Race to the Bottom of the Sea

by Lindsay Eagar

  The cannons were deafening. They exploded with black clouds of smoke, blasting giant, splintering holes into the side of the Jewel.

  Tears fogged Fidelia’s glasses as the Jewel’s toppled foresail caught fire. She could still see the ghost of Bloody Elle, her long cornsilk hair whipping in the breeze as she inspected a line. And there — her eyes found the spot on the boards that Cheapshot Charlie had scoured with the holystone, scrubbing away pond scum — gone now, only ash.

  “Again! Fire at will! Take it out.” Admiral Bridgewater had fallen under a spell — his eyes glazed over, the hairs in his mustache standing at attention, emanating steam and fire and red.

  His men reloaded and shot, and shot, and shot.

  Fidelia’s ears rang. Somewhere she thought she heard singing — was that Cheapshot Charlie again, droning his three-note mourning song?

  No, the boatswain’s mouth was closed. He looked like he would never sing again.

  The shots finally ended — whether by Bridgewater’s command or because they had run out of ship to shoot at, Fidelia didn’t know. When the smoke cleared, the Jewel was a pile of kindling, and Fidelia watched each little blackened stick fall through the water. The red flag, thundered through with grapeshot, floated for a second on the sea’s surface before it, too, sank and was lost forever.

  Fidelia buried her face with her hands and sobbed.

  “Take them below,” Admiral Bridgewater ordered, “but keep them separated. And put a gag on Merrick. He’s spoken his last words.”

  “What about the girl?” an officer asked, clutching Fidelia’s elbow roughly.

  Admiral Bridgewater considered her. “Put her in the barracks,” he finally prescribed, “but if she gives you any trouble, take her below with the others.”

  Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle were removed first, dragged to a hatch and pushed inside. Fidelia stared at the trail of blood left by Charlie’s injured leg.

  Two sailors carried Merrick down to the hold, not even giving him a chance to use his legs — just towing him off like a rabid dog on a leash.

  The Mother Dog set sail, heading north. Back to civilization, back to the real world, where pirates were criminals to be hanged, not comrades, not men to be pitied, not clever or brave or hopelessly tragic. A world where a cave of red daisies could exist only in sailors’ yarns.

  A world where a girl who was kidnapped would be best off just forgetting all about it.

  Fidelia was escorted to a dingy, dark bunk on a lower deck, and she couldn’t tell if the sound of howling was the wind, thrusting them back to Arborley much faster than she wanted, or Merrick, moaning and coughing beneath the deck boards.

  Water held ships. It held creatures of all shape and form and disposition.

  Water also held memories.

  It was the perfect vessel for them — Merrick would be sailing across the white arctic sea, weaving through a labyrinth of ice caps, and the water would suddenly gift him a remembrance of the day he defected from the navy — his first battle with Admiral Bridgewater, a success. A happy day, happy memory.

  He would be sailing across the golden waves of the Molvanian coast, and again, the water would present him with a memory, as if it had been storing it for him — the memory of his first raid, that first pillage of a beanie ship and the giddy night he spent counting gold in his quarters. That night he didn’t think of all the things he would buy, but of how this would be considered a dismal amount of gold, pathetic compared to how much he’d take before the reign of Merrick the Monstrous came to its glorious end.

  He could sail across the blues and grays of Arborley Bay and remember the first time he saw her. A green dress flapping on the boardwalk, hair blowing free, her eyes on him and his ship as though she’d never seen something so wild. A bittersweet memory, to be sure — these days more bitter than sweet.

  But for all its good memories, the water also offered up the wretched ones. The time he’d lost her, the one honest thing he’d ever given her falling between the waves as if it were just a brooch made of cheap metal and not a piece of his very heart.

  Even that — even that — paled in contrast to this latest memory.

  The worst battle he’d ever lost. Losses too horrible to face. He wished he could remove the memory of this night completely from his mind. Drop it into the sea like an old bone, hear it plop and watch it sink into the silver churn, the sharks snatching it up.

