Deeplight

by Frances Hardinge

  “Do you think people ever believed it when they said that?” asked Hark on impulse. “I know they believed in her . . . but the lace-making?” His mind flitted to other islands’ orphaned sayings. “What about ‘Gathergeist’s Washboard’? It’s just a scummy old sand flat, with oystercatchers paddling about on it. Did the Siren folks really think Gathergeist crept up onto it at night, with its laundry—”

  “Why do you care?” asked Jelt, in a tone that suggested that he didn’t and that Hark shouldn’t, either. This was a cue for Hark to stop talking. Yet there was a contrary part of him that always wanted to share his thoughts with Jelt.

  “I don’t think they did believe it. Gods making lace? Washing socks?” Hark narrowed his eyes. “I think . . . it was like a game of make-believe. They could pretend for a moment that the gods were just big, scary neighbors, with their own chores. Something they could understand. Something that might understand them.”

  Of course the gods hadn’t been doing anything homely or domestic. But then, what had they been doing, all those centuries in the lightless cold of the Undersea? How had they passed their days? Had they even noticed the days at all, or had they lived in an eternal night? Had they thought, planned, dreamed, or talked? Or had they lived like sharks, swift and sinuous nightmares swimming in eternal search for food? It was a dark, cold thought, and as Hark stared down into it he could see no bottom.

  An icy scoop of water splashed him in the face, shocking him out of his thoughts. Jelt watched Hark with a grin, the paddle used for the splash still in his hands.

  “Back to reality, are you?” he asked. “I saw you drifting away.” He shook his head. “I knew I’d been gone too long. Whenever I leave you to yourself, you get like this. All these weird ideas push up in your head like weeds. Takes ages to pull ’em up so that you start making sense again.”

  For some reason, his words chilled Hark more than the shock of the water. The day no longer seemed so bright.

  They’re not weeds, Jelt. They’re thoughts. And they’re mine.

  Was it always this way? Did Hark start to get ideas of his own when Jelt was away, ideas that Jelt took pains to kill as soon as he got back?

  As they took up their paddles again, Hark tried to smother an uneasy nagging resentment of Jelt. You’re not allowed to go places he can’t go, said a small voice in his head. You’re not allowed to have things he can’t have. You’re not even allowed to think things he can’t think.

  Ahead, Hark could see the long line of the Entreaty Barrier’s towers of brick and metal jutting out of the water. From this angle, you could see how irregularly they were spaced and how unequal their heights were, some raised up on little islands, some emerging from the water itself. There would be others that were now completely underwater, waiting to rake the bellies out of passing boats or submarines. Between them ran a faint ribbon of white foam, where the waves broke on the great, submerged chain from which the net was suspended.

  On the far side of the net was the Embrace.

  To the untrained eye, it simply looked like open sea. A Myridden like Hark, however, could recognize the danger signs—the dark, dull color of the water and the strange, coiling wisps of high cloud that spiraled instead of obeying the wind. In the distance, a glittering shoal of flying fish cleared the surface for a quick skim. They might be avoiding a predator, but they were more likely escaping some treacherous whim of the sea itself. These waters were not merely deep. The Undersea was unusually high here, and so the ordinary sea above it could not be trusted.

  “Head for those!” called out Jelt, and nodded toward two of the Entreaty Barrier towers that rose close to each other on nearby islands, as if conspiring. They were separated from their other neighbors by a sizeable gap on either side.

  “We’re going to the Strides?” Hark asked, surprised. “Nobody dives there!”

  There were good reasons for this. A great iron bridge had once crossed the gap between the Strides, and its wreckage now lurked perilously underwater. Metal railings and broken spires poked viciously out of the submerged rubble, waiting to rend flesh or puncture diving bells. The currents and eddies around the Strides were notoriously unpredictable, too.

  “That’s why it’s perfect,” Jelt answered with maddening calm. “Nobody will see the bathysphere, and you won’t be spotted running around without your leash.” His argument had a twisted logic.

  “But there’s no crane!” protested Hark. The larger island’s crane had been torn from its roots during the Cataclysm and left sprawled across its island.

