Understand the Unknown

by K. A. Applegate

  I saw a soaked, battered Jalil stagger to a surviving oar, but no way, not one guy, wasn't happening, and now the second wave, the mother of all waves, was bearing down.

  The deck fell away sickeningly as we slid into the trough. The wave towered above us, towered above where the mast would have been. It was a mountain of water. No hope.

  A hammer blow that caught me, snatched me away from my precarious hold on the steering oar, and carried me away, once more to be stopped by the bulwark. I was half drowned, dazed, bruised.

  Still she swam. But the quinquireme was low in the water.

  Gunwales barely clear.

  The crew, what was left, clung helplessly to rails and the stump of the mast. So did my friends. Hopeless. Another wave coming. Relentless. If we stayed any longer we'd go down, sucked down with the ship.

  "Off the bow!" I yelled in the weird calm between waves.

  "Grab an oar, jump! Go, go, go!"

  I saw April running. Christopher limping. The deck tilted perilously. We were stem on to the wave. Now we were rolling, falling toward the bow. Christopher jumped. Where was Senna?

  The wave... I jumped.

  Chapter

  III

  The wave lifted the boat nearly vertical, slammed into the stem, and drove the ship down like a spike under a sledgehammer's blow. The ship speared into the water and then disappeared.

  "Senna!"

  Suction caught me, a swirling drain with me no more than a bug.

  Blinded by salt water and confusion and pain, I put one hand over my head, palm flat up, and kicked, used my left arm as a paddle, had to get to the surface, hell, I could be on the surface, couldn't tell, woozy, head hurt.

  Remember, David, save yourself first, be able to save the others

  Palm hit something hard, better than hitting with my head. I felt along the object, lungs beginning to burn, still Wind, kicked to my left, used the free arm again to propel myself beyond the barrier, strong stroke down... broke free!

  Air! I took deep, deep breaths, another slap of water almost choked me, rushed down into my lungs. I coughed, gagged, rubbed my eyes until they opened. blink, blink, had to find the others, had to find Senna!

  I grabbed a floating timber. All that was left.

  "Who's there?!" I shouted, but I didn't know if anyone could hear my voice over the boiling sea, a sea tormented into an artificial frenzy by Neptune, a sea meant to kill us. A sky lowering and black, a sky now raining hailstones like bullets.

  Impossible to see. The waves were mountains around me. I rose with the swell, was swamped by the crest, then slid down the far side of the wave.

  Then... through the needlelike spray and biting foam, a form, a figure. I kicked, thrust my arms through the water, breaststroked, dog-paddled, anything to fight my way through the chaotic sea, to get closer to that form, that person

  "April! April, hold on!"

  Struggling, flailing manically, long hair streaked across her face, wound around her neck like an oil slick. April. I swam, saw her gulp about a gallon of water. Saw her eyes close, saw her slip under, one pale hand.

  No! One more awkward stroke, thrust, lunge, and I would be there. Where? Where had she gone down, exactly? I was exhausted, confused, in the middle of a wrathful storm, but no choice, I had to try. Gulping air, as much as I could hold through the sudden overwhelming weariness, I dove, tried to open my eyes, managed a slit, felt stupidly around with my hands, crying silently, April, April, April.

  Had to come up for air. No use to anyone dead, right, David? Gasping, pulling wet, heavy hair off my forehead, yanking my eyes open with my hands. Nothing, no one, only debris in this watery canyon.

  I took another deep breath and, shivering, teeth chattering, prepared to dive again, and again, as many times as it took, when I was hit from behind. A jagged piece of the destroyed ship, I couldn't guess more than that, speared me in the back and thrust me under the angry waters. The fear-sickness overtook me. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think straight, I was disoriented — had I reached the surface again? Couldn't tell, because now my body was being turned round and round, I was revolving, twirling, like some half-smoked cigarette tossed in a flushing toilet.

  Panic and struggling and inhaling water and more panic, more struggling, now vertigo, nausea I knew about sailing I knew about drowning knew the causes and stages and how to try to revive a near-drowning victim. I knew all this and forgot every bit of it as I began to drown in that violently whirling sea.

