Kid vs. Squid (9 page)

“Take them to…” Bike Lady paused, unsure. I figured the next word would be “dungeon.” Or “torture chamber.” Instead, she said “kitchen.”

Since kitchens were places with more knives, not to mention boiling pots of oil, I was in no way relieved.

They frog-marched us into a cluttered room of dirty tile floor and walls that might have once been black-and-white checkerboard. Battered pots and
pans and cleavers hung from hooks. The cleavers bothered me. At a stove, a stoop-shouldered old man in chef whites (or almost-whites) stirred a dented cauldron of soup. He took no notice of me or Trudy or the Flotsam until Bike Lady cleared her throat.

“Fin?”

“Busy. Cooking.”

“Fin, we caught these intruders—”

“Busy. Cooking. Soup.” He continued stirring.

Exasperated, Bike Lady tried again: “Fin, these children … they are
with the witch
.”

“Hmm. Come here and taste this.”

“Fin—”

“Soup! Dinner! Taste it!”

Bike Lady's hands balled into fists, but she went forward and took a slurp. “Cabbage soup, yes, very nice. As I was saying—”

“Yes, cabbage soup. I suppose you are disappointed it's not polar kraken,” the cook said. “Perhaps if somebody had caught a polar kraken, I would prepare polar kraken for His Royal Highness. Alas, His Exalted Majesty's hunters were only able to spear three heads of cabbage, so that is what you will be served at His Extreme Grace's table. Speaking of whom, where is our king?”

“Leading a search party to find the princess,” she answered, her face turning red in frustration. “And
as these intruders have brought with them our most terrible enemy, I have no doubt they know the princess's fate.”

“We do,” Trudy said, straining against the two Flotsam clutching her arms. “Shoal was swallowed by a monster fish. We're her friends, and we've been trying to help her.”

At that, the Flotsam gasped. Except for Fin.

He offered his spoon. “Would you like some soup?”

“No, I would not like some soup! If you're not going to help us help Shoal, then let us go!” Trudy was steamed, and in a roomful of angry Flotsam with trident spears and racks hanging with ugly cleavers, I didn't think anger was a good idea. Not that I could blame her, but I wanted to make sure we didn't end up as key ingredients in Fin's pot.

“Sir,” I said, faking a reasonable tone, “we are Shoal's friends, and she told us to come here because she said you were her family. We have the witch's head with us, and she put the Flotsam curse on us. Whatever mess we're in, we're all in it together.”

Fin took another taste of his soup and made a sour face. “It's not even good cabbage. Concha, tell your guards to let the children go.”

“But Fin—”

“Do it.”

Concha, the bike lady, gave a reluctant nod, and her guards released us. All the moving parts in my arms creaked and popped as I stretched them, trying to restore circulation.

“Now,” Fin said, “I would like to have a look at the thing in your bag. Will you permit me?”

Trudy nodded. She removed her backpack and very carefully set it down on the kitchen counter. Concha and her guards held their breaths, spears ready, looking more scared than angry as Fin gently pinched the zipper and opened the backpack, just enough to peer inside.

“Well, by Poseidon's eye socket, that's her all right.”

He rezipped the backpack and motioned for us to join him sitting a long kitchen table. Spread across the scarred wooden surface was a big sheet of butcher paper covered in dark ink markings: lines, curves, circles that might have been planets, and scribbles lined up like math problems. Fin dipped a pen in a small, squid-shaped pot of oily black ink and scratched out some notations.

“What is all this?” Trudy asked, examining it with her nose a bare inch off the table.

“This represents what has become my life's work, done in service to my king: attempting to calculate Last Day, when the curse calls us back into the Drowning Sleep. It is dependent upon a convergence of high
tide and deep ocean currents and planetary alignments. Every year I get closer to figuring it all out, but then Last Day arrives before I can solve it and we're called back to sea, and no matter how cleverly I think I have hidden my chart, one of Skalla's minions steals it while we're adrift. Every summer I must begin anew, from scratch.”

“I don't understand why the curse works like this,” Trudy said, annoyed at her own lack of understanding. “If Skalla hates you so much, why not just drown you outright? Why keep you coming back here every summer?”

“Ah, because she needs us, you see. We don't know what for, but she has a plan for us, so the very same spell that condemns us also keeps us alive. The currents bring us to this beach that, in old days, was Skalla's hideaway, her refuge and stronghold. We wash ashore here every summer, and the witch keeps us enslaved to the tourists, humiliated.”

“But not after midnight,” I pointed out. “Here, right now, you're not all zombified.”

Fin steepled his fingers. “We are a strong people. Even as our hands squirt mustard on hot dogs, we fight. Years ago, with the help of our few land-dwelling allies, we almost won a victory. As the king's sorcerer, I used my own small magic, and we gained this modicum of freedom—a place of our own to dwell in the
longest hours of night, where we can plan, and calculate. Even if it is all for nothing in the end.”

These land-dwelling allies Fin mentioned—he was talking about the Keepers. Like my uncle.

“So when is Last Day?” Trudy asked.

Fin smoothed out the butcher paper. “There is an unusually strong high tide due soon, the strongest of the century. It coincides with the full moon, an arctic storm, the approach of an undiscovered comet, the venting of an underwater volcano, the braiding of geomagical force lines.… It is very complicated. But I believe I know when.”

“And ‘when' is … ?”

“Three weeks from today.”

Trudy and I exchanged wide-eyed stares.

“Three weeks?” I shouted. “We've only got three weeks before we're all floating garbage?”

“Oh, it is even worse than that,” Fin said. “Something even larger is happening this year. More than merely Flotsam being drawn to the drowning. I have been unable to put my finger on it, but I believe there is a disaster coming. I do not know its nature, nor its magnitude, but who is to say it won't be of a proportion even greater than the storms that befell the last Atlantis?” He paused. “Are you sure you wouldn't care for some soup?”

