The Tree of Water

  Madame Sharra’s words rang in Ven’s foggy memory.

  It might be in a place of extremes—the hottest and coldest part of the sea, the highest and lowest place in the world, the brightest and darkest realms, all at the same time.

  “That must be it,” he said. “If the Tree lives, it’s in the Trenches.”

  “No one would survive to see it, then,” Coreon said. “Especially not land-livers. The pressure and the cold of the water would kill any of us long before we even got to the Abyss. We can’t even survive in the Midnight Realm. My father warned me never to even go into Twilight—how is it possible to find something that grows in the Trenches?”

  The dragon shrugged.

  “You didn’t ask me if it was possible to live through getting to where the Tree grows,” he said. “You only asked me where to find it.”

  “That’s true,” Ven said. His heart was pounding, and the fear in his thrum was obvious even to him. “But my first question was ‘How can I save Amariel?’ If you are to keep your word, you can’t very well give me an answer that does me no good.”

  The dragon’s eyes narrowed, but his smile grew brighter.

  “Actually, I can,” he said. “But since I have no stake in whether you live or not, Son of Earth, I will tell you how you can go to the Tree of Water, if you are willing to make the sacrifice.”

  “I am,” Ven said quickly. “Tell me.”

  The dragon snorted. “You’re a fool, Son of Earth,” he said. “You should never agree to terms you haven’t heard yet. Has our little negotiation taught you nothing?” He stared at them for a long moment, then extended his claw over their heads.

  In it was a strange sort of metal cage, shaped a little like a woman’s skirt, with a chain on the top, a metal lattice bottom, and a smaller cage attached to the slats of the bottom by a hook and smaller chain. Unlike the other items in the sea dragon’s hoard, it was encrusted with barnacles and other grime from the sea, and was large enough to hold several people.

  The boys looked at each other.

  “With respect, Lancel, what is that?” Ven asked.

  The dragon’s smile grew even brighter.

  “This is a special diving bell,” he said. “A diving bell is something humans use to gather treasure and other things they want to salvage from the ocean floor. Of course, that’s in the Sunlit Realm, where the floor of the sea is only a few fathoms deep. The shape allows the pressure of the water to trap air inside the chamber. But this diving bell is different, because it’s made for just one purpose—to transport the curious to the deeper realms. The sea is full of these, believe it or not.”

  “How does it work?” Char asked.

  The sea dragon laughed. The thrum of it was ugly, and it made the boys shiver.

  “You get into the large chamber, and the bell will descend through Twilight to the Midnight Realm all the way to the far edge of the Abyss,” he said. He sounded as if he was having great fun. “When it gets to that depth, it will stop in its descent, because the pressure is too great for it to continue. And then you have a decision to make.”

  “And what is that decision?”

  Lancel laughed again.

  “Whether or not you are willing to separate your body from your spirit—your soul,” he said. “This large metal part is for your body—the smaller cage is a diving bell for the soul. If you are determined to see the deepest part of the sea, you just speak your name, say going down, and will yourself to step into the smaller cage. Then turn the key in the lock on the floor, and you will descend into the Abyss—or so I’m told. I’ve never done this myself, as you may have guessed. Dragons are said not to have souls as other beings do—our souls are part of the Earth. Of course, if you separate your soul from your body, it’s only your soul that descends. You leave the mortal part of you behind in the cage, locked, to be safe from the creatures that prowl the Deep, looking for prey in the dark—and if you return, and if the key is still there, you can reunite with your body, say going up, ride the diving bell back up through Midnight to the Realm of Twilight, and back you go to the Sunlit waters.” He chuckled.

  “It sounds like that doesn’t happen very often,” Ven said.

  The dragon shrugged. “Well, as I said, the sea is full of diving-bell cages, and the cages are full of bodies. And the darkness of the Midnight Realm is haunted by souls looking for the cages where they left their bodies, hoping in vain to reunite with them. Sometimes when they actually find their cages, the key is gone. Reunion of body and soul isn’t, shall we say, a likelihood. But that doesn’t mean it never happens.”