  Neck snapping with each revolution around and down and around and down Neptune's whirlpool, the final force sent to finish us off. Spine cracking, arms and legs slapped to my side then torn away, flung wide, somehow I knew this but could not really feel my body, arms, legs. Could not see — were my eyes open or shut? Could not hear — was I imagining the roar of water, hallucinating the scream of wind? Could not breathe, could not think, could not live...

  All over. All over. I sucked in water, but it didn't matter, nothing mattered because it was over.

  And I breathed. Gagged, wretched, but breathed and did not die. Choked but breathed again and habit or instinct made me spit it out, the water that I was breathing but still, I breathed and was alive.

  How how how how? And I was sinking, slowly, gently, down down down, my eyes open, un-stung by salt, open and aware and what, what was that I was seeing beneath me, what was I falling toward? Maybe I was dead after all. Unconscious at least, imagining, dreaming, hallucinating, and this was my dream of heaven or whatever world there was beyond death.

  Funny, I'd never thought I had the creative power to come up with something so...

  No, not a dream, no hallucination, somehow I knew that.

  Something told me I was there, taking up physical space, alive, observing the scene I was about to become a part of.

  And not only me because now I could see Jalil close by, others, some of the sailors, and yes, April, now Senna, Christopher, all of us slowly floating downward, alive, unbelievably alive. Senna caught my eye, moved her lips but I couldn't hear or guess at what she was saying. After a moment she looked away.

  Below us was a city. I might have been skydiving, falling toward it. A city. With tiled roofs and neatly laid-out streets.

  Roofs? Why, to keep out the rain? People down there.

  Swimming? Walking? It was crazy. I was wrong, I was hallucinating. Had to be. So far down below the surface of the water, how was it possible to see so clearly? Why wasn't everything shrouded in complete blackness; where was the light source; what was the light source?

  Why was I bothering to wonder? W T F

  Chapter

  IV

  It was a city or town, surrounded by a sort of mountain range of coral, or something a lot like coral, rounded peaks in white, natural caves creating areas of dark, undulating sections in a pinkish-orange. Dotting or decorating the coral range, along its entire circumference I guessed, though from my ever-descending vantage point I couldn't see the far side of the range, were shoots and clumps of seaweed and other aquatic plants in different shapes, some short and plump, others tall and weedy, and in the entire range of colors from pea green to acid blue, from pale yellow to white spotted with red.

  Nibbling at the vegetation, slipping into and out of the caves, were fish of all sorts. Long and skinny; short, flat, and wide; muddy coloring and pebbly skin; sleek bodies in shimmering purple.

  Inside that coral bowl were structures, buildings and what seemed to be free-standing monuments, some built in the coral or coral-like material, some mimicking the coral's natural, asymmetrical formations, some looking an awful lot like —yeah, like stuff right out of ancient Rome Tike the things we'd seen at Olympus A huge triumphal arch. An arena that might have been a Disney version of the Colosseum.

  I flashed on something Athena had said, about Poseidon being on the outs with his brother Zeus, wondered if that meant Poseidon's Roman counterpart — Neptune — was also feuding with Zeus, maybe also with Poseidon. But the th
ought was gone as soon as I realized I could see individual people moving along streets, could see chariots whipping by, vehicles pulled by oversized sea horses and dolphins — as soon as I realized that a huge bubble encased the city and in less than two minutes I was going to break right through it. Weird. The bubble enclosed air, but it enclosed water, too. The city had areas of normal atmosphere, areas where the streets surged with water.

  The bubble had bubbles within.

  Ride the big bubble, David. I concentrated on flipping my body facedown, not hard to do, then on spreading my arms and legs wide to distribute my weight, to make me, hopefully, less of a projectile or bullet, maybe something that might rest on top of the bubble, not piercing it, maybe not destroying the city and seriously pissing off its resident, presiding god. Though what I would do next if I didn't fall through to the underwater city, remained balanced on the bubble, I didn't really think about

  Closer, closer still. I didn't dare risk looking around again for the others. Hoped they were watching me, trying to do what I was doing. Or maybe they had better ideas.

