Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

  But Blaze doesn’t reply. Instead he powers down the engine and turns hard again, until we are facing back the way Bludgeon came. Then he opens up the throttle to make our escape.

  We don’t see the rope lasso until it’s already over the tusk on the prow of the Spark and pulled tight. The other end of the rope must be tied to Bludgeon, because we’re flipped around as we reach the end of it, and suddenly we’re powering straight towards our enemy! Blaze quickly puts the boat into reverse and we start moving backwards, but we’re stopped again. It is, quite literally, the end of the line.

  “Get that rope cut!” cries Blaze.

  Violet and I look around for something to “get that rope cut” with, but there’s nothing. Violet grabs the rope and tugs at it, but it’s thick and gnarly and strong. In front of us now, Bludgeon begins to come about in the heaving water, and the ghastly faces of the fishermen are picked out by flashes from the storm as they leer at us, clutching their axes and boathooks.

  The rope begins to shorten as we’re winched in.

  “The fisherfolk of Eerie,” Boadicea Bates calls across the waves, “always make their catch!” And the fishermen roar in triumph.

  But now no one on the Jornty Spark is looking at Bludgeon. It’s what’s just appeared behind Bludgeon that has grabbed our attention. In the sky above, forgotten by the fishermen in their eagerness to capture us, Gargantis attacks. The clouds part, and two vast yellow eyes above a gaping mouth fill the sky as the monster charges down.

  “Look out!” we cry to the fishermen, and we point and wave our arms frantically. But the fishermen just laugh and wave back like it’s all a joke, as our boat is pulled ever closer to theirs.

  Above us, Gargantis – wreathed in storm and lightning – is only seconds away.

  “She’s going to crush us all!” Violet cries. And it’s true – we’re so close to Bludgeon now that our shared doom is sealed.

  Except… I shove my hand in my pocket and pull out the clockwork hermit crab.

  “I don’t know what part you play in all this,” I cry to it. “But if you help me again, I promise I’ll do all I ever can to help you!”

  The shell springs from my hand, its blades extending in a flash of bright steel. It spins through the air towards the tusk, and with a fourfold sword swipe, it severs the rope.

  The Spark lurches backwards as we break free.

  “Hold on!” cries Blaze, spinning the wheel and then slamming the drive lever forward to full thrust. Our little boat roars away over the waves at maximum velocity.

  I look back and see mighty Gargantis impact the sea where Bludgeon is, and where we just were, with a sound like the end of the world. A wall of water – a tidal wave as high as the Grand Nautilus Hotel – soars into the air, and closes over the Jornty Spark like a giant mouth in the sea.

  DEEP RUNNING

  WE ERUPT THROUGH the wall of water, and I am blown off my feet. I find myself hanging on to the boat as pieces of wood and glass from the wheelhouse fly past me. I see Violet, her hair streaming back and her eyes terrified, clinging on by one hand. I grab her and she grabs me.

  The giant wave crashes behind us as Blaze squeezes every scrap of speed he can out of old Squint’s engine. A surge of water lifts the boat high and carries us with it at a crazy angle. Blaze fights with the wheel, his skipper’s cap somehow still on his head as he struggles to keep us straight.

  And then, as suddenly as it erupted, the wave is spent and the sea grows calmer, and once again we’re just riding the choppy waters of Eerie Bay. Blaze throttles down.

  We look around, amazed to be alive.

  The Jornty Spark is battered, the roof of her wheelhouse torn halfway off. The carved tusk on the prow is leaning at a crazy angle. The turbine has been smashed clean off the wooden pylon, which lies crumpled along the deck. It’ll be a long time before the battery can be charged again. But the Spark is tough, and we’re still afloat.

  “Bludgeon?” says Blaze, running to the back of the boat and leaning out. “She’s … she’s gone!”

  The sea behind us is empty.

  “A direct hit.” I adjust my cap. “Deep Hood zero – Gargantis one, by the looks of it. Game over.”

  “Herbie!” Violet nudges me. “There were people on that boat. And they’re … they’re all gone. Every one!”

  I say nothing. I don’t like to think what it must have been like on Boadicea’s boat when the monster fell out of the sky and crushed it – and everyone on board – down to the ocean floor.

