Aquifer (7 page)

She says nothing.

“Aren’t you going to guide me or encourage me one way or —”

“I’m going to let you choose. Your thoughts are precious. You don’t need mine on the matter.”

Would I like to learn how to read?

I remember Walery. He, too, offered to show me. He is likely undone. How could I place my new friend in the same danger? “It’s not allowed.”

She pours herself some tea. “Outside these walls, true.” She stares up into the blue sky and then back down. “I may have a solution. I give you permission to forget how to read outside the museum. I will simply teach you to read inside.”

I glance at her sideways. “Is that how it works?”

“Absolutely not.” Wren sips from her cup and removes a book from inside a table.

“Is that it?” I lower my voice. “You know, the really dangerous one?”

She pauses, and then sets down her tea and the book and folds her hands.

“Years ago, before our Great Thirst, before the countries had boundaries, and before the Great Wars … thousands of years before, rain fell. It fell with fury, and soon the rain from above joined with the waters beneath our feet, and this earth was covered, above the highest mountain. One family alone
prepared, was alone tossed by the waves, and alone survived the deluge.”

“Who were they?” I ask, eyes wide. I can’t imagine that much water.

“I don’t know.” Wren sighs. “But since I do not have the dangerous book, I thought I would at least tell you a dangerous story.”

“So it’s filled with stories?”

“Stories and prophecies. I only know a few, those remembered and those that come to me in the stillness. But enough on that for now …”

Stories and prophecies
.

Wren reaches for her thin volume. Yellowed pages crackle as she pulls back the cover. “Even the safest of books are useless without the reading. Let’s meet the sounds.”

I offer a slow nod. Wren writes the letters in her book. It’s amazing how quickly the shapes and curls form on my lips over the next hours. Scratches take on weight, purpose. One scratch plus another scratch equals not two, but one — one word.

“Luca can lear … lear …”

She underlines the words with her finger. “Just keep sound flowing through each scratch.”

“Luca can learn to rea … read.”

Wren smiles. “I will give you a reading test tomorrow. Unfortunately, it would not be safe to send this book home with you, so you’ll just need to repeat the sounds in your mind. I trust your memory.”

I think about the books smelling up my shanty.

“No problem. I look forward to the test.”

L
earning to read is tougher than I thought
.

That, or the books I rescued put up a tougher fight than Wren’s. There are few one-syllable scratches, and every page is a challenge.

I dig for the thinnest book — a pamphlet, really — plunk down on a pickle barrel, and stroke the wrinkled pages.

“The Consti … Constitution Act. Whereas the peop … people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, hum … humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite …”

I blink and swipe sweat from my eyes. “Relying on the blessing of Almighty God. Whatever that means.” It’s tough reading, but I’m doing it. I pump my fists, and read the line again.

People form the union. Not the PM or the Council of Nine? The people?

I whisper, “If the idea spread, it would change everything.”

Outside, the familiar sound of wash and motor.

“Luca! Are you there?”

Metal thumps gently against the dock, and my heart pounds. “Father?” I jump up. “Father Massa!”

I race up the stairs, through the house, and burst out the door. “Father Mass —”

“I’m sorry to disappoint, mate.” Seward holds up his arms and lets them flop. “Believe me, I’d give my arm to know his fate. But I do bring strange tidings of the man. Come aboard —”

I already am.

“Please speak!” I grab his long coat and yank. “Father’s not here. What happened to him? They told me nothing.”

Seward loosens my fingers and leans back. “They know only what they be told. Lots to blame the Amongus for.” His jaw tightens. “Lots. But not knowin’ the truth can’t be held against ‘em.”

“They publicly announced that he was fine, that he just needed rest.” I crumple down on the bench.

“He’s not fine?” he asks. “There be more to their story?”

I peer up at Seward, his lip bulging with baccy.
Should I tell a pirate?

“They told me something else in the tunnel.”

Seward turns and spits. “They told you he was undone.”

I jump up. “How do you know this?”

“Because Mape just told me. Mape, the most unpleasant one of the lot. Sit down, I be speaking hushed as we go.”

We float with engines off over the reef, and my muscles calm. Distance from mainland relaxes the heart, and thoughts flow more freely.

“So listen to Seward through and through, and then you can add your piece.”

I make a motion to zip my lips and glance over the sea, still and calm as glass.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it,” he begins. “Not a breeze. Not a wave. Dead as recent business, and without restating the obvious, it’s a nasty one I’m in.”

“I know. I helped you retrieve a group of un —”

He grabs my fingers and lifts them up in front of his face. “This be one ineffective zipper.”

“Sorry.” I motion for him to continue.

“In the past months, I’ve only been asked to make two retrievals. One, you rudely interrupted. The second set was dunked the day before that … the day before Water Day, if you can believe it. The morning of their undoing, Mape told me the count. ‘They’ll be three men and two women.’ A few days ago, that’s who I bagged.”

