by E. G. Foley
The voices grew louder.
Was that Jake? Yes, she could hear him talking to Derek Stone. Their muffled exchange floated in through the pair of French doors standing open on the far end of the grand library.
Through the open doors with their light curtains billowing on the breeze, she could see a pleasant terrace that overlooked the River Thames. She ventured closer, but the serious tone of their conversation made her hold back instead of barging in. Jake would call her a pest, and she always hated that.
“I can’t bring back your parents,” Mr. Stone was saying, “but at least I can introduce you to the last person who ever saw them alive.”
Edging closer, Dani leaned to eavesdrop in the doorway, until she saw Jake standing with one foot propped on the stone railing of the terrace. He was scanning the water. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“She’ll be here shortly. And when she comes, you must be very careful. Her kind can be dangerous, as I said. You have to show respect. Trust me, you don’t want to offend a water nymph.”
Dani furrowed her brow, and Teddy gave a low, nervous growl as the water in front of Jake began to bubble in the most peculiar fashion.
Jake pointed at it in sudden excitement. “Look! There! Something’s rising!”
“Not something, someone,” Derek corrected. “They can travel this part of the river now, thanks to a breathing apparatus that one of the Order’s geniuses invented—and I daresay you’ll meet him.”
Then Jake let out a sound of utter amazement, backing away from the river. Dani did the same, edging back in fear; she continued to watch, unnoticed, behind the doorframe, but she could hardly believe her eyes.
A dripping figure rose up from the water, a beautiful woman in light armor, like a Roman goddess. She was standing in a chariot made from a great nautilus shell, pulled by a pair of giant carp.
Dani stared in slack-jawed wonder at this vision. I must have bumped my head harder than I thought.
The woman’s armor gleamed in the moonlight, the pale metal inlaid with mother-of-pearl from the inside of cockleshells. Her dark purple hair flowed out from beneath her helmet; her pale skin had a faintly greenish tinge.
She had large, mysterious eyes that reflected the changing colors of the Thames. Her necklace was a starfish, her belt a green twine of aquatic plants.
In one hand, she carried a slim silvery trident as tall as herself, with a large green stone set in the center. In the other, the stately woman held the reins of her chariot. Each fish was as long as Derek was tall, weighing hundreds of pounds. The giant river carp pursed their rubbery lips as they bobbed at the surface, their big, oddly human-looking eyes rolling about, taking in the scene.
Dani noticed silvery eels making figure eights in the water around the chariot. Then she realized there were more water nymphs swimming nearby, attending their leader in the chariot. She, in turn, looped the reins over a hook on the front of her vehicle, then removed the elaborate breathing apparatus that covered her nose and mouth like a mask. “Who summons me?” she demanded.
“I do, Jake Reed! Uh, I mean—” He glanced warily at Derek. “Jacob Everton.”
“Ah, yes, so they finally found you! The lost heir of Lord and Lady Griffon. So we meet again, my young lordling.” There was a fierceness in her smile. She greeted Derek with a nod. “Guardian Stone. I am pleased to see you tracked the boy down at last.”
The big man nodded. “He’s come into his powers.”
Lordling? Dani thought.
Derek stepped closer with a polite gesture. “My lord, allow me to present the person who saved your life: Captain Lydia Brackwater, Keeper of the Thames.”
Dani blinked—and was she hearing things, or had Derek Stone just addressed Jake the Blockhead as ‘my lord’?
Her pickpocket friend stood there motionless until Derek elbowed him. “Bow,” he muttered.
Abruptly, Jake snapped out of his reverie and managed a slight, awkward bend at the waist.
The water nymph looked amused. “Well, boy, where have you been hiding all these years? What do you have to say for yourself?”
Jake glanced at Derek, then back at her. “I should ask you the same, ma’am.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Jake,” Derek warned.
“Stone said you’re the one who abandoned me in the river!”
“Abandoned you?” Anger flashed across the water nymph’s face.
