Everdark

by Abi Elphinstone

  ‘Now something for the whirlpools because, if Crumpet’s been telling the truth, they spin faster than tornados.’ Smudge’s mind raked over everything she’d been taught in class about navigating stormy seas until her mind was wandering freely. Then she looked down at the armchair. ‘I need to find a pocket watch.’

  The obligasaurus stayed where it was and Smudge frowned, then she opened the drawers of the desk in front of her. The first few she skipped past – nothing except old quills, notebooks and a few packs of cards – but eventually she found the pocket watch in a corner of the bottom drawer. It was still ticking, after all this time, and it even showed the correct time – half past three in the afternoon – so Smudge guessed that this was a magical pocket watch. And they, Crumpet had said, were capable of all sorts of things, not simply showing the time, if handled correctly.

  Smudge pushed back the catch that held the glass face in place. ‘No one’s ever said this would work,’ she murmured, lifting a jar of purple sand from the shelf above the desk and sprinkling a few grains over the clock face. ‘But I don’t see why not. It’s sand from Turtle Shallows, after all . . .’

  Bartholomew’s eyes flickered open from the cubbyhole then narrowed as they took in what Smudge was doing. The Sunraiders back at Wildhorn had never considered enclosing the multicoloured sand in a pocket watch – it was mostly just used by Unmappers as a decorative item. But perhaps Smudge was hoping she could use it in another way, only quite what Bartholomew had no idea. The monkey gave up trying to make sense of things and drifted off to sleep again and for that reason neither he nor Smudge noticed the giant eel slithering past the cubbyhole window.

  And this creature wasn’t just passing by. It had been following their every move since Morg had spoken to it back at Lonecrag.

  It turned out that there were supplies in the kitchen: a range of jungleleaf teas along with a few cans of beans that Smudge and Bartholomew wolfed down. Meanwhile, outside the cubbyhole window, the sea turned darker. The sun had already set and Smudge noticed that the creatures drifting past the glass were altogether stranger now: jellyfish with luminous tentacles that stretched the length of the boat, shoals of multicoloured fish that swam backwards instead of forwards and once, though it passed so quickly she couldn’t be sure, Smudge thought she saw the tail of a mermaid.

  The waves were bigger in these parts, too, and The Coddiwomple was already tilting from side to side. The larger pieces of furniture had been hammered to the floorboards years ago, but Smudge and Bartholomew had bolted shut every cupboard, wardrobe and chest in the cabin in anticipation of what might lie ahead.

  Smudge felt her skin prickle. They were nearing the Northswirl, the very place that had filled her dreams back on Littlefern Island. She had longed to see it – longed to cross it – but now that she was heading into its grasp she suddenly felt small and afraid.

  ‘We must be close by now,’ she whispered.

  A wave shunted against the dhow, knocking a mounted hydra tail to the floor. Bartholomew clutched the wall for support, but then another wave juddered the boat from the other side and a can of beans rolled across the rug.

  ‘And this is only the beginning . . .’ Bartholomew moaned.

  The waves roared above deck and the wind groaned. Smudge thought of Nefarious Flood steering towards the Northswirl all those years ago – had his heart been thundering against his ribcage, like Smudge’s was now? Had the doubts whirling through her mind been whirling through his, too? Smudge steeled herself. She couldn’t let her fear get the better of her, not when they were this close. So she wound the rope from the lifebuoy over her shoulder and headed towards the steps.

  ‘You’re sure we should be going up on deck in this?’ Bartholomew asked as the dhow veered on its side, then thumped down on to the water.

  Smudge felt for the watch in the pocket of her tunic. ‘We can’t just sit tight and hope for the best. We’ve got to be cunning, remember? We’ve got to outwit both the storm and the Northswirl.’

  Bartholomew hugged his tail as a rumble of thunder passed over the boat. ‘But I don’t have the arms for swimming if it comes to that! And you don’t have any experience – or perspective – or common sense!’ he wailed. ‘We don’t even have any watergums – we could drown, Smudge!’

  Smudge looked back at him. ‘I’m scared, too, Bartholomew – but if we turn away from the Northswirl, like everyone else has done in the past, Morg will win. We’ve got to do things differently.’

