“But what about Gancy?” says Violet. “Is she going to be OK?”
Old Squint gives a pirate’s grin and pats the storm fish’s snout.
“She’s an ancient thing,” he replies. “A creature from the beginning of the world, who should endure till its end. I reckon she’ll heal well enough. But she’ll need looking after.”
“Like Saint Dismal looked after her?” says Boadicea Bates, approaching with the other fishermen. “In the old stories?”
Squint grunts.
“No. Not like that at all.”
“What happened exactly?” Violet asks. “When you brought Deep Hood here? Blaze told us his side of it, but…”
“Blaze? You’ve seen my nephew?”
“It was Blaze who brought us here,” I reply. “In the Jornty Spark.”
Squint looks amazed to hear this. Then he shakes his head.
“I was such a fool. I was desperate to finish my engine, but I should have realized that the man in the hood meant no good. Yet I took his gold and agreed to take him to the Vortiss. I suppose I was just pleased to meet someone who didn’t laugh at my stories.” And he glares at Boadicea. “Anyway, I realized my mistake soon enough.”
“Because of the bomb?”
Squint nods.
“I couldn’t believe it when he pulled it out. I fought him, but that tentacle burst from his hood and threw the bomb at my boat! I understood then that he wanted to kill us so that no one else would know he was here, or how to find the Vortiss. I had no choice but to cut the rope that held the barrel and hope that Blaze would have the sense to get away.”
“He did,” says Violet.
“Anyway, when we got down here, the fight continued. That hooded maniac threw another bomb, right at Gancy’s head! He seemed desperate to kill her before she could wake. That must have been when the fish-shaped bottle got thrown into the water and lost. Well, there was no stopping Gargantis from waking after that. Sebastian Eels fled for his life back out to sea, leaving me here, desperately trying to find that bottle. It must have been washed into the sea as well.”
“It turned up on Eerie Beach during the storm,” I explain. “I’ve been trying to figure out who it belongs to ever since.”
“And we never would have done that without Blaze,” says Violet. “He was amazing.”
“Was he?” Squint looks taken aback.
Violet gives the old man a stern look. “He fixed your damaged engine all on his own, and he stood up to the other fishermen. And he sailed the Jornty Spark into Maw Rocks to bring us safely to the Vortiss.”
“He even reversed the polarity,” I say, “of a … a … thingummybob. And everything!”
Squint Westerley opens and closes his mouth as if stunned. Then he looks up at the stalactite roof of the cavern to the deep sea beyond, and nods.
“That’s my boy,” he says.
“How did the sprightning end up in a bottle in the first place?” I ask then. “It seems so cruel to lock her up.”
Squint scowls.
“As for that, we have no one to blame but old Dismal himself. Follow me.”
So we do, as he climbs rough-hewn steps in the cliff. We arrive at a recess – a shelf of rock just over the cave entrance where Gancy’s head now trembles with profound snores. In the recess, sitting on a throne made of boat wreckage and storm fish tusks, sits a skeleton – a skeleton wearing the crumbling remains of a monk’s habit. On the chin of the skull, attached to scraps of mummified skin, is a long dangling beard that reaches all the way to his bony toes. By the way the skeleton’s arms stick out, you can tell that something used to be held there.
The fish-shaped bottle.
“Is that…?” I goggle at the remains. “Is that Saint Dismal?”
“Aye,” says old Squint, straightening the saint’s wonky skull and brushing rock dust from the top of it. “But Saint? My armpit! He was nothing but a thief who found this place by chance and stole the Light. But when the Light is taken too far from a storm fish, the storm fish will wake. Gargantis searched in storm and rage to get her sprightning back, and Dismal realized he had no choice but to return it. The town was being destroyed. If only he’d left it at that, none of the rest of it would have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he took the Light again. And again and again. He couldn’t resist it. Dismal was a fisherman, and there’s nothing quite like the light of a sprightning for attracting fish. That’s how a storm fish fishes, after all, during its prodigious once-a-century hunts. Put a sprightning in a bottle and dangle it in the sea, and your nets will fill to bursting. Dismal found that as long as he brought the sprightning back to the cavern before dawn, Gargantis wouldn’t fully wake. It was a risk, but Dismal became famous for his miraculous catches. People came from far and wide to venerate the First Fisherman of Eerie-on-Sea and his wondrous Gargantic Light.
