Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

  But is it taunting me? Or is the hermit crab trying to tell me something?

  Suddenly, the shell springs once more into clockwork life. It scuttles back up over my face and head, and down my back to my hands. It begins to saw with its sword blades. But there’s no pain. Instead, the constant pressure of the knots vanishes as the ropes are severed and my hands are freed. Then the hermit crab cuts the rope binding my legs.

  I’m free!

  “He’s free!” cries a voice. “The Lost-and-Founder is getting away!”

  I struggle to my feet, crouching low on the wobbly end of the plank. I look up at the heavily armed fishermen of Eerie and the reloaded whaling cannon. And I see two things: one thing that fills me with utter dread, and another thing that gives me sudden, unexpected, joyous hope.

  The dread thing? Well, that’s Gargantis. The monster has swum across the sky way faster than Bludgeon can turn, and it is closing in on us from above, like a comet about to collide with the earth.

  I look down at the clockwork hermit crab nestling in my hand. It doesn’t have a face, but somehow I know it’s looking back at me. Without warning, it jumps in my hand, retracts all its appendages in one smart movement and lands neatly in my jacket pocket.

  I rise unsteadily until I’m standing on the plank. I look at Deep Hood, Boadicea Bates and the massed crew of the Bludgeon. I look at the descending sky monster.

  So this was my destiny after all.

  I jump into the sea.

  GANCY

  I’M UNDER THE WATER for a long time. It’s when I surge back up to take a desperate breath that the hand grabs me. Or rather, the hands do, as four of them clutch at different parts of my poor, sodden, adventure-soiled uniform and pull me out of the sea.

  “Herbie!”

  “Violet!” I gasp in reply as I lie on the deck of the Jornty Spark.

  This, you see, was the other thing I’d noticed – the unexpected, joyous, hopeful thing. The unmistakable shape of Blaze Westerley’s little electric boat powering silently towards Bludgeon at high speed.

  “Welcome aboard,” says Blaze. “Now, let’s get out of here!” And he jumps back to the wheelhouse. In a second, the Spark is banking sharply, sending up a wall of water.

  I pull myself up on my elbow and look back at Bludgeon. Despite the darkness, I see the fishermen running around in terror as Gargantis falls out of the sky above them. Only Deep Hood stands his ground. He shoves the cowering sailors away from the whaling cannon, swings the weapon up to face the monster and fires. The explosion comes almost immediately in the sky above Bludgeon, blasting Violet down beside me. Shattered sea monster scales the size of dustbin lids fall in the sea all around, as the Spark roars away at full thrust.

  “Vi!” I gasp again, sitting up and flicking a piece of hot twisted metal off my uniform. “How did you find me?”

  “We’ve been out in the Spark for an hour, looking for you,” Violet replies. “It was the explosions that told us where you were.”

  “And Bludgeon?” I say, twisting around to try and see behind us. “Did the creature…?”

  “No,” Blaze calls to me from the wheelhouse. “That last spear was a nasty hit. Gancy’s been forced back up into the clouds. Bludgeon’s still afloat.”

  Sure enough, Boadicea Bates’s boat can still be seen, far behind us as we speed away. There’s a beam of light shining out from it, probing the sky. Above her, Gargantis is no more than a coiling shadow, swimming high in the flickering storm cloud. As we watch, a bolt of lightning jabs down at the boat but is channelled harmlessly into the sea. That must be the lightning conductors the fishermen told me about. In reply, another spear is sent skyward, exploding high in the storm, causing a shrieking moan from the beast. Bludgeon is waging war against the monster in the sky.

  “But why doesn’t it just leave? Why’s Gargantis still attacking the fishermen?”

  Then I remember.

  “The sprightning!” I cry. “Where is she, Vi? Did she get away…?”

  My mind fills with a sudden image of the fishes that writhed and jumped below me when I was tied to the plank, their awful mouths gaping hungrily at the sprightning’s wondrous light. “She wasn’t…?”

  Violet shakes her head. She holds something out to me. It’s a Lost-and-Founder’s cap, a dry one that she must have brought out with her from my cellar. I take it and hold it like a bowl. Inside it, the sprightning is huddled in the corner, barely sparking at all.

