Secrets of the Deep

by E. G. Foley

  The brisk wind made her lab coat flap around her and riffled the edges of her notepad.

  Thunder rumbled overhead just then, drawing their attention to the dark clouds that had begun swirling directly over their beach. Farther out in all directions, though, the afternoon sky was as blue as ever.

  “Archie, put the thing down,” Nixie said, while Jake snapped another picture, this time of the sky.

  “She’s right. Next comes the spinning,” said Sapphira. “You don’t want to be holding on to it for that—trust me.”

  “Look at the waves, everybody!” Lil exclaimed, pointing at the water.

  Sure enough, though high tide was hours away, the waves were gathering force, growing white-capped and agitated.

  “I’ll get the reading!” Isabelle ran to squint at the wave heights on the yardstick, marking them down.

  Dani backed away as Archie gingerly carried the disk over to the table and set it down. “Um, how exactly are you going to shut it off when you’re done with your experiment, Arch?” she asked.

  “No idea,” he said absently.

  Hearing this, she glanced at Jake in alarm. Seeing the worry on her face, and having watched Red and Maddox retreat, Jake couldn’t help feeling that this experiment had gone far enough.

  Especially when the first fat raindrop plopped down on the center of his forehead.

  He wiped it off and looked up in surprise at the dark clouds thickening overhead. Uh-oh.

  Was this how Noah’s Flood got started?

  “Rain!” Dani exclaimed, turning her hand palm up in wonder as a few large drops plunked down to the sand here and there.

  “Ack!” said Isabelle, running over to Dani’s umbrella to save her notes from the isolated shower that began falling only on their beach.

  Jake rushed to seal up the leather case of film plates before they got wet, then hurriedly collapsed and closed the camera.

  Lil giggled riotously, pointing at the blue sky beyond the rain’s definite boundaries. Everywhere except over the Villa di Palma and their private beach, it was still a bright, balmy Mediterranean afternoon.

  “Just be glad it’s not salt water, little one,” Jake teased the younger mermaid, wiping another raindrop off his nose. But he glanced again at Archie. “Well, coz, you got the thing working. That’s enough of a trial run, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm, yes. For now, I’m satisfied. This has been excellent progress.”

  Unfortunately, the orb wasn’t satisfied; it looked like it was only getting started. As Archie reached for it, it levitated off the table.

  His cousin turned to him in surprise. “Are you making it do that?”

  “No,” said Jake with an equally puzzled shrug.

  “I told you!” said Sapphira.

  “The lights on top are going crazy!” Dani pointed out.

  The pitch of the frequency was getting higher, too. The orb now hovered about a foot off the table, giving off pulsating waves of mysterious energy.

  “Marvelous,” the scientist murmured to himself, staring at it.

  “Time to turn it off, Arch,” Isabelle ordered.

  He glanced at her, distracted. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  But just as he reached out and grasped one edge of the disk, it yanked out of his hand and began to spin. “Egads!”

  “I warned you it would do that!” Sapphira exclaimed.

  “Yes, but you’re a proven liar, aren’t you?” Archie said. “Now, everyone be quiet and let me think! Not exactly sure…”

  He tried a few more times to grab it, but it just pulled free of his hand as it whirled in place.

  “Think faster, Arch,” Dani mumbled as more thunder rumbled directly overhead. The rain gathered force and became a steady downpour.

  Apparently this was not a threat to the instruments, which were made to weather the outdoors. The cup anemometer was spinning crazily now with the wind gaining speed, the barometer still dropping.

  Lil left the umbrella to Dani and Isabella, leaving its cover to twirl and dance around on the sand in the rain, laughing.

  The rest of them were getting drenched, as well, but no one seemed to mind, since the day had been hot and the air very dry. It felt good, as far as Jake was concerned. Still, he had no desire to be in a flood, if that was what came next.

  He also noticed that the storm clouds that had gathered over their beach were now spreading in all directions and blotting out more of the fine Sicilian sunshine.

