Girl at Sea (31 page)

“You may be right,” he conceded. “I’m going to model these and figure out ways in and out. Are you still sure?”

“Are you really worried?” she asked.

“I have to be,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because if you die, Julia will probably make
me
do it, whether I know how to dive or not. So it’s in my best interests to keep you alive. Also, I think you’re nuts.”

267

“I
am
nuts,” she said, feeling her eyes widen. “I’m my father’s daughter.”

It looked like Aidan was about to do something—she wasn’t sure what. Reach over for her. Jump up and down. But instead he sat at his computer with a very definite effort.

“Yeah,” Aidan said. “Maybe you want to skip anything that sounds like famous last words right now, okay? Please?”

268

The Diver

First, there was a quiz.

Every single bit of gear, every hand signal, the use of the dive computer, questions about decompression stops, what to do if she had to switch to the secondary breathing regulator if the first one ran out. Clio had been trained well back in the day and managed to get almost every single question right. The one she got wrong wasn’t very serious but still got her a lecture.

Martin wasn’t a huge guy, so his suit wasn’t such a bad fit. She had forgotten how unpleasant this part was, getting powdered up, dragging the rubber up her legs inch by inch. Her father loaded her down, putting the backpack-like buoyancy com-pensator over her shoulders, the weight belt around her waist.

They did a trial dive to make sure she could handle herself under the surface.

Getting in wasn’t a problem. It involved taking one very wide step off the back platform, one hand holding her mask and 269

regulator in place. She looked out, not down, just like she was supposed to, and watched the horizon drop away suddenly, only to be replaced by a greenish-tinted, very quiet world. The weight she carried pulled her down a few feet. She cleared her ears, looked around for jellyfish, and took a thirty-minute swim with her dad around the boat, descending about twenty feet.

The second she went under, it was if the intervening years without her dad just went away and they were exactly where they were before. There was so much freedom under the water. As she came up to surface, she could see Aidan leaning over the edge of the platform. He looked very tall from down here, very grave. He still didn’t like the idea. As for Clio, it felt really good to be worried about.

They rested a bit before the actual dive, going over the plans that Aidan had worked up.

“We’re using pony bottles today,” her dad said as they geared up to go. “We’re going to be carrying way more gas than we need. And you’re going to be carrying a second knife.”

Clio was covered in her weight in equipment. Three bottles on her back, knives on her thigh and arm. A spool of guide rope.

Artifact bags, weights, camera, light. There was something hanging off every part of her body that could withstand the weight. It was almost impossible for her to move.

“One more time,” her dad said to Aidan.

Aidan pulled out the plans and held them down against the breeze.

“Okay. Your access point is here, this doorway under the intact funnel. It appears to be an open passage, nothing you have to work to get through. It leads to stairs that go down to the 270

passenger cabins. There’s one bend in the staircase, after the fourth step. It’s not really wide, but I think you should be able to get through without too much trouble. From there, you have a hall with a series of six doorways. Magwell’s cabin was likely along this hall. If you follow this hall all the way back, you’ll end up in the dining room.”

“Nice and simple,” her dad said. “But even simple things can look confusing underwater.”

“I know,” she said.

“First sign of trouble, you give me the up signal and we come back.”

“I know.”

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

Clio took the one big step. Being so much heavier, she went down much more quickly. It took her a moment to stabilize herself, then get over to her father. She was light now. Free.

Physical reality changed in an instant.

They slowly descended along the anchor line. The visibility was good, with the sun cutting down through the water and making everything glow. But at about ten feet, it started to get darker. At thirty, they switched on their lights.

At about forty feet, she saw it clearly—a massive, tilted thing below her. Things that have been underwater a long time cease to look normal. There are no straight edges on the bottom of the sea, just undulating forms with puffs and fronds coming off them. You could get some sense of the boat’s shape, but it was squashed and confused.

They went down farther, making regular stops to check the monitor that was connected to her tanks, which told her when 271

she had to stop for a few minutes and let her body get used to the pressure.

At fifty feet, she was looking at a rusted smokestack. They kept going.

Clio hung, suspended, just a few feet above the deck of the boat and watched her father inflate a lift bag—a kind of underwater balloon. He released it and it gently floated to the surface, trailing a rope that he had already tied to the bow. He was marking their position so that the
Sea Butterfly
could guard them from any boats in the area. Then he tied the anchor to the wreck, securing everyone above, and attached a strobing light to the line. It winked at her, like the hazard light on a car. It seemed to have a repetitive message for her:
Warning, warning, scary,
scary, death boat, death boat.

A strange, to-the-bone fear made her want to shoot right back up to the surface, rip the gear from her body, and cower in her bed, as if the duvet could protect her from the weight of eternity. Her breath was catching in her chest. She had to keep it even. She couldn’t breathe through her nose—she had only the respirator to suck from, and it was up to her to drink in the air evenly.

