The tunnel opened up to a deep and massive valley. Penelope felt the downward tug of the craft descending farther and a slight hum of pressure pushing against the vessel’s walls.
The seven of them spied a dark object on the ocean floor.
“Prepare to deploy,” whispered Pooley.
Omar, Martin, and Lucas unsnapped their seat belts and attached collapsible harpoons to their wings.
“You got those magic cookies handy, March?” Sparks whispered. “It’s chow time.”
Penelope reached into a paper bag and handed a cookie to Miles, then grabbed one for herself. Both of them gingerly removed their helmets.
As Lucas opened the airlock compartment under his seat, Omar and Martin watched the March siblings, wondering what exactly was going to happen when they took a bite.
“Hang on,” Sparks said. “What is that?”
Everyone stopped.
Penelope pressed her face against the plexiglass to get a better look at the mass on the ocean floor but couldn’t make out its shape in the dark.
“I’m going to turn on the lights,” Sparks said.
“Negative,” Pooley whispered. “It doesn’t know we’re here. Our best chance is to surprise the enemy. Turn the lights on and you take away our advantage.”
“We can’t go out there until we know what we’re dealing with. For all we know, it’s approaching us right now.”
“Don’t touch those lights.”
“Mom, Dad, quit fighting,” Omar said. “What’s the plan here?”
Pooley and Sparks stared at each other for a minute. The two of them had an entire conversation without saying a word.
Pooley sighed. “Fine. Let’s see what we’ve got. Light it up.”
Sparks flipped a switch, and for a moment Penelope expected to see a monster outside her window, looking in. To her relief, nothing was there.
But the spotlight lit a path toward the shadowy object on the ocean floor.
“Whatever it is, it’s not moving,” Sparks said. “Let’s go in for a closer look.”
“What if it’s a trap?” Penelope asked.
“Then it’s working,” Miles said. “Because we’re going right into it.”
They crept closer to the ocean floor until the lights were shining directly on the object.
It was an airplane, a four-seat twin-engine plane with a rusted body, once silver, now a dull gray. Moss and seaweed draped its propeller and tail. Painted on the side were some strange symbols, including a faded image of a white flag with a red dot in the center. Beneath the flag was one five-letter word.
“What’s ‘Japan’?” Omar asked.
No one answered. No one knew.
Sparks pulled up next to the plane and shined the headlights inside. Still buckled in their seats in the cockpit, with hungry sea spiders weaving in and out of their exposed rib cages, were two very old-looking human skeletons. That was when Pooley and Sparks agreed it was time to turn around.
“Have you got any relative bearing grease?”
Penelope stood in the supply shack, feeling ridiculous. The supply chief, a gruff old broad wearing horn-rimmed glasses, gave her a sketchy look that seemed to go on forever.
Pooley had enlisted Penelope to help out with maintenance and sent her off in search of this stuff. “We’re installing relative bearing and we need grease,” Pooley had grumbled. “And hurry. This maintenance can’t start till we get it.”
After glancing at her assistant, the supply chief vanished into the supply shack. Penelope couldn’t hide her aggravation. She had already been to the torpedo division, the operations compartment, Dupree’s galley, and two bathrooms, and no one could seem to locate even an ounce of relative bearing grease. Still, she considered herself lucky. Miles had drawn janitorial ops and was currently down in the depths of the lower-level engine room degreasing the bilges.
They’d been on the Delphia for three days now, slogging west. Every now and then, the sub made a dramatic depth charge and the whole thing pointed so far aftward—“all angles and dangles,” the crew called it—that dishes slipped off tables in the mess hall and supplies fell off shelves.
But the Trouble Bubble remained parked in its chamber behind the electrician room. Makara Nyx’s trail had gone cold, and after the mysterious episode with the ghost plane, no one trusted the vague intelligence information anymore.
“This ocean is twenty million square miles, and Nyx is a shape-shifter,” Penelope overheard one officer tell another. “It’s like trying to find a particular blade of kelp.”
“And we don’t even know what the kelp looks like,” the other added.
