Race to the Bottom of the Sea

by Lindsay Eagar

  “Where did you disappear to, Merrick?” Admiral Bridgewater muttered. “Back to your hidden cave of treasure? Or did you finally sail straight to hell?”

  The Mother Dog sailed south aimlessly. The admiral barked orders at his men. He tried to do this at least once an hour, to keep them soft and afraid. Every day Admiral Bridgewater endured without Merrick behind bars felt like an eternity, felt miserable. Felt like he could hear someone laughing at him and the Queen’s Own Navy.

  Other pirates had met their fates. Other pirates, he had crushed like fleas under the boot of the law. But getting rid of the fleas one by one did nothing when the whole mangy dog still roamed free.

  “I’ll find you,” he vowed to the open sea. “If I have to drag the entire ocean, if I have to storm every shore. If I have to swim to the bottom of the sea myself — I will find you.”

  The sun began its descent, casting a pink glow on the water, and land came back into view.

  Fidelia stared as the Jewel came closer to the coast. The land stretched forever. Like looking out at the sea, but the opposite — green instead of blue.

  The spray was warmer here, the water a more vivid blue — no more undertones of gray, no shingle beaches full of pebbles and rocks. The air even smelled green. Spiced, and fresh.

  A brackish whiff hit the ship — the scent of estuaries, those spots where seawater turns into river mouths.

  Near a stretch of white shale cliffs, Cheapshot Charlie angled the ship toward the land. The cliffs were straight, a line of perfect tabletop rocks with no visible openings or coves.

  “What exactly is this place?” Fidelia asked Bloody Elle, who was tacking the front bottom corner of a sail.

  “It’s an old … hideout of ours,” Bloody Elle said.

  Merrick pulled his peacoat tighter and hunched under the popped collar. For the first time since he boarded the Jewel, Merrick refused to steer, or touch the sails, or do anything except glower over the bow.

  “He really hates this place,” Fidelia observed quietly.

  Bloody Elle’s smile was pained. “Actually, just the opposite. Captain loves this place so much, it hurts.”

  Cheapshot Charlie steered the Jewel so it was set to sail right into the wall of shale.

  “You’re heading for the cliff,” Fidelia pointed out.

  The Jewel held steady.

  “The cliff !” Fidelia’s voice sharpened. “We’re going to smash right into it!” She looked to Bloody Elle and Merrick for their reactions, but they barely blinked.

  She marched to the helm. “Charlie,” she cried, “I’m not going down in a shipwreck after all you’ve put me through —”

  “Out of the way.” Cheapshot Charlie steadied the wheel.

  The bowsprit was feet away from kissing the cliffs. “Hang on to something!” Cheapshot Charlie commanded.

  Fidelia obeyed, grasping a guard line.

  Just before the Jewel’s needle nose made contact with the cliffs … the ship slipped right through, as if the cliff were just a phantom. Clear, cool water trickled down from a river channel in the cliffs — a curtain of water, Fidelia realized. A secret waterfall, which reflected the stony white of the cliffs as it streamed down into the sea. A path camouflaged so well that if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.

  From behind the waterfall, the opening was clear — a wide arch, leading to a dark grotto, cut out by centuries of waves hurling themselves against the cliffs. The last gasps of sunlight finally disappeared as Cheapshot Charlie steered the ship into the depths of the grotto, deep under the cliffs, into the largest natural chamber Fidelia had ever seen.

  The sunlight was gone, yes, but it had been replaced by a radiating blue light, almost as if the water itself were the source. The whole grotto gleamed with it.

  Fidelia leaned over the railing and gasped. Soft electric-blue lights pulsed through the water.

  Jellyfish.

  They were so beautiful, her eyes pooled with tears.

  If only Mom and Dad could see this.

  “Jellies,” she whispered.

  “Medusas.” It was the first thing Merrick had said in hours.

  “Yes, medusas. A whole bloom of them,” Fidelia said.

  “Bloom?” Merrick repeated.

  “Two or more medusas are called a bloom,” she explained. Medusa’s Grotto — not a person, but an animal.

