Everdark

by Abi Elphinstone

  The man said nothing for a while. ‘Your idea isn’t all bad – in fact, it makes a lot of sense. In a book I once read, Secrets of a Sea Witch by Montgomery Dampweed, it talked of a sailor who encountered a sea witch and used a net full of low-pitched sun-chatter – chimney moans and bottom A notes from a piano, I believe – to fight it off. But those kind of sounds usually only grow around reefs and we, as you well know, are trapped in a wreck on the ocean floor.’

  ‘But there are sounds down here, all the same,’ Smudge said. ‘Maybe not the ones you catch in raiding nets. But –’ she watched the seagrass sway above the coffin as her mind ticked over – ‘there are magical beasts here. Creatures who make sounds. And there’s one creature responsible for the lowest sound of all – lower than the bottom note on a piano, lower even than thunder.’

  ‘You want to summon a whale?’

  ‘Not just any old whale but the whale with the lowest song in Crackledawn.’ Smudge took a deep breath. ‘I want to summon a silver whale.’

  The man in the casket laughed. ‘Never in all my time at sea have I heard of a person summoning a silver whale. They’re as wild as sea dragons – they don’t just appear on demand. And besides, even if you were to whistle for one – as Henrietta Humpleback, who claimed to be a whale whisperer (despite having no luck whatsoever calling silver whales), instructed – you wouldn’t manage it.’ He sniffed. ‘Because you’d need an item of silver under your tongue while whistling. And if Henrietta Humpleback had read Gertrude Scatterworth’s Fantastical Forgotten Facts she might have had more luck.’

  ‘Right then,’ Smudge replied, but her words came out mumbled because, while the man had been jabbering on about Henrietta Humpleback and Gertrude Scatterworth, Smudge had been removing her nose ring and placing it under her tongue in a desperate attempt to summon a whale.

  ‘Why do you sound as if you’ve got a crab wedged in your throat?’ the man asked.

  Smudge ignored him and began to whistle. And, though the sound was soft and almost lost in the prattle of the sea witches in the ballroom, it rang out all the same.

  ‘You’ve evidently managed to conjure up some silver,’ the man said, ‘which is impressive, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up for the next bit. I really think silver whales have better things to be doing with their time than heeding the call of the Annoyingly Alive.’

  Smudge whistled again for the silver whale and, as she did so, she poured all the hope she had inside her into her breath. Because if there was one thing she was learning out here on the open seas it was that self-belief was almost as powerful as magic.

  Suddenly a hush fell over the ballroom as the witches’ chatter faded away. Smudge fell silent, too. But she needn’t have worried. The sea witches’ anxious silence was not caused by her whistling, which they hadn’t even heard above their chattering, but by the silver glitter that had started floating down the staircase and drifting in through the glass-less windows.

  Smudge held her breath as flecks of silver dropped through the holes in her casket and she found herself remembering Bartholomew’s words. Seawater can change colour depending on the types of creatures that swim in it. Silver for the silver whales . . . Smudge hoped hard. Could it be that a silver whale had heard her call?

  Then a new sound rumbled across the floorboards. A long, slow boom that juddered through the ship as if it was made of paper. Smudge’s heart leaped. Only a silver whale could make a sound that low! Again came the whale’s echoing song and the noise seemed so close Smudge felt it thrum in her bones. And, as the call swelled round the boat, Smudge felt the power return to her body at last.

  She burst out of the casket just as the man in the coffin beside her did the same. Only now he was brilliantly alive! He had shining green eyes and was running his hands over his matted beard and torn tunic, as if he could hardly believe that they belonged to him. Smudge blinked. It couldn’t be . . .

  And yet it was. Next to her stood Nefarious Flood. Her all-time hero. And, up until Smudge and Bartholomew’s voyage, the only person to have sailed beyond the Northswirl! Smudge blinked once, twice and then a third time. He was still alive, after all this time! He hadn’t drowned as everyone thought . . . He had been a prisoner of the sea witches all along.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, Smudge glimpsed something else. An enormous creature with skin so silver it would have made starlight look dull. The silver whale glided past the window then disappeared, and only its song was left, reverberating through the wreck.

