Harrison Squared (15 page)

She wasn't sure how long she had been in the cave, or even if it was day or night. The light never changed, and her watch and cell phone had been taken from her when they pulled her out of the water. Then she'd been brought to another cave, where she met … something. Something gigantic that spoke like a woman but smelled like an abattoir. Rosa had lain in that cave for hours, until she was bundled up again, thrown onto a hard shoulder, and taken here. Wherever that was.

Her body was the only way to measure time. Her captor had fed her eight times—if you could call what he brought her “food”—and judging from her hunger those meals were eight to twelve hours apart. But could her body be trusted? Adrenaline did strange things to one's sense of time, and she was already exhausted from the crash and the unrelenting chill of the cave. She knew only that sometimes she slept, and sometimes her captor sat with her for what seemed like hours, talking in that low, insinuating tone, polishing the plate of white bone in his hands … and then he would slip away to retrieve her food and do whatever errands a kidnapper needed to do. He'd left an hour ago, if she was judging time correctly, and she didn't know how much time she had left before he returned. Better make the most of it.

For perhaps the two-hundredth time since that hour began, and an uncountable number of times since she'd woken up here, she gripped the rope that tied her to the anchor. Then she crouched, leaned back to take up the slack, and kicked backward. The rope bit into her spine and she suppressed a grunt.

The anchor did not move.

She crouched, took a breath, and kicked back again. And again.

She thought she felt the anchor shift a millimeter. But she only needed a dozen millimeters to reach her goal. She turned toward the nearest wall, and strained against the rope, her arms outstretched for the nearest portrait.

It was a picture of a couple. A handsome man in his thirties, and his dark-haired wife with wide eyes that seemed both hopeful and deeply sad. They seemed to know what she needed. The edge of the plate was scalloped, and tapered to paper thinness. In the right hands it could be a serrated knife, she thought.

Rosa exhaled, willing herself to be thinner (and she
was
thinner, losing weight every day), and threw herself against the rope.

An inch of air separated her fingers from that portrait.

The couple regarded her with pity. Rosa looked up at the rows and rows of faces. A child with piercing black eyes. A sailor from the last century, staring in terror. A kind-faced man with thick glasses, wearing a cardigan sweater.

What about the rest of you? she thought. You want me to live or die? Or do you just want me to entertain you down here?

The mob remained silent.

“
Vá à merda
,” she said.

She could not give up. Her son was waiting for her. She wasn't about to make him an orphan.

She turned back to the anchor, gripped the rope, and took a breath. Then she heard the clank of a metal bucket striking rock. It sounded impossibly close—but sounds were tricky down here.

Quickly she lay down in the pile of sailcloth. And then, though she hated to make herself more vulnerable, she closed her eyes.

There was no sound for a long time … and then he was in the room with her. A thunk as the bucket dropped to the rocky floor. A scrape of chair leg, and then a creak as her captor sat.

“I know you're awake,” he said teasingly. “Don't you want your supper?”

She decided to sit up.

She'd grown up in a dangerous town, and had traveled in dangerous places; she'd read all the advice about surviving a kidnapping. Her job in this moment was to make her captor feel at ease. To establish rapport. To make him see her as a human.

If only she was sure that
he
was human.

He slouched in the chair, his wide hat pulled low over his face. Watching her. The bucket had been dropped within range of the tether. “Here's one that didn't get away,” he said.

She scooted over to it. The past meals had each been a single can of food—navy beans the first time, then soups, and vegetables, and once, bizarrely and unsatisfyingly, cranberry sauce—rolling about in rusty water that was her ration of drinking water. And when the water was gone, it would become her slop bucket. One bucket for all needs. She tried not to think about that.

She peered inside.

It was a whole fish—an Atlantic cod.

“State fish of Massachusetts,” Rosa said.

“Aren't you a smarty girl.”

There was water in the bucket, and she hoped it wasn't salt water this time. She lifted out the fish. She could tell by its clear eyes that it was fresh—possibly killed within the hour.

“You don't mind a little of the raw stuff, do you?” the captor asked.

“I love sushi,” she said. Thinking: Joke with him. Put him at ease. “I don't suppose you'd cut it open for me, would you?” He'd at least had the courtesy to open the lids of the canned food.

“If you're hungry enough, you'll make do.” He smiled. His teeth were bright and sharp.

He opened the wooden chest and brought out a rectangle of sandpaper and the slab of white whale jawbone he'd been working on for days. “You're a lucky one,” he said, and ran the sandpaper over the face of the bone. “This is prime canvas. An
honor
.”

He'd told her this a dozen times, but again she nodded, showing her appreciation. He'd spent hours polishing that bone. Cooing over it. It was maddening.

She pushed back the cod's operculum, the gill cover, and yanked out the gills. She looked for a place to put the organs. He stopped his polishing and watched her. She realized there was only one place he'd allow her to place them. She dropped them into the bucket.

“Can't rush the polishing,” he said. “It's porous, you know, and if you don't sand it down it'll suck all the ink. Look how smooth it is! Like pearl.”

“You do beautiful work,” she said. She tried to make it sound sincere.

“No one cares about quality these days,” he said.

She worked her thumbs into the space where the gills had been. If her hands were untied, she'd simply rip down along the belly now, but she had no leverage. She glanced up at her captor.

“Problem?” he asked.

“Just considering my options,” she said. If her captor expected her to be squeamish, he'd picked the wrong woman. She'd eaten and cooked fish her entire life, and for the past twenty years she'd studied and dissected scores of species. She knew her way around a straightforward specimen like the cod. And she understood that if she was going to have the strength to escape, she needed all the protein she could get.

