The Legend of the Rift (20 page)

“W
HERE IS
F
AROUK?”
I mouthed to Cass.

He shrugged. “I don't know.”

I looked back into the murk. Farouk had warned us about getting close to the sunken island. She was probably too afraid to follow us. Or too smart. Were we in danger? Had we gone too deep too quickly?

I wanted her to see this. Someday, I wanted the whole world to know about the Seven Wonders and why they existed. I looked at the watch Farouk gave me—3:01. We had eighteen minutes.

“We should go back,” Eloise mouthed.

Cass didn't say a thing, but the look on his face was definitely
Are you nuts?

I began swimming toward the Lighthouse. The light that we'd followed had floated to the top, and the base of the thing was a lot darker. Still, I could make out the shape. The base was a superwide structure about the size of a city block and maybe four stories tall. The tower's tall shaft rested on top of it.

I headed for an arched doorway in the base's center. If the Loculus was inside, we had to start somewhere. The others followed. I waited at the door, floating.

My watch read 3:03. Sixteen minutes.

Marco pressed down on the door's latch and pushed it open. A small school of fish swarmed upward around our masks as if we'd interrupted class. Cautiously we swam in.

The Song of the Heptakiklos was loud and clear. I expected to see a Loculus any moment, but the room was pitch-dark. The Lighthouse's beam was high overhead, at the top of the shaft—but down here in the base, the ceiling was thick, blocking all light. As we swung our headlamps around, we could see rows and rows of stout columns, once straight but now thickened and warped by crusts of barnacles and coral. They seemed to move and dance in the crisscrossing beams, like awkward old men, and I made sure to avoid them as I trained my lamp on the floor.

I saw a sharklike fish, lazily flapping its tail. A gigantic crab. A couple of gallon plastic jugs. A splayed-out creature that was either a drowned pig or a dropped kid's toy.

No Loculus.

We met at the other end. Eloise gave me a shrug.
See anything?

I shook my head.

Cass pointed to his ear. Hearing the Song of the Heptakiklos?

I nodded. I was hearing it all right. And, believe me, when it's jangling and twanging away at your nerves and bloodstream, while you're in a wet suit, that's not a whole barrel of fun.

Marco pointed up. We would search this thing top to bottom.

Together we swam out of the base and back out into the sea. I still hoped to see Farouk, but she wasn't there. With a powerful thrust of his flippers, Marco quickly rose above the thick base and swam upward toward the tapering Lighthouse shaft.

Higher up, the glow of the beacon cast the building in a dull amber green. The sides just above the base were octagonal and pocked with windows like an office building. But as we squirmed through a door at the base of the section, I could see that there were no offices inside, no floors. Just a huge, spiral staircase flanked by stone buttresses connecting it to the wall.

As we got closer to the top, the sides slanted inward. The octagonal shape gave way to rounded walls tapering
to maybe ten feet in diameter. At the top we could see a hatchway leading up into the chamber that contained the great light.

Marco and I both swam up carefully through the hatch, which was way over to one side of the circular floor. We peered inside the top chamber to see a steep pedestal supporting a giant rotating ball of light. The ball made a low moaning sound as it turned, and it was too bright to look at it directly.

Cass and Eloise were in now, too, and she was pointing upward. “Loculus?” she mouthed.

“Too big,” I mouthed back.

Besides, the Song of the Heptakiklos was weaker up here, not stronger. With frustration, I realized we must have missed something at the base. I pointed downward through the hatch.
Let's go back.

I looked at my watch—3:12. Seven minutes left. My air gauge was low, and I hoped Farouk had left us a little margin of safety in case we got stuck.

I led the way this time, spiraling down the stairwell. Sure enough, the Song was growing stronger now.

Obey the Song. Follow it.

I could feel it leading me down into the base, until I found myself nose to the floor. It was then I knew that the Song was pulling me lower.

The Loculus was not in the Lighthouse shaft or the
base. It was in the island itself. Had to be.

I turned and waited for Cass, Eloise, and Marco, then pointed downward. “Inside the island,” I mouthed. They all looked at me as if I'd gone completely bonkers.

Which was pretty much how I felt.

I swam out the latched door. With a strong kick, I propelled myself along the surface of the island. The Song of the Heptakiklos was raging, but I couldn't tell if it was getting louder. Like the rest of the sea bottom, the island was covered with muck and shells and slimy waving tubes. But the surface itself was so much darker than the rest of the sea bottom. What was this island made of? And how had Massarym been able to move it?

I swam down to the surface of the small island, planted my feet, and started to clear away sea growth. As I pulled up some slimy grass fronds, sand sprayed upward. But under that sand was a rock-hard smoothness, way too hard for me to dig through without tools. Whatever material the island was made of, it seemed to be tinted green—maybe from algae, or maybe Massarym had figured out some space-age material, an industrial-grade structure that could support a Wonder of the World.

Whatever it was, the Loculus seemed to be inside it, and we needed to find a hatch, or a way to dig.

