Konrad threw across the rest of our gear before making his own jump. It went well, and after he’d landed and was taking off his harness, Elizabeth burst into tears. Konrad enfolded her in his arms.
He looked at me over her shoulder. “We should not have brought her. It is too much. We were foolish and selfish.”
Elizabeth pushed free of his embrace, and her wet eyes now blazed.
“I’ve had a bad fright, and a cry-yes, tears come more easily to young women than men perhaps-but now I’m done, and I’m ready to carry on.” She wiped at her eyes. “Which way now?” she asked, her voice steady.
And so we continued on.
We went farther. We went deeper. My clock told me it was nearing noon.
Our tunnel gradually contracted, and we had to crawl single file, dragging our packs behind us. I felt a new sympathy for Henry. I had never before been bothered by small spaces, but this rat’s maze threatened to rob me of breath.
“Did Temerlin make any mention of this?” Konrad asked behind me.
“Nothing. Maybe he was too busy blinking dust out of his eyes.”
“You’re sure we are on the right path?”
I gazed again at the map. “I’m sure of it. I’ve missed no turn.”
Konrad sighed. “Then, on we go.”
A sense of responsibility crushed down against me, as powerfully as the stone. I could not let myself be wrong. But after a few more minutes, as if to confirm my worst fears, the walls of our tunnel shrank even tighter. I stopped.
“Is it a dead end?” Konrad asked.
“Not quite.”
I pressed myself tightly against one side of the tunnel so he might see the slit-shaped hole directly before us.
I stuck my lantern through. “It widens quickly on the other side,” I reported.
“But can we reach the other side?” he asked.
“How could a grown man have fit through there?” Elizabeth demanded when she saw the opening.
“Temerlin must’ve been very thin,” I said. I would not voice my fear, but it beat wildly in my chest.
“I’ll have a try,” said Konrad. “If I can do it, you can do it.”
I did not argue with him this time. There was something about the gash that terrified me.
“And if you two can do it,” Elizabeth said, “I will surely have no problem.”
We both watched as Konrad tried to push and twist and fold his body through the gap. It seemed he would never fit, and then suddenly he was on the other side.
“It’s not so bad!” he called back to us. “Hand me a lantern, Victor, and come.”
“I’m coming,” I said, and sipped some water from my flask, willing my stomach to stop churning.
There was only one spot wide enough for my head, and I had to twist it most unnaturally to push it through.
“It’s like… being born again,” I gasped as I narrowed my shoulders and tried to ease them past the bony contraction of rock. I could not. I tried to fold myself even tighter, shoved with my feet. I hated to think of the spectacle I must be making to Elizabeth, my feet scrabbling, bottom waggling. But my embarrassment quickly became panic.
“I’m stuck!” I said.
“You can do it,” Konrad said. “Our bodies are the same.”
“ You have lost weight,” I said. “You’re skinnier!”
I felt a sudden crazed anger in me. I was an animal snared in a trap, knowing escape was impossible. Konrad had tricked me! He had lured me into this!
“I can’t move!” I bellowed. “I can’t breathe!”
“Be calm, Victor,” I heard Elizabeth say behind me. “We will ease you through.”
My left arm was pinned tightly, and my right flailed about uselessly. I was as helpless as a newborn. There was a sudden warmth around my hips and I wondered in horror if I’d wet myself. Then I felt Elizabeth’s hands around my waist.
“What’re you doing?” I cried out.
“Applying grease,” she said.
“You brought grease?”
“For just such a thing. I found a very informative book on cave exploration in your father’s library. Now, Konrad, can you pull?”
Konrad seized my upper right arm, and I felt Elizabeth shoving from behind.
“Now!” she said. “Pull him, Konrad!”
For a moment I didn’t budge. Then I shot forward, tumbling upon my brother in a heap. As we disentangled ourselves, I began to laugh hysterically in relief.
“Are you all right?” he asked me.
“I feel wonderful,” I gasped. “Who wouldn’t?”
