by Philip Reeve
“But what about Prawl?” asked Skarper.
“And what about Prince Rhind, and his sister, and their nice old cook?” said Henwyn. “I wanted their quest to fail, but I did not want them all drowned!”
“What about my scratchbackler?’ growled Grumpling.
“If the fire did not catch hold too quick, there’s a hope they got off safe,” said Kestle. “We should be in the waters where they foundered by sunrise. We must keep a good look out for their boats.”
Dawn came, and the sides and rigging of the Sea Cucumber were lined with watchful goblins, but they saw no sign of any boats. All they saw was some flotsam riding the grey waves – charred spars trailing blackened snakes of rope; a few drifting timbers. One of the timbers came from a ship’s stern, and on the blistered paintwork a name was still visible. As they had thought, she had been the Swan of Govannon.
They had almost given up hope of finding anyone alive when Zeewa sighted a larger fragment, not far off. It was a floating portion of the forecastle, and it was bristling with people. The people seemed to be hopping or dancing around, and the sounds of shouting came faintly across the water.
“It is them!” said Henwyn.
“But what are they doing?” asked Skarper.
“Anchovies!” roared Gutgust.
“The sea people are attacking them, that’s what!” said Spurtle, who had borrowed Captain Kestle’s telescope.
He was right. A dozen or more of the people of the sea were riding their seahorses in rings around the wreckage, waving their swordfish blades and narwhal horns.
Prince Rhind had been very brave. When the Swan’s mainmast had collapsed in a flurry of sparks and the ship had begun to founder, he had wrapped himself in Breenge’s wet towel and gone racing down to the cabins. He had saved the Elvenhorn, his sword, and Breenge’s bow, and also his splendid armoured coat, which shone silvery bright in the dim morning light as he perched on the highest point of the floating forecastle, waving his blade at the people of the sea and shouting his war cry – the long, quavering, “Baaaa!” of the men of Tyr Davas, which had struck terror into the hearts of so many sheep rustlers down the years.
The sea people shouted back, but they dared not go close enough to test their swords against Prince Rhind’s. A few had tried, and Breenge had shot their seahorses from under them. Woon Gumpus had found a length of charred plank that he was waving like a club, and Ninnis whacked her wooden spoon on the webbed hands of the unseahorsed riders as they tried to grope their way aboard the wreckage.
What Rhind didn’t realize was that it was his armour which had attracted the sea people in the first place. They had been happily ransacking the wreck of the Swan way down on the sea floor, until the glimmer of those silver-bright scales caught their eye, glinting through the wave tops. How could they resist such shiny splendour? So they kept circling and circling, too scared of Breenge’s arrows and her brother’s sword to actually attack, but waiting for the moment when the forecastle finally sank and they could help themselves to that wonderful metal vest.
The goblins, watching the battle from the Sea Cucumber as it swung towards the wreckage, understood what was going on at once. They loved shiny things themselves, and many a war had been fought in the corridors of Clovenstone over mail shirts far less fabulous than Rhind’s.
“Take off your armour!” Skarper shouted, as Kestle steered the Cucumber nearer.
“What, so you goblins or your mermen friends can shoot me down?” Rhind shouted back.
“Oh, do be polite to them, Rhind,” Breenge told him. “We need them to rescue us!”
“We can’t shoot you!” Skarper yelled. “Goblins are rubbish shots and we haven’t got bows anyway.”
“I reckon I get him with a spear from here,” said Grumpling. “Why’s we got to rescue them anyway?”
“Because they are fellow mariners, in peril on the sea,” said Henwyn.
“And because if you got him with a spear he’d fall in the sea and sink like a stone in all that armour, and then how will you get your scratchbackler back?” said Skarper. “Look, there it is, a-dangling round Rhind’s neck.” He cupped his paws around his mouth and yelled at Rhind again, “Take off your coat of scales! That’s what the sea folk want! Let them take it, and save yourself!”
Reluctantly, Rhind took off his armour. He lifted it high above his head and threw it as far as he could from the wreckage. It hit the waves with a white splash and sank, and the sea people followed it down, shouting, “Mine! Mine!” and “I saw it first!” until the water swallowed up their voices.
