Fear the Drowning Deep

by Sarah Glenn Marsh

  The hissing grew louder as the serpent’s giant head finally surfaced. The creature shot upward with a rumble as deep as thunder, sending a wave of chill seawater into our faces. It swayed overhead, taller than any tree. There were no cracks in its black, scaly armor, no weak point in which I could thrust the end of my paddle.

  Craning my neck, I took a proper look at its head. One murky yellow eye, the size of a dinner plate, watched our boat. The lump where the other eye should have been was a swollen mass of black and purple. Morag’s handiwork.

  The serpent opened its mouth, revealing row upon row of needlelike teeth. Most were stained a dull red, as they had been in Mam’s painting. The monster released a deafening screech, but still I clutched the paddle.

  A thud sounded behind me. Liss slumped beside the overturned bail bucket, her eyes closed.

  With another shriek, the serpent swooped toward us, jaws stretching wider as if it intended to devour the boat in a single mouthful. A blast of the monster’s cold breath pushed my sodden hair off my face.

  It was underestimating me. It thought it could make me cower. Good.

  I raised the paddle like Sir Gawain’s huge axe, like Manannán’s red javelin, prepared to cram the handle down the serpent’s throat.

  The monster lunged. I struck out with my paddle, putting the strength of all my years of chopping wood for Mam behind the swing. The serpent screeched and writhed as the blow landed between its eyes.

  I may not have pierced its throat, but any wound was a victory. I raised the paddle again, taking advantage of the monster’s momentary confusion to stab the exposed white flesh on the underside of its neck. I was a knight, and I wouldn’t flee from this dragon. The wooden handle met scales and splintered with the force of my attack.

  “That’s for Morag!” I screamed, though I couldn’t hear my words over the ringing in my ears from the serpent’s cries.

  My second blow had angered the serpent more than hurt it. The beast glowered at me with its good eye, rearing up to strike. I clutched my paddle-spear, but now I realized it was more than splintered at the end—it was useless, cracked all the way down past the spot where I gripped it.

  I barely had time to think of my family, of Fynn, and everyone else I’d miss as the serpent bore down upon us. Its mouth slowly closed over the front of the boat, like someone wanting to savor a delicious supper. I scrambled toward Liss, who clutched the lantern to her chest as though it could somehow shield her, hoping to prolong my final moment.

  Crack.

  Something large collided with the serpent’s head and knocked it away from the boat before its teeth could sink into the wood. The waves rocked our vessel, nearly capsizing us. I clung to the wooden seat with one hand and Liss with the other, trying to prevent us from spilling into the water.

  “Bridey!” a familiar voice shouted. “Hang on, I’m coming!” Da waved from a boat several yards away. The real Da. Water poured off his hair and beard.

  “No!” I yelled, my eyes on the serpent’s head and the dark shape repeatedly crashing into it. The impact sent up so much white spray that only the outlines of the two struggling creatures were visible, one much smaller than the other. The great serpent submerged most of its bulk as it fought, leaving plenty of room for me to maneuver the boat.

  “It’s too dangerous! We’ll come to you!” I called to Da. Pushing myself upright, I grabbed the lantern and the remaining paddle.

  “What happened?” Liss asked groggily.

  “You fainted.” Coercing my numb arms into paddling was more difficult than I would have imagined. “But Da found us. I’m taking you to him now.”

  As we helped Liss into Da’s boat, he blanched at the sight of her shattered leg.

  The water in the hull was now past my ankles. I released a shaky breath as Da’s strong hands slipped under my arms and pulled me into his boat.

  “Are you mad, child? What are you doing out here?” Da gave me a little shake. The jarring was nothing compared to the waves created by the serpent and its attacker.

  “Finding Liss for you.” I tilted my chin up, and he simply gaped. “Some things are worth braving the water for.”

  Da wrapped me in a tight embrace, then picked up his paddles. “I never knew we had another sailor in the family. Now let’s get away from that damned thing.” He jerked his head toward the snarling brawl taking place so near the boat.

