Race to the Bottom of the Sea Read online

  He swam back and forth, too far out for Fidelia to nab with the Track-Gaff. She took her binoculars out of her bag — just a refashioned pair of Ida Quail’s old copper opera glasses, but they gave Fidelia the perfect close-up view.

  The shark’s skin faded from a polished, pearly black on top to a dappled gray underbelly. She studied his jawline, his pectoral fins, counted his gills (five of them, standard for sharks in the Lamniformes order). His wide, sweeping tail curved like a sickle — this creature was built for speed and power. His teeth were long thick triangles, so she knew he ate seals and dolphins and other critters with plenty of fat.

  “Hey!” she cried suddenly. “You’re the one who’s been eating all the halibut!” How many dozens of fish did it take to satisfy a shark this size? No wonder there’d been such a dip in the halibut population this year.

  Less halibut in the bay had led to an increase in sculpin (halibut’s dietary staple), which led to a decrease in sea grass (sculpin’s dietary staple). Such was the way of the sea — a delicate ecosystem, every pairing of predator and prey carefully balanced. To lose one or the other meant the whole biological orchestra jangled out of tune.

  Fidelia tapped her chin as she thought. She knew the records of documented sharks backward and forward, knew all two hundred species by sight, silhouette, and scientific name. But she’d never read about a shark like this.

  “You are gorgeous,” she said to the mystery shark. “The question is, what are you, exactly? You have mako teeth, and a great white’s tail. But you’re too big to be a hybrid.”

  She pictured the Drs. Quail’s view — fifty feet beneath the surface, the Egg puttering among the clawed reefs, and the shark looming above them, ragged teeth poking from his snout like crooked rows of ivory headstones, his creamy belly glowing in the darkness.

  Fidelia put her binoculars back in her bag and snapped the radio on.

  “Mom, Dad, come in! Are you seeing this?” Her hands were shaking.

  “Seeing what?” Her mother’s reply was calm. “We just dipped down to pick some mermaid’s wineglass, and —”

  “Starboard side!” Fidelia burst. “Quick!”

  “All right, we’re moving!” Arthur Quail grunted as he cranked the Egg’s helm. Sometimes salt water gummed the wheel — a quirk of the submarine Fidelia was still working out.

  The shark busied himself with the mackerel Fidelia had offered, nonchalantly chewing until it was shredded to fleshy ribbons.

  “Do you see him?” Fidelia impatiently transmitted.

  A moment of static, and then —“We see him! We see him!” Ida Quail was so giddy, the radio couldn’t transfer the highest pitches of her squeals.

  “What a monster,” Arthur Quail said. “A beautiful, beautiful monster.”

  “It’s him! Our halibut thief — it’s got to be,” Fidelia said. “Did you see his teeth?”

  “How could we miss them?” her father said. “They’re as big as my good jam knife!”

  “So, what are we looking at here? A hybrid? Or is this just an oversize great white, trolling the world for spare halibut?” Fidelia waited for Ida’s expertise, but there was only silence. “Mom? Are you there?”

  “I think,” Ida said, each word reverent, “we’re looking at a new species.”

  A new species. Fidelia’s goose bumps were the size of mosquito bites. “I can’t believe it! It’s been ages since we found a new species —”

  “We?” her mother echoed through the radio. “Oh, no. No, darling. This is your discovery.”

  The Platypus bobbed. Fidelia was stunned, the radio clenched in one hand. “But —”

  “Your mother’s right,” Arthur piped in. “You know the rule. He who spots it, gots it. Or she, as the case may be — and that’s you.”

  A new species … Her own discovery … If she tagged this shark, the Track-Gaff would be splashed on the next cover of Adventures in Science Engineering. She’d patent all her gadgets, and then every wonder in the ocean would be explored with a Fidelia Quail invention.

  Maybe she’d even win a Gilded Iguana.

  The shark cut through the water like a razor blade — still too far out to tag, but he was circling closer, getting curious.

  A Gilded Iguana … It was the most prestigious award a biologist could win, an honor bestowed only on those who discovered something great. Someone who left a mark.

