The Order of Odd-Fish (19 page)

“We might be able to find our way back…,” said Ian doubtfully; then he shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll go first. Just to make sure.”

Ian climbed down the hole—and with a sickening slurp, he was gone, too.

Jo felt her stomach curl. Now she was alone.
Why
did
I come down here?
she thought. She liked Nick and had enjoyed making Ian jealous, but now she was so nervous she could hardly see, she couldn’t swallow, and the walls seemed to be growing thicker, drawing closer…She turned around. Maybe she could find her way out.

But no. She couldn’t leave Ian.

Jo turned back to the hole. She took a breath and gingerly climbed down into it, little by little, trying to keep her hold. Suddenly there was a huge gulping noise all around her, she lost her grip, and a flood of water swept her away, tumbling and sliding into the twisting darkness. Then the tunnel unexpectedly opened into empty space, and Jo fell far, far down and splashed into a deep pool of water.

Jo floundered to the surface, coughing and spluttering. Nick and Ian grabbed her arms, dragging her up some slimy steps. They both had torches, and their faces looked strange and red in the flickering fire.

“Fun ride?” whispered Nick.

Jo coughed up dirty water. “You’re crazy—I almost got killed in there—”

Nick looked offended. “Killed? Oh, no, it’s perfectly safe. I ride it all the time.” He spread his arms wide. “For this, my friends, is home!”

“Home!” said Ian in awe.

Jo wiped her eyes and looked around. They were in a flooded stone rotunda encrusted with twinkling jewels. Elaborate arched passages led out on either side into watery darkness, and the ceiling of the dome was pierced in the center by a dripping hole.

It was a cathedral from the early days of Eldritch City, buried by centuries, its stone halls left to rot and ruin under the busy metropolis. It was thousands of years old, and even though it was wrecked and flooded and humbled by age, it was astonishing to see. The dome over their heads was coated with thousands of tiny jewels, blue, green, red, purple, and yellow, arranged in glimmering mosaics of half-human shapes and strange animals, cavorting and twisting all around the ceiling and walls.

Ian’s contempt of Nick had turned into respect. “How did you find this?”

“Poking around,” said Nick. “I was looking for a place to live. Yeah, I live down here! And it’s not such a bad life—if you’re careful.”

“Does anything
else
live down here?” said Jo.

“Sure. Lots of things. Watch.”

Nick clapped his hands and whistled. Watery howls answered down the dark tunnel, then splashes and snorts, coming closer. The dark water became a seething broth, churned into a writhing foam, and out of the depths of the flooded cathedral rose three gigantic squids. Jo gasped, and Ian stepped back a few paces, but Nick seemed unconcerned.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re tame, mostly.”

The squids were each the size of a large car, with rough orange skin, dangling tentacles, and eyes as big as plates. They rolled over, gurgling with pleasure as Nick scratched them. Then Nick waded down the steps and mounted the largest squid.

“C’mon, get on a squid,” he said. “We’ll go for a ride.”

Jo and Ian exchanged incredulous looks. But Nick insisted, and eventually Jo cautiously crawled up onto a squid, while Ian got on his. Nick held their torches patiently and, to his credit, did not laugh as Jo and Ian kept falling off, trying to figure out how to sit on them properly.

“Hold on to their head with one hand, and squeeze them with your legs. That’s it,” said Nick. He handed back their torches. “Let’s go!”

Nick dug his heels into the squid’s side, and it began swimming toward one of the dark passages leading out of the rotunda. Jo and Ian’s squids followed, pulsing and gliding.

Jo gazed around in astonishment as they rode the grunting beasts down the glittering tunnels. The cathedral was cracked and stained but encrusted everywhere with thousands of gems, glinting red, green, orange, and blue. The torchlight licked the jewels to glittering life, bringing them glowing out of the darkness like colored stars. Water oozed from the walls, roots dangled from the ceiling, and everywhere gems dripped from grooves and hidden holes, seeming to grow out of the rocky wall, itself shot through with veins of icy sapphire. These jeweled tunnels felt like the roots of the city, laid down when the world was young, holding secrets as old as the world. Jo almost imagined she could hear the secrets, whispered in the darkness.

She started. It wasn’t her imagination—something
was
whispering. Little voices all around her chattered softly in the darkness.

A rock struck the back of her head.

