Crystal Rain (16 page)

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Authors: Tobias S. Buckell

BOOK: Crystal Rain
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To dive deep into the water Jerome followed the Frenchi girl’s directions. After several feet his ears hurt, but by holding his nose and blowing hard, his ears went ‘pop,’ and he could try to dive deeper.
He wanted to try riding the scudder-fish, but everyone insisted on showing him how to hold his breath and drop to the sand in the deep part of the bay. It took almost a day to conquer his desire for air, and his fear of letting the water close off over his head.
Jerome didn’t relax until the girl came back up to him and showed him how to breath slowly to ready himself for the dive, and to let out his breath to sink to the bottom.
“My name Sandy,” she said. “You Jerome, right?”
“How you know?” Jerome asked, surprised.
“Everyone know you: only one who make it out Brungstun.”
Jerome turned away from her and bit his lip. He’d been keeping his mind away from those memories by spending the day splashing about with them. That was what Troy had intended, no doubt. Now he thought about his mom, and Swagga, and Schmitti …
“But I also remember you from the time when you had visit here with you dad.” Sandy saw that Jerome didn’t want to talk about any of that, so she said, “Why don’t you try and dive again?”
Jerome nodded. The wind blew over his ears as he took several deep breaths, then sank beneath the water. The world fell quiet, and water bubbled out his nose until his body became heavy enough to fall.
It felt wrong to blow out all the air in his lungs, but Jerome sank to the bottom. Calm descended on him as his feet and hands kissed the sand. He opened his eyes and could only make out blurry shapes around him.
Jerome listened to a steady cacophony of croaks and grunts from the ocean’s far distance. The heavy rhythmic sound of the small waves lapping against the beach stirred at him. Even the indistinct voices of the splashing swimmers ten feet above him filtered down.
It felt peaceful. Time played tricks with him. It seemed as if only a minute had passed, or a long hour.
Okay, he thought, maybe not even a minute. His lungs burned. Jerome pushed off the sand and swam to the surface. For a brief moment he could see his reflection off the underside of the mirrorlike border between ocean and air, then he broke the surface next to Sandy.
“Good,” Sandy said. Jerome smiled. One of the older Frenchi rode the scudder-fish around the bay with a whoop.
“Could I try and ride he now?” Jerome asked, excited.
But before she could say anything, Troy yelled from the beach that it was time to come in. When Jerome stood out of the water, he shivered from the cold wind. He rubbed his waterlogged fingers over each other.
“We all looking shrivel-up,” Sandy said. Jerome looked up. Everyone had wrinkled skin from the hours in the water.
The gentle pink and orange hues of the sunset glowed in the west, the bands of color peeking over the Wicked Highs and the foaming waves breaking over the reefs. Azteca were in that direction. As if to confirm this, he noticed a small speck in the sky over the ocean. An Azteca blimp. Jerome pursed his lips and turned around. When he faced the beach and walked out, he noticed that the pillars of smoke from Brungstun were turning toward them with the beginnings of the night wind.
Jerome noticed Troy staring at the blimp in the distance.
 
