Unwritten Books 2 - Fathom Five

by James Bow

  CHAPTER FIVE

  UPON THE WATERS

  Rosemary floundered, struggling for air and light.

  She felt herself rising through the murk, towards a shimmering ceiling. Darkness pushed in on all sides.

  Rosemary rocketed out of the water. She barely had time to breathe before falling back in.

  She flailed and splashed, blind with spray. Hands clasped her arms and hauled her above the waves. The wind broke against her back, breathtakingly cold.

  “Peter!” she gasped.

  “Find your feet,” said a voice like a strict schoolteacher. “Put your feet down!”

  Rosemary found ground beneath her feet. She was waist deep in the cold water. A hand pressed against her back. “Now, walk,” said the stern voice.

  Rosemary tried. Then she bent double and threw up water. The voice sighed and pressed her forward, marching her to the shore.

  They left the water, and Rosemary collapsed onto a flat stone. She curled up into herself, retching.

  “You were a fool to follow us!” It was a woman’s voice, young and sweet as a girl’s, but with an edge of power and age. Rosemary rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. She sat up to stare.

  A woman-creature glared at her with shark’s eyes. She was tall and thin, wearing green robes. Her skin was like sea glass, and her red hair was long enough to cloak her. Hair and robes billowed in the wind. She looked as though the waves would break her, but they didn’t dare.

  “You wake at last.” The sea-woman sneered, baring white triangles of enamel. “Good.”

  “Who … who are you?”

  “Peter’s friend.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Safe,” the sea-woman replied. “Do not concern yourself with him. Worry about yourself. You are halfway between your world and mine. I have stayed back to show you the way home.”

  “Wait a minute; you pulled Peter off that cliff?” All she had seen was Peter holding hands with a thickening of the fog, but this felt like the same being. Maybe it could take whatever shape it wanted, like something worse than a shark-woman. Rosemary swallowed hard, then squared her shoulders, and faced up to her. “You can’t just take him away. That’s kidnapping!”

  “I am taking him home. You need to go to your home. Look around you.”

  The tone of her voice gave Rosemary no choice but to look around.

  She was sitting on a rock at the base of a line of cliffs stretching along the shore of an endless lake. The world was bathed in perpetual twilight, with no sun or stars in the sky. The dome overhead was a smooth navy blue, broken only at the cliff tops where clouds hung as thick as the fog around Clarksbury.

  “That pathway will take you home.” The seawoman pointed to a gully cut into the cliff. There was a fin growing along the back of her arm. “It is difficult terrain, but you should make it. Don’t look back, for the path will vanish behind you.”

  Rosemary shivered in the steady wind. “I’m not leaving without Peter.”

  The woman’s smile wasn’t sympathetic. “Suit yourself. Good luck. It is a cold wind.” She walked backwards into the lake. “This place echoes memories. Don’t be ensnared.”

  “Hey!” Rosemary scrambled to her feet. “Come back here!”

  The sea-woman cast up her arms and the lake rose.

  The wave dodged around her and charged at Rosemary. She barely had time to clutch at her glasses before the wall of water smashed her into the cliff face. Rosemary struggled against the suck of the undertow. Stones cracked against her legs and arms. Her lungs begged for air once more. Finally, the water receded, leaving Rosemary clinging to the flat stone, gasping.

  The woman was gone. The only sound was the roar of the waves, and the whistle of the wind.

  When she recovered her senses, Rosemary pulled away from the shoreline. She sat on a stone and tried to dry her glasses with her sopping cardigan before she realized that was silly. Blood trickled from a cut on her knee, and her head ached. The wind was so cold it burned her skin. And somewhere a bell tolled.

  “Well,” she said at last. “That went well.” She sat shivering as she took recent events apart and put them back together again, trying to think of what to do next.

  Around her, the fog that had been at the top of the cliffs descended, wrapping around her. The rocks seemed to dissolve like candle wax.

  That woman had pulled her out of a lake. Not the same lake they had fallen into, but a lake nonetheless. And the woman had stepped back into that lake before leaving. Then there was the path the woman wanted her to take, without Peter. The direct opposite to that path was the lake.