“But in the end he got fearful that someone else would take it. He couldn’t stand that someone in the future might use the Light and make legends of their own. So, at the very end of his life, he laid down laws to forbid any other fisherman to even approach the Vortiss. He had long communicated with a few chosen fisherfolk on shore, using a secret form of writing. Those followers set out the lore of the fishers of Eerie-on-Sea, and Dismal died on his throne, alone, clutching the bottle. And here he would have remained in secret if I hadn’t started asking questions. Anyway, it’s all here, in his writings.”
Squint waves his hand at the recess wall, behind the throne. The rock is covered in words, in tiny, carefully scratched letters.
“Eerie Script!” says Violet, touching the symbols with her hand.
“Know about that, do you?” Old Squint looks impressed.
“A little,” says Vi, giving me a wink.
Then Squint leads us back down the rocky steps to the cavern floor.
Where we see something creeping towards us.
CLERMIT
“HERBIE, LOOK!” SAYS VIOLET, pointing at the creeping thing. “Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes!” I cry, overjoyed.
Clambering over tufts and mossy knolls, a mechanical creature I recognize all too well scuttles towards us on four little brass legs.
“Clermit!”
“What?” Violet frowns.
“Clermit,” I explain as the wind-up shell gets closer. “‘Cl-’ from clockwork and ‘-ermit’ from hermit. Well, I have to call him something, and ‘clockwork hermit crab’ is a bit of a mouthful. He’s back!”
“But … but I thought it was Deep Hood’s gadget.”
“Deep Hood had him,” I say, “but I don’t think Clermit was ever really his to have. Besides, he’s chosen a new home now.”
I crouch down, and Clermit comes to a halt beside me. He’s got something dangling from one sword arm.
It’s my Lost-and-Founder’s cap.
I take the cap and put it on, and I feel good as the elastic slides around my chin.
Then I reach down, and Clermit climbs sluggishly into my hands. The brass legs and appendages, gritty with salt and sand, fold slowly into the shell. The whirring of the mechanism click-click-clicks to silence as the spring finally unwinds and the shell goes still.
“I made a promise to you,” I say, brushing sand and seaweed from the shell with my cuff. “And I’ll keep it. I’ll find your rightful owner, too, one day.”
I pop the sleeping Clermit under my cap. Well, I’ve got used to keeping something there, haven’t I?
“I reckon it’s time for you two to go home,” says old Squint.
“OK,” says Vi. “Only I don’t have the faintest idea how we do that.”
“Ah,” he replies with a wink, “there’s one more secret I can show you.”
Squint Westerley leads us back towards the churning lake. There is a channel leading out of it, along which shoots a fierce flow of water.
“This is where the water sucked down by the Vortiss finds its way back to the sea. It’s the quickest way
out.” Then he adds, no doubt seeing the alarm on our faces, “It’s said there’s a route up to the town through caves and fissures at the back of the cavern, but no one – not even Dismal himself – has been able to map the way. Eerie Rock has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, even with Gancy filling up the biggest of them. You’ll have to go back the soggy way, I’m afraid. Blaze will pick you up. Don’t worry.”
“If he’s still up there,” I say, the squeak creeping back into my voice as I contemplate what’s about to happen.
“He’ll be there,” old Squint declares. “But you’ll need this.”
He hands Violet his flare gun. She pushes it into her belt.
“And a barrel,” Squint adds as he rolls an old barrel towards us.
“Get this over the pair of you, and prepare for the ride of your lives across the bottom of the sea!”
“But won’t it be cold?” I say. “Won’t it be dark?”
“It’ll be a bit bumpy,” Squint concedes, “and there are a few squids and spider crabs. But keep the barrel over you, and the air trapped inside, and you’ll soon reach the surface. There’s a strong countercurrent that will take you halfway back to Eerie.”
