Sometimes this is how it feels — like nature waits until we’re not looking.
Fidelia’s eyes blurred as she scanned the scene her father had doodled in his observation book — a crab waving its pincer in greeting, the back of Fidelia charging into the water with her dress sashes untied and streaming, Ida looking back at Arthur, a smile in the corner of her mouth.
Slam! Cheapshot Charlie plunked the crate with the Water-Eater in it on the bench next to Fidelia, all the contents rattling. “Get to work.”
“I am working,” Fidelia retorted, and defiantly ran her eyes over the same sentence in her father’s observation book, again and again, until Cheapshot Charlie left her alone.
She pulled the busted-up pieces of her invention out of the crate and set it on the bench next to her. Flipping through her own observation book, she found her original blueprints for the Water-Eater, all her initial notes, and the sections that had been scrubbed out, scribbled over, and rearranged altogether. Even though she hadn’t looked at these plans for weeks, they were seared into her brain.
This was her last chance to get it right. If she couldn’t figure it out, it would be the end of her. Merrick had promised that.
The Water-Eater, as it existed in her daydreams and sketches, was a small rubber mouthpiece attached to a long, cylindrical device, which stretched out to both sides like a handlebar mustache. The device was covered in rubber scales, each of which allowed seawater to seep through small holes and enter the filtration chamber. The chamber separated the water molecules from the air molecules, leaving free, clean oxygen to flow into the wearer’s mouth.
In theory.
In reality, however, she had never been able to successfully filter enough oxygen — after a few small gulps, her test runs always ended with the whole system flooding.
She opened her observation book to a clean page, then uncapped her pen and made an inventory of all the pieces she had.
Mouthpiece. Hollow cylinder. Scales. Filtration system. Oxygen chamber. Hoses. Small tool kit (screwdriver, wedge, hammer, worm gear, and a handful of bolts and screws). And that was it. No raw materials, so she couldn’t start over from scratch. No way to plug up the holes in her filtration chamber, no way to extend the cylinders so more water could flow into the system, no way to adjust the angles.
No way and no time.
She closed her eyes, searching through the caverns of her brain for an answer. A fix. Even a starting place. But all she could see was the Egg, smashed on the shore of Stony Beach. An invention she’d had such confidence in — she would have bet money that it would survive the Undertow. But she’d been so wrong.
How could she believe the Water-Eater would be any different?
“Hungry?” Bloody Elle interrupted Fidelia’s stream of thoughts and offered her a choco-glomp. Fidelia munched it down gratefully.
“How’s it coming?” the pirate asked.
Fidelia didn’t answer, but Bloody Elle seemed to read Fidelia’s thoughts. “You’ll figure it out,” the pirate said. “Your folks were fish people, weren’t they?”
“They studied fish, yes,” Fidelia said. “Fish people” made it sound like she’d descended from some ichthyo-sapiens hybrid — Ida and Arthur Quail with gills and fins and scales.
She waited for Bloody Elle to leave, but Bloody Elle pulled out another choco-glomp and unwrapped it for Fidelia. Fidelia ate it, feeling some of her melancholy dissipate as her body took to the sugar.
Her parents, the fish people …
Fidelia opened her mother’s observation book, turning pages until she found a diagram of angelfish’s gills. She studied her mother’s pen marks, the way the ink pooled at the tops of her loopy L’s … How she wished Ida were here now, on the other side of the bench, saying calmly, “Pull it apart in your mind. Stand on the other side. Now stand on your head. What does it look like now?”
Mom. Fidelia’s eyes stung with tears.
Bloody Elle pointed at a picture of a shark on the opposite page, its tail stretching longer than the paper would allow. “That’s one scary-looking beast.”
“It’s a thresher. See its tail?” Fidelia dragged her fingers along her mother’s drawing. “They crack them like whips and stun their prey. We saw one once… .”
She stopped talking, letting her mind play the memory — she and her mother in the Egg, Ida at the helm while Fidelia gawked out the porthole at the shark. “Six feet of fish, six feet of tail,” Ida had said of the thresher shark, and Fidelia hadn’t believed her until she saw for herself. So many animals sounded too fantastic to be true, like fairy-tale beasts — horns, and giant eyes, and hundreds of legs, and scales every color of the rainbow …
“There are different kinds of sharks?” Bloody Elle said. “I just watch for the big sharp teeth and start swimming.”