  That settled it. She had to get across that lake.

  But how? A boat?

  The bell tolled again.

  Wait a minute. Where is that bell coming from?

  She looked around, holding herself against the cold, but she was surrounded by fog now. Waves rolled in from nothing and broke at her feet. But the sound of the bell was as plain as day. It echoed from the cliff face behind her, and it was getting closer.

  Then black burst out from the white: a threemasted schooner in full sail, its prow already above her. Rosemary rolled away, yelling, and covered her head. The ship bucked like a wounded animal. Wood crunched against stone. Rigging fell around her, bombarding her with sound. There was a snap of ropes and the plosh of objects hitting water. The masts toppled with the sound of timber, and Rosemary heard the screams of men.

  Then the screaming stopped. Rosemary chanced a look up, and then stumbled to her feet. She gaped.

  There was no sign of the ship that had broken on top of her, unless the shipwreck had occurred years ago. Instead, she stood in the middle of a graveyard of snapped masts. Multiple ships rested here. Nearest her, the wooden ribcage of a stern poked above the waves. Beyond the waves, the navy blue sky could be seen through holes in the metal hull of a tanker. Planks and chunks of metal littered the shore among large cargo boxes, some made of wood and others of corrugated metal. Several of the boxes had broken open and spilled out their contents. There were no bodies.

  Rosemary drew her arms around herself. Her teeth chattered. She took a step, tripped, and fell on her face.

  What was wrong with her? She struggled to her hands and knees, as her legs wouldn’t hold her up. Her fingers were numb. Her teeth were chattering so hard she could hardly breathe. It was so cold.

  Cold. With a gasp, Rosemary looked at her fingertips. They had gone pale.

  Hypothermia. The wind was strong and bitter. Worst of all, she was soaking wet. She needed shelter, dry clothes and a heat source. Now.

  The gully looked very tempting, but to go along it meant leaving Peter behind forever. Besides, she doubted she could make it back to Clarksbury before she passed out. The means to save herself had to be here.

  She stumbled among the wreckage, pulling aside planks, looking into crates. She fell several times, once into a tide pool. Each time, it was harder to get up.

  Her hand fell upon something soft and she pulled it out. A blanket fluttered in the wind. She wrapped herself up, but it was too little, too late. Her fingertips were blue.

  She peered into box after box, casting aside food canisters, boxes of nails, more blankets. Then, as she was about to toss aside another can, she stopped and stared at it with shaking hands.

  The writing was decades old, though the metal shone like new. The words made Rosemary gasp with new hope. “S-s-st-terno!” Canned heat. She was halfway to being saved. Her eyes darted from container to container, looking for … oh, to be this close!

  She let out a shuddering yell of delight and stumbled to a crate whose contents had spilled out and broken open. Thick wooden matches lay scattered about. She scooped up a dry box.

  The beach had cut into the cliffs, and one could sit on stones beneath a rocky overhang, out of the wind. Rosemary ducked underneath. Using a nail, she pried open the can of Sterno and placed it on a dry stone. Her fingers could hardly hold a match, let alone strik
e it, but desperation drove her forward and she finally lit one. The can flared up in blue flame.

  Rosemary breathed a shaky sigh of relief. She placed the flaming can just outside the overhang and started putting wood over the flames. The wood sputtered and smoked, but finally caught. The heat singed her cheeks, and burned away the fog, but she couldn’t stop shivering. Her clothes clung to her and felt like icepacks.

  “I need dry clothes,” she gasped. “Or I need to dry these clothes.”

  She stood up, almost banging her head on the overhang. With no thought of modesty, she threw her windbreaker, jeans, cardigan, t-shirt, shoes, underwear, and socks in a damp pile beside the fire. Soon she was wrapped in her blanket, wilting towards the heat.

  The waves rumbled and crashed.

  As she stared into the flames, the fog drew closer. Her vision blurred, and she tried to shake it clear. I mustn’t sleep, she thought. Worst thing to do if you have hypothermia. Just stay close to the bonfire … and remember.