“You maniac,” he said, but soon we were both laughing uncontrollably.
“When you boys are quite finished,” Elizabeth said, passing our gear through the opening. Then she eased her slim figure effortlessly through. We sat for a moment, putting our things to rights, eating some food.
“It’s strange,” Konrad said, chuckling, “because Mother always said I was born easily but you took your time.”
“Two minutes only,” I objected.
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. You got stuck.”
Both Konrad and I looked at her in utter surprise.
“Really, Elizabeth,” he said, “this is a rather indelicate subject for a young-”
“Honestly, Konrad, don’t be such a prude,” she said.
“Did I really get stuck?” I asked her.
“Boys never remember these stories properly,” she said with a sniff. “Girls do because we know it awaits us. You,” she said, looking at me sternly, “nearly killed your mother.”
“She never told me-”
“You were all twisted the wrong way, and the midwife nearly wasn’t able to get you turned round properly.”
I nodded mutely. Glancing back at the opening, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the underground cold. I was very glad to see that up ahead the tunnel enlarged.
“Let’s continue on,” I said, eager to leave behind the subject of my awkward and life-threatening birth. I did not care for this image of myself as a wailing baby-and did not want Elizabeth to think of me so.
Down and down. Gradually the ceiling lifted. We crouched, then hunched, then stood tall and stretched, groaning in relief.
“Which way now?” Konrad asked, for our tunnel suddenly branched into three. The first angled gently upward, the other two downward-one of them quite steeply.
I looked at the map, sickened. There was no such branching indicated.
“There’s only one passage marked here,” I mumbled.
Konrad stepped closer. “Perhaps you’re reading it incorrectly.”
I pointed at the spot where we should have been.
“We’re lost,” said Konrad. “You should’ve let me help navigate.”
“You mean take over entirely,” I snapped.
“Two sets of eyes are better than one.”
“My eyes are quite capable of reading a map, Konrad!”
“You have been too greedy with it, Victor,” said Elizabeth quietly. “You might have let us share the responsibility.”
This stung deepest. Humiliation and jealousy choked my voice. “You think him a better leader, do you?”
“I did not say that-”
Konrad snorted. “It’s this pigheadedness that has gotten us lost.”
I shoved him hard against the wall-my twin, who, mere weeks ago, had been bedridden with fever. He lost his balance and fell.
“Victor!” I heard Elizabeth cry above the pounding in my ears.
Immediately I was overcome with guilt and reached out to help him to his feet. “Are you all ri-”
He grabbed me by the arm and shoulder and hurled me against the wall, then stood before me, glowering, his fists raised. I clenched mine, ready to spring.
“Stop it!” shouted Elizabeth. “Both of you, stop!”
There was such anger and authority in her voice that we both turned to look at her.
“Don’t you dare put this venture at risk
!” she said.
Konrad sighed heavily and dropped his fists. “This venture is at an end. We must turn back.”
“Turn back?” I exclaimed.
“To continue on without a map would be madness.”
“Elizabeth can mark our every turn with chalk!”
“Shush!” she said.
“Do not shush me!” I shouted.
“I hear something!” she said.
We listened. Far, far away came a low murmur. For a skin-prickling moment it sounded like people whispering.
“Water,” said Elizabeth.
Konrad nodded. “But from where?”
He moved a ways down each of the tunnels in turn.
“I think it must be this one,” Konrad said at the threshold of the ascending passage.
“No, it is this one,” said Elizabeth, standing at the steepest downward-sloping tunnel. “The sound is clearest here. Victor, what do you say?”
I tried all three tunnels. It was virtually impossible to decide, for I thought I heard the whisper of water everywhere now.
“I don’t know,” I said, defeated.
“I do,” said Elizabeth. “This way our pool awaits.”
Konrad looked at her, then at me.
I nodded. “I trust her.”
“Very well. We can always turn back if we find nothing. Mark the turning, Elizabeth.”
