The Fog Diver

by Joel Ross

  I glanced at Bea. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “You brought me a rose!” Bea exclaimed, her eyes suddenly bright.

  I wasn’t sure if she was playing along or just excited to see the flower. No telling with Bea.

  The mutineer captain looked from scrawny Bea to beautiful Hazel and his lip quirked. “You’re giving the wrong girl flowers, tetherboy.”

  “Go fog your head,” I muttered. “You garbo.”

  Vidious tapped me with the toe of his boot. “Mind your tongue.”

  “Don’t tease the boy, Vid,” Nisha said. “Young love is hard enough.”

  My head throbbed, my elbow burned, and they thought I was in love with Bea—but I didn’t care. I still had the diamond.

  “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” Vidious said, and crushed the rose in his fist.

  “If this is a good mood,” I muttered, “I’d hate to see what you look like cranky.”

  He sprinkled the rose petals onto the deck, then strolled across the boarding plank. His three airsailors followed, and a moment later the plank vanished into a slot in the Night Tide.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Hazel asked me, too softly for the muties to hear.

  “Getting my butt kicked,” I muttered, still splayed on the deck.

  “In that case, you did a pretty good job.”

  “It’s my special gift,” I told her.

  “Owww,” Swedish groaned, waking up and rubbing his head. “Why aren’t we dead yet?”

  “Scurry back to the junkyard,” Vidious shouted from the deck of the Night Tide. “And if I see you again, I’ll drop you into the Fog.”

  The warship veered away, fins slicing the air. The back draft of its fans shook our balloons, and the deck jerked and swayed. I exhaled in relief but stayed still until the Night Tide disappeared behind a towering spray of Fog. Then a smile crept across my face—I still had the diamond!

  “Got ’em!” Bea announced before I could say anything.

  “Got what?” Swedish asked.

  She showed him the crushed rose petals she’d collected from the deck. “These! They’re so purple!”

  “Looks more like pink to me.”

  “Not that kind of purple, Swede! And they’re softer than silk.”

  “Chess!” Hazel said. “Would you tell me what—”

  A slithery hissing sounded above us, louder than before, and the terrifying put-put of air escaping from a hole.

  We all froze, staring up past the rigging. For an instant, I refused to believe my ears. Then the raft lurched, the deck slanted, and the middle balloon popped with a terrifying bang.

  13

  “SWEDISH, TAKE THE WHEEL!” Hazel shouted. “Chess, the balloons! Bea—we need altitude, now!”

  Bea flung herself at the ballast tank as shreds of fabric cascaded around us. I raced into the rigging and wove my tether through the main lines: if I didn’t hook the two remaining balloons together, they’d slip from the rigging and we’d fall from the sky.

  While I tugged the lines closer, Bea crooned to the overtaxed engine.

  Swedish muttered under his breath for three long minutes, then said, “Would someone tell me what happened?”

  “Our balloon popped,” I told him, “because you fly this thing like it’s a racing thopper.”

  Which wasn’t fair of me, but what can I say? Getting tossed around by mutineers made me grumpy.

  “I mean, how come we’re still alive?” Swedish asked with a scowl in my direction. “What happened after I got knocked out?”

  “Hazel saved us!” Bea called to him from the gyroscope. “She saw a lady on the mutie ship who she knew was nice, only they dumped our cargo and wanted to take me prisoner—I mean, they said I’m a good geargirl, and then Hazel saw a cargo raft and realized they’re trying to smuggle something onto the Rooftop and—”

  “The woman is Captain Nisha,” Hazel called from the crow’s nest. “She’s Vidious’s sister. They say she’s three kinds of awesome, so I knew she wouldn’t actually hurt us. Watch that Fog!”

  The raft jerked sideways, avoiding a crest of Fog, and for the next few frenzied minutes, I tugged and jerked, forcing the lines closer, trying to secure the balloons.

  “C’mon,” I whispered to myself. “We’re too rich to die.”

  “Get her five feet higher!” Hazel shouted beneath me. “Now, Bea!”

  “She can’t,” Bea wailed. “She can’t!”

  “We’re touching Fog,” Hazel snarled. “You promised me five more feet.”

