Race to the Bottom of the Sea

by Lindsay Eagar

  The wind carried her honey-colored hair right into his cheeks. He inhaled, the smell of her like dusty old tomes and polished mahogany and cinnamon tea and chocolate.

  “Of course,” she said, “but see, now I’ve started a new chapter, and I need to finish it.” Hers was the same smile as his — gently teasing, ready to break into a laugh so happy, it would split the universe into a stained-glass window.

  And so Merrick relaxed beside her, one hand in his greatcoat pocket, clutching the box, the other finding hers. She turned pages in her book; he watched the afternoon sun dip lower in the sky, a golden ball ablaze, bathing the world in a saffron light. Dolphins in the distance dove up and out of the water in graceful arcs, their wakes crystallizing like snowflakes in the blue ocean.

  When she finished her chapter and closed her book, she looked right at him, and he suddenly forgot everything he’d rehearsed to say to her.

  “Choco-glomp?” she offered, holding up a sweet from BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop. “Last one. I saved it for you.”

  “I — I,” he stammered, and she patiently waited, waited for the man who commanded the fear of the nine seas to summon his courage and continue. “I’m so happy,” he said, “here with you.” It wasn’t what he’d planned to say, not at all; apparently his practiced speech had stayed on the deck of the Jewel.

  But it worked.

  She blushed, something in her gray eyes glittering as she squeezed his hand. “I’m happy,” she echoed, “here with you.”

  Merrick pulled the box from his pocket — were his hands truly shaking? He hadn’t been this nervous since the first time the navy backed him into a corner with cannons blasting. “This is for you,” he said, “and I want you to know I bought it myself.”

  “You mean you didn’t pluck this from the hands of some …” Her banter trailed into silence as she opened the box. Everything happened just as he’d pictured, just as he’d hoped. Her lips fell open in a modest gasp — a sure sign of surprise from a woman who rarely let emotions paint themselves on her face.

  “Merrick,” she whispered, suddenly at a loss for words despite feasting on them all day in her books. “It’s — it’s —”

  Merrick examined the brooch. “It isn’t as fancy as the other things. No pearls, or rubies, or … But I thought —”

  She stopped his mouth with hers. “You thought right,” she whispered.

  “Marry me,” he whispered back, and her kiss was her answer, and the end of their conversation. He pinned the brooch on the simple white lace dress she wore, and she tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder, where it fit so nicely, and together they looked out at the world.

  A world that wouldn’t ever understand what force kept them together despite all the odds against them — a world that wouldn’t understand his bloodstained hands in her ink-covered ones.

  “Now, about that choco-glomp,” she said. “How much do you really want it?”

  He snorted and unwrapped it for her. “Your stomach must be made of steel.”

  The sun set. Stripes of vibrant pinks and purples, like watercolors running, streaked across the sky, and seabirds cawed — Merrick felt like he was watching himself watch it. He was … happy. Happy enough to think of doing things. Drastic things.

  A wife. A home. Dry land.

  She sighed, a sound so contented and blissful that Merrick could feel himself unraveling somehow. How did she do it? How did she manage to strip him down to his core and still make him feel boosted up, higher than he’d ever been, in the clouds with the gulls?

  There wasn’t a speck of the nine seas he hadn’t sailed, not an inch of shoreline he hadn’t explored — he knew of places not even a maritime cartographer would include on the maps.

  And still.

  There was nowhere he’d rather be than right here, her chin propped on his arm.

  “Read to me,” he implored.

  She opened her book and read aloud from a story of enchantresses, poisoned arrows, hundred-year sleeps, and first kisses of pure, white love.

  When the sun dipped below the horizon, the light shifted. He sat up as if an iron rod had been jammed through his spine. The motion jerked her out of his shoulder nook, where she’d been cozily making daydreams of her own.

  “What?” Her whisper was fierce — the only weapon she ever brandished. “What’s wrong?”

  Merrick didn’t answer. He stood and yanked a spyglass from his pocket. When he couldn’t get the angle he wanted, he left their spot beneath the jackfruit tree and ran to the edge of the cliff.