I reached down and rubbed my gloved hand along the island surface. I tried to pry away some of the barnacles,
but they were stuck tight. Marco joined me. He took out his knife and began hacking away at the barnacles, trying to see what was underneath.

With a mighty, Marcoish thrust, he managed to bury the blade into the surface.

The ground below us heaved violently. Marco and I were flung upward into the sea. I could see him mouth “Earthquake!”

Bad timing. What were scuba divers supposed to do during an earthquake? No one had taught us that.

Eloise and Cass had swum away from Marco and me, investigating the sunken sides of the island. They must have noticed it, too, because I could see the whites of their eyes as we swam toward them.

But instead of coming to meet us, they veered away, as if we'd just farted.

I could tell Cass was trying to say something. He and Eloise were both pointing to something behind us.

Marco and I turned. The island's side, now rising through the water, showed two burning white spheres. For a moment I thought we'd somehow found two Loculi.

But Loculi didn't blink. And they didn't have beady black eyeballs. And they weren't set into a massive, dragon-like head.

I felt my legs kicking like crazy. But they weren't fast enough to get away from the giant, gaping mouth that thrust forward out of the green island and closed tight around me.

O
F ALL THE
ways a person could die, being digested by a prehistoric creature posing as an island had never crossed my mind.

I somersaulted helplessly into a massive gullet. My flippers hit the top of the creature's throat, making a gash that spurted yellow goop. Then they bounced off the sticky, toadstool-dotted tongue, which nearly sucked those flippers off my feet.

My poor fried brain was trying so hard to latch on to something normal. It was conjuring up images of the Walk on the Moon bouncy house in the Mortimer P. Reese Middle School Annual Kidz Frolic. But the rest of my nervous system was telling me I'd just made the transition from
human being to fish food.

This could only be Nessie. The Kraken. Mu'ankh. Greenie. When Massarym went on his trip to “find a movable island,” he brought back this escaped Atlantean beast to protect the Loculus.

And now we were inside it.

I raised my arms over my head to protect my headlamp. As I tumbled, I caught glimpses of Cass, Marco, and Eloise. Cass had lost one of his flippers to the Amazing Suck-o Tongue. I was veering downward now, toward the thing's throat, where it was getting narrower but no less gross. I finally stopped when I crashed into a wall.

Well, maybe not crashed.
Squelched
would be more like it. The wall was fleshy and gray, with a thick, lined seal running from top to bottom like a tightly shut curtain.

As the other three barreled into me, the curtain of flesh began to open, bowing outward from the center on both sides. Showtime.

I screamed inside my mask, even though I knew I was the only person who could hear me. We were passing through the opening, tumbling downward. If my knowledge of anatomy was correct, we had just entered the beast's esophagus.

We slid downward through a smooth, narrow tube that hugged us on both sides. I have never not wanted to be hugged so much in my life. The light from my headlamp
was useless here; the creature's fluids made it nearly impossible to see out my mask.

Finally the tube ended, and I somersaulted downward into a cavernous chamber. I spun a couple of times and landed with a splat on a gelatinous floor—well, it would have been a splat if I could have heard it.

Marco and Eloise landed next to me, and a one-flippered Cass tumbled to a stop not too far away. Cass jumped up, holding his side. But even just standing up proved not to be too easy. The floor wasn't exactly flat—or steady. Cass teetered off-balance. As I wiped the slime off my mask, I could tell Cass was angry about something. He was also pointing downward, to where he'd landed.

An old television set, in pretty good condition, was sitting there, minding its own business, on the floor of . . .

The stomach.

That was where we were. It had to be.

I was feeling the Song of the Heptakiklos like crazy right now. I was afraid the beast had the Loculus in its clutches, maybe right underneath us. I was tempted to stab through with my knife, but I was pretty sure this thing would kill us if I tried. I shone my beam around. The chamber was about the size of my sixth-grade classroom, and not that much more attractively decorated. Not far from the TV was a hair dryer, a hardcover book, and a soggy Elmo doll—all just passing the time. I guess the beast just ate whatever it saw.

“What now?” Marco was mouthing.

I held my hands to my ears and mouthed back: “Song of the Heptakiklos.” It wasn't an answer to his question, but at least he would know that we were close. For what it was worth.

Cass lifted the TV, a look of utter confusion on his face. The box was pretty well embedded. The stomach floor stretched up with it.

As Cass tried to tug the TV free, I heard a deep rumble. Without a chance to brace ourselves, we all pitched violently upward. My head bounced off the stomach ceiling, dislodging my headlamp. I dived for it, but the lamp changed course in midwater. Instead of falling downward it veered off, straight through the valve that went back up into Mu'ankh's throat.

Marco turned to me, and his lamp shone into my face. I pointed up to my own mask.
No light.

This was getting worse by the minute.

Marco stayed by my side as we all floated back down to the stomach floor. Cass was pointing to the TV and shaking his head. “I will never do that again,” he was mouthing. Which was wise. Irritating the beast that swallowed us wasn't exactly a good strategy.

