Kid vs. Squid

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “Sir,” I said, faking a reasonable tone, “we are Shoal’s friends, and she told us to come here because she said you were her family. We have the witch’s head with us, and she put the Flotsam curse on us. Whatever mess we’re in, we’re all in it together.”

  Fin took another taste of his soup and made a sour face. “It’s not even good cabbage. Concha, tell your guards to let the children go.”

  “But Fin—”

  “Do it.”

  Concha, the bike lady, gave a reluctant nod, and her guards released us. All the moving parts in my arms creaked and popped as I stretched them, trying to restore circulation.

  “Now,” Fin said, “I would like to have a look at the thing in your bag. Will you permit me?”

  Trudy nodded. She removed her backpack and very carefully set it down on the kitchen counter. Concha and her guards held their breaths, spears ready, looking more scared than angry as Fin gently pinched the zipper and opened the backpack, just enough to peer inside.

  “Well, by Poseidon’s eye socket, that’s her all right.”

  He rezipped the backpack and motioned for us to join him sitting a long kitchen table. Spread across the scarred wooden surface was a big sheet of butcher paper covered in dark ink markings: lines, curves, circles that might have been planets, and scribbles lined up like math problems. Fin dipped a pen in a small, squid-shaped pot of oily black ink and scratched out some notations.

  “What is all this?” Trudy asked, examining it with her nose a bare inch off the table.

  “This represents what has become my life’s work, done in service to my king: attempting to calculate Last Day, when the curse calls us back into the Drowning Sleep. It is dependent upon a convergence of high tide and deep ocean currents and planetary alignments. Every year I get closer to figuring it all out, but then Last Day arrives before I can solve it and we’re called back to sea, and no matter how cleverly I think I have hidden my chart, one of Skalla’s minions steals it while we’re adrift. Every summer I must begin anew, from scratch.”

  “I don’t understand why the curse works like this,” Trudy said, annoyed at her own lack of understanding. “If Skalla hates you so much, why not just drown you outright? Why keep you coming back here every summer?”

  “Ah, because she needs us, you see. We don’t know what for, but she has a plan for us, so the very same spell that condemns us also keeps us alive. The currents bring us to this beach that, in old days, was Skalla’s hideaway, her refuge and stronghold. We wash ashore here every summer, and the witch keeps us enslaved to the tourists, humiliated.”

  “But not after midnight,” I pointed out. “Here, right now, you’re not all zombified.”

  Fin steepled his fingers. “We are a strong people. Even as our hands squirt mustard on hot dogs, we fight. Years ago, with the help of our few land-dwelling allies, we almost won a victory. As the king’s sorcerer, I used my own small magic, and we gained this modicum of freedom—a place of our own to dwell in the longest hours of night, where we can plan, and calculate. Even if it is all for nothing in the end.”

  These land-dwelling allies Fin mentioned—he was talking about the Keepers. Like my uncle.

  “So when is Last Day?” Trudy asked.

  Fin smoothed out the butcher paper. “There is an unusually strong high tide due soon, the strongest of the century. It coincides with the full moon, an arctic storm, the approach of an undiscovered comet, the venting of an underwater volcano, the braiding of geomagical force lines.… It is very complicated. But I believe I know when.”

  “And ‘when’ is … ?”

  “Three weeks from today.”

  Trudy and I exchanged wide-eyed stares.

  “Three weeks?” I shouted. “We’ve only got three weeks before we’re all floating garbage?”

  “Oh, it is even worse than that,” Fin said. “Something even larger is happening this year. More than merely Flotsam being drawn to the drowning. I have been unable to put my finger on it, but I believe there is a disaster coming. I do not know its nature, nor its magnitude, but who is to say it won’t be of a proportion even greater than the storms that befell the last Atlantis?” He paused. “Are you sure you wouldn’t care for some soup?”

  Another Flotsam entered the kitchen. I thought I’d seen him selling churros on the boardwalk. “The king has returned,” he announced. “He demands the witch and prisoners be brought before him.”

  “They’re not prisoners,” Fin said. “They are guests and allies.”

