The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton's Lair

by S. S. Taylor

“I’m sorry, Zander. Just . . . believe me.”

  “What do you mean? If Dad wanted us to do this, I’m going too.”

  I looked right at him. “Dad wanted me to do it. Just me, Zander.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Sukey put a hand on his arm. “Zander. Let him go.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded.

  M.K.’s diving suit was tight against my skin, made of a thick synthetic material that was supposed to keep me warm in the frigid water. Once I had the helmet on, I signaled that I was ready to go out through the diving hatch.

  Sukey touched my arm and I met her eyes and smiled. It was strangely silent inside the helmet. The only thing I could hear was the rasp of my breathing apparatus. I waited a moment before opening the hatch to the air lock. I waited there for a moment until the door to the outside opened and I swam out into the freezing water.

  I started to panic, remembering the shipwreck, with the cold pressure on my body, the terrifying inability to breathe, the feeling that my lungs would burst. I took a deep breath.

  It was okay. This was different. I could breathe inside the helmet. And the turtle was here. He swam alongside me and his shell opened enough that I could swim inside. It shut again and I took off my helmet as the water drained out and I found myself once again in the cool, glowing quiet of the turtle’s shell.

  I waved to Zander, M.K., and Sukey. Their astonished faces got smaller and smaller as the turtle swam into the passage to the chamber behind the throne.

  Now, he said. It is almost the end.

  Why? Why are you destroying the city? I asked him.

  No one can see. It is one of the places.

  What places?

  Not now. Now you must see the map.

  In a few minutes, we’d reached the map room. The elderly turtle was there, hovering before the huge mosaics, with the map in the center and the panels with their strange hieroglyphics all around it.

  I hadn’t tried to communicate with the old turtle before, but now I stared at him, directing my thoughts into his huge head.

  What is this? I asked. Who left it here?

  It doesn’t matter who left it. It matters that you found it. You are the one. You were chosen. His voice sounded different in my head from the other turtle’s—older, raspier.

  But why? What do I do with it?

  I don’t know. But you must remember it. So someone will know. So you can carry it.

  I studied the map with everything I had. This was it. This was my one chance to remember what Dad had sent me all this way to see.

  I stared and stared, working to imprint it upon my brain, taking snapshots, the way Dad had taught me. “Work across the map,” he’d said. “One square at a time. Create pieces of a puzzle in your brain, pieces you can put together later to recreate the whole.”

  For what must have been an hour or more, I stared at the map and the panels, closing my eyes and testing myself to see if I could still see it.

  Finally, I had it.

  It’s okay, I told the old turtle. I’m finished.

  Goodbye, he told me. Now carry it.

  I took one last look at the map I’d come all this way to see. Each tiny stone and shell was perfect on its own, the shapes and colors completely unique. Together they created something else, something I didn’t yet understand, a map of some yet unknown place, a place I couldn’t even imagine.

  Forty

  We found the temple mostly destroyed, the throne and murals crushed to sand. Through the gaping holes in its side, I could see the ruined city and the dark water beyond. It was empty except for Amy.

  You must go now, my turtle told me. They have all gone. The men of the land will be here soon.

  I looked back at the passage. What about the map? We can’t let them find it.

  He will destroy it.

  I looked at Amy. I thought of the old turtle, his flippers tired, his raspy voice. We’ll help, I told him, putting on my helmet. We’ll help you.

  The shell opened and I was back out in the frigid water, murky now with sand and debris. M.K. maneuvered Amy over to me and I made my way through the hatch. It was a relief to be back inside Amy and out of the helmet.

  “What happened?” Zander said. “Did you do it? Do you know what the map shows?”

  I held up a hand. “I’ll tell you later. They say BNDL will be here soon. We have to help them, M.K. Can we get the drill to work?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know. Zander, flip that switch and then use these levers to control it.”

  He did as she said. There was a grinding noise and the tentacle with the drill on the end stretched out, the huge bit on the end spinning powerfully.