  “Great,” Char muttered.

  The thrum in the dusky water grew bristly, and Ven knew the dragon was becoming irritated.

  “Take my gift, or leave it. My offer only remains open for a moment longer. There is a pathway of pearls in the seafloor past my lair to the place where the Midnight Realm begins. You can follow them in the dark, and when they stop, well, you’ll know that you’ve come to the last place where light touches in the sea. Now, decide, Son of Earth. Do you want the diving bell, or not?”

  “We do,” Ven said hurriedly before either of the other two could speak. “Thank you, Lancel.”

  The dragon’s eyes narrowed to slits of blue fire again.

  “I will give you the gift of one more piece of information, Son of Earth. It is this—you have survived your time in my lair only because you had information that I could not acquire anywhere else in the world, information about something special to me that would not truly have been mine if I did not have sole possession of it. You cleverly bargained that information into safe passage for yourself and your friends through my realm, and my promise not to harm you in the future. You also gained answers you wanted to questions you had. But allow me to be clear as the water at the surface of the sea—you and I are not friends, nor will we ever be.

  “You claim you have a dragon friend, and your thrum says you believe this to be true. If you do, he is not much of a credit to our race. Real dragons know that friends are a luxury that we cannot afford, and most of us do not want them anyway. Survival in the sea is a constant vigil. One must remain awake and aware almost all the time, and that tends to make those of us who live here suspicious and quick to destroy anything that comes snooping around our lairs. You are out of place, Son of Earth, and that is more dangerous than you can even imagine, because you have cheated Death, so you do not know the real consequences of your actions. I advise you not to get used to that, because, sooner or later, Death always wins. Finish your business in the sea and then get out of here while you still can. Our conversation has come to an end. Follow the trail of pearls if you wish, or return to the Realm of Sunlight. But either way, I want you to leave my lair now.”

  The black sea around the circle of Lancel’s light rumbled with unspoken threat.

  “We’ll take the diving bell, with great thanks,” Ven said quickly.

  The beast opened his claw.

  The bell-shaped cage began to sink slowly to the bottom of the sea.

  “I suggest you catch hold of it before it becomes stuck in the sand,” Lancel cautioned. “It’s very heavy.”

  Char and Coreon exchanged a glance, then swam up to meet the drifting metal cage, taking hold of the chains on top.

  “You’re not jokin’,” Char said. His face turned slightly red with the strain.

  “Will you point the way to the pathway of pearls, please?” Ven asked as he swam over to where the hippocampus was hovering in the drift. “I don’t want to trespass on your lair any further.”

  The dragon waved his claw in the drift. Nearby, several of the broken ships in the collection began to rock back and forth, then slid out of the way, opening a tunnel in the lair between them. Coins spun and fell in the undersea waves, then settled back onto the ocean floor again.

  “The passageway will close behind you, so make haste,” said the dragon. “I do not want any of my ships damaged by falling on you.”

&nbs
p; Ven put out his arms to the hippocampus.

  “Here, Teel, give Amariel to me,” he said. “I think you should go back to your home now—I suspect, as she would say, that this is about to get ugly.”

  The giant sea horse shook its head. Its skin faded to a paler blue than it had been before.

  “Hippocampi are faithful creatures,” the dragon commented. “Often, when one’s mate dies, the other will die of grief. It seems Teel feels strongly about not leaving your merrow friend.” He chuckled as Ven pondered what to do. “You may as well take him with you. He’s likely to lose her either way shortly.”

  Ven looked at the sad hippocampus.

  “All right, Teel. Come if you wish. But you’re not going in the diving bell—you won’t fit.” He turned back to Lancel. “Since you and I will never be friends, nor are we likely to meet ever again, please allow me to ask one last question, just for the sake of history and curiosity. Your collection seems to contain ships that have gone down all over the world. How did all of these things come to be in your lair?”