Even before Jo could cry out, Nick whipped out a slingshot and fired a stone into the darkness. There was a squish and a shriek, something tumbled from far above; a hushed gibbering echoed in the gloom all around them, and then there was silence.

“What was
that
?” said Jo.

“What? What?” said Ian wildly.

“Shhh! Calm down!” said Nick, bringing his squid around. A creature was floating dead in the water—a gray, furry, monkey-like beast with a cruel little face and clawed hands and feet.

“The groglings are out,” muttered Nick.

“Groglings!” said Ian. “I’ve never actually seen one before.”

“You’ll see plenty of them down here,” said Nick.

The whispers returned, all around them now, louder and angrier. Nick held up his hand and listened to the hushed voices. Jo and Ian looked around into the darkness but saw nothing.

“It’s not safe here anymore,” said Nick.

“Where—”

“Shhh! Follow me!”

Nick spurred his squid onward, and Jo and Ian followed, surging through the thick water. The voices got louder and bolder, and stones whizzed through the air, struck off the walls, and made little splashes explode around them. Jo could just barely see gray little shapes climbing the ceilings and popping in and out of holes, every moment fiercer and more numerous. What had been an excited whispering and then an agitated chattering was now the roar of a hundred tiny throats, echoing up and down the caverns, filling their ears with a raucous gibber.

“Go!” shouted Nick. “Don’t stop! Faster!”

The groglings leaped out, flying from everywhere at once, as though the darkness had congealed into a hundred snarling shapes, dropping from the ceiling, springing from the walls, bursting out of the water. Nick tore them off and flung them away, Ian flailed uselessly at them, and Jo screamed as they climbed all over her, nipping her with slimy teeth.

Nick flung away his torch. “Hold your breath!”

“What?” yelled Ian.

Nick’s squid reared and then plunged underwater with a tremendous splash. Jo grabbed her squid with both hands as it too bucked and dived. The slimy water gurgled all around her as the squid twisted wildly through underwater tunnels, and Jo could barely hold on. Then she broke the surface again, into darkness. She heard Nick’s voice somewhere, and a moment later Ian’s. Jo clutched her squid nervously. It was so dark she might as well have been blind.

“Jo? Ian? Everybody here?” came Nick’s voice, just as jaunty as before. “That was close. The groglings have been getting peevish lately.”

“Peevish, you say!” said Ian with heavy irony. “A touch out of sorts, were they, old chap? Perhaps a spot of tea would set them to rights, what?”

“I’m sorry if that was too interesting for you,” said Nick coolly. “Perhaps you’d prefer something less stressful. I understand that knitting is very soothing.”

“Knitting? I’ll knit
you
!” said Ian.

There was an awkward pause.

“Okay, that was kind of stupid,” said Ian.

“Enough,” said Jo. “Where are we?”

“Um…I’ve never been in this part of the cathedral before, actually,” said Nick, and Jo’s confidence sank. “But don’t worry. The squids know their way. I think.”

The squids snorted quietly as they nosed their way down the pitch-black tunnel. Jo didn’t like being unable to see—her imagination created claws reaching out in the darkness, or a rotting face smiling inches from her own. When Nick’s squid brushed against hers, she gave a little shriek.

“I think we’re coming to the center of the cathedral,” whispered Nick.

“There aren’t any groglings here,” said Jo. “Why not?”

Nobody answered. And the farther the squids swam down the flooded passageway, the nearer they drew to the cathedral’s center, the weirder Jo felt. She felt they were approaching a huge, slowly beating heart, murmuring just beneath human hearing. The water seemed warmer here, the darkness thicker, as though it was a substance of its own.

They were suddenly dazzled by a flood of light and heat.

A gigantic golden mouth opened before them. The huge, strange mouth was set in a carved brass wall swirling with olive and apple jewels and silver glyphs cut in curling grooves. The light blazed from the mouth itself, although the throat beyond was dark. Jo screamed and the squids panicked. It seemed the ruby-lipped, black-throated mouth was rushing forward to devour them, with all the noise and fury of an oncoming train, and Jo saw, or thought she saw, crouching in the darkness deep in the throat, a horrible shape.

Jo barely got a breath and dug her fingernails hard into her squid’s hide before the squids howled and dived underwater. Her ears felt crushed with pressure, the water rushed by so fast she almost lost her grip, her lungs were tight and empty, she needed to breathe—soon she couldn’t wait another second—her grip was loosening, sharp lights were stabbing behind her eyes—and then the squid burst above water. Jo gasped for air as the squid plunged away, and was gone.