Then Captain Kestle took the Sea Cucumber closer until it bumped against the wreckage, and the stranded Woolmarkers and Woon Gumpus scrambled aboard up ropes and ladders that the goblins dangled over her side.
They were a sorry sight, these shipwrecked woollen-folk, charred and sodden, dazed with weariness after their night adrift. At least Rhind had salvaged enough of his princely good manners to say, “Thank you for rescuing us, Henwyn of Clovenstone. Decent of you.”
Henwyn just said, “I think you have something that belongs to us?”
“Belongs ter me,” snarled Grumpling.
Rhind looked grim, but he took the baldric from around his neck and handed it to Henwyn with the Elvenhorn dangling.
“So is my quest to end here?” he asked.
“Too right it is,” said Grumpling. He snatched the horn and shoved it down the back of his armour for a good old scratch. “Ahh,” he said, “Nuffin’ sorts out them flea-bites like my own scratchbackler!”
“And where is Prawl?” asked Henwyn, looking at Rhind’s bedraggled followers. “I cannot see him among your number. Did he stay behind at Floonhaven?”
Rhind and his companions looked at one another. In all of the excitement, none of them had spared a moment’s thought for Prawl.
“I think he was aboard the ship,” said Breenge. “His cloak was aboard, anyway. It was kicking about on the deck. I noticed it, just before the fire started.”
“The poor gentleman must have gone down with the ship,” said Ninnis, wiping away a tear.
“I’m here!” said the white rabbit, which Breenge was still cuddling. “Oh, this is so humiliating!” But its little rabbity mouth could not form the words, so all that came out was a faint squeaking.
“Your rabbit?” asked Zeewa, reaching over to tickle it between its long ears.
“I found him aboard the Swan,” said Breenge. “He must have stowed away. I call him Fuzzy-Nose.”
“Oh good grief,” said the rabbit, but of course nobody understood it.
“He squeaks a lot, don’t he?” said Flegg.
“There’s good eating on a rabbit,” said Spurtle, and licked his lips.
“Oh, there is no need to eat Fuzzy-Nose,” said Henwyn, before they did something unfortunate. “There are much better things to eat in Etty’s tin cans. Probably. I’ll open a few, and cook up some breakfast.”
“And I’ll help you, my dearie,” said Ninnis, who was still all smiles and rosy cheeks despite her sufferings, and seemed to have overcome her sadness at the loss of Prawl.
“And we’ll turn back to the Westlands,” said Skarper, “and leave Elvensea where it lies.” But when he looked up at the sail he saw that it was hanging limply, and that the long red pennant that had fluttered out so proudly all the way from Floonhaven now dangled lifelessly. “The wind has deserted us,” he said.
“Then how come we’re still moving?” asked Zeewa.
It was true. The Sea Cucumber was still moving westward just as fast as she had when the wind was blowing her, and the white water still rippled and chuckled under her forefoot. In the west, directly above the Cucumber’s brow, a strange disc of clouds hung in the sky. They were the sort of clouds that might hang above a lonely island, but there was no island to be seen.
“This is
not natural,” said Kestle. “We must be caught in some current, but one I’ve never heard of. I shall consult my charts.”
“I shall assist you!” said Woon Gumpus, who had been feeling embarrassed about the loss of his ship and hoping that none of his passengers were going to ask him for a refund.
Kestle looked him up and down. “Very well. Glad to have another seafaring man aboard. These goblins are good lads, as goblins go, but t’aint the same as a crew of real sailors.”
“Oh no, indeed!” said Woon Gumpus, hurrying after him into the deckhouse where Kestle kept his charts. “And if it would help you to think, I could play you something soothing on my hurdy-gurdy…”
There was nothing much that mere landlubbers could do while those two men of the sea held their conference around the chart table. So Henwyn and Ninnis set about cooking a breakfast, and then everyone set about eating it, and all the while the Sea Cucumber kept ploughing westward, although there was still no breath of wind. And by the time breakfast was finished and the clatter of cutlery had died away, a new noise could be heard. It was a rushing, roaring sound, like a far-off wind, or the world grinding round upon its axis.