  But the water couldn’t keep it forever. It would stir the memory up if he ever came this way again, if he ever sailed across the Coral of the Damned again. Then he’d remember.

  The slick of his deck boards, blood rolling along their surface and dripping off into the sea.

  The sight of a head lolling against his feet — one of his crew members, but drenched, and disfigured, like a bruised fruit.

  The sounds — oh, god, the sounds of the slaughter.

  The Mother Dog’s braying cannons, hurling great balls of terror, and the Jewel’s pitiful retaliating gunshots, tiny nips from a puppy in comparison.

  The cries of his crew — grown men and women who had lost limbs for him over the years, and tattooed their skin with the tips of their blades on a wavering sea, and survived the near starvation and mental torture of long journeys. Never, never had Merrick heard them cry like this — the wails of beasts, trapped and awaiting their certain death.

  And above it all the sound of Bridgewater laughing — laughing — as he carried out his butchery.

  Merrick’s crew was picked off one at a time with the guns, or in whole groups by the cannons, until once again there was only Merrick and Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie, who helped him move the pulverized Jewel away from the scene at last, skimming through the shallow waters of the Coral of the Damned, where the Mother Dog couldn’t follow.

  Merrick the Monstrous, retreating like a wounded animal.

  In the waters below, his men and women sank until their bodies bumped the sand — that’s what they were now, just bodies. Bags for their bones, meat for the bottom-feeders.

  And soon they, too, would just be sea and salt and memory.

  Merrick had plotted out the trip perfectly: He would sail to the prison barge, and Cheapshot Charlie would distract the guards. Bloody Elle would take care of the dogs. Merrick would let everyone on the prison barge loose, crew or no, because the more people wandering free in the world who were like him, who were pebbles in the admiral’s shoe, the better.

  And this is what happened.

  They broke them out of the prison, everything unfolding according to plan. The crew had set the Jewel at a fair clip, and were already cheering their captain’s victory, when Admiral Bridgewater ambushed them.

  And then the bloodbath.

  A dreadful memory. One of the worst simmering in Merrick’s mind.

  But then why, only a week after losing his crew, was it a different memory that kept pushing to the surface? A different loss?

  Her face plagued him day and night, awake or dreaming — the coldness in it as she dropped the brooch overboard; the feathery sound of her voice; the feel of her twirling around him as they danced, the softness of her lips against his skin.

  The memory of her was relentless.

  They sailed aimlessly for a week, trying to gather their bearings. Merrick watched the sea’s spray cleanse the Jewel completely of blood. He watched, silent. After a week of hollow sleep and nightmares in waking daylight, Merrick spun the helm east.

  “Captain?” Bloody Elle said — a question and a concern, all in one word.

  “We’re going to the market,” Merrick said, his jaw tense.

  “Good idea,” Cheapshot Charlie said. “We need to tar this hull before she springs a leak —”

  “You do that,” Merrick said, “but keep her ready to make a quick exit. Molvania is not going to like the storm I’m bringing.”

  Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie exchanged a look — they’d been doing this lately, Merrick noticed. Of course he noticed; th
at was his job, as the captain. To oversee.

  He didn’t care. Let them worry.

  Merrick stalked through the wet market with single-eyed purpose.

  The posters advertising for his dead-or-alive capture had tripled on the walls of the hash house. He barely noticed.

  Without a word, he walked up to the jeweler who had sold him the brooch and held his pistol against the jeweler’s throat.

  “My watch,” Merrick said. “Where is it?”

  The jeweler lifted a shaking finger. “The table.”

  Merrick’s old watch, given to him by his father. The only thing Merrick had that was his. And he was taking it back.

  “That brooch you sold me was garbage,” Merrick said.

  “I told you, you should have brought her diamonds,” the jeweler replied, his breath stinking of tooth rot and fear. And then as he regretted his cheek, his eyes widened, just white holes with black circles floating, and he braced himself for the kill shot.

  But instead of blowing his head off, Merrick just laughed.