  As M.K. guided Amy close to the passage and the walls of the temple, Zander used the lever to bring the drill up and out. It hit the mother-of-pearl wall with a terrible rasping. What was left of the temple began to crumble away.

  My turtle just watched us, a sad look on his face. Thank you, he told me.

  The other turtle, I said. He needs to come out now. This is all going to go in a minute.

  He didn’t say anything. Amy kept drilling, and what was left of the walls of the temple and the passageway kept falling. Soon we’d reach the map chamber.

  I was determined that if Mr. Mountmorris and BNDL made it to this part of the ocean they would find nothing more than a few mounds of cracked shells covered in sand.

  The water around us suddenly darkened.

  “What’s that?”

  M.K. turned around. “I don’t know.”

  “There’s something coming out of the cracks! See that black stuff?” A black ribbon, thick and viscous, was seeping out of the fissures in the rock. Thousands of dark ribbons curled through the water.

  “It’s the oil,” Zander whispered. “The stories were right.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” M.K. yelled. “I can’t see anything!”

  Suddenly, the rest of the walls crumbled away in a rush of black.

  “I’m pulling us out,” M.K. yelled.

  “The turtles!”

  “There isn’t time. They’ll follow us!” M.K. spun Amy around and throttled us out into the streets of the city, slamming against piles of debris as she tried to maneuver through the water, which was densely clouded with the black oil.

  I concentrated as hard as I could, trying to send my thoughts back to the turtles. Come out. Quickly. The oil will hurt you.

  They didn’t answer.

  “It’s oil,” Zander whispered. “All that stuff about the black waterfalls. They were right. There is oil here.”

  “A lot of it, by the looks of things,” Sukey said. “Look how fast it’s coming!”

  “We’ve got to stop it,” Zander said. “It will kill everything it comes in contact with. We’ve got to stop it.”

  I watched. “How can we? We need equipment. We need something that can block it.”

  Zander was silent. Finally he said. “We’ve got to get help. We’ve got to get back to the island. Where are those turtles?”

  “They must be coming out,” I said. “They must be.”

  Come on! I tried to tell them. You’ll die if you stay there.

  Nothing.

  We sat there watching as black snakes of oil kept slithering toward us. The turtles never appeared.

  Forty-one

  “Zander’s right,” I told M.K. “The only way to stop the flow is to get BNDL to bring down pipes and equipment.”

  “This is awful,” Zander said angrily. “Do you know what we’ve done? Do you know how many animals, how many fish and birds may die because you wanted to protect that map? There are species here that no human being has ever seen. And now no one will ever see them because they’ll be gone.”

  With a rush of air bubbles and black silt, another huge chunk of the city disappeared

  “Go,” I told M.K. “Go now!” Amy was making terrible grinding and w
heezing noises.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know.” M.K. worked away at the controls, checking pressure gauges and pushing buttons to release more steam, trying to figure out what was going wrong. She eased the throttle forward, but we barely moved. M.K. flipped a few more levers and after a few minutes, Amy sounded a little better. We seemed to be moving with more power.

  And then we heard a boom and saw, in the distance, a huge cloud rise up from the ocean floor as what was left of the city collapsed down into the trench, disappearing in a swirl of sand and dark water. “Go!” I shouted to M.K. “It’s coming down! It’ll bury us!”

  “I’m trying!” M.K. shouted as she flipped a lever. She pushed the throttle all the way up and Amy shot forward, up, up, away from the oily cloud of sand rising from the trench.

  “I can’t look at it,” Sukey said. “Why do they have to destroy it?”

  “They don’t want the city to be discovered,” I whispered.

  “But why?” Zander asked me. “They destroyed the map.”

  I thought about it. “I think it’s about something even bigger than the map, but I don’t know what it is. I think that they don’t want anyone to know about the city. They’re willing to destroy it in order to keep it a secret. But I don’t know why.”