With the sighting of the blimp the entire Frenchi community burst into even more action. Jerome was taken to dress in warmer clothes. When he came down to the main beach in front of Troy’s store, he found that people had gathered around the fishing boats. Again Jerome marveled at everyone’s light skin color and the red noses some had from the sun. Jerome could get sunburned, but not like that.
Troy, and the old men who always sat in front of his store slapping domino tiles, faced everyone. Overhead the smoke from Brunstun blotted out the early-evening stars.
“It now or never,” an old lady from the crowd said. Everyone looked around them with sad or worried expressions.
“It just an airship, Harriet,” a young man next to her said.
“Only one now. But just you wait. Soon it go be another. And when they see where we is, they go build a boat to come for we.”
Another old lady walked down to the beach. “Harriet right. They already leave Brungstun to come for we. We been using one of them looking glass on top of Gaston house to see town.”
The crowd gasped. Jerome wondered if he could use this looking glass the old lady talked about to look at Brungstun. Could he see people through it? he wondered.
More Frenchi trickled in. “What you had see?”
“Look like they build a few large barges and they’s getting ready to pull them with an old steamer that been up on the docks for repair.”
Jerome felt faint. It was going to happen. They were coming for him at last. He would die soon.
“Okay.” Troy held up a hand. “Then we don’t have no choice. The smoke clouds and dark go fuss with the blimp seeing where we go. Tell everyone in they house sleeping is time they wake up. We leaving.”
The crowd melted away. One of the old men tapped Troy on his shoulder. “What about the boy?” he asked, pointing at Jerome.
“He go with the rest of the pickney. He hold he breath well enough.”
People called out to each other, some went door-to-door waking everyone up. Many already had large sacks and bags sitting in their fishing boats. Three families pushed their small fishing boats off the sand into the water and rowed out of the harbor.
“What going on?” Jerome asked.
“We scattering.” Troy stood up, his knees popping. “And some go hide in a place the Azteca ain’t go find us. I want you to go stand by that boat there.” He pointed at a yellow skiff with hand-painted letters on its bow. “You go leave with a group of pickney-them there.”
Jerome nodded, and Troy trotted off. He yelled at several of the men, wanting to know if anyone else would go back up to Gaston’s house and keep an eye on the Azteca with the glass. And he wanted to know how many working guns everyone on Frenchi Island had.
More boats rowed off into the dark waters. Jerome walked over to the small skiff, wondering what was going to happen next. If they were going to try to sail away from the Azteca, then they couldn’t come back to the few small islands all the Frenchi lived on. And as Pepper said, they could last a month like this. What then?
Troy came back, crouched, and looked Jerome straight in the eye. “Now, you go have to give a big promise, okay?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t ever tell no one where we going, or what we go do here.”
Jerome swallowed. “Okay.”
 
 
Twelve children jumped aboard the skiff. A pair of tiredlooking fishermen with leathery skin and scraggly beards pushed the yellow craft out to sea. Several of the other skiffs out on the water had been painted black, but Jerome had the impression that much of this had been planned hastily, so their skiff remained brightly colored.
The skiff was heavy, the waves lapping into the boat. One of the men handed them a pair of calabash gourds to bail water with. If an Azteca blimp saw them, Jerome wondered, would they shoot at them?
“Keep bailing water.” The sails remained packed away on the floor, tied tight with hemp ropes. The men sat side by side and pulled on the long wooden oars. The bow jumped and dipped into the water, and they pulled out from Frenchi Island into the reefs.
“One, two …”
“Tree, fo’.” The fisherman on the right had a much heavier accent than his companion. Jerome’s companions sat on the floorboards, wrapped in blankets but already getting soaked. They looked tired. And scared.
“One, two …”
“Tree, fo’.” Jerome laid his head against the side of the boat and watched the Frenchi fisherman’s arms flex. The two pegs holding the oars in place creaked with each stroke.
A small figure wrapped in a patched-up blanket crawled underneath the seat between the fisherman’s legs and shuffled back to sit next to Jerome. It was Sandy. She pulled the blanket around her tight.
“You know where we going?” she asked. He shrugged. Sandy leaned closer to him and pointed over the edge of the boat at a tall rock island that had once splintered off of the mainland. There were several other smaller ones around it.
Even from several miles away Jerome could see the sudden
random explosions of white spray shooting up into the air as the ocean dashed itself against the sharp rocks scattered around the miniature islands.
“You can’t land any boat there,” Jerome said. “That mad.”
“It go be all right,” Sandy said. “It okay if I sit here?”
Jerome looked around. “Um, yeah, sure, I guess.” She smiled a bit and pushed her face down into her blanket. Jerome stared at the water that sloshed out of the floorboards and wet his bare feet.
 
