Kid vs. Squid (14 page)

“I'm not so worried,” I said. “I've been threatened, smacked around, cursed to be Flotsam, and swallowed by a fish. I'm cold and wet, and I've been cold
and wet practically since I arrived in Los Huesos. So go ahead and tell me what's going to happen next. Or don't. Makes no difference to me.”

“Nice little performance, Thatcher. But not clever enough to get me to tell you anything I don't already want to tell you.”

I shrugged. “Okay then.” And I turned my back to walk away.

I knew myself. I couldn't resist gloating, and neither could my reflection. I didn't even get two steps away before my reflection called me back.

“Thatcher!”

I stopped but didn't turn around.

“I might as well tell you what Skalla's got brewing,” my reflection said. “It's not like you can do anything to prevent it. There's a reason why Skalla's creatures didn't just kill you outright. It's not because you and your friends are so brave or capable. It's because she needs you alive. When Skalla works a spell or casts a curse, some of her own magic, her own thoughts and the residue of her intent, is left inside the creature she worked her magic upon.”

“You know I know that,” I said. “It's like after Shoal extracted the fish oil that gave her resistance to the boardwalk. The magic was in her blood, so she could share it with me and Trudy.”

“Well, yeah. But don't act like you understand,
because you don't. Not fully. She's going to get her magic out of you and Trudy and Shoal, too, right out of your veins. All of it. Everything's ready. Her time is here. Her magic is bubbling. She'll raise winds, and she'll raise waves, and she'll raise storms, and she'll drown the entire town of Los Huesos. Then her new Atlantis can emerge, the one her creatures have been building for her in secret. A new Atlantis she'll rule as queen of the very last island-city. So, what do you have to say about that?”

I had nothing to say.

“That's right,” my reflection said. “You're out of words, and since words are the only things you've
ever
had, I guess that means you've got nothing. So why don't you just have yourself a seat and digest for a while.”

I coughed. The smell of inside-fish was starting to overwhelm me. My reflection-self's words bounced around my head, as if my skull was lined with mirrors.

“It's all true,” I said. “Everything you're saying about me…. Yeah, it's true. All true.” A faint voice drifted through the fish. It was calling my name. “But what you don't get is that it doesn't
matter
. I'm doing something. I'm saving my friend. So you just glisten and talk your fishy brains out, Mirror-Thatcher. As for me, I'm busy.”

Leaving my reflected image alone to sputter to
itself, I went deeper into the fish. I kept my eyes straight ahead, ignoring all the digestive burbles that started to sound like my name, spoken inside my head. Turning down another twist in the gut corridor, I found Shoal sitting cross-legged on the ground, her clothes and hair slicked with fish-belly slime. She looked lost, staring at nothing in particular. I wondered what reflections she'd seen in here. What had spoken to her?

I said her name, and she looked up.

She blinked. “It ate you too?”

“I came in voluntarily. Almost.”

“Why would you do
that
?”

“Can we talk about this later? I'd like to go now.”

“There is no way out,” Shoal said, her shoulders hunched. “I have tried. I tried to crawl out its throat, but its lips would not part for me. I tried to pass through the digestive tract, but this fish is not arranged like other fish. I am pleased that you wanted to rescue me. That was very brave. But I fear you have doomed yourself.”

“I've got something you didn't have,” I said, proudly raising the mighty blade of volcanic glass. “An ancient sword of Atlantis.”

She rose to her feet. “Oh, Thatcher. That is not a sword. It is an implement used for the gardening of kelp.”

Oh.

Well.

Whatever.

It was still sharp.

This wasn't a time for cleverness, or talking, or even thinking. This was a time for chopping. I chopped at the fish wall. I whaled. I slammed and I sliced, again and again, until my arms and shoulders and spine ached, and then I kept chopping.

I wasn't making a scratch.

No time to get discouraged. More chopping.

So I chopped again, and when I knew for absolute certain that I couldn't swing the sword—I mean, the kelp implement—even once more, I kept on chopping.

The blade still wouldn't penetrate the inner fish wall, but something started happening. The slime floor beneath our feet wriggled. There was a rumbling. The stench of fish gas nearly knocked me unconscious. The walls and ceiling quivered, then began closing in on us.