“There are three hundred species.” Fidelia flipped a few pages and found a goblin shark: a rare pink shark with a rusty-nail smile and a long, flattened spike for a snout. A funny unicorn, seven-year-old Fidelia had called it. A living fossil, Ida had called it, and had been too goo-goo and starry-eyed to sleep that night.
“Wow,” Bloody Elle said. “I’d hate to run into one of those while taking a dip.”
“You think this one is a monster,” Fidelia said, “you should have seen this one.” She showed Bloody Elle her own observation book, the slapdash sketch of Grizzle she’d made while waiting for her parents at the Book and Bottle that night.
Talk about mythological creatures — was Grizzle truly that massive? She hadn’t really let herself think of him; it was too easy for her mind to wander from the shark to her parents. Did that really happen? she wondered again, for the thousandth time since that night. Was Grizzle a real shark, a shark she had baited and tried to tag, or just a fabrication that had grown, ripple by ripple?
Her parents, lost. Did that really happen?
“He’s wide as a lifeboat.” Bloody Elle was still balking over Grizzle. “So this is one of the famous Quail discoveries?”
Not yet. That’s what she would have said six weeks ago. Before everything in her world upended.
“No,” she said quietly, and closed her observation book.
Bloody Elle watched Fidelia, and looked like she was about to say something when her belly gurgled. “Whoops.” She slapped it. “Time to fill the pit.” She rustled through her knapsack for another sweet from BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop — a kaleidorainbow fig.
Fidelia was starving, too — but when Bloody Elle tried to pass her a crack-o-mallow bar, she refused.
“Please, no.” Her stomach felt wrenched inside out. “I can’t possibly eat any more candy.” She searched around her pathetically, as if one of the masts might suddenly sprout apples. Her eyes found the sandpit, a cast-iron cook pot dangling from a tripod above a pile of forsaken coals on the main deck.
Mmm, fresh seafood. A couple of scallops, grilled on the coals. Blackened cod. Some boiled sea lettuce … Her mouth watered. “Does the Jewel have a fishing pole?”
“But we already have the fish.” An unfamiliar voice boomed across the ship.
The hatch to the hold was flipped open, and a group of strangers clumped on the quarterdeck, each holding a pair of antique revolvers, silver with ivory inlays, one in each hand. Except for a woman with maroon lips and a ribbon with a rose around her neck — she held two curved daggers, which she twirled expertly.
Fidelia stayed where she was on the bench — barely moving, barely blinking.
“You have no need for your pistols,” a large olive-skinned man with a dark ponytail said to Merrick, who stood at the helm, his gun aimed calmly at the intruders. “So you can drop them.”
Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle waited for their captain’s orders, their own guns steady. Merrick didn’t move, except his top lip, which curled ever so slightly, ever so dangerously.
“Shall we convince you to obey?” the man said, his accent heavy. A throng of clicks; the strangers readied their own guns to fi
re.
“We have been in the dark, drippy hold for many hours,” the man went on. “We’re tired, and impatient, and I’m sure a few of us are anxious to test our guns. Make sure they still fire.”
With a poisonous glare, Merrick dropped his pistol to the floor, and motioned for his two mates to do the same.
Fidelia’s heart clenched with sickening fear — what happened now? Merrick’s crew was bad enough, but at least they needed her for something. These others … What if they didn’t see her as valuable, but as fish food?
“I thought stowaways were supposed to stay hidden during their stolen ride,” Merrick said. “Even rats know better than to do their scurrying in daylight.”
Stowaways … Even Fidelia knew this was an insulting word to just sling around. Back on Arborley Island, whenever stowaways were caught, they were flogged or jailed — or worse. Most stowaways didn’t make it past a ship’s crew, who were always eager to punish anyone who took a ride without pulling his weight.
“Stowaways?” The barrel-chested man with the ponytail and thistly black beard smiled. “Now, pralipe, you’ve lost an eye since we last met, yes. But do you truly not recognize us?”
