Malamander, p.16
Malamander, page 16
But both boats have disappeared in the bank of fog.
The scene fades as the tunnel collapses.
The mist begins to dissipate.
“No!” Violet cries. “This is wrong. I don’t want to see the past. I want to see now. I want to see where my parents are NOW!” And her face twists in fury as she grips the egg even tighter.
The mist roars back around us, angry red now, whipping Violet’s hair, and nearly throwing me off my feet. A new tunnel starts to form.
I see something in the tunnel, something like trees – trees with giant leaves. There are two figures walking, stumbling, searching. The image begins to grow clearer…
But it doesn’t get the chance.
The tunnel of mist breaks apart as Sebastian Eels bursts through it, his chain mail gleaming as seawater pours off it, his helmet lights blazing. He grabs the egg with one hand and punches Violet in the face with the other. Violet falls back, dazed, and slides down the slope of the malamander’s nest.
She vanishes beneath the water.
And now Eels has the egg, his jubilant face bathed in its fiery red glow.
CAPTAIN KRAKEN
PART OF MY BRAIN – the part that is responsible for the squeak – goes into overdrive. But I ignore it.
Violet has just disappeared underwater.
And she hasn’t come back up!
I heave a desperate gulp of stinking air into my lungs, race down the mound of wrack and rot, and throw myself into the water.
It’s so abysmally cold and dark, I wonder for a moment if I’ve died without noticing. But then I bob back up, and roll over. I reach down as far as I can, frantically swooshing my hand from side to side in the depths, and I find something. I don’t have time to think what it is, I just pull and pull, and watch as Violet bursts up through the surface, her face covered in seaweed and hair.
She gasps and coughs, and I try to swim with her, back to the corridor and to safety. But our clothes are too heavy with water, and the cold has its hand on my heart. I manage to shrug out of my coat and pull Violet out of hers, but we make no progress doing this, and it’s all I can do to help Violet up onto the buckled bulkhead in the centre of the pool.
I feel my foot wedge into a tight space deep underwater as I do this, and my trousers snag. I try to get up beside Violet, but it’s no good.
I’m stuck.
All around, lit by the magical light of the malamander egg, seawater is spraying into the cavern as the tide continues to rise. We have just minutes to either get out of the wreck or learn to breathe underwater.
But my leg is stuck fast.
So this is probably the worst time for what happens next to happen. But it happens anyway. With a great burst of foaming water the malamander surges up through the surface of the pool.
The monster is enormous, bigger even than I realized when it was charging us in the corridor. The spines on its back bristle and vibrate, and webbed ridges jut from its arms.
In its claws it is holding the broken body of Boathook Man.
The old sailor isn’t dead – the curse must still be at work – but he has clearly lost the fight with the monster. His haggard face is white and awful above his yellow beard, and he lies helpless and foggy in its scaly arms.
Sebastian Eels, holding the egg, looks at the malamander. His face breaks into a sneer.
The monster, seeing the egg glowing in the man’s hands, gives out a great, shrieking roar and drops Boathook Man. It rises up in the water, throwing its arms wide as it prepares to lunge.
So Sebastian Eels shoots it.
Simple as that.
He drops to his knee, braces his gun and releases one carefully aimed harpoon with a th-TOUM! of compressed air.
The malamander quivers all over, its lunge suddenly ended before it began. The harpoon has buried itself deep between two of the monster’s scales, where – now we look closely – a slim opening in its armour can be seen.
Inside the opening, something is pulsing: the creature’s heart.
The malamander gives another roar, weaker this time, so Sebastian Eels shoots again.
Th-TOUM!
Another harpoon, in exactly the same place.
Th-TOUM, th-TOUM, th-TOUM! as three more find their mark.
Then there’s a hiss of empty air, as the auto-reloading gun runs out of harpoons. A look of alarm spreads over the face of Sebastian Eels. But then he relaxes as he sees the malamander give a violent shudder.
Its arms fall, and it twists onto its back. The five steel shafts of the harpoons are clustered together in the gap in the monster’s scales.