  “Yum,” said Peter. “It’s just like caramel!”

  She looked up. Red-gold flames licked away the fog. As she watched, the bay came into focus. She could see an arm of the escarpment reaching out into the water, bathed orange in the setting sun. Peter held a stick away from the bonfire, licking his fingers.

  Rosemary laughed. “As if you wouldn’t believe me.” She squished her marshmallow between two graham crackers and pulled it off the stick. “You never roasted marshmallows? Ever?” She set her stick down and rubbed her hand on her jeans.

  “Never. Can I have another?”

  She rummaged through her knapsack. “We’re almost out,” she said.

  “How?” asked Peter. “We bought a whole package!”

  She gave him a playful scowl. “You lost half of it in the flames.”

  “Told you I never did this before,” said Peter. “I need practice. We should have bought two packages.”

  “You’ll make do.” She bit into her s’more.

  Her teeth clicked on nothing.

  Rosemary shook her head so hard, it rattled. The image of Peter faded into the fog until she was sitting by herself. Her blanket fluttered in the cold wind. The breakers roared.

  “What … the hell?” she gasped.

  Then the sea-woman’s words echoed in her head: “This place echoes memories. Don’t be ensnared.”

  Memories. Like shipwrecks, played out over and over again? Like her memories?

  It had been so real. She could still taste the memory of marshmallows and graham crackers. Already she could feel things circling around her. She saw flashes at the edge of her vision like multi-coloured cobwebs.

  She stood up with a shout, and the memories scampered away with the fog. She leaned against the rocks, breathing heavily. Then she picked up her underwear and rubbed it between her fingers. It was dry.

  Later, warm and dressed, Rosemary stepped away from a broken container at the waterline, opening a keyed can of preserved meat. She wrinkled her nose, but dug in her fingers and nibbled at the pasty contents. Beside her, the bonfire waned.

  Okay, she thought. That’s one crisis dealt with. Now what do I do?

  Look for Peter, obviously.

  How? she wondered. How do you search when you don’t even know where you are?

  She looked up and down the beach again, up to where it vanished in the fog. Her eyes fell on the broken cargo containers. Curiosity twigged, and she stepped forward for a better look.

  Picking up a fallen plank, she stared at the letters printed across it. It read: “USS Lorelei.”

  She blinked. “That was over a hundred and eighty years ago!”

  This box had been the one with the food.

  “Ugh!” She cast the container aside, then picked it up again and stared at it. The tin gleamed in the twilight as though it had been made months ago, not centuries. The meat did not smell appetizing, but it didn’t smell rancid, either.

  Moving to another container, she shoved some broken pieces of wood aside and opened up one of the smaller boxes within. Her eyes widened. The boxes contained nails: old iron nails of the sort made before mass production, as shiny as the day they were made.

  Cargo containers smashed against the rocks, but showing no other signs of decay; food that should have been rotten but was edible (she hoped).

  “Well, Toto, we’re not in Clarksbury anymore,” she said.

  Then her eyes fell upon another container further out in the water. Glass was scattered over the protruding stones. They were the remains of bottles, of a sort that Rosemary had only seen in the antiques market. Some of the bottles weren’t broken.

  She hopped from rock to rock, keeping an eye out for broken glass underfoot, and picked up one of the unbroken bottles. It was filled with a white liquid. “Milk? Well, here’s a test.” The lid was made of foil, and she peeled it off using her fingers and her teeth. She sniffed the contents, then took a tentative sip, then gulped it down and stared at the empty bottle. “I’m standing in the middle of the best refrigerator ever made!”

  She tossed the bottle back inside the cargo container with a clink. “Neat. Now what do I do?”

  Go find Peter, she thought.

  “Where?” she muttered.

  I don’t know, but I’ve found all I can in this spot. It’s time to go somewhere else.

  “Let’s take along some supplies.”

