Cheapshot Charlie pressed his lips together and exhaled through his nose. He folded his arms, his muscles straining against his tunic. “Do you understand who you’re dealing with, shrimp?” He pointed at his captain. “Merrick the Monstrous, wanted in thirty nations for robbery, burglary, arson, murder, jail breaking, and piracy.”
Jail breaking? “You were in prison?” Only the most notorious, most dangerous of criminals were sent to the naval prison — a windowless iron barge that floated a mile off the mainland’s arctic coast, its own tiny island.
“Only long enough for a good rest,” Merrick said. “Then I left.” He spoke of the prison as if it were a cozy inn — one that he could simply check out of when he was finished with his stay.
“But how?” Each prisoner on the barge was fitted with a heavy vest, a wearable anchor of sorts, secured with chains. Even if someone managed to ditch his or her cell and get past the guards and the dogs, to jump ship was to sink to the bottom of the sea and drown miserably.
Merrick didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he walked to the washstand on the left side of the bed — her father’s side. The porcelain basin was still full of water, a clean folded towel and a shaving kit laid out and ready.
A sour taste filled Fidelia’s mouth as she watched this pirate use her father’s bristly brush to load his face with shaving cream, then run her father’s blade along his jaw to clear away his patchy mustache and beard. Only his two sideburns remained, and Merrick slicked those and the rest of his black sea-devil hair down with Dr. Quail’s greasy pomade.
Fidelia blinked. The spicy, woodsy smell of pomade hit her nose — her father’s scent.
“Much better,” Bloody Elle appraised after inspecting her captain. “You look like yourself again.”
“I could use a good dip in turpentine.” Merrick scratched his head. “Damned prison gave me nits, I think.”
“I don’t understand,” Fidelia said. “You’re Merrick the Monstrous. If you can do all that — escape from prison and elude the navy — then …” She paused. He didn’t look much older than Aunt Julia. But he had already carved out a name and a reputation for himself — and a monstrous one at that.
Merrick finished her sentence for her: “What could I possibly want with you?”
Before he could elaborate, he coughed, a string of violent hacks that made Fidelia’s throat tighten in sympathy.
Bloody Elle rushed to his side, holding out a canteen.
But Merrick waved her away. “It won’t make a difference,” he snapped, “and you know it.”
He collapsed in the armchair, panting. He coughed once more, just a tickle, then straightened, locking Fidelia’s gaze with his clashing eyes. “A treasure of mine fell into the sea,” he said, “and you’re going to get it back.”
Sunken treasure.
Electricity jolted her nerves.
She tried to remember how it used to feel to be gently swallowed by the sea, to sink down into the water until the world was upside down, brighter, filtered blue … The underwater fairyland, her parents called it, and that’s how it felt now — as if her old life had been a fairy tale, far away. A passage from a book.
Merrick was demanding that she dive into a dream.
“There’s more,” the captain said. “I don’t know where it is.”
She gaped at him. For eleven years, she had studied the ocean and its inhabitants with her parents. Dr. and Dr. Quail had done it on their own for a decade before Fidelia came around. And the three of them had seen only a speck of the ocean’s secrets. “There are nine seas,” she finally said, stunned. “How could you possibly expect me to find —?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Merrick barked. “I know the general vicinity. But the seafloors have all shifted. Everything down there — it’s moved. Different.” He picked a ball of lint from the wool of his threadbare peacoat. “The Undertow wreaks havocs on the tides. Sweeps sand and shells and lord knows what else over my treasure.”
“I don’t know what you expect from me,” Fidelia said. “My parents were Dr. and Dr. Quail. They were brilliant. “They doubled the list of known marine species in just five years. They saved the great northern narwhal from overfishing. They knew everything about the sea, and —”
“And they’re gone,” Merrick finished. “And you are what’s left behind.” He dashed his hand like a blur into his boot and produced a sleek, silver knife. The firelight glinted off the blade — a warning, a hint. “Surely some of their expertise rubbed off on you.”
Fidelia stared at the knife. “What if it didn’t?” She kept still, concentrating on keeping her hands from fidgeting beneath the ropes.