  We chugged back the way we’d come, out of Girafalco’s Trench and up into shallower waters. Up ahead, we saw the ghostly shapes of the shipwrecks rising out of the darkness. They were like dead trees, the broken masts bobbing gently with the current. Zander and Sukey and I pressed our faces to the glass.

  “Amy’s not happy, but she’s running,” M.K. said. “We’ve got to get back up as soon as we can. Kit, look . . .”

  Sunlight was now filtering through the water, and beyond the wrecks we saw undulating fields of seaweed and hovering anenomes. We made our way slowly through the water.

  But something was wrong.

  “Where are all the fish?” M.K. said.

  The sea stretched all around us, empty of life. The anemones and coral remained, but the fish were gone.

  “Do the fish know?” Sukey asked. “Do they know that BNDL’s coming?”

  Zander watched the empty void. “I don’t know. But they’re all gone. Nothing’s there. Not a single fish.”

  And then suddenly, there were thousands of fish swimming past us in huge schools. We couldn’t tell where one began and another ended.

  “They’re swimming away from the oil!” Zander said.

  “Look at that one,” M.K. said. “And that one . . .” I followed her gaze.

  Some of the fish were slowing down, then sinking, unable to swim.

  It’s killing them,” Zander said. “But I don’t know. . . . They’re all going the same direction.”

  It was like standing in a field on a blustery day and watching as a rain cloud blew by, leaving blue sky behind it. The waves of fish went by and then we were all alone again in the silent ocean.

  And then we saw it, wriggling up slowly toward us out of the deep, a giant black form twisting through the water. It was, I realized with horror, a gigantic version of the eels on the island, its white teeth gleaming, its mouth opening to attack Amy.

  “What is that?” M.K. asked, fumbling with the controls.

  “It’s an eel,” Sukey said. “It’s a really giant eel.”

  “Dive!” I shouted. M.K. steered Amy into a dive. Through the side windows, I could see the eel following us through the murk, and M.K. pulled us up again. But the eel kept coming. “Here it comes. Get us out of here, M.K!”

  “It’s huge,” she shouted. “I don’t know if I can get away.”

  “It’s coming!” Zander said.

  It swam up slowly, its body twisting, one eye staring at us through the cockpit glass. M.K. pushed the throttle all the way up and Amy shot ahead, but the eel followed, curious about this strange octopus. It kept pace with us easily, twisting through the water.

  “How far are we from the beach?” M.K. asked.

  “I don’t know.” I checked my compass to make sure we were going in the right direction.

  M.K. kept Amy moving quickly through the water and I thought we were going to get away, but when we tilted up toward the surface, there it was in front of us again, rising up, its enormous mouth open and ready for attack.

  Sukey screamed. She reached for the tentacle controls and swung the pincer arm at the eel, but it barely noticed what must have felt like nothing more than a tap on the back.

  “Try the hose,” M.K. said.

  But before Sukey could engage the hose arm, the eel struck the glass with a terrible bang and we watched in horror as a thin crack appeared on the windshield.

  “Come on, Amy. Come on.” I could feel Amy go a little faster. But not fast enough. The eel seemed to be maddened by the fact that it hadn’t been able to get us, and it reared up once again.

  We all watched as its body grew rigid and its huge eye fixed on us.

  “Oh god,” I whispered.

  But just before it attacked, it hesitated, its body rippling as it turned its head toward some far-off sound or smell.

  “What is it? Is it the turtles?” M.K. asked.

  I couldn’t see anything through the dark water.

  The eel looked at us again, and then it was spiraling away toward the bottom of the ocean.

  I peered through the water and then I saw a cloud of thin black curls easing toward us, twisting through the water.

  “It’s the oil,” I called out.

  “I’m taking us up,” M.K. said. “We can’t let it get into the engine.”

  We sped away from the oily cloud through the water. “I think we’re almost back to the island,” M.K. said. “There’s the coral reef.”

  Up ahead, the reef still buzzed with life, fish and small eels swimming over the sandy floor, the sunlight filtering through the gentle waves and casting shimmering patterns on the floor.