Fidelia held her breath. The strangers’ faces radiated hunger, she now realized — not for food, but for something else. Something crueler, bloodier.
“You and the Jewel may look like you’ve sailed to hell and back,” the man hissed, “but I know it’s you.”
Merrick said nothing, only twitched his fingers ever so slightly. The man pursed his lips. “Well, pralipes, I suppose we can’t expect Merrick the Monstrous to remember every person he’s pillaged.”
The man spat at Merrick’s feet and shifted his revolvers so they reflected the last gasps of sunset’s gleam. “I am Niccu, captain of the Rasculat. Two years ago, you took something of ours.”
Merrick’s black-and-red eye pulsed in its socket like a man-of-war. “So you’ve come to avenge some chest of gold,” he said, as if he were already bored of these intruders. As if this had happened many times before. “Go ahead, search every beam — you’ll be sorely disappointed in our offerings.”
“No. Not gold,” Niccu whispered. “A cousin.” With a sudden burst, he leaped forward and shoved his guns into Merrick’s neck, pressing hard enough into the cords and veins to leave an indentation. Fidelia opened her mouth to yelp, but no noise came out.
“A cousin,” Niccu repeated, his eyes shining. “And now we finally make the monster pay.”
Bloody Elle and Cheapshot Charlie strained, but the other strangers’ guns stayed locked and aimed at their foreheads. Fidelia’s heart thudded against her ribs. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the blast of Merrick’s death.
Niccu clenched his teeth, his finger itching the trigger.
Then Merrick coughed.
He coughed, and coughed, and coughed.
And instead of shooting, Niccu stared at the pirate captain, and tipped his head back, and laughed.
As Niccu laughed, a hearty, beefy sound, the sun tucked itself behind the horizon, sending long, mast-shaped shadows across the Jewel’s deck in black stripes.
“Don’t tell me,” he said over the din of Merrick’s hacking. “Could it be?”
Merrick caught his breath and spat at the feet of the other pirate, returning the gesture.
Niccu ogled the bloody spit as if it were a rare ten-legged octopus. “Merrick the Monstrous,” he marveled, “finally undone by his own cave of wonders.”
“It’s only a chest cold,” Merrick said.
“You wish it were so, don’t you?” Niccu said. “But the cough of the red daisies is unmistakable.” Niccu hooted, then lowered his guns from Merrick’s jawline. “Luca,” he directed one of his comrades. “Bind the pirates. Tie Monstrous to the mainmast.”
A brawny man with arms almost as big as Cheapshot Charlie’s immediately grabbed a rope, but Bloody Elle dashed forward, scooped up her pistol, and shot at Niccu, narrowly missing his head. One of Niccu’s men backhanded her with his revolver, sending the Jewel’s quartermaster tumbling to the floorboards, her hair splaying like white lightning against the darkening sky.
Cheapshot Charlie bellowed and punched at two of the other pirates, who grabbed his thick arms and clung to them like seaweed. He lifted them both without effort and threw them across the deck, then stormed across the ship to his own gun.
Fidelia rushed to help Bloody Elle to her feet, but Niccu caught her. His arm wrapped around her neck, and her blood froze as he placed his revolver to her temple. “Now, now, little bebelus,” he said in a cooing, mocking tone, the barrel of his weapon cold against her skin. “You stay here with me.”
“Let her go,” Merrick stopped coughing long enough to say.
Bloody Elle picked up her gun and aimed it at Niccu, massaging her jaw with her other hand. Cheapshot Charlie, too, aimed his pistol at Niccu.
“Toss your guns down,” Niccu said, his dark eyes flashing, “or I blow her head off.”
Fidelia stopped breathing.
“I order you to release her.” Merrick set his sapphire eye burning on the other pirate captain. “Now.”
“You’re in no state to be giving orders.” Niccu twisted the gun deeper into Fidelia’s skull — deep enough to leave a mark. She swallowed a yelp. “Tell your crew to drop their weapons.”
