by P. G. Bell
“I don’t think I’m quite as good at this job as you think I am,” she said. Outside the portholes, towering clusters of bright pink coral were rising into view, teeming with clouds of tropical fish. It was very beautiful, but she was too nervous to enjoy it. “Couldn’t you do it? You seem to be the expert.”
“Gosh.” Wilmot seemed flustered all of a sudden. “I’m not sure I’d really call myself an expert.” His shy grin suggested he was very happy that she had called him one, however. “I passed all my theory tests, but there’s still so much of the job I haven’t done for real yet.”
“Why not?” she asked. “How long have you been doing it?”
“Just over a year now. Ever since I dropped out of school.”
“You were in school?” This surprised her. “How old are you?”
“A hundred and fifty.”
“How old?”
“I know,” he said, blushing. “I’m the youngest troll ever to hold the job. Normally, I’d have spent a few decades in the Postal Academy, started as a junior postie, and then worked my way up, but the Impossible Postal Express has been understaffed for years, and when Dad died I was the only one who could take his place.” He blushed even harder. “The Impossible Postal Express has been a hobby of mine since I was in diapers, you see. I’d studied all the postal routes, the delivery prices, the rules and regulations. It’s a great privilege to be here.”
This confession only served to renew the sense of guilt gnawing at Suzy’s insides.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” she said. “I had no idea.”
Wilmot smiled, though there was sadness in his eyes. “He died with his boots on,” he said. “That’s all any troll can ask.”
Suzy wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but she was preoccupied with another question. “So how long do trolls live? Most humans are lucky to live to a hundred.”
“Really?” Wilmot looked horrified. “How do you get the time to do anything?”
“We keep busy,” she said.
“No wonder,” said Wilmot. “Most trolls can expect to live to at least a thousand, although I know lots who are older.”
“Like Fletch,” she said. “He told me he was a thousand and ten.”
“And still two centuries from retirement,” Wilmot sighed. “As he keeps reminding everyone.”
Suzy shut her eyes and made some rough calculations in her head. “I think,” she said, opening one eye again, “that one human year must be about the same as twelve troll years. Roughly.”
“How old does that make you in troll terms, then?” said Wilmot.
Another quick calculation. “One hundred and thirty-two,” she said, and laughed. “It was my birthday last month. My cake should have had more candles.”
“And how young am I in human years?”
“Twelve and a half,” she said.
They both laughed and, for a moment, Suzy’s fear of the Lady Crepuscula felt very small and far away.
“I might not have all the experience I need yet,” said Wilmot, “but this pickup is a part of the job I have done before. So trust me when I tell you you’ll be fine. Besides, I’ll be here to help.”
He skipped to the strange machine at the opposite end of the carriage and flipped a few switches on the control panel. The machine wheezed to life, its flywheel turning, spewing a cloud of dust into the air. “This will keep you breathing,” he said between bouts of coughing.
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Absolutely. This is troll engineering. Guaranteed to last a century, or your money back.”
“And how long have you been using it?” To Suzy’s alarm, bits of the machine seemed to have been repaired with the same tape as the space suit.
“Don’t worry about that now,” he said, a little too quickly for her liking. “You’d better get dressed. The quicker you get out there, the quicker you’ll be back. We’re still behind schedule, remember.” He took a seat at the controls and began fiddling with the machine.
Suzy looked at the suit again. There were no obvious tears, although she wasn’t sure just how waterproof the stitching between the various sections of fabric would be. Still, it wouldn’t matter as long as the air pressure inside the suit was strong enough to keep the water out.
Pressure is measured in units called atmospheres, she told herself. Pressure at the surface is one atmosphere. Every ten meters of depth increases the pressure by one more atmosphere. A glance out the nearest porthole suggested they were about twenty meters down. So, two extra atmospheres. Three atmospheres in total. She still had no idea whether the suit would hold the water out, but the calculation had made her a little calmer, at least.
She shrugged off her bathrobe and climbed into the suit. The boots were so heavy she had trouble lifting her feet, but she suspected that would be less of a problem once she was in the water. The suit was tight, as Wilmot had predicted, but the arms and legs had sections of concertina’d fabric sewn into them, so they stretched to fit.
“Don’t just leave me here!” Frederick’s voice was muffled by the fabric of her bathrobe, but it was loud enough to prompt Wilmot to look around.
“What was that?” he said.
“It was me,” said Suzy in a voice that she was sure was too loud, and too false. “I was just … talking to myself.”
“My mom always says that’s the first sign of going mad,” he replied. “Of course, the last sign is painting yourself orange and sticking carrots up your nose.” He looked worried. “You’re not about to do that, are you?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, trying to smile. “We’ve only got bananas on board.”
The H. E. C. gave a final shudder as it came to rest on the sea floor.
“Right.” He grinned. “Are you ready?”
“Almost.” She turned her back on him and knelt down, pretending to fiddle with the helmet. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her bathrobe and drew out the snow globe. “Be quiet,” she whispered, raising it to her lips. Then she reached into the helmet and pushed the snow globe into the nose sock, which dangled down in front of her like an elephant’s trunk once she had pulled the helmet into place.
