Race to the Bottom of the Sea

by Lindsay Eagar

  Soundlessly she replaced the hatch to the hold, then threw the set of keys overboard, and when she climbed back into her bed, she stared at the ceiling until morning.

  Twenty knots. That’s what the Jewel could do, back in her heyday. So said Cheapshot Charlie.

  The Mother Dog could barely reach twelve knots — she was much too big to be as nimble as the Jewel — but she made up for her lethargy with sheer gusto. Goose pimples broke out on Fidelia’s arms with every swell, but the ship powered through any threat of storms with the strength of ten blue whales.

  Still, slow as she was, the Mother Dog was flying, making record time. The crosswinds, Fidelia realized, were almost nonexistent. The Undertow was not only sparing them its chaos; it was actually pushing them back to Arborley.

  Too fast! Fidelia wanted to cry to the wind and the waves. Slow this down; make it last. These are Merrick’s final moments. Stretch them out.

  But on they sailed, and by the afternoon of the second day, the Mother Dog cruised past the Coral of the Damned without fanfare or ritual. Fidelia, seeing the red fringes poking up out of the water from the porthole in her bunk, closed her eyes and hummed a tuneless three-note song, and she didn’t open her eyes again for a long time.

  The officers had discovered that two of their four prisoners were missing. (Fidelia counted herself in this group because although she wasn’t cuffed in the leaky hold, she was no longer allowed to leave her quarters.) Admiral Bridgewater sent some of his men out in longboats to scan the ship’s surroundings for any clues to their whereabouts, but to no avail. The pirates were gone.

  On the evening of the third day, an officer came to Fidelia’s bunk.

  “The admiral wants to see you.” An order, not a request.

  Admiral Bridgewater’s cabin was spacious, larger than Aunt Julia’s loft at Arborley Library. Fidelia took a seat at an elaborately carved table that seated twelve — a war table, for plotting out battles, she figured. How many plans to catch Merrick were made at this very table, only to be thwarted on the seas?

  Silhouetted in the bay window, the admiral stood across from her. His uniform jacket was currently being ironed and starched by a sailor in the corner; instead he had donned a burgundy velvet smoking jacket and lounging cap.

  “I am trying,” Admiral Bridgewater said, “to get an exact accounting of what happened to you.” He walked to his drinking cart and poured himself a glass of spirits, then sipped it with a grimace as if it were a tonic.

  “Let me guess what happened here,” he said as he circled the long table. “Merrick took you against your will. He brought you to his cave, and he would have made you fetch his treasure for him if we hadn’t shown up and saved you.” His piggy eyes were squinted, focusing on Fidelia as if she were a very small, indecipherable treasure map. “Is that accurate?”

  How could she possibly explain to Admiral Bridgewater that it was all a bit blurrier than that? Yes, there were pistols in her face when the pirates came to the Quail family home, pistols that motivated her to board the Jewel and do as Merrick said — she’d believed him when he said he’d hurt her. He was Merrick the Monstrous, after all.

  Yes, it was easy to measure a beast by the size of his teeth and the power of his jaws … But there was more to a beast than just his bite. And somewhere along the way, things with Merrick had shifted. She’d wanted to help Merrick, to grant this dying man his last request. Even though it meant risking her own life.

  “Yes,” Fidelia answered honestly, “but —”

  “What doesn’t make sense,” Admiral Bridgewater went on, “is why a victim of Merrick the Monstrous would be so distraught when we finally caught and bound her captor. Am I mistaken, or did I see tears when the Jewel sank?” He sneered and smoothed his velvet lapel. “And then there is the matter of the missing prisoners. Two of my men reported seeing you on deck — in direct violation of your orders to remain in your cabin — on the very night the pirates escaped. The coincidence is rather remarkable, isn’t it?”

  His smile was terrible, pompous as one of the medals on his uniform. “A victim of Merrick’s will be returned safely home and given Her Majesty’s guarantee that the vermin will hang until dead.” He swished his glass of spirits so the ice clinked against the sides. “But his accomplices,” he continued, “will swing next to him.”

  His stench of alcohol and body odor soured Fidelia’s nostrils as he stepped even closer.

  “So what are you?” Admiral Bridgewater enclosed her in his shadow. “Are you one of Merrick the Monstrous’s unfortunate pawns? Or were you a willing participant?”