Jo was left treading water. She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t touch bottom. All was silent except for the occasional drip.

“Ian!” rasped Jo.

Nothing.

“Nick…?”

There was no answer. She swam a few strokes, but she couldn’t see where she was going. She tried not to think that she might be trapped or hopelessly lost—that nobody would ever find her down here, not even her body. For a dreadful minute she treaded water, her legs tiring, breathing deeply, trying not to panic. Then, echoing somewhere in the darkness, she heard a faint coughing. She swam toward it and saw a dim light ahead, and two figures on a concrete shelf near a sewer pipe where—thank God, thought Jo—daylight trickled through.

Too tired to speak, Jo paddled the last few strokes and grabbed the shelf. Ian helped her crawl onto the concrete, where Nick lay sprawled out as if dead. Ian kicked open the sewer grate, and Jo smelled the fresh air. They were out.

Jo and Ian stood outside the pipe awkwardly. It was a hot, cloudless day, and not a breeze stirred in the humming city.

“Are you okay?” she said at last.

“I don’t know…yeah, I think so,” said Ian weakly. “But Nick got knocked on the head pretty hard. Luckily I had a chance to grab him, before that…I don’t know. It was all too fast.”

There was a nasty cut across Nick’s brow, and his scalp looked sickeningly askew. Jo gingerly smoothed his hair.

She was astonished when it all came off at once.

Jo was left holding Nick’s wig in shock—staring at his real hair, which was long, wavy, and blond. Nick’s face seemed even more effeminate than before. Even—

Ian shouted, “I knew there was something strange about this guy!”

“Nick’s a…girl?” said Jo, unable to believe what she was seeing. “Then what—”

“Go through her pockets,” said Ian. “Maybe she has a wallet, or identification, or something.”

Jo awkwardly searched through Nick’s clothes and found a familiar jeweled key. She held it awkwardly for a second before she realized what it was.

Ian said slowly, “What…
what
is Nick doing with Lady Agnes’s key?”

Jo stammered, “M-maybe we should go back to Lady Agnes’s house, or…”

“If she’s still alive!” said Ian. “I think there’s more to this ‘lad of the streets’ than we thought! Jo, what if
Nick
is ‘Duddler Yarue’? This is a fiasco—I bet if we go to Lady Agnes’s house, we’ll find her dead! How else could he have gotten the key? This Duddler Yarue probably just took us underground to finish us off!”

“Impossible,” said Jo weakly—but it all hung together. Lady Agnes’s house wasn’t far away. They took off, half running, half walking, dragging “Nick” roughly between them. They were all drenched, their bones ached, and they smelled like the sewers; people in the street watched them suspiciously. Just when Jo was afraid the police were going to stop them and ask why they were dragging around an unconscious girl, they finally arrived at Lady Agnes’s. Jo slipped Nick’s jeweled key into the lock and opened the door.

There was nobody home. Jo and Ian carefully called out “Hello?” and “Lady Agnes?” but no one answered. Ian searched the house, looking in all the rooms, while Jo heaved “Nick” onto Lady Agnes’s chair in the front parlor, examining the cut on her forehead.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Ian, coming in with some bandages he’d found. “Where’s Lady Agnes’s butler? Didn’t Lady Agnes say she never left the house? And why was this girl acting like a boy?”

Jo suddenly realized what must have happened.

“That’s it!” she said. “I knew I recognized Nick somehow!”

“You recognize Nick?” said Ian slowly. “Then why didn’t you tell—”

“No, Ian, there
is
no Nick! And no Duddler Yarue—no Lady Agnes, either. This girl—she just
made it all up
!”

Ian looked at Jo as if she had told him Lady Agnes was an ape.

“Listen, it all fits!” said Jo. “Why would Nick have Lady Agnes’s key? And why isn’t Lady Agnes here now? Because Nick
is
Lady Agnes! This girl dressed up as an old woman, gave us a quest, and then dressed up as a ‘lad of the streets’ and met us outside! Lady Agnes, Duddler Yarue, Nick—they’re all the same person—they’re all
characters,
played by this girl!”

“Wait, wait—”

“You said it first,” said Jo. “You told Lady Agnes this wasn’t a proper quest, but something out of a bad detective novel. You were right—we
were
in a bad detective novel! It was all a game! This girl—Nick, Lady Agnes, whatever—she’s been playing with us!”