Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

“You!” cries Blaze, suddenly finding his voice. “You’re the stranger, the one we took to the Vortiss. The one who fought my uncle. You survived!”

  Deep Hood hisses at the boy, and then steps towards him. Blaze snatches up the spanner he dropped earlier.

  “It’s all your fault Uncle’s gone!” Blaze cries, and he leaps forward, the spanner raised like a club.

  There’s a flash of pink, and something whips out from Deep Hood, smashing Blaze in the face. In a moment, Blaze is lying on his back, groaning, the spanner clattering across the deck and falling into the sea.

  And now Deep Hood is advancing again, one arm raised, pointing directly at me.

  “Give it to me, Herbert Lemon!”

  Under my cap, the hair on my head starts to rise as a massive electrical charge builds, as if the little fairy thing I have hidden there is feeding on my terror.

  “Give it to me,” gurgles Deep Hood, “or I will drag you to your doom on the cold, dark bottom of the sea.”

  And he makes a noise that sounds like laughing.

  My cap explodes.

  Literally, it blows off with a twang! of slipped elastic and a KA-CHA-BOOM! of localized thunder. A bright bolt of lightning leaps from my head and connects with Deep Hood’s outstretched hand. The man is engulfed in brilliant light and hurled backwards, his coat flying. Myriad arcs of power crackle along the railing of the Jornty Spark, as Deep Hood topples over it and hits the sea with an almighty splash.

  There’s a moment of astonished silence in the wheelhouse.

  My cap lands back on the deck with a soft thud.

  Then, above us, the dials of the control deck light up a steady blue.

  “There’s charge in the battery!” Violet shouts, jumping to her feet.

  She slams the drive lever forward.

  With a powerful roar and a plume of water, we leap ahead and surge away from the terrible figure who just boarded us, and out into the open sea.

  “Is he following?” I shout over the engine’s whine.

  It’s a few minutes later, and Violet and I are looking fearfully over our shoulders. The empty sea churns behind us as we power through the water.

  “I don’t know,” Violet replies. “I … I don’t think so.”

  “There was a moment,” I gasp, “when we first saw him, when he seemed to have … to have…”

  “A tentacle?” Violet says in a whisper.

  “He can’t have,” I say. “And yet, you saw it too?”

  The sound of the engine drops as Violet pulls the throttle back. She runs to the back of the boat and starts scanning the rolling sea.

  There’s a groan, and I help Blaze to his feet.

  “What … what hit me?” he says groggily.

  “It was some kind of whip,” Violet says. “Yes, it must have been. Some kind of whip that Deep Hood keeps under his coat. And he must have used it to board us, after swimming out here.”

  But Blaze doesn’t reply. He’s staring at me openmouthed, a look of amazement on his face.

  It’s then I remember that I’m no longer wearing my Lost-and-Founder’s cap.

  “A sprightning!” Blaze gasps, pointing over my head. “You have … a sprightning!”

  “I do?”

  Over me, the little electrical fairy is flitting around in a sparkling glow, just above my head. Then it settles down into my hair, and I feel it curling around and around, like Erwin does when he’s trying to get comfortable.

  Violet passes me my cap.

  “It was in the fish-shaped bottle,” she explains. “And we, um, we sort of let it out.”

  “But it’s a sprightning!” Blaze cries.

  “Whatever it is,” I say, taking the cap, “it seems to have latched on to me, sparks and all. I can’t make it go away.”

  “What is a sprightning anyway?” asks Violet.

  “I don’t really know,” Blaze confesses, “but my uncle does. We saw some near the Vortiss, though none as big as yours. He said they can be extremely dangerous.”

  “Good for us that they are,” Violet replies, with a grin of relief. “Not so good for Deep Hood!”

  “Don’t be so sure,” says Blaze. “If that sprightning was in the bottle, and the fishermen find out you’ve taken it, it won’t be good for any of us. Uncle always said…”

  Then he stops and blinks, and I wonder if his brains are still rattled from the bash in the face. Mine would be.

  But it can’t be that, because he cries again, “My uncle!”

  “What about him?”