  With the whale gone, the sea witches’ turned their attention to Smudge and Nefarious and the group began to advance towards the two escaped prisoners. Smudge froze. She realised that she had absolutely no idea what to do now that she was free. The witches rushed towards her . . .

  CRASH!

  The wreck juddered with such force Smudge and Nefarious were knocked to the ground and the sea witches smashed against the pillars.

  ‘The silver whale,’ Nefarious gasped. ‘I don’t think it’s gone yet . . .’

  There was another ear-splitting crash and Nefarious grabbed Smudge by the arm as a chunk of ceiling collapsed beside them.

  ‘Swim!’ he yelled. ‘Swim!’

  Together they headed for the staircase, but the witches were on their tail, refusing to give up their prey so easily. The silver whale was making life difficult for them, though, and it was only when Smudge and Nefarious were up on deck that they saw how. The whale was thrashing its mighty tail against the wreck and, as Smudge and Nefarious dodged out of its way, the whale turned its tail on the witches that tried to follow them.

  The witches sang to try and push the silver whale back, but the creature was fighting with a wilder magic than theirs and it flung its tail at any witch that came close and sang out its booming notes, draining the witches of their power. And as Smudge and Nefarious kicked away from the wreck, the sea witches’ song weakened to nothing until one by one they sank back into the depths of the ocean.

  Hardly daring to believe their luck, Smudge and Nefarious kept swimming upwards. Then Smudge’s eyes grew very, very large because, instead of water against her belly, she felt the cool, smooth touch of whale skin. She gasped as the wonder of things danced inside her. Because here she was, beyond the Northswirl, riding a silver whale with Nefarious Flood!

  She turned to the Sunraider behind her, who was running a hand over the whale’s dorsal ridge and blinking in astonishment.

  ‘I have seen many things in my lifetime,’ he murmured, ‘but none so extraordinary as this.’

  Smudge smiled and deep inside her, in the slightly overlooked and under-cherished corner of her heart, she felt something stir. It could have been pride or maybe it was simply joy. Whatever it was, it had happened because she had dared to believe not only in the impossible but in herself.

  Smudge faced forward and watched, in silent awe, as the whale carried them through the sea. They passed an octopus that blew golden bubbles and a stingray that changed colour every time it flapped its fins, but nothing was as magnificent as the whale they rode on. It was like riding a giant, or a fallen star, and it was so soul-smashingly magical that Smudge had to bite down on her lip to stop herself squealing.

  Eventually, though, shards of sunlight filtered down from the surface of the sea and from the angle they fell Smudge could tell that it was already midday. She thought of Bartholomew. Had the sunrise woken him up, as Nefarious had suggested? And was he waiting for her to return or – Smudge’s throat tightened – had he turned tail and fled to Wildhorn?

  Smudge hoped and hoped and hoped again as the whale broke through the surface of the sea, sending a torrent of water out through its blowhole, then Smudge’s face broke into a wide smile. Because there was The Coddiwomple and, at its helm, an extremely anxious-looking monkey, chewing on a trilby.

  ‘Bartholomew!’ Smudge shouted.

  ‘Oh, Smudge!’ the monkey cried. ‘You haven’t gone and died, after all!’

  The silver whale raised
its magnificent head towards the bow of the boat and Smudge and Nefarious clambered off. Bartholomew flung his arms round Smudge, then remembered himself and let go.

  ‘Please don’t hug me in front of company, Smudge,’ he tutted. And then his eyes widened as he, too, realised quite who the company was. ‘Nefarious Flood! Well, I never . . .’

  Nefarious laughed as he ran a hand over the side of the dhow. ‘Didn’t think I’d be seeing this old girl again.’

  Smudge leaned over the boat until her face was level with the silver whale’s. Its eye was small and almost lost in the wrinkles and the barnacles that surrounded it, but it shone as bright as the sunrise.

  ‘Thank you,’ Smudge whispered.

  The silver whale dipped its head and as it did so Smudge felt a tingling sensation on either side of her neck. She raised her hands and to her surprise, she felt little ridges under her skin there. Her gills! They hadn’t disappeared completely, as they did with ordinary watergums. Now they were with her forever, just under the surface, and she would remember, every time she dived underwater and used them, the silver whale that had answered her call. The whale sank below the surface until all that remained on the water was a patch of silver bubbles.