Straight through its heart.
With a gurgling sigh, the malamander twitches one last time, and then goes still. It slips beneath the water and its lamp-like eyes go dark.
It’s dead.
“Not such a fearsome beast, after all,” says Sebastian Eels, standing and replacing the harpoon gun in its holster. “Once you know where to hit it. What a shame you can’t be here, Peter, to see this.”
And he turns the fiery crystal egg in his hands.
There’s movement in the water, as something rises up beside the corpse of the monster.
It’s Boathook Man.
He looks awful, his twisted body half submerged, his skin raked over with great gashes and slashes. Staring open-mouthed at the body of the malamander, he turns to Eels. “The egg…”
He reaches his arms like a beggar. “Your promise…” he croaks. “Set … me free!”
“Ah, my old friend,” says Eels. “I did indeed promise to free you from your curse. And you deserve it, I suppose. Even though it was I who destroyed the monster.”
“Set … me … FREE!”
Sebastian Eels holds the egg in his two hands. He murmurs to it in a voice too low for us to catch, and its light blazes. Mist boils again from the water all around, swirling and twisting. But instead of gathering around Sebastian Eels on the nest, it encircles Boathook Man in the eye of a storm.
Before our astonished eyes, we see Boathook Man lifted out of the water. His ruined form straightens, his wounds close up, his clothing mends. His beard shrinks back to a neat trim, and his face fills with colour. The boathook on the end of his right arm evaporates, and a new hand appears in its place, pink and perfect.
And now, where once had been a ghastly wreck of a human, a healthy and shipshape naval officer – in the prime of his Victorian life – is set down on a girder.
Boathook Man has gone, and in his place is Captain Kraken.
“It is a marvel!” declares the captain, gazing over his remade body. “My nightmare is ended.”
“Perhaps,” says Sebastian Eels. “But, I wonder, has mine begun?”
“What do you mean by that?” says Captain Kraken.
“Well, you wanted the egg for yourself once,” says Eels. “Maybe you will try to take it again now.”
“I paid the heaviest price for it,” the captain replies. “I lost everything – my ship, my fine men, even my family in the end.”
“With the egg,” Eels says, in a taunting voice, “you could wish it all back.”
“Perhaps, but the egg is not made for the likes of you or I,” says Captain Kraken. “I see that now. It will destroy anyone who tries to use it. I never want to see the damned thing again in my life.”
“Ah,” says Eels with a leering smile, “then your wish is my command.”
And he raises the egg, whispering to it.
Sea mist swirls again, and the water in the cavern starts to boil. But no, it’s not the water this time; it’s something in the water.
It’s the body of the malamander.
As we watch, the scaly corpse of the monster quivers and splits, and dozens of fleshy tendrils shoot up from it. They wrap themselves around the arms and legs of the astonished Captain Kraken, and begin to pulse and thicken, becoming tentacles.
“What are you doing?” cries the captain. “You promised —”
But a purple squid tentacle slaps across his mouth, and cuts off his words. The man struggles, but more and more tentacles are bursting from the sea now, wrapping him tightly, as the body of the malamander is transformed into a mass of writhing, quivering sea life.
“I think I liked you better with the hook,” says Sebastian Eels, his face alive with fascination as he watches his terrible creations. “Or shall we try something else? A crab claw, perhaps?”
And with his words, mist swirls around the captain’s new hand, which elongates and crusts into a blue and red crab pincer. At this, the captain begins to struggle frantically. With a huge effort, he manages to cut through one of the tentacles using his new claw.
Eels, maybe sensing some danger to himself in this terrible game, whispers urgently to the egg in his hands. Light pours from it as the magic responds.
Captain Kraken’s body trembles and ripples, then collapses into a mass of squid and jellyfish and sea slime. Now the water is filled with a riot of new sea life, splashing fins and writhing tentacles. Something like an arm, with something like a giant crab claw at the end of it, reaches feebly towards Eels for a moment, but then loses its form, tumbling into the water as sea urchins and starfish.