  Left her behind.

  “Bridgewater,” he mumbled as the unmistakable sails of the galleon, pride of the Queen’s Own Navy, came into view. Its crisp white sails glowed against the twilight water.

  “Merrick,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s the admiral.” That same mouth he’d used to kiss her moments ago now curled in rage. “He thought the sunset would camouflage his ship —”

  “You said you were done with work for tonight,” she protested. “This is supposed to be our time.”

  “He can’t find us, do you understand? He can’t find the grotto,” Merrick said. “I have to meet him.” He collapsed the spyglass. “We’ll strike first. He won’t know what hit him — pompous old bilge rat —”

  “You promised me, Merrick.” She stood, and the light hit her new brooch, splintering the last of the sunset into the captain’s eyes — reds, fuchsias, deep oranges …

  “I know.” Merrick seized her shoulders and gave her a quick, perfunctory kiss. “But I have to do this. For us.”

  For us.

  It was the falsest gift he’d ever given her.

  From the top of the white cliffs he whistled, and from every tunnel beneath, his crew stopped their lounging and frolicking and jumped to attention. Captain’s whistle meant all hands on deck.

  Captain’s whistle meant Bridgewater.

  “Get inside the grotto,” Merrick directed her, “and no matter what happens, you stay there. Stay until I come for you.”

  “But what about —?”

  “There’s food, and water, and books. You’ll have everything you need. Please, Jewel,” he said. “Do this for me.”

  Her gray eyes swirled with angry clouds, a storm raging, but he didn’t see them. She picked up her book and headed down the stairs into the grotto.

  She looked back at him, but he was already somewhere else, his face flushed with the bloom of adrenaline. Hide and seek with the enemy — his greatest game, his greatest passion.

  His first love, she realized with a stab.

  From inside Medusa’s Grotto, she watched his ship disappear under the hidden waterfall, back out to open sea. Then she tucked herself deep in the caverns so she wouldn’t hear the stray cannons, the blasts, the ricochets, the ringing of battle. Sounds that made her heart pang and tremble. She ate shrimp, and shellfish, and sweets from BonBon Voyage — he kept them on hand, just for her, and once upon a time this had made her swoon. But now she felt like she could never taste chocolate again without tasting this disappointment, this bitterness of crumbling expectations.

  She drank the cool water, and watched the jellies swim, and waited.

  While the starfish munched the Jewel clean of barnacles, Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle restructured the ship to sail on its two remaining masts.

  Cheapshot Charlie bound the sails together, his big hands careful and steady with the stitches, and then scaled the unbroken masts, restringing the rigging, creating new knots, new connections. Bloody Elle sanded the masts and the rest of the ship with an old hand-plane recovered from one of the tunnels, her black-ringed forearms bulging with the effort. Merrick paced back and forth along the dock like a caged tiger awaiting his release into the wild. His impatience was all-consuming; clearly he wanted to sail out of Medusa’s Grotto right away.

  Fidelia stayed sitting on the dock. Her leg still tingled from her jellyfish sting, but she could feel the blood flowi
ng, her nerves awakening. It would be sore, but salvageable.

  “There,” Cheapshot Charlie said, setting the last sail in place.

  Bloody Elle tightened a knot. “It’ll slow us down some,” she said, “but it’s the best we could do.” She watched her captain survey his ship. It looked like a failed science project. As if the Jewel’s builder had missed half the blueprints.

  “Weigh anchor,” he said. “Cast us off.”

  “There’s still a few tar lines that need to dry,” Cheapshot Charlie said.

  Merrick narrowed his blue eye. “How long?”

  Fidelia could have sworn Cheapshot Charlie flinched as he said, “The night.”

  Merrick cussed. “We sail at dawn, then,” he said, “and not a second past.”

  “Captain —” Cheapshot Charlie started.

  “We stay on the ship,” Merrick ordered. “For the rest of our time here.” He slammed into his quarters, and Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie had one of their silent conversations with their eyes.