  The medusas flexed their billowing bodies, thin and delicate as chiffon skirts, tentacles streaming ribbons in the water. Not a ripple among them as they floated around the ship. Fidelia’s face glowed — she watched the little blue jellies, mesmerized, while Cheapshot Charlie brought the ship deeper into the grotto, until Merrick told the pirates to drop anchor.

  She finally peeled her eyes away from the dancing blue ghosts. Merrick climbed down the starboard side of the Jewel onto a wooden dock, which was built right into the grotto.

  Several tunnels lined the curving wall behind the dock, like a row of hallways. Offshoots, caverns that continued back — how far under the cliffs, Fidelia couldn’t tell. Underneath the entire mainland? There could be a whole pirate network underneath the cities of the world, and no one would know.

  Merrick spoke to his crew, who were tying off the Jewel and assessing the broken mast. “Quail, you help me with the barnacles. Elle, Charlie, the mast.” He set his jaw and looked each of his shipmates square in the eye. “There’s no reason we should be here past nightfall.”

  He moved to the hull of the Jewel, a steel scraper and his knife out and ready. “Quail,” he barked, “are you going to give me a hand, or do I have to take it from you?”

  Fidelia followed him to the bow of the ship, but her eyes stayed on those tunnels. She glanced down one tunnel and saw a room — a round office. An old rolltop desk, drippy walls covered in maps and graph paper, cold-looking candles with blackened wicks, everything buried in dust and cobwebs and time. What else would she find if she slipped away to explore?

  “What is this place?” she asked, more to herself than Merrick.

  He knelt on the dock, aligning his scraper with one of the barnacle clusters on the Jewel’s bow. “It’s best forgotten,” he growled.

  On the dock post behind him, words were carved into the wood: Merrick + Jewel.

  Fidelia almost snorted. Did Merrick’s love affair with his ship truly run this deep?

  She peeked down another tunnel and saw a hat stand. “A home is not a home without somewhere to hang your hat,” Aunt Julia always said. Fidelia’s heart panged to think of her, back in the library, all alone, her niece — her only remaining family — gone.

  “Did someone live here?” she wondered aloud.

  “Stop with the questions and come pound the scraper for me.”

  Fidelia tore herself away from the curiosities of the cave and eyed the hull. A colony of barnacles was growing its own city there. Once they cleared the ship of these intruders, Merrick could push the Jewel harder, faster. Up to twenty knots, if Bloody Elle was to be believed.

  She scrutinized the barnacles. They had hours of work ahead of them, curling upside down to reach the farthest crustaceans, both she and Merrick getting neck aches … And without careening the Jewel, how would they reach the barnacles below the waterline?

  She looked around the grotto, at the eerie blue water, and a pop of orange made her jump. “I have an idea.” Unlacing her boots, she scooted to the edge of the dock. “There,” she said. “Near that rock.”

  Merrick frowned. “What am I looking at?”

  “Common starfish. Pisaster ochraceus.”

  He stared at her.

  “They eat barnacles,” Fidelia explained. “Trust me, this’ll be a feast to them.” She climbed down into the water. “Ah! Cold, cold!” Her shriek echoed in the grotto. Jellyfish swirled around her, floating blue paper lanterns keeping their distance.

  “Mind the medusas,” Merrick warned. “They pack quite a punch.”

  “Don’t worry,” Fidelia said, wading ac
ross the water. “I know how to handle dangerous animals.” She stopped, waiting for a jellyfish to drift in front of her. “You’d be surprised how timid most of them are.”

  “That’s exactly what they want you to think,” Merrick called. “Then when you’re close enough, they sink their teeth into you.”

  An image flashed to Fidelia: a wide shark’s grin, mottled gray skin, a pair of endless black tunnels for eyes. A creature so big, it could swallow her whole — a real monster, some might say, but still, a twenty-foot fish with fresh mackerel blood on its teeth would always be, to her, more fascinating than frightening.

  The rock was plastered in pale-orange starfish lying in a heap, a pile of limbs. Fidelia lifted them one by one, gingerly placing them in her outstretched skirt until she had nearly fifty of them.