Triumphantly she chalked the stone. “You are lucky to have my ears along with you.”
“We’re lucky to have all of you along,” said Konrad, and won a chuckle from her.
I wished I had the quick wit to make such flirtatious compliments.
We started down the tunnel, and the lapping sound grew stronger.
“You see?” Elizabeth said. “I was right.”
Quite suddenly the tunnel angled sharply upward.
“The floor is damp here,” Konrad said.
I ran my fingers along the slick stone. “The walls, too.”
For some minutes we walked uphill, puffing. Then the tunnel leveled off and opened out onto the sloped rocky shore of a vast pool.
“We found it!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
Its surface was not glassy smooth, as I’d imagined, but slowly swirling, as though in the grips of many hidden currents.
“I cannot see the bottom,” Konrad said, holding his lantern out.
“The light!” I said, remembering. “Trim your wicks. We don’t want to scare away the coelacanth!”
As our lanterns faded, a new light dawned in the cave, for the walls and low ceiling were glazed with some kind of strange mineral that emitted a purplish twilight.
“I wonder how deep it is,” I whispered, looking at the black water. Was it fed by the lake alone, or was there an even deeper source, fed by the waterfall? As I gazed at the pool’s surface, a portion of it shimmered, and a blue silhouette moved beneath it, its scales sparkling in the half-light.
“That’s him,” I breathed. “The coelacanth!”
It was but a quick glimpse, and then the creature disappeared into the depths. We all looked at one another, smiling. We had done it. We’d descended the caves and found the pool, and now all that was left was to catch the fish itself!
“I got no proper sense of his size,” said Konrad.
“It was too fast,” I agreed.
“He was a marvelous dark blue,” whispered Elizabeth. “Did you see those white markings?”
Hurriedly Konrad and I assembled our rods and tackle. Earlier this morning when William and Ernest had seen us with our gear, they’d eagerly started to hunt the garden for worms. They hadn’t realized that we’d need more substantial bait for what we sought. According to Polidori, the coelacanth ate other fish, things as big as small squids. But we’d let our younger brothers proudly present us with their pail of worms, and had promised to bring them back our prize. We’d brought heavy line, for we knew from Polidori’s specimen that these fish grew large.
We baited our hooks with the pickerel we’d bought from a local fishmonger after setting off from the chateau. Then we cast into different sections of the pool and stood back, paying out our weighted lines. Down and down and down they went, until I was afraid we would run out of line before we hit bottom.
“A hundred feet at least,” said Konrad finally, reeling back in a little.
“Will he eat?” whispered Elizabeth. “What if he’s satisfied his hunger already?’
“He won’t resist such easy food,” I murmured confidently. But as the minutes ticked by, I was not so sure. Maybe this creature did not care for pickerel. Water lapped at the toes of my boots, and I shuffled back a few steps.
Suddenly my rod gave a jerk and the line raced out.
“He’s taken it!” I cried.
“Don’t try to stop him yet!” Konrad cautioned.
I watched where my line entered the water. The coelacanth was moving swiftly, spiraling lower in the pool.
“He’ll have all my line before long!” I said, eyeing my reel nervously.
Ever so slightly I increased the drag, and needed to lean back with all my weight. I didn’t like to ask for help, but I had no choice.
“I’ll need you to hold me, both of you,” I said. “He’s too powerful!”
“Coming!” said Konrad, and At that very moment the tip of his own rod dipped low, and his reel spun furiously.
Our lines, I noticed, were angled in exactly the same direction.
“He’s taken both our hooks!” cried Konrad.
I felt the strain on my rod lighten. This was good news indeed.
“He has the two of us to contend with now!” I said.
“The Frankenstein boys will bring him in!” hooted Konrad. “Let him tire himself.”
“Good, good!” I said, feeling a surge of exhilaration. I was not thinking about Elizabeth or my jealousy-only working with my twin.
“I think he begins to slow,” said Konrad after a few minutes.