  The right answer was obvious: All she had to do was condemn Merrick, disintegrate into cries of relief at being rescued, and recap the nightmare she’d had, spending those days on the Jewel in terror with the outlaws. All she had to do was name Merrick for the devil he was, and the admiral would be satisfied.

  She looked into Admiral Bridgewater’s face. There, between the jowls and the scorn, she saw it — fear.

  A fear she recognized. That fear you get when something massive is dangling on your line, and you’ll do anything to reel it in — and you’re scared you’ll lose the biggest catch of your life.

  Admiral Bridgewater had Merrick. He had Merrick’s great treasure. And he’d do anything to reel this all the way in.

  So why couldn’t she do it? Why couldn’t she give the admiral the answer he was looking for?

  Admiral Bridgewater watched her flail, scrunching his face. “Did you know that Merrick was in the navy?”

  She nodded slowly, wary of a trap.

  “Do you know how he left?” Admiral Bridgewater stroked his mustache and took a seat right next to Fidelia — she could smell the sharpness of his cologne, the sweat between his chins. “Merrick was top of his class. The best gunfighter we’d ever seen, a pro with schematics and navigation, a master sailor. But even more than that — he was a thinker. He’d devise ways out of battles that didn’t require a single cannon fired. A mind like that, I thought, will spoil faster than Molvanian goats’ milk if we don’t channel it. And so Merrick was on track to being the youngest vice admiral in the history of the Queen’s Own Navy.”

  Yes, that sounded like Merrick. A man who hid his beloved ship in a lake knew how to think sideways, how to come up with plan Z when plans A, B, and C were ruined.

  “I knew, of course, how bright he was — but I had no idea the things he was truly capable of. The horrible things. I should have seen it — I should have put out that twinkle in his eyes, wiped away that laugh in the corner of his mouth. I should have stopped him.” Admiral Bridgewater sipped the melted ice in his glass.

  “I have caught and hung the most notorious pirates to ever sail the nine seas,” the admiral said. “But I’ve never seen a monster like Merrick. He didn’t just abandon rank and leave the base as any decent officer would have done. No, he had to make a grand exit. He and that — that fiend Charlie, they took one of the frigates one night and threw its crew overboard. They set off explosions all along the fort. Those who weren’t blown completely into pieces had to search for their own legs among the debris.”

  Fidelia shuddered. She shouldn’t be surprised. She knew Merrick’s legacy. She knew how monstrous he was.

  And yet she’d seen it, in his one remaining eye — a shred of humanity. There was sadness there — deep, abiding sadness. And immeasurable gratitude when she brought him that brooch. It didn’t excuse what he’d done; of course it didn’t. But it made it impossible for her to write him off as simply a monster.

  “So please believe me,” the admiral finished, “when I say you are lucky to be alive. You are lucky to be in one piece. And whatever sympathy you may have for this … this animal, well — toss it overboard, where it belongs.”

  Arborley Island.

  Smog hung thicker than she remembered, and the plants seemed yellowed and dried compared to the lush green fronds in the tropics. Everything about the island looked stale. Bleached. Sad.

/>   The Mother Dog made berth at the main wharf, and the officers exited the ship in rank — the seamen first, the warrant officers, then the lieutenants. A lieutenant strong-armed Fidelia off the ship and took her to a bench on the boardwalk. They wrapped a scratchy, colorless, navy-issue blanket around her.

  As if she, and not Merrick, were the one infirmed.

  Admiral Bridgewater came down the Mother Dog’s gangplank, his beery red eyes scanning Stony Beach as if he expected a royally commissioned parade to greet him and celebrate his victory. But the beach was empty. “Bring him out,” he ordered.

  They dragged Merrick out of the hold completely uncuffed; the thirty marines’ bayonets aimed at his head were more than enough to keep him tethered. Fidelia winced at the sight of him — he shivered and coughed, soaking wet and stinking so strongly of mildew that she could smell him from where she sat. The officers marched him down the gangplank, then dropped him onto the shingle beach like a half-drowned rodent.

  His arms were yanked out of his peacoat. His shirt was peeled from his body. The faded tattoo of a red daisy stained Merrick’s sunken chest, just above his heart, his rib cage visible enough to play like an instrument. The hardened purple veins on his hands had spread, weblike, up his arms, onto his knotty back, and onto his neck.

