by Derek Landy
The mermaid kissed her again and Valkyrie took what oxygen she could, and then they were travelling, moving astonishingly fast with apparently very little effort. As tightly as the mermaid was holding her, Valkyrie was aware of every rhythmic swish and sway. The way the creature moved was hypnotic.
There was a light in the dark, then more lights as they drew closer.
The underwater laboratory was a series of brightly lit glass bubbles, like upturned goldfish bowls as big as houses.
The mermaid took Valkyrie to the smallest bowl, and they swooped in underneath and slowed as they came up, breaking through to the surface.
Valkyrie gasped, sucked in air, blinking quickly to clear her vision. The mermaid took her to the edge of the pool and gave her a little push up out of the water. Valkyrie’s hands and knees were suddenly on dry, solid ground. It was warm here, too, and filled with plants. They grew from pots and hung low from the domed glass ceiling. A path of stone led to a door.
Valkyrie stood, and turned. The mermaid rested both arms on the edge of the platform and smiled up at her.
“Hello,” the mermaid said.
“Hi.”
“My name is Una. What’s your name?”
“Valkyrie.”
“That’s not your real name.”
“No,” said Valkyrie. “It’s my taken name.”
“Oh,” said Una. “We only have one name down here. It’s simpler.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Una. You saved my life.”
Una shrugged her bare shoulders. “Are you here to see Doctor Nye?”
“I am. Is it here?”
Una nodded.
“Do you work for it?” Valkyrie asked.
Una laughed. “We don’t work for anyone.”
“How many of you are there?”
“There are enough.”
“I don’t want to be rude or anything, but could I ask what you are?”
“What do I look like?”
“A mermaid.”
Another smile. “I am a Maiden of the Sea. You can call me a mermaid if you like.”
Valkyrie took off her coat, looked around for somewhere to hang it, then just laid it wetly on the ground. “Thank you for saving me.”
“You’re welcome. The Sea Hag is unpleasant.”
“She certainly hasn’t changed much since we first met.”
Una raised an eyebrow. “Do you know her?”
“Not really, but the first time I met her she was living in a lake.”
Una laughed. “Yes, we heard about that. It is indeed a pity she didn’t stay there. I don’t think she likes you.”
“I think you might be right.”
“Are you feeling unwell? You’re shivering.”
“The water’s pretty cold. But I can warm up,” Valkyrie said, and held out her arms, letting her magic crackle. Una stared in wonder, her eyes reflecting the light show.
Valkyrie stopped before her clothes began to scorch. She was warmer, and a lot drier, even if her clothes and hair were still damp.
“That was beautiful,” Una said.
“Did you happen to see my friend before you saved me?” Valkyrie asked. “He’s a skeleton. In a suit.”
“A suit of clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Your skeletons wear clothes?”
“Just him.”
“That is most odd,” Una said. “But then I find the human obsession with clothes to be a source of endless puzzlement. When I was on the surface, humans followed me around and insisted on covering me with fabric. They were very insistent.”
“You were on the surface?”
“Long ago,” said Una.
“Did you … did you have legs?”
“Oh, yes,” Una said. “With feet and everything. On the surface, we have legs; in the seas, we revert to our natural state.”
“Wow.”
“But I have never understood clothes.”
“They have their uses. They keep us warm and dry, and shoes protect our feet, and pockets are cool.”
“Pockets?”
“They’re where we keep stuff. But my friend, the skeleton. Have you seen him?”
“Is that him there?” Una asked, looking over Valkyrie’s shoulder.
She turned. Skulduggery waved to her from outside the bubble.
She pointed at the pool and he nodded and sank from sight, and a moment later he broke through the surface of the water and rose up until he could step off on to the platform.
“You’re alive,” he said to her.
“You lost your hat,” she replied.
“I did, and that is unfortunate.” He moved his hands away from his body and the water drifted from him in droplets. He guided them back to the pool, then brushed at his jacket. “But I would choose you over a hat every time.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying that I’d—”
“It would be a choice?”