  “That was ten feet ago!”

  “Give me five feet or we’re dead.”

  “Fine!” Bea pulled a cable cutter from her belt and started apologizing to the raft.

  Hazel gritted her teeth. “One notch to the left, Swedish.”

  Swedish frowned, his knuckles white on the wheel. “Poor Mrs. E. She’s going to starve without us.”

  The raft swayed and bobbed, missing a ridge of Fog by inches. My arms ached from the effort of squeezing the lines tighter, and the bruise on my elbow throbbed. I gave one final heave, straining to pull the ropes together . . . and couldn’t.

  Hazel bellowed, “The aft balloon’s slipping, Chess! Steady them now!”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” I shouted, and threw my arms around the lines.

  Linking the leather bracers on my wrists, I trapped the lines inside a desperate hug. The ropes chafed my arms, and the pain brought tears to my eyes, but the rigging started to steady. I wanted to call for help but closed my eyes instead. If Swedish moved the wheel an inch too far, the raft would overturn, if Bea didn’t keep the fans spinning, we’d sink, and if Hazel didn’t plot the shortest course, we’d shake apart in the air.

  So I breathed slowly, trying to think of other things. Like switching the ring with the rose to trick the mutineers. Like selling the diamond to the bosses, then hiring coyotes to smuggle us into Port Oro. Finally we’d have more than a few scraps of food and a rickety shack. And we’d find a cure for Mrs. E.

  For twelve years after saving me from the Fog, Mrs. E hadn’t felt a twinge of fogsickness. Then last year, she’d started getting weaker. Only for a few hours, at first, but soon the sickness struck deeper. About six months ago, she’d spent two weeks straight sick in bed. Unable to stand, unable to feed herself. We’d known then that if we didn’t find a cure, we’d lose her forever. That’s when Hazel took me to meet the fogheads in the chamber under the platforms. And when they told us they couldn’t help, we decided to smuggle Mrs. E—and all of us—into Port Oro.

  We gathered in the kitchen and told her our plan. “We’ll start scavenging farther from home,” Hazel explained. “Until we raise enough money. There are places nobody’s searched in a hundred years.”

  Mrs. E pursed her lips. “And there are dangers nobody’s seen in that long, too. This is a foolish idea.”

  “There’s no other way to get you to Port Oro,” Hazel told her. “We need money. Lots of money.”

  “I forbid it!” Mrs. E said, her voice stronger than usual.

  “Too bad.” Swedish crossed his arms. “I’m not going to sit around and watch you die.”

  “Me neither,” Bea said.

  I wiped my face with my palm. “None of us are.”

  Hazel took Mrs. E’s hand. “You fed us when we were hungry, you loved us when we were alone.”

  “And now it’s our turn to take care of you,” I said.

  Mrs. E’s eyes welled with tears. “The four of you . . . you’re all I have. Every time you step onto that raft, I know I might never see you again. That’s worse than fogsickness.”

  “We’ll always come back to you,” Bea promised.

  “And if Chess finds something big, we can hire smugglers no problem,” Hazel said with an eager smile. “Heck, if he finds something really big, I’ll haggle with the rooftoppers directly. Even Lord Kodoc himself might let us leave if we—”

  Mrs. E jerked like she’d been bitten.
“No! Not Kodoc. You stay away from Kodoc.”

  “I was just saying!” Hazel protested.

  “Promise you’ll stay away from him,” Mrs. E demanded. “Promise me.”

  “Fine. I promise.”

  “I thought I could protect you, but now . . . I’m not so sure,” Mrs. E said, her voice wavering but intense. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  “Something about Kodoc?” Hazel asked.

  “Yes,” Mrs. E said, her lips thinning. “If he ever finds us, he’ll kidnap Chess and work him to death.”

  The walls tilted around me and I stared at Mrs. E, not quite believing my ears. That had been the first time I heard about the link between me and Kodoc.

  “M-me?” I spluttered.

  “He’ll chain you to a tether, Chess, and he’ll drag you through the Fog, scraping you against rocks and ruins in his search for the ancient machines—”

  “The machines that lower the Fog?” Bea interrupted.