“Let me do you up,” said Wilmot. It was dark and echoey inside, and the sound of him fastening the clasps that sealed the helmet was deafening. Suzy had never suffered from claustrophobia before, but as the seconds dragged on, she started to sweat with nerves. How would she cope outside, under the water, if she couldn’t even handle this?
This thought was interrupted when Wilmot gave the helmet a tap and, holding his hand up in front of the eyeholes, gave her a thumbs-up. “This way.”
He guided her to the large hatch in the wall, spinning the big brass wheel that unlocked it and pulling it open to reveal an air lock—a space the size of a cupboard, with an identical hatch on the opposite side. Suzy hesitated, suddenly hating the idea of being sealed inside that tiny space.
“You’ll have to attach your air hose once you’re outside,” Wilmot shouted, bringing his mouth up as close to the helmet as he could. “It’s the bright red valve to your right.”
Suzy forced herself to focus on his instructions. If she had a clear objective, it might help keep her rising fear at bay. “Okay,” she called back, and winced as her voice bounced around inside the helmet. “Where do I go after that?”
“It’ll be straight in front of you,” he shouted. “Oh, and you’ll need to deliver this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a green glass bottle.
“I thought I was picking something up, not delivering,” she called, taking the bottle and holding it up to the eyeholes. An old-fashioned label on the front bore a picture of the moon and the title SEA OF TRANQUILITY—FINEST DARK RUM. The neck was sealed with black wax, although the bottle seemed to be empty. She gave it an experimental shake, and something light and feathery rattled around inside it. She did her best to see what it was, but the glass of the bottle was too thick and dark to see through properly. She fumbled it into
a large leather pocket attached to the front of the suit.
“You are, technically,” said Wilmot. “But there won’t actually be anything for you to pick up. Well, there will be, but you won’t be able to pick it up, if you see what I mean.”
“No,” said Suzy, “I don’t.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll all make sense once you meet the captain. Are you ready?”
“I think so. Who’s the captain?”
“He’s a nice man, really,” said the Postmaster. “Once you get past all the, y’know.” And here he pulled a face, sticking his tongue out, rolling his eyes, and waving his hands around his face. “Best of luck!”
Before she could protest, he swung the air-lock door shut with a crash.
* * *
“What was he talking about?” Frederick asked from the depths of the nose sock.
“I have no idea,” she said. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”
A moment later, the air lock began to flood with water. It came gushing in through a grate in the floor, rising rapidly, and was around Suzy’s knees in just a few seconds.
“What’s that noise?” Frederick cried. “I can’t see anything in here. Why didn’t you put me somewhere I can see?”
“Because I had to hide you,” she said.
“That sounds like water. Are we going to drown? We’re going to drown, aren’t we!”
“Sshhh,” said Suzy. “Calm down. This is an air lock. It has to fill with water before we can open the outside door. Otherwise the sea would rush in all at once and squash us.”
“Oh,” he said. “If you say so.”
“I do say so,” said Suzy, although she had to stop herself from holding her breath as the water reached the helmet’s goggles. “It’s all about equalizing the pressure, so it’s the same in here as out there. It’s physics.”
“Physics.” He tested the word. “Is that a bit like fuzzics?”
“No,” she said, gritting her teeth in annoyance. “Physics always makes sense.”
The water reached the ceiling of the chamber, and she unlocked the outer hatch.
Her boots sent up puffs of fine white sand as she stepped outside. Towers of neon coral rose all around her, and clouds of fish glimmered and darted between them. The surface rolled like a broken mirror far above them, letting through fractured spears of sunlight.
“It’s wonderful,” she breathed.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” grumbled Frederick. “Aren’t you supposed to do something with that pipe on your head?”
“Oh yes!” Suzy had forgotten all about Wilmot’s instructions to attach her air hose. Without it, she only had the air already in the suit to keep her breathing, and she doubted that would last more than a minute or two.
She looked around and saw the bright red circular nozzle protruding from the side of the carriage next to the air lock. She reached up and, a little clumsily, took hold of the trailing hose and fed it through her hands until she found the brass screw fitting at the end. Her thick gloves made it difficult to attach the one to the other, and she was short of breath before the hose finally clicked into place and she was able to screw it tight to the nozzle. A thin whistle of air filled the helmet, and she felt its cool touch on her face and neck. She heaved a deep sigh of relief.
“That was close,” said Frederick. “You’re looking after royalty now, remember. You should be more careful.”
“Thanks, Your Highness,” said Suzy. “I’ll take extra care not to drown.”
“Good idea.”
Suzy paused to wonder whether sarcasm simply didn’t exist in the Impossible Places, before remembering she had a job to do and that, as beautiful as this place was, she would feel much safer once she was looking at it from inside the carriage again. She looked around until she saw a large, jagged shape sticking up from among the coral a short distance away.
“That looks like a shipwreck,” she said. “Do you think that’s where we’re supposed to go?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Frederick. “You’re the postie.”
