Kid vs. Squid (10 page)

“Follow me!” Fin shouted, leading us back into the kitchen. He flung open the doors of a cupboard beneath the sink. “It's a quick escape from the palace. Not safe, but safer. Do not forget what the king said. It all falls to you now.”

“Why don't you come with us?”

Two lobster men burst into the kitchen, pincers snapping.

Fin took a meat cleaver from the knife rack over the stove and faced the lobsters. “Obey the king!” he ordered us. “Go!”

I took a last look at Fin grappling with the lobster men and followed Trudy into the dark.

Banging my knees and elbows and head, I rattled down a metal chute in the dark until coming out an opening and dropping through empty air. I was grateful when something cushioned my landing.

“Getoffameyoulummox!”

That was Trudy.

“Sorry,” I said, rolling off her and helping her up.

Muffled sounds from the battle above echoed down the chute as Trudy moved her flashlight beam through the dark space. We were standing on the narrow concrete edge of an underground river. A strong current flowed down the channel.

“I think this is a ride,” Trudy said. “Or at least it used to be.”

We'd seen the ruins of roller coasters and tossaround-throw-up
rides up above. This appeared to be the inevitable scary Tunnel of Love.

Trudy pointed her flashlight above our heads. “Hey, are those … bats?”

Trapped like flies inside sheets of cobwebs, bats the size of kites leered down at us with glow-in-the-dark eyes.

“Fake bats,” I said. “But let's get out of here in case I'm wrong.”

We jogged along the water's edge, and then, when the space narrowed, scraped along the wall until there wasn't even enough room for that.

“I guess we go swimming,” Trudy said.

“My clothes still haven't dried from the last time we went swimming. I haven't been dry since my plane from Phoenix landed. My socks never stop squishing and my underwear chafes.”

“Are you done complaining?”

“I'm not complaining actually. I'm getting used to being soaked and salty.”

“That could be the result of the Flotsam curse,” Trudy mused. “Some kind of psychological adjustment to the idea that we're going to spend fall and winter and spring adrift on the seas.”

“Okay, actually, I
was
complaining. I'd give anything for a change of pants.”

A creak of wood and sloshing of water interrupted me before I could speak longingly of warm socks and underwear from the dryer. Trudy and I braced ourselves for the next new danger in the dark.

A miniature pirate ship approached, the paint chipped but still gaudy where it remained. From a mast no higher than my head flew the skull and crossbones, carved out of wood.

“It's not a tunnel of love without a ship built for two,” I said, and since the boat was heading in the same direction we were—out, hopefully—we climbed aboard.

This wasn't my first time in a spooky tunnel of love—they always had one at the Arizona State Fair— but this was my first time riding one alone with a girl. Ordinarily it would have been weird, crammed so close beside each other, wondering if we were supposed to hold hands or do other stuff. But I felt comfortable with Trudy. We were at war, and there was nobody I'd have rather had in a foxhole with me. And, come to think of it, she smelled kind of good.

Then she aimed her flashlight in my face and blew my eyeballs to smithereens.

“Hello? Blindness? Ouch?”

“Sorry,” she said, redirecting the light to the tunnel walls. The tunnel was lined with murals painted in the same style as those we'd seen up in the palace.
There was a mix of scenes from Atlantis, with grand ceremonies and celebrations and heroic fishing expeditions, as well as scenes from the boardwalk. I recognized Coriolis at the popcorn stand. And I felt a pang of desire as we passed by a scene of the midway games and the ring toss, with stuffed animals hanging from racks like executed criminals.

“Who painted these?”

“The Flotsam, I bet,” Trudy said. “Probably trying to preserve their history. To tell their story.”

There was writing on the walls, some of it undecipherable, some in English, laid out in segments so we could read it as our boat floated by. One section read:

OF SHOAL'S MOTHER

The queen of Atlantis perished with the sinking of the island-city and thus never suffered the Drowning Sleep. Our king, however, suffered both their shares. For in autumn and winter and spring, he enjoyed no life, cursed like the rest of his people to drift in slumber. And in summer, he suffered life without his beloved. His heart was a cold stone submerged in a cold sea.

