by T.A. Barron
“But how?”
“He said there was a way.”
Terry kicked away a piece of bar shot. “He must be part fish, then. And even so, he couldn’t survive the whirlpool. Can you imagine the pressure of that water, with the strength to hold back half a mile of ocean? It’s probably several thousand pounds per square inch,” He studied the swirling vapors. “No, not unless the whirlpool slowed way down, for whatever reason, could anything pass through it and survive.”
Stubbornly, Kate threw her braid over her shoulder. “Then where is Geoffrey? He found a way.”
“I’ll give him this,” said Terry. “If he did find a way, he’s plenty ingenious. Not to mention self-sacrificing.” His shoulders drooped a notch. “I guess you already found out how self-sacrificing I am.”
She turned to him, saw the regret in his eyes. “Up there on the Skimmer? Look, you wanted to grab me. You just didn’t move fast enough.”
“No way. I was more concerned about my equipment than anything else. I might not have saved you, but at least I could have tried. Really tried.”
Kate scrutinized him. “If that’s an apology, I accept. Now let’s get back to finding some way out of here. Maybe the whirlpool has a weak point.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Lousy as it is, our only sane option is to stay put. There’s a tiny chance we could survive an eruption. But there’s zero chance we could survive the whirlpool.”
“It’s not the eruption I’m worried about. It’s my dad! And Isabella! I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
Terry shook his head. “Keep your wits, will you? This is real, not just a story in some book.”
Kate sat upright. “That’s it. The little red book!”
She rushed to the mainmast and retrieved the slender volume lying at its base. “He used this!”
“Come off it,” scoffed Terry. “Talking with animals is one thing. Disappearing into thin air is another.”
Madly, she flipped the pages to the one displaying an elephant and an ant. “This must be it! What did Geoffrey say to do? Either say all the magic words, or just look at the design and . . . concentrate. Hard.”
Clenching her jaw, she started to imagine herself as a deep-water fish. Like the one Isabella bought from the fisherman. She stared at the page, then suddenly halted herself.
That wouldn’t work. Terry was right. No fish could withstand the pressure of the whirlpool wall. What had Geoffrey said? No creature of flesh could survive. Even a piece of eight would probably not last.
She chewed her lip. What was it she had said that gave Geoffrey his idea? That the power of the Horn, somehow, gets through . . .
“Give up,” advised Terry.
“There has to be a way!”
Following the curling clouds of vapor with her eyes, she considered the puzzle. She tried to recall Isabella’s theory of how the Merlin effect might work. Some kind of particle that circulates in the water, altering the genes. Circulating. Water.
Water! That was the answer. Something more like water than like flesh might be able to get through. How had Isabella described those early single-celled creatures? More water than organism.
She closed her eyes, fixing her thoughts on the idea of water, vaporous and elusive, without shape or substance, rising softly through the air. Then, opening her eyes, she did her best to hold the image in her mind and stare at the page without blinking.
Nothing. She concentrated harder, holding the book before her face. Water being. Water creature. Water spirit.
Just then, Terry snatched the book from her hands.
“Give that back,” she cried, wrestling with him. “I need it!”
Holding the book just beyond her reach, he crooned, “When in doubt, try hocus pocus.” He gestured wildly and said in his deepest voice, “I am Ali Baba Heebee Jeebee, the great magician.”
“Give it back!” she bellowed, finally getting her hand on the volume. She tried to pull it away from him. “I’ve almost got it right.”
“Have you tried this?” he asked, pretending to sweep a cape across his shoulders. “Abra cadabra!”
There was a nearly inaudible pop, just as the book dropped to the deck. No one picked it up again.
XX: Water Spirit
Before feeling came memory.
Vague as reflections in a pool, wispy as visions in the mist, the first memories drifted to Kate. The many forms of water flowed in and around her. She remembered all she had been and might yet become. She yearned to begin again.
I am rain. Showering, sprinkling, misting, pouring. Rolling with thunder, pulsing with light. I scatter the sun, each droplet a prism, connecting soil and sky with archways of color. To soak, to fill, that is what I am about. To find every last thirsty thing and give it new life. I sparkle as I weep. For I am made to dance, even as I cry.
