Challenger Deep Page 6

  “Very good,” says the captain. “Well-spoken! You know your lore.”

  “Lore-master,” says the parrot. “Make him Lore-master.”

  “A clear choice,” the captain agrees. “You shall be our designated expert on lore.”

  The fat kid panics. “But I don’t know stuff—I only heard you talking once.”

  “Then learn.” The captain reaches to a shelf I didn’t know was there a moment ago, grabs a volume the size of an unabridged dictionary, and slams it down on the table in front of the poor kid.

  “Thanks for sharing,” says Carlyle from the corner, flicking a bit of wood from his knife to the ground.

  The captain turns his gaze to the girl with blue hair, waiting for her contribution. She looks off to the side as she speaks, as if her lack of eye contact is the ultimate rebellion against authority. “There must be sunken treasure or, like, whatever,” she says. “Otherwise, why would you want to go there?”

  “Aye,” says the captain. “All treasures lost at sea seek the world’s lowest point. Gold and diamonds and emeralds and rubies taken by the jealous sea are dragged by its watery tentacles along the seafloor and dropped into the unknowable depths of Challenger Deep. A king’s ransom without the nuisance of a kidnapped king.”

  “Kidnap, sand trap, sandstorm, life-form,” says the navigator. “Life-forms never seen by the human eye lie in wait for a challenger.”

  “So who is the challenger?” asks the kid with a dearth of cheekbones.

  The captain turns his gaze to him. “Since you asked the question, you will prophesize answers.” Then he turns to the parrot. “Bring him the bones.”

  The parrot flies across the room and returns with a small leather sack in his beak.

  “We shall call you the prophet and you shall interpret the bones for us,” the captain says.

  “These,” says the parrot, “are the bones of my father.”

  “Whom we devoured one fine Christmas,” the captain adds, “when no one would be the turkey.”

  I swallow and think of the White Plastic Kitchen. Then the captain looks at me and I realize that everyone’s spoken but me. I consider what everyone else has said and I can feel my anger building. The captain with his single bloodshot eye; the parrot, his head bobbing in anticipation of whatever nonsense I would add to this foolishness.

  “The Marianas Trench,” I say. “Nearly seven miles deep—the deepest place on earth—and southwest of the island of Guam, which isn’t even on your globe.”

  The captain’s eye opens wider so it appears to have no lids. “Go on.”

  “It was first explored by Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh in 1960 in a submersible called the Trieste. They didn’t find any monsters or treasures. And if there are treasures, you’ll never get to them. Not without a heavy-duty diving bell—a bathyscaphe made of steel that’s at least six inches thick. But as this is a preindustrial ship, I don’t think that’s going to happen, because you don’t have that kind of technology, do you? So this is a waste of everyone’s time.”

  The captain folds his arms. “How very anachronistic of you,” he says. “And you believe this because . . . ?”

  “Because I did a report on it,” I tell him. “In fact, I got an A.”

  “I think not.” Then he calls to Carlyle. “Swabby,” he says. “This crewman has just earned an F. I order that it be branded on his forehead.”

  The prophet snickers, the lore-master groans, and everyone else waits to see whether or not it’s an idle threat.

  “You are all dismissed,” the captain says. “All except for our insolent F.”

  The others shuffle out, the navigator giving me a sympathetic gaze. Carlyle hurries out and returns in seconds with a branding iron, red-hot and smoking, as if it had been waiting just outside. Two of the nameless ship’s officers hold me against the bulkhead, and although I fight, I can’t get free.

  “Sorry about this,” says Carlyle, holding the red-hot brand, the heat of which I can feel two feet away.

  The parrot flies off, not wanting to watch, and the captain, before he gives the order to do the deed, leans close to me. I can smell his breath. It reeks of bits of old meat pickled in rum. “This not be the world you think it to be,” he says.

  “Then what world is it?” I ask, refusing to give in to my fear.