But one summer, he met a woman. Shirley, she was called. In the language of
the land-dwellers, her name meant “bright meadow.” She came from the land of Detroit, but seeking escape from a colorless life spent toiling in offices, she was drawn to the endless possibilities of the broad, open sea. She found a job in Los Huesos, making doughnuts in a shop near the beach. At night she fried bear claws and crullers, but in her time off she would roam the boardwalk, up and down, not minding the smell of seaweed and fish. For here, on the edge of the land, she could look out over the ocean, beyond the limits of sight. She would imagine the wonders hidden unseen in the depths, and dream of mysteries and possibilities.

One day, she met the king of Atlantis, who sold popcorn. He had never met a land-dweller who could lift him from his cursed daze, who could make him forget the smell of butter-flavored oil and remember who he was. In her own way, Shirley possessed a kind of magic. They fell in love.

At the end of summer, the king left Los Huesos, as all Flotsam must, and Shirley found herself alone, carrying a child within.

Yet the king returned the next year and rejoiced upon being greeted by Shirley and
their daughter, the new princess of Atlantis Lost.

There were hopes for young Shoal. Since she was half land-dweller, half Atlantean, perhaps she would be spared Skalla's curse. Perhaps this one, this last daughter of Atlantis, would break the evil cycle.

But at summer's end, when the tide dragged the Flotsam back into the unforgiving waters, not even the strength of a desperate mother could keep the infant Shoal from crawling into the waves for her first drowning. Shirley swam after her, but she swam so far she could not find her way back to land. And, unlike the Flotsam, when her body next touched shore, there was no life in it.

“That's so sad,” Trudy said.

No, it was more than sad. It was tragic. The entire story of Atlantis was just one terrible tragedy. We read more narratives, battles won and battles lost (mostly lost), and memorials for the dead. We floated past portrait after portrait marked with birth and death dates. The Tunnel of Love was a tomb.

The Flotsam themselves weren't the only things from Atlantis that had washed up on the beaches.
Wreckage that could only have come from the sunken city lined the channel. Fragments of pillars and columns. A headless statue of a muscular, fish-tailed sea god posed hurling a harpoon. A saddle that looked big enough to fit over the back of a killer whale. Everything was in bad shape, corroded and studded with barnacles but displayed with care on sawhorses and other makeshift platforms.

“Atlantis must have been beautiful,” Trudy said.

Judging by just the sad remains around us, I had to agree.

“If you think Atlantis was something, you should see what's coming next,” said someone in a deep croak.

Gurgling and splashing, a lobster man the size of a sumo wrestler rose from the water. He must have followed us down the chute, which meant he'd gotten past Fin and Coriolis and Concha and all the rest. And if that was true, what had happened to the Flotsam?

Grasping the boat with two claws, the lobster upended it, and we went spilling into the channel. Our feet hit the shallow bottom and we thrashed away, scrambling up among displays of Atlantean artifacts to get away from the lobster.

The tip of an antenna brushed the back of my neck. I grabbed a crusty goblet and chucked it behind
me to hear it ricochet off hard lobster shell. Claws snapped over my head. Another claw slammed into the side of my skull. I went down, sprawled over the wreckage of Atlantis. Dizzy and barfy, I struggled to get up, slipping on ocean-weathered Atlantean coins and pottery fragments. My hand landed on a handle of some kind, and my fingers instinctively gripped it as the lobster loomed over me, reaching for my face with a pincer big enough to engulf my entire head. I raised my arm in defense and saw what the handle was attached to: a length of volcanic glass fashioned into a sword blade.

The pincer came down at my face. I swung the blade and shaved inches off the point of his claw.

With a whistling scream, the lobster man looked at his injury, eyes the size of billiard balls twitching on the ends of his eyestalks.

The hundreds of nicks in the blade's edge made it look even more deadly. What kind of warrior had wielded this weapon in the ancient past, I wondered. What battles had it seen? Maybe it had been handed down from generation to generation, soaking up blood and sacrifice. And now it had come to me. I was determined to do it proud.