  Cheapshot Charlie noticed Fidelia watching and glowered at her. “Quit wasting time,” he said. “All of us. Back to work.”

  Archipelagos reef, just after sunrise. The fish-finder Fidelia has made for our trawler is working splendidly, just like we knew it would. Our brainy, briny girl.

  Fidelia touched the sketch her father had drawn of her wrestling with her Hydro-Scanner, her tongue sticking out of her mouth in concentration. She remembered that day, the first day she’d brought the Hydro-Scanner to an actual field study. How nervous she’d been, fastening it to the wheel of the Platypus, praying that all those late nights spent tinkering with the radar screen would pay off.

  Her test run in the shallows went swimmingly, but here the water stretches hundreds of feet deep, and still! Her fish-finder located a family of brown marble groupers, hiding in the rocks. I thought Ida was going to jump out of her skin, she was so excited.

  If this fish-finder is any indication of the future of Quail Studies, I don’t think there’ll be a single plant unidentified or a seashell left unturned.

  Eyes pooling with tears, Fidelia read the passage over and over until two words stuck in her mind: test run.

  A test run.

  Of course.

  She’d tarred over the holes in her Water-Eater’s filter, and if she could find something to pierce new, smaller holes, she could conduct a test run, right here in the grotto. Merrick had said to stay on the ship, but she wouldn’t stray far. Besides, it was either do the test now or when she was actually in the deep tropical sea, with Merrick’s black-and-red eye haunting her from the surface.

  A sharp splinter would do the trick. She peeled away a particularly gnarly one from the boards of the ever-flaking Jewel and carefully punched through the tar.

  There. Holes large enough to allow water flow, but, she hoped, small enough to merely seep the water molecules into the chamber, where they could be stripped of their hydrogen and converted into oxygen.

  She screwed the rest of the Water-Eater back into place, then bit down on the rubber mouthpiece and took a few test breaths. The whole thing tasted a bit like mortar, but so far, so good.

  While Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie were busy tightening lines on their new mast, she took off her boots and strapped on the mask over her glasses. Bracing herself for the bite of salt on her jellyfish sting, she slipped into the electric blue water.

  The water brightened, and soon she could make out the edges of the jellyfish — the closest ones were twelve feet away. Not exactly safe, but safe enough.

  Time for the big test.

  She inhaled, just a teeny bit, and almost cried when air flowed into her mouth.

  It worked! It really worked.

  She pursed her lips around the mouthpiece and sucked for more air. But it didn’t come.

  She inhaled harder — still no air.

  For the love of a lionfish! She’d cut the new holes too small.

  Her head spun from lack of oxygen. She spat out the Water-Eater and searched for the bottom with her feet, so she could kick off and rocket to the top. Her feet found only blank space, more water — she had spun herself sideways, and now she was lost in the water, disoriented, and out of air, desperately trying to find the surface, blue lights flashing and spinning.

  A pair of hands seized her by the collar and yanked her up. She gasped, drawing in the sweet grotto air in heavy swigs. Cheapshot Charlie lay her on the dock and waited for her to choke and sputter herself calm.

  “Captain told you to stay on the ship,” he said.

  Fidelia held up her Water-Eater in one soggy hand. “I had … to test it.”

  Cheapshot Charlie squatted down so his huge head was level with hers. From here, she could see every pore of his umber skin, the facets of his nose jewel, the red vessels in his eyes striking like lighting across the white. “While you are on this ship, you obey our captain, or I will tear your arms off and you can kick your way home. Is that understood?”

  He carried her back onto the Jewel and set her down roughly on the bench. A failed test run just days before they reached the tropics.

  Now what was she going to do?

  Dinner was grilled scallops from the cavern pool — only two apiece — and (not surprisingly) candy from BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop. Their supply from Arborley was running low, but Bloody Elle had found a whole crate of the sweets in one of the grotto’s tunnels. Apparently candy was an old pirate hideout staple.

  Fidelia filled her already sugar-soaked stomach with jelly-jellied jigglers, grumbling with every bite.