Then old Squint puts his fingers to his mouth and whistles an eerie whistle. A nearby sprightning – one of the smaller ones, from the swarm – swoops over, and Squint whispers something we can’t catch. It comes and flits around above us.
“This little fellow will give you light.”
I look at the tiny electrical creature. It’s so like the one I kept under my cap, and yet it is different – smaller, less like a fairy, more like a bee.
“Aren’t you coming too?” Violet says to Squint.
Old Squint Westerley nods over his shoulder, to where the fishermen of Eerie-on-Sea, with Boadicea Bates, are standing on the shore of the lake, picking up shipwrecked objects and gazing around in wonder.
“Aye, in a few days,” he says. “I’ve got things to show that lot first. And things to say. But we’ll be back soon enough, never fear.”
So now there’s nothing left to do but climb into the rushing water. Squint tips up the barrel and lowers it as gently as he can over us, sprightning and all.
“Ready?” says Violet, beside me in the barrel, icy water up to her shoulders. Her eyes are flashing with excitement.
“Gng!” I reply, pressing against the sides of the barrel with my palms to keep myself as wedged as I can.
The sprightning fizzes and crackles.
Then we’re off.
How long the journey takes, I cannot say. I have some memory of Violet shrieking with fear, though I suspect it might have actually been delight. There is a really bumpy bit, and the barrel threatens to turn over many times, but then we’re rising, suddenly, like a cork, until …
BOOSH!
We hit the surface.
And throw off the barrel.
So now here we are – two bedraggled friends, soaked through and cold, bobbing in the ocean with a tiny sprightning flitting above us. In its fizzing light we see a low, broken rock – one of the sea stacks that has collapsed in the recent earthquakes. We clamber onto it, gasping. Then the sprightning flies away, back towards the Vortiss.
But not before I glimpse Violet holding the flare gun in the air.
PAM!
She fires it.
FZZZZ-zzz-zzz…
The flare rises into the sky.
Brilliant orange light illuminates the choppy sea all around.
“Do you think Blaze really is out here somewhere?” I ask. “His battery was getting flat the last time we saw it. And that must have been hours ago.”
Before Violet can answer, I spy a small light on the horizon. We watch as the light grows bigger and bigger, and soon we can see the smashed wheelhouse of the Jornty Spark and Blaze Westerley’s beaming freckled face, lit by the blue light of the dials.
“Ahoy!” he calls, waving his skipper’s cap. “Ahoy there!”
And so it is that we climb aboard the little boat once more, wrap ourselves in oily towels and the warmth of old Squint’s engine – not to mention the purrs of Erwin the cat – and watch as Blaze turns the wheel and sets course for home.
“Thirty per cent!” I say, looking at the dial. “But that’s more than when we got swept overboard.”
“I rigged up a small waterwheel,” Blaze explains. “Using a spare turbine and some bits and bobs. It kept the battery topped up.”
“When you see your uncle next,” says Vi, “make sure you tell him that. Or I will!”
“You mean…?” Blaze’s eyes light up. “You mean, you’ve seen him? He’s alive?”
“He is,” says Violet.
And she launches into a breathless account of everything we saw down in the undersea cavern, as Blaze blinks in amazement and the Jornty Spark carries us home to Eerie-on-Sea.
HERBIE’S CHOICE
IT’S THE NEXT MORNING, and the sky over the bay is clearer than it has been for days. A gentle sun shines low on the horizon, and a clean, crisp wind blows from the sea. It feels like the calm after a storm, which it is. And it feels like the winter has finally ended.
Violet and I arrive early at Seegol’s, with Erwin close behind.
“Will you tell them straightaway?” Vi asks me. “Or after chips?”
“Straightaway,” I reply, and push open the door.
Seegol’s Diner has not escaped the impact of the storm any more than the rest of the town. Several windows are broken, and the building has picked up a bend in its ceiling that it didn’t have before.
“Ah!” cries Seegol, beaming at us as he finishes hammering a board over a crack. “You are my first customers of the day. Please, take any seat you like.”