The monotony had gotten to the crew—the endless maintenance, the drudgery of work, the constant fire and flooding drills. It wasn’t long before they were blowing off steam in the form of pie fights, poker games, and, when Decker wasn’t around, sliding down the long hallways on their bellies.
Miles often seemed to be in the center of it all. Thanks to Dupree’s food, and at least ten glasses of chocolate milk a day, he had put on some weight. He was even starting to act like a penguin. He’d begun eating krill. And on days when he wore a white shirt with long black sleeves, strutting around with his belly and long neck puffed out, he even looked the part.
Penelope had grown impatient and began to devour library books at an alarming rate. She’d even tried her hand at the books written in Penglish. Most of them, as far as she could tell, were murder mysteries, and in the end, the murderer was always a seal.
The supply chief returned. “Sorry, Miss March. We’re all out of…relative bearing grease. You might try the auxiliary machinery room.”
Penelope threw up her hands. “But they sent me to you!”
“Oh, uh, you know, I might’ve issued the last can to the boys in the engine room.”
Once Penelope was gone, the assistant turned to the supply chief. “Relative bearing grease? Haven’t heard that prank in ages.”
“Eh,” the supply chief said. “It’ll keep the kid busy for a while.”
—
Was Coral ever really my friend?
That was the thought scratching at Penelope as she roamed in search of the engine room. Or was it all a scheme of some sort? The girl had been so silent, and then so odd, then suddenly so friendly, then ruthless and immediately tearful, and now silent again, that Penelope didn’t know what to believe.
And where is this stupid engine room?
After a wrong turn at the oxygen generator, Penelope ended up down a flight of stairs, lost in the deserted bowels of the ship. It was a steamy, stifling underworld with metallic walls and grinding machinery.
Down a long silver passageway, Penelope saw an abnormally tall penguin. She had begun to distinguish one crewmember from another and recognized this one as Ernst Popper, the dour and hostile corpsman who had been so rough during her arrest. In his wing he grasped a hammer. At his side was what appeared to be a hacksaw. He was studying a thick pipe that ran the length of the corridor.
“Hello,” Penelope called. “Do you know where the engine room is?”
Startled, Popper locked eyes with Penelope. Something in his gaze stabbed her chest with anxiety. It was as though his whole face and body hardened, feathers and all, into something calloused and unreasonable. Then he shot her a curdled smile and swung the hammer into a pipe.
The clash of steel sent a tight pressurized spray of water shooting out. Then Popper pulled out the hacksaw.
“Stop!” Penelope screamed, but it was too late. Her tentative walk became a desperate sprint as she watched Popper dig the hacksaw into the pipe. The jet of water thickened.
Popper turned on his heels and scuttled into the shadows, forcing Penelope into a split-second decision. Rather than chase him, she put her hand over the gash in the metal to slow the water, which was now pooling up around her feet.
“Help!” she screamed. But her voice disappeared quickly into the noise. No one would be coming.
The
pressure beneath her hand built mightily until she had no choice. She pulled her hand off the pipe and cold water shot in all directions. Then she ran up the stairs in search of someone, anyone, who could help.
An hour later, Ernst Popper was dead and Penelope was shaking in a tiny chair in the yeoman’s quarters.
“It’s a tragedy, of course,” said Floyd, fighting back tears. “But it’s a good thing you stumbled upon him when you did. Our technicians repaired the pipe before permanent damage was done. We’re just lucky he didn’t cut into the hull. That would have been”—his face darkened—“problematic.”
“What was he doing down there?”
“I don’t know. Ernst Popper was a fine sailor, a strong and moral penguin. We’ve interviewed dozens of birds and none reported any strange behavior from him. He’d been on countless missions and never showed any signs of cracking. But it happens sometimes.”
Penelope thought of the stony look in Popper’s eyes. He had not looked crazy enough to sabotage the ship, then slit his own throat with a hacksaw; he’d looked controlled—even amused. A thought bubbled to the surface.
“What if it wasn’t Popper?”