“You left me to die!”
“Jake!”
“Was that the best you could do?” he demanded. “Sending me off down the river alone? A baby! I could’ve been run over by a ship. I could’ve drowned. Bad enough I was lost for eleven years and had to grow up in an orphanage all because of you—”
“Show some respect!” Derek barked, but the shocked Keeper of the Thames drew herself up grandly, enraged.
“Why, you ungrateful tadpole!” Lydia Brackwater thundered. “It is true, your mother saved a colony of water nymphs from being poisoned by a factory dumping filth into their stream, but we are not in the habit of helping humans. You are lucky the water nymph queen gave your mother that summons shell as a token of our people’s thanks, or we would not have come at all. But whoever wears that shell has the authority to command us, and so we did as Lady Griffon asked and took you—for all the thanks we get! How dare you speak to me thus? I’m surprised at you, Guardian Stone, allowing this brat to summon me—so I could be insulted? I have 200 miles of river to tend tonight!”
“I’m sorry, Lydia. I was telling him about the Order and who he really is, but he didn’t seem to believe me. He wanted proof.”
“Oh, did he, indeed?” she asked with a sharp gleam in her eyes. Before pulling down her mask, she added, “Well, let’s give it to him then.” With that, she jumped up like a dolphin from the water, grabbed Jake’s arm and yanked him off the terrace, plunging with him under the river’s surface.
Dani screamed when the creature grabbed Jake. She came running out of her hiding place, put Teddy down, and crossed the terrace, peering over the railing in a panic.
“Jake! Jake!”
Teddy was standing at the water’s edge barking at the river.
Even Derek Stone was rattled. “Brackwater!” he roared. “Bring him back—now!”
But the water nymph captain was long gone. She had even left her chariot and her giant carp behind.
“Where’s she taken him?” Dani cried.
“Probably to Griffon Castle. Blast it, I told him not to insult her!” Derek spun away from the stone railing and marched back across the terrace toward the house. “Doesn’t he ever do as he’s told?”
“Not really.” Dani ran after him. “Is she gonna eat ‘im?”
“Don’t be silly,” he clipped out. “Water nymphs don’t eat people. Drown them occasionally—what are you doing out of bed? You need to rest like Doctor Celestus said!”
She stopped. “How do you know about my dream?”
“I have to go.”
“Well, I’m coming with you!” she informed him, striding at his heels.
“No, you’re not. You just had a terrible blow to the head, young lady—”
“I feel fine! Jake needs me! You know he does. Please!” She grabbed his arm and made him turn to her. “I’m the only one he trusts,” she insisted.
He looked at her in exasperation, then shook his head. She could tell he was not accustomed to dealing with children, especially girls.
“Oh, very well,” he said impatiently. “From what I’ve seen, if you actually got that lad to trust you, that is a major accomplishment, Miss O’Dell. You’d better come along. Go get your cloak and shoes on—and hurry!”
Dani dashed off to obey.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Below the Surface
The River Thames was deep and dark and cold, and Jake was terrified. He could see nothing, for it was not yet sunrise, and the murky water was brownish even in the daytime. Lydia cut through the current with po
werful, waving strokes, pulling him after her, bits of mud and slime sliding over his skin.
He could not believe he’d been abducted by a water nymph. Such creatures were not even supposed to exist. But they obviously did.
They were swimming at top speed against the current, which meant she was taking him not toward the sea, Jake realized, but deeper into the heart of England.
Lydia paused and did something to her trident so that its green jewel glowed, providing them with light. She held it out in front of them like a lantern, then forged on. Where they were going or what she meant to do to him once they got there, Jake had no idea, but in the meanwhile, he was running out of air.
He had managed to take a deep breath before she had pulled him under, but it was escaping him bit by bit in a trail of bubbles from his mouth and nose.
In another thirty seconds, he’d run out of air. He was beginning to panic. Though Lydia Brackwater was pulling him along at wild speeds, he tugged her arm frantically until she turned and glared at him.