“Gently now,” I said, and we both increased the drag on our reels. My feet felt wet, and when I glanced down, once again I saw that water was lapping against them.
“Konrad,” I said, my pulse quickening. “The water’s rising.”
“What?” He glanced over at me in confusion, then down at his boots, wet to the ankle.
I realized that we’d unknowingly backed up very close to the cavern’s wall. There was not much more room to retreat.
“The pool must be filling from beneath,” Elizabeth said. “That waterfall…”
She hurried to pull back our packs and keep them dry.
“We don’t have much time,” said Konrad. “It rises quickly.”
“If it overflows the ledge,” said Elizabeth, “it will begin to fill the tunnel.”
“Temerlin made no mention of this,” I muttered. But I remembered the wet floor and walls as we’d approached. This was no rare occurrence.
“We’ll have the fish any moment,” I said, leaning back to test its strength.
“Definitely he tires,” agreed Konrad.
“There he is!” cried Elizabeth, pointing.
Once again the blue form shimmered below the surface, but this time he actually broke it for a moment-and for the first time we saw his full size. I swallowed.
“He’s seven feet!”
“We will have him, though!” said Konrad. “His fight is gone. Let’s reel in.”
All at once the coelacanth flashed out of sight, Konrad’s line snapped, and the full power of the fish was in my hands. Instinctively, foolishly, I gripped my rod tighter and was instantly yanked off the rocky ledge. I was pulled some twenty feet through the air, and then crashed into the pool.
The cold was like a hammer blow. It was all I could do to keep my head above the water and fill my lungs with air. I felt like a ship trapped in ice, slowly being crushed. The fishing rod was long gone from my hands. I was dimly aware of my name being called, voices echoing everywhere. My clothes and boots were heavy with water. Sluggishly I turned to fac
e the shore, the lanterns, Konrad and Elizabeth.
I tried to kick, but my legs hardly moved. Were they so numb already? Then I felt a painful tightening around them, and realized they were bound together by loops of fishing line, cinched by the circling coelacanth.
I dragged my sodden arms through the water, my legs lashing up and down like a fish tail.
“Victor! Stay still!” cried Elizabeth.
“What?” I gasped.
“It will think you’re a squid! They eat squids!”
I looked around in terror. And then, suddenly, it shot past me, not a foot away. Its length was one thing, but its width was equally worrying. How much could it swallow? It seemed to take forever to pass-and then it began to circle.
“Konrad!” I shouted. “My saber!”
I saw him scramble through my gear and grab the sword. He threw it. The blade flashed in the lantern light, and I caught the saber in my cold-clawed hand.
“I’m coming, Victor!” he cried.
He was kicking off his boots, stripping down to his shirt. He snatched up his own saber.
The coelacanth plowed past, so close that it grazed me, its jagged scales rasping against my clothing-and possibly my flesh, but I was so cold I felt nothing. Twice I stabbed at it with my sword, and was dismayed when the blade deflected off as though from armor. The fish’s muscular flank swatted me. My head went under. I lost grip of my sword. I choked on the cold water, and came up spluttering, weaponless.
The fish was coming straight at me now, its mouth wide, and wider still. It did not have many teeth, but those it had looked very sharp. I flailed at it with my feet, trying to kick it away. With its head it batted my legs effortlessly to one side and came at my torso.
Before I could raise my fist to pound its head, it took my entire arm into its mouth. Its teeth closed around my bicep, not tearing, not gnawing, just gripping. I screamed in pain. Against my hand and forearm its fleshy maw contracted and sucked, trying to drag me in deeper.
I heard a splash, and seconds later Konrad surfaced beside me, like some Greek hero, his face alabaster and fierce with cold. In his hand was his saber.
“It has me!” I cried.
I tried again to drag my arm out, but the fish’s teeth were sunk into my flesh and every movement was agony. With my free hand I punched and pummeled the fish’s head, but it seemed to feel nothing. Its throat sucked and spasmed wetly around my arm.
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