We sit at a table in the middle of the diner where the sun shines in cheery squares on the salt shakers and vinegar pots. I’m carrying an enormous bag, so I’m glad to put it down.
“Do you think they’ll get here soon?” I say to Vi.
The door of the diner opens, answering my question.
“Hallooo, my dears!” calls a cheery voice. “Hallooo, Mr Seegol! Isn’t it lovely out? And such wonderful things to find on the beach today! No time like after a storm for beachcombing.”
And Mrs Fossil comes breezing in, carrying a basket. Behind her is Jenny Hanniver.
“It’s not every day I’m summoned somewhere,” Mrs Fossil continues, settling down at our table and removing a few of her hats. “How exciting!”
“It’s for important Lost-and-Founder business,” I say, pulling the front of my uniform flat.
“Oh, I’m sure.” Jenny smiles. “Thank you for inviting me, too.”
“We’re just waiting for Dr Thalassi,” says Vi. “I can see him coming now.”
Sure enough, the doc is striding towards us along the pier, carrying his big black medical bag. His bow tie is crooked, and he looks as if he could do with a sit-down.
“Sorry I’m late,” he puffs as he enters the diner. “I have been rushed off my feet. A lot of people were hurt in the storm, and I’ve just spent the last hour with Lady Kraken. She is displaying some extraordinary symptoms.”
Violet and I exchange glances.
“What sort of symptoms?”
“A tiny tentacle!” says Dr Thalassi, putting his bag down. “Or something that looks a lot like one, growing on her back. And she claims to have been able to walk again for a few hours, which is quite impossible with her condition. But she’s very excited. She kept asking me about something called an ‘ocean potion’, though I don’t approve of these alternative remedies myself. Oh, and she told me to tell you, Herbie, that she’s expecting a full report later today. I believe the word she used to describe you was ‘dunderbrain’.”
I do a slightly desperate grin.
“Anyway,” the doc continues, “her ‘tentacle’ is already showing signs of dropping off, so I prescribed her an ointment. I expect it will be gone in a day or two.”
“Thank you, all, for coming
,” I say then, standing up and feeling nervous about being the centre of attention. “I’m pleased to say that I have finished my investigation into The Case of the Fish-Shaped Bottle, and I’ve summoned you all to hear what I’ve decided to do about it, and then to eat a huge slap-up lunch of fish and chips and whatever it is Mrs Fossil has brought with her in that basket, though I’m hoping it’s muffins.”
“It is!” declares Mrs F.
I reach into my bag and heave out the empty fish-shaped bottle, and with help from Violet, manage to get it into the centre of the table. It gleams at us with aqua light and ancient mystery.
“My lovely beachcombing find!” gasps Mrs Fossil. “So beautiful.”
“My historical artefact!” says the doc, letting his specs fall over his nose. “Quite fascinating.”
“So, what have you decided, Herbie?” says Jenny.
“I have decided,” I say, “that the rightful owner of this bottle is Mrs Fossil. She found it. It belongs to her.”
“OOH!” Mrs Fossil claps her hands.
Dr Thalassi falls silent. He looks down at the Formica tabletop, defeated.
“Oh, Doc, don’t take it like that,” cries Mrs F, her triumph evaporating as soon as she sees his face. “Please don’t be sad. There’s only one bottle, and we can’t cut it in two. Oh, why does it have to be so tricky!”
Violet coughs a little “ahem” cough.
“Well, you could donate your bottle to the museum,” she says. “You would still be the official finder and owner, of course. Your name would be on the card beside the bottle, explaining it all and telling visitors to the museum where they can find your wonderful Flotsamporium, as well as Eerie-on-Sea’s most famous beachcomber.”
“Famous?” says Mrs Fossil.
“And then,” I say, taking over from Violet, “in your shop window, you could display a framed photo of you with the bottle – along with a card explaining it all, and telling visitors to your Flotsamporium where they can find the amazing Museum of Eerie, and its distinguished curator.”
Gargantis Page 19