“What?” she demanded in a gurgly underwater voice.
He pointed toward the surface. She narrowed her eyes at him in impatience, but then sped upward.
Jake’s head shot above the waterline. He came up coughing and gasping for air. Wiping the water out of his eyes, he caught a glimpse of lights far off in the distance. London! They had already come so far!
Lydia Brackwater pulled off her pollution-filtering mask while Jake coughed up river water and gulped fresh air. He’d be happy to survive the next half hour.
Lydia reached over and none-too-gently put her mask on him; it sucked onto his face like a starfish. She turned a dial on it from ‘Filter’ to ‘Air Mask,’ and he suddenly found that he could breathe.
“Where are we going?” he demanded, his voice coming out nasal and strange through the mask.
She didn’t bother answering the question, but grabbed him by the wrist again and dove.
Jake decided that if she meant to kill him, she would have done so by now, and she probably wouldn’t have given him her mask.
Perhaps they were far enough away from the city now that the water was clean enough for her to breathe unaided.
With air in his lungs and the green glowing light to show the way, Jake found his abduction to be quite a different experience. He looked all around him in wonder at the strange, eerie world beneath the river.
Above, he saw the underside of ships: the long wooden hulls of old sailing vessels, a mighty ironclad merchant ship, and a few paddlewheel boats, stilled for the night.
Duck feet paddled lazily by the banks.
All around him, a forest of countless chains as thick as his leg secured the boats with the giant anchors that held them in place for the night.
He looked down and saw an ancient wreck that had probably sat there rotting away for centuries, a simple fishing boat covered in barnacles and moss.
He saw many nets and the schools of fish doing their best to avoid them. Crab traps bobbed at the bottom of the river amid vast colonies of cockleshells.
Elegant silvery dace darted about in a school, while catfish rested on the bottom. Slimy bits of algae drifted past his mask, but then, suddenly, a long, mean pike appeared in front of him, its sharp teeth bristling.
It eyed him like it thought he might be something good to eat. Lydia Brackwater ordered the dangerous fish away. The pike fled at her command and left Jake alone.
They raced on, his ears filled with the gurgling whoosh of rushing water as they swam. Soon he heard a strange sound up ahead, a deep, rhythmic pounding.
Lydia’s green light revealed the underside of a waterwheel, churning silvery bubbles in the river. He wondered what sort of factory it powered, maybe an old gristmill where they ground corn and rye into flour.
Jake was fascinated by the steady turning of the mill-wheel, but Lydia had no intention of letting him linger.
They pressed on; some snails attached to a nearby rock peeked out of their shells and watched them go zipping by.
Jake wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Lydia headed once more for the surface. When they cleared the waterline, she pulled her mask off Jake’s head and sent him flying out of the water. “Next time somebody tells you something, maybe you should believe them!”
He landed with a squish on the muddy bank and rolled to a halt amongst the pussywillows. “Hey! Where are you going?” he yelled after her. “You can’t just leave me here! Abandoning me again?”
But she was already gone.
He fell back onto the riverbank in delayed astonishment, trying to catch his breath. For a second, he just lay there, freezing cold, his chest heaving.
Well, that was the closest thing to a bath I’ve had in ages, he thought. Then he sat up. Where am I?
As he wiped the stinging water out of his eyes, he saw the castle. It loomed a few hundred yards ahead against the fading stars.
Jake stood up, dripping wet and shivering, but fascinated. “Ahhh!” he suddenly yelped as something wriggled in his pocket.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slippery minnow. It looked at him in alarm. He threw it into the river.
Then he shook himself. What a strange night I’m having. Fortunately, dawn was beginning to light the eastern horizon.
He set his sights on the castle. There had to be a reason why the water nymph had brought him here.