“It's collapsing!” I shouted.

“No,” Shoal said. “I believe it is regurgitating.”

A flood of the foulest-smelling fluid I had yet encountered during a summer of foul-smelling fluids slammed into us. It was hot and it burned, and I pressed my eyes and lips tightly shut as I tumbled in its flow.

We passed through the fish's lips out into the sea, but we weren't much better off. Lost in a cloud of fish puke, I couldn't see anything and had no way to tell which way was up. I wondered if this was what the Drowning Sleep would feel like. Maybe this
was
the Drowning Sleep.

A hand grasped mine. It was small, but the grip was strong: Shoal. She pulled me along, my flutter kick probably not helping much, and a moment later we emerged on the surface of the waves, coughing and gagging.

“Are you still alive?” Shoal asked.

“I'm miserable, so I must be.”

Still knotted to my belt, the pillowcase with Skalla's head inside bobbed on the surface like a grisly buoy.

The witch began to chuckle.

Her laugh started as a low chortle, like someone waking up from an amusing dream. I'd heard Skalla laugh before, louder and more shrieky, but this was worse. This time, I knew she was on the verge of winning.

Overhead, the clouds spun faster, and the blue eye of the storm shrunk to a pinhole. Rain shot down, punching thousands of little splashes in the water.

“Good evening, my darling guppies,” the witch said from inside the pillowcase. “Thank you for keeping me safe and cozy all this time. You're about to see what all this fuss has been about.”

“Just toss her!” Shoal hollered over the wailing wind. “Be rid of her!”

“But then we won't be able to stop her!”

“We are unable stop her
now
. Perhaps we will get lucky and sharks will devour her.”

“Oh, sharks are nothing to fear,” scoffed Skalla. “Voracious eating machines with hundreds of teeth like knife blades? What's so bad about that?” Shark fins sliced to the surface of the water and began circling us. My heart shriveled in dread as a great bulk passed near, brushing my pants with sandpaper skin.

“But there is much worse in the sea, my dear barnacles. Here, let me show you one of my favorites.”

She whistled as if she was calling a dog. Seconds later, a green-black dome, big enough to fill our living room back home, rose beneath us in a mass of bubbles. It lifted Shoal and me from the water on its leathery back. Looking down, I saw four massive fins, each the length of a surfboard, and a green scaly head shaped like that of a turtle. But the eyes gave it away. There was intelligence in them, and age. There was humanness. Sea turtles don't start out large. They grow slowly over years, over decades, and this one was enormous. It must be very old, and it must have seen a lot of really bad things.

“How may I serve you, mistress?” it asked in exactly the low, croaking voice you'd expect a sea turtle to speak with if the sea turtle was actually some poor slob who'd once been human.

“Take me to the Ferris wheel, pet,” Skalla
commanded. “One last spell to cast, and then this will all be over.”

The turtle started to swim, accompanied by Skalla's escort of sharks. How to stop her? Stab the turtle with my kelp-gardening implement? Skalla would only summon some other creature from the deep to transport her.

Maybe Shoal was right. Maybe I should just chuck Skalla as far as I could, or chop her head into firewood. My friends and I would still be doomed, but if there was a chance to stop her from drowning Los Huesos and ruling over a new Atlantis, it was worth it.

An L-shaped brass tube rose up in front of the turtle's path: a periscope. Then, in an eruption of bubbles that rivaled the turtle's, a spiral-shaped white seashell with red stripes surfaced. The size of an elephant, it gave off odors of motor oil and diesel fuel. With a determined frown, Trudy peered at us through a porthole of Griswald's death-trap submarine.

A hatch popped open on the top of the shell, and Shoal and I wasted no time. Shoal took a running leap across the turtle's back and flung herself at the hatch. I was right behind her.

“No!” Skalla roared.

There was a slow-motion moment when the turtle was no longer beneath my feet, when I was sailing
across the distance between the turtle and the sub with nothing but ocean beneath me. And then, teeth.