I am stream. Bright and bouncy rivulet, born of mountain snows, cascading through a meadow. Cold on the tongue. Brimming with sunshine. Splash, trickle, lap, gurgle. Over the rock, under the spout, down the channel. Call me creek in Colorado, burn in Scotland, wadi in Egypt, arroyo in Spain, billabong in Australia. I link summits to seas, freshets to rivers. I seek, I surge, I murmur and purl. And I never rest, I never stop.
I am ice. Smooth and sharp, gripping and binding. Ever so slowly I spread and harden, over lakes, over leaves, over windows and roads. As an icicle I stretch to the tallest, as a sheet to the thinnest, as a floe to the widest. As a glacier I grow heavy, squashing the land, gouging valleys out of mountains, ponds out of pinnacles. I seize, I freeze. That is my way.
I am snow. Part water, part crystal, part miniature star. Feather and diamond bonded as one. My life is a flight, twirling and gliding. Though I am distinct from all my trillions of cousins, we are so alike in our luminous hearts that we can coat canyons and cities and make them seem one. I whiten the land, brighten the air. I bring frosted galaxies down to the ground.
I am cloud. Rumbling, gathering, steaming, stretching. Vapors are my body, thin as a breath, yet thick enough to stop the sun. Finer than filigree, broader than basins. Cumulus, nimbus, cirrus and stratus. Whatever I yield shall float back to me. My gifts to the world are always returned.
I am ocean. Raging and bitter, glassy and great. I move with the moon, I ride with the tides. Smelling of brine, brimming with life, tasting like salty kelp stew. No roads cross my surface, no sun shines below. I am the edges of continents, the bottoms of chasms, the peaks of tsunamis. Though my waters lie deep, my mysteries lie deeper still.
And with time, Kate understood that she held within her all these forms. She could swim with the wave, sail with the mist. Her body wrapped around her like a flowing tail, transparent as dew and subtly gleaming. Liquid as the sea itself, she swept into the swirling vapors above the old ship, gracefully rising.
For now she was a water spirit.
Soon the mist deepened into fog, the fog into droplets, the droplets into heaving waves. The current whirled her around, faster and faster. Immense waves pressed into her, flattening her to nothingness.
For an age she spun through these reeling waters. Then, gradually, the pressure reduced. Though she had no need to breathe, she felt her body expand, and she drank of the wide ocean again.
Darkness surrounded her, except for some strange and shadowy lights that circled and flickered. She could no longer see the ship. In every direction, deep currents throbbed, flowing into underwater canyons and around the roots of islands. She had passed through the whirlpool.
PART THREE:
Beyond the Abyss
XXI: Battle in the Depths
Kate soon discovered she could swim in an entirely new way, without stroking or kicking. Such motions were impossible anyway, since her new body, which had expanded in size once she emerged from the whirlpool, bore no arms and no legs. Something of a cross between a transparent jellyfish and a slender frond of kelp, she possessed a lithe, ribbonlike form. She was, in fact, little more than a long and lacy tail. She needed
only to sway herself from side to side, undulating with the currents, to move in any direction, including up and down.
A group of thin fish swam past, their tails and jaws radiating blue phosphorescent light. Twisted black smokers jutted off the sea floor like shrunken volcanoes, venting bright clouds of chemicals that illuminated the water while making it taste of rotten eggs. Giant white clams, so large they made the Venus clams of the lagoon look like mere infants, clung to the base of the smoking vents. Kate flowed past one of them, feeling its intense heat. She knew that it spewed superheated gases, boiling bile from the center of the Earth.
As she swam, swaying gracefully, the humming of the whirlpool faded behind her. More strange life forms appeared on all sides. Tube worms, clustered together in bizarre bouquets, bent and curled in slow motion. Their tops opened in scarlet plumes, possibly a kind of mouth for drinking the chemicals billowing from the smokers. A ghostly crab bolted away as she approached, sliding into a narrow crevasse. Tiny blue limpets, oversized snails, and wormlike larvae congregated on the rocks.