  ‘So,’ Bartholomew mused as he placed his hands on his hips and stared at Smudge. ‘You disappeared in the middle of the night – from the stench in the cabin and the fact I couldn’t move a muscle I assumed the sea witches had taken you. When the sun rose, I was freed from their curse, by which time The Coddiwomple had drifted and I had no idea where you might be. But here you are, on the back of a silver whale with a Sunraider who’s been dead for almost twenty years!’

  Smudge nodded. ‘It’s been a busy few hours.’

  Bartholomew raised an eyebrow, then he turned to Nefarious who was stroking the dragonhide sail. ‘Thank you for rescuing Smudge. I do try to keep her under control, but she is, I fear, utterly unmanageable.’

  Nefarious laughed. ‘Rescuing her? I did no such thing. It was Smudge here who rescued me.’

  Bartholomew turned to Smudge. ‘How on earth did you manage that?’

  ‘Whistling mostly,’ Smudge replied.

  Nefarious sat down on a broken bench. ‘Turns out Smudge here probably isn’t going to make a very good Sunraider.’

  Smudge’s face fell. Nefarious had only just met her and already he had decided she was a hopeless case. She had thought he’d been impressed with her plan, but obviously he’d noticed something especially useless about her down in the wreck . . . Something unfixable that meant she wasn’t cut out for anything of note.

  She glanced over at him, but Nefarious didn’t seem to look displeased or disappointed, as the Lofty Husks often did. In fact, he was looking hopeful and just a tiny bit mischievous.

  ‘I know I never was,’ he said quietly, and smiled.

  Bartholomew looked up from bailing out the water the silver whale had blown into the boat. ‘But you went down as one of Crackledawn’s greatest Sunraiders!’

  Smudge nodded. ‘There are books on you and everything – and there’s a portrait back in the Den!’

  ‘Is there now? I hope they captured my devilish good looks and roguish charm.’ Nefarious made room for Smudge on the bench beside him. ‘People – well, grown-ups in particular – are very fond of labels. You’re either this or you’re that. A Sunsmith or a Sunraider. But, the truth is, I was never a terribly good Sunraider. I got some truly dreadful exam results, despite trying my hardest, and I almost never returned from raiding trips on time and with the right mix of sun-chatter.’

  Smudge’s heart skipped a beat. Nefarious Flood, the most famous Sunraider in Crackledawn, sounded just like her! She grinned at the knowledge that someone brilliant, legendary even, had started out in just the same faltering way as she was.

  ‘It sounds like you think differently from most people, Smudge, but that is certainly not a bad thing. The world needs people to look at things from different angles; that’s what keeps it moving forward.’ He smiled at Smudge. ‘You and I are made of the same stuff.’

  Smudge leaned forward eagerly. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Curiosity, courage and self-belief. And do you know what that makes us?’

  ‘Criminals?’ Bartholomew asked.

  Nefarious laughed. ‘No, my dear Bartholomew, it makes us explorers. You and I, Smudge – we’re destined for voyages to far-flung places and adventures at the edges of our world.’

  Bartholomew groaned. He wasn’t sure he approved of the direction the conversation was taking: it was one thing telling Smudge to believe in herself, but quite another encouraging her to go on explorations to the ends of the earth.

  ‘We might not know quite where we’re heading most of the time,’ Nefarious went on, ‘which is actually why I named my ship The Coddiwomple—’

  ‘Isn’t a coddiwomple a type of limpet?’ Bartholomew interrupted sourly.

  ‘Coddiwomple is one of the finest words in the dictionary,’ Nefarious replied. ‘It means to travel purposefully in a vague direction.’ His eyes roamed the sea around them. ‘So, Smudge, do you have a destination in mind for this mission?’

  ‘Everdark,’ Smudge said quietly, ‘via the Fallen Crown, according to The Coddiwomple, though I’m not really sure what that is. We know Morg has returned to Everdark to brew a curse for me and Bartholomew, but unless we get there before she makes the curse we risk the harpy taking control of Crackledawn, then flying on to the other Unmapped Kingdoms to steal their magic, too.’ Smudge paused. ‘Wings are power for a harpy, so Morg said back at Lonecrag, so if we can somehow steal Morg’s wings then maybe we’re in with a chance of stripping her of her power.’