He walked through overgrown formal gardens with graveled paths laid out in geometric patterns. Weeds were slowly overrunning the once-grand gardens. Topiary bushes that once had been clipped into interesting shapes had grown into large, misshapen bulges. The neglected flower beds were in chaos, the trellised archway sagging under heavy vines. The gardens seemed to be asleep.
Jake eyed the stone garden statues posing here and there with suspicion. After the things he’d seen lately, he would not be surprised if they came to life and started up a conversation. Fortunately, they did not.
At the other end of the garden, he stopped before a stately back entrance to the castle. The smooth gray stone tapered up into an arch above thick double doors of oak, reinforced with iron.
There were no signs of life anywhere around the place. For that matter, there wasn’t even a ghost on hand he could’ve asked a question, starting with, Where am I?
His heart pounding, Jake walked slowly to the door. Deep in his heart, a knowing whisper stirred. Somehow he sensed that he had been here before…
He listened hard, still hearing nothing but the wind rustling the gardens. He felt uneasy, but years of brazen misbehavior as a London street kid helped him find the nerve to grasp the massive iron door latch and lift it.
It opened, unlocked.
Pushing the door inward, he peered into the dark, silent home. A glance confirmed that, indeed, the castle was deserted.
All the furniture was draped in ghostly white cloth. It smelled musty, cobwebs waving in a draft. Cautiously, Jake stepped in and closed the door behind him. He took another step into the hallway when something moved by his feet. He shot backwards as a large frog leaped out of his path with a throaty ‘Ribbit!’
It sounded vaguely reproachful.
With a weak laugh, Jake clutched his chest, mocking himself for how his heart was banging after that scare.
“Sorry, mate!” he muttered, recovering his usual cheeky sarcasm. “Didn’t mean to step on you.”
He took care to step over the frog and then proceeded warily, soon arriving in a classic castle great hall.
He looked around in every direction, marveling at the place. It was huge, with a soaring vaulted ceiling and a fireplace as tall as he.
By the wall stood a dusty suit of armor on display.
But then he frowned as another hopping motion in the half-light drew his gaze toward the floor.
Frogs everywhere!
There must have been thirty of them sitting around the great hall, croaking up a storm. They must have come up from the river and had somehow gotten in. T
hey had taken over the abandoned castle. The place was infested with them!
Although a boy of twelve usually found gross things fairly amusing, even Jake was a little disgusted by all the frogs. He would’ve thought the creatures preferred to live down on the river. He picked his way into the great hall, minding his footing, but still determined to have a look around.
At any rate, the frogs seemed to enjoy the puddles he left behind, for they followed him eagerly, croaking louder, as he squished across the room in his sodden shoes and wet clothes.
Cold from his dunking, he pulled one of the cloth covers off a nearby wingchair and used it for a towel, drying his face, and then wrapping it around himself to try to get warm.
Just then, the portrait hanging above the fireplace caught his eye. He stood stock-still, staring up at it.
The first golden ray of daylight beamed in through the high window on the other end of the great hall and lit the painting of a handsome blond man and a dark-haired lady with a baby on her lap.
Jake quietly drew in his breath, riveted.
The man seemed to stare back at him from the canvas with a lordly look of pride. The smiling lady wore a seashell on a ribbon around her neck.
As for the baby in the picture, Jake understood now why he had been brought here. The truth finally sank in. Everything Derek had said clicked into place inside his mind.
These had been his parents.
This once had been his home.
PART III
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Grounded
Bickering was not a very pleasant sound to wake up to, but that’s what Gladwin heard, coming from the top of the stairs early the next morning.
“Please, dear Waldrick, let me have another feather!”
“Oh, I think you’ve had quite enough! Malediction, woman, I told you not to stay out so late. The sun is already rising! Hurry, we’ve got to get you back into your tank!”
“Ow! Careful with my tentacles, you oaf!”
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Gladwin pushed up onto her knees from where she had been balled up on the floor of the jar that was her prison. She rested her hands on the glass wall and stared at the spectacle of the Earl of Griffon helping Fionnula Coralbroom down the stairs.