  “I call to them,” the sea dragon boasted. “A ship on the surface will only be mine if I rise out of the Deep and take it down with me, and some of them I have obtained that way. But the broken bones of ships sing their names sadly, over and over again, when they sink to the ocean floor. If I hear them, and I call out to them, they often come to me. They know I will care for them as no other would.”

  “I see. Thank you,” Ven said. “The trail of pearls you mentioned—”

  A belch of acidic fire burst forth from Lancel’s enormous nostrils.

  The boys swam as fast as they could down the open channel in the hoard of treasure. They had gotten past a few ranks of ships when the bright light that had erupted when the beast appeared winked out again, plunging them into total blackness.

  Behind them they could feel the drift vibrate as the lines of ships moved back into their places again.

  “Keep going!” Ven shouted to the others. “Follow my thrum—at least we’ll keep together.”

  In the distance he thought he heard what sounded like a bell tolling.

  “Can you feel that?” he asked the other boys. They both nodded. “I wonder if that is the thrum of a body struggling within a diving bell.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Char advised.

  “Pearls,” Coreon said.

  “Where?”

  “Down below. Look.”

  Ven blinked several times. Coreon was right—for the first time since the dragon had sent them back into the Twilight by dousing his light, he thought he could make out something in the gloom all around him.

  On the ocean floor tiny spheres were glowing with a blue-white light, neatly positioned in a line that led off into the dark for as far as he could see.

  Except for one single pearl floating in the water in front of them.

  “That’s strange,” Char said as they approached the hovering pearl. “It musta been swept up out o’ the sand.” He put out his hand to catch it.

  And could only freeze in shock as a savage mouth with rows of pointed teeth and a jutting jaw roared, open, out of the darkness and snapped shut over his hand.

  Filling the sea around him a second later with the thrum of his blood.

  35

  Descent into Darkness

  * * *

  For the first few moments I had no idea what was happening.

  Even when I saw the teeth, and could feel the thrum of Char’s blood, the heavy pressure of the water around me was making it hard for my brain to work.

  Then I felt him gasp.

  It was the most terrible sound, or feeling, or whatever it is that thrum really is, that I have ever heard, or felt.

  It made my blood literally run cold.

  In the sea I thought I had lost my sense of smell. Amariel had told us that the hooded sea slug had a powerful odor, but I couldn’t tell. So I thought I was unable to smell anything underwater.

  Until Char began flailing and shaking his arm beside me.

  And the blood in the water swept past my face.

  Then it was all I could smell.

  * * *

  “Ven!” Coreon thrum was urgent. “Take out your light!”

  Ven fumbled in his pocket and located the air stone and his jack-rule. He pulled out the blue-white bubble, glowing in the same color as the pearls on the ocean floor, but far more intensely.

  In the cold light, he could see Char violently waving his hand, trying to shake off a monstrous-looking fish whose jaws had clamped around his wrist. The fish was brownish and round like a ball, and a little shorter than Ven’s arm to the elbow, but it had swallowed Char’s hand and seemed to be dragging him into its huge mouth, which was opening wider than the rest of its body. Above that massive mouth the glowing ball Char had reached for bobbed on what looked like a small fishing pole attached to the fish’s head.

  “It’s an angler, I bet,” Coreon whispered, his thrum high with fear. “The sea Lirin warn about them. We have to pry it off fast, before it swallows his whole arm.”

  “Ven!” Char’s thrum was desperate.

  “Stop jerking your hand around and hold still,” Ven said. He extended the blade in his jack-rule. His hand was shaking so much that he lost his grip on the tool and it almost dropped to the ocean floor. He caught it in the drift, trying to keep his fingers clear of the knife.

  Gathering all his strength, he slashed across the top of the fish’s head, and struck off the bobbing light.