The light from the egg dims again, and the thrashing in the water dies down. The bodies of both the malamander and Captain Kraken are gone, transformed into countless sea creatures that swim away into the rising sea.
“The power of life and death.” Sebastian Eels gazes in triumph at the magical object in his hands. “My every wish made true.”
“Is there a P-p-plan B?” I stammer to Violet, my teeth hammering together with the cold as I cling to the last of the bulkhead. “Now would be a g-g-good time for a Plan B.”
But Violet isn’t there.
I look around groggily, this way and that. Violet has gone!
But then I spot her.
She is swimming towards Sebastian Eels.
A STRANGE AND EERIE LIGHT
EELS DOESN’T NOTICE Violet coming, doesn’t see her swim round behind the malamander’s nest. He is still gazing in rapture at the egg in his hands, oblivious to the water that is spraying in through the hull of the ship as the tide continues to rise. There’s a slow boom as the first big wave hits the wreck. But then why would the man worry about that? Sebastian Eels has the awesome power of the malamander egg. He also has full scuba gear. I can’t see how anything can stop him now.
But there’s still Violet.
I watch as she struggles up the mound of seaweed, where Eels hasn’t yet seen her. But she must make a noise doing this, because his head jerks up, and he starts to spin round.
So Violet shoves him.
It’s a desperate shove, and it causes Violet to lose her footing, but Eels is caught unprepared, and he slips too. Violet grabs for the egg in his hand.
“No!” shouts Eels, raising the egg menacingly. But Violet somehow manages to break her slide down into the water, and – with her mother’s boots on – lands a kick in the man’s face.
Sebastian Eels falls, dazed, back into the pool, the egg falling from his fingers.
Violet snatches it up.
She closes her eyes to concentrate, and I still have enough energy in my freezing brain to think, What now? Surely Vi isn’t still trying to see her parents. Doesn’t she know we’re as good as drowned already? None of that matters now.
The sea mist boils once more, red and strange in the submerging cavern, as Violet calls on the magic one more time.
“No!” Eels shouts again, splashing upright in the pool, grabbing his harpoon gun. He aims it at Violet, at point-blank range.
Fut! Fut!
Since he didn’t bother to reload the gun, the mechanism spits nothing but compressed air.
In desperation, Eels starts climbing the mound, but by now Violet is wreathed in a maelstrom of power, and the man slips back and cringes in terror as the light of the malamander egg grows brighter and brighter …
… but then dims.
Violet lowers her hands, looking suddenly small and defeated. The storm ceases its roar, dying down again, and the mist rolls away.
Now all we can hear is the rush of water as the tide continues to rise. The magic is ended, and whatever it was Violet wished for hasn’t appeared.
“Nothing?” rages Sebastian Eels, as he struggles back to his feet. “You wretched, unimaginative child. Is that it? You don’t deserve the power. You are as weak and pathetic as your father. Give me the egg! Give it to me, now!”
“Are you sure you want it?” says Violet, quietly. “Really sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Eels rises up out of the sea towards her, pulling his knife from its sheath. “Give it to me!”
“Then take it!” Violet shouts, and she tosses the malamander egg over the man’s head.
Eels jumps, throwing himself up in a frantic bid to catch the egg before it hits the water.
And he succeeds.
He bobs back down, holding the egg above him in triumph.
“Ha!” he cries.
And his cry is answered by a sound I thought I would never hear again: a screeching, shrieking roar of reptilian fury. The malamander, miraculously whole again, glistening with iridescent scales and bristling with spines, leaps from the shadows and lands on Sebastian Eels. Its gaping mouth, lined as before with tooth needles, closes with a sickening crunch over the hand that holds the egg.
Then both monster and man are gone, crashing beneath the inky surface in a storm of water.
Which subsides.
There’s a ripple or two, and a snaking, finned tail twists to the surface of the water for a moment. Then there’s nothing.
Sebastian Eels is gone.