  The windblown rain pelted them on an angle, but the wetness made Archie’s efforts to grab hold of the whirling disk all the more impossible.

  The waves were now tossing angrily, churning white. Lil waved to her seahorse when Wallace popped his head up from the surf and looked around as if to say, What the deuce is going on up there?

  Then lightning flashed overhead.

  Lil screeched and dove for cover under the instrument table, while particles of blowing sand began to sting their eyes, carried on the wind.

  Isabelle did her best to protect her notes, and Dani the leather case of photographic plates even as the gusts threatened to flip their umbrella inside out.

  “Isn’t this fun,” Nixie muttered.

  Only the two mermaid sisters seemed perfectly at home in the rain, considering they were used to dwelling in water.

  Meanwhile, the noise from the orb was growing deafening now. Archie’s wet lab coat whipped around him, while the deep, low, vibrating hum was slowly climbing to a high metallic screech, like an incessant ringing in the ears, and the disk spun faster and faster.

  The colors of the whirling lights around it seemed imbued now with veiled malevolence. It seemed to be operating with a wicked mind of its own.

  Archie was still trying to figure the thing out. “I imagine they must’ve had a whole array of these, not just one,” he remarked as he puzzled over it, not yet looking too alarmed.

  “Archie, do something!” Nixie finally exclaimed.

  “But what, is the question. I can’t get hold of it; it’s spinning too fast!”

  “So, what then, we’re all going to drown?” Dani yelled over another clap of thunder.

  “Of course not! Don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control.”

  “That’s what the Atlanteans said, too, I’d wager.” Jake stalked over to Dani to make sure she stayed safe.

  “Sapphira, walk me through it again, how you turned it off last time.” Archie looked at her through his rain-splashed glasses.

  “I’m not telling you,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and turning away with her nose into the air. “You’d just accuse me of lying. Humph!”

  “Sapphira!” Jake cried.

  “Oh, very well. I just held on to it, got spun around till I was half-silly in the head, and kept punching buttons all the time.”

  “These little lights?”

  “Yes.”

  “At random, I suppose?” he asked with a disapproving glance over the tops of his rain-blurred spectacles.

  “Sorry!” she said sarcastically.

  “Well, somebody do something!” Nixie bellowed.

  “Hold on. What the devil’s that?” Jake’s heart skipped a beat as he slowly pointed out to sea.

  The others turned to look. A dark funnel of spinning water dropped down from the darkest part of the thundercloud and reached toward the sea like a giant elephant’s trunk—or a titan-sized snake.

  “I say!” Archie cried in delight. “It’s a waterspout! A very rare weather phenomenon—like a tornado, only made of water rather than wind—”

  “Archie!” Nixie shouted before he could launch into a meteorology lesson, but he turned to her and threw up his hands.

  “What do you want me to do, Nix? I can’t grab the blasted thing! It’s moving too fast!”

  “Maybe I can hold it still for you.” Jake closed his eyes, stilled his mind despite his fear of the water twister barreling down on them, and summoned up his telekinesis.

 
; After a deep, slow breath or two, he flicked his eyes open and lifted his hand, aiming his palm at the disk.

  He ignored the wind and waterspout and fear of Armageddon and focused all his concentration on stopping the orb’s spinning.

  It fought him, but Jake used all his stubborn will to slow its motion. The lights protested, angrily flicking off and on like they were communicating a message to him in response, but the whine gradually dropped back in pitch.

  He wasn’t nearly done yet. He turned his palm upward and spread his fingers as though he were holding a ball; turning his hand, he focused his mind on trying to make the disk spin in the opposite direction.

  The counterpressure was enough to bring it to a halt; he kept concentrating hard as Archie snapped into motion. Stepping forward, the boy genius shoved his rain-covered spectacles up onto his head, grasped the edges of the disk, and began reversing every twist and turn he’d made with the sections.

  Isabelle started to read them off to him, but he interrupted: “Shh! I’ve got it. I memorized the sequence as I did it.”

