Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

  “Couldn’t they just pick him up or something?” I ask.

  “No,” says Vi, slipping back into her piratical voice, “because he who touches Bad Luck Cat will nary catch a cod nor sprat!”

  “You’re making these up now.”

  But Violet shakes her head as she dissolves into laughter again.

  “Anyway,” I say, as I’m clearly the only one fit to say it, “it’s just as well Erwin was there. I should have known the pub would be a risky place to be near, with this whole fish-bottle business going on. The fishermen practically own the Whelk & Walrus. We’ll have to be careful going back.”

  The harbour wall has always been a battered old thing, and the relentless storm hasn’t done it any favours. The wind gets gustier as we head further out, and we have to be careful of the edge. On one side of the wall, the sea rolls dark and cold and stretches out as far as the eye can see into Eerie Bay. I feel a wobble come into my legs.

  A couple of fishermen on the deck of a big, ugly iron boat moored to the harbour wall glare at us as we pass. They are fiddling with something hidden beneath a tarpaulin and clearly don’t want an audience.

  “Come on,” I say, leading Violet on.

  “That’s a huge fishing boat,” Violet whispers, glancing back.

  “It’s the Bludgeon,” I explain. “Boadicea Bates’s boat. The biggest for miles around.”

  “Are you sure this is where we’ll find Blaze Westerley?” Violet asks. “On one of these boats?”

  “Yes, but not just any boat,” I reply. “The Westerleys’ vessel stands out from the rest.”

  At the end of the harbour wall a grizzled old fisherman sits on a lobster pot, whittling a tiny stick with a knife the size of a cutlass. I do my best not to make eye contact, but I distinctly hear his whiskers bristling as we approach. Perhaps if I could take off my Lost-and-Founder’s cap I wouldn’t be so easy to recognize, but I can hardly do that now, not with the incredible thing I have hiding under there. I dread to think what the fishermen would do to me if they found out that I’ve opened their precious bottle and let the electrical fairy out. But maybe Blaze can help me get rid of it.

  “Is it this one?” says Violet, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Blaze Westerley’s boat?”

  And it is.

  Below us, tied to an iron ring, is the most extraordinary vessel you’re ever likely to see.

  JORNTY SPARK

  OLD SQUINT WESTERLEY is famously eccentric, but even if you’d never heard the strange stories they tell about him, you’d know he was odd just by looking at his crazy boat.

  The Jornty Spark must have started out as a normal fishing vessel. It’s still got the short, deep hull – painted mid-morning blue – and proud little wheelhouse that most of the older Eerie boats possess. But there the normalness ends.

  I’m not talking about the wires, dials and widgets that festoon the control panel. I’m not even talking about the immense curved tusk that is strapped to the prow and covered in scrimshaw carvings. No, I’m talking about the mast. Or, rather, the place where once a mast would have been. In this place, the Jornty Spark sports something else entirely.

  “A windmill?” says Violet. “Is that really a windmill?”

  I nod. “Well, more a wind turbine.”

  At the top of a tall wooden pylon, four blades spin with a furious whine in the wind. With the boat itself below us in the water, the wind turbine is at our level, and its spinning sails are an impressive sight.

  “Old Squint,” I say, “has built Eerie-on-Sea’s first – and so far only – electrical fishing boat.”

  “Pah!” comes a grumble from the grizzled old fisherman behind us. “It ain’t natural. Wrong sort of sails for a boat.”

  “Let’s go down and see if Blaze is on board,” says Violet, ignoring the man and turning to lower herself down rungs in the harbour wall. But I stop her.

  “Er, no!” I declare. “I don’t do boats, remember?”

  “Even if they’re tied up and not going anywhere?”

  But I ignore the question. In any case, it’s not polite to board someone’s boat without permission.

  “Ahoy!” I call down, feeling a bit silly, because it isn’t every day I get to shout “Ahoy!” “Ahoy there, Jornty Spark!”

  A head pops out of the wheelhouse – a head with a flop of red hair over a pair of welding goggles. The goggles are raised, and the wary face of Blaze Westerley looks up.

