The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (23 page)

I had to will myself to move closer to him, floating down to Dock 4, which looked older than the others. Fat tires hung from the wooden support beams that held the dock in place, no doubt to soften the blow when smaller cargo ships ran up against the dock. The person—a man. No! A
young
man—clutching the last support beam at the end of the long dock, yelling something.

I moved closer.

“Fish!” he shouted. “Fish!”

I fell in behind him. If he could sense my presence, he didn’t show it. He was searching the black water, breathless.

“Fish, I gave you freedom!”

We waited. I searched the water with him. It was calm, unnaturally calm, almost as smooth as glass. I didn’t need to see his face to recognize him. I knew just by looking at his familiar broad shoulders. His tattered jeans. His pompadour haircut.

“Chase,” I whispered.

He turned, scanning the dock as if he’d heard my voice. His eyes moved past me without recognition.

Something popped up from the dark water. Above, the clouds dispersed. I could see it clearer now with the moonlight shining down. It was the fish.

The one that got away.

“What is it?” the fish asked, swimming closer to the dock. He looked bigger. Maybe it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but I swear he looked … well,
fatter
.

“Do you …” Chase licked his lips, tentative. “Do you know about baseball?”

“Boys hit a ball with sticks and run around with much fanfare,” the fish said dryly. “I picked up enough over the years from the safety of my horrible fish tank.”

“I want to hit home runs,” Chase said. “Every time I bat.”

“Is that so?” the fish asked. “Is it not enough that I gave you back your legs? Is it not enough that you can walk again?”

“I freed you!” Chase shouted. “You
owe
me!”

“Why not be satisfied with
potential
?” asked the fish. “Why not ask me for the
ability
to be great? Do you not rob yourself of something by asking for the easy way out?”

“I want to hit home runs!” Chase shouted.

“Very well,” the fish said. “Go home. When you wake tomorrow, you’ll find I’ve granted your wish.”

Chase smiled. It was a smile I’d never seen on him. It looked
evil
.

He turned and started walking. One of his legs seemed to go out from under him. He fell over, landing hard on the old wooden dock. When he pulled himself to his feet, he looked shocked. Then that smile returned.

I woke with a start, feeling a tear escape from my right eye. “Briar?” I called out quietly. There was no response. My room was empty, and it felt so lonely I could barely get out of bed.

“What am I going to do?” I asked, grabbing the first pair of jeans I could find. My hand hovered over my collection of violet shirts. There were more than a dozen of them hanging up, another half-dozen dirty ones lying on the floor. Was Trish right? Was I overdoing it with my favorite color?

OK. Yes.
Duh
. But did it really matter?

Apparently it did now. And if I wanted to keep myself from sliding down the social ladder at school, I’d have to make changes. But I didn’t
want
to make changes. Arrrrg! Why was my brain doing this to me? Because I was lonely. That’s why. I knew it even then as I stood in my closet, staring at my clothes. I was afraid of being alone, hovering over a sea of water.

My hand reached for the first non-violet shirt it could find: a gray v-neck shirt with short sleeves. I put it on, staring at myself in the mirror.

I realized, quite suddenly, that it didn’t really matter what I put on. I had nowhere to go. I was suspended until Monday. And I was grounded until … oh, around 2046 or so.

“Briar,” I whispered, hoping the rabbit would magically reappear. He didn’t.

OK. Steel yourself, Alice. I was on my own until the rabbit came back. What would Briar do if he were here? Well, first off he would listen to my dream. Then he would make some snide, goofy comment. Then he would
research
.

And I knew exactly where to start: ship speeds. I went to Google, hoping someone somewhere on the planet was also curious about the speeds of big whaling vessels that also just so happened to be around 200 years old. I tried “How fast do whaling ships go?” and found myself confronted with some disturbing facts: whaling was still happening. Not only was it happening, but the few rules governing whaling were being actively ignored by a number of whalers around the world. I ended up completely distracted, wondering why exactly whaling had been so prevalent for so long.

Here’s what I found:

1.
       
Oil. The oil could be used in lamps and machinery.

2.
      
Ambergris. This was found in the whale’s digestive system. It was used in perfumes.

3.
      
Baleen. This is the hair inside the whale’s mouth that filters krill. After the whale is killed, its baleen is used to make whips and corsets.

So there. Whales were hunted by the captain and then their “stuff” was sold off to merchants who used it to make whips, corsets and perfumes. Good thing, too. What would we have done without those items in our daily lives, right?

And then the captain used the money to repair his old ship. His sailors, cursed and unable to escape, did the captain’s bidding while the shadows clung ever tighter to their bodies.

“Focus!” I scolded myself, going back to Google. I tried “How fast does a pirate ship go?” this time, and—surprise, surprise!—it turned out a lot of people were curious about how fast a 17
th
or 18
th
century pirate ship might travel.

The answers on each web page varied, but they all gave me a rough estimate of 8 knots per hour for a ship from the early 19
th
century. That was enough for me to go on. Now I just had to figure out
how
the ship was traveling, if it was indeed making its way from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Michigan to catch the magic fish.

I searched for “Distance from Atlantic Ocean to Lake Michigan” and got a lot of hooey … until I came across a site for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Not only did the site show exactly how a ship traveled from the Atlantic Ocean and through The Great Lakes, it gave me the nautical distance from the city of Montreal to Milwaukee: 1909 kilometers.

“Holy crud!” I exclaimed. I was doing it. I was figuring this all out on my own. “Now … uh, what the heck is a
knot
?”