  “If the stranger in the hood survived, then my uncle might have too!” Blaze grabs Violet’s shoulders and starts dancing her around. “He’s really out there. He’s alive!”

  “OK, OK…” Violet dances around with Blaze once, then calms him down. “I’m sure he is. But you’ll need to get the engine running again, won’t you? To go and look for him?”

  Blaze nods and jams the skipper’s cap onto his head. He runs to the wheelhouse and starts flipping switches.

  “How’s the battery doing?” I ask, eager to change the subject. Eerie-on-Sea is large on the horizon, but not large enough for my liking. I’d give a month’s worth of stale croissants to get back on dry land right now.

  “Something’s still not right,” Blaze says, taking the wheel again and adjusting a dial. “Despite that boost, we’re already losing power.”

  Sure enough, the needle on the dial is steadily dropping back towards zero.

  “Do you think…?” He turns to look at me, or rather at the glowing thing that has nestled into my hair. “Do you think you could do that again? Another zap would be useful.”

  Very carefully, I reach up and scoop the little sprightning into my hands. It’s sleeping now, curled up in a warm glow in my palms.

  “It’s not me who does the zaps,” I say, gently putting the dozing sprite back into my hair and carefully replacing my cap. “I think you’ll have to fix the engine the old-fashioned way.”

  Blaze sighs. His hands dart expertly across the control panel, flipping switches and tweaking knobs, but the needle keeps falling.

  “If only I could,” he says. “I just don’t get what’s wrong with it.”

  “Really?” asks Violet. “Are you so sure? You look like you know what you’re doing to me.”

  Blaze says nothing for a moment. Then:

  “Well, I … I did wonder if it might be the flow capacitor. Back when the explosion happened – at the Vortiss, I mean – bits of metal pierced the hull and hit the battery. It’s possible that the polarity of the flow capacitor got flipped.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” Violet replies. “But it sounds like you do. Have you checked?”

  Blaze stares at her.

  “I can’t reverse the polarity of a flow capacitor! I’m only an apprentice.”

  “When I first became Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel,” I say into the silence that follows this, “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Mr Mollusc said I was the worst Lost-and-Founder there had ever been, and I believed him. But after a bit, in my own way, it turned out…”

  “What?”

  “It turned out,” Violet replies for me, “that Herbie knows more about lost-and-foundering than anyone. He can certainly run rings around that stuffy old Mollusc. So maybe, Blaze, you can do more than you know. Maybe your apprenticeship is already over, and you haven’t realized it yet.”

  Blaze doesn’t reply. But we can both tell he’s thinking about it. And I wonder suddenly what more there is to know about Blaze Westerley. What’s his own story? Why is he all alone on this boat, fending for himself?

  Where are his parents?

  I look out at the empty sea and think that perhaps we have more in common, this teenage fisherman and I, than just learning on the job. I wonder what book the mermonkey would dispense for him.

  “Maybe…” Blaze says eventually. “Maybe I’ll take a look at that capacitor after all. Just in case.”

  A
nd with another glance at my cap, he flips a switch, grips the wheel, and expertly guides the Jornty Spark towards home.

  FRAZZLED

  “WHERE WILL WE GO ASHORE?” Violet asks Blaze. “We’d like to avoid meeting any more fishermen, if possible.”

  “And Deep Hood!” I add.

  “You do think he survived that blast of lightning, then?” Vi says.

  I look out over the rolling, choppy sea.

  “I think I don’t want to count on anything except getting back to my Lost-and-Foundery and stoking up the wood burner,” I reply.

  “There’s a place I know, near the cliffs,” Blaze says. “I can get in close to the beach there, but you’ll have to jump. Is that OK?”

  “It’s fine,” Violet calls back. “Isn’t it, Herbie?”

  It’s not, actually. But I’m so desperate to get off this boat that I nod anyway.

  The Spark approaches the edge of Maw Rocks, where the sea stacks reach the shore. A slab of gleaming stone, studded with barnacles, breaks into view between waves. The beach is beyond it, strewn with chunks of driftwood, clumps of seaweed and storm-tossed detritus.

  Blaze expertly eases us alongside the slab.

  “This is as close as I can get,” he says.