  He laughed the entire walk back through the market. He laughed when he got to the patched-up Jewel, and as their lousy, shaken three-man crew brought her to her full twenty knots, he laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

  Fidelia stared up at the ceiling. The beams of the Mother Dog were impeccable — no slivers, no wood rot, no termites. As if the oak trees had grown branches already sanded and shaped.

  Her mind felt too tangled to sleep, her heart too wounded. Merrick was finally caught.

  Logically, she knew he was dying anyway. He’d signed his death sentence when he went into the cave of the red daisies. What difference did it make whether he was hanged by Admiral Bridgewater or blown up with the Jewel or left to wheeze and cough and sputter while his lungs slowly collapsed?

  But it did make a difference, Fidelia knew.

  It made a difference whether a great shark was reeled in or left to fight and lose its battles out in open waters.

  And what about Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle? Admiral Bridgewater would hang them, too, without a doubt.

  So much unnecessary death.

  Her adventure was over. She, too, was being hauled back like a fish on a barbed line. And after everything that had happened over the last week, nothing had really changed. Her parents were still gone. Grizzle was still untagged. Aunt Julia was waiting in Arborley with her books and her turtle soup, and they would still be moving to the mainland.

  She still buzzed with questions unanswered: Why did Merrick send Fidelia into shark-infested waters just to see an old brooch one more time?

  And for that matter, why did he search through the deadly cave in the first place?

  What was the brooch for, really?

  And what would happen to it when the admiral inevitably found it?

  Long after the lamps had been extinguished, Fidelia resisted closing her eyes, certain it would be a sleepless night for her. But her eyelids grew droopy in the darkness, so she rolled over onto her side and slept. Dreamlessly and silently.

  Sometime in the night, she was suddenly awake.

  The bell must have rung, signaling the changing of the watch. Or perhaps the ship had rocked, or —

  It didn’t matter. She was up now, and she knew what she had to do.

  She threw her covers off and shivered. The air was crisper, chillier than the muggy tropical counterpart. They were back on the cocoa route, on their way to Arborley. To the gallows.

  She tiptoed, the boards cold beneath her stocking feet, up to the quarterdeck. A line of marines stood along the railing, keeping guard, and Fidelia approached them, clutching her stomach.

  “The admiral told you to stay in your cabin!” one of the men barked at her.

  “I know. It’s just … I think I’m going to be sick.” She put a wasted look on her face and gagged, then rushed between two of the men and leaned over the railing, heaving dramatically.

  “Don’t you get any of that on the boards,” one of the men said. “You make sure you pitch it way out.”

  At last she stood up, wiping the back of her mouth delicately. “That’s better.” She sucked air through her nose with a little quaver. “I’m sure I cleared the ship.”

  As expected, the guards dashed forward to inspect the side of the ship; Admiral Bridgewater would no doubt blame them if even a drip of vomit hit the Mother Dog. When their backs were turned, Fidelia carefully plucked a set of keys from one officer’s waist and sneaked to the hatch, lifting it slowly.

  It was a dark, damp space. Creaks from the deck above echoed through the hollows of the ship; the ocean pounded against the sides in muffled rhythm. Fidelia had to duck to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling.

  At first, nothing. Just the scratching of rats.

  Then something moved in the shadows.

  Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle sat on the benches in their cells. Water sloshed around their ankles.

  Bloody Elle snoozed; Cheapshot Charlie nudged her gently and said, “We’ve got a visitor.”

  “And the visitor has a gift.” Fidelia glanced behind her, just to be sure she hadn’t been followed, and pulled the set of keys from her dress.

  “How did you … ?” Bloody Elle said.

  Fidelia smiled. “You three have been a bad influence on me.”

  She unlocked their cell doors and uncuffed them. “Where is he?”

  Bloody Elle rubbed her sore wrists, then pointed to the farthest corner of the hold.

  “Merrick?” Fidelia inched forward until she found him, and her breath abandoned her.