I searched for a definition and got it simply enough: one knot is equal to 1.852 kilometers per hour. Which meant 8 knots was about 14.8 kilometers per hour.

“This would be so much easier if we learned kilometers instead of miles,” I muttered, clearing my calculator so I could do one more calculation:

1909 kilometers divided by 14.8 kilometers per hour.

About 129 hours.

I raised my arms in celebration. Oh, how my junior-year algebra teacher would scream in triumph if he could see me now. I was using
math
. I was using math to track down a terrible whaling ship with a Corrupted captain who had every intention of capturing a magical fish.

OK. So maybe I wouldn’t be able to tell my math teacher
everything
, but if I ever passed him in the hall I would at the very least thank him for drilling basic math skills into my brain.

The phone rang. It was Seth. I grabbed my phone and hit the green “talk” button.

“Hello!” I exclaimed.

“Woah. Why are you so excited? You’re suspended.”

“I just used math!”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Wait! What’s going on?”

“Oh nothing,” he said. “Just wondering if you’ve … um, you know … talked to Trish at all.”

“Not really,” I answered. “We talked a little right before that idiot Joey Harrington tried grabbing my hair. We were arguing about who I should date.”

“She didn’t …” He cleared his throat. “Um, she didn’t mention if she was dating anyone, did she?”

Oh crap. My mind raced. What to say? I couldn’t lie to him. He was my best friend. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, either. And what if Trish wanted to keep it a secret?

“Look,” I said, swallowing hard. “You and Trish are both my friends. I think you guys should both leave me out of it, OK? Otherwise, I could end up with just one friend or no friends, and I don’t want that.”

There was silence for a moment. Finally, Seth sighed into the phone. “You’re right. I’ve gotta just deal with this on my own. It just totally sucks, that’s all. And I can’t even come visit you because you’re under arrest.”

I laughed. “I have a job for you, if you want.”

“Yes. Definitely. Anything to get me thinking about something else.”

“I need you to go to the Washington High baseball game tonight.”

He made a gagging noise. “What for? Wasn’t it bad enough I had to sit through the hour-long pep rally this morning? Seriously, you’d think Chase was some kind of rock star or something the way they played up his triumphant return.”

“That’s why I need your help. I have a feeling he’s …” Oh geez, how to explain
this
one? “I have a feeling he’s under the spell of a Corrupted.”

“What? Weird! What kind of Corrupted?”

“A fish.”

“Oh. That’s not as scary as I expected.”

“Will you
please
just ask him?”

Seth laughed. “Ask him
what
, exactly? Whether he’s under the spell of a fish?”

“Yes.”

He was silent a moment. “If someone overhears, this is totally going to eliminate what little social status I have. Can’t you just call him?”

I could. I had. The truth was I’d called him a dozen times without an answer. “Just keep an eye on him,” I offered. “Don’t ask him anything. Just make sure nothing weird happens.”

“And if something weird does happen, I’ll just step in and save the day,” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“I know you’re ready to take this risk. Thanks, Seth.”

“Yeah. Oh hey, wait! Have you seen Briar? I’m worried about him.”

My heart sank. “He hasn’t been around for a few days.”

“Yeah, it’s weird. We were going to play
Risk
and eat marshmallows this week, but I haven’t seen him.”

“You two play
Risk
together?” I had to admit, I was a little jealous.

“Just let him know I’m, um …” He paused. “Ah, crap. I’m a little lonely.”

I nearly cried. He sounded so sad that it was jarring—I hadn’t heard Sad Seth in years and years.

“But don’t
tell
him I’m lonely,” Seth added. “Because then I’d seem like a total dork. Just tell him I want to play
Risk
.”

“I’ll tell him. I promise.”

I hung up and looked down at my crude map I’d drawn of the Great Lakes. It was possible the ship could be anywhere. I needed to figure out how much time I had. I needed to get aboard. I needed to take down both of these Corrupted somehow. Maybe I could trick the captain to catch the fish for me … or maybe I could corner Chase and convince him to …

To what? Give up his wishes? Go back to the wheelchair just so I could kill the fish? Gawd, the entire situation was already insane enough. How would I explain to Chase that maybe his wish to walk again wasn’t such a good idea after all? That I might be the one to take it away from him?

That evening, my parents had calmed down enough that I could at the very least make it through a dinner of beef stew without getting grilled about whether I was transforming into some sort of deviant gang leader. Mom was less hysterical. Dad seemed genuinely regretful about yelling at me; not enough to un-ground me, though.

And so I was forced to wait. In my room. With nothing but homework to keep me busy. I put the finishing touches on my paper on Thomas Jefferson, then spent a solid hour studying Genetics.

My mind wandered again and again outside my room. Somewhere, Chase was no doubt playing some of the best baseball of his life. But was there some kind of catch? When the captain of the
Leviathan
caught his fish, would the wishes be reversed? Briar would have had answers.

“Briar,” I whispered, staring out the window. Outside, brown leaves fluttered across the lawn.

The phone call came at nearly eleven o’clock.

“Well, I’m officially an outsider,” Seth mumbled instead of a “Hello.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I’d given up on finding a man-sized rabbit scurrying between the houses, instead burying myself in Genetics. I returned to my bed, tugging nervously on a stray hair.

“I mean Trish is totally ignoring me, none of her friends will even look at me, and it’s entirely possible that the baseball team plans on beating me up at some point in the near future.”