He stopped brushing, and looked at her. “Sorry?”
“You’d need to actually choose between me and your hat? It wouldn’t be an automatic thing? You’d have to pause and consider the options?”
“Huh,” Skulduggery said. “I had thought that what I’d said was a good thing. Now I see that it wasn’t. I apologise, and will now change the subject.” He stepped towards Una, hand outstretched. “Hello.”
Una rose up and shook his hand. “You are Skulduggery,” she said. “I am Una. I take it you are here to see Doctor Nye also?”
“Indeed. Is it in?”
“That depends,” said Una. “Do you promise not to kill it?”
“I can’t actually promise that, no.”
Una pointed at the door. “In which case, the doctor is through there,” she said, and smiled.
Beyond the door was a passageway of glass, a tunnel encircled by water. Fish pulsed around Valkyrie and Skulduggery as they walked, slashes of colour emerging from the dark and then sinking back into it once again. It was hypnotic. Restful.
Valkyrie’s eyes refocused on her reflection and she scowled. “My hair’s gone frizzy.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” Skulduggery responded.
“I was talking to the pretty mermaid with her glorious hair while I looked like I’d electrocuted myself. Which I suppose I kinda had.” She did her best to smooth her hair down, but it didn’t do much good.
There was a circular door ahead of them, metal, almost as wide as the tunnel itself, with a wheel in its centre. Skulduggery gestured for Valkyrie to go ahead, so she spun the wheel and heard a click, and had to put her shoulder to it to get it to move. Once she had it moving, the door swung freely, and she stepped over the lip and into a large, brightly lit glass dome, which housed the laboratory. Music was playing. Something classical.
Doctor Nye didn’t look up from the microscope it was stooped over. “Of course,” it said. “Of course you’re here. Of course you would find me. Of course you could not leave me in peace.”
“Hello, Doc,” Valkyrie said, all smiles as she wandered over. Nye wasn’t wearing its surgical cap today so its mottled scalp, decorated with a few wispy strands of hair, was hers to examine the closer she got. There were some sores on that scalp. A few had scabbed over. A few were open, and weeping.
Nye raised its head. Its eyes, yellow and small and far apart, blinked quickly, and its long, thin mouth twisted at one corner in annoyance. It didn’t have a nose. Just another open wound.
“Is Whisper here?” Valkyrie asked. “She’s cool. I liked her. I know I’ve only met her once, and that was when I was threatening you and demanding to know where Abyssinia was, but I think we could be friends.”
“She hated you,” said Nye.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“She despised you. She told me so.”
Valkyrie shrugged. “First impressions aren’t really that important, though. That’s what I always say. It’s on the third or fourth impression that you really start to
build up an idea of who a person is. So is she here?”
“I have switched patrons,” said Nye, “so Whisper is no longer my bodyguard.”
“Switched, eh?” Skulduggery said. “So you’re no longer working for Serafina Dey. Did you know that’s who you were working for, up there in that castle, in those mountains?”
“At the time, I did not,” said Nye.
“And who are you working for now?”
Nye looked at them both. “Why are you here?” it asked. “Is this about Abyssinia again? I do not know where that woman is and I have no wish to ever see her again.”
“It’s not about Abyssinia,” said Valkyrie. “It’s about your work.”
“And what work would that be?”
“Your work on the soul.”
Nye nodded, and stood. It was about ten feet tall – not nearly as tall as it had been when Valkyrie had first encountered it. Crengarrions of a certain age tended to shrink, apparently, right up until their death. Nye picked up a tray of Petri dishes with its long-fingered hands, and took it to a nearby desk. “And if I help you?”
“We leave,” Valkyrie said. “We just walk out of here, without putting you in shackles and slinging you back into Ironpoint Gaol.”
“Very well,” it said. “Please make this quick. I have a lot of work to do.”
“We want to know how to heal a soul,” Valkyrie said.