  Then Blaze starts to sing.

  It’s just a few lines of a song of the sea, sung to a sad tune I’ve heard before, and it’s over almost as soon as it has begun. But he’s not singing it for us.

  He’s saying goodbye.

  The fisherfolk may have treated him and his uncle badly, but Blaze is still one of them. There will be few fishermen left in Eerie-on-Sea now.

  “We should go,” says Vi, putting her hand on his shoulder. “There’s something we have to do, remember?”

  But I’m not listening. I’m scrabbling around the chaotic deck, shoving aside split boards of wood and twists of metal. Where is it? Where is it?

  “What are you doing, Herbie?”

  “The shell!” I cry. “It’s gone. It saved us, and now it’s gone!”

  “Probably swept over the side,” says Blaze.

  “But I made it a promise…”

  “Herbie,” Violet says matter-of-factly, “I don’t know how you got that shell back, but it’s gone now. Just be grateful you had its blades to cut us free.”

  I sit down on the deck and put my head in my hands.

  It’s a little later and the storm has given way to strange slow-tumbling clouds in the sky, and the wind has died to a whisper. The ordinary darkness of night reasserts itself, though a weird, wavering glow can be seen below the horizon, as if from the depths of the ocean.

  “Gargantis has gone deep,” says Blaze. “I reckon she thinks her light was still on the Bludgeon. She’ll be swimming on the sea floor now, searching, but she’ll take to the skies again soon enough, if she can’t find it. And the storm will return with her.”

  He re-engages the engine and nudges the drive lever forward. The Spark moves ahead steadily.

  “The dial is down to thirty-seven per cent,” I hear Violet say. “Will that be enough?”

  “It’ll get us to the Vortiss at least,” Blaze replies, steadying the wheel. “We’ll see about the rest later.”

  Violet glances at me, but I say nothing.

  A massive shape sweeps past us on the starboard bow. It’s a spur of rock. Shortly afterwards another passes by on the port side, even bigger than the first. We’re entering Maw Rocks – the vast expanse of rocky sea stacks that jut from the water like giant teeth. Soon Blaze is having to work hard at the wheel, turning this way and that, as the rocks become bigger and closer together, and the current starts to pick up.

  “You know the way?” says Vi.

  “Aye,” he replies. “I’ve studied my uncle’s charts. And I’ve been to the Vortiss once before, remember?”

  “You think you can find it again?”

  “You don’t find the Vortiss,” says a feline voice. “The Vortiss finds you.”

  Erwin is peering up at us from the hatchway, his ears flat and his whiskers low. He looks about as uncomfortable on the sea as I am, but amazingly, despite everything, he’s completely dry.

  “That’s true enough,” says Blaze, frantically spinning the wheel to avoid a collision with a jagged spike of rock and then turning to look at Vi and me. “But which one of you said that?”

  Violet and I point at each other, and I manage a grin.

  “All currents in Maw Rocks lead to death or the Vortiss,” Blaze continues, turning hard to port. “We’ve long since passed the point no sailor should pass if he wants to stay alive.”

  “Why are you speeding up, then?” says Vi. “Shouldn’t we slow down?”

  “I already have the e
ngine in reverse,” says Blaze, twisting the wheel again. “Just hold on. We’ll be there soon.”

  Something big moves beneath the boat.

  I look over the side, and my stomach lurches as I see a monstrous, glittering flank of scales and fins slide along deep, deep beneath the water, leaving me with an impression of vastness and deepness that makes me want to close my eyes and not open them again till we’re back on dry land.

  “Gargantis!” says Blaze with a gulp. “Still searching. She would break us like matchwood if she surfaced now.”

  I clutch my Lost-and-Founder’s cap. I can feel the sprightning twitching inside, prickling my scalp with her electrical potential. Has she rested enough to signal? And am I really about to be lowered underwater in a barrel to return her to this giant of the deep? Oh, bladderwracks! I am, aren’t I? I think my knees are about to give way.

  Then we pass between two great horns of rock and see before us an amazing sight.