  “You’re the boy from the hotel,” he calls over the wind and the whine of the turbine. “The Lost-and-Founder. The one who took the fish-shaped bottle. What do you want?”

  It’s not exactly the response I was expecting.

  “Um,” I call down. “I was just …”

  “… just making enquiries,” Violet shouts down for me. “And I’m Violet Parma, from the Eerie Book Dispensary, who’s helping him. Of all the people in Eerie-on-Sea, we think you might know the most about that old bottle. Can you come up, please, so we can talk about it?”

  Blaze glares at me. Then he looks at Violet. In a moment he scampers up the rungs and stands awkwardly in front of us.

  “What’s to talk about?” he says. “Are you going to give me the bottle or not?”

  “I really like your boat,” says Vi, dodging right past the tricky question as only Violet can do. “Herbie was just telling me it’s electric. Did your uncle really build it? He must be very clever.”

  Blaze’s eyes flash, but not so much with anger as with pride.

  “Aye, he did. Custom-built engine, deep-storage battery, eighty horsepower of pure electrical drive, when she’s up to speed.”

  “That sounds … fast?”

  “Fast?” cries Blaze. “You’ve never heard of the Jornty Spark? This is the ship that made the Kessel Island run in less than twelve minutes. I don’t think there’s a ship faster in Eerie Bay.”

  “Ship!” comes an incredulous cry, and we all turn to look at the grizzled old fisherman. His leathery face is creased up with amusement. “That old tiddler boat, a ship? I wouldn’t give you twenty smackers for her, and even that be for the scrap. Ship!”

  Blaze Westerley clenches his fists.

  “She’s fast enough for you, old man. Dare to race me?”

  “A-ha-ha-harrrr!” The sailor throws his head back in laughter. “I’ll race you any time you want, boy. I’ve seen you pootling around in the shallows. Your uncle’s tub might have been fast enough when she still had canvas on her, but she’s a dud’un now. Like Squint himself.”

  Then he picks up a piece of loose rope from the harbour wall and tosses it into the spinning sails of the wind turbine. The rope tangles around them immediately, and they grind to a halt.

  “No!” cries Blaze.

  “Oh, whoopsie,” says the old sailor, picking his teeth with the little stick he’s been whittling. “Like I said, wrong sort of sails for a boat.” And with this he stands, slides the giant knife into his belt, and strolls away down the harbour wall, towards the town.

  Blaze quivers all over with anger and frustration.

  “But … but she is fast,” he cries, as if to the whole world. “She is. The Spark’s got what it takes where it matters. It’s just… I don’t…”

  “It’s OK,” says Vi, touching the boy’s arm. “Don’t let him get to you.”

  “It’s not just him,” says Blaze. “It’s all of them! The other fishermen have always laughed at us, ever since…”

  “Since what?” asks Violet.

  “But they’ll be sorry –” Blaze shakes his skinny fist at the back of the fisherman – “when my uncle Squint gets back!”

  “I thought Squint was lost,” I say. “At sea?”

  “Aye, he is.” Blaze looks at his feet. “But he’s been lost before and managed to find his way home. If he can do it again, I want to be out there, ready to pick him up.”

  “I didn’t think anyone was going out to sea at the moment,” Violet says. “I thought the storm was keeping all you fishermen
grounded.”

  “It may keep them grounded,” says Blaze, nodding back along the wall towards the Whelk & Walrus, “with their diesel engines and mouldy sails. But the Spark’s different.”

  “Look, Blaze –” Violet rummages in her pocket – “that fish-shaped bottle has some strange symbols on it. What can you tell us about them?”

  And she pulls out the piece of paper with the crayon rubbing on. She unfolds the paper and holds it up, flapping in the wind.

  “Is it really some sort of secret writing?”

  “Aye, it’s the Eerie Script,” Blaze replies. “It’s a secret lost to time.”

  At least, this is what his mouth says. But the way he glances away and looks shifty says something else.

  “Blaze?” says Vi, refolding the paper. “What happened to your uncle exactly? How did he get lost at sea?”

  The teenager still seems torn between saying one thing and doing something else. In the end, he just mumbles, “You aren’t fisherfolk. Neither of you. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I would love to understand,” I tell him. “I really would. But in the meantime, what are we going to do about them?”