Merrick darkened. “Don’t test me, girl,” he said. “You’re getting my treasure if I have to hog-tie you and throw you into the water myself.”
He angled his knife so the light hit Fidelia’s eyes. “But if you cooperate, I’ll have you home safe within a week.” He sliced through her restraints.
Home. Fidelia watched the fire flicker in the hearth — the hearth that no longer belonged to her. Nothing in this house belonged to her.
No, Fidelia didn’t have a home. Not anymore.
She stood shakily, the ropes falling to the floor in coils.
“Smart girl,” Merrick said. “I’d hate to see you lose one of those hands.” He inspected a silver pocket watch and growled. “Now, we have a hell of a trip ahead of us. A week’s sail southbound, along the cocoa route, and we’re going to do it in half that time.”
“Wait, we’re leaving now?” Never mind Merrick’s absurd delusion that they’d be able to pinpoint their exact moment of arrival; traveling by sea was a notoriously slippery thing, since there were so many factors — crosswinds, and traffic on the routes, and unpredictable ship maintenance. He was ignoring the most important — the most dangerous — factor of all. “What about the Undertow?”
“We’ll see if the remaining Quail can make it through the storm a second time. What is it you say here? In the Undertow, anything can happen?”
The cruelty of his comments chilled Fidelia to her marrow. “But why —?”
“Because the navy begins their winter patrols next week.” Merrick’s blue eye seared a hole in her. “Because the faster I can be rid of you, the better. And because,” he finished with particularly lethal poison, “some things you have to do now. Right now, and hope to the stars it isn’t too late.”
Fidelia swallowed, adjusted her glasses, and nodded.
“Now, when the navy finds me —”
“When?” Fidelia cut in, her mind still churning like high tide.
“When,” he repeated. “They’ll hang me. This time, they’ll stay and make sure I die.” His good eye burned in the firelight. “If you give me any trouble, any at all — you’ll swim back home. Whole or in pieces. Do you understand?”
For some reason, a memory flashed into Fidelia’s mind — a beached marlin she’d found with her parents, struggling for breath in the sand. It flopped pathetically, trying to swim back out to deeper water, but it was pale, malnourished, one fin mangled and twisted and useless. Its cerulean scales flaked off every time it fluttered across the shore; the sight of its naked white flesh beneath its failing chain-mail armor made Fidelia intensely uncomfortable, itchy all over.
Fidelia’s mother, ever the tender-hearted zoologist, had rushed over and gently placed her arms beneath the marlin’s twitching body — only to receive an ungrateful chomp on the thumb.
“We’re trying to help you!” Fidelia had scolded the fish.
Ida had pulled her daughter back, wrapping the hem of her dress around her bleeding digit. “He’s asking for space,” she had said. “We need to respect his wishes.”
“But he’ll die!” Fidelia had cried.
Ida had nodded. “He’s going to die no matter what we do. That makes him extremely dangerous. He’s got nothing to lose.”
Merrick the Monstrous spoke like a man with nothing to lose.
“What about
supplies?” Merrick turned to his comrades.
Bloody Elle started to open her knapsack, then paused. “Now, Captain,” she said slowly, “I know this isn’t your first choice in grub —”
“We found the crate unattended in the harbor,” Cheapshot Charlie cut in. Both pirates were nervous, Fidelia realized: Bloody Elle traced her finger along the thickest of her bracelet tattoos, and Cheapshot Charlie’s eyebrows pushed so far down on his forehead, they cast a shadow over his eyes.
“There isn’t a spare bit of bread or salted meat on the island,” Cheapshot Charlie said, unapologetic. “The Undertow’s got everyone on lockdown.”
“And there won’t be any ships to loot, either,” Bloody Elle added.
Without a word, Merrick took the knapsack from her hands and peered inside.
“It was all we could find, Captain,” Cheapshot Charlie said.
Merrick tipped the knapsack upside down, and an avalanche of sweets fell onto the floor: kaleidorainbow figs, crack-o-mallow bars, choco-glomps. A logo was emblazoned across every bright-yellow wrapper: a hot-pink ship with mint-colored flags curling like ribbons sailing on a whipped-cream sea beneath the words BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop.