  As Da made for shore, I peered over the side for a glimpse of our savior. The rain slowed as I raised the lantern, allowing me a clearer view of the creature harassing the serpent. The glashtyn’s stallion head and dolphin tail were painfully familiar. He bared a set of impressive teeth at the agitated monster.

  “Fynn!” Though he couldn’t possibly see or hear me, I stretched my arms toward him. “Get away from there! We’ll be fine, we’ll—” The words died in my throat.

  The serpent rolled its good eye, apparently tired of Fynn’s taunting. It surged forward with lightning speed, snapping its jaws around his middle. The monster jerked from side to side in a celebratory dance, with Fynn flopping in its jaws.

  I tried to scream, but couldn’t get enough air. There was so much red in the water, spreading from the spot where Fynn and the serpent were struggling. There wasn’t even that much blood in my body. I hoped the grisly sight meant Fynn had wounded the serpent.

  At last, I found my voice. “That’s Fynn!” I grabbed Da’s arm and pointed to the spot where the serpent threw my dark-haired lad around like a child’s toy. “It’s Fynn! We have to help him!” I attempted to wrest the paddles from Da.

  His grip was unyielding, but he spared a glance for the fight. “That’s not Fynn! It’s a horse-seal-dolphin—Hell, I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s no lad!”

  “It’s him.” I patted my Bollan Cross and swung my leg over the side of the boat. There wasn’t time to convince Da. I would have to jump in, and trust the cross to help me ride the waves to Fynn. I took a deep breath, preparing to swing my other leg over.

  Da seized my arms. “Look,” he commanded hoarsely.

  There was no longer a glashtyn dangling from the serpent’s mouth. Fynn, with his shaggy hair and tanned skin, was human once again, but still caught in the monster’s teeth. His chest rose and fell shallowly.

  Liss gasped, raising her brows at the sight.

  “Merciful angels,” Da breathed. He changed direction, paddling back toward the fight.

  I leaned over the side of the boat, holding the lantern aloft for Da. “We’re coming!”

  The serpent shot around our boat and rose into the sky. Da hesitated, torn between helping Fynn and fleeing to protect his daughters. I elbowed him in the ribs, urging him to keep rowing to Fynn’s aid.

  The serpent hadn’t yet spotted us. Fynn was now awake, and he was clawing at the monster’s remaining eye.

  “We’re down here!” I yelled. “Jump! Hurry!”

  Fynn’s exhausted gaze met mine, and he shook his head. “Bridey,” he coughed. Then he twisted in the serpent’s jaws, digging his fingers deep into the rim of the monster’s eye. The serpent thrashed and howled, but Fynn gouged the eye with a sickening pop.

  A deafening wail forced Da, Liss and me to cover our ears. With a bone-chilling screech, the blind serpent dived beneath a swell, Fynn still trapped in its mouth. Water from their violent descent smacked me in the face, masking my tears.

  Da moved cautiously toward the spot where the monsters had vanished, paddles cutting through the reddened sea. We sat for several minutes, the boat bobbing on the storm-charged waves in the darkness, but neither Fynn nor the serpent resurfaced. The only sound other than my sobs was the mournful keening of the wind.

  “Where is he? Where’s the serpent?” A woman’s rough voice called from a distance. “And the glashtyn boy?”

  A blurry speck of light, another lantern hanging from someone else’s boat, headed toward us. Morag, no illusion with her sodden clothes and sea-foam eyes, feebly dug a paddle into the angry sea
. In her other hand, she clutched a shining spear.

  “What happened?” she demanded, pulling her boat alongside ours. “Fynn—?”

  “He’s gone.” Da hung his head. “Whatever he was, he’s with the angels now.” I sobbed harder, and Liss draped an arm across my shoulders.

  “And the serpent?”

  “It’s down there somewhere.” Da waved a hand at the red stain over the water. “Blind, though, if it’s even still alive.”

  “That’s something.” Morag’s gaze shifted to me, and the fire that seemed to animate her sputtered and died. “I’m sorry, girl.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears. “I’m too late. I wish I had a way to bring him back, but the greedy sea claims whatever it can.”

  I stared at her, numb with cold and shock and disbelief. “You shouldn’t have come!” The words sounded strange, as though someone else had spoken them. I seemed to be watching everything from a distance, like a spectator at a game of cammag.