The sound stirred strange memories for Henwyn. That dream which had come to him while he was drowsing in the mantrap tree had faded as soon as he awoke, but now it came back to him.
“There is a hole in the sea!” he shouted, just as Kestle and Woon Gumpus emerged from the deckhouse to see what was causing the noise.
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Woon Gumpus. “There are no holes in the sea, my dear boy. It is not a piece of cheese. I expect you are thinking of the land – there are holes in that, in places.”
“He means a whirlpool,” said Kestle, tugging worriedly at his whiskers. “Look yonder!”
They looked. Ahead of them, beneath that strange swirl of cloud, a dark patch had appeared upon the ocean. As the Sea Cucumber surged towards it, the watchers on her deck could see that it was a deep hollow in the surface of the sea.
“There is a hole!” said Skarper.
The wreckage of the Swan of Govannon, which was far lighter than the Cucumber, was drawn ahead of her, and vanished over the edge.
“A whirlypool!” wailed Spurtle.
“All the waters of the world are draining away down it!” gasped Henwyn.
“And we shall be taken with it,” said Breenge, “like bathwater twirling down a plughole.”
The goblins knew little of baths or plugholes, but they could all see the danger. When Kestle bellowed, “To the boat! Start rowing!” they jumped to obey him, and for once not even Grumpling grumbled. They threw the Sea Cucumber’s boat overboard, Skarper attached the rope which Kestle threw them to her stern, and they started rowing with all their goblinny strength, trying desperately to drag the ship away from the brink of that terrible hole.
But it was useless. They pulled on the oars with all their might, but the whirlpool pulled harder. Soon the passengers on the Sea Cucumber’s prow could look down into its depths. There, far below, ringed by the whirling walls of water, weed-draped turrets jutted from a pother of foam.
“Drowned Elvensea!” cried Prince Rhind, over the water’s roar. “It is there! It is real!”
“And drowned is what we’ll be too, if this whirlypool drags us down there,” said Henwyn.
Just then, he felt someone tug at his belt. He looked round. Prince Rhind’s cook, Ninnis, was staring up at him, and her usually jolly face was hard and grim. “If you would live, Henwyn of Clovenstone,” she said, “if you would save your friends, you must sound the Elvenhorn.”
“Eh?” said Henwyn, who had forgotten about the Elvenhorn in all the excitement. The last time he saw it, Grumpling had been scratching his back with it.
“One blast to part the waters, one to raise the drownéd land,” said Ninnis, in a chanting way. “And one to wake the sleeper there,” she added in an undertone.
“Eh?” Henwyn wasn’t really listening. “Fentongoose said that to sound the horn may bring dire peril,” he said doubtfully.
“What peril could be more dire than this?” urged Ninnis. “Did your goblins and that pretty Muskish girl follow you all these long leagues just to be smashed and smothered in the sea?”
She had a point, thought Henwyn. The Sea Cucumber was teetering on the very rim of the whirlpool now. The boat full of goblins which was supposed to be towing her had been dragged over already, and swung there on the taut towrope while the goblins clung to it and the fierce waters spilled over them.
Henwyn leaned over the Sea Cucumber’s side, shouting down, “Goblins! Are you all right?”
“No!” said Grumpling.
“Bumcakes!” said Skarper.
“I’m being sick EVERYWHERE!” said Spurtle.
“Skarper!” Henwyn hollered. “Sound the Elvenhorn! It’s our only hope!”
Skarper heard him. He let go of his oar and let the whirlpool take it. He scrambled through the foam-filled boat to the thwart where Grumpling sat, and snatched the Elvenhorn from around Grumpling’s neck. Before Grumpling had a chance to say, “Oi!”, he put the horn to his lips, and blew.