  “Starfish will eat the barnacles,” Fidelia recited as she carried her cargo back to the dock, “and then king crabs will eat the starfish. And then people will eat the king crabs. Someone, somewhere, will be dining on these very crustaceans in a fancy seafood restaurant come springtime.”

  “How wonderful to know I’ll be outlived by the crust on my ship.” Merrick took the starfish from her, stacking them on the dock. He caught Fidelia’s horrified blush and smiled his terrible crooked smirk. “Don’t worry, Dr. Quail. Death is a part of life, remember?”

  Irritation loosed Fidelia’s tongue. “Maybe I’m not as ready to accept it as you are — ouch!”

  A sharp sting, right above her knee. She stumbled from the white-hot blinding pain of it, grasping for the dock.

  “What is it? Quail? Quail?” Merrick grabbed her hands, holding her steady.

  “Jellyfish …” she choked out. She tracked the way the venom curled around the wound. First, the sting of the tentacles. Next, the burn of venom pulsing through her skin. In a moment her leg would cut off all feeling — not to shut down nerves permanently but to offer an alternative to fainting from the pain. Yes, here came the numbness — her leg was now dead weight.

  Merrick yanked her out of the neon water. “Where is it?” he demanded.

  Still horizontal, and stiff as a plank, Fidelia ripped through her stocking and found the sting. The skin was already blistering.

  He inspected the sting, using his fingernails to remove a few stray stingers. “Nothing to do now except wait out the pain.”

  “Will it scar?” she asked.

  “Without a doubt,” Merrick said. “But what’s life without a few scars?”

  Fidelia took in his black-and-red eye, his bandaged shoulder, where a crater from Niccu’s bullet still festered. There were a few things she wouldn’t mind remembering from this whole journey — these beautiful jellyfish wafting through the water like strange aliens, for one. She’d never seen anything like it. She was certain her mother never had, either.

  But she’d rather this journey not leave any permanent marks.

  If only her father were here to squeeze a bit of suma root juice into her jellyfish sting to keep it from scarring.

  Forget the root — if only her father were here.

  The worst of the pain subsided after a few moments, and then Fidelia directed Merrick in decorating the barnacle-encrusted hull with the starfish. To his annoyance, the starfish did not immediately devour the crunchy little pests.

  “Give them a minute,” Fidelia said.

  He coughed. “I don’t have very many to spare.” He shifted from his haunches, dangling his legs over the edge of the dock.

  Fidelia took a seat next to him, twelve inches of space between them. “How much time?” she asked.

  She didn’t expect him to answer, but he surprised her: “Who knows.” He examined his pocket watch, the water’s reflection turning its face blue. “Another few days or so,” he said.

  “Days!” Fidelia balked. “How fast do the red daisies work, anyway?”

  “Fast.” He narrowed his sapphire eye at her — enough prying, enough questions.

  Only a handful of days … “That’s why you’re in such a hurry,” she realized. “You want to get your treasure before you —”

  “Maybe I just don’t like to dillydally,” Merrick said.

  Fidelia knew better than to believe him. This was the strange way he communicated, she had learned in the last twenty-four hours with the pirate — saying the opposite of what he meant, in a cruel, mocking way to derail the less clever, to filter weak people from his conversation. A brutal form of sarcasm — how befitting a pirate captain. “But why do you want treasure?” She had to ask. The terrible image surfaced again in her mind — her parents, clinging to life in the Egg, their last breaths being taken … What whispers came out of that breath? What were they thinking of ?

  “Your last days of life,” she said, her voice sharpening, “and you spend it hunting for gold. Why?” What could someone possibly do with treasure if they were dying?

  “Because I’m Merrick the Monstrous,” he said. “A vicious, greedy pirate who only cares about gold.” He glanced up at the Jewel. “What else is there to chase after?”

  “Plenty,” Fidelia snapped, and when he finally looked at her, a slight surprise in his mismatched eyes, she bubbled over.

  “There was this shark,” she said, and told him all about the day it happened. The crackling static of the radio. The moment when Grizzle arrived, the reverence in the sea, the electricity in her blood, the excitement. “And he’s out there still,” she said, “Swimming somewhere, just waiting to be found.” And I thought it would be me who would find him, she thought, but then I found the submarine on the beach instead, smashed and twisted, and it tore me in half.