  I felt the tension leave my body, but Zander was becoming more and more agitated. “It’s a disaster. It’s going to kill everything in the ocean. Why did you have to do that? Why did we have to destroy that map? If you hadn’t destroyed the map, that never would have happened.”

  “We had to,” I said. “You know that. The turtles were destroying it anyway. The oil would have come out when the city crumbled.” I tried to convince myself.

  “But we’re killing off hundreds of species. We’re destroying an ecosystem that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth. And for what? A map? A map only you’re allowed to see? I don’t know what you think Dad intended to happen, but it can’t be this. You don’t even know what it’s a map of. You don’t know if you’ll ever find out. And down here, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of species of fish and animals, and we’ve made them extinct before anyone can ever see them!”

  “Dad wouldn’t have told me to—”

  “Dad! Dad! I’m tired of you talking about Dad as though you have some secret line of communication to him. Where is he? If he wants you to do this so much, then where is he? Where is he, Kit?” Zander grasped my shoulder so hard it hurt. His eyes were furious. I’d never really been afraid of him until now.

  “Stop!” Sukey yelled. “This isn’t the time. We’re back at the island. What are we going to tell them? We’ve been gone for hours.”

  Zander let go of me and turned to look out the window at the life all around us. “We’ll figure something out,” I said. “It’s still early. Let’s leave Amy on the other beach. Maybe we can sneak back and get into the tents without waking them up.”

  Amy rose up and up, a white veil of air bubbles covering the windows as we surfaced into sunlight. M.K. maneuvered Amy up onto the beach as best she could and Zander, Sukey, and I helped to pull her up even higher. Pucci was waiting for us in a palm tree, and he started to greet us, squawking. Zander hushed him and made him stay on his shoulder.

  The sun was rising above the horizon now and the sky turned a beautiful pink-orange
as we walked through the sparse trees and low bushes in single file, trying to be as quiet as possible. I was in the rear, looking up at the morning sky, and suddenly bumped into M.K., who had stopped just in front of me. Joyce was on the path ahead of us, holding one of the water receptacles we’d made from palm fronds, two swords hanging from a piece of rope around her waist. I checked for Njamba and found her flying overhead. Joyce put a finger to her lips before we could say anything, and then she silently beckoned us to follow her. We walked along the path for another hundred feet before she stopped and pointed.

  Through the trees, we could see the bright purple sails of a big sailing catamaran anchored just off Castaway Beach.

  Forty-two

  Tried to tell you, Pucci chortled on Zander’s shoulder. Tried to tell.

  “Shhh,” we all hissed at him.

  Joyce put her finger to her lips again and whispered, “I went to look for water and when I came back, six pirates were storming the beach and tying everyone up. There are more out in the harbor. I managed to stay out of sight, and they don’t know I’m here.”

  “Unless Lazlo told them,” Sukey whispered.

  “Unless Lazlo told them,” Joyce admitted. She was wearing her green bandanna tied pirate-style around her head again.

  Zander craned his neck to try to see the beach, but we were still too far away. He silently pointed up the hillside and then pointed two fingers at his eyes—we needed to climb higher in order to see what was going on. Joyce nodded and we all crept up through the flowering bushes until we were up above the beach, behind a rocky outcropping, with a good view of the camp.

  It was Monty Brioux.

  I recognized his long red hair and purple cloak. And I recognized his shiny red alligator-skin boots. He had five pirates with him, three men and two women, all of them dressed in leather boots and bright Neo clothes, their hairlights and facelights blinking and flashing.

  I counted four additional pirates on the deck of the catamaran out in the bay. I held up ten fingers and Zander nodded. They were ten to our five. Not good odds.

  At the back of the beach, Monty Brioux stood before Leo Nackley, whose hands were tied together behind his back. Brioux was smiling broadly and training a huge chrome-and-brass pistol on him. Not far away, the three other pirates guarded Lazlo, Jack, and Kemal, whose hands were tied together like Leo Nackley’s. They were all lined up on the sand.