  “Don’t you know? ’Tis a world of laughter, a world of tears.” Then he lifts up his eye patch, revealing a nasty hole that has been plugged with a peach pit. “But mostly, it’s a world of tears.”

  And he signals for Carlyle to give me an F on my report.

  36. Without Her We’re Lost

  In the aftermath of my branding, the captain becomes gentle. Apologetic even, although he never actually apologizes. He sits by my bedside dabbing water on the wound. Carlyle and the parrot stop in once in a while, but only for a moment. Once they see the captain there, they retreat.

  “This is all the parrot’s fault,” the captain tells me. “And Carlyle’s. The two of them put ideas in your head, and get you all riled up when I’m not around.”

  “You’re always around,” I remind him. He ignores me, and dabs my forehead again.

  “Those damn trips to the crow’s nest aren’t helping you either. Away with the spirits—to the devil with your potion. Mark my words, those unholy concoctions will rot you from the inside out.”

  I don’t tell him that it was the parrot who insisted I get myself a cocktail.

  “You go up there because you want to fit in,” he says. “I know about these things. Best thing to do is pour it overboard when no one’s looking.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell him. I think of the lonely maiden decorating the bow; how she asked me to be her eyes and ears on the ship. I figure if the captain is ever going to be open to questions, now would be the time, when he feels guilty for my raging F.

  “When I was on the bowsprit, I saw the ship’s figurehead. It’s very beautiful.”

  The captain nods. “A work of art to be sure.”

  “Sailors used to believe they protect ships. Is that what you believe?”

  The captain looks at me curiously, but not quite suspiciously. “Did she tell you that?”

  “She’s a piece of wood,” I say quickly. “How could she tell me anything?”

  “Right.” The captain fiddles with his beard, then says, “She protects us from the challenges we will face before we reach our destination. The monsters toward which we sail.”

  “She has power over them?”

  The captain chooses his words carefully. “She watches. She sees things no one else sees, and her visions echo in the hollows of the ship, strengthening it against the onslaught. She is good luck, but more than that, her gaze can charm all nature of aquatic beast.”

  “I’m glad we have protection,” I tell him. I know not to push any further, because then he might get suspicious about my questioning.

  “Without her we’re lost,” the captain says, then gets up. “I expect you at roll call in the morning. No complaints.” Then he strides out, tossing the wet rag to the navigator, who clearly has no interest in nursing my wound.

  37. Third Eye Blind

  My headache is like a brand on my forehead. It makes it hard to focus on my schoolwork—hard to do anything. The aching comes and it goes, and with each return, it’s a little bit worse. The more I think the more my head hurts, and lately my brain has been in constant overdrive. I keep taking showers to cool it down, like the way they pour water on an overheating machine. I usually feel better after the third or fourth shower.

  After today’s multiple showers, I go downstairs and ask my mom for aspirin.

  “You take too much aspirin,” my mom tells me, and hands me a bottle of Tylenol.

  “Tylenol sucks,” I tell her.

  “It brings down fevers.”

  “I don’t have a fever. My forehead is growing a freaking eye.”

  She looks at me, gauging my seriousness, and it b
ugs me. “I’m kidding.”

  “I know,” she says, turning away. “I was just looking at the way you wrinkle your forehead. That’s why you get those headaches.”

  “So, can I have aspirin?”

  “How about Advil?”

  “Fine,” I say. It usually works all right, although it makes me moody as hell when it starts to wear off.

  I go to the bathroom with a Mountain Dew and take three pills, feeling too rebellious to take the recommended dose of two. In the mirror I can see the wrinkles on my forehead that my mother was talking about. I try to relax, but I can’t. My reflection looks worried. Am I worried? That’s not quite what I’m feeling today—but lately my emotions are so liquid, they flow into one another without my noticing. Now I realize that I am worried. I’m worried about being worried.