  “What will you do now?” Vi asks, getting ready to jump.

  “Go back to the harbour wall,” Blaze replies. “Then…” He glances at each of us, as if for reassurance. “Then I guess I’ll get back to work on the engine.”

  I do a nod. I hope it’s an encouraging one.

  “What will you do?” he asks in return. Then he nods at my cap. “What will you do with that?”

  But I don’t have an answer to this, not yet, so I say nothing.

  Balancing as carefully as we can, Violet and I clamber over to the prow of the Jornty Spark, which is bobbing dangerously close to the rock. Violet pauses to look at the tusk that is strapped there so proudly, the tusk Squint Westerley claimed to have brought back from the Vortiss.

  Then we jump ashore.

  The Jornty Spark peels away from the rock, pushing back out into the rolling sea. Blaze raises his skipper’s cap in farewell.

  “So, what do we do next?”

  It’s Violet asking this, after we’ve climbed the shingle bank. She sits down on a rock, beside the sea-worn steps that lead up to the promenade. Above us looms the mighty ramparts of Eerie-on-Sea’s castle.

  “We’re no closer to understanding the secret writing,” I say, sitting beside her and enjoying the reassuring feel of solid stone beneath my bum. “And I’ve never heard of this Vortiss before. I don’t know how anything Blaze told us helps me figure out what to do with that blasted fish-shaped bottle.”

  “But it’s not the bottle that’s important, is it, Herbie?” says Vi. “It’s what was inside. Talking of which, how are things up there?” And she points at my cap.

  I tip my head from side to side.

  “All quiet,” I reply. “For now. But I can’t carry on like this, Vi. Someone’s going to get hurt. Probably me!”

  “Well, at least we’ve learned something useful,” Violet says then, with a mischievous grin. “Something useful to you, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “You just went on a boat trip, Herbert Lemon, and we didn’t sink. Do you still think that The Cold, Dark Bottom of the Sea by Sebastian Eels is a warning from the mermonkey?”

  I look out across the rolling waves to the distant storm. We’ve just been chased by fishermen, attacked by a stranger armed with some kind of whip and nearly swept out into the open ocean in a boat with a broken engine. Frankly, I think we’re lucky to be alive. Trust Violet to find something positive to say about it all.

  “Maybe the best thing you could do right now, Herbie, is come to the book dispensary with me and consult the mermonkey again. A new book might just make everything clearer.”

  But I’m not ready to do that. I’m just about to say so, with knobs on, when a particularly loud crash of surf draws our attention back to the sea. Something has broken the surface of the water, near the shore.

  “What’s that?” says Violet.

  It rises from the surf, the thing, seawater streaming off it.

  Then it stands erect.

  Deep Hood walks out of the sea, striding powerfully up the beach, his metal-bound box hanging at his side. We drop behind the rock we were sitting on.

  The stranger crunches past us on the beach, making for the steps. Then he stops and turns. He swings his drooping hood from side to side with a horrible snorting breath, as if he’s sniffing – sniffing for something.

  Or someone.

  Violet and I go completely still as seagulls cry overhead, and the surf crashes on the shore below.

  Deep Hood sniffs a final time and then turns away, continuing his climb to the sea wall. We shrink closer to our rock, our faces pressed into the seaweed, as the awful man climbs the slippery steps above us, three at a time, up to Eerie-on-Sea.

  It’s a few minutes before we dare to move.

  A seagull lands on the rock and peers at us hungrily.

  “Hey!” says Violet, shooing the bird away. “We’re not dead!”

  Yet! I add, but only in my head.

  Then we jump up and run to the steps. It feels risky to be stepping in the watery footsteps of Deep Hood so soon, but this is the quickest way to get off the beach. And being on the beach is the surest way to get ourselves seen from above.

  When we reach the top, we slip across the cobbles of the promenade and dart into the familiar, twisty old streets of Eerie-on-Sea.

  It’s then that a large hand clamps down on my shoulder.

  MERMONKEY

  I SPIN AROUND and see a familiar face looking down at me – an olive-coloured face with a pair of caterpillar eyebrows and an impressive Julius Caesar nose.

  “Dr Thalassi!” I cry, relieved.