  “Perhaps you would like to tell the king that,” the newcomer said.

  Fin thought about it. “You had better go up to have your audience,” he said to us in a conspiratorial whisper. “It won’t be so bad. If he puts you in the dungeon, I will bring you soup. If he does worse … well, let’s hold that thought in reserve for now.”

  The Atlanteans took Trudy and me up to a huge room on the second floor. I figured it had once been a dining hall. Fin followed us, carrying Trudy’s backpack. A chair of driftwood, adorned with pearls and spiky frills of coral, loomed at one end of the room. Leaning against a seat back made from a giant clamshell, the man sitting in the chair watched without expression as Trudy and I were brought before him. He wore a T-shirt with a faded crown on it and a tan raincoat thrown over his shoulders like a cape. With one hand, he stroked a long, braided beard fastened with a gold hoop—a napkin ring. His other hand gripped a trident spear. Back on the boardwalk, he’d told me that I was smelling the scent of the sea, and that I should buy popcorn. In this setting, he seemed very different.

  “I am Coriolis,” he said. “Welcome to my court.”

  He pulled his lips back in a smile like the last thing you’d see before a shark bites your face off.

  “We have sought Skalla the witch for many summers. We thought we had defeated her some years ago, in one of our many battles. I cast her off the fishing pier myself. It was not the first time. Her head rolls on the sea floor, through mud and muck, down in the trenches where the only light comes from glowing fish. This is where she learns her secrets. But she always returns here, like Flotsam in her own way. Of late her whereabouts have remained unknown to us. And now, here she is again. I would very much like to hear how you made her acquaintance. But first, I would know this: Where is my daughter?”

  For once I did the smart thing: I let Trudy do the talking. She told him everything, from Shoal stealing Skalla’s head, to the jellyfish boys and the monster fish, plus everything in between.

  “Shoal said we should come to you,” she concluded.

  Coriolis didn’t say anything for a long time. He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. He was like a big firecracker with a long, burning fuse that you regret having lit because no matter how far you run, you know it’s going to blast your fingers off.

  “Sire, they are lying,” Concha said. “They belong to the witch. You cannot believe Shoal would go off on her own to steal Skalla’s head. If she discovered its location, she would have told you, and you could have dispatched me and my guards to retrieve it. She would not have acted alone.”

  “You speak as though you’ve never met the king’s daughter,” Fin said. “That is precisely the kind of thing she would do. She is impetuous, foolhardy, and brave. Not unlike her friends. And if she thought the best way to take Skalla’s head was to steal her in the night, then it is a good thing she didn’t tell you first, because you and your guards are as stealthy as a walrus with a distressed stomach.”

  Concha opened her mouth to protest, but the king held his hand up and a thick silence settled over the chamber.

  “I would see the witch now.”

  Fin stepped forward. “Allow me, sire. I have a gentle touch.” He unzipped Trudy’s backpack and, as if he was handling a bomb, set the What-Is-It?? on a side table beside the king’s throne. After carefully unlatching the lid, he opened the box. The witch’s eyes were still closed and the duct tape Shoal had put over her mouth still in place.

  And t
hen her eyelids moved like the wings of a moth.

  “Let me kill her, sire,” Concha pleaded.

  “No. Ending her life could mean ending the curse. Or it could mean losing any chance of ever ending it. That is our dilemma. We have had opportunities to kill her in the past, but we cannot know the consequences. We cannot stab or smash or boil our troubles away.”

  Concha pounded her fist into her palm. “And what has our restraint earned us, sire? We remain enslaved, selling cotton candy to tourists. What of your daughter? If these mud walkers are telling the truth, then Skalla holds her captive in a prison fish. We must end the witch, my king. Now, while we have the opportunity.”

  Coriolis rose to his full height. He hadn’t looked that massive beside the popcorn cart. He glared down at the What-Is-It?? and said, “There will come a day when my hatred of this creature will surpass my sense of responsibility. I feel it coming, soon. Then, I will teach this witch the true meaning of suffering.” He closed the lid. “But that day is not now.”