  He crumbled, a shower of bloody phlegm coating the pebbles under him, and he balled his fists from the pain.

  In one of those hands, Fidelia realized, Merrick still has the brooch.

  “Merrick von Mourne,” announced Bridgewater, “you are convicted — again — of piracy, evasion of the navy, and the kidnapping of a minor. All are capital crimes under Her Majesty’s rule. You are hereby sentenced to hang by the neck until dead.”

  “Or … until … you blink,” Merrick wheezed.

  Admiral Bridgewater strode closer to Merrick, until the pirate captain’s face was mere inches from the admiral’s well-polished boots. The admiral lowered his voice. “Legally, I have to hang you. The queen prefers that enemies of her kingdom have public deaths. But when you attempt whatever hackneyed escape you’re planning”— here, the admiral leaned down, close to Merrick’s ear, which, Fidelia noticed, her gut twisting, was also bleeding —“I will be the one to shoot you.”

  Merrick raised his head. “Looking … forward to it.” The pirate stared, his two-toned eyes firing holes into the admiral — but just when Fidelia was bracing for the admiral to throw punches, Merrick coughed. He coughed right in Admiral Bridgewater’s face, and red spittle clung to the admiral’s mustache like raindrops.

  Admiral Bridgewater pulled one of his white gloves off and wiped his mustache clean. “You hang at dawn,” he said, “and then I’m finally free of your black soul.”

  A nod from the admiral, and the brutes in silver buttons swept Merrick down the boardwalk, into the cobbled street, and out of sight. They were taking him to a holding cell, an iron box where he’d wait for death.

  And this time, Fidelia knew, death would find him. Whether Merrick truly could make a grand escape from the noose or whether he gasped his last breath in that cell, it didn’t really matter. Merrick the Monstrous was done.

  Admiral Bridgewater went back to his ship, leaving a small group of marines to patrol the beach. Fidelia barely noticed them. She stayed huddled on the boardwalk. A soft rain fell.

  She rubbed her glasses dry on the hem of her dirty, threadbare dress and sniffed the ends of her hair. She positively reeked. Enough dirt coated her arms that she could have planted carrots. Aunt Julia would dunk her in a bath right away and pour that awful violet tonic all over her — if she even let Fidelia inside. Maybe she’d just make Fidelia wash off in the rain.

  Here she sat, again, staring out at Stony Beach, again. Just as she had done weeks ago. She’d sailed almost around the world, and she’d come back to see the same view. The Undertow swirled just beyond the harbor, crackling, a stormy commander gathering troops for weathery destruction.

  Beneath the bridge, a canal boat approached, splashing grimy water onto a murder of crows congregating on the cobblestones. Fidelia barely noticed; she was too busy watching the waves in the bay go from ripples to mountains.

  “Fidelia!”

  At first Fidelia thought it was the crows crying, the sound was so inhuman. But when she turned, she saw a woman hobbling across the boardwalk. It took a moment to realize it was Aunt Julia. Her aunt was wearing the same beige dress she’d worn the day Fidelia was kidnapped, only it was covered in ink blots and tearstains and smudges from who knew what. And her hair — Aunt Julia’s usual tight, perfect chignon was a gull’s nest of greasy tendrils. She was a person undone.

  Fidelia got to her feet. Aunt Julia ran along the slats, the gap between them closing smaller and smaller, until —

  Her aunt collided into her and clutched her so hard, it felt like the wispy librarian might snap in two.

  “Oh, god, you’re all right.” Aunt Julia buried her face in that crook between Fidelia’s neck and shoulder, muffling her words. “Thank goodness. They told me — they told me you’d been taken by pirates! But you’re all right!”

  You’re all right… . Was Fidelia all right? “I’m home now,” Fidelia said, her words mechanical, stroking her aunt’s back.

  Aunt Julia landed a kiss on Fidelia’s forehead and searched her face. “Fidelia, what happened?”

  “Aunt Julia,” Fidelia croaked. “The book.”

  “The book?” Fidelia dropped the military blanket and pulled Exploring an Underwater Fairyland out of her bag.