  “If they exist.” Mrs. E took a trembling breath. “If Kodoc catches Chess, he’ll kill him. He’s killed dozens of tetherkids already, experimenting on them, keeping them in the Fog for days on end—”

  Hazel frowned. “Does he know about Chess’s eye?”

  “He doesn’t even know Chess is alive. But Chess wasn’t the first child born with Fog in his eye. There are old stories of another child with the same white spots—”

  “What stories?” I said. “I never heard any.”

  “Secret stories, Chess.”

  “You could’ve told me!”

  Mrs. E raised a trembling hand. “It was safer this way.”

  Anger and confusion swirled in my head. I knew Mrs. E kept secrets, but not about me. Not about the one thing that shaped my whole life.

  Hazel touched my arm. “Let her talk.”

  When I nodded, Mrs. E continued: “The stories say that a hundred years ago a child was born inside the Fog with white in her eye. A shifting, shimmering cloud of nanites. Like a pearly mist.”

  “But Chess wasn’t born in the Fog,” Bea said.

  “Maybe he was,” Hazel said.

  “Lord Kodoc spent decades trying to create a baby like the girl in the story,” Mrs. E said. “He thinks that any child born with nanites will have a special affinity for the Fog.”

  “What does that mean?” Bea asked. “Affinity?”

  “A special connection to the Fog,” Mrs. E explained. “Special abilities.”

  “Like how Chess doesn’t get fogsick even though he dives way too much?”

  Mrs. E nodded grimly. “Kodoc wanted to harness that power. So he locked pregnant women inside cages and lowered them into the Fog to give birth, hoping one child would be born with eyes of Fog.” Grief deepened the furrows on her face. “But they were born with fogsickness instead. Every one of them died, until . . .”

  “Until me.” I touched the hair over my eye. “So Kodoc is the reason I’m like this?”

  She nodded again. “When I was young, I worked with him. This is—”

  “You what?”

  “W-with Kodoc?” Bea stammered.

  “No way,” Swedish said. “How could you?”

  A wistful expression flickered on Mrs. E’s face. “We had big plans, big dreams. We were going to change the world, build shining cities on the mountaintops. Then I realized that his true goal was to turn the Fog into a weapon. I saw how cruel he was, how obsessed. He’d do anything to find the ancient machines.” Mrs. E closed her eyes briefly. “Including experimenting on innocent people. I started to spy on him, looking for a way to stop him. But he found out. . . .”

  She fell silent, and my anger and confusion gave way to curiosity. And respect. Mrs. E had been fighting this battle before I was born; she’d done things I couldn’t even imagine.

  “I had a friend named Tiara,” she continued. “She was younger than me, and I used to dress her in silly costumes and braid her hair. We were like sisters.” For a moment, Mrs. E seemed lost in her memories. “She met a man from the lower slopes. A poor man. A good man, Chess. They got married, and soon she was pregnant with you.” Her dull eyes shone with unshed tears. “When Kodoc realized I’d been spying on him, he went after your mother. He forced her into the Fog with a dozen other women. And I lost my head. . . .”

  Her voice faded, and she swayed. In a flash, Swedish was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  “My mother,” I said, blinking back tears of my own. “You went into the Fog after her.”

  “I waited until the middle of the night,” Mrs. E replied in barely more than a whisper. “I snuck past Kodoc’s guards. And I climbed down the chains leading to the cages.”

  My throat tightened as I thought about my mother, trapped like an animal in a cage in the darkening Fog. She must’ve been so scared and alone.

  “Most of the women were beyond help, but finally, finally I heard a noise. I must’ve only been a foot away—” She smiled sadly. “Or maybe you had really strong lungs. I heard you crying. You were so little that I managed to pull you between the bars. Your mother, though . . .”

  She shook her head, and then I knew. My mother had died giving birth to me in the Fog.

  “When Kodoc raised the cages the next day,” she continued, “he must have thought you’d squirmed away.”

  “So you grabbed him,” Bea said, biting her lower lip. “And brought him to his dad.”

  Mrs. E smiled softly at me. “You should’ve seen your father’s face, Chess. He thought he’d lost both of you. He mourned your mother, but the way he took you in his arms . . . I knew from the first moment that he loved you.”

