Elise and The Astonishing Aquanauts

by Steven Welch

  An ocean. Maybe our ocean?

  Elise felt a shadow to her starboard and turned to the glass just as a massive great white shark, jaws wide, bumped the sub inches from her face.

  She jumped. The shark’s dark eyes seemed to consider her for a moment, and then it swam away into the clear water trailed by dozens of tiny scavenger fish.

  Elise wasn’t frightened of the shark. She felt such an overwhelming happiness. Maybe this really was their ocean with sharks and whales and dolphins. Maybe there was a way to make things right again.

  Jules piloted the sub upwards, to the surface.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  WANDERING HAVEN

  THE OCEAN WAS clear and full of life, just as it had been and perhaps just as it would be again someday.

  The submersible, the Aquaboggin carved through the waters at good speed, rising as it went, shedding bubbles.

  Jules and Elise smiled as the vessel reached the surface and the water dropped away from the forward view glass.

  There were two suns, one large and golden, the other small and blindingly white, and they were gloriously bright in a sky as blue as the mind could allow. Jules flipped a switch and the forward glass popped up with a hydraulic whoosh.

  The air was warm and fresh and smelled of the sea.

  There were structures that rose from the surrounding ocean. Towers, buildings, monuments, but just the peaks and tops jutting out from the water.

  The ocean had flooded a great city here, and they were floating above the flood.

  Dolphins jumped off in the distance, breeching up and out of the water, playing or hunting. Bait fish, mullet perhaps, skittered here and there, chasing schools of flying shrimp.

  The sun felt wonderful on Elise’s face.

  Jules guided the vessel slowly along, past great stone buildings carved out of rock and stone that glistened with quartz lines and was the color of Georgia clay.

  “Idiot girl, in the unfortunate case that you had not deduced this for yourself,” he said, “we have somehow found ourselves in a new world.”

  “There was a flood.”

  “Yes, apparently so.”

  He checked the instruments on the control panel of the Aquaboggin.

  “The sea here is shallow. Fifty meters according to the instruments. We are looking at the top of a primitive city and there is much more beneath us.”

  Something moved along the surface of the stone building to their port side.

  Elise squinted. She couldn’t see it at first, then it moved again.

  A big red crab, the size of a dog, was clinging to the side of the building. Its eyes were on stalks and they considered Elise for a moment then the crab shimmied down the side of the building and into the sea.

  Charlie had come from this world. She had brought him home.

  “Do you hear that?” Jules asked.

  Elsie heard nothing at first, only the soft splash of water against the hull of their sub. Then, off in the distance, she heard the sound of laughter and music.

  It sounded like a party or a concert or a circus.

  Her Dad had taken her to a carnival once, a wonderland of ferris wheels and games and wooden coasters and people with unique talents doing strange things. What she heard now reminded her of that night.

  The sub cruised toward the sound and in just a few moments they passed between stone pillars and a floating city was revealed, a village adrift on a bed of wood and rubber and trash all tied together to create an island.

  Seagulls swooped down over them as they stared in wonder at the carnival.

  *

  There’s a circus, then there’s a fair, then there’s a carnival. A circus is a tidy thing, wild but controlled, sensory overload contained in a space where your focus is directed and a joyous story is told. A fair billows out beyond your reach, but it’s yours, a child of your community, and it tells the story of your town’s tastes and smells and attitudes. At a circus you become a child. At the fair you become a teen in love. But darker amusements can be had when the train rolls into town at midnight and madness sprouts on the town field like strange mushrooms. At the carnival you become the stranger. A carnival invades and shocks, its dark story spills out as if dumped onto a field by dark authors and comfort is a wink and a nod. The carnival is where you see and taste things you shouldn’t, where the thrill is streaked with fear, where the tent might be the last place you’d take your child. The circus is a clown with a rubber nose and a smile. The carnival is a man who eats living chickens with a leer. At night, after the story is told, you want to run away to the circus. You want to run away from the carnival.

  Under the two suns of this new, flooded world, Elise and Jules stepped out of the sub and onto the solid footing of the docks of a vast floating island. The carnival, if that’s what it was, and it certainly felt like one, was an eruption of life and color and music along the docks and into the crowded jumble of streets that had been fashioned out of wooden planks, sheet metal, and other debris.

  There was a tall wooden stage and on the stage was a quintet of musicians playing instruments of all kinds, percussion and string and brass. The musicians were a strange mix. A beautiful human woman with bright red hair worked the bow of a violin while a black and white merman pounded a massive set of skin covered drums and a thin child dressed in colorful rags blew a gleaming trumpet.

  The crowd was mixed as well. The mer people danced and partied with humans. A trio of sea monkeys dashed past them chattering and clapping. A small flock of penguins waddled along and made chirping sounds as they went.

  The music was contagiously energetic, wildly rhythmic, joyous. Elise was horribly embarrassed to see that Jules was moving to the music, his elbows to his side and his head bobbing back and forth.

  “Cut it out,” she said.

  Jules snapped an eyebrow up and danced even more.