The sound was louder than it had been when Prince Rhind blew it, back on the hills in front of Clovenstone. It was a full, rich, throaty sound, not at all kazoo-like any more, as if being brought so close to Elvensea had given it more strength somehow – or maybe it was just that the sea had washed some of the dust and earwigs and Grumpling’s skin-scrapings out of it. At any rate, its note rang high and clear above the thunder of the circling waters…
And the waters heard. The mad, rushing movement of the doomed ship slowed. The steep sides of the whirlpool shallowed. The goblins in the boat and the humans on the ship peered down and saw that Elvensea was drowned again, and that the hole in the ocean was healing. Within a few moments the ship was on an even keel again, and the goblins were sloshing water out of their swamped but floating boat. The waves were still confused and choppy, but the whirlpool was gone.
“The Elvenhorn does not work!” said Rhind. “The second blast is supposed to raise Elvensea, not sink it again!”
“It must be broken,” agreed Zeewa.
“Maybe Skarper didn’t blow it properly,” said Breenge.
“I blew it brilliantly!” said Skarper, scrambling back aboard with the other soggy goblins as their boat came bumping against the Cucumber’s side. “I got rid of that whirlypond thing, didn’t I?” He was rather pleased with the way things had gone, and thought the humans ought to show a bit more gratitude.
“Gimme my scratchbackler back,” snarled Grumpling, grabbing at the Elvenhorn.
“Wait!” said Ninnis.
Since when had a simple cook had such a commanding voice? They all fell silent. Even Grumpling stopped, one paw outstretched to take the Elvenhorn.
Into the silence that the healing of the whirlpool had left there crept a new sound. A rumbling of a different sort. A sound that you felt in the soles of your feet as it came trembling through the old ship’s timbers. It was the sound of the earth flexing its muscles, of vast masses of rock shifting like sleepy animals, deep beneath the sea. It was the sound of magic.
Around the Sea Cucumber the water was growing paler. From deep blue-grey to light it turned, filling with foam as swarms of bubbles came wobbling up from below. The clouds above thickened and spun, sparking with lightning.
“Land ho!” shouted Woon Gumpus suddenly, pointing off to starboard.
“Land!” cried Breenge, pointing in another direction.
“Land! Land!” the goblins yelled.
All around the ship, like breaching whales, the tops of towers were rising from the waves. The white sea gushed from their gutterings and windows as they rose; gargoyles spewed long arcs of foam. Up, up went the towers, with the rumble of their rising so loud now that everyone aboard the Cucumber clapped their hands
over their ears to block it out.
The ship lurched.
“The ship’s run aground!” shouted Rhind.
“The ground’s run a-ship!” shouted Skarper.
The deck tilted steeply as the ship lay down on her side and the water drained away around her, leaving her marooned in a cleft between two towers.
And still the land kept rising, and Skarper, clinging to the Sea Cucumber’s rigging, started to see how the towers and rooftops which he had seen peeking up at him from the depths of the whirlpool formed only the topmost tip of Elvensea. It was a tall, thin island, shaped like a witch’s hat, and on every inch of it the elves of old had built their towers and streets and palaces, their delicate arbours and walled gardens and pillared halls.
Taller and taller it grew, until, at last, quays and harbours emerged from the surf which frothed around its sides. Only then did the upheaval end. The mountain of ruins stood steaming in the sunlight that shafted down through the thinning clouds. Torrents of water fled foaming down its streets and stairways, back into the sea. Stranded silver fish flip-flopped on pavements which had not seen daylight for a thousand years. And the Sea Cucumber lay wedged five hundred feet above the waves, her empty boat swinging on its towline like a clinker-built pendulum, while her passengers gazed about in disbelief.
“It is as high as Clovenstone Keep!” said Skarper.
“Clovenstone was just a copy of Elvensea,” said Breenge. “Ninnis told me once. She said the Lych Lord and his fellow sorcerers envied the elves, and set out to create something that would rival Elvensea. And when they failed, in angry jealousy, they sank Elvensea so that no one could see how poorly Clovenstone compared.”
“That’s not what Fentongoose said,” said Skarper.
“If we want to know the truth about this place,” said Henwyn, “I think Mistress Ninnis is the person to ask.”
“Ninnis?” scoffed Rhind. “My cook? What would a cook know about anything? Well, except cookery, of course. She does a lovely rhubarb crumble.”