  “What if the serpent had gotten you, too?”

  Despite her intense fear of the sea, she had come ready to do battle. She had come for me, for my family, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

  Morag closed her cold, waxy hand over mine. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to make things right, you and me. We won’t stop trying until we recover everything the sea has taken from us.”

  I squeezed her hand. Words still eluded me.

  “Bridey.” Da laid a hand on my back. “We have to go. Liss needs a doctor.”

  I nodded, burying my face in Liss’s shoulder. The sea had stolen another piece of my heart, and I couldn’t bear to watch the crimson water churning in our wake. The serpent had won today, but now that Fynn lay beneath the ocean’s dark surface, I would never stop fighting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Ready, my love?” Da rumbled in my ear, his whiskers scratching my cheek.

  Without taking my eyes from the gleaming ocean, I nodded. “Remind me what I’m supposed to do, again.” I gripped the long handle of the dip net with both hands, letting the mesh dangle over the side of the boat.

  Da frowned. “It shouldn’t be any different from the last time. Drop the net in the water, and—”

  “Da,” I groaned. “I’m teasing.” I plunged the net into the brine.

  In the weeks since Fynn’s disappearance, I’d learned how to set a crab trap, how to use dip nets, and how to bait a hook. Looking into the water still made my head swirl, especially when I thought of the creatures hidden in its depths. But I could hold a wriggling fish in my hands and ride in a boat without getting sick.

  We sat in silence awhile, Da with two fishing rods and me with the dip net. An early autumn breeze combed my salt-crusted hair as I narrowed my eyes against the glare of the sun. As always, I searched for a sleek black fin, but the only fins jutting out of the water belonged to a school of dolphins.

  A week ago, the serpent’s body had washed up near Peel. According to Da, pictures were splashed across newspapers, even reaching Mally in London.

  Da took me to see the body one morning, thinking it would help. But as the sightless monstrosity rotted under the summer sun, I wept. I’d somehow convinced myself Fynn would be there, too, but there had been no sightings of a lad matching his description reported.

  I wasn’t sure what became of the monster’s carcass after that, nor did I much care. Lugh insisted someone had carved it up for the meat. I pitied the person who found serpent on their plate at suppertime.

  Da cleared his throat, and I tore my gaze from the dolphins. “Morag came by the house again this mornin’ while you were helping Liss to her room.” Liss still couldn’t walk unassisted, but she was growing stronger each day with the aid of the healing tonics Morag provided.

  “What did she want?” I tried to keep my voice neutral despite the pang in my chest.

  “Same as usual. She asked about Liss’s leg. And told me to remind you that your job’s waiting whenever you’re ready to go back.” Da shook his head. “She said if you’d like, you can be the boss, and she’ll be your apprentice. She misses you, bird.”

  “I know.” I missed her, too.

  Morag’s cottage would forever remind me of summer, of Fynn. Still, the absence of Morag’s sharp-tongued remarks and pungent teas smarted like a toothache. And I couldn’t delay my return much longer when more serpents and other monsters yet swam the depths. Whenever they reached our shore, Morag and I needed to be ready to fight them. Together.

  My hand strayed to the Bollan Cross around my neck, rubbing the worn bone between my thumb and forefinger. “Did you invite her for supper like Mam wanted?”

  “I would have, but Danell Gill stepped outside to work in his garden, and old Morag limped off before I could get another word past my lips. I’ve never seen her move so fast. Almost like magic.”

  Da grew quiet, humming gently under his breath while we waited for hapless fish to swim near the boat. Neither he, nor Liss, nor I had breathed a word of Fynn or our encounter with the serpent to anyone in Port Coire. The arrangement suited us well. And though Liss’s doctor asked a great number of questions, though Mr. Gill continued to press us for news of Fynn’s whereabouts, we kept our silence. I got the impression Da had explained everything to Mam, though, because she hardly let me out of her sight now.

  When Da finished the last line of his sea chanty, he offered me a tin. “Kippers?”

  I shook my head, carefully balancing the net handle as I reached for the oilskin pouch holding my bread and cheese. “Thank you, but I packed my own lunch.”