  Food smells drifted on the wind and Elise felt her belly rumble. Something smelled really good. They walked on, through the crowd of revelers, toward the smell of whatever was cooking. Tall billboards were splashed on the sides of rough tents, lurid artwork promising to introduce the curious to strange visions. Here was a human from exotic lands dressed as a pigeon who could contort in the most unusual ways. There was a half man, half beaver that seemed to be able to remove his tail at will.

  Elise stopped at a plank of wood that was hammered to another to form a wall. Upside down and sideways on the plank was nailed a faded, water-stained and hand-drawn poster of a strange looking elephant. She turned her head upside down so that she could read, but the words were in a language she didn’t understand. The elephant was wearing armor and carrying a spear in its trunk.

  “Jules, look,” Elise said.

  Jules studied the poster for a moment.

  “A story unfolds. I suspect that this is a “lost sea elephant” poster. Clearly the poor creature came to our world in the event they call The Turn, but must have escaped from its owners before the flood. If I am to guess, based on its habit of piling rocks atop the portal, this sealephant does not want to return.”

  “But what if somebody misses it.”

  “No, the poster hints to me that she is a beast used for battle. Perhaps she is done fighting. The strange men who fought with her in the valley must be four that were also lost. Warriors, trying to reclaim their beast of war. This explains much.”

  “I hope she gets away from them.”

  “So do I, little one.”

  They stumbled, danced, were half-shoved by the crowd into the island’s food court. It was a narrow alley and on either side were food vendors grilling, sizzling, steaming, chopping, and baking a dizzying array of foods.

  “My tongue explodes in anticipation,” Jules said.

  “Can you speak normally for once? Your tongue explodes? What?”

  Jules shrugged, the classic French gesture for, among other things, “what are you gonna do?”

  Street chefs barked and beckoned to them at every step
, offering things that were batter fried and other things that were wrapped in dark breads and others that were still alive and skewered. The chefs were human and merman both, working and competing for attention side by side.

  They stopped at a tidy little stall where a chubby woman was deep frying fish. It smelled glorious.

  Jules leaned down to Elise and whispered, “Do you have any money?”

  Elise gave him an “are you kidding” look.

  Jules grimaced. He was wearing dark jeans and a striped shirt with his Scaphandrier outer vest. He began rifling through the various pockets. A whistle, a single bullet, an anesthetic bulb, chewing gum, a laser pointer, a dissolvable fish hook, a grenade. No money.

  “Bonjour Madame,” he said to the woman frying the fish.

  She turned and smiled so widely that her head might have split.

  “Bonjour!” she replied in French.

  The two began speaking excitedly in French so quickly that Elise couldn’t keep up. She caught bits of phrases, a word here and there.

  “Wandering Haven. Edith. Ten years. From the Vendee. Crazy world, right? Thieving sea monkeys. What happened, who’s to say? Husband catches and I cook.”

  She dropped sizzling fish chunks into little tins and handed them to Elise and Jules.

  “Merci,” Jules said, shaking her hand.

  She made a “not a problem” gesture and bent down to Elise with a warm smile.

  “Bonjour, mon fil, and welcome to Wandering Haven of the world called Orcanum. I am Edith. There’s no money here, just trade. So give me a grin and we’ll call it even for the fish.”

  Elise grinned.

  The fish was a delicious, crispy delight.

  “Edith, I am Jules and this is Elise,” he said in English, “we come from Paris.”

  “Yes,” Edith said, “my English is not so good, but yes, I understand. But Paris is still there?”

  “Just a ghost of the city, I’m afraid,” said Jules, “and we fled even as the ghost was fading.”

  “Ah. So sad. I am sure my Cholet, my town, is no more.”

  “What do you remember of the day, what some call The Turn?”

  “What does the fly remember at the end of a swatter? We are the lucky and there are few of us. Just here on Wandering Haven. The survivors live here and here alone.”

  “How many?”

  “Perhaps a few hundred,” she said in French.

  “These strange beings, these black and white men with fins like sharks, are they new to this world as well?”

  “Oh no, monsieur, this is their home. They are the Orcanum. Not bad, but some of them are brutes, so be cautious. Took some doing but we can understand each other a bit. We must get along because their world was turned as well, all of us at the same time. Flooded. This is a world of two seas so we make do together.”

  “Two seas?” Elise asked.

  “The Earth’s ocean didn’t just disappear, my dear. It was brought to this world at The Turn. Our entire ocean dumped into theirs. Can you imagine? Well, of course you can.”

  “This place, Wandering Haven. You built it?”

  “Yes, out of flotsam and jetsam from the flood. Our village isn’t much to look at but we love her. Big place too and growing all the time.”

  “How did you arrive here?”

  “We were at the beach, my family and me, and a hole opened on the shore. My husband Fernand and I were pulled in, but not…I was pulled into the waves but not…” and she stopped there because Elise could see that she was going to cry if she continued.

  Jules put his hand on Edith’s.

  “Not my children,” she said, “just us. Ten years ago. I dream that they are alright, back home in Cholet, playing. That’s what I dream. Who’s to say?”

  “Perhaps they are,” he said. They thanked her for the fish and walked back into the noisy musical chaos of the carnival.