  Sounds came from downstairs: a window breaking, heavy footfalls, and screaming. Someone called out, “Get the head!”

  Coriolis and Fin hurried down the stairs with a few Flotsam guards, leaving Concha and several of her men and women to watch the head.

  Trudy and I raced downstairs. Dozens of creatures swarmed the lower floor, shaped like men but with faces armored in hard, speckled brown shells. Instead of hands, they gripped clubs in giant lobster claws. An Atlantean swung his trident at one of the lobster men, who caught it in his pincers and snapped the shaft in two. They all wore I Los Huesos T-shirts.

  It didn’t take an expert in military history to see how the battle was going. There were only a couple dozen Atlanteans. There was a whole school of lobsters.

  In the center of the skirmish, Coriolis said something in Fin’s ear. Fin nodded and hurried upstairs, dodging several lobsters and bashing a few more.

  Coriolis turned to Trudy and me. “It falls on you now, friends of Atlantis. The witch’s servants will make more attempts to reclaim her. You must not let them. Foil her plans any way you can. More than just Atlantis rests in the balance. And… if you can help my daughter …”

  “We will,” I promised. And I meant it. We would.

  “Then remove Skalla from here. We shall fight to cover your escape. Now go,” he ordered. And he dove into the fray.

  Fin came running down the stairs with Trudy’s backpack. He thrust it at Trudy, and she ducked her arms under the straps.

  “Follow me!” Fin shouted, leading us back into the kitchen. He flung open the doors of a cupboard beneath the sink. “It’s a quick escape from the palace. Not safe, but safer. Do not forget what the king said. It all falls to you now.”

  “Why don’t you come with us?”

  Two lobster men burst into the kitchen, pincers snapping.

  Fin took a meat cleaver from the knife rack over the stove and faced the lobsters. “Obey the king!” he ordered us. “Go!”

  I took a last look at Fin grappling with the lobster men and followed Trudy into the dark.

  CHAPTER 11

  Banging my knees and elbows and head, I rattled down a metal chute in the dark until coming out an opening and dropping through empty air. I was grateful when something cushioned my landing.

  “Getoffameyoulummox!”

  That was Trudy.

  “Sorry,” I said, rolling off her and helping her up.

  Muffled sounds from the battle above echoed down the chute as Trudy moved her flashlight beam through the dark space. We were standing on the narrow concrete edge of an underground river. A strong current flowed down the channel.

  “I think this is a ride,” Trudy said. “Or at least it used to be.”

  We’d seen the ruins of roller coasters and tossaround-throw-up rides up above. This appeared to be the inevitable scary Tunnel of Love.

  Trudy pointed her flashlight above our heads. “Hey, are those … bats?”

  Trapped like flies inside sheets of cobwebs, bats the size of kites leered down at us with glow-in-the-dark eyes.

  “Fake bats,” I said. “But let’s get out of here in case I’m wrong.”

  We jogged along the water’s edge, and then, when the space narrowed, scraped along the wall until there wasn’t even enough room for that.

  “I guess we go swimming,” Trudy said.

  “My clothes still haven’t dried from the last time we went swimming. I haven’t been dry since my plane from Phoenix landed. My socks never stop squishing and my underwear chafes.”

  “Are you done complaining?”

  “I’m not complaining actually. I’m getting used to being soaked and salty.”

  “That could be the result of the Flotsam curse,” Trudy mused. “Some kind of psychological adjustment to the idea that we’re going to spend fall and winter and spring adrift on the seas.”

  “Okay, actually, I was complaining. I’d give anything for a change of pants.”

  A creak of wood and sloshing of water interrupted me before I could speak longingly of warm socks and underwear from the dryer. Trudy and I braced ourselves for the next new danger in the dark.

  A miniature pirate ship approached, the paint chipped but still gaudy where it remained. From a mast no higher than my head flew the skull and crossbones, carved out of wood.

  “It’s not a tunnel of love without a ship built for two,” I said, and since the boat was heading in the same direction we were—out, hopefully—we climbed aboard.