  VORTISS

  A SPACE OPENS AHEAD – a clearing in the treacherous expanse of rocks. But the sea here is far from calm. Fed by converging currents, the water is channelled around and around, spiralling into a rushing whirlpool wider than the Eerie pier is long. And at the centre of the whirlpool, the water turns and falls away into a gaping black hole.

  The Vortiss.

  Almost as strange and terrible as what we can see is how we can see it – myriad points of light are zipping around in the air, or drifting on the wind, or dancing across the water’s surface, bathing everything in a magical, sparkling light.

  “Sprightnings!” Violet gasps. “Dozens of sprightnings!”

  Blaze pulls the drive stick back to full reverse, and we come to a stop – holding our position against the current between the two great rocks. All that is keeping us from being sucked into the powerful whirl of the Vortiss is old Squint’s engine and the mighty battery he built to run it. I glance at the dial. Its needle is trembling on twenty per cent.

  “These ones seem different, though,” says Vi, as the sprightnings gather around us, zipping here and there. “Smaller, more like electrical bees.”

  “They don’t look too friendly,” I say as one of the crackling things zaps off the rail beside my head with a pang, showering me with sparks.

  “Ow!” cries Violet, ducking as another swoops low and singes her hair.

  “Gancy’s been hurt,” says Blaze, dodging an electrical sprite of his own. “Maybe they think it’s us who did it!”

  Then three sprightnings fly down through the open hatchway and go ping-pang! as they zip around the pots and pans below deck.

  “They’re trying to get into the engine!” cries Blaze.

  But before he can act, they fly back out and circle the boat once before spiralling in towards my head.

  I feel a tugging at the elastic on my Lost-and-Founder’s cap.

  So I take it off.

  The sprightning – my sprightning – leaps from her hairy hideout and dances joyously above my head. She lets out a flash of lightning. The other sprightnings flutter close, sparking bright and dancing in the air. They start flashing, too, as if amplifying the signal.

  “Oh!” Violet shouts, pointing into the sky above us.

  I lift my head and nearly fall over.

  Above the Jornty Spark, filling the sky over the Vortiss, the vast face of Gargantis looms down at us – two immense half-moon eyes over a huge tusk-edged fishy snout. Behind it, a long sinewy body coils and turns gently in the air, as hundreds of shimmering fins flutter and bat, creating clouds. On either side of its neck, gigantic flippers paddle slowly as the beast comes to a halt just above our little boat and treads the air.

  “Gancy!” Violet climbs the broken wheelhouse and reaches out, managing to touch with one fingertip the gnarly, chinless lower lip of the mighty storm fish. The creature lets out a long, keening moan in sing-song response.

  On Gancy’s head, between her eyes, is the stem of a lure, like the lure that protrudes from the head of an anglerfish. At the end of this stem is a large gauzy bulb, like a sling, open on one side. But unlike an anglerfish, whose lure glows bright, Gancy’s is cold and dark.

  My sprightning – the Gargantic Light – starts dancing above me, and I suddenly realize exactly what I need to do to return her to her rightful place. And I could shout for joy, because now I won’t need to be lowered down into the ocean’s depths in some smelly old barrel! I can return the light right here, right now, and get the lost-and-foundering done when I’m only half drowned! And then, when the day has been saved and the world put to rights, we can sail back to Eerie-on-Sea to see if Mrs Fossil still has some of those salty caramel muffins left!

  I climb onto the ruins of the wheelhouse beside Violet. The creature must sense what I’m about to do and lowers the bulb of its lure towards me. I cup the sprightning in my hand and reach up as the empty bulb swings down.

  But my hand doesn’t get there.

  Gargantis lurches back as a spluttering, roaring sound cuts through the night – an angry mechanical noise that seems offensive in this mythical moment. A hulking shape emerges into the sea clearing, in a cloud of stinking diesel smoke.

  “It can’t be!” gasps Blaze.

  But it is.

  It’s Bludgeon.

  The iron fishing vessel is crumpled and buckled, and its masts and spotlights are smashed. Smoke spews from twisted gaps in the hull, and the boat is barely afloat at all. And yet, somehow, Bludgeon has survived! On her deck the wild faces of the fishermen stare in terror at the creature above them.