  Aunt Julia went pale as a turtle’s egg. She opened the front cover, shuddering when she saw the stamp — Property of Arborley Library. Aunt Julia took hold of her shoulders, her magnified doe’s eyes blinking fiercely behind her peach spectacles. “Tell me what happened, Fidelia. Tell me everything. Right now.”

  So there, on the boardwalk, rain pitter-pattering down into their hair, Fidelia told Aunt Julia everything — a skeletal version. She told her aunt that she’d been taken by Merrick and Charlie and Elle. When she said his name, Merrick the Monstrous, Aunt Julia closed her eyes, and kept them closed for a full five seconds before she seemed ready to see the world again.

  “What did he want?” Aunt Julia’s voice was strangled. “Did he tell you why he took you?”

  “He needed me to get his treasure,” Fidelia answered. “Lost treasure. From an underwater cave —”

  “From the cave of the red daisies,” Aunt Julia whispered. Her cheeks were gray.

  “How do you know —?” Fidelia said.

  “I’m a librarian.” Aunt Julia shook all over. “Did you go into the cave? Tell me now, Fidelia — did you breathe in the pollen?” She clamped Fidelia’s wrists with cold, bloodless fingers.

  “No,” Fidelia managed, and pulled her wrists free. “No. The navy came, and they took it all, and …”

  “Where is he now — Merrick the Monstrous?”

  “He’s locked up somewhere.” She didn’t mention that Merrick was dying. She didn’t mention that all he wanted from the bottom of the sea was some old pewter brooch. She didn’t mention that watching him die was horrifying, and would haunt her for the rest of her days — like seeing a fish drown on dry land. “The admiral is hanging him tomorrow morning.”

  Her aunt bloomed red with anger. “Good.” Aunt Julia’s teeth were clenched. “Let him hang.” She wiped her palms on her skirt.

  “But …” Fidelia didn’t know how to tell her aunt that there was a spark of humanity in Merrick — or there had been, before the admiral captured him, before he was muzzled and beaten and locked in the hold of the flagship. “I don’t think he should die like this.”

  “He kidnapped you,” Aunt Julia said. “He would have let you die —”

  “But he didn’t,” Fidelia said. “He could have been so cruel. He could have kept me in ropes the whole journey — he could have held his gun to my head and made me dive into the cave. He could have just let me breathe in the pollen. But he didn’t.” She
glanced down at her boots. “I know he’s Merrick the Monstrous … But I don’t think he’s all bad.”

  “He’s a pirate, Fidelia.” There — there was a whiff of the stern Aunt Julia Fidelia had left behind. “How could he possibly be anything but bad?”

  Fidelia looked out over Stony Beach, at the slate-blue water folding over itself, the foam climbing the shore. There was so much still to tell, but she was out of strength. Out of words.

  Aunt Julia reached out and tucked a strand of Fidelia’s ragged hair behind her ear. “Are you hungry?” she finally said.

  Her aunt’s hand lingered in her hair; Fidelia could feel the warmth of the familiar touch radiating through her entire being.

  “That depends,” she said with a weak grin. “Are you cooking?”

  “Huzzah for Fidelia!”

  The howling of the Undertow was nothing compared to the storm inside the Book and Bottle. Fiddles whinnied and sailors sang and danced around the tables as Fidelia and Aunt Julia slurped their bowls of Shipwreck Stew.

  Shipwreck Stew, hot and robust, a hundred flavors to decipher: lobster and littleneck clams and tarragon and cod. And above all, the taste of familiar.

  The taste of home.

  “This island isn’t the same without a Quail!” Old Ratface drained his fourth mug of ale and hiccupped.

  “Long live the reigning Quail!” the pub chorused.

  Fidelia smiled at each of them, most already drunk and red-nosed. Some of the sailors gawked at her, as though they were looking at a ghost. Some regarded her with mugs raised, clearly impressed that she had endured Merrick the Monstrous and lived to tell the tale. And a few grinned stupidly, glad she was back safely, no doubt, but also pleased to have an excuse for merriment.

  Then she thought of a few other faces missing from this circle.

  Ida’s and Arthur’s, yes. Of course, yes.

  But also Bloody Elle, her rough, tanned skin, her black ringed tattoos, her loyalty to her captain, her earnestness. And Cheapshot Charlie, his long face and bald head and grouchy eyebrows and his brambly disposition — his way of protecting his captain, Fidelia now understood.