  “Them?” say Blaze and Vi together.

  “Yes,” I squeak. “Them!”

  And I point back along the harbour wall, to where a large group of men have gathered. A large group of fishermen, to be precise, with Boadicea Bates at the head. Beside her, the whittling sailor is pointing back our way. As we watch, the whole bunch of them begin a steady, menacing walk towards us, filling the entire width of the wall. With nothing but heaving sea in all other directions, they are completely blocking any escape. And behind them, watching from the doorway of the Whelk & Walrus, is the unmistakable figure of Deep Hood.

  “Oh, bladderwracks!”

  I feel a stirring under my cap as the little electrical creature gives a start.

  “We’re trapped!” says Violet.

  I see her look at the waves, and I know her well enough to guess she’s wondering what our chances would be if we made a swim for it. But for once even Violet judges something to be too dangerous.

  “Trapped?” says Blaze. “You make it sound as if they’re after you.”

  “They are!” I blurt out. “They think I should give them the fish bottle. And they’re not being very subtle about it.”

  “You mean you haven’t?” says Blaze. “I thought that was why you’d come to the harbour. To hand it over to Boadicea and her cronies.”

  “No!” I say. “I haven’t decided what to do with the stupid thing. But if you thought that, then maybe they think …”

  “… maybe they think you’re here to give it to me,” Blaze completes the sentence. “Come on!”

  “Come on, what?”

  “They think they have you cornered,” says the boy. “Only, they haven’t reckoned on Uncle Squint’s engine. I can’t wait to see their faces when we’re powering away from the harbour at maximum thrust.”

  “You mean…?” I start to say, not wanting to say any of it at all.

  “Aye!” cries Blaze Westerley. “All aboard! All aboard the Jornty Spark!”

  OLD SQUINT’S ENGINE

  BLAZE IS THE FIRST TO REACH the deck of his boat, and he immediately sets about untying it from the harbour wall. Violet stops halfway down the ladder and looks up at me.

  “Herbie, come on!”

  But I don’t “come on!” How can I, when “coming on” means doing a thing I said I’d never do again?

  I think back to when I first told Violet the story of how I washed up in Eerie-on-Sea in a crate of lemons. I remember how impressed I was that she didn’t laugh at the lemons part. In fact, she didn’t laugh at any of it – not the bit where Mrs Fossil (who else?) found me half drowned on the beach, or where Dr Thalassi got the seawater out of my lungs (yikes, I’ll never forget that!). She didn’t even smirk at the part where Lady Kraken took me in, and gave me a job and a uniform and my unlikely name. Which is why it’s so annoying when I look down at Violet now, beckoning me onto the boat, and see the glint of amusement in her eyes. She’s probably one of those people who believes in facing up to your fears, isn’t she? Yes, of course she is.

  “Herbert Lemon!”

  That’s Boadicea Bates calling that, roaring into the wind from the head of the gang of approaching fishermen.

  “We have things to say to you, boy.”

  And so I’m faced with a choice: get on the boat – despite the mermonkey’s warning – and run the risk of a watery end on the cold, dark bottom of the sea, or don’t get on the boat, and face the certainty of being nabbed by a bunch of angry fishermen with ropes and knives.

  I hurry down the ladder.

  Well, at least this should only be a short trip.

  The Jornty Spark is already moving away from the quayside as Blaze shoves an urgent oar against the wall, so I’m forced to jump.

  “Argh!” I cry, hitting the rolling deck and waving my arms to keep balance. “Wait for me!”

  “Stop complaining and get that rope off the turbine,” Blaze barks in return, his shy awkwardness gone as he gives the order. He grabs a tatty skipper’s cap from the top handgrip of the wheel and jams it onto his head. “We can’t engage the engine while the pylon’s up, and I can’t lower it while the turbine’s tangled.”

  I look up at the wind turbine above us. Viewed from the deck, it suddenly seems ridiculously high. I step towards it, but the boat chooses that moment to lean sharply. I let out a groan and clutch a brass handgrip on the wheelhouse. There’s a sudden twinge in my scalp, as I feel the strange little creature under my cap respond to my alarm. The deck tips even further, and everything loose slides across it.