  Her parents each had one, both of them displayed on a shelf in their parlor — the first things Fidelia saw every morning on her way down to breakfast.

  If I tag him, I get to name him, she thought, her head light with glee. Ida had an entire collection of mollusks named for her favorite candies. Arthur once thought he was clever when he gave a trumpet-shaped plant its nom de plume: tootweed.

  Now, at least, it would be Fidelia’s turn.

  The shark rotated again, zipping past the length of the Platypus — just a casual swim for the two-ton beast.

  What should she name him?

  Carcharhinus arborleyan? Roughly translated, it meant “sharp-toothed Arborley shark.”

  No, his official title for the books should use her own name. That way there would be no doubt that she was the one who discovered him.

  Lamnidae fidelius? “Fidelia’s fish of prey?”

  She’d pin down an official name in time. For now, he needed a nickname.

  The white foam splashed against the shark’s mottled, grizzled skin as he cruised around the trawler, mouth gaping, those gargantuan teeth just bright-white blurs in the water.

  Grizzle.

  “That’s what I’ll call you, until I can think of something better,” she said. “Grizzle.” The name suited him. He gave her a sharky grin and rolled past, her reflection gleaming in his round black eye, her pointy features furrowed in concentration.

  “Did you tag him?” Ida asked on the radio.

  Fidelia tightened her grip on the Track-Gaff. “Not yet.” Not yet, no — but she was ready to sink the tag into his fin. Ready to make her mark.

  “He’s all yours.” The radio blared Ida’s final, supportive words before the whole system dissolved into fuzzy static again: “Go get him.”

  All mine.

  Fidelia set her jaw, squinting past the sun’s mirrored rays and into the water.

  The Platypus leveled in the chop. Grizzle flipped around and barreled toward her. She leaned over, determination flushing through her like a fever. This was her chance.

  Just a little closer.

  A burst of wind shook the Platypus just as Fidelia clicked. The tag missed the fin and sank into the watery blue.

  “Son of a squid!” she exploded, then regrouped with a deep breath. No worries — she had plenty of tags with her. She reloaded her Track-Gaff and waited.

  Come on, Grizzle. Come on back.

  Another salty breeze blasted her cheeks like a smack from an open palm. The afternoon’s peaceful, sorbet-colored clouds were completely gone; the sky had darkened to charcoal. Seawater swirled around the Platypus, tossing it like a bathtub toy.

  Then someone turned on the rain.

  Fidelia tried to plant her boots on the slippery deck, but the Platypus was just a cradle, violently rocked in the waves. She grasped the railing, the trawler whipping her to and fro like a rag doll.

  It was here.

  The Undertow was a shift in the ocean’s current, a result of the hot summer air leaving the island and colliding with the incoming cold weather front. Its chaos had earned itself a catchphrase —“During the Undertow, anything can happen.” Whirlpools appeared out of nowhere and tore ships to splinters. Schools of cod flopped onto fishing boats, surrendering without a fight. Forests of kelp uprooted themselves from the seafloor and floundered ashore.

  Anything could happen, yes. But the Undertow’s specialty was destruction.

  The wind screamed. Grizzle, spooked by the madness, dove down.

  “Wait, Grizzle!” Fidelia managed to stay upright, her beanpole shadow spearing the last of
the shark before he slapped his tail into the stern of the Platypus, then disappeared.

  She hesitated, raindrops freckling her glasses. She should warn her parents that the storm was here, close enough to feel. And she needed to get the Platypus into the harbor before the Undertow turned it into driftwood. But she hadn’t put a tag in Grizzle’s fin.

  It was September 30 — the massive shark would likely be migrating to the tropics tonight with the rest of his fishy cohorts, to spend the winter where it was nice and warm. If she didn’t tag him now, right now, he might be lost forever, free game for someone else to discover. A lesser scientist. Or, even worse, just a person. A citizen.

  She pictured a third Gilded Iguana on the shelf between her parents’ awards — hers a particularly shiny gold, especially when the sun crept through the garden window and hit the letters on the plaque: Fidelia Aurora Quail, Scientist.