An entire herd of scudder-fish paced the skiff as they got closer. They swam fast circles around the tiny craft, swooping just under the hull and lying on their sides to look upward at the sides of the boat.
Jerome stood up with a smile. A set of waves boomed against nearby rocks and took it right away. He could barely see the rocks in the dark night, but he could sense how close they were.
Not even half a mile away the water foamed and hissed, defeated for the moment. The ocean lay silent after the loud explosion of water and spray, the constant draining sound overpowering the area as water rushed off the rocks and crevices to return to the ocean.
“We here,” Sandy said. The men shipped the oars. The skiff bounced in the chop reflected back at them as another series of waves passed them and dashed themselves against the immovable rock faces.
Children began slipping into the oily, dark water.
“You remember all that we had teach you today?” Sandy asked over the sound of the surf. Jerome nodded, holding on to the rail to balance. “It all for a reason. Troy had want you to come with us.”
“But where?” Jerome snapped. The scudder-fish surrounded the boat, jostling against its side.
“Down deep there are cave we can hide in.” Sandy dropped the blanket to the floor of the boat and jumped over the rail. The splash wet Jerome. “Come in.” She waved, nothing more than a small, pale blob in the black night ocean. Jerome could see stars reflected off random smooth patches of water the skiff created with its rudder.
Jerome swallowed. What was the alternative? he wondered. Go back and face the Azteca? What could he do there? He jumped in.
The cold water slapped his face. A scudder-fish pushed past him. Jerome’s fingers ran over the smooth skin until he caught one of its two fins and he lurched forward. When he looked back, he saw the two fishermen jump out into the water.
“They go let the boat hit the rock. That way the Azteca go think we all dead trying to escape,” Sandy yelled.
Jerome’s scudder-fish surged forward toward the rocks. He held on, looking from side to side to reassure himself that everyone else followed next to him, that he wouldn’t be dragged to drown against the rocks. As the next wave rose, the scudder-fish sped up over the small rising crest, flailing its two tails, and for a few seconds they surfed down the front of the wave. Then it passed from underneath them.
The waves grew bigger. A random wavelet smacked Jerome on his side, almost knocking him off. The water around them boiled, and the smashing waves made noise loud enough to pound Jerome’s chest. When Jerome dared to sit up and look forward, he could see the details on the jagged spires of worn rock just ahead. Quicksilver rivulets of water dribbled down through their nooks and crannies, reflecting the moon.
“Hold you breath,” someone yelled, as a wave cut Jerome off from the rest of the group. Jerome did as he had been taught earlier in the day. He took several deep breaths, and then one last final one. The scudder-fish, sensing his readiness, plunged under the water.
At first he almost panicked as the darkness closed over his head. He could feel the powerful thud of waves, but now the world around him existed only as far as he could reach out with his fingers. The scudder-fish stroked downward and Jerome’s ears stabbed him with pain. He held his nose and blew them out.
But once wasn’t enough. They moved downward so quickly he kept his left hand gripped to his nose and blew to keep the pressure off. The water grew colder and colder.
How long would this take? The need to breathe again hit him hard. The burning in his lungs felt odd in the cold water.
The scudder-fish banked; Jerome could feel the change in the water over his skin. He closed his eyes and leaned between the fins. Don’t think about breathing. Focus. He felt everything slow down to a pinprick, just as he had on the bottom of the bay.
Calm.
It only worked for another few seconds. The burning in his lungs returned and Jerome blew bubbles. That helped some, but then soon Jerome had nothing left to blow. I go die, he thought. Right on the back of this animal. But Jerome realized he didn’t want to die. He gripped the fins of the scudder-fish. Pepper was right. One could only focus on the moment, on living then and there.
Jerome focused as hard as he could, pushing back until he felt the sharp edge of blackness descend on him anyway and his grip loosened.
The scudder-fish veered upward.
They broke into air with a spectacular crash. The moment Jerome felt it prickle against his skin, he opened his mouth and sucked as much air as he could.
He hung on, panting, as the scudder-fish pulled him toward sand. Strong hands picked him up, and Jerome could see brass gaslights flickering along the side of a large cavern. Children and scudder-fish popped up behind him, everyone gasping for air.
Blankets and hot fish soup waited for them. As they huddled around the fire, matted hair and forlorn faces half-lit, Jerome realized that somewhere above him, miles out on Frenchi Island, the adults were going to fight the Azteca. More people would die to protect his life.
He wanted to live, he thought, staring at the middle of the fire. He knew this for sure.
He would avenge them. His friends, his mother, his dad. They might be dead, but he could hurt the Azteca back. Somewhere. Somehow.
But he would live, that was for sure.

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