  She clambered up the stairs and pushed the trapdoor open. The rain gushed in, soaking her tunic and plastering her hair to her skin, and the wind howled louder. Smudge thrust her body out on to the deck and, behind her, the shaking monkey followed.

  The night had closed in around them, but the lantern burned bright and Smudge gasped at the scene before her. The sea was a churning pit of waves and the sky blazed with lightning.

  A wave arched over the boat, then thumped down, forcing Smudge and Bartholomew to their knees. They staggered up, coughing salt water, as the storm clouds bulged across the sky. But, despite the storm, The Coddiwomple continued to inch forward, its dragonhide sail seeming stronger and even more determined than ever as it carried the dhow closer and closer to the most enormous whirlpool Smudge had ever seen.

  ‘We’ve got to cross that?’ Bartholomew shrieked.

  A peal of thunder tore across the sky and the rain fell harder.

  ‘Whirlpools line the length of the Northswirl, remember?’ Smudge yelled. ‘We’ve got no choice but to sail over them!’

  ‘We’ll be sucked to our deaths!’

  The boat moved nearer still and Smudge’s heart clamoured as she took in the circle of spinning water before them. It was the size of a fairground wheel and at its centre was a gaping hole carved out by the fast-spinning water around it.

  ‘Hold on!’ Smudge cried as the boat entered the outskirts of the swirl and spun wildly.

  Bartholomew clung to the side of the boat as Smudge set the lifebuoy down and rummaged in her pocket because her plan, their only hope of crossing this whirlpool, lay in the folds of her tunic. She drew her arm back, clutching the pocket watch in her shaking fist, then for a second she wavered. What if her idea didn’t work? But the boat was spinning faster and faster and Smudge realised she didn’t have time for doubt. She had to act. Now.

  So, hoping hard, she hurled the pocket watch into the heart of the whirlpool.

  Smudge held her breath and Bartholomew held his tail and the boat continued to spin. Then – miraculously – the whirlpool started to slow, to unravel almost, and, as the boat stopped turning, Smudge saw that the hole in the middle of the whirlpool had closed up. Either side of the dhow there were more giant whirlpools and above them the storm still raged, but the way ahead – the narrow passage of water cutting through the waves – was, all of a sudden, astonishingly calm.

  ‘It worked!’ Smudge gasped. ‘My idea actually worked!’

  Bartholomew blinked in amazement. ‘But I don’t understand . . . I’d heard that some pocket watches are magical – they last forever and can speed up journey times with the right ingredients scattered inside them – but how can they calm a sea?’

  ‘We visited Turtle Shallows on a field trip once,’ Smudge replied as the boat sailed through the channel, ‘and the whole class was given a jar of multicoloured sand as a souvenir. I scattered mine below a palm tree on Littlefern Island, to see what happened, and all the animals, everything from the velvet sloth to the dancing parrot, moved far more slowly when they came into contact with the Turtle Shallows sand because of its magic. So I sort of figured – or hoped, I suppose – that if I combined the magical sand with a watch it might somehow slow time down rather than speeding it up.’

  ‘And, by doing so, slow down the whirlpool!’ Bartholomew laughed. ‘Well done, Smudge!’ And then he looked ahead and gulped. ‘I hope you have something equally clever for that?’

  Smudge followed his gaze and her mouth fell open. Some wa
y ahead, and blocking their path completely, was a wave. Only this wave was nothing like any she’d seen before and it made the ones from the storm that still raged either side of them look tame. This was a single looming barrier of water that stretched the height of a church spire and, for some reason, it wasn’t keeling over and breaking. It was heading straight for them.

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure my idea will work,’ Smudge stammered. ‘I didn’t imagine waves could get that big!’

  The storm inhaled and, in the face of this terrible wave, what magic the pocket watch had cast over the whirlpool now vanished. Suddenly water charged at the dhow again, hammering against the sail and knocking Smudge and Bartholomew to the deck. They hauled themselves up only to be flattened seconds later by another wave which tore the lantern from the bow and sent broken glass spinning through the air. The darkness advanced and the thunder bellowed.

  ‘We could try sailing through the wave instead of over it!’ Bartholomew shouted.