  38. Ah, Here’s the Proboscis

  I have this dream. I’m dangling from the ceiling. My feet are a few inches from the ground. Then, as I look down, I see I have no feet. My body tapers into a squirming, wormlike bit of flesh, as if I’m a larval version of myself, suspended above the dark ground. Suspended by what, though? I realize that I’m caught in something that’s like a net but more organic. A web, sticky and dense. I shudder to think what kind of creature could spin a web like that.

  I can move my arms but it takes such an incredible force of will to move a single inch, it doesn’t feel worth the effort. I think there are others in here with me, but they’re all out of view, behind me, just past the edge of my peripheral vision.

  It’s dark around me, but dark isn’t the word for it, more like lightless. As if the concept of light and dark have not yet been born, leaving everything a persistent shade of somber gray, and I wonder if this is what the void was like before there was anything. Not even the White Plastic Kitchen exists in this dream.

  The parrot comes out of the lightlessness, strutting toward me, but he’s the size of a man. It’s frighteningly intimidating to see a bird that big. A feathered dinosaur with a beak that could snap my head off with a single bite. He looks me over with that grin that never goes away, and seems to approve of my helpless situation.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Like I’m waiting for something to suck out my blood,” I try to say but all that comes out is, “Waiting.”

  The parrot looks past me, over my shoulder. I try to turn my head, but can’t move enough to see what he’s looking at.

  “Ah, here’s the proboscis!” he says.

  “What’s that?” I ask, realizing too late that it’s a word I’d rather not have defined.

  “Its stinger. The sting is the only pain you’ll feel. Then you’ll drift off as easily as falling asleep.”

  And sure enough, I feel the sting, potent and painful. I can’t tell exactly where the unseen creature stings me. Is it in my back? In my thigh? In my neck? Then I realize that it’s everywhere at once.

  “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Even before my terror can blossom, the venom takes effect and in an instant, I don’t care. About anything. I hang there in absolute peace as I am slowly devoured.

  39. Stars on My Scantron

  A science exam, which, for once, I did not study for. It occurs to me that I don’t have to take this test, because I know more than the teacher. I know so much more. I know things that aren’t in the book. I know the inner workings of all things biological down to the cellular level. Because I’ve figured things out. I KNOW how the universe works. I’m practically bursting with the knowledge. How can a single person have so much crammed in their brain and not have their head explode? Now I know the reason for the headaches. This knowledge is nothing specific that I can describe. Words are completely ineffective. I can draw it, though. I have been drawing it. But I must be careful who I let know the things I know. Not everyone wants the information spread.

  “You will have forty minutes for this test. I suggest you use your time wisely.”

  I snicker. There’s something about what he said that strikes me as funny, but I can’t say why.

  The moment I receive my Scantron and flip over the exam, I realize the words on the paper aren’t the real exam at all. The true test is something deeper. The fact that I’m having trouble focusing on the printed questions is a clear indication that I must look for more meaningful answers.

  I begin to fill in the little circles with my number two pencil, and the world goes away. Time goes away. I find patterns that are hidden within the grid. The answer key to everything, and suddenly it’s—

  “Pencils down! Time is up. Pass your answer sheets forward.”

  I do not remember forty minutes passing. I look at both sides of my Scantron to see wild constellations that don’t exist in the heavens, and yet are more true than the stars we can see. All that remains is for someone to connect the dots.

  40. Hell Asail

  The girl with blue hair is made Mistress of the Treasury and is given a trunkful of manifests from sunken ships. Her job is to go through them and find evidence of lost treasure, based on what was listed as the ship’s cargo. It might not be so bad, except that all the pages are shredded into confetti, and must be pieced back together. She labors at this day in and day out.

  The pudgy kid, who everyone now calls the lore-master, struggles to learn what he can from the massive volume the captain inflicted upon him. Unfortunately, the entire book is written in runes from some language that I suspect is either dead or never actually existed.