Another Flotsam entered the kitchen. I thought I'd
seen him selling churros on the boardwalk. “The king has returned,” he announced. “He demands the witch and prisoners be brought before him.”

“They're not prisoners,” Fin said. “They are guests and allies.”

“Perhaps you would like to tell the king that,” the newcomer said.

Fin thought about it. “You had better go up to have your audience,” he said to us in a conspiratorial whisper. “It won't be so bad. If he puts you in the dungeon, I will bring you soup. If he does worse … well, let's hold that thought in reserve for now.”

The Atlanteans took Trudy and me up to a huge room on the second floor. I figured it had once been a dining hall. Fin followed us, carrying Trudy's backpack. A chair of driftwood, adorned with pearls and spiky frills of coral, loomed at one end of the room. Leaning against a seat back made from a giant clamshell, the man sitting in the chair watched without expression as Trudy and I were brought before him. He wore a T-shirt with a faded crown on it and a tan raincoat thrown over his shoulders like a cape. With one hand, he stroked a long, braided beard fastened with a gold hoop—a napkin ring. His other hand gripped a trident spear. Back on the boardwalk, he'd told me that I was smelling the scent of the
sea, and that I should buy popcorn. In this setting, he seemed very different.

“I am Coriolis,” he said. “Welcome to my court.”

He pulled his lips back in a smile like the last thing you'd see before a shark bites your face off.

“We have sought Skalla the witch for many summers. We thought we had defeated her some years ago, in one of our many battles. I cast her off the fishing pier myself. It was not the first time. Her head rolls on the sea floor, through mud and muck, down in the trenches where the only light comes from glowing fish. This is where she learns her secrets. But she always returns here, like Flotsam in her own way. Of late her whereabouts have remained unknown to us. And now, here she is again. I would very much like to hear how you made her acquaintance. But first, I would know this:
Where is my daughter?
”

For once I did the smart thing: I let Trudy do the talking. She told him everything, from Shoal stealing Skalla's head, to the jellyfish boys and the monster fish, plus everything in between.

“Shoal said we should come to you,” she concluded.

Coriolis didn't say anything for a long time. He didn't move. He didn't even blink. He was like a big firecracker with a long, burning fuse that you regret
having lit because no matter how far you run, you know it's going to blast your fingers off.

“Sire, they are lying,” Concha said. “They belong to the witch. You cannot believe Shoal would go off on her own to steal Skalla's head. If she discovered its location, she would have told you, and you could have dispatched me and my guards to retrieve it. She would not have acted alone.”

“You speak as though you've never met the king's daughter,” Fin said. “That is precisely the kind of thing she would do. She is impetuous, foolhardy, and brave. Not unlike her friends. And if she thought the best way to take Skalla's head was to steal her in the night, then it is a good thing she didn't tell you first, because you and your guards are as stealthy as a walrus with a distressed stomach.”

Concha opened her mouth to protest, but the king held his hand up and a thick silence settled over the chamber.

“I would see the witch now.”

Fin stepped forward. “Allow me, sire. I have a gentle touch.” He unzipped Trudy's backpack and, as if he was handling a bomb, set the
What-Is-It??
on a side table beside the king's throne. After carefully unlatching the lid, he opened the box. The witch's eyes were still closed and the duct tape Shoal had put over her mouth still in place.

And then her eyelids moved like the wings of a moth.

“Let me kill her, sire,” Concha pleaded.

“No. Ending her life could mean ending the curse. Or it could mean losing any chance of ever ending it. That is our dilemma. We have had opportunities to kill her in the past, but we cannot know the consequences. We cannot stab or smash or boil our troubles away.”

Concha pounded her fist into her palm. “And what has our restraint earned us, sire? We remain enslaved, selling cotton candy to tourists. What of your daughter? If these mud walkers are telling the truth, then Skalla holds her captive in a prison fish. We must end the witch, my king. Now, while we have the opportunity.”

Coriolis rose to his full height. He hadn't looked that massive beside the popcorn cart. He glared down at the
What-Is-It??
and said, “There will come a day when my hatred of this creature will surpass my sense of responsibility. I feel it coming, soon. Then, I will teach this witch the true meaning of suffering.” He closed the lid. “But that day is not now.”

Sounds came from downstairs: a window breaking, heavy footfalls, and screaming. Someone called out, “Get the head!”

Coriolis and Fin hurried down the stairs with a
few Flotsam guards, leaving Concha and several of her men and women to watch the head.

Trudy and I raced downstairs. Dozens of creatures swarmed the lower floor, shaped like men but with faces armored in hard, speckled brown shells. Instead of hands, they gripped clubs in giant lobster claws. An Atlantean swung his trident at one of the lobster men, who caught it in his pincers and snapped the shaft in two. They all wore I
Los Huesos T-shirts.

It didn't take an expert in military history to see how the battle was going. There were only a couple dozen Atlanteans. There was a whole school of lobsters.

In the center of the skirmish, Coriolis said something in Fin's ear. Fin nodded and hurried upstairs, dodging several lobsters and bashing a few more.

Coriolis turned to Trudy and me. “It falls on you now, friends of Atlantis. The witch's servants will make more attempts to reclaim her. You must not let them. Foil her plans any way you can. More than just Atlantis rests in the balance. And… if you can help my daughter …”

“We will,” I promised. And I meant it. We would.

“Then remove Skalla from here. We shall fight to cover your escape. Now go,” he ordered. And he dove into the fray.

Fin came running down the stairs with Trudy's
backpack. He thrust it at Trudy, and she ducked her arms under the straps.