  To Jake’s relief, within just two or three reverse turns, the piercing hum quit, the wind puttered out, and the rain stopped.

  Jake released his mental hold on the orb, since Archie’s altering the shape had clearly deactivated it, though the lights still flicked angrily. He dropped his hands to his side, his chest heaving.

  For another tense moment, Archie continued the sequence of reverse twists and turns while the waves went on churning. The clouds still roiled overhead, but when Jake glanced out to sea, he was glad to spot the towering waterspout already dissipating.

  Dani sent him a grateful look.

  He nodded in answer, feeling surprisingly drained. That thing had been giving off more power than had been readily apparent.

  “Well!” Archie said, his hand trembling visibly as he set the orb—a sphere once more—on the table in between the camera and the barometer so it wouldn’t roll away. “That was…exciting.”

  “Never a dull moment with you lot.” Nixie shook her head and turned away to squeeze the rain out of her hair.

  The young scientist looked around at all his observers. “Everyone all right?”

  Before anyone could answer, Maddox came marching out onto the sand with fury in his dark eyes.

  “Give it to me,” he ordered, putting out his hand.

  Archie’s eyes widened and he obeyed, as startled as they all were to see the small trickles of drying blood that had leaked from the older boy’s ears.

  “Maddox?” Isabelle stepped forward in alarm, lifting her goggles onto her forehead. “Are you all right?”

  He cast her a seething look, then took the orb and pivoted, heading back toward the stone steps that led up to the villa.

  “Where are you going?” Jake called.

  Maddox stopped and turned around. “To climb Mount Etna, where I shall be throwing this cursed thing into the volcano! I should have done it the first day we found out what it was.”

  “Maddox, you can’t just destroy it!” Archie protested, hurriedly trying to dry his glasses on his wet lab coat.

  “Well, you can’t control it! I never should’ve let you do this. This blasted artifact already wiped out one civilization. I’m not about to let it drown ours, too.” He set off again.

  “But Maddox, what about my people?” Sapphira cried, taking a few steps toward him. “What do you think Davy Jones might do to my father and my homeland if worse comes to worst?”

  “Your father is a king with an army. Let him use it,” he said. “I am not letting this fall into the wrong hands.”

  Archie tried to reason with him, which Jake could have told him was a bad idea. “Maddox, I’m sorry your ears were hurt in my experiment—”

  “I’m fine!” Maddox barked.

  Archie flinched. “It’s just that you cannot throw that into the volcano.”

  “The lava will destroy it,” Maddox said.

  “Or you could blow up half the continent of Europe!” Archie retorted.

  Maddox eyed him in suspicion. “What do you mean?”

  “The fact is, I have no idea how those unknown metals will react when exposed to that kind of heat!”

  Maddox glanced uncertainly at the orb. “They’ll melt.”

  Archie pressed his fingers to his thumb as he lifted his hand. “And release what? Must I explain everything to you people? The chemical reaction could give off a burst of energy that could destabilize the whole magma chamber, setting off a chain reaction, causing Etna and other volcanos in the region to erupt—because many of them are connected by magma tunnels underground. For you to speak of just lobbing it willy-nilly into a volcano is both…i-i-incredibly stupid and irresponsible!” he sputtered.

  “No, what you just did was stupid and irresponsible!” Maddox bellowed back. “But what else would I expect from someone with freakish intelligence and no bloody common sense!”

  “How dare you?” Archie shouted.

  Jake had never seen his easygoing cousin so incensed. Likewise, stoic Maddox hadn’t lost his temper since the day he’d held Jake headfirst over a pile of dragon dung. How had this escalated so quickly?

  The girls all looked to Jake to do something; he stepped forward, knowing it was time to intervene.

  “Maddox, I really think we should listen to Archie on this,” he said in as soothing a tone as he could find. “He usually knows what he’s talking about.”

  “I would remind you that he’s twelve. Playing around with an unknown device of possibly demonic origins that could destroy the world. But suit yourselves,” Maddox said indignantly, nostrils flared. “Who am I to second-guess the genius? Here you are, wünderkind, if you’re so smart. Catch!”