“Back off,” I said.

To my astonishment, the lobster man did.

“Back off
more
.”

He did again.

“She'll win,” the lobster man said. “The witch always does. You think you can fight her, but you're wrong. You think I
wanted
to be a lobster man? Look, just give up now. Give me her head. You'll be saving yourself a lot of trouble.”

I swung the sword again, right into his damaged claw. The blade bit, and he screamed.

I raised the sword blade a little higher. “Get lost.”

Cursing even worse than Griswald, he scuttled back into the channel.

I should have felt good. Triumphant. Or at least relieved at having dispatched an enemy and prevented the capture of Skalla's head. It's what Coriolis had told me to do.

Instead, the lobster's words echoed in the dark tunnels of my thoughts.

He hadn't wanted to be a lobster man.

But Skalla always got her way.

Skalla always won.

The tunnel emptied into a salt marsh a few hundred yards off the beach. While Trudy consulted her map, trying to figure out exactly where we were and how to get back to the highway where we'd left Griswald, I kept the Atlantean sword ready and watched out for more lobster men.

We found our way back to Griswald on the side of the road. Using rope and a boat anchor, Griswald had managed to get the flat tire changed.

“There you are!” he bellowed like a ship's horn, hobbling over with his crutch as he saw us emerge from the fog. “I was worried about you!”

And after we'd told him everything that had happened at the Flotsam's palace and the Tunnel of Love, he was even more worried.

“I thought I saw a school of big lobsters go by,”
Griswald said as we loaded into his car. “They were driving pickups, with big bundles in the back. I would have followed them if I'd gotten the flat fixed in time.”

I had a sinking feeling that these bundles Griswald was talking about were the Flotsam. We made Griswald drive us for a return visit to the palace, where my fears were realized. King Coriolis and Fin and Concha and all the rest were gone, leaving behind some snapped trident spears and just a few fragments of giant lobster shells.

Skalla had Shoal, and now her family as well. She'd do to them whatever awful thing she'd dreamed up in that disgusting head of hers. And considering that she was a 100 percent disgusting head, it was sure to be dreadfully awful.

“I hate those lobsters,” Trudy seethed. “They're even worse than the jellies. We should get the biggest pot of water we can find and make fish stew from the whole lot of them. Make them tell us how to defeat their boss. Or else, they can boil.”

I mostly agreed with Trudy. But another part of me couldn't forget the sumo lobster's words. He hadn't always been a lobster. Skalla's hate had made him what he was.

But Trudy was right about at least one thing:
Skalla's creatures were the key to rescuing the Flotsam.

“Uncle Griswald, do you know where we can find the jellies?”

He surprised me with a helpful answer. He knew, and he agreed to take me and Trudy there.

At the edge of a cliff overlooking the beach hunkered a row of small cottages. Once upon a time, maybe, they'd been charming little bungalows, perfect for a seaside vacation. But now they were weathered down to gray, chipped wood. Even the boards over the windows looked ancient. There was, however, one exception—the cottage in the middle. I wouldn't say it looked like a place where you'd spend money to stay, but the windows were intact, and a warm yellow glow came from inside. That was where I saw the jellyfish boys approach. They leaned their bikes against the cottage and went inside.

Trudy and I didn't even need to speak. We just nodded to each other and got out of the car, ignoring Griswald's warnings as we began cutting through ice plant and dune grass, up to the cottages. We knew it was a gamble, taking the witch's head closer to Skalla's enemies, but if the jellies knew how we could get Shoal back, we were willing to risk it.

From a small patch of dead grass in front of the
door, the rusty handle of a wagon poked out like a periscope. It hadn't been played with in a long time. There were also some soil-encrusted toy cars and a dusty, deflated football.

We walked up three sagging wooden steps and knocked on the door. Trudy held her flashlight like a club. My sword in hand, there was no way they'd get their stinging fingers anywhere close to us. After a moment, a woman with silvery purple hair opened the door. A choker of pearls ringed her wrinkled neck.