  But then, as if the wave had heard the monkey, it began curling over at its peak. Smudge’s eyes grew large as she realised that the foam tearing down towards them had sharpened into hundreds of spikes lit up by the flashes of lightning. Smudge screamed as she saw the base of the wave was also studded with spikes. The wave had transformed itself into a mouth with jagged teeth and they were sailing right inside it.

  Smudge snatched up the lifebuoy. ‘There’s no point thinking of sailing through or over anything, Bartholomew!’ she screamed. ‘We just need to stay afloat if we want to survive!’

  The boat shook violently as it crossed the teeth lining the bottom of the wave and Bartholomew made a beeline for the trapdoor. But Smudge was now shimmying up the mast with the lifebuoy, and – though the storm howled around her, the fanged wave loomed above the boat and Smudge’s pulse raced – she tied the rope as tightly as she could round the top of the mast.

  Then she jumped down, leaving the lifebuoy hanging up there, and hurtled towards the trapdoor, flinging herself inside just as the wave folded over the boat. The force of the blow not only knocked Smudge and Bartholomew down the steps but it turned the boat on its side. The Coddiwomple shunted downwards and though the dhow managed to flip itself upright again there was no mistaking what was happening.

  The wave was dragging them down into the depths of the sea.

  ‘We’re . . . we’re sinking!’ Smudge stammered, turning her terror-stricken face towards Bartholomew. ‘There’s no way the lifebuoy can keep us afloat now! I was mad to even think it could!’

  Bartholomew clutched her hands as the boat drifted down. The cabin was a wreck of smashed furniture and shattered glass and there was water dripping through the trapdoor.

  ‘You were right all along, Bartholomew,’ Smudge sobbed. ‘We should have turned back for Wildhorn when we had the chance and searched for a way to lift the curse on the Lofty Husks. But now,’ she sniffed, ‘we’ve failed Crackledawn, we’ve failed Rumblestar, Silvercrag and Jungledrop and we’ve failed the Faraway!’ She clutched her head in despair.

  The noise of the storm grew quieter as the boat sank further into the depths of the ocean, but Bartholomew’s words were loud and clear. ‘I might have doubted you at first, Smudge, but I should have had more faith. Most people spend their whole life never knowing the strength that lies inside them. They live timidly and are too scared to speak up or step out. But you’re not afraid, Smudge. You dared to believe that you are capable of extraordinary, impossible things.’

  A tear rolled down Smudge’s cheek. ‘But I was wrong, wasn’t I?’ The boat groaned under the weight of the sea.

  Bartholomew squeezed Smudge’s hands. It was only a little squeeze, but there was something about the way the monkey held her hands, his old paws wrapped firmly round her fingers. Smudge had never thought Bartholomew liked her, but as she looked into the monkey’s eyes she now realised, for the first time, that they were big and kind and shining with loyalty.

  ‘It isn’t easy to believe in oneself,’ Bartholomew said. ‘In fact, sometimes it’s easier to believe in things like dragons and witches, though they are rarely seen. But to know the quiet strength of your spirit – and to count on it in times like these – is to understand what it means to be truly brave.’

  Smudge brushed the tears from her eyes.

  ‘I underestimated you,’ Bartholomew said, ‘but I will never do so again. Because the strength inside you is iron-strong and, if you can find it again now, and hold it, just for a second, I believe things might turn out all right.’

  Smudge watched the sea scroll past the cubbyhole window – down, down, down they went – but Bartholomew’s words, so different from the sniggering of her classmates and the Lofty Husks’ lectures, kindled something inside her. She took a long, deep breath and dared to believe in herself again. And, as she did so, a peculiar thing happened . . .

  The boat stopped sinking and began, very slowly, to drift upwards.

  ‘What’s – what’s happening?’ Smudge gasped.

  Bartholomew smiled. ‘I noticed the tag on the empty bottle on Nefarious’ desk . . . You filled the lifebuoy with a sea dragon’s breath because you remembered that it’s more powerful and more buoyant than ordinary air. But you forgot one thing.’ The boat floated on up. ‘A sea dragon’s magic only works if the person in charge of it believes in themself as well as in the magic.’