With a wave from their captain, Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle surrendered their weapons once again. Merrick was lashed to the mast, the fat ropes stacking around his middle like a crocodile’s armored belly. Cheapshot Charlie and Bloody Elle both struggled, but eventually their wrists and ankles were bound, and both of them were secured to a barrel on the main deck.
“What about the bebelus?” A bristly man in a purple headscarf pointed at Fidelia with his pair of guns. Her stomach clenched.
With the Jewel’s crew secured, the other pirates now stalked around Fidelia like wolves, pivoting their revolvers so they were all aimed right at her sweat-slicked forehead. The woman with the daggers homed her glare in on Fidelia especially, her eyes cold, mineral green flames, the fat of her pupils reflecting the twilight like a wild animal’s.
Niccu, too, circled her, assessing. “You’re puny for a pirate.”
“I’m not a pirate,” she said. “I live in Arborley. Merrick kidnapped me for —” Fidelia stopped. If they learned that Merrick was using her to retrieve his sunken treasure, they might not let her go. She stared at the six revolvers still aimed in her direction, her mind scrambling to come up with a lie. Six bottomless holes, six black tunnels …
“For a ransom,” Merrick finished from the shadows.
Fidelia watched Niccu’s face and hoped to the sea stars that he believed Merrick.
The stowaway pirates exchanged a few words in a foreign tongue, and gradually — and grudgingly, it seemed — they holstered their weapons. When Niccu looked back at Fidelia, he flashed a large white smile.
“Please, pralipe,” he said, and gestured to the freshly caught fish hanging from his belt. “We would like you to share our vittles.”
Fidelia nearly drooled — she was still so hungry. All she’d had to eat the entire day was candy from BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop. But her gut also told her to keep her distance. She had no idea who these new pirates were, only that they were bold enough to sneak onto the Jewel and challenge the notorious Merrick the Monstrous.
“Why?” she asked slowly, cautiously.
Niccu spread his arms wide. “Any enemy of Merrick’s is a friend of the Rasculat.” He dropped his arms and scrutinized her with slivered eyelids. “Unless you are not an enemy of Merrick’s, in which case …”
Ida Quail always said, “Always approach new critters with a tiptoe, in case what you thought were paws turn out to be claws.”
In the end, Fidelia’s hunger persuaded her to take their fish — although she decided she would wait until they ate theirs before she took a bite herself. Just in case they tried to get rid of her by poisoning her dinner.
/>
The pirates scattered themselves around the cook pot, starting a fire in the sand. Fidelia took a seat on the far end of the bench, sneaking a glimpse at Merrick. He seemed a million miles away, staring at the embers with his signature glower.
As two of the pirates cleaned the fish and skewered the meat onto kebabs, they spoke to each other in their native language, their tongues rolling and flicking out sentences.
“That is my brother Hanzi”— Niccu suddenly leaned toward Fidelia and pointed to the fellow in the purple headscarf —“my brother Luca”— the strongman with the beetle-black eyes —“and Drinka, our sister.” Drinka jutted her chin out in Fidelia’s direction — more a threat than a greeting.
Fidelia nodded politely, her nerves still prickling. A sea breeze ruffled the sails, highlighting the silence.
“Shall I teach you some manners, bebelus?” Luca touched a finger to his gun. “We gave you our names. Aren’t you going to give us yours in return?”
“Please.” Niccu put his hand on Luca’s back. “Let us not be rude.” He turned to Fidelia. “Forgive us. Your name is yours to keep.”
When Niccu passed Fidelia her share of the food, she muttered a thank-you and ate it slowly, her head down.
“The Rasculat makes berth in Molvania.” Merrick broke through the silence. “You’re a long way from home.”
Niccu glowered at him. “I’d have sailed much farther to avenge Yanko.”
“Didn’t think there were any of you left,” Merrick continued from the mast. “Rumor had it the navy caught up to the Rasculat and sold her off to beanies.”
“We are all that remains,” Niccu said, sadness coating his voice. “Our beloved Rasculat was sunk on the Molvanian shelf not three months ago.”
“Bridgewater surprised us at the gulf with sixty galleons.” Luca broke his kebab stick in half and threw it at the fire. “He slaughtered us. No mercy.”
Race to the Bottom of the Sea Page 9