  He tossed the orb to Archie, who barely managed to catch it before Maddox pivoted and stalked away.

  “Maddox—” Isabelle started, but he waved her off, leaving the beach without a backward glance.

  A long, hideous silence followed.

  Dani cast Jake a wide-eyed look that said, That was ugly.

  He nodded in discreet agreement, but could only conclude that both of his male friends had reacted that way because they were embarrassed. Archie had pretty much botched the orb experiment in front of everyone, including Nixie, and Maddox had left the scene of danger because of his own intense pain, something Guardians were never supposed to do.

  All this, on top of the strain that everyone was feeling, being homesick and under threat from two terrible directions—the Dark Druids and Davy Jones.

  Sapphira and Lil exchanged a glance, both looking like they wished they could’ve escape the awkwardness of witnessing friends fight.

  Isabelle lowered her gaze and pulled off her lab coat, obviously feeling caught in the middle.

  Nobody spoke as Archie stiffly put all his pieces of scientific equipment back into a large wooden box. “I’d better take these things inside.”

  “Here.” Isabelle closed her notebook and tucked it into the box, giving her little brother a tender look. As an empath, she no doubt had an even clearer understanding of what he was feeling right now.

  But Archie avoided her gaze, as though he much preferred to be left alone at the moment.

  “Good job, Arch,” Jake offered. “It was a valid experiment. It needed to be done. We had to know what we were dealing with.”

  Archie just looked at him, then handed him the orb. “You take it.”

  Startled, Jake cradled it carefully. Then Archie nodded as though washing his hands of the whole thing, and walked off carrying his box.

  Isabelle let out a sigh and glanced at Jake.

  He shrugged and shook his head, then held up the orb. “What are we going to do with this thing before it gets us killed? Ladies? Any ideas at all?”

  Sapphira shrugged. “I think we’re stuck with it.”

  At least the sun had come out again, and the sea’s midday calm was restored.

  “It is quite a pickle,” Nixie remarked a
s she leaned against the empty table. “It’s too dangerous to keep it, and even more dangerous to try to destroy it.”

  “Can’t we just hide it?” Dani asked.

  “That doesn’t seem to work,” Sapphira said with a wry glance at Jake. “Someone always seems to find it.”

  “Maybe we could throw it back into Calypso Deep,” Nixie suggested. “It did all right there for a very long time. Jones already searched the canyon and didn’t find it. Why would he look there again?”

  Jake shook his head. “Too risky. Speaking as a former thief, people always hide their valuables in the same two or three places. A pirate like him is going to know that. He’ll search the canyon again if he has to.”

  “And don’t forget this Lord Wyvern fellow,” Dani reminded them. “He could send the rock monsters back down to check for any artifacts they might’ve missed the first time around if he’s greedy.”

  “Good point,” Nixie conceded.

  “Speaking of Davy Jones,” Sapphira said, “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but am I the only one who’s noticed the full moon starts two nights from now? Remember, according to legend, when the full moon rises, he and his shark men can come up on land. We’ll have to be ready.”

  Isabelle frowned. “But surely we have no reason to think he knows where we are. We’ve all stayed out of the water, just like your Commander Tyndaris told us to.”

  “Well, except for when Jake rode the dolphin from the beach at Nisáki to the boat,” Dani pointed out.

  “Aw, that was only for a few minutes. Let’s not be too paranoid,” Jake said. “For now, let’s just figure out what to do with this orb. Come on, girls, think.”

  They all stood racking their brains, with no sound but the whisper of the once-again gentle breeze and the lapping of the waves. A gull screeched somewhere, but no one offered any answers.

  “I wish I’d never seen it,” Sapphira said softly.

  Nixie used her wand to work a spell that dried her clothes and hair instantly. She offered to do the same for Jake and the mermaids, but when she turned to Dani, the redhead suddenly gasped.

  “I’ve got it!” Dani cried. “My new hatbox—!”

  They all looked at her, baffled.