  Smudge hugged Bartholomew tight. ‘Oh, clever old you for remembering! For telling me to hope!’

  The monkey stiffened in her embrace and things became terribly awkward. ‘Ahem, yes, very nice. Thank you.’ He stood up and shook the water from his fur as the boat bounced up on to the surface of the waves. Then he turned a very serious face towards Smudge. ‘If you breathe a word about that hug or my overly sentimental words earlier, I am afraid I shall have to disown you completely. I appear to have lost control of my emotions.’ He picked up his trilby and put it on. ‘And that will not do at all.’

  Smudge grinned as she leaped up the steps, two at a time, and pushed the trapdoor open. The boat had taken a battering – there was water everywhere, the sail had almost completely come loose and the benches had splintered right through – but The Coddiwomple was still afloat and that in itself felt like a miracle. Smudge threw back her head and laughed.

  Because she and Bartholomew had done it: they had crossed the Northswirl – and lived.

  Smudge leaned against the bow of the boat and peered through the dark. The sky was still full of clouds and the air was misty with drizzle, but the storm had passed and they were one step closer to Everdark and to finding out what else lay beyond the Northswirl.

  Bartholomew emerged through the trapdoor and Smudge squinted harder into the gloom. ‘It just looks like miles and miles of open sea around us . . .’

  The monkey ran his paws across the stern. ‘That clanking noise we heard after The Coddiwomple transformed its sail and altered its lantern . . . I thought perhaps the boat might have had an extra weapon to help protect us, but I can’t see anything different.’

  The clanking noise had, as Bartholomew had guessed, been an extra weapon, but it was too dark for either he or Smudge to see the little slits on the railings through which thousands of merscales had poured when the fanged wave dragged them down. Because, unbeknown to those aboard the dhow, there had been a final threat readying to pounce in the Northswirl, and sensing it, The Coddiwomple had hurled the one thing capable of beating an ogre eel – merscales – out into the sea when the monster drew close. Now the eel lay stunned into a trance at the bottom of the ocean but even merscales cannot hold back evil forever. And it would have helped Bartholomew and Smudge immensely if they had known that by the next moonrise there would be a rampaging monster tailing their boat. For now, though, they sailed on unawares.

  Bartholomew fumbled through the trunk under the canopy, then his face dropped. ‘We forgot to take the quill and ink down into the cabin.’ He looked up at Smudge. ‘They’re gone . . . Tossed overboard by the
storm.’

  Smudge glanced nervously at the sail. ‘How will we direct the ship without them?’ She slumped against the side of the boat. They’d got this far – they’d achieved what no other Sunraider had – and yet now it seemed they were stuck! ‘How could we have been so careless?’ she muttered.

  Bartholomew was silent for a moment, then he looked up at Smudge. ‘I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I just wonder . . .’

  He beckoned her back towards the trapdoor and Smudge followed him down inside the cabin, desperately hoping the monkey’s hunch – whatever it was – was right. The obligasaurus was whizzing back and forth, straightening hydra tails and hauling up furniture. It had claws tucked under its armrests, as well as below the seat, it appeared, and these were working tirelessly to set the cabin right.

  Bartholomew’s face lit up. ‘If the place is being given a spring clean, then I might well be able to find what I’m looking for.’

  The obligasaurus seized a broom and began sweeping up the rogue sea-hoppers (miniature toads that could burp the alphabet backwards) that had escaped from a toppled fish tank.

  Bartholomew hurried over to the desk and began rummaging through the papers the obligasaurus had stacked back on its surface.

  Smudge frowned. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘This,’ Bartholomew said. ‘The map we consulted right at the beginning of our voyage. I think that it might be a mind map.’

  ‘A mind map?’ Smudge said gloomily. ‘Crumpet gets us to do those for revision before exams – not that they helped me much – but mine looked nothing like this. And how is a mind map going to help us anyway?’

  Bartholomew waved his hand dismissively. ‘A real mind map is nothing like the kind of thing you came across in class.’

  He unfolded it on the desk and Smudge did a double take. When they had last looked at the map, there had been nothing beyond the Northswirl but now, strewn across the parchment, were words written in swirling ink.