“He didn’t mention a child? I remember that march. I remember seeing a boy …”

“You remember wrong.” He tongues his cheek and gently puffs out air. “An unfortunate trait for a Deliverer, I might be addin’. Only five there were. No child.”

I pause and think about Walery. The events around his rescue and his stay in the shanty were so crazy; he could have danced through my imagination. I could have dreamed him up.

“So fine, you found five,” I say. “Go on.”

“I be paid by the head, or the body as it is. Mind you, the job is grim, and I pull no satisfaction from seein’ them that were undone, but it does keep me alive. But two retrievals in as many months? There’s no livin’ in that. And I have to wait the allotted thirty days. A month or more they must rest on the sea floor before I can winch them up and extract my fee from Mape.”

I rub my shoulders. I could not do Seward’s job.

“Then last night, after a day of honest thievery” — he points to three water casks — “I return to the wharf and he be waiting.
Mape, that rat of a man. He tells me he has a special retrieval. Just one. ‘Not worth my time,’ I says. But Mape said he could change that. He offers thirty times the price for the extraction, and a year’s worth of credits for my silence. Luca, please understand, it’s hard to turn down that much —”

“Father,” I whisper.

“When he told me Massa’s name, it was all I could do to hold me supper in place. He asked if he should search out a retriever from Derby, but I pulled it together. ‘No, I be your man,’ I says. ‘I need the credits.’ But in my mind, I think, I don’t believe the body is Massa’s.” His voice cracks. “And I need to know.”

“Not my father’s? Not undone?”

“Luca, think it through. Would your father make an error?”

“No, I always said he couldn’t —”

“Even if he did, if he be punished, destroyed, the Watcher’s actions would leave this world in your hands. They don’t know how well you know the way, or even if you truly know it. Massa’s undoing is too big a risk. Unless … unless they pulled from his mind the path.” He grabs my arm. “Do you think they could do that?”

“I … I don’t — No, he would give them the alternate,” I whisper. “He made me memorize it. It’s an alternate set of directions. ‘For use when pressed,’ he always said. It never made sense until now.”

“Ah, Massa, they could not pull the path from you. An alternate.” Seward laughs aloud. “Arrogant, stubborn trickster of a man. They could not break you. Now I be sure of it.”

My mind whirs. “How do you know my father?”

“A different story for a different time.” Seward places his fingers nearly atop my eyes. “For now, I need these. I go to retrieve Massa, and a body I will surely find, but will it be
his? You know it best. It will have been a month below. Bodies change, bloat. Sharks gnaw. I need to know if the man I retrieve is him. It may be a horrible sight, Luca.” Seward’s leg bounces. “But what if it’s not him? Would the risk of horror not turn to sudden joy?”

Father Massa, alive!
The possibility buoys me. “Take me.”

One half hour later, Seward kills the engines three miles north of Rottnest Isle and drops two anchors. The mainland is no longer visible in the darkness, and I wonder how this pirate can locate a floating spot with precision.

“Don’t have the promised light rods, do ya?” He rolls his eyes. “We may need some renegotiating. Grab the winch arm with that pole.” He points toward the rear of the craft. “I like havin’ a mate. Should savin’ the world ever get boring, consider yourself hired.”

“No chance.” My hands shake as my pole hook clanks against the magnetic claw.

“Push it out.” Seward squints. “Left a little … a little more, there.”

I unhook the pole from the arm, and Seward releases the winch, watches the claw splash into the water. Down, down it sinks, while Seward holds an orb over the surface. He stares at the sea, watching the ripples calm while the line slips between his fingers.

“‘Tis right below us.”

Slack doubles the rope, and it coils on the surface of the water. Seward holds up his hand. “Got it.” He slowly cranks the winch.

Either way, what comes up will change my world.

The surface churns and Seward pauses. “Not the way these
things should be done. If it be him, this will heap pain upon pain.” He rubs his face. “You don’t need to be party to this.”

I cock my head. For a pirate, Seward has a side I don’t often see; it’s something I don’t ever see, except in Wren, and in those last precious minutes with Father.

Father
.

I swallow hard, nod, and step back.

Seward slowly lifts the claw. The body lifts limp from the water, a small waterfall spilling down from the catch back into the ocean. Shackles of iron — a wrist ring, ankle rings, and chains — stick fast to the metallic pinchers, and Seward pulls the mechanical arm over the boat.

My heart sinks.

The face is already bloated beyond recognition, but the clothes and the backpack, they are Father’s.

“It’s him,” I say quietly. And I weep. I’ve wondered when the dam would break. Each time it got close, the waters held back, but not now. Now they flow salty and loud, and I crumble into the bottom of the boat.