  “You’ll see,” was all Jelt would say.

  After some vigorous paddling, they brought the skiff up against the larger of the two islands, a helmet-shaped pinnacle of red rock about fifty feet across. Jelt scrambled out of the boat and up the uneven, rocky slope. Hark followed, his wet feet slithering on the smooth rock. When they reached the top, Hark stared around, seeing no sign of the island’s mangled crane.

  “This way!” said Jelt. He strode toward the end of the island that was closest to its neighbor. Hark joined him and peered down what looked like a sheer cliff face. The sea sluiced hungrily between the islands, chewing at the red rock. As each fierce wave receded, little plumes of red silt flourished in the water.

  Fixed in the rock above the ledge was a rusted iron ring, with a weather-bleached rope attached.

  “Trust me, you’ll like this.” Jelt took the rope in both hands, then started to climb down the cliff face, finding toeholds in the slippery rock. He edged down until he was almost out of Hark’s view. Then he kicked away hard, let the rope slide a few feet through his hands, swung back and . . . vanished into the cliff.

  There was a muffled but echoing slap! below, like wet feet hitting rock. There had to be a hidden hollow in the cliff down below.

  “Your turn!” Jelt’s voice was faint and echoing.

  The old rope was frayed and bristling, but Hark’s palms were tough, and he lost no skin as he let himself down. His toes were deft, his feet and ankles strong from climbing. He edged his way down the cliff, with the old feeling that if Jelt trusted him, he could trust himself.

  I’m bigger when I’m around Jelt, sang the little voice in Hark’s head. I’m better. I do things I’d never even try if I was by myself.

  He kicked off, let the rope slide a little, tightened his grip again and swooped into the darkness of an overhang, releasing the rope as he landed in a crouch.

  Jelt barely gave him a glance.

  “Took your time. Come and look at this!”

  Hark blinked, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He realized that the overhang was actually a large cavern, its size hard to guess from the outside. Behind Jelt, taking up half the space, was an ungainly metal structure, as if a giant iron spider had tucked itself into a crevice.

  Hark’s eyes were drawn at once to the large, dark orb that rested on the rocky floor next to the contraption. The reflected sea light undulated slightly on its tarnished, green-brown surface.

  He walked slowly forward and laid his hand on the side of the bathysphere.

  It was smaller than he had expected, narrower than he was tall. The round door-hatch in the front was barely a foot and a half wide, the little windows only six inches across. It was blotted and blackened by the elements and studded with limpets.

  Its surface felt strange under his hand. It wasn’t exactly warm, but it wasn’t as deathly cold as metal would have been. There was a strange, waxy smoothness that caused the hairs to rise on his neck. He had felt the same tingle touching the great carapaces in the museum.

  Hark pushed very gently, wobbling the sphere with unexpected ease. Quest was right. The bathysphere was surprisingly light.

  “There’s so much godware in this,” he whispered, and smiled in spite of himself.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jelt grinned. “And look at that!” He pointed out at the surging water between the two islands. “Perfect for a trial run. The water’s deep, but not as deep as on that
side.” He nodded toward the Embrace. “There’s a gap in the net here, too, so we won’t have that banging into us, either.”

  “Where did the crane come from?” asked Hark. Obviously Jelt hadn’t thrown it together in the last two days.

  “Some salvage divers grabbed what was left of the old crane and put it together down here a couple of years ago, so they could drop diving bells. I went drinking with one of them once. He said there were some real treasures down there—lots of things washed up from the deeps and the Undersea.”

  “So why aren’t they here, then?” asked Hark.

  “They gave up. The swell was too strong, too many spikes . . . the bells couldn’t cope. But we’ll be fine in this.” Jelt knocked on the sphere’s surface, and it gonged huskily under his knuckles.

  “Let’s have a look at the machine,” Hark said, trying to cover his confusion. He had intended to show Jelt how dangerous and unworkable his plan was, but now he was looking at a shallower descent than expected and a crane that had apparently been used within the last two years. The prospect still filled him with dread, but the ground for his argument had suddenly been hacked from under him.