Fidelia’s heart panged at the sight. BonBon Voyage was her favorite sweets shop. The heavenly cotton candy–scented wonderland was located right next to the Book and Bottle on the boardwalk, so most nights after field studies, Dr. and Dr. Quail had let Fidelia pick a green note’s worth of sweets (usually as many apple crantruffles as she could fit in her pockets). The smell of the sweets hit Fidelia like a sugary wall — she still hadn’t eaten breakfast.
Merrick, however, glared at the pile of candy with this good eye as if sweets were his sworn enemies. He nudged a choco-glomp with his boot, his breathing slow and deliberate.
“Captain?” Bloody Elle pressed.
“Pack them up,” Merrick’s orders came. “Put out the fire. Then we leave.” He stalked to the Quails’ bedroom window and pulled back the curtain with a scarred finger.
The two pirates knelt down and shoveled the candy back into the knapsack. Cheapshot Charlie unwrapped a striped, sprinkled bar and took a bite. “Mmm,” he said.
“I haven’t had one of these in ages.” Bloody Elle grabbed a sweet, practically drooling.
Fidelia’s stomach lurched with hunger. Or maybe that was a knot of fear and uncertainty snarling inside her as she pondered the enormous task ahead of her: a dive, possibly hundreds of feet down, to locate a lost treasure, buried by algae and sand and time. And if she didn’t do it — or couldn’t — Merrick the Monstrous would no doubt add her to his list of victims.
If they even survived the journey.
“We’re all clear.” Merrick let the curtain fall, turning away from the window. “Time to go.”
The pirates slung their knapsacks over their shoulders. Cheapshot Charlie snuffed out the fire in the hearth; Bloody Elle scarfed down one more kaleidorainbow fig and threw the wrapper onto the rug.
Fidelia stared at the wrapper — part of her wanted to shout at the pirate for the careless littering. But it didn’t really matter, did it? It wasn’t her parents’ bedroom anymore. It wasn’t her house anymore.
When she didn’t move, Merrick seized her arm to make her move. “Wait,” she said. “I’m supposed to just swim down to the bottom of the sea and fetch your treasure?”
“You’re a Quail,” Merrick said. “Isn’t that your second nature?”
“We use equipment for our research,” Fidelia pointed out. “For a dive that deep, my parents would use a diving suit.” Or the Egg, she thought with a pang.
A growl like an annoyed jaguar came from Merrick’s throat. “You have one, I assume?”
“Down in the garden shed,” Fidelia said.
She pictured the department heads from the university showing up tomorrow morning to gather the Quails’ collection and finding their expensive diving suit gone. More than a fair trade, she decided, considering they were taking away everything else. All the tangible, touchable memorabilia of the Quails’ adventures would be locked away in a cold university laboratory, to be squinted at beneath microscopes. Or in a display, stowed behind glass. She hated that. The house should be allowed to stay just like it was forever — a museum dedicated to the two greatest scientists to ever live.
Rain pelted Fidelia as she led the pirates through the yard. She didn’t stop to prepare herself as she hurled open the garden shed door, and before she could think, or breathe, there it was — the salvaged fragments of the Egg.
All she could do was stare at the smashed submarine. Her invention. Her creation. She had been so certain it would be safe in an ocean storm, but the Undertow had squashed it like a sea snail. Her parents had always trusted her inventions, and it had cost them their lives.
She turned away from the pirates so they wouldn’t see her blurry eyes and took a few steps into the shed. A hole in the roof dripped raindrops onto her head.
“Get what you need,” Merrick said. “Clock’s ticking.”
Fidelia tiptoed around a pile of mismatched fins, past the rusty diving bell (an antiquated relic of marine biology equipment the Quails kept around as a sort of joke), past life jackets, past dragnets …
But where was the diving suit? It should have been here, in the back left corner of the shed. But all she saw was an old broken helmet, barnacles still crusted on the visor. Fidelia nudged it with her foot; a refugee spider scurried away into the shadows.
“It’s gone!”