“Luca, lad, I don’t have words …”

I peek up. Seward faces the last glow of the orb, and in that light I see a tear.

Seward cries.

We float silent and motionless with our sadness. The night falls, and my sobs choke back to whimpers and finally sniffs.

“Please,” I say. “Can we get him off that hook?”

Seward gentles my father into the boat. He removes a blowtorch from beneath his seat and carefully burns off the shackles.

“Cursed things,” he says, and kneels down beside Father.

“He looks so different.” I scoot up on the opposite side. “His face —”

“Water does strange things to a man. Strange things. It twists the flesh, distorts the mouth, bends the nose —”

“Removes scars?”

Seward glances up, his eyes large. “No, lad, it leaves the evil acts done above intact.” He slowly rolls the body onto its front, lifts the light orb, and we both lean over the back to peer between the shoulder blades.

I fall to my haunches. “It’s not there. He had a scar, jagged and ugly. That’s not something that can be wiped away, is it?”

Seward rubs his stubble. “That one would be there. It was too large, too deep.”

“How do you know it?”

He climbs to his feet, and his words come slow. “I gave it.”

I scurry backward. “You stabbed my father?”

“No,” he says quietly. “I knifed my brother.”

I blink. Brother? Seward?

Uncle?

Seward shakes his head, and his gaze clears. “The reasons will not be discussed now, as we have bigger problems.” Seward hauls the body into a bag, zips it tightly inside. “This is not Massa. So why go to great lengths to hide the fact? To produce a body? To convince everyone he’s gone?”

A deceit like this makes no sense. “It would be a day of wrinkles, for sure. The entire world would mourn. If everyone knew I alone held the route, they couldn’t endure it.”
Especially not Lendi
.

“No, they couldn’t.” Seward paces and mumbles. “What does the Council gain? What do they want? What does everyone want?”

I think of Wren. “The Aquifer?”

Seward turns to me and smiles. “Yes, Luca. I see it now.” He slaps his thigh. “They thought they’d extract the route to reach
it from weak Massa. Instead, they received the alternate, and you can be sure they tried that path many a time. By now, they know they be fooled. But there is one other who holds the key that lived in his mind.”

I face his gaze. “But I could be brave. If they ever ask me, I could give the alternate, like Father.”

“You be brave, lad. No doubting it. But for them, there be a far easier, and quicker, way to get what they’re after. Especially since your alternate matches Massa’s.”

He points to me and then over the edge of the boat.

“What would happen if you too be undone?” Seward scratches his stubble.

“Me?”

“With no Deliverer, the people would demand action from the Council. They would rise up until the Aquifer was taken by force.”

“But,” I say, “they don’t know the way down.”

“No, not yet.” Seward squeezes his forehead between thumb and forefinger. “But if Massa believed you had met your end, that you could not make the exchange, he would be forced to reveal the true route to his captors. His heart be too big to watch millions thirst. The Age of Deliverers would be over. The Council’s Amongus would follow the route, take control of the Aquifer. The Nine would finally control the earth.”

My head swims.

“So why fake Father’s undoing?”

“People fear change, unless there is no other way. My guess be the Council will show this body, and your body, as proof that a new course must be charted, and once the Aquifer is taken, the Nine will emerge as saviors of the world.”

I should be following Seward’s reasoning, but my mind is stuck on one question. “So Father’s alive?”

“Are you listening to nothing, boy? I guarantee, he’ll stay alive as long as you do. If you be gone, and he shares this route, he’s no longer needed.” Seward starts the motor. “I fear they mean to undo you, Luca. You can’t go back home.”

“What’s wrong with home? I have to go home. To Old Rub and my books and paintings —”

“Even now, Mape waits for me at Freemanl.” Seward rubs his hand over his face and stares off. “If I turn this body in, I give you my word, you’re next to be taken.”

I jump to his side and clutch his sleeve. “Then don’t turn it in!”

He glances at me. “We make another deal, eh, pirate?” Seward exhales. “Of course I will not be turnin’ this body in, though I forfeit a fortune. I’ll report the body washed, lost in the current to parts unknown — that is, if you swear
not
to stay on the Shallows.”

“But Seward … where should I go?”

He reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. A touch, strong and sure. “We pick up what you need tonight. Then we leave the same hour. All sign of you must be gone by morning. We take only what fits in the boat.”

“But we can’t float around our whole lives.”

“
We
.” He laughs. “You speak as if we be in this together.”

“You said if I ever needed a new job, I had one. Well, I need one now.”

Seward falls silent and shakes his head. “A mate. My blood and my mate.” He breathes deeply. “Ah, so it comes to me. It won’t be comfortable, but I know your new home. It will be safe.” He pauses. “My nephew once showed it to me.”

I slump down to the deck. I know he means Glaugood. I know that’s his plan, but my mind fills with another.

I need to reach Wren
.