  Nefarious nodded. ‘Then we must sail on with curiosity up our sleeves, courage in our hearts and –’ he shot a sideways glance at Smudge – ‘in the firm and rather exciting knowledge that we have on board our boat one of the most ingenious minds in Crackledawn.’

  Smudge had no idea what ingenious meant, but from the grin on Nefarious’ face, and the despair plastered all over Bartholomew’s, she decided it must be a compliment. All her life she had been ashamed of thinking differently from everybody else, but she was beginning to see that it wasn’t such a disaster, after all. By thinking differently, she had sailed beyond the Northswirl, escaped a swarm of sea witches, rescued Nefarious Flood – and now she was back on course to stop Morg.

  Down in the cabin, over a cup of jungleleaf tea, Nefarious talked Smudge and Bartholomew through the tails mounted on the walls.

  ‘A hydra I bumped into while crossing the Northswirl.’ He held up his right hand that, Smudge noticed, only had four fingers. ‘The hydra took the fifth,’ he said darkly.

  Smudge listened, wide-eyed. Nefarious Flood was every bit as marvellous as she had imagined, and hearing about his adventures first-hand was so thrilling her toes had started to tingle. She felt more confident about what lay ahead now, too, because here was a man who had brought down hydras and krakens – he’d be a match for the harpy . . .

  Nefarious pointed to a purple tentacle coiled up on the plaque above his desk. ‘This kraken here tried to drown me shortly after the Northswirl and I showed him who was boss.’ He winked. ‘Until the wretched thing came back for me the next day – turns out you’ve got to take more than a tentacle from these creatures if you want them off your back – capsized my boat and sent me down to the sea witches’ wreck. But losing thumbs and boats is all part of being an explorer. If we make it back from Everdark with our toes intact, I shall be most surprised.’

  Bartholomew choked into his teacup. ‘How about a jollier subject for the journey, hmmmm?’

  But there’s a limit to how light you can keep the conversation when you’re sailing towards trouble. And, though nobody said anything as dusk fell and the sea grew darker, Smudge, Nefarious and Bartholomew could sense each other’s unease.

  Smudge watched silently as a shiver of ghostsharks glided past the cubbyhole window – wisp-like creatures with ho
llow eyes and gaping mouths – followed by a jellyfish with feathered tentacles. Time drifted on, then Nefarious pointed as a flash of turquoise scales shot past the glass.

  ‘It was only a glimpse,’ he breathed, ‘but it could just have been a sea dragon. This far north, the ocean is full of strange beasts.’

  Smudge settled herself on the end of the bed – she didn’t want to miss a thing – but no sea dragons appeared again and eventually she realised that the boat was slowing.

  ‘We must be near,’ she said quietly.

  Bartholomew sat up straight in the obligasaurus. ‘And we’re none the wiser about what the Fallen Crown actually is . . .’

  Nefarious grabbed the merscale boomerang from the trunk. ‘My enchanted object from the Lofty Husks when I was just a child,’ he said when he saw Smudge frowning. ‘I think we’re going to need all the help we can muster.’

  Before Smudge could ask what the boomerang could do, Nefarious flung open his wardrobe and pulled out a quiver of purple-fletched arrows and a bow. He slung the quiver over Smudge’s shoulder. ‘These arrows have taken down many a kraken in their time and, I think, are your best bet against Morg.’

  ‘But . . . but, I don’t know how to use a bow and arrow,’ Smudge stammered.

  ‘Set the arrow against the string of the bow,’ Nefarious explained. ‘The tip of the arrow (which, by the way, is coated in frog poison) should be pointed at your adversary then simply pull back on the string and fire.’

  Smudge grinned. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that Nefarious Flood would lend her one of his prized weapons!

  ‘Let’s take a look up on deck,’ Nefarious added, hurrying up the steps as Smudge – almost as an afterthought – took a small jar she’d seen wedged inside the top drawer of Nefarious’ desk and shoved it in her pocket. Then she and Bartholomew climbed up the stairs after Nefarious.