  “We need to get that pylon down!” cries Blaze, leaning out over the water, using his weight to correct the boat’s balance. We’re away from the harbour wall now and turning out of control. “The turbine makes us top-heavy.”

  “Herbie!” Violet cries, leaning out beside Blaze to help him, but there’s nothing I can do – my legs are rooted to the spot with fear.

  The wind shifts, and suddenly the boat is swinging back the other way.

  Violet wastes no time. She jumps forward and shimmies up the pylon like a cat, reaching the top just as it teeters momentarily upright. She scrabbles at the rope, pulling it away in frantic loops. The coils fall to the deck, as the deck starts to tip the other way.

  Blaze darts over to my side of the boat and swings out over the water again, holding on by just his finger and boot tips in a desperate attempt to counter the weight of the turbine now that a girl is on top of it.

  Violet slides down the pylon – her boots hitting the deck with a bang.

  Blaze immediately jumps into the wheelhouse and starts jabbing at switches. With a clack! the wooden blades of the turbine fold down, no longer presenting a windmill to the wind. Then, with a steady clanking sound, the pylon begins to lower towards the deck of the boat.

  On the harbour wall above, beyond the cry of the seagulls and the harsh gusting of the wind, comes a roar of fury from Boadicea.

  “Blaze Westerley! Bring that Lost-and-Founder back here. He has something that belongs to us.”

  This prompts a grumble of angry agreement from the fishermen gathered on the harbour wall.

  “He’s aboard the Spark now,” Blaze calls back, the skipper’s cap firmly on his head, “and has the protection of the Westerleys.”

  With the pylon lowered there is less seesaw pressure on the boat. But I’m still clutching the handgrip.

  “Herbie, it’s OK,” says Violet.

  Is it? I want to shout. But I can’t do anything right now but cling on.

  “Think of the town!” comes the voice of Boadicea Bates again, carrying across the growing distance between us and dry land. “Eerie is in danger. No matter how crazy your uncle was, you Westerleys are an old fishing family. You know the lore and our ancient rights. That fish-shaped bottle is a Dismal business, and the property of all us fish
erfolk. You must bring it to us.”

  “It’s my uncle’s business!” Blaze calls back. “And I will not let you have it.” And then, turning to us, he adds, “Brace yourselves. I’m going to engage the engine.”

  “Do you think they’ll try to follow?” asks Vi, planting her feet firmly on the deck and grabbing the rail.

  “They think they won’t need to,” I cry. “Look!”

  Back on the harbour wall, one fisherman has stepped apart from the others. He starts to twirl a rope, tied into a lasso. There are dozens of things on Blaze’s modified boat that it could catch on, not least of which the great curving tusk on the prow, and we’re still drifting without any power.

  Blaze grabs a key on the control panel.

  He turns it.

  There’s a wheezing, whining sound, and several dials on the control panel light up. A large dial in the centre, with the word CHARGE on it, flickers with a quivering blue light, its needle trembling at the zero mark.

  The fisherman throws his lasso with the precision of a man who has done such things all his life. The loop sails through the air towards us, as the dial finally lights up a solid blue. The needle slams over from zero to max, and the Jornty Spark’s engine roars into life.

  Blaze pushes, hard, on the drive lever.

  We are flung back with sudden acceleration. Violet and I cling to the rail, and Blaze to his wheel, as the motor thrusts us forward at incredible speed, showering us with spray. The rope lasso misses the back of the boat by a finger’s width and falls behind us into the churning water.

  Violet gives a whoop of triumph as we race away.

  “Yes!” cries Blaze, his skipper’s cap blowing off his head. “I got her working again! Oh, see, Uncle, see! I told you I was ready. I fixed the engine!”

  But then, just as quickly as it started, the tremendous acceleration stops, and the roar of the motor dies away. The blue lights on the control panel flicker out as the needle of the dial drops back to near zero. The water that was spraying up behind the Jornty Spark as she sliced through the sea is soon replaced by some very modest ripples.