  I kept my eyes on the city, noticed now I was heading right for the arena. Noticed that on the floor of the arena there was a racetrack of some sort. Reviewing stands, cheering crowds, I was failing right on top of all that. I pretended, told myself I was as light as a feather, weightless, that bodies in water had buoyancy, what was I worried about, I'd land gently on the city's bubble roof and then...

  And then I felt the skin of the bubble meet my flesh and a sensation I'd never experienced. I became one with the skin. It stretched across my limbs, torso, molded itself against my face like stretched elastic wrap, but soft, gentle, then seemed to pass behind me, to leave my skin with a tickle, caress my head and the back of my neck and pass beyond. But the skin had not moved, had not gone anywhere. I was the one moving, I was still falling, floating sweetly down, closer to the residents of this place. I lifted my head to see the large bubble unbroken above me. And closer to my head... I reached out my hand and felt another skin. Now I was in my own bubble, protective or restraining, a womb or a prison, it didn't matter, what the hell was happening...

  Closer to the ground, right over a far corner of the arena, off to the side of what was definitely a roughly oval racetrack, not far from what I took to be the finishing line where the race was ending in a rush and roar. I had the absurd feeling that I was floating down into Wrigley Field but that none of the fans cared enough to notice.

  Closer... My feet hit the ground, then my knees, and the small bubble burst, depositing me on the hard-packed sand.

  Muffled thumps behind me. I turned. Christopher, then the Greek captain. Then, more sailors, but by no means most of them, then Jalil, Senna, April, bubbles popping, dropping their contents to the ground.

  No Merlin.

  "Where are we?" April asked, the first to get her head straight.

  Her words were swallowed up in an anticipatory roar from the crowd. The horses for the next race were coming onto the track. It was a roar that warbled weirdly: The stands were underwater. The roar of the crowd sounded like people yelling from the bottom of a swimming pool.

  Obviously we were not anyone's top priority right then. We were off the track, a small, forlorn knot of people, irrelevant to the racing fans.

  "Ben Hur," Christopher muttered. "Ben Hur meets the Little freaking Mermaid, man."

  The captain stated the obvious. "We are in Neptune's realm," he wailed. "If only it was Poseidon."

  "Is there a difference?" Jalil muttered, looking even skinnier soaking wet.

  "Both are terrible in their anger," the captain answered.

  "One prefers pasta, the other likes gyros. Jesus, look at this place." Christopher, of course. He babbles when he's scared.

  I dropped my hand to my sword hilt and squeezed the hard, reassuring steel. That's what I do when I'm scared.

  We were in air. Standing on dry land. The track itself was a pocket of air, but the reviewing stands were behind a curved, arched wall of water. It was like looking into an aquarium. From an air bubble inside the aquarium. The entire mass of magically restrained water looked as if it might crash down on us at any moment. I had the sense of being a bug about to be crushed by a sledgehammer:

  "We've done gods," April said. "How much worse could Neptune be?"

  "You cannot compare the glorious gods of the Greeks to their pale Roman imitators!" the captain stated hotly. His crew, which had moved close, now edged away nervously. No one was anxious to cast aspersions on Neptune.

  "Our gods, from great Father Zeus to the most lowly messenger gods, are gracious models of gentle humanity compared to the craven, spineless gods of the debauched Roman people,"

  He sounded shrill and he glanced over his shoulder as he said all this. And he'd noticed that suddenly no one was standing within thunderbolt range of him. I turned to Senna. She looked as shaken up as the rest of us, but stood, as was her habit, a bit apart.

  "Do you know anything about Neptune?" I asked quietly.

  She laughed. "Here's what I know: We're miles under the surface of the ocean, in the power of a Roman god. And Merlin managed to follow us out of Egypt. And as much as I'd like to think the old man's drowned, I'm not counting on it. We, on the other hand, could be drowned very suddenly, very finally."

  "Could be, but we're not, which by rights we should be,"

  April pointed out, finding the one small ray of optimism.

  "Yeah? Well, stick around. The day is young!” Senna said.

  As if to underline her statement, a dozen trumpetsall blared out, announcing that the next race was about to begin.