“Well, where’d it go?” Merrick said.
Fidelia thought. “The university. They must have come early.” But why didn’t they take the rest of their equipment? Clear out the house? Typical academics. They made sure to grab their costly diving suit first, and left the true prizes behind: the unicorn fish skeleton, the bramble shark skin, all the photographs …
She cursed, then looked at Merrick helplessly, who shrugged. “Now what am I supposed to do?” she said.
“You’re the inventor,” Merrick said. “Make a new suit on the way.”
Fidelia shook her head. “I don’t have the right tools — I’d need a bolt of canvas, and a pump, and …” She stared at the pirate captain. “How did you know I was an inventor?”
“I know all about how you Quails conducted your research,” Merrick said. “Your Hydro-Scanner, and your Air-Spinners, and your submersible there.” He jutted his chin toward the ruined Egg.
Fidelia’s mouth fell open.
The Air-Spinners were Fidelia’s early attempts at replacing regular old fins with foot propellers, thus reducing the amount of energy used by a diver. A brilliant concept but an utter failure in execution; the Air-Spinners weren’t flexible enough to be steered.
“How do you know about —?” Fidelia started, then answered her own question. Air-Spinners were her special project at least four years ago, right around the time the Quails were working on their manuscript. “You read their book. You read Exploring an Underwater Fairyland.”
Merrick wrapped his peacoat tighter around his chest. “It passed the time on the crossing to Molvania.” His brilliant blue eye burned past the lenses of her glasses, right into her. “Now quit stalling. You’re fetching my treasure. I don’t care if you have to grow your own set of gills.”
Gills.
Fidelia’s skin prickled. “Gills,” she repeated, and straightened.
Cheapshot Charlie lunged for her, but she sidestepped his grip. “She’s wasting time, Captain. Let’s go.”
Fidelia ignored him. She walked to the back of the leaky shed, where a dinged-up farm table served as her old workstation. Bolts and screwdrivers littered the surface, along with sketches of half-baked ideas on blueprint paper.
Her hands ran along the sides of a dusty cocoa-bean crate. She lifted the box and turned toward Merrick.
“A box of toys for the long trip?” Merrick said, and Fidelia swallowed hard so her cheeks wouldn’t burn. Nothing more than a toy for bored schoolgir
ls who like to play at science, the patent office had said of the Hydro-Scanner, one of her most successful inventions. What would they say now, about this box of junk? A hodgepodge of misplaced ambition? A waste of scrap metal?
“My own set of gills,” Fidelia said, rattling the contents of the crate. “At least, that’s what it was supposed to be.”
The Water-Eater — an invention she’d worked on for almost a year. It was her pet project, the one that kept her up most nights, turning it over and over in her mind… . It was also the project that she could never get right. Every few weeks she had what seemed like a breakthrough, which only ever lasted a day before she threw it back into the crate, disgusted and discouraged. It had been sitting in the shed for months, put away in its crate — in its grave, where it couldn’t taunt her. Where she could forget about it.
Merrick looked down into the crate, and Fidelia held her breath. “Doesn’t look like much,” he said of the strange little mask, its failed filtration system broken down into its basic parts, the loose screws rolling around the bottom of the box rebelliously.
“Well, it’s not finished yet.” Hot defensiveness curled in Fidelia’s chest, its flames momentarily melting the chill of her fear.
“And you think you can finish it before your big dive.” Merrick didn’t ask this, but it still sounded like an inquiry. And it sounded like he already had the answer.
Fidelia crumpled, staring at the crate.
If she couldn’t get the Water-Eater right when her parents were here — bringing her toast with tomato jam during late-night work sessions, lending an ear when she needed to talk through the mechanics — how could she possibly get the Water-Eater right without them?
“Captain,” Cheapshot Charlie said, his teeth gritted. “We need to go.”
“One minute,” Merrick said. “She has sixty more seconds, and then we leave.”
Fidelia’s thoughts raced, her body drumming with panic. She set down the crate and took her observation book from her bag, flipping through it — maybe a solution would jump out among her scribbled notes and slapdash diagrams.
Race to the Bottom of the Sea Page 6