  “She must be exhausted,” I say, tipping my cap gently from side to side. “She signalled so hard to go home, Vi.”

  “Then I hope she perks up fast,” says Blaze, powering down the engines and bringing the Spark about. “If the sprightning can’t signal again soon, Gancy will keep attacking Bludgeon. Gancy may be big, but I don’t think she’ll survive if she keeps being hit with exploding spears like that.”

  “Gancy?” I say. “You almost make it sound friendly, and not a vast monster out of legend that’s trying to destroy Eerie-on-Sea.”

  “That’s because she’s not!” Violet declares.

  Something’s changed. Vi has news, I can tell. And I want to know it! I want to know how Violet escaped Deep Hood and teamed up with Blaze and came out to sea to find me. But I’m suddenly very tired, and the cold of the ocean is shutting down my brain.

  I begin to shiver uncontrollably.

  “Come below deck, Herbie,” says Vi. “I don’t care what the doc says, you really might catch your death from this cold.”

  I must pass out for a bit, because when I can next think straight, I’m a lot drier. And something is biting my hand.

  “Ow!”

  “Prr-up!” comes a familiar voice, and a furry head rubs my chin.

  “Erwin!”

  I’m amazed to see the bookshop cat. On a boat, of all places.

  “I needed all the help I could get,” says Vi. “When Deep Hood took you, I went into a bit of a panic, and Erwin got scooped up in the rush. But first I had to get out of that sarcophagus.”

  “What about Lady Kraken?” I say, suddenly remembering her pirouetting underwear as Deep Hood bulldozed straight through her.

  “She was all right,” Violet explains. “A bit shaken, but that ocean potion stuff was still having its effect. It was Lady Kraken who got me out of the sarcophagus. She gave me a lecture about fandangles and door-to-door salesmen. She’ll be fine.”

  I look around me. I’m still in my battered uniform, and there’s an oily towel near by that looks as if it’s recently been used to dry off a small Lost-and-Founder. I’m warm and toasty and realize that it’s because I’m leaning against the green ceramic battery that powers old Squint Westerley’s electric engine. The battery is humming with power, and there’s a dependable fizz in the air.

  “You fixed it!” I say to Blaze, who is sitting on the steps that lead down from the hatchway.

  “Thanks to you two,” he says with a grin. “And your advice. Turns out I could reverse the polarity of a flow capacitor, after all. If only…” He lowers his eyes. “If only my uncle had been here to see it.”

  “I’m sure he’d have been proud of you,” Violet says, beaming. “And you’ve piloted the boat like anything, and we found Herbie. You’re ready to take over the Jornty Spark, Blaze. You’ve proved it.”

  But Blaze looks away.

  “Why did you shout, Vi?” I demand, bringing her attention back to me. Blaze fixing his uncle’s boat is all well and good, but we wouldn’t be in this mess at all if Violet hadn’t given us away when we were listening in to Deep Hood and Lady K’s conversation. “Remind me to never go eavesdropping with you again.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Violet pulls a face. “But I suddenly understood something. It was when Deep Hood drew a line across the table with his tentacle that I suddenly understood how the secret writing works. Herbie, I can read it! I can read Eerie Script!”

  TWO HALVES OF A COMPASS

  I BLINK AT VIOLET. BUT SHE SEEMS TO BE expecting something
a bit more than blinks.

  “Seriously, Herbie,” she says. “I can read Eerie Script! I can read the message on the sides of the fish-shaped bottle. And the inscriptions on old Squint’s charts. I can read it all!”

  “But how?” I say. “What’s the secret to reading Eerie Script?”

  Then I think maybe I shouldn’t have asked this, because there’s surely no time for an explanation now. But it’s too late – Violet’s face breaks out into an excited smile, and she brings out her piece of paper and pen. I get the feeling that she’s been waiting to tell me all about it ever since I was kidnapped.

  “Herbie, it’s easy! Once you know how. Eerie Script isn’t ancient runes. It’s a secret code, just as I thought. And like any code, you just need to know the key.”