  “Kids are supposed to like candy,” Cheapshot Charlie said.

  “We do … for dessert after a real meal,” Fidelia said. “This feels like a punishment.”

  “Actually,” Cheapshot Charlie said, “this turned out to be excellent sea fare.” He examined a glitter cranmeringue. “It tastes exactly the same whether it’s fresh or stale.”

  Bloody Elle was sprawled on the deck, lying on her stomach, her long legs behind her in the air. She unwrapped something from the knapsack and took a bite.

  “Is that the last crack-o-mallow?” Cheapshot Charlie asked.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Bloody Elle warned.

  Cheapshot Charlie grinned, then tackled Bloody Elle like a crocodile.

  “Get off me, you blooming idiot!”

  Bloody Elle’s face burst up from the tussle, red with fury. Cheapshot Charlie lay across her with his whole weight and dashed into her pocket for the candy, which he gobbled. “Yum!” He licked his fingers. “Good eats!”

  “You … you pirate!” Bloody Elle threw him off with a grunt, then kicked him squarely in the chest, propelling him backward. He quickly recovered and socked her in the jaw, which sent her sprawling.

  Bloody Elle jumped sprightly to her feet, rubbing her chin. “Come on, Fidelia, we can take him!”

  Fidelia shook her head, backing up against the railing. “You’re already more than he can handle.”

  Cheapshot Charlie furrowed his one eyebrow low. “Captain, are you going to let her insult your best man?”

  There was no response.

  “Captain?” Cheapshot Charlie called out.

  The door to Merrick’s quarters was open, his office empty.

  “How long has he been gone?” Bloody Elle asked. Cheapshot Charlie shushed her, listening intently to the trickling sounds of the grotto.

  “Too long,” he determined, and straightened, clenching his jaw. “Let’s go.”

  Bloody Elle secured her pistol, and the two pirates leaped from the Jewel and onto the dock, disappearing down separate tunnels.

  “Captain?” Bloody Elle was out of sight down a tributary, but Fidelia could still make out a quiver in her words.

  “What if he’s … ?” Cheapshot Charlie’s words faded.

  Stay on the ship, Merrick had insisted.

  Obey the captain, Cheapshot Charlie had barked two inches from her face.

  But th
ey had left Fidelia alone.

  Could she sail away, leave them stranded in their old hideout? No; she couldn’t man the massive Jewel alone, especially with its new structure. Maybe she could swim out of the cavern. It would be difficult with the jellyfish, yes, but possible. They might not find her in the dark. She could stay close to the cliffs until she found a way up, then make her way to civilization. To help.

  Her breathing was shallow and hot blood coursed through her, making her limbs jumpy.

  She’d regret it if she didn’t escape now while she could. She knew that.

  But a sound pierced her thoughts — a cough, a frenzied one, echoing from the nearest tunnel. Was Merrick sprawled in a cavern, his single blue eye wide and pale as he searched for his next breath?

  She hopped onto the dock and ran down the tunnel.

  It was dark and damp — her hands quickly became her eyes.

  “Merrick?” she called weakly. This wasn’t her search — she knew this. Not her people, not her captain. Not her concern. But before she could shake away her sympathy completely, she spotted the faint gleam of a candle’s light, flickering off the rock walls in front of her. She followed it like a beacon, stepping through the tunnel and into a massive cavern, large enough to be a room.

  Not just any room.

  A library. Unmistakably, a library.

  There were bookshelves, tall, lined in a row to create aisles, and endcaps, proper space for an entire catalog system to be in operation. A stalactite dripped water onto one such shelf — the source of the rancid, earthy smell of rotting wood that filled the room.

  A pillaged, abandoned library in a pirate’s grotto.

  Fidelia had seen many incredible things in the last two days, but nothing so unexpected as this.

  The books remaining on the shelves were crumbling, a consequence of their age and state — forgotten. Some books, the fibers exposing the spines like human vertebrae, lay in sad piles, collecting dust. A few books had gooseneck barnacles coating their covers; a family of sea spiders made their nest beneath the loose pages of a broken atlas.