“Hmm,” said Nye, and didn’t move for a moment. Then it looked up. “You don’t. You can’t. A soul is not a physical thing, and so it cannot be hurt. If it cannot be hurt, it cannot be healed. But a soul can be broken. Pieces go missing. It is then a matter of finding the missing pieces, and allowing it to put itself back together.”
“And how do we do that?”
“That all depends on the type of death experienced. Some souls dissipate, some roam, some barely move from the spot where the death occurred. I cannot say why one death is different to another, and even my studies have yielded contradictory results. The secrets of the soul, I think, were never meant for the likes of us.” Nye smiled. “That doesn’t mean I will not seize them when I can, of course.”
“I’m looking to repair my sister’s soul,” Valkyrie said. “Where do I start?”
“First, tell me where and how she died.”
“She died in Roarhaven, killed by the Deathtouch Gauntlet,” Valkyrie said. “Revived with a Sunburst.”
“Interesting,” said Nye. “Not the Sunburst. The Sunburst is just a tool. But the gauntlet was designed to kill even those who would normally be able to recover from the slight inconvenience of death. At a single touch, it stops the body and the brain from functioning and eradicates any magic that might circumvent one’s mortality. It does this by scattering the soul. The essence of who we are splinters and vacates the physical form.”
“That didn’t happen with Darquesse,” Valkyrie said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Darquesse had taken over my body. The gauntlet was used to kill me and to kick her out. She wasn’t splintered.”
“I would imagine Darquesse’s soul to be vastly different to other people’s,” Nye said. “I would have loved to have examined her.”
“Yeah,” said Valkyrie. “I’d have loved to see you try.”
“If the gauntlet scattered Alice’s soul,” Skulduggery said, “then where are the pieces?”
Nye sat back. “I assume the girl is responsive? Aware?”
“She’s completely normal,” said Valkyrie, “apart from the fact that she never gets sad.”
“Then she was revived in time for at least part of her soul to return to her body. If you can retrieve the other fragment or fragments, I believe you can reattach them. But I find it interesting that you wish to pursue this course at all. Your sister cannot get sad, yes? That sounds like a happy life. Why would you want to reunite her with the aspect of her soul that brings sorrow?”
“She’s damaged,” said Valkyrie. “I need to fix her.”
“Perhaps she would argue that she doesn’t need to be fixed.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you,” Valkyrie said. “I’m responsible for breaking her apart, and I’m going to put her back together. You’re going to tell me how to do that.”
“First we need to know how to find the fragments,” Skulduggery said. “Do you have a way for us to do that?”
Nye hesitated.
“You do,” Skulduggery said, “but you don’t want to tell us what it is.”
“It’s not that,” said Nye. “It’s merely …”
“It’s a device. And you don’t want to part with it.”
Nye sagged.
Valkyrie picked up a box with wires poking out of it. “Is this it?”
“No,” said Nye.
She dropped it. It smashed on the ground and Nye gasped as she picked up something else. “Is this it?”
“Here it is!” Nye said quickly, scuttling over to an old globe in a brass stand. “Please don’t break anything else!”
Skulduggery took the globe. It was about the size of a football. “How do we use it?” he asked.
“It will need to latch on to what remains of the girl’s soul,” Nye answered. “Once it has done this, it will find whatever fragments there are and direct you to them.”
“And once we’ve located the fragments, how do we retrieve them?”
“A simple Soul Catcher should suffice. Once you have collected all the errant fragments, you will need to isolate your sister and then simply break the Soul Catcher. The fragments will return home.”
“And the soul will put itself back together once they’re inside her?”
“Indeed.”
“It’s that easy?”
“The process should be straightforward, yes.”
Valkyrie smiled. Laughed. “Well … OK then. OK. This is good. This is great!”
“And now,” said Nye, “a warning.”
Valkyrie’s smile failed. “A warning?”
“It is entirely possible that the fragments have remained independent,” Doctor Nye said. “If, however, a fragment has found a host, then it is inside a living being with a soul of its own. Because of the damage it has sustained, there is a possibility that the fragment will have merged with this other soul in order to maintain its integrity.”