  I wanted to say something, but my throat felt tight and thick. That’s why Mrs. E was sick: because she’d tried to save my mother and me. That’s why I was a freak: because Kodoc had lowered my mother into the white. And that’s why I loved the Fog, why I moved faster and saw farther than anyone: because I’d been born there.

  “So that’s when you got sick,” Swedish said.

  Mrs. E exhaled slowly. “By the time I carried Chess from the Fog, it was almost dawn. I’d spent too many hours in the white.”

  For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Swedish said, “I don’t get it. Why hasn’t Kodoc been searching the slums for a kid with a Fog-eye?”

  “He thought all the test subjects died,” Mrs. E told him. “He thought his experiment failed. I burned his records, burned his entire estate to the ground. Then Chess’s father and I disappeared into the junkyard. We kept our distance from each other, in case Kodoc caught one of us.” She looked to me. “I didn’t even know that he’d died until months afterward.”

  I nodded. I didn’t blame her for that. I didn’t blame her for anything, really. But my mind was still whirling. I hadn’t known the truth about myself until that day. I didn’t only look like a freak, I was one. The leader of the Rooftop had killed my mother and given me this eye so I’d lead him to these ancient machines? It was terrifying. But I also felt a wash of relief, like a darkness in my mind had brightened. Because I finally knew why I was like this. I finally knew that my connection to the Fog was real, not a crazy delusion.

  “And Kodoc never heard about my eye?” I asked after a long moment.

  “You know what the junkyard’s like,” Mrs. E said. “There are a thousand new rumors every day. A cloudy eye would’ve sounded like any other disfigurement.”

  “If he’d heard about you,” Hazel said, “the bosses would’ve lined up every kid in the junkyard and checked our eyes.”

  “Indeed.” Mrs. E started trembling. “And now I think you’re right. You must go to Port Oro.”

  “Yes,” Hazel said. “We’ll find someone to cure you and—”

  “For Chess!” Mrs. E said, her voice suddenly high and frightened. “Before Kodoc finds him!”

  “Kodoc won’t find him,” Hazel assured her. “We’ll dive for salvage and hire coyotes—”

  Mrs. E slid sideways, almost toppling f
rom the chair. Swedish steadied her, but she’d already slipped back into the sickness. She kept repeating “before Kodoc finds him” over and over as Swedish carried her to bed.

  At first, I dismissed her fears about Kodoc finding me. After all, he hadn’t found me in thirteen years. But a few weeks later, we caught wind of a rumor about a kid with a Fog-eye living on the Rooftop. We’d never heard anything like that before. Then a new rumor claimed that Lord Kodoc himself was searching for the Fog-eyed kid—which terrified us.

  How had the rumors started? Who was spreading them? We didn’t know. We just spent more time than ever on the raft, searching the Fog for our ticket to Port Oro.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. E spent most days asleep. She’d wake for a few hours and talk loco, her clouded eyes wild. I hated that; the real Mrs. E was strong and fierce, not pathetic and weepy. But one time, she woke and was herself again, a skinny woman whose beak-like nose and sharp alertness reminded me of a hawk.

  She eyed me. “How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Not long,” I said.

  “Liar,” she whispered with a smile.

  “Well, not that long.”

  I would’ve sat there forever if I’d known she’d sound like this when she woke, instead of babbling nonsense like usual. The thought of her going mad was too much—I couldn’t handle Mrs. E acting like a stranger.

  She must’ve seen something in my face, because she suddenly took my hand. “It’s not your fault, Chess.”

  I shrugged like I didn’t know what she was talking about. “That you sleep so much?”

  “That I’m fogsick.”

  I’d never told her that I blamed myself for her sickness, but somehow she knew. Still, I wasn’t sure what to say. So I just sat there as the sound of a bootball game drifted through the wall, and the distant thrip of a rivet gun echoed from Bea’s workshop.

  After a while, I said, “I barely remember my dad. I guess I was too little when he died. But I remember the way he sang me to sleep, and how he read from his scrapbook. And one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A story he told me about a lady who risked her life trying to save me when I was a baby. Me and my mom.”