  He stared at the mechanism. It took a little while for him to disentangle it in his mind and understand what he was seeing. There was the thick crane mast, of the sort Quest had talked about, fixed to the cave’s floor and ceiling with big daubs of cement. From it stuck two sturdy metal arms, one dangling the sphere, the other suspending a tough, metal-mesh net filled with rocks. A counterweight, Hark realized. And to lower the sphere, you had to wind that chain around that reel, which you could do by turning that wheel . . .

  “Well?” demanded Jelt.

  “I can’t see any parts missing or broken,” said Hark reluctantly at last. “But I don’t know for sure how it’s meant to look. It’s all really old, Jelt.”

  “It’s fine,” snapped Jelt. “You can see it’s fine! Look, we’re in a hurry, remember? We need to get you down there and up again before the wind rises, don’t we?”

  Hark’s heart sank. Since their last conversation, Jelt’s suggestion that Hark be the one to descend had solidified into an assumption.

  “Jelt—”

  “We agreed, didn’t we? You’re lighter than me. I’m stronger. You just talk me through these wheels and everything, and it’ll be fine.”

  Cornered by Jelt’s logic, Hark tried to explain the mechanism for slowing the chain’s passage through the crane, so the sphere wouldn’t descend too fast. Jelt nodded impatiently, then repeated it wrongly. He got more annoyed every time Hark tried to set him straight. At last he seemed to comprehend what Hark was trying to say and immediately acted as though he had understood it all along.

  “I got it a long time ago! You’re just stalling now. Look, you’re the one who needs to be home before the morning’s over, aren’t you? The sooner we do this, the sooner you get back to your precious Sanctuary.” Jelt tapped a crank handle on the inside of the door hatch. “See this? If there’s trouble, you can uncrank this, get out and swim up.”

  Hark leaned over and peered into the little doorway. The interior was almost entirely empty, with only a little seat inside and some leather straps presumably to keep the occupant in place. The leather had not rotted, and there was no smell of damp or the sea, only a faint, strange scent of incense and something animal.

  “Calm down!” Jelt was holding up an old copper diving helmet, with its air-hose and float bladder. “Once I’ve lowered you, I’ll use these to look down and make sure the sphere’s all right. If there’s trouble, I’ll haul you up again.”

  Hark let out enough of the crane’s chain to attach its hook to the bathysphere. Then, with a deep sense of dread, he pulled himself head first through the narrow door and wriggled his way in. The space inside was small, high enough to kneel but not to stand. The wooden seat was dry and showed no sign of rot. The leather straps were rough under his fingers as he looped his arms through them.

  “Are you in?” Jelt’s darkened face appeared for a moment in the hatch, then the little round door swung closed and the light dimmed in the enclosed space. Outside, metal squealed as Jelt turned the external door crank. The old dry smells seemed to become more intense, almost choking. There was a clang, and the sphere wobbled slightly, leaving Hark feeling vulnerable and sick.

  Hark imagined the sphere descending into darkness and leaving the daylight behind. He remembered Quest’s fears that he had seen the sky for the last time, and suddenly Hark was filled with the same terrifying conviction.

  He needed to know that he could loosen the door if he had to. He reached forward, and gripped the crank handle with both hands. It did not budge. He wrenched harder, yanking with all his might. It remained fast.

  Panic took over. Hark gave a yell and banged on the door, then kicked out with his feet. He pummeled the strange false metal in desperation, with a dread certainty that at any moment he would be raised aloft and swung out over the unforgiving sea. He kept kicking and thumping even when the squeal of the external crank resumed.

  The hatch opened. Hark hastily struggled out through it, pouring himself out on the wet rocky floor of the cave. Even now there didn’t seem to be enough air, and his heart was racing.

  “What the billow’s shriek is wrong with you?” demanded Jelt.

  “I . . . I couldn’t turn the . . . the crank . . .” Hark managed between gasps.

  “Is that all?”

  Hark glared at Jelt.

  “Yes,” he muttered, recovering his breath. “I wouldn’t be able to get out if I got stuck or started to drown. Yes, that’s ‘all.’”