  Chapter

  V

  There was a clap of thunder and the horses were off. They came pounding around the bend of the oval track.

  The horses were large, larger than the largest real-world horses I'd ever seen, large in the way so many things were large in Everworld: in impossible proportions, proportions that had nothing to do with real-world physics. The horses were white, blazingly bright, built like thoroughbreds, with sleek, trim bodies, long legs, long narrow necks. But unlike real-world thoroughbreds, and so appropriate for Everworld, these; horses had long, flowing manes of what had to be spun gold. And their hooves —definitely bronze, and gleaming.

  "I don't know why I keep saying this," Jalil muttered under his breath, "but none of this is possible."

  Riding the horses were elves, looking smaller than ever on the backs of the huge horses. The elves didn't so much straddle the horses' backs as perch there on top, crouched down in typical jockey position.

  And in the reviewing stands or bleachers, whatever they were cal ed in ancient Rome, watching the race, cheering, talking, laughing, me usual once-mind-blowing, now-to-be-expected variety of beings. A cornucopia of species and nationalities. All sitting, standing, milling around behind their shimmering wal of water.

  There were humans: white, black, Asian, and undetermined. All breathing water. Breathing. Talking. Laughing. Drinking.

  Underwater.

  There were nymphs in their usual array of colors, translucent and opaque, green, blue, and yellow, seated next to leering brown and black satyrs, who, given their particular bodies, stood.

  And leered.

  There were elves, delicate and beautiful, Lara Flynn Boyle thin, male and female equally ethereal. They looked strangely at home in the water.

  There were dwarves, taciturn, tough-looking, short but as broad as they were tall. Bristling beards, always an ax or some other sort of weapon or tool at their sides. You could sense something dangerous about dwarves, something not evil but serious and purposeful and not ever in the mood for nonsense.

  Their hair and beards floated weirdly around their faces.

  There were trolls, too, which I was not happy to see. They're stupid, rocklike things, servants and soldiers of Loki. Maybe other gods as well, who Knows, maybe there's a special troll employment agency.

  From the back, trolls looked hea
dless. From the front, you saw a sort of slung-forward rhinolike head with a long, blunt snout and blank little piglike eyes. Either view was unfortunate.

  The water gave them a faintly blue cast. And there were representatives of the two alien species we'd encountered in Everworld: the Coo-Hatch and the Hetwan. God knows what the Coo-Hatch were doing there: It was hard to imagine the obsessive metallurgists being happy in a place where no forge could be lit.

  But the elves, dwarves, fairies, nymphs, satyrs, Coo-Hatch, and Hetwan were old news. There were other species here as well, scatterings of shapes and faces and skin colors we had not yet encountered.

  Then there were the locals.

  "Mermaids," Christopher said, nodding and suppressing a grin. "Mermen, too," April agreed.

  "Really? I hadn't noticed them," Christopher said dryly.

  "Noticed the mermaids, though. Noticed the hell out of the mermaids."

  From the waist down they were sleek, muscular fish covered in gleaming scales of pale blue and cotton-candy pink and sparkling silver, ending in translucent, fanlike tails.

  From the waist up they were male or female — human male or female. The men were a powerful-looking crew, rippling biceps and rock-hard pecs. And they seemed particularly numerous right around the fifty-yard line where Neptune himself and a crowd of minor gods, hangers-on, and toadies lounged comfortably. My guess was that the mermen were Neptune's honor guard.

  The female mermaids, on the other hand, were not at all threatening. They had slender arms, straight shoulders, long, flowing hair, magazine-ad hair, TV-spokesmodel hair, deep red and bright gold and lustrous black. Hair which, when the water wafted it just the right way, discreetly covered them.

  But, to the frank delight of Christopher in particular, the water seldom placed the hair with perfect discretion. "I'll tell you right now, David, if they have beer in this place, I'm staying.

  Forever."

  April opened her mouth to say something crushing, but whatever she was about to say was cut off by a mammoth cheer that rose warbling and gurgly from the stands. Voices were accompanied by the trumpetlike sound of conch shells blown like horns.