  She wrapped some matches and some cans of food and Sterno in her blanket and stuck one of the bottles of milk in her pocket. Turning to douse the bonfire, she stopped and noticed, for the first time, the thick black smoke that curled from it, up the cliff face and into the sky.

  “Hmm.” She stuck out her lip. “Here I am. Come and get me.”

  What an odd thought. Other than that sea-woman, I haven’t seen a living thing since I got here.

  A splash brought Rosemary’s attention around.

  The waves were a distant rumble, overpowered by the gentle lapping against the stones nearby. The sound was small and close by, like a pebble disturbed by a shifting foot.

  Rosemary looked. In a still area of the cove, ripples reached out along the surface of the water. She could see nothing that could have caused them.

  There was another splash, to Rosemary’s left. Another set of ripples, closer, fanning out against the shore.

  Rosemary backed away.

  Another splash, another ripple. This time, she caught a glimpse of a small, black shape as it slipped back into the water.

  Then something flew at her.

  She swung up her pack instinctively. Something bounced off it and fell with a splat onto the rocks.

  Rosemary lowered her pack and stared.

  The creature was an eel with legs and a tail, covered in scales that glistened with water. It had a huge unhinged jaw with many long and pointed teeth.

  It rounded on her with the speed of a salamander when she dared take a closer look. It opened its jaw and let out a venomous hiss.

  Rosemary scrambled back, barely taking it all in. What was this creature? Was it a fish?

  There was another splash, and then another.

  Rosemary had a nasty thought: fish sometimes travel in schools.

  Something leapt at her out of the murk. Rosemary screamed and swung her pack. A long-tailed shape sailed out past a far tide pool.

  She only just saw the other shape out of the corner of her eye when it sank its teeth into her forearm. She cried out and swung it against a rock again and again. The creature squealed, but it did not let go, even when it stopped moving.

  Other shapes leapt forward and Rosemary ran for her life. Behind her, the sound of splashes became like applause, growing to an ovation that paced her along the shoreline.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ARIEL

  “Breathe, Peter.”

  Peter floundered, struggling for air and light.

  He felt himself sinking, pulled deeper and deeper by song. He reached for the shimmering ceiling above him, but darkne
ss swept over his vision. It pressed.

  Music rang in his ears: a haunting, lilting tune that came into his ears with the water. He wanted it in his lungs. He wanted to breathe.

  Even though it would kill him.

  He wanted to breathe in, water and song. His chest convulsed. He flailed desperately, but silky strands wrapped around him and held him still. The song broke off. “Easy, Peter. Relax. Breathe.”

  The water slipped into his mouth and into his nose. Finally, he could resist no longer. The water swept into him.

  “Breathe,” said Fiona.

  Peter opened his eyes. He was floating in aquamarine, the shimmering surface within arms reach. Fiona stood above him, her hair fluttering in the current, her arms beneath his back. She smiled down at him. “Peter?” He wasn’t sure if he heard her words with his ears or his mind.

  “Am I in heaven?” he found himself asking, surprisingly calm.

  Fiona laughed like a flute underwater. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” He wasn’t sure if he was speaking, or how Fiona heard him.

  “Certain.”

  “Then, where am I?”

  “Home.” She hauled him to the surface. “Breathe!”

  Peter burst from the surface, gasping. The sweetest air filled his lungs. He coughed and flailed, weak with relief. Fiona held him as he sagged into her.

  “Thanks,” he wheezed. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and gazed around blearily.

  I thought I was dead. Why did I think I was dead?

  Falling … Rosemary … their screams mingling … the lake rushing up …

  He flailed, raising spray.

  “Rosemary! Rosemary, where are you?”

  Fiona grabbed at him. “Peter, calm yourself! You’re safe, now.”

  “No! Rosemary!” His voice echoed.

  Fiona touched his brow and caught him as he went limp in her arms. She sat him down in the shallow water. “Rest,” she whispered. She cupped her hand into the lake and brought the water to his lips. “Drink.”

  Peter swallowed the sweet water. It settled into his chest like a cool pebble. His ragged breathing eased. Tension slipped from his shoulders along with the fears from his mind.