But what was?

My watch said 3:18. In one minute we were going to run out of oxygen.

You are dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

No one will ever know what happened to you. Not Mom on the island. Not Dad in Greece. Not Aly in Atlantis. No good-byes. Nothing.

My brain had decided not to be an optimist at this time. I tried to shut down the thoughts, or at least switch them to the great dilemma of How to Get Out of a Stomach. This was not something they taught you in biology. Stomachs were where things got digested. Digestion was the breakdown of food into components for your bloodstream, your respiration, and your excretion—the last part of which I did not want to think about. All of this, I knew, was accomplished by stomach acid.

Acid!

I looked around. My friends' lights were bouncing off the stomach walls. I could see the outlines of all kinds of debris down here, not just the TV but some fishing nets, a wooden lobster pot, a baby carriage.

Baby carriage?

All this stuff must have fallen off ships. But if the stomach was supposed to digest, why wasn't all this stuff eaten up by acid?

Why weren't we?

Cass was pointing frantically toward an area of the stomach wall above us. It was round and darker than the
rest of the wall, with another closed valve running top to bottom.

I could feel my own stomach churn as I imagined where that led. Because after the stomach came the . . . well, the nasty stuff that I'm not supposed to talk about in polite company.

I did not want to end my life as nasty stuff.

Eloise was swimming around in a weird way now, with her left arm twisted around to her back so that her palm was raised upward. Her fingers were tight together, and I realized she was trying to imitate a fish with a dorsal fin. Which, I figured, was a shark.

I did believe at that moment that Eloise had lost her mind. Until I looked at Cass, who was mouthing a word that I took to be
China
. Maybe they'd both lost their minds. It was Williams-Mind-Losing Day. I swam closer and realized he wasn't saying
China
at all.

He was saying
Jonah.

As in Jonah and the whale. As in, the character who may or may not have been swallowed by a beast who may or may not have been a whale but possibly instead a shark. And sharks were cool because they are one of the few survivors of prehistoric beasts. Scientists love them for their weirdnesses.

I tried to remember what those weirdnesses were. Eloise had told us.

Sharks use their stomachs for storage. Stuff can just stay in there, like forever. They can choose which items to digest—and digestion happens in the shark's gizzard.

Storage.

That's where we were. Whatever happened to old Jonah, we were in the belly of some kind of prehistoric beast. And I had a strong feeling we had more nutritional value than a TV. Which meant a possible Journey to the Gizzard. Which was where we would find our acid bath.

Now Cass was balling up his fists by his chin and tossing his fingers outward. At the same time he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. It took me a moment to realize he was pantomiming the act of puking.

Great.

I shook my head with a vigorous
no
! A mask full of barf would not be a helpful thing right now. But he kept doing it, adding a new motion—pointing upward, too.

Barf. Beast.

As I tried to figure that one out, Eloise swam by him, still “sharking.”

Barf. Shark.

Well, if we were about to fry to death in a gizzard, why not end it all with a friendly game of charades? I was sweating like crazy, teetering between laughing my head off and crying like a baby. But Marco was swimming over to the TV. In my state of mind, I wouldn't have been surprised if
he'd manage to pick up a vintage broadcast of
Sesame Street.

Barf. Shark.
Sesame Street.

Oh.

The roiling mess that was my mind finally began to snap to attention again. There was a connection, and I knew it. I tried to remember what else Eloise had said in the House of Wenders.

That stuff in the stomach? If it starts irritating them or whatever, they just go . . . bleeahhhh! They throw it up, right out of their mouth. Their stomach is like this giant rubber slingshot. It's the coolest thing ever.

I looked at Eloise. She caught my glance and smiled.

We could do this. I knew it. I had an idea, but it was certifiably crazy. Which had never stood in our way before.

I took another look at my watch—3:19. We were done. I prayed that Farouk had given us some extra air.

I swam to Marco as fast as I could, and I grabbed his arm. Underwater he was much easier to maneuver than on land. I forced him to swim with me, training his light around the chamber. The TV was a thick old thing like one my grandparents had, from the pre–flat screen days. So it had been here awhile, undigested.

I wanted to know what else was down here. I wanted to know everything.

As we gazed downward at the folds of the stomach floor, I let the Song of the Heptakiklos burrow deeply into me. It
was getting way stronger.

There.

It was, at first glance, a bulging fold of flesh where the stomach floor met the stomach wall, like a gigantic pimple. But it was glowing.

As we neared it, my suspicion proved true—something
underneath
it was glowing. Something round.

Cass and Eloise were right behind us. I didn't bother looking at their faces. I needed to focus, because I could feel myself getting sleepy. My oxygen was running out.

The octopus.
That was the name of the little emergency hand-sized knob. I grabbed for it, turned it, and took a deep breath. And another. I signaled for the others to do the same.

Then I reached for my knife. I held it tight against the beast's pimple, which was trapping our last Loculus.

With a deep thrust, I pierced the skin and sliced the pimple open.