  This wasn’t my first time in a spooky tunnel of love—they always had one at the Arizona State Fair— but this was my first time riding one alone with a girl. Ordinarily it would have been weird, crammed so close beside each other, wondering if we were supposed to hold hands or do other stuff. But I felt comfortable with Trudy. We were at war, and there was nobody I’d have rather had in a foxhole with me. And, come to think of it, she smelled kind of good.

  Then she aimed her flashlight in my face and blew my eyeballs to smithereens.

  “Hello? Blindness? Ouch?”

  “Sorry,” she said, redirecting the light to the tunnel walls. The tunnel was lined with murals painted in the same style as those we’d seen up in the palace. There was a mix of scenes from Atlantis, with grand ceremonies and celebrations and heroic fishing expeditions, as well as scenes from the boardwalk. I recognized Coriolis at the popcorn stand. And I felt a pang of desire as we passed by a scene of the midway games and the ring toss, with stuffed animals hanging from racks like executed criminals.

  “Who painted these?”

  “The Flotsam, I bet,” Trudy said. “Probably trying to preserve their history. To tell their story.”

  There was writing on the walls, some of it undecipherable, some in English, laid out in segments so we could read it as our boat floated by. One section read:

  OF SHOAL’S MOTHER

  The queen of Atlantis perished with the sinking of the island-city and thus never suffered the Drowning Sleep. Our king, however, suffered both their shares. For in autumn and winter and spring, he enjoyed no life, cursed like the rest of his people to drift in slumber. And in summer, he suffered life without his beloved. His heart was a cold stone submerged in a cold sea.

  But one summer, he met a woman. Shirley, she was called. In the language of the land-dwellers, her name meant “bright meadow.” She came from the land of Detroit, but seeking escape from a colorless life spent toiling in offices, she was drawn to the endless possibilities of the broad, open sea. She found a job in Los Huesos, making doughnuts in a shop near the beach. At night she fried bear claws and crullers, but in her time off she would roam the boardwalk, up and down, not minding the smell of seaweed and fish. For here, on the edge of the land, she could look out over the ocean, beyond the limits of sight. She would imagine the wonders hidden unseen in the depths, and dream of mysteries and possibilities.

  One day, she met the king of Atlantis, who sold popcorn. He had never met a land-dweller who coul
d lift him from his cursed daze, who could make him forget the smell of butter-flavored oil and remember who he was. In her own way, Shirley possessed a kind of magic. They fell in love.

  At the end of summer, the king left Los Huesos, as all Flotsam must, and Shirley found herself alone, carrying a child within.

  Yet the king returned the next year and rejoiced upon being greeted by Shirley and their daughter, the new princess of Atlantis Lost.

  There were hopes for young Shoal. Since she was half land-dweller, half Atlantean, perhaps she would be spared Skalla’s curse. Perhaps this one, this last daughter of Atlantis, would break the evil cycle.

  But at summer’s end, when the tide dragged the Flotsam back into the unforgiving waters, not even the strength of a desperate mother could keep the infant Shoal from crawling into the waves for her first drowning. Shirley swam after her, but she swam so far she could not find her way back to land. And, unlike the Flotsam, when her body next touched shore, there was no life in it.

  “That’s so sad,” Trudy said.

  No, it was more than sad. It was tragic. The entire story of Atlantis was just one terrible tragedy. We read more narratives, battles won and battles lost (mostly lost), and memorials for the dead. We floated past portrait after portrait marked with birth and death dates. The Tunnel of Love was a tomb.

  The Flotsam themselves weren’t the only things from Atlantis that had washed up on the beaches. Wreckage that could only have come from the sunken city lined the channel. Fragments of pillars and columns. A headless statue of a muscular, fish-tailed sea god posed hurling a harpoon. A saddle that looked big enough to fit over the back of a killer whale. Everything was in bad shape, corroded and studded with barnacles but displayed with care on sawhorses and other makeshift platforms.

  “Atlantis must have been beautiful,” Trudy said.

  Judging by just the sad remains around us, I had to agree.

  “If you think Atlantis was something, you should see what’s coming next,” said someone in a deep croak.