Then, in the dim light, she perceived another shape. Huge, streamlined, and gray, it floated just above the bottom, completely motionless. It possessed an enormous tail, wider than she was long. Just behind its jaw, a great eye regarded her cautiously.
A whale.
Almost imperceptibly, she wafted nearer. The whale, an adult male, did not stir, following her movements with his unblinking eye. Before long, she could see the cluster of barnacles on his belly and tail, the knobs of his vertebrae, the twin blowholes.
Suddenly, the massive back arched and snapped, sending the whale gliding away into the shadowy depths. The current washed over Kate, rolling her backward. She brushed against a cluster of tube worms, felt them tickle the full length of her body.
As the whale departed, he began to whistle in a low, haunting voice. Soon other invisible singers joined him, wailing and weeping, reliving their sorrows. Kate listened quietly, feeling her own longings. Dad . . . a prisoner of Nimue. I’ve got to find him. But how? He could be anywhere.
At once she sensed that something apart from herself had frightened the whale. Curious, she whirled around.
Swimming awkwardly, a most unusual creature approached. Although shaped somewhat like herself, this figure looked spindly, even shriveled. It resembled more a twisted root than a graceful tail. Jerkily, it swam toward her, evidently eager to communicate.
The creature blinked its single swollen eye, the color of blue-tinted ice. Then it spoke to Kate telepathically, in a voice she recognized with a twinge.
“Where the devil are we?” asked Terry. “And what are we?”
“I was hoping you had stayed behind.”
“So had I. Guess, ah, you were right about the book. You’re full of surprises.”
Kate felt a surge of both pleasure and embarrassment. In her old body, she would have blushed.
“So tell me. What are we?”
“We’re some kind of water creatures, I guess.” A laugh bubbled up. “You look a little on the skinny side, though.”
“Incredible,” said Terry, curling his transparent tail so he could see it. “I still can’t believe this is real.”
“As real as the ship and the whirlpool.” She spun slowly in the water. “Why did you decide to follow me?”
“I didn’t. I just found myself here.” The bulbous eye blinked. “How do we get our old bodies back?”
“Maybe Geoffrey can do that, if we ever find him again.” She resumed swimming. “That won’t be easy, though. He had a good head start. You can bet he’s on his way to the Glass House, wherever that is.”
Struggling to stay with her, Terry called, “Listen, are you crazy? We’ve got to get out of here before the eruption happens. As far away as possible, while we still have time.”
“You do what you want,” she replied, waving her tail more rapidly. “But I’m going to try to find my dad, if I can.”
Terry hesitated, then tried to keep pace with her. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he grumbled. “I’ll stay with you, at least until we can figure out how to get our old bodies back. Hey, what’s that?”
Both of them stopped short, staring at the cloud pouring from a smoker straight ahead. They watched the cloud slowly rising into the water, pulsing with reddish light.
“Did you see that?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “It was there, beside that cloud. Then it vanished.”
“It looked like something out of a fable,” he said, a touch of awe in his voice.
Kate, studying the smoking vent, did not answer for some time. “It could have been the weird light down here, playing tricks.”
“Could have been. But I’m sure I saw it. And it looked just like . . .” He paused, unable to say the word. “Like a mermaid.”
Together they floated, silently waiting, hoping to glimpse it again. But they saw nothing beyond the glowing fumes.
“Let’s go,” said Kate at last. She slid through the water, waving her gossamery form. Despite her fears, she still could not help but enjoy the feeling of weightlessness, of being so insubstantial that she was almost part of the water itself. Then, with a sharp pang, she thought of her father and Isabella. Even if she could possibly find them, would it be in time? And what could she hope to do to help them? Seeing a house-size boulder covered with a thick mat of yellow vegetation, she drifted toward it, occupied with her thoughts.