She gripped the head of the fish in her bound hands, getting her thumbs deep inside the gills, then bit into its belly just behind the ventral fin. She tugged down with her hands, and flesh began to rip. She paused to get a firmer bite, tugged once more, and the fish practically unzipped for her. Gore spilled onto her shirt, but she figured it was worth it.

She quickly dug out the intestines and the other internal organs, dropping those into the bucket as well. She hoped there was enough moisture in the meat of the fish that she wouldn't have to drink that water.

“You've done this before,” her captor said. He seemed disappointed.

“Not exactly like this,” she said. “But I've cleaned a lot of fish.”

“You don't say.” He leaned forward and snatched the cod from her. She almost yelled, but held her tongue.

He sniffed at the fish, now open for him like a book. “Mmm,” he said. Then he bit down and ripped out a long chunk of white, steak-like flesh. It hung from his pointy teeth, and then he flipped it up like a dog and swallowed it whole.

Rosa was too angry to cry. If she could have reached him, she would have strangled him.

He tore into the fish with gusto. A minute later he looked up, smiling. “You know, I almost had your boy for lunch.”

Rosa went cold. Her vision blurred, then snapped back into focus.

“What did you do?” she asked softly.

“Nothing,” he said. “Missed him by a hair.” He tossed the flapping carcass into a far corner, well out of her reach.

“Now,” he said, and licked two long, yellow-nailed fingers. “Back to work.” He picked up the whalebone. He held it up to the light and said, “I think we're ready.”

She could think of nothing but Harrison now.

“Turn to the left,” he said. “I said turn!”

She shifted her body.

“No, just your face. That's it. Straight on. Full of grit.”

She stared at him. The brim still hid his eyes.

He unsheathed his long knife. Then he pressed the tip to the bone and flicked it lightly.

Rosa felt a whisper of cold along her cheek, as if it had been brushed by the point of an icicle. She gasped, and her captor nodded.

“The first cut's the most important,” he said. “Everything depends on it.”

12

“Say quick,” quoth he, “I bid thee say—

What manner of man art thou?”

By the time I woke up Monday it was no longer morning. Aunt Sel had decided I didn't need to go to school. She was wrong about that, but the reasons I needed to go had nothing to do with my classes.

I showered, ate quickly, and told her that I needed to take a walk—without mentioning that the walk would take me up the hill to school. When I slipped through the doors the atrium was empty. It was just before the end of the school day, eighth period. I wasn't going to world history in Mr. Waughm's room, though. I went straight to the library.

Once again, the place seemed empty. I walked to the back of the room first, and quickly found Professor Freytag in a dark corner. He was sitting on a wooden chair, with a book open on the floor in front of him. He was leaning over his knees, reading with an intense expression.

“Professor?”

He looked up in surprise. “Boy!”

“It's Harrison,” I said. I don't think I'd ever told him my name.

“Oh, I wish you hadn't told me that. Names are dangerous. I wouldn't want to spill the beans.”

“Right. So is that the book you were looking for?”

“This? No. This is just something someone left lying about. I know it's close, though. I can feel it.”

“Well. That's … good.”

“And what brings you to the library today? It is day, isn't it? I lose track of time. The light's always the same here—so
bright
.”

“It's afternoon, sir.” I didn't add that this was the most dimly lit library I'd ever been in. “I have a question for you.”

“Excellent! Fire away.”

“What's a scrimshander?”

The doctor lurched in his chair, a look of fear on his face. “Why do you say such a thing? I can't … I can't be heard discussing—”

“Please. I'm just trying to figure this out. A scrimshander does carving, right?”

The professor seemed to regain some of his composure. “Oh. The
craftsman
. You would like to know about a scrimshander in
general
?”

“That's a good start. They carve whalebone, right?”

Professor Freytag removed his glasses, blew into them, and set them back on his face. “Whalebone, yes. Also teeth, and tusks. The artworks they produce on these carvings are called scrimshaw.” He hopped up from the chair and strode away. I jogged to catch up.

“It started centuries ago,” the professor said as he walked. “Whaling is too dangerous to do at night, so the sailors had time on their hands, not to mention plenty of material to work with. Whalebones, baleens—that's cartilage, looks like an automobile's radiator grill, perfect for filtering out krill. Whales evolved it over fifteen million—”

“Scrimshaw?” I said, trying to steer him back to the topic.

“Ah, yes! Sailors began etching designs upon these materials with sail needles, then special knifes, and the practice soon evolved into quite the art form. I have a book, a diary…” He marched down one row, then abruptly turned left. “I know it's here somewhere. Ah!”

He pointed at a high shelf. “Up you go.”

“Pardon?”

“Climb! It's that green one that's slightly sticking out from its mates.”

I set down my backpack and eyed the shelves. Professor Freytag didn't offer me a hand, so I put a foot on the lip of one of the shelves and stepped up. The bookcase seemed sturdy. Immovable, even. I reached up to another shelf and pulled myself higher. The green book was just out of reach. I stretched on the toes of one foot, got my fingers around the green spine, and in one motion yanked it free and dropped back to the ground.

The professor seemed pleased. “That's it!
Tobias Glück: A Scrimshander's Diary
.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said.

“There are questions in that book,” the professor said. “Important questions, buried in page after page of interminable droning. Isn't that always the way, though?”

“I was kind of hoping for answers,” I said.

“You can't have quality answers without quality questions,” he said.

*   *   *

The class gong sounded as I left the library. The hallways filled, and I surfed along the crowd, aiming for the front door. I was maybe five yards from a clean escape when Lydia appeared in front of me, scowling.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Are you
mad
at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“You're always looking at me like that. With your angry face.”

She frowned. “I have an angry face?”

“I take it back. That's just your default expression.”

This time the scowl was more definite. I pushed past her, and she said, “Why did you go in the bay if you're afraid to even go in the pool?”