  “And you’ve got the key?” I say, though I don’t know why I sound so surprised. “You, Violet Parma, have cracked the code?”

  Violet nods, sending her hair into overdrive.

  “Remember how the symbols never seem to be quite the same from message to message? Well, there are two symbols that are always there. Symbols that look like this.”

  She smooths the paper on the floor and draws them:

  “Yes,” I say, “the two crosses, but—”

  “What do you get if you put these two symbols together?”

  “Er.” I overlap the two crosses in my mind’s eye and get a funny eight-legged shape. “A spider?”

  “No! It’s a compass. Look.” And Violet draws it.

  “It’s north, east, south and west from one cross, and from the other, it’s the directions in between: north-east, south-east and so on. It’s the eight points of a compass, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Now, remember this?” Violet pulls a book out of her pocket and holds it up to me. It’s Set Course for the Storm by Clarity Marks.

  “That’s the book the mermonkey dispensed for me!” I cry, shuddering at the tentacle on its cover.

  “Well, maybe it really was meant for both of us after all,” says Vi. “Because the title and the author’s name are also the clues I needed. I just didn’t see it straightaway. The key to reading Eerie Script is direction, Herbie. So, look at this compass again and tell me which direction you think the storm is.”

  I look at the drawing.

  “North-east?” I suggest. “Because that’s the compass direction with the lightning flash?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Right!” I say, excited now myself. “So what do you do when you have a direction?”

  “That’s the fun part,” says Vi. “You take a pen and make a mark in that direction on every symbol, and then you can read it. It’s easy!”

  “Um,” I say, the excitement going a bit flat. “What?”

  Violet shakes her head with impatience. She picks up her pen again and slowly writes a completely new message in Eerie Script, her tongue sticking out in concentration.

  “There!” she says, thrusting the paper and pen at me.

  “Just draw a short line in a north-easterly direction from every dot.”

  So I do, feeling slightly silly, until suddenly the Eerie Script transforms in front of my eyes:

  “Bladderwracks!” I cry.

  “Bladderwracks indeed,” says Vi. “And then, in another message, you can choose a completely different compass heading, say …

  … and leave off parts of the letters in that direction instead, so the code will look different. But as long as you include the compass, anyone who knows the trick will know what to do. That’s the secret, Herbie!”

  I stare at the paper a bit more, managing to find room in my bamboozled brain to feel amazed by what Violet has done. Then I turn over the paper and look among the scribblings and workings-out until I find the original rubbing Vi made from the fish-shaped bottle. As I thought, Violet has used her pen on this already. I read what it says out loud:

  “Gargantis sleeps, Eerie keeps. Gargantis wakes, Eerie quakes.”

  And then, the message from around the rim:

  “Gargantis dies, Eerie dies, and all falls into the sea.”

  “Gargantis dies, Eerie dies?” I repeat, looking up at Violet. “But that isn’t in the old saying. I thought killing Gargantis would save the town.”

  “The fishermen think the same,” says Vi. “Everyone who believes in Gargantis thinks the same, because this line has been lost and forgotten. But old Squint Westerley found it. Old Squint Westerley understood it all.”

  “But what about the earthquakes? The cracks in Eerie Rock…?”

  “It’s not the storm that’s causing Eerie Rock to crumble,” Vi explains, “it’s crumbling because Gancy is out of her cave. Gargantis sleeps, Eerie keeps, remember? Squint said the creature was sleeping in a cave when he first saw her. Later he found out why. Gancy isn’t destroying Eerie Rock, Herbie. She’s been holding it up all these years. If the fishermen kill her, it will be the end of Eerie-on-Sea!”

  “But what can we do?”

  “The sprightning,” says Blaze, “is the Gargantic Light of legend. It’s precious beyond anything to Gargantis. We can use it to lure her back home.”

  “Exactly,” says Vi. “We need to lure Gancy away from that whaling cannon, before Deep Hood kills her and causes a disaster.”

  I look down into the cap in my hands and stroke the little creature gently. At my touch, the sprightning flickers back on and rises unsteadily into the air before plopping fizzily onto my head.