At once, the boulder stirred. From under its hulking form, more than a dozen burly legs extended, groping on the rocks. The vegetation, so soft and swaying from a distance, hardened into murderous spikes, each one as long as a lance. The monster, with narrow slits where eyes might once have been, lifted itself from its lair and opened its gargantuan mouth, where an army of tongues rippled like a nest of blood red worms.
“Look out!”
The pair turned and whipped through the water. But the spidery creature pursued them relentlessly, crashing over fuming vents and rock outcroppings. The faster they swam, the nearer it drew, legs churning, snarling angrily. Beads of brown sludge oozed from the edges of its mouth.
Glancing to the rear, Kate could see the monster pulling nearer. Terry, swimming clumsily, had fallen so far behind her that the beast was almost on top of him.
“Hellllp!” he cried. “It’s going to—”
As his words disappeared in an avalanche of snarling, Kate spotted a shallow cave about equidistant between them. Without thinking, she reversed her direction and raced back, toward it, throwing herself directly into Terry and driving them both into the mouth of the cave. They wriggled inside just as the monster arrived.
Protected by a ledge of overhanging rock, they pressed against the back of the cave. The cries of the creature echoed around them, rising in repeating crescendos. Then, inexplicably, the noise ceased.
For several minutes they waited, not daring to move. Still as stone, they could only hope that the monster had finally given up and departed.
“There!” screamed Kate.
A long, leathery leg reached into the cave, slithering toward them. They shrank still deeper into their burrow, even as the leg lashed out at them. It grazed Kate’s flank, but could not quite reach her.
For an instant the leg seemed to hesitate. Then it planted itself against the rock ledge directly above them. The snarling resumed, as the leg began pulling on the roof of the cave, trying to tear it away.
A jagged piece of rock broke loose. Kate grabbed it in the folds of her tail and stabbed at the leg. The creature roared wrathfully, but kept its leg in place. Harder and harder it pulled. The water in the cave grew murky with crumbling rock.
All at once, the rock ledge buckled. Before Kate or Terry knew what had happened, the slab flew off, exposing the cave. There, gaping at them, was the cavernous mouth. The squirming tongues stretched toward them.
Then, in a shriek of pain, the monster jerked backward. A titanic tail wrapped around its body, squeezing
mercilessly. The yellow spikes snapped off like stalactites as the beast writhed and kicked, trying to free itself from its attacker, a great blue scorpion with a poisonous barb and slashing fangs.
Great clouds of sediment rose all around as the two leviathans wrestled, battling in the depths. The scorpion’s fangs ripped at the flesh of its opponent, even as powerful legs tried to break its back. On and on they fought, screaming and roaring, pounding themselves against the sea floor.
Kate and Terry could do no more than cower in the small hollow that once had been a cave. They waited for some chance to escape, knowing it would probably never come. Meanwhile, the battle grew ever more violent. The monsters thrashed and tumbled, battering each other’s bodies, unwilling to stop until one lay vanquished.
Finally, the legs of the spiderlike beast hung limp. The blue scorpion lifted its head and bellowed a cry of victory.
“Don’t move,” whispered Kate. “Maybe it will go away.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Terry replied nervously.
Using its great barb, the scorpion butted the corpse fiercely, making sure its adversary would not rise and strike again. Finally, coiling its tail, it seemed to prepare to crawl away, when suddenly it halted. Spotting the two gleaming forms in the hollow, it stretched its neck toward them.
The colossal head lowered until it hung only a few feet above Kate and Terry. Darkly, the scorpion’s indigo eyes examined them. Then it opened its jaws, baring the horrible fangs.
XXII: The Passage
As the deadly fangs draped over them, the two water spirits huddled tightly together.
“You shouldn’t have come back for me,” grumbled Terry. “That was stupid.”
“Guess so,” Kate said sullenly.
“I suppose I should say thanks.”
“I suppose I should say you’re welcome.”
Just then, something odd happened. The fangs began to melt into seawater, along with the rest of the scorpion’s head. The blue armor covering the length of its body grew steadily lighter in color, fading to the point of transparency. The indigo eyes flashed for the last time. Then, with a slight pop, the scorpion disappeared completely.