“If this has happened,” Skulduggery said, “how do we separate it from its host?”
“If it has merged fully with its host’s soul,” said the doctor, “there will be nothing you can do. That fragment is now gone. If, however, it has not merged fully, then the sister will need to be nearby. Her presence should pull the fragment to her.”
Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery. “We have to go.”
Instead, Skulduggery folded his arms. He tapped a finger against his chin.
“Skulduggery—”
“Doctor,” Skulduggery said, “Valkyrie can see souls.”
Nye’s small eyes widened. “She can?”
“I can see auras,” she corrected.
“Same thing,” Skulduggery said. “What’s more, Doctor, her powers seem to be directly attuned to them. Just a short time ago, I witnessed what appeared to be the full dispersal of a ghost.”
Nye stared at Valkyrie. “You killed a ghost?”
“No,” she said immediately. “I mean … I don’t think so. You can’t kill a ghost. Can you?”
“Instead of bringing her sister with us to coax out the fragment, couldn’t Valkyrie do it?” Skulduggery continued. “If she can see the soul, and touch the soul … surely she’d be able to separate the soul.”
“Yes,” Nye whispered. “Yes, this would be entirely possible. In theory. I … I should go with you. To observe. This could help my research in innumerable—”
“Forget it,” Valkyrie said. “We’re not teaming up. Skulduggery, we have to go.”
Skulduggery nodded. “I just have a few more questions for the good doctor.”
She put her hand on his arm. “For al
l we know, a part of Alice’s soul is just about to merge with someone else. We have to go now. Skulduggery, please.”
“You go say your goodbyes to the mermaid,” he responded. “I need to know how to work this globe.”
“One minute,” said Valkyrie.
“I promise.”
She nodded, and hurried out the way she came.
Una still rested her elbows on the edge of the platform.
“She’s been waiting,” she said, rolling her eyes as the Sea Hag rose up from the water behind her.
“I don’t have time for you,” Valkyrie said.
The Sea Hag’s sneer was not a thing of beauty. “You think you can dismiss me so easily? After what you’ve done?”
“What have I done?” Valkyrie said. “Really, now? What have I done that’s so terrible that you’re still trying to kill me? Is it really that I was rude to you over ten years ago? Seriously?”
The Sea Hag said nothing.
“I don’t have time for these little vendettas that people like you seem to love. I’ve got enough going on without adding your drama to the list. So, allow me to say I’m sorry. I’m so dreadfully sorry for being rude to you once upon a time. Are we over it now? Are we?”
The Sea Hag folded her long arms, and a mermaid’s head broke the surface of the pool behind her. Blonde hair. Beautiful. Another appeared beside her. And another. All looking at the Sea Hag. All intent. All focused.
Valkyrie frowned. “Hold on a second,” she said.
They burst upwards, and they had spears in their hands – harpoons – and they drove them into the Sea Hag’s torso and the Sea Hag thrashed and screeched. Valkyrie jumped back as the mermaids kept their grip on the weapons, keeping the Sea Hag from swimming away. With gritted teeth and bulging muscles, they forced her backwards, moving her torso out of the pool and on to the platform. Another mermaid rose, handed a harpoon to Una, and with a kick Una propelled herself out of the water completely, her fish tail splitting, forming human legs that drank in and swallowed the scales, and she dropped, the harpoon aimed at the Sea Hag’s heart.
Valkyrie lunged, colliding with Una after she landed, but before the harpoon could sink into the Sea Hag’s chest. They went rolling. The harpoon fell. Una’s hand closed around Valkyrie’s throat and Una came up to her feet and lifted Valkyrie, slamming her against the glass wall. Valkyrie brought both fists down on to Una’s arm and buckled the elbow, but Una went to grab her again with her left hand and Valkyrie kicked at her newly formed knee, twirled her round and snaked her arm under her chin.