  She had to tag that shark.

  Even as the storm wailed around her, she opened the cooler and roped another mackerel, her mind whirring at top speed.

  Should she break out the diving suit?

  The suit was standard, professionally made diving equipment — a canvas suit lined with rubber, which clamped into a twelve-bolt helmet — and all three Quails hated using it. The so-called watertight seal was unreliable — every other dive, their helmets came up sloshing with seawater. Corselets, the pieces that connected the helmet to the suit, rusted and broke constantly.

  And it was the most advanced diving technology available.

  Inflating the canvas suit took a good twenty minutes, which she didn’t have. But maybe she could skip the inflation and just head underwater with a saggy suit? If Grizzle wouldn’t come up to her, she would swim down to him.

  She fiddled with the door to the hatch.

  If only the Water-Eater was ready, she thought.

  But before she could get the diving helmet and begin improvising, a wave curled over her, tall enough to cast the entire Platypus in shade.

  “Here we go,” she muttered, and held on to the rail tightly as the water succumbed to gravity and fell.

  Hair, glasses, dress, stockings, boots — all soaked. Miraculously, the boat managed to stay afloat, but a spray of seawater burst through the slats of the Platypus’s port side.

  A leak!

  Forget the diving suit — the whole boat was about to head underwater.

  She radioed the Egg between tidal-wave splashes — no answer, just static.

  Submarines, for the most part, fared just fine in ocean storms. So she wasn’t worried about her parents. They would be safe.

  But, a voice in her mind nagged, they’re in a submarine built by an eleven-year-old. A child’s contraption, the patent office would call it.

  Again, she called the Egg. Again, static.

  Her parents were probably already on the dock — shivering and worrying and wondering where their brainy daughter was.

  She could feel the Platypus grow heavier and heavier as it filled with water. Grizzle’s tail must have split a hole clear through the wood.

  Just then, all the bait lines went slack. For a moment, the sea leveled. The waves had blended the chum like a milk shake — now it sank straight down, the blood diluted, fish guts reduced to pinkish-brown grains. The nibbled mackerel’s head floated, a single silver eye staring up at the storm.

  The Platypus was leaking, yes — but even worse, Grizzle was gone. Her chance was gone.

  With blistered hands and a scowl that would startle a stonefish, she flipped on the Platypus’s propellers and prepped the vessel for transport.

  The back of the trawler dragged below the surface as she flashed to shore, a trail of icy white foam behind her. Her adrenaline dissipated from her body in waves, leaving her exhausted and aching — she hadn’t eaten in hours. She’d bring in the boat and get dinner with her parents. She’d regroup, make a new Track-Gaff in the workshop. Tomorrow morning, if the skies had improved, she’d tar the split boards on the Platypus, and together the three Quails would sail back out to find the shark, and she’d slip a tag in his fin.

  Her first discovery.

  She snorted at her own gumption — or at her desperation. Did she really think Grizzle would stick around for the first chill of winter? Did she really think the storm would cooperate for one more day of open-water fieldwork?

  But then again, in the Undertow, anything could happen.

  Fidelia managed to steer the Platypus into the harbor just as the engine sputtered a briny burp and gave out. She looked for a familiar flash of aqua-blue metal near the Quails’ regular spot on the dock, but the Egg was nowhere to be seen.

  Arborley was a ghost town. Usually, Friday evenings brought a traffic jam of ships, each one impatient to unload its exotic cargo — crate after crate of raw cocoa beans, freshly harvested from the tropics.

  But tonight the port was dead. Skiffs slumped in their moorings like snoozing dogs; the boardwalk’s everyday stench of fried shrimp was a faint memory. No rowdy sailors exchanging tall tales while their crews tied off along the dock, no children poking at the strange things in the tide pools of Stony Beach. No dogs barking joyfully, just to bark.

  Again, the culprit was the Undertow. Only a dimwit would dare stay near the water when it hit. Even now, the black swirling clouds whistled in the bay, gathering steam as they galloped toward the shore.

  Fidelia quickly tied off the half-sunken Platypus, then glanced around the eerily empty port. No sign of her father’s pointy black beard. No sound of her mother’s happy, goose-like laugh.