  “This is hell on earth,” the lore-master declares to me in his frustration, and the parrot, who seems to hear things before they’re even spoken, points out that since land is nowhere to be seen, it would best be described as “hell asail.”

  The choker-girl is in charge of morale—odd because she’s always so dismal.

  “We’re all gonna die, and it’s going to be painful,” she’s said several times, although she always finds a different way of saying basically the same thing. So much for morale.

  The boy with the bag of bones has become skilled at telling fortunes. He holds the little leather pouch of the remains of the parrot’s father, ready to roll-and-read whenever the captain asks.

  Bone-boy confides in me that he makes up most of his readings—but he’s vague enough that it all can be interpreted to be true by someone who really wants it to be.

  “How do you know I won’t give away your secret?” I ask him.

  He smiles and says, “Because I can just as easily prophesize that you’ll get thrown overboard by a crewman destined to be rich and famous.”

  Which, of course, would make any member of the crew want to hurl me into the sea. I have to admit it, this guy is no idiot.

  The navigator continues to do what he’s done since I met him. He creates his navigational charts, searching for meaning and direction to guide us to the trench and back again.

  “The captain has special plans for you,” the navigator tells me. “I think you’ll like them.” And somehow, in four steps he conjures “special plans” to “swollen glands,” and begins to feel his throat in a troubled way.

  “You, my insolent F, shall be our artist in residence,” the captain tells me. Just the mention of the brand reminds me that the pain in my forehead never quite goes away. Mercifully there are no mirrors on board, so I can’t actually see it, only feel it. “Your purpose shall be to document our journey in images.”

  “The captain is partial to images over words,” the navigator whispers to me, “because he can’t read.”

  41. Nothing of Interest

  I know I should hate the captain with all my heart, and yet I don’t. I can’t explain why. The reason must go as deep as the trench we sail toward—it must hide in a place that no light can reach except for the light you bring with you, and right now I feel pretty much in the dark.

  I peer off the side of the ship, pondering the depths, wondering what unknowable mysteries lie beneath us. When I look at the roiling sea long enough, I see th
ings in the randomness of the waves. There are eyes everywhere in those waters scrutinizing me, judging me.

  The parrot is watching, too. He struts along the railing toward me. “‘Look into the abyss and the abyss looks into you,’” the parrot says. “Let’s hope the abyss finds nothing of interest.”

  In spite of the captain’s disdain of the crow’s nest, I still make the climb twice a day to have my cocktail, and commune with my fellow crewmen—although few of them are social once their potion is in hand.

  Today the sea is a roller coaster, doing everything short of corkscrews and loops, and the ship’s rolling motion is always worst in the crow’s nest, which pitches to and fro atop the mainmast like the weighted tip of a metronome. Even as I try to hold my drink steady, it sloshes within the glass, spilling a little bit on the ground, where it flows into the dark spaces between the planks and disappears.

  “It’s alive, you know,” says the master-at-arms—a seasoned crewman in charge of the cannon, with unpleasant tattoos up and down his arms. “It’s alive, and waits to be fed.” I then realize that the voice isn’t coming from his mouth, but from one of the skulls inked on his arm. The one with dice for eyes.

  “What’s alive?” I ask the tattoo. “The ship?”

  The skull shakes its head. “The dark sludge that holds the ship together.”

  “It’s just caulking,” I tell it, and that makes all the other skulls begin to laugh.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” says the dice-eyed skull, “but when you wake up with a few less toes, you’ll know it’s been tasting you.”

  42. Spirit of Battle

  I climb out to the bowsprit in the middle of the night, avoiding the crewmen on watch. Once there, I intentionally slide off the well-polished pole, and the maiden—the ship’s figurehead—catches me, as I knew she would. At first she holds me by my wrists, but then she pulls me close, embracing me with her wooden arms. Although there’s nothing but her arms keeping me from plunging into the depths, somehow I feel safer here than I do on board.