Now all there is to worry about is the spraying of the invading sea, and the boom of the waves, and the creaking of the wreck as the tide rises to engulf us.
The water is up to my neck now. I make another attempt to free my ankle, but it’s wedged fast, and only hurts when I try.
I look over to the nest.
Violet isn’t there.
“No, I’m here,” she says, suddenly close.
I turn my head, and she’s right beside me, treading water.
“You can still g-g-get out,” I say, suddenly realizing it’s true. “Just go, Vi.”
“I can’t leave without you,” she says, and she dives down beneath the water. But she’s up again in a moment, gasping. There’s no time left now, and no light in this ink-black sea. She needs to stop trying to free me if she’s going to save herself.
“They’ll be n-n-needing a new Lost-and-Founder at the G-g-grand Nautilus Hotel,” I say, pulling the remains of my cap from my head and pushing it through the water to Violet. “You should do it, Vi.”
“Herbie, no!”
The water laps over my face for the first time. When it dips again, I grab a quick breath.
“Please go, Vi,” I say. “T-tell Lady Kraken…”
The water again.
Cough!
“Tell Lady Kraken…”
Then the water closes over me for good.
WENDY
BLADDERWRACKS, it’s dark in here.
But it’s not cold, so I guess being as dead as driftwood has an upside.
Bit odd, though, isn’t it? That I am able to think that? If I’m dead, I mean.
Perhaps I should try an eye. If I still have one.
So I do. And I have!
And what I see starts me wide awake.
A face is looking at me intently, from just a nose or two away. It’s an impressive nose, too, a real Julius Caesar job. A pair of spectacles drops from the forehead of the face, to land neatly on the hook of the nose, and a voice I know well says, “Ah, he’s coming round.”
“Dr Thalassi?” I manage to say, but my chest and throat feel like they’re on fire and I dissolve into coughs.
“Steady there,” says the doc. “Don’t try to speak, Herbie. Just take it easy.”
“Violet?” I say anyway, springing up like a jack-in-the-box. “Where’s Violet?”
I’m in a book-lined room, near a roaring fire. Something hairy and horrible is hunched over a typewriter in the window, and I realize where I am.
The Eerie Book Dispensary.
I’m lying on a makeshift bed of armchairs, wrapped in a blanket that smells of cat (but in a good way). Weak daylight is creeping in through the window, and I see that it’s snowing.
“Morning?” I ask, in a voice like sandpaper.
“Morning,” someone replies, and Violet appears at the doc’s shoulder, her face beaming like the sun.
Then more people are there: Jenny Hanniver in her shawl, peering down at me. And Mrs Fossil, her hands clasped together.
But there’s something odd about them all. They look wet. Well, not actually wet, but like they have recently been soaked to the skin and are now almost dry again. Jenny even has a piece of seaweed in her crinkly red hair.
I must look a bit confused, because Violet answers my question before I can ask it.
“They came to get us,” she explains. “Mrs Fossil sounded the alarm after we left her on the beach last night, and all three of them came. Jenny swam like a fish, Herbie, it was amazing. She got your ankle free and, well, here we are.”
I swing my feet to the ground. I notice my Lost-and-Founder’s cap is hooked on the log scuttle near the fire, but I leave it where it is for now.
“Eels?” I manage to say.
Dr Thalassi makes a grunting sound in his throat.
“No sign of him. And after some of the things Violet has told us, that’s probably just as well.”
“We went to see him yesterday morning,” says Jenny. “The doctor and I. We were worried he was planning something for last night, but we never thought he’d go this far.”
“Herbie, that’s who we heard talking with Eels!” says Violet. “While we were hiding in his study.” And the three adults gasp.
“It seems there’s a lot more you haven’t told us yet,” says Jenny, folding her arms.
Violet gives a shrug and winks at me.
I say nothing. Sebastian Eels is a slippery character, but surely he couldn’t have escaped that final malamander attack, not even in full scuba gear and armour. I shake my head. I don’t want to think about that man ever again.