  They should be here by now.

  She ran up onto the bridge.

  The port narrowed into a canal that flowed through the island as its main road for transportation. The water streamed along the high street, past the shops, past the gabled houses, which all had small white wooden docks in lieu of front porches. Above the mouth of the canal was an arching stone bridge, the highest point in the bay. From here, she could see the entire harbor.

  No Egg.

  Her heart thumped. The Undertow was getting closer. She could hear the growl of its thunder, feel the air around her practically seize up in anticipation of the incoming chaos.

  They weren’t still out on the water, were they?

  She pulled out her binoculars and scanned everything — the boardwalk, the beach, the chandler’s warehouse, the gate to the shipyard. The sky dimmed even darker; the wind howled even louder. Fidelia wrapped her arms around her thin frame, scooting along the stones of the bridge slowly, carefully, to keep from being blown over.

  On the boardwalk, rowdy laughter surged from the Book and Bottle. Fidelia watched the wooden sign flap in the wind, the amber glow of the pub’s windows shining like beacons.

  Maybe she should go inside and wait. Maybe if she ordered three bowls of Shipwreck Stew, her parents would appear. Summoned by shellfish.

  She opened the door, and the warm air inside the pub sent prickles along her chilled skin. One more look back at the beach, and when she saw nothing, she slipped inside the pub, the wind slamming the door shut behind her.

  Come on, Mom and Dad, where are you? she thought. Nice hot soup at the Book and Bottle, if only you’ll walk through the door.

  Every sea dog who came through Arborley Island considered the Book and Bottle to be a home on dry land. Always a fire burning in the hearth. Always room for another seat at the bar. Always a fiddle or two filling the lulls between conversations. Always a better fish story than yours.

  Always, always more ale.

  Inside, the pub was gritty but cozy. Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, thick as a curtain. The cedar beams in the ceiling crissed and crossed like the staves of a woven basket. Chandeliers flickered their primitive candlelight, providing just enough illumination to see if your mug was empty.

  Fidelia took a table near the window. The docks might have been deserted, but the Book and Bottle was busier than a reef during a feeding frenzy; at least two dozen sailors teetered on st
ools around her, drinks in hand.

  “Fernalia!” a sailor slurred, and shook her hand with his own, sticky from ale. It was Ratface, the whiskered, wind-burned captain of a cocoa ship called the Anemone. “Join us for a drink!”

  “I’m only eleven,” Fidelia reminded him.

  “Then let’s get you some milk.” He belched, pounding the counter. “Barkeep! Some milk for Quail and refills all around, on me!” The pub erupted in cheers.

  Fidelia ignored the drunken buffoons and took out her observation book. Her hands were desperate to stay busy. She loosely sketched an outline of Grizzle’s body — huge and barreling, but compact as a bullet as it shot through the water.

  Five gills or seven? She closed her eyes, picturing the sleek shark. Five. All athletic breeds of sharks had five gills, and Grizzle was certainly athletic.

  “Where are Ida and Art?” Ratface asked. “Out counting the hairs on a walrus’s belly?”

  Before Fidelia could respond, a group of sailors crashed into the pub. A woman limped between them — Captain Beagle, of the Honey Fox, a gash on her forehead streaming with blood.

  “Get her a chair, mates!” someone said.

  “And a clean rag! She’s dripping on the hardwood,” someone else said.

  “Blimey, Beagle.” Ratface guffawed between sips of ale. “Did the Undertow crack your melon?”

  Captain Beagle let her shipmates plop her down on a stool and drained a whole mug before answering breathlessly. “Not the Undertow… . Pirates.”

  The whole pub seemed to wince.

  “Pirates.” Ratface wiped the foam from his top lip and snarled. “Those bold bastards. As if the Undertow isn’t deadly enough.”

  Fidelia sat up taller, her ears alert. Something inside her opened, a chasm of panic deepening. Already the Undertow loomed in the bay, but now pirates, within striking distance? Just walk through the door, she bade her parents silently. Hurry, hurry, so I know you’re safe.