  All except one.

  Deep Hood points the whaling cannon towards Gancy and fires at point-blank range.

  The spear hits the creature in the neck, embedding itself deep. Then the bomb on the point explodes in a sickening ball of fire that bursts out of the storm fish’s mouth.

  “Gancy!” Violet cries as the great beast writhes and twists, shrieking with pain and spouting flame. It smashes a flipper into the sea, and I fall back off the wheelhouse and crash to the deck. The sprightning spirals helplessly back down towards me, as if tugged by an invisible string.

  “NO!”

  Gargantis tries to rear back into the clouds, shattered scales tumbling from her wound, but instead she starts falling from the sky, her fins going limp, one by one. There’s a crash of splintering rock as she smashes into a sea stack and collapses into the sea.

  “What have you done?” Violet wails towards Bludgeon.

  It’s then that the other, smaller sprightnings attack. They swarm around the iron fishing boat, darting and zapping at the fishermen and running in hot angry arcs across its surface. Deep Hood is struck full force and drops from sight with a cry, his tentacle flailing. Then they reach Bludgeon’s diesel engines, and there is an explosion as the back of the boat is blown wide open.

  The fishermen cry out in terror as their vessel, no longer under power, is instantly grabbed by the fierce currents of the Vortiss. Bludgeon sweeps around the whirlpool once, then twice, and then – on the third turn – is pulled decisively into the centre. The boat tilts crazily and then it’s gone, all thousand tonnes of it, swallowed with its crew by the relentless swirl of the Vortiss.

  “They’ve killed her!” Violet clutches at me. “They’ve killed Gancy!”

  The CHARGE dial starts flashing a warning, the needle dangerously low.

  “We have to go!” Blaze cries, grabbing the drive lever. “Or the Vortiss will get us too!”

  Then something breaks the surface of the swirling sea and towers above us, streaming water. It’s one of Gargantis’s mighty clawed flippers. Before we can react, it sweeps down and strikes the side of the Jornty Spark with a tremendous smack.

  And now I’m flying through the air.

  Except, of course, that Lost-and-Founders can’t fly, not on their own, so the actual flying part is soon over, and I hit the sea before I can close my mouth.

  When I bob up to the surface, flapping my arms and spluttering for brea
th, the Spark is far away, turning wildly, and I’m already deep in the irresistible current.

  “Blurbie!” glugs a voice, and I see Violet close by in the water, reaching out to me. I reach back and we cling together as the world turns and turns and turns again, as we’re swirled into the mouth of the Vortiss and swallowed down to the cold, dark bottom of the sea.

  THE TURGID LAKE

  “HERBIE! HERBIE, WAKE UP!”

  Wake up? How can I “wake up”? I don’t remember going to sleep. I do remember something, though. Now, what was it? Ah, yes…

  OH!

  I wake up with a start.

  “Herbie, you won’t believe where we are.” Violet’s wet hair is all over my face as she blinks down at me. “Look!”

  And so I do, propping myself up on one elbow and staring around.

  “The bottom of the sea!” I gasp.

  Beside my elbow is a human skull.

  “Argh!”

  “Herbie, calm down!” Violet snaps. “Look a bit more.”

  I force my eyes off the skull and gaze around.

  I’m lying on a bed of soft mossy earth, in an otherworldly landscape that is dotted with strange plants and lit by the glow of sprightnings. All around are the wrecks of ships and boats, more than I can count, some ancient beyond belief. The ground is littered with coils of rope, anchors, cargo barrels and other ship’s whatnots – looking like they have been flung here over centuries.

  “It’s not the seabed, Herbie,” says Vi. “It’s a cavern! A huge undersea cavern, beneath Eerie Rock.”

  I get to my feet, gaze around the vast space and see that the wrecks are lying on the shore of a lake of churning water. Arching over it all is a high rocky ceiling, sparkling with stalactites and echoing with the sound of the splashing lake. Sprightnings flit and crackle here and there, and at the far end – in the cavern wall – I see the openings of caves.

  “I think that’s the other end of the Vortiss,” says Vi, pointing to the seething lake. “Where the things it swallows are spat out.”

  “Like we were?” I ask.