  “Good morning, Herbie. Good morning, Violet,” says the doc, raising his hat and surveying our crumpled and sea-spattered appearance. The doctor is wearing a waterproof coat and has several tools poking out of his pockets. “I was just out fixing storm damage on the castle roof when I saw you come ashore. So, you’ve been out on the Jornty Spark. And, er, spoken to Blaze Westerley?”

  “I was on important Lost-and-Founder business,” I say. “We thought he could tell us more about the fish-shaped bottle, and…”

  “Ah!” says the doc, with an anxious waggle of his eyebrows. “And are you any closer to deciding who should get it? I hope you aren’t tempted to give such a historically important relic to the Westerleys. I don’t see how Blaze can have a good claim, despite what he says about his uncle.”

  “Herbie hasn’t decided anything,” Violet says firmly. “We just wanted to find out if Blaze knew anything about the secret writing. That’s all.”

  “But if you wanted to know more about that, you should have come to me,” replies the doc. “What are you doing now? Perhaps you’d like to come to the museum to see some other examples of Eerie Script. And I’m sure I can find some fruitcake.”

  “Thanks, but we can’t,” says Violet quickly. “We’re going to the book dispensary. Jenny will be worrying about me, and Herbie needs to consult the mermonkey. Don’t you, Herbie?”

  Do I? I glare at Violet. I’ve no intention of doing any such thing, but before I can say so, Violet winks. And then I understand that making this excuse at least means that we can escape from the doctor. Annoyingly, though, the doc replies, “Then allow me to escort you. The streets are difficult to navigate with all the storm damage, and it’s the least I can do to see you safely home, Violet.”

  The doc is right about one thing: the narrow streets of Eerie are in a terrible state. All around us people are still boarding up broken windows and sweeping smashed roof tiles. Some of the buildings have alarming cracks in them.

  We come out into the square called Fargazi Round and pass in front of Mrs Fossil’s Flotsamporium. Normally, on the pavement outside the beachcom
bing shop there are baskets of driftwood sticks, fossils by the nodule and crafty knick-knacks made of tide-twisted plastic. Even the letters of FLOTSAMPORIUM are made from twists of rope, sea-bent spoons and rock-chewed Frisbees and flip-flops. But today the pavement is bare, and the sign is missing a letter or two.

  The doc tries to hurry us past, but the unmistakable face of Mrs Fossil appears in the glass of the peeling shop door. In a moment the door is flung open.

  “Hello, my dears!” she calls, beaming her snaggletooth grin. She’s wearing a lumpy knitted pullover and, for once, not a single hat. “Where are you going, I wonder?” She peers suspiciously at Dr Thalassi. “Would you like to pop in for tea and something nice? I’ve been baking.”

  “We can’t, thanks,” says Violet. “We need to get to the book dispensary.”

  “But you’re soaked through!” Mrs F looks at our clothes, which are still soggy from the boat trip. “You should dry out by my stove, or you’ll catch your deaths of cold.”

  “In point of fact,” the doc states, with a cool look at the beachcomber, “it is not possible to catch a cold simply by being out in the wet, Mrs Fossil. Let alone a ‘death’. A cold is a viral infection.”

  “Oh, well, I won’t argue with a man of science, I’m sure,” Mrs F sniffs. “Even if all I’m trying to do is look after these young people.”

  “I am already looking after them,” the doc scowls in reply. “And I will make sure that they dry out as soon as we reach the bookshop.”

  “Then I’d better come along too,” Mrs F shoots back at him. “Hold on, I’ll just grab my basket.”

  And before anyone can think how to stop her, Mrs Fossil joins us, a large basket under one arm, covered over with a tartan tea towel.

  “So, Herbie,” she says, edging in front of Dr Thalassi as the four of us walk on, “have you had a chance to think more about my lovely fish-shaped bottle? I don’t want to assume anything, I’m sure, but I have cleared a nice space in my shop window, and got some fairy lights ready—”

  “In the castle,” the doc booms, trying to step back in front of the beachcomber, “I have a magnificent first-century Roman pillar on which to display the bottle. It will have pride of place in the museum entranceway—”