Not a shark, but eels. Big ones, with teeth like ice picks. They had arms, and also hair, and their pointed snouts came at me like missiles.

The eels bit into the bottom of the pillowcase and tore open the fabric. The head fell free. I reached for it, putting my hand within range of those terrible, needle-lined mouths. My fingertips caught the tips of Skalla's stiff hair, but the eels had a better grip on her. They had her, and I caught Skalla's malevolent glare just before the turtle angled down into a steep dive. Left holding nothing but limp cloth, I climbed into the nautilus shell.

“Follow that turtle!” I shouted, securing the hatch after me.

Trudy sat on a bicycle banana seat before an array of controls, including a cassette tape deck and a builtin cigarette lighter. She threw a lever, her feet furiously spinning bike pedals. Behind her, on another seat, Shoal spun another pair of pedals, and there were yet more pedals and seats behind her. I hopped on and got to work.

“Hello, Trudy,” said Shoal. “Thank you for coming to our rescue. But where did you obtain a submarine?”

“Back in the Shanghai tunnel. Once I saw Thatcher
go underwater, I figured I needed a way to go chase him, so I commandeered the nautilus. Griswald helped me launch it. He said it was built by one of the old Keepers.”

“What happened to him?”

“Drowned in shallow water,” said Trudy, peering through the porthole into the murk.

In the sub's dim headlight, I could just make out Skalla's head and the eels, still clinging to the back of the paddling turtle.

I told Trudy and Shoal what I'd learned about Skalla's scheme to rule over a new Atlantis, and that prompted us to pedal faster. The submarine groaned under the pressure of the depths. I tried not to pay too much attention to the water dribbling through the hatch seal.

“Hey,” said Trudy. “I just noticed this button labeled
torpedo
.”

“Press it!” Shoal shouted, with something like glee. “Here, I will do it!”

Trudy placed her hand protectively over the button. “Maybe we should know what it does first?”

“I presume it launches a torpedo,” I offered helpfully.

“But how do we know it's not tipped with a thermonuclear warhead?”

“Because that kind of firepower would be awfully
ambitious for a giant nautilus shell powered by bicycle pedals? Besides, we're falling behind. Come on, this might be our only chance to catch the turtle.”

Trudy gritted her teeth. “Okay, okay, I'm pressing it. I'm pressing a button, even though I don't know what it does, and hopefully I won't turn the whole continent into a smoking radioactive wasteland of—”

Shoal leaned forward and slammed her palm down on the button.

With a violent shudder, the submarine surged forward and we were hurtling along at great speed.

“Stop pedaling!” Trudy said, desperately grasping at the controls to stay on course.

But we weren't pedaling anymore. The submarine was under its own power now. We
were
the torpedo, and I figured we'd explode on impact with anything we struck.

The turtle came up fast in the porthole. Too fast.

“Trudy, watch out, we're going to—”

And we did. Crashed. Right into the giant's butt. The sub didn't so much explode as shatter, the shell walls cracking like an egg into thousands of tiny fragments. Water gushed in, and then the shell and the submarine were just more flotsam. Trudy, Shoal, and I followed a cascade of air bubbles to the surface.

A shark greeted us there.

“Howdy do,” it said, lifting its face out of the
water. Its teeth looked like hatchet blades. “Swim with us to shore or we'll eat your legs.”

Behind us, the sea turtle rose to the top of the choppy waters. Still riding on its back with her eels, Skalla was having herself a fine, horrific laugh.

An army of Skalla's creatures waited for us on the beach in a drenching downpour. There were dozens and dozens of them: Lobster men and kelp guys and women with writhing eels for hair. There were manta rays with legs, their broad wings trailing awkwardly in the sand. There were lazily sprawled elephant seals wearing glasses, and five-limbed starfish smoking cigarettes, and little urchin children bristling with spines. And Tommy and Dicky, of course, the jellies. And the big sumo lobster from the Tunnel of Love.

With Skalla on its back, the turtle emerged from the surf and walked up the beach.

“You don't look much worse for the wear,” said the witch. “That's good. I am pleased to see it. I'd hate for
you to spill too much of your blood. It's quite precious to me.”