  “The sprightning can signal to her,” I say. “If she has the strength. But then what?”

  Violet gives me a level stare. Then she turns to Blaze.

  “Do you have another barrel?” she asks. “And rope?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then I have a plan,” Violet declares. “We get the monster to follow us, we sail straight to the Vortiss and lower ourselves down into the whirlpool. Then you, Herbert Lemon, can do your Lost-and-Founder bit and return this Gargantic Light to its rightful owner, once and for all.”

  THE FIRST RULE

  UMBRELLAS.

  That’s what I thought I’d be dealing with when I took on the position of Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Umbrellas, and maybe the odd suitcase.

  Even when I was first led down into the glittering cavern of misplaced thingummybobbery in the hotel cellar, and had my breath taken away by it all, I still thought the job would mostly be returning whim-whams and knicker-knacks to forgetful guests, and keeping the ledger up to date.

  But never, not even in my wildest imaginings, did I think I’d one day face an expedition to the depths of the ocean to return a magical light to a gigantic sea creature of legend.

  Of course, I had no one to train me back then. Mr Mollusc just threw my new uniform in my face and marched off, leaving me to cope all by myself. That’s why the rules are so important – the rules of lost-and-foundering, which I found scribbled on scraps of paper tucked into the ledger, or pinned to the wall behind the desk in my cubbyhole. One of them even turned up at the bottom of the biscuit jar (Tea breaks make the world go around. Keep it spinning!), another when I was sorting through the lost books on my lost-books bookcase (One person’s throwaway scrap is another person’s bookmark!). One rule – Never store snakes in the underwear drawer! – is even scratched in desperate letters on the floor. It’s the collected wisdom of all the Lost-and-Founders before me, stretching back through the ages and coming down to yours truly in countless secret ways. It’s the hidden apprenticeship Mr Mollusc will never know I’ve had.

  I’ve been spending my spare time collecting these rules and trying to get them in some sort of order. I’ve even tried writing a few of my own. But if there’s one thing that unites every rule and makes sense of it all, it’s this: It’s not really about the lost things at all. It’s about the people who lost them.

  That’s the first rule of lost-and-foundering.

  If you find something that is lost, and you know who it belongs to, there is NO DOUBT AT ALL what
you should do.

  Even if it does involve facing your greatest fear and voyaging to the cold, dark bottom of the sea to do it.

  I pull my Lost-and-Founder’s cap onto my head, sprightning and all, and set it straight.

  “OK,” I say, with almost no squeak whatsoever. “OK, let’s do it!”

  We’re below deck, helping Blaze tie up the barrel, when something makes us turn. A steady light is spilling down into the hatchway – a light that wasn’t there before.

  The beam of a powerful searchlight.

  “They’ve found us!” Blaze cries, dropping the rope.

  He scrambles up the ladder and onto the deck, with Vi and me running to follow.

  Up on deck, the rocking of the boat seems even more pronounced. The waves are growing wild again, and the Jornty Spark is being tossed about like a stick in a game of Poohsticks gone horribly wrong.

  The deck is floodlit by a powerful beam of light from across the heaving water. It’s from Bludgeon, as she crashes through the waves towards us.

  “Hold on!” cries Blaze, jumping into the wheelhouse and engaging the battery. The dial lights up a strong blue, and the needle shows a charge of seventy per cent. Blaze shoves the drive lever forward, and Violet and I cling to the rail as the Spark thrusts ahead and begins to accelerate.

  But Bludgeon is already at maximum speed and closing on us fast – an ugly hulk of iron, enveloped in diesel smoke. Its prow slices through the sea like a mighty barnacled blade, threatening to smash our little wooden boat in two.

  Blaze spins the wheel, turning us hard to try and dodge the impact. But the Spark is struck violently as the great fishing vessel sweeps past and scrapes our side with a sound like splitting planks. Above, on the deck of Bludgeon, the fishermen shout and jeer.

  “Give us the Light!” bellows the voice of Boadicea Bates over the wind.

  Inside my Lost-and-Founder’s cap, I feel the sprightning twitch.