  “That’s not going to happen! Get a grip! I can’t believe you freaked out like that!”

  “It’s not going to happen, because I’m not going down there!” Hark picked himself up, his embarrassment making him angry at last. “This is stupid, Jelt, and I can’t do it! Not this time!”

  “I bet you could undo the crank if you had to,” said Jelt remorselessly.

  “You always think like that! ‘Oh, Hark’ll do it if he has to!’ So you always arrange things so I do have to. Like when you made me agree to Rigg’s plan! Every time I find I’ve got no choice, and it’s life and death, so I just have to make it work somehow.”

  “Yeah, and I’m always right, aren’t I?” said Jelt. “You always can do it. You just need a bit of a kick sometimes to get your nerve up.”

  “No!” shouted Hark. “You’re not always right! I couldn’t manage the beacon-smashing as fast as you promised, could I? My neck was on the line, and I still couldn’t do it!”

  “You could have done it,” said Jelt, without hesitation, his eyes hard and dark. “If you’d really gone all out. But I guess you panicked, the way you did just then. You slowed down so you wouldn’t fall. Maybe you thought you’d rather be arrested than that.”

  Hark stared at him, mouth open, his heart quivering in his chest.

  “Go kiss a shark, Jelt!” he blurted out. He had just enough time to see Jelt’s eyes go bright and empty with rage, and then a savage punch hit him in the temple, knocking him over. A sharp kick bruised his ribs, and Hark reflexively curled up, arms shielding his face.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that!” Jelt stood over him. “You never talk to me like that! I’m the only reason you’re alive!” Another hard kick in the small of Hark’s back.

  Hark’s anger gave way to pain and surprise. Jelt had only turned his fists on Hark a dozen times in all the years they’d known each other. Hark was usually good at avoiding it, but this time he had missed the warning signs. Perhaps this anger had been burning away in Jelt ever since Hark’s indenture, looking for an excuse to lash out.

  “You don’t get to walk away!” Jelt was yelling, increasingly incoherent, as he rained kicks on Hark. “You don’t get to do that, Hark! They’re . . . they’re training you, Hark! You don’t get to talk like . . .” A particularly hard kick, in the meat of Hark’s calf. “We’re brothers, Hark! You little
. . .”

  Hark stayed curled, teeth gritted, face shielded. If he tried to get up, he knew from experience that Jelt would pin him to the rock and put him in a choke hold.

  Weather the storm, he told himself. At least he’s kicking you in places where the bruises won’t show. His own anger had put out its head for a moment, like an eel, but had pulled back into the crevice the way it always had to. There were sharks in the water. Jelt’s rage was always more dangerous.

  When at last the kicks stopped, Hark stayed curled for a while, and then very carefully pulled his arms away from his face.

  Jelt was standing with his back to Hark, staring over at the bright red cliff of the opposite island.

  “I really want to smash your head in right now, Hark,” he muttered under his breath.

  He turned his head and cast a withering look at Hark.

  “So it looks like you’re going to wet yourself if you go back in that sphere,” he said. “I’ll go down this time to show you it’s safe. But next time it’s you.” Without another word, he walked over the sphere, and wriggled in through its narrow door.

  Hark had come there to talk Jelt out of going down, but now all the will to do so had been kicked out of him. What good would it do anyway? He reached out, hesitated, then pushed the door closed and cranked it tight.

  It was a struggle to turn the great handle that swiveled the mast, but at last he had the bathysphere swung out over the water. Then he began slowly, slowly turning the wheel to lower the sphere, using the toothed support to stop the wheels turning too fast.

  The bathysphere dipped, jolted, then descended while waves patted playfully at it. It dropped lower until only its very dome was visible, foam lathering over its greenish surface.

  There was a sudden crack. Hark spun around, and stared in confusion at the mechanism. A faint creak drew his eye to the counterweight.

  The net was giving under the weight of the rocks. As he watched, a second metal chain holding it to the hook snapped. With ponderous inevitability, the great rocks tipped and tumbled out of the net in a deafening cascade.