  He was cuffed to the wall. His wrists, feet, and neck were all enclosed by tight metal hoops and linked by a heavy chain to the ship’s boards. A sort of steel cage was fixed over his head and around his mouth — a muzzle. Admiral Bridgewater was either afraid Merrick would talk his way to freedom with his clever words or he was tired of Merrick’s insults — or both.

  Merrick was slumped against the wall, his labored breathing audible even over the hold’s noisy groans and shudders. He coughed every few seconds, an awful, grating sound.

  Fidelia’s stomach clenched at the sight of him — shackled. Exhausted. Defeated.

  “Merrick,” she said.

  He didn’t even look up — his chin stayed tucked to his chest, coughing, sniffling, breathing that rattly breath… .

  She unlocked his cell and stood beside him, waiting for him to expose his cuffs so she could free him.

  “Lean forward, Captain,” Bloody Elle said.

  But Merrick didn’t move, or make any indication that he’d even heard them.

  Fidelia looked at Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle. “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered, her voice weak. “Why won’t he let me unlock him?”

  Merrick slowly angled his head up and coughed, and Fidelia winced at his black-and-red eye — swollen, and black as ever, leaking some darkish fluid down his cheek.

  Cheapshot Charlie studied his captain. “He’s not coming,” he finally surmised. Merrick coughed, his whole body straining, chains jangling, blood spraying through the bars of his muzzle. For a moment, Fidelia thought, This is it. His last breath. But Merrick somehow found his air, then dropped his head again.

  “No!” Hot tears stung Fidelia’s eyes. “No, you can’t just surrender like this. You’re Merrick the Monstrous — you always escape! Do your disappearing act before Bridgewater hangs you.”

  But with every shaky inhale Merrick took, it was confirmed the pirate captain was all but finished. He’d never survive an escape. He’d never be able to swim away, and Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle were in no shape to tow him to land. They were both weak from their all-sweets diet, drained from the tussle with the navy, and Charlie’s leg wound was festering with pus and crusted blood. It would be a miracle if the two of them made it to safety.

  Was Merrick trying to speak? Fidelia couldn’t tell — his jaw muscles were blocked by the iron gate of the muzzle.

  “Go,” he
croaked. Bloody Elle dropped to her knees and gripped Merrick’s skeletal hands. “Captain …”

  But there was nothing more to say. If Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle had any chance of escaping, they’d have to leave Merrick behind.

  Merrick raised his head again and met the faces of his crew, his two best mates. The ones who had survived by his side. Slowly — so painfully slowly — he nodded.

  It was all the answer Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie needed.

  “You have to hurry. They’ll know I’m out of my bunk any minute.” Fidelia could barely stand it, the heaviness of this moment, the agony.

  Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle slipped up the ladder in silence, off to hide themselves somewhere on the massive flagship until the opportune time to jump. No good-byes, no hugs, no final message to their captain or their captive.

  Fidelia needed to get back to her bunk before the admiral was alerted, but she couldn’t make herself care. What did it matter if they caught her? She couldn’t save Merrick. Just like when her parents died — she was helpless against the ebbs and flows of life, the triumphs and the losses. Creatures were born, and played their part in the great ecosystem, and then they died.

  And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  She swiveled around and marched to the ladder — she had to get back to her bed so she could pretend to be waking at dawn. So she could feign innocence when the officers realized Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie weren’t in their cells. So she could act like everything was fine.

  “Quail …” The moan was barely detectable among Merrick’s strained breaths.

  “Thank … you.”

  Thank you? For what? For retrieving his brooch? Well, he had forced her. Taken her away from Arborley, sailed her across the world, threatened her with all manner of violence if she refused to complete the task …

  But he hadn’t made her care. No pirate on earth could have forced such a thing, not with a thousand pistols.

  Her tears spilled over as she climbed the ladder. No sign of Cheapshot Charlie or Bloody Elle on the deck. Perhaps they’d already dived overboard, or perhaps they were hidden safely out of sight, waiting until the opportune moment to make their getaway. Either way, she wished on every swell of the sea that they would make it.