  “So is this what you would chase after, if you only had a day?” he asked, ignoring her tears. “You’d find this shark? Put a tag in its fin and collect your award?”

  “It’s not about the award,” she said. “Don’t try to turn this into treasure.” Her own words surprised her — it wasn’t about the Gilded Iguana or Adventures in Science Engineering. Not anymore.

  Her eyes went to Merrick’s pocket watch, its second hand’s slow revolution. “I might not be able to get my parents back, but if I can get him back …” Sometimes I think that’s the only way I’ll ever be stitched back together again, she finished to herself, sniffling.

  Merrick leaned forward. “Listen to me. If you have something important to do,” he said, “you do it now. You don’t wait until your clock has started ticking. I wish I had —” He sighed, a shaky rattling exhale. “My final days, and this is where I am.”

  What did Merrick mean? This is where I am, back in Medusa’s Grotto? This is where I am, sitting on a dock, waiting for starfish to eat barnacles off my ramshackle ship that somehow has more lives than a cat? This is where I am, talking about life and death with some kid I took?

  Or maybe he meant something else entirely.

  She spared him from any more of her incessant questions. She sat silently beside him, and as the starfish slowly did their work, she and Merrick watched the minute hand of his pocket watch tick around, and around, and around.

  Merrick rode the bow of the Jewel, watching the break of the waves. He reached for his pocket watch, then remembered it wasn’t there. Sweat coated his hands; he wiped them on his linen shirt and metered his breaths, inhaling until his lungs were at full capacity. Why was he so nervous? She met him here every other week, both of them breaking away from their busy schedules to spend time alone.

  His hand brushed the box in his pocket. Because this time is different, he let himself admit.

  The crew guided the Jewel into the shallows near the white cliffs of the mainland. Through a secret passageway, under a waterfall in disguise, they sailed the ship into a dark grotto — their hideout, used by the captain and his band of pirates for years.

  The Jewel moved easily, like a stallion exhausted from a long day of bucking and riding, ready for rest in a stable. Merrick kept his fingers on the small box in his pocket, its contents a mystery to most of his crew. Only his bes
t people knew about the brooch.

  Only his best people knew about her.

  As they floated through the grotto, the sunlight faded and the strange electric blue light of the medusas pulsed from the water. Merrick smiled — not the wry, crooked half grin he gave to his victims before he pilfered their hold (or worse), but a softer smile. A genuine one.

  “Dock her and get her tarred,” he ordered his crew. “Shore leave until tomorrow morning. Then we head west. Cocoa season is under way; we want to be there to greet those beanies with flags blazing, don’t we?” He gestured to the Jewel’s scarlet flag, rippling from the mast.

  Hearty huzzahs from his crew — his overworked crew, who were never too tired to give their captain an enthusiastic reply. Merrick kept smiling as he charged past the tunnels. The largest one led to the captain’s quarters; a side tunnel led to an office; a third, to the rum storage.

  He turned down another side tunnel, one that meandered deeper under the cliffs to a round, wide, open cavern, a room filled with books —

  A library, in the middle of the grotto.

  He walked up and down every aisle, past every volume. Except for the characters and ideas and words populating the books on the shelves, the library was empty.

  “Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?” His voice bounced off the cavern walls.

  In the back corner of the library, there was a stairway carved into the slick gray rocks of the grotto, leading all the way to the top of the shale cliffs. He climbed up until the sun warmed his head and a salty breeze ruffled his hair. He had to squint through the light to see her, sitting near the edge of the cliff beneath a jackfruit tree.

  “You’re late.” She said this without looking up from the gigantic book spread open in her lap. She was sitting sideways with her legs folded beneath her in the shade, her posture straight as a mast. Her feet were bare, pale as shark bait, and bright yellow candy wrappers were scattered by her side — all empty, Merrick noticed with amusement.

  “I lost my watch,” Merrick said as he knelt beside her, and his voice wasn’t a growl or a rumble or a threat, but something … tender, a ripple lapping the shore of a periwinkle lagoon. “Forgive me?”