Suzy chewed a stray length of hair that had fallen across her face. “I can’t see anything else around here,” she said. “Maybe we’re going to meet a mermaid.” She gave a weak laugh and started toward the wreck, being careful not to tread on any of the coral. “Could we actually meet a mermaid?” she asked. “I mean, do they exist here?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “Mermaids, mermen, merbeasts, weresharks, weresquid, flying squid, land squid, giant eels, electric eels, nuclear eels … They all exist somewhere in the Union.”
Suzy shivered, and wished she hadn’t asked. Some of those creatures sounded decidedly unpleasant, and although the reef looked tranquil, she tried to keep an eye on the darker crevices within the coral.
“So, Your Highness,” she said, looking for a distraction, “how does a prince end up stuck inside a snow globe? And how does the snow globe end up getting mailed to an evil witch?”
“It’s a long story,” said Frederick.
“So I guessed,” she said. “I’m all ears.”
He sighed again. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m next in line for the throne. That means I’m going to be king one day, and that’s kind of a big deal.”
“It sounds like it,” said Suzy.
“And not to boast or anything, but the people of the Western Fenlands can’t wait until I’m in charge. I’m just really, really popular there.”
“Naturally,” said Suzy flatly. “So what happened?”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I overheard something I wasn’t supposed to,” said Frederick. “A plot to overthrow the kingdom.”
“Wow,” said Suzy, genuinely shocked. “That’s pretty serious.”
“I know,” he said, sounding morose. “When I tried to raise the alarm, a remote spell came out of nowhere and I found myself stuck in this stupid ornament.”
“Crepuscula’s curse!” gasped Suzy. “So she’s behind the plot?”
“D’you know what the worst thing is?” said Frederick. “As soon as I’d been cursed, my bodyguards—the two people I trusted most in all the Union—packaged me up and put me in the mail to the Obsidian Tower. They’d been working with Crepuscula all along.” His voice wavered, and Suzy felt a rush of sadness for the boy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s terrible.”
“It is,” he agreed. “I mean, a novelty frog! She didn’t even turn me into something classy, like a candlestick or a clock.”
Suzy plodded on toward the wreck. It was certainly a troubling story, and it had raised the specter of Crepuscula again in her mind. If Frederick knew the old woman was behind the plot, surely she would do anything to silence him? The shadows beneath the coral seemed a shade darker than they had a moment ago, and she tried not to look at them too closely.
But there was something else as well. She could feel that little itch in her brain again; something didn’t quite add up.
“Hang on,” she said, coming to a sudden stop. “When you asked me to rescue you, you said the fate of all the Impossible Places depended on it.”
“Did I?” Frederick’s tone of surprise didn’t quite ring true. “Are you sure I didn’t say the fate of an Impossible Place depended on it?”
“I’m positive,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I helped you.”
“You were under a lot of stress,” he said. “Perhaps your memory’s just playing tricks on you.”
My memory’s perfect, Suzy thought. Which means you were either lying then, or you’re lying now. She almost gave voice to the thought, but instinct told her to keep it to herself for a while longer. Maybe Frederick had just been exaggerating his importance to make sure she saved him from the tower. But now that she had, why not just admit to it? The itch refused to fade—she had a puzzle to solve. She didn’t have all the pieces yet, but she knew Frederick would clam up if she pushed him too hard. She’d have to wait, and
hope he gave something away accidentally.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said with studied patience. “Come on. I want to see what’s in that wreck.”
10
A WATERY GRAVE
“I wonder when I’ll get a nice, straightforward job,” said Suzy. “Like sticking a letter through a mail slot.” They had reached the wreck, and now stood outside a ragged hole in the side of its barnacle-encrusted hull. It must have been a magnificent ship once—a large, oceangoing vessel with three huge masts, now all broken. The nameplate on the prow was still just barely discernible—LA ROUQUINE.
The hole in the hull was big enough for a man to walk through without bending over, but only darkness was visible inside. Suzy lingered on the threshold, wishing she had a flashlight.
“What are you waiting for?” said Frederick. “They’re expecting us, aren’t they?”
“If only we knew what we should be expecting,” she said. “Oh well, here goes.” She cleared her throat and shouted as loud as she could. “Hello? Is anyone there? I’m here to pick up the mail.”
“Ouch,” winced Frederick. “I think I’ve gone deaf in one ear.”
“You don’t have ears, Your Highness,” she said. “Now, shush.”
They both listened, but no reply came from inside the wreck.
“What now?” he asked.
“Only one thing to do, I suppose,” she said, and swallowing her fear, she stepped through the hole into the shadows.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he whispered.
“No,” she said. And now that she was there, peering through the small lenses of the helmet into total darkness, she really wasn’t sure at all. There could be anything in there with her. Sharks, eels, nuclear squid. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but this wasn’t the sort of darkness your eyes could get used to. This was proper, total blackness, with not a wink of light to see by.
Until a faint blue-white glow faded into being somewhere in the depths of the ship’s ruined interior. It was very slight, and she wasn’t even sure she was seeing it at first, but it gradually grew in size and strength until it illuminated the vague shapes of old barrels and chests, an overturned table, a rusted cannon … and a few white objects scattered about in the sand that covered the floor.