“Multiple crewmembers identified his body.”
“No, I know. I mean, what if the one I saw in the passageway down there was someone else, pretending to be him?”
“Who would do that?”
“Makara Nyx.”
Floyd narrowed his eyes. “If Nyx wanted to sink this submarine, I can think of easier ways than disguising herself as an independent duty corpsman. Why not just rip a hole in the side of the ship from the outside?”
“Maybe she’s toying with us. Maybe she thinks it’s fun to turn us against each other. Maybe she wanted me to find her. And maybe,” Penelope said quietly, “she’s still on board somewhere.”
—
If Penelope’s theory was right, Makara Nyx had succeeded. When the shock and sadness over Popper’s death subsided and rumor got out that Nyx may have been disguising herself as a crewmember, penguin turned against penguin.
Tempers flared. Accusations mounted. Friends who had worked together for years began to suspect each other. A wingfight broke out between a sonar operator and an electrician, both of whom ended up with bloody beaks and a trip to the infirmary, where they continued to accuse each other. More than once, Penelope caught a penguin watching her closely, as if she were the sea monster. Or as if she had killed Ernst Popper.
While walking past the gym, Penelope saw Commander Beardbottom running on a tiny treadmill. Without breaking stride, he nodded at her in his regal way. “Miss March,” he boomed. Apart from a few ruffled feathers, he appeared as crisp and ramrod straight as ever.
“Commander Beardbottom.”
The old penguin looked around. “The officers have their own gym, but I like to work out here. Enlisted sailors are much more interesting.”
She smiled. “Sir, I have a proposal.”
“Proceed.”
“I want to talk to Coral Wanamaker.”
Beardbottom pushed a button to stop the treadmill. He grabbed a towel to wipe down his face and shook his feathers vigorously, as if to eliminate sweat, though his coat was waterproof. “What good do you imagine that would do?”
“None, probably. I just wonder if she might be able to help. And it’s the nice thing to do.”
Beardbottom put his wings behind his back. His tiny black eyes searched Penelope intensely. “If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that ninety-nine percent of hunches turn out to be wrong. But if you don’t take risks, you’ll never find the other one percent.”
—
“I’ll be right outside,” said Twickie LaRouche. “Just holler if you need help.”
“Thanks, Twickie,” said Penelope. She couldn’t imagine what kind of help might be necessary inside Coral’s cell, nor what kind of help little Twickie could provide.
Twickie puffed up his chest. “We need a code word in case you need help. How about…berserk? Wait. Cocoon. Cocoon? No, hold on. I’ve got it! Commando! Yeah, if you need help, just holler ‘Commando.’ ”
“How about I just say help?”
“Oh,” Twickie said, disappointed. “Yeah, that’s fine too.”
The tiny room, basically four concrete walls and a dusty bulb hanging from the ceiling, smelled like armpits. In one corner, hugging her knees to her chest, hands still cuffed, sat Coral. With hollow eyes, stringy hair, and hands caked with dried blood from all the nail-biting, the girl looked as if she was dying. Maybe she was. A tray sat beside her with a sad slice of white bread and a bowl of gray soup. “We give her one meal a day,” Twickie had said. “And she barely touches it.”
The lightbulb flickered off. For a moment, Penelope panicked at the darkness, but then it buzzed back on. She sat in the opposite corner from Coral, and the room was small enough that their feet almost touched.
She still hadn’t forgiven Coral, but the sight of her wasting away filled her with so many emotions that she didn’t know where to start. With questions? Accusations? Sympathy? Anger?
“I just wanted to say hey,” Penelope blurted out. “I thought you might be lonely.”
Coral gave no indication that she had even heard.
The two of them sat in a quiet so absolute that Penelope could hear the girl’s every shallow breath. She tried to read the thoughts in Coral’s head, which was now down between her knees. Nothing.
The bulb flickered off and on periodically. Nothing else changed. The longer they sat, the less Penelope knew how to draw out the huddled lump across from her.
How did I ever think I could get her to talk? I can’t even get myself to say anything.