  The fish reared back in shock, its mouth agape.

  “Pull it off!” Char moaned. “Get it off me!”

  Coreon seized the angler’s upper and lower jaws and pried them apart. As he did, Ven grabbed Char’s arm and dragged it, bleeding, out of the angler’s mouth.

  This is going to get ugly, he thought as Coreon threw the fish as far away as he could in disgust. If Megalodon could find me from just three drops of blood, what kind of beacon is this going to be, and to what?

  “You all right?” he asked Char.

  Char nodded numbly, but his eyes seemed glazed.

  Looking through the magnifying glass of the jack-rule, Ven inspected his friend’s injured hand. It was gouged and bleeding, but the wounds didn’t seem too deep. There was, however, something black at the edge of each tear in the skin, and it seemed to be spreading. “Wrap your shirt around your hand,” he said to Char, who was trembling with shock. “We have to get past the Realm of Twilight and into the diving bell as soon as we can, before predators find us.”

  He looked at the symbol of the Time Scissors in his palm, wondering what moment he would redo if need be.

  This is the closest I’ve come to needing to use this power, he thought. It was something he had avoided carefully, uncertain if changing a decision in the past would be better or worse than allowing things to remain as they were.

  But somehow, entering a sunless, all-but-frozen part of the sea in a diving bell that separated his body from his soul, with two of his friends gravely injured, seemed to be an action that might need to be reconsidered.

  “Can you drag the diving bell yourself if I pull with one arm?” he asked Coreon. The sea-Lirin boy nodded. “All right, then, let’s get out of here. Char, hold pressure on the bite with your other hand and I’ll pull you along by your good elbow.”

  “I can swim,” Char mumbled.

  “No. Your thrum is getting weaker, and we need to douse the light or everything in the Deep will find us.”

  He held up the tiny glowing sphere one last time.

  In the circle of dim light he saw little but the sand of the ocean floor. This realm of endless night, somewhere between Twilight and Midnight in the sea, was a lifeless place, empty and cold, without even dead seaweed on the ocean floor or floating in the motionless drift.

  “Teel—how is Amariel?”

  The hippocampus shook its head sadly.

  Ven inhaled, willing himself to be calm, to be brave. It seemed to work—a moment
later he felt as if his brain shut off all ties to his feelings, and was functioning by itself.

  “All right,” he thought briskly to the other boys and the sea horse. “Let’s go.”

  He put his air stone back in his pocket and buttoned it carefully. The dim light was swallowed immediately, returning them to absolute darkness a moment later. Then he took hold of Char by the elbow with one hand, and the diving bell’s chain with other, feeling Coreon’s grip on it closer to the end.

  He made sure he could feel the thrum of each of his friends. Coreon was nervous, he knew. His gills were opening and closing with more effort than usual. As nervous as the sea-Lirin boy was, Char was fighting full-blown panic, clutching his wounded hand with all his remaining strength. The hippocampus’s vibration was mournful and frightened.

  He could feel nothing at all from Amariel. He shook that thought from his mind.

  Then he made his way back to the water just above the pathway of pearls and started following it.

  * * *

  Everything Amariel had taught us about riding the drift seemed long ago and far away. There was almost no movement to the water this deep in the sea, just a thick swell here and there, like moving through heavy cream or the air of the upworld in a hard, blinding rain.

  With the light gone, I began to think of my limited sight as a bit of a blessing. All about me in the heavy drift I caught sight of movement, but little else. Occasionally a glowing light would pass by in the distance, or we could feel the sea above us move as something swam overhead, but considering what Lancel had said about the creatures that lived in the Realm of Midnight, it was probably better that we couldn’t see them too well, anyway.

  Every now and then, I thought I could hear a bell tolling in the depths.

  The thrum made my teeth sting.

  Usually I have a terrible time controlling my curiosity. But for once the vibration of those distant bells did not catch my interest even a little bit.