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to hang there, standing on nothing. Just floating. She imagined that the cool hiss of air was a drink, a slow, refreshing drink. She was drinking life. One sip of life. Swallow. Relax. Two sips of life . . .

Someone was slapping her arm.

Her father gave her the “are you okay?” underwater signal.

She’d forgotten about the hand signals. She indicated that she was.

272

They went farther. Now she was at eye level with the top part of the ship, peering in the encrusted windows into the utter blackness. That was where she was going—into rooms that had been the property of the sea for more than a hundred years.

Her father waved her along, down what had been the deck, to a pitch-black opening. He secured another line just outside this and tested it for strength. That would be their guide if they lost their way. Inside the opening was the staircase.

In normal life, staircases weren’t something that Clio gave a lot of thought to. This staircase, in addition to being filled with water, was incredibly narrow. And she was
not
so narrow, with all of these tanks on her body. There was no turning in this staircase, only moving forward. And there was no stepping, because her finned feet were too large for the steps. She had to hover with one hand on each wall, carefully working her way down, turning, and going down farther. It was too much work for her even to be frightened.

There was more tying of rope and signaling okay once they were in the hallway. At least she assumed it was a hallway. It didn’t look like much of anything, and it felt small. At least here, though, she and her father could face each other. There were, as reported, six doors. Three of them were closed. They started with the three open ones. The rooms felt a bit different. They were scrambled, but she could see that they had been bedrooms.

There was a light fixture, a bit of chair, a piece of glass. There was a dark form that had probably been a bed. Someone had stayed here, and this was where they had died.

She had a huge worry that she would see a spooky doll’s head.

She had seen pictures of the
Titanic
, and there was a spooky 273

doll’s head in one of them. But the worst she saw here was a comb that had been permanently stuck to the floor under some kind of rust formation.

These three rooms produced nothing. Back in the hall, her father signaled that he was going to work at one of the doors and pointed Clio toward another.

She looked down into the impenetrable darkness at the end of the hall. In her light, it looked like the view of a snowstorm by car headlights, with mysterious flecks. The water was very
full
. Every part of it sustained smaller and smaller forms of life.

She turned back into the first room—the broken, rusty mess that surrounded her. Running her light along the walls, she was just able to make out a small lamp on the wall. It was twisted to the side, but the glass shade was still intact. That was the only familiar object. But where there was a light, there was likely to be a bed. That could have been the lumpy mass next to her. She worked her way around, trying to mentally place objects and make sense of this world.

Clio didn’t know how she saw it. Something with just a little bit of shine to it. A tiny circle of white. A tiny circle of white that didn’t belong in the composition around her.

Oh no
, her brain said.
It’s the eye of a doll.

Maybe it was her own fearful disgust that made her look, to assure herself that it wasn’t the lone, staring eye of a doll peering out at her from watery darkness. Whatever it was, it was under a pile of half-rotted wood. She picked up the remnants of a metal pole whose original function was a total mystery and poked deep into the pile, dragging at the white spot. A few small fish skittered out, causing her to jolt. But the massive eel or 274

toothy fish she’d been expecting never came. She smacked at the wood a bit, shoving some of it away. It was hard to maneuver the tiny object with the clumsy pole.

She was obsessed now. Whatever little piece of junk this thing was, she was going to get it. She pulled out her ankle knife and speared at it, knocking it closer. She got closer to the floor and shone her light down.

It was then that she saw something slightly larger but also white. It was about three inches thick but clearly smooth. It could have been many things. It could have been the collapsed marble top of the table that this appeared to be. But it was under the rotted wood. It couldn’t be the tabletop.

She picked up the pole again and poked farther, not caring about any potential critters she was going to stir up. She moved the rotting wood away.

Whatever it was, it was about two feet long. And it was oval.

275

The Stone

The
Sea Butterfly
barely rocked as they sat in the Mediterranean.

The Marguerite stone sat out on the back of the deck in its tub of water. Like a newborn, it had emerged covered in goop. The goop, in this case, was partially alive and couldn’t just be scraped off. It would have to be done carefully, by an expert.

There had been some screaming, some jumping, and a lot of enthusiastic hugging from Clio’s dad. Clio even managed to stand a Julia-dad kissing moment. She was feeling generous for not wanting to barf. A bottle of wine was found and opened, and everyone on deck had a glass. Even Clio got a little. Martin was sleeping, so the good news would have to wait. Elsa didn’t emerge. They would have to join in later.

The cameo sat on the table, its creamy peach alabaster background standing out against the white lacquer. Clio studied it.

“This,” she said. “This face. It’s Marguerite.”

276

Julia came over and had a look for herself.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “He must have had this with him when he died.”

“Then it only makes sense that the person who found the stone should get to wear this,” Clio’s father said, coming around.

The chain was badly blackened, but it held as Clio’s father slipped it over her head carefully. The cameo landed right in the center of Clio’s chest and stuck to her skin.