After an hour of excruciating silence, Penelope had had enough. Her legs had gone numb and so had her brain. How did Coral manage to sit here, hour after hour? The girl’s stubbornness impressed Penelope to no end.
Penelope stood on wobbly legs. “I just thought you should know,” she murmured. “Your grandmother tried to kill me.”
For the briefest moment, Coral’s face flashed with an agonized frown. But it quickly disappeared behind her mask of defiance.
It wasn’t until Penelope knocked on the door for Twickie to let her out that she heard Coral’s weak rasp behind her.
“Don’t go.”
Stunned at the outburst that had split open the silence—and how quickly it had faded back into nothing—Penelope turned around. She found Coral trying to smirk, though it seemed to pain her to do so.
“This is the best conversation I’ve had in days,” Coral added. It took so much out of her that she closed her eyes in exhaustion. When her head dropped back between her knees, Penelope knew that was all she was going to get out of her.
—
As Penelope bunked down that night, she heard faint sniffles coming from the bunk above.
“You okay, Omar?”
“Just feeling kind of lonely,” Omar said. “I miss my girlfriend.”
“I miss my dad.”
“Wanna see a picture?”
“Sure.”
Omar hopped down with a worn photo of a penguin that looked exactly like every other penguin. “Her name is Teresa.”
“She’s beautiful,” Penelope said.
“Thanks. She’s a real pistol. And you know what? She loves me. I can’t figure out why, but she does.” He blew his beak in a hanky. “Hey, don’t tell the other guys I was crying, okay?”
“Of course not.”
“Does your father love you?”
“He does.”
Omar winked. “Even if you’re an evil sea monster?”
Penelope laughed. “Even if.”
“Well, then, as much as you miss him, I bet he misses you more. Dads are like that.”
Penelope thought of her father. What had he felt when he’d woken up on her bedroom floor and found his children gone?
“Hey,” Omar said, back to his old booming voice. “I heard you struck out with the creepy girl in sol
itary.”
“Boy. Word gets around fast.”
“Yep. If there’s one thing penguins like, it’s gossip.”
“Omar, I’m curious about something.” Penelope didn’t know how to word her question. “How did Buzzardstock make you real?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, you guys were an ice sculpture in his gallery, and then you came to life. What was it like being frozen all that time? How long were you there?”
Omar gave Penelope a weird look. “I don’t know what you mean. I was born off Hogan Ice Shelf, and I’ve been in the navy for seven years. Buzzardstock? He’s just a guy who lets us dock the sub in his house.”
“But…what about the bowling? The rhinoceroses?”
Omar bust a gut laughing. “I think someone’s eaten too many cookies. Also, I think it’s rhinoceri. Which reminds me.” He pointed to the box in the corner of Penelope’s bunk. “I tried one of your cookies last night.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Bored. Curious. Hungry.”
“Omar! You shouldn’t mess with those!”
“I know. Spent all night on the toilet. Never experienced anything like that before, nor do I wish to again.”
Omar ambled off, his claws clicking against the floor, and Penelope’s eyes shifted to the box in the corner. Before she realized she had even made a decision, her hands were reaching for the box.
Now she was floating higher than ever, up where the sun wrapped her face in a golden glow and the clouds felt like a breeze stacked with pillows and cotton as she passed through them.
The warm glimmer faded, and Penelope found herself somewhere dark and dusty that smelled of melted wax. From the corner came the weak squawk of a caged bird.
Wanamaker’s Fortune-Telling Emporium. She was back in Glacier Cove. There was Coral, looking slightly healthier but terrified as her grandmother pointed a long, sharp fingernail at her.
“It is time,” Stella said in a horrible voice. “Time to fulfill our destiny. The shadow prophesy, foretold ages ago, is upon us. Oh, have I waited for this day!” She grabbed Coral’s shaky hands. “The girl. She is the key to it all. She will lead us to the final piece. Only then will the waters boil black and only then can we join the Dark Wanderer in the forever. Do you understand what you must do?”
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