  The thin Asian man dressed in an old wetsuit had been listening, concealed behind planks of wood near the food stall where Edith served her fish. He was an old string of a thing smoking a thin reefer, his long silver hair fashioned into a tangle of dreadlocks. He discreetly followed Jules and Elise as they explored.

  You could barely read the faded logo on the front of the tattered wetsuit.

  Les Scaphandriers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A SHOTGUN BLAST TO THE FACE

  ELISE WALKED WITH eyes wide at the side of Jules Valiance through the din of the carnival.

  The ground at their feet was sandy plywood and other lumber all tied and nailed together. Here and there water sloshed up through cracks. It might have been her imagination but she would feel the whole thing shift slightly now and then, as if they were walking on the deck of a giant ship.

  Neither Elise nor Jules noticed the skinny old man that was following them. He was good, popping in and out of alleys and huts and scrambling under and between and over to stay hidden.

  The people of Wandering Haven were of all ages and nationalities, a melting pot of languages and cultures. The Orcanum were also more diverse than Elise thought possible, with big ones and little ones, some working at food stalls or little shops, others, the big ones, wearing thick armor and carrying blunt weapons crudely fashioned out of debris. They didn’t speak words she could understand but chattered in a strangely musical language of clicks, whistles, and song. She got close enough to one of the big ones to see that the skin was smooth, the black-and-white pattern a bit different on each one, the fins along the back of the arms and legs and head of various sizes and attitudes. The face was almost human, but with dark eyes buried deep under a thick brow, a bump where the nose should have been, and a large mouth full of sharp teeth. They weren’t sharks, she thought, they were more like the orcas she had seen at the Aquarium with her Dad.

  You could see Orcanum in the water as well, surfacing to breath through holes in the back of their necks and then diving back down into the clear water off the docks of the island. They were fast, so fast that they could leap out of the water and onto the wooden planks of Castaway Island without seeming to exert any effort at all.

  Jules tugged at Elise and they approached a filthy tent where a crowd had gathered, a mix of people and Orcanum. A young man stood on a box and shouted to the crowd, barking for them to come in and experience the concert of the Octo-Thing, the wonder of the centuries, nature’s conundrum, a puzzlement of the sea. The curious were filing in, handing the man little items as payment for entry.

  Jules couldn’t contain himself. He paid with a button and a single bullet, and so the two of them found their way into the tent.

  Sunlight bled through little rips in the fabric, but it was mostly dark. A single candle on a small stage offered a strange sight, a lump of wriggling tentacled flesh that glistened. Elise had seen octopus before, but never one like this.

  There was a little foot, like a baby’s foot, at the end of one of the writhing arms. Other tentacles were tipped with what looked like tiny hands. With a soft suction noise the creature pushed itself up and stood. The head was a bulbous amalgam of octopus and human, with wide eyes and a mouth hidden below the mantle.

  “Oh,” Elise said, pointing at the little hand reaching out from the tip of a fat tentacle.

  The Octo-Thing picked up a violin and began to play a tune.

  The gathered crowd gasped, laughed, applauded.

  The eyes of the thing seemed sad, even as it played a happy melody, and Elise felt uncomfortable.

  She looked up at Jules and his face was stone.

  “Let us go, Elise,” he said. They walked back out into the sun.

  “That was weird, but I felt sad for it,” Elise said as they wandered back into the streets.

  “A tent is no home for that beautiful creature. Laughter and applause do not sooth its soul. The Octo-Thing will someday swim free. So pledges Jules Valiance.”

  “Can we go check on Charlie? Maybe it will help him, to be back home.”

  “Of cours
e. And there is something else that I would like to see back at the vessel. Curse me as a fool, but I have neglected the obvious.”

  *

  The warm sun had heated the interior of the Aquaboggin, but her batteries were solar powered and they kept the cooler at just above freezing.

  Elise stared through the little glass portal, through crystal etchings of frost, at the gray body of the crab.

  Nothing moved, not the feelers, not the antennae, not the eyes on long stalks.

  She had expected this. Elise didn’t really believe in miracles anymore. Charlie was dead, and he was always going to die, just like everything else.

  There were soft beeping sounds from the cockpit. Elise traced a heart shape on the fogged surface of the glass and kissed.

  “Goodbye,” she said, “you were my friend and I’ll never forget you for saving my life. Thank you.”

  She walked up to where Jules sat in the pilot seat. He was staring at a round screen that had little glowing blue dots. The beeps came from the screen.

  “This is the Aquaboggin,” he said, tracing the outline of the sub on the screen. Elise could see it clearly. There were two flashing blue dots in the front of the ship.

  “That’s us?”

  “Oui, the tracers built into our watches.”

  “So what are those other blue dots?”

  There were a tight grouping of the dots to the north west of their ship.

  “Those are testament to how far my astounding faculties have fallen. They are beeping shameful obscenities at my own stupidity.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Jules was out of his seat fast and strapping on diving gear.

  “One hundred meters over there, in fifty feet of water, are Les Scaphandriers.”

  Elise watched in wonder as the old man geared up. He was moving so quickly that she couldn’t follow. A vest, fins, regulator, small silver tank, headpiece with goggles, dive knife, and oddly, a rubber duck.