  “I never thought you’d come out here with me,” he remarked, a smile in his voice. He wasn’t the only one. In a few short weeks, I had gone from being a gossiped-about witch’s apprentice to a gossiped-about lass who went out fishing with the men. And, as before, I didn’t care.

  I pulled a wedge of cheese from my sack. “That makes two of us.”

  Da grinned. “Now it’s only a matter of time until you’re begging to try some fresh fish. One day we’ll catch something so delicious, you won’t be able to resist.”

  “Not a chance, Da.” I held up the tart cheese and licked my lips. “Some things will never change.” Like Grayse’s love of every creature finned and feathered. Or my slowly mending friendship with Cat and Lugh, who both somehow understood that I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened, even though I’d never said as much.

  The kipper tin hit the floor of the boat with a clatter, startling me. “We’ve got a bite!” Da sprang to his feet. “Help me reel ’er in!”

  I threw down my net, unable to stop my heart from giving a hopeful leap. The only other time I had assisted Da with reeling in a line, there had been a baby shark on the end. Perhaps today, we’d see a dark, rounded fin and a pair of familiar cobalt eyes.

  My heart sank as sharp, dusky gray fins and a white belly appeared. Together, with much groaning and swearing, Da and I heaved a thrashing shark onto the boat. It wasn’t more than three feet long, but it jerked hard enough to rock our vessel. Panting, I wiped my grimy fingers on my shirt and sat back to watch Da subdue the struggling creature.

  “This is a handsome one. Should fetch a nice price.” Da glanced over his shoulder, a huge smile splitting his face. Without the serpent hunting in our waters, fish were once again plentiful. We caught so many crabs and lobsters that we’d been making weekly trips to Peel to sell our surplus in their larger market.

  “Sounds like we’ll be able to buy some more cloth then. You ought to ask Mam to make you a new shirt.” Now that we could afford fine cloths, Mam had been sewing dresses and skirts. She even sold some at the market. She’d lost all desire to paint, but she wasn’t plagued by headaches and nightmares anymore.

  “She should make a few more dresses for you girls first,” Da said at last. He poked his calloused fingers through a hole in the side of his shirt and wiggled them. “This has room for another hole or three.” I smiled as he bent over to check on the shark.

&nb
sp; “By God! Look!” Da lifted something from beside the shark’s head.

  Heart in my throat, I hurried to his side.

  A glimmer of silver-pink flashed between Da’s fingers as he polished the object on his shirt. “This was in the shark’s mouth!” His gleeful expression warmed my insides, banishing thoughts of monsters.

  “What—?” The question died in my throat as my trembling fingers closed around a massive pearl swirled with silver and pink.

  “Keep it, bird. Consider it payment for being my first mate,” Da said. He must have mistaken my watery gaze for one of deep gratitude. I nodded my thanks, gripping the pearl. “Now, do you want to head to shore? Or see if our luck holds farther out?”

  I shrugged, swallowing around a lump in my throat. Not long ago, I would have given anything to leave the Isle, with its brine and wind and blue-green waters, far behind. Now, I rode the waves like I truly belonged. Like there was a place for me here. Perhaps there had been all along. And now, some stubborn part of me, the same part that clung to a wild hope that Fynn had survived, vowed to stay put until I saw him again.

  London and Paris and Dublin could wait.

  After all, the sea had taken Fynn away, but the sea had also brought him to me. New treasures rolled in with the tide each morning, perfect ivory shells and starfish that, if left unclaimed, were pulled back into the water by nightfall. The ocean spat out some of the same shells day after day, never allowing them to travel far from the coast. Who was to say the changing tide and ever-shifting winds wouldn’t carry Fynn back to Port Coire today, tomorrow, or even six months from now?

  Turning away from Da, I clutched the pearl against my pounding heart. The sight of it was slowly dredging something Fynn once told me to the surface of my memory, about glashtyns knowing places deep underwater where they might heal.

  I brought the pearl to my lips, tasting salt.

  And a promise.

  I scanned the water again, seeing only the dolphins diving in and out of the blue. But that could change in an instant.