The Legend of the Rift (21 page)

I
FELT LIKE
someone had thrown a can of thick yellow paint in my face. Knowing it was Mu'ankh blood was pretty disgusting, but I guess if it had been red it would have really topped out the sick-o-meter. At least Marco had the presence of mind to wipe off my mask, so I could see the path of my knife. Despite the thickness and gooeyness of the skin, I managed to pull the knife downward through the pimple that encased our Loculus. I had to hold tight, because the creature was clearly feeling this and not liking it one bit. Its body was moving, tilting one way and then the other.

When I had cut about halfway around the trapped orb, I felt the stomach lurch. Hard. I let go, hurtling backward. My knife went flying. It embedded itself in the stomach
wall above me, dangling from a gash that spurted more yellow blood.

Marco had hung on. With one hand, he hung on to the sliced flap of skin around the Loculus. With the other, he was coaxing the orb free.

Spinning around, he held aloft a glowing Loculus of luminous deep green. The Song of the Heptakiklos was ringing through every molecule in my body.

It had never sounded better.

“Yeee-HAH!” I screamed. My own voice was muffled inside the mask and no one else could hear me, but I didn't care. Cass and Eloise were swimming up beside Marco, flailing their limbs in an underwater celebratory dance. But the big guy was holding out the Loculus toward me.

He knew that this Loculus had the power to get us out of here. Its power was time travel. It could take us to a farm at the break of the Civil War, the hospital on the day I was born, a gladiator match in Ancient Rome, or a dinner with King Arthur and his knights at the Round Table. But it could also send us back to the time and place that started it all. To Atlantis on the brink of its own destruction.

And it could give us what we wanted—Aly.

The stomach wall was undulating wildly now. It looked like a battalion of gremlins were flinging themselves at it from the other side. Mu'ankh was feeling the cuts, big-time, and the cuts were only deepening with the movement.

Yellow Mu'ankh blood was coating the TV and the baby carriage, gumming up the whole stomach. Our wet suits were flecked with it. I snatched the Loculus from Marco's hands. I knew I needed direct contact, so I ripped off my gloves and let them float away. The water was much colder than I expected, but it was offset by the warmth of the Loculus itself as I held tight.

The think system.

The others had pulled off their gloves, too, and they were holding my wrists. I closed my eyes and thought of Aly. Her hair, dyed some crazy purple not found in nature, was pulled back straight like a ballet dancer's. She was tossing her head back, laughing. Making her laugh was a hard thing to do, and it always made me smile. I could feel my own face relaxing and my heartbeat quicken . . .

A deep, ominous
ggggglluuurrrmmmm
shook the water. I felt something snap upward from below me, throwing me off balance.

I opened my eyes. We were nowhere near Atlantis in the ancient past. We were still in the belly of the beast, and the beast had only gotten angrier.

My oxygen levels were near zero. Even the octopus was spent. What had I done wrong? The Loculus was supposed to respond to my thoughts. My thoughts were commands.

Maybe the command was too vague.
Atlantis in the ancient past
wasn't exactly specific. Maybe Loculi were like
toddlers. They needed to be told exactly what to do. For now, I would pick a year, any year. Just to get us out of here.

July 4, 1999. Noon. 121 Elm Street, Belleville, Indiana. My bedroom.
I don't know where that came from, but you couldn't get more specific than that.

But I opened my eyes to the same murk, the same rumbling chamber, the same scared friends in wet suits.

Year 1776. Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Ditto.

Marco was glaring at me, palms upward.
What's happening?

It wasn't working. I could feel Cass's fingers let go of my wrist. His body went slack, his eyes fluttering. Eloise had grabbed the back of his mask with one hand and was knocking on it with the other. Her mouth was saying “Stay awake.”

Marco wrapped his arm around Cass's arm and managed to grab both Eloise and me. He kicked hard, trying to lift us all, trying to get to the opening at the top of the stomach.

I knew I needed to help him. His hands were full, and the least I could do was try to pry open the valve, so we could climb out through the beast's throat.

As we neared the valve, I realized there was a better way. I thought about Jonah. About that weird digestive system of prehistoric fish.

Irritation.

Forcible ejection.

Stomach functions like a giant rubber slingshot.

I broke loose from Marco and swam right up to the stomach wall. Holding tight to the defective Loculus with one hand, I plunged the knife into the beast's stomach again and again. The yellow goop was all over the place now, but I didn't care.

Feel this . . .

FEEL THIS . . .

I heard a pop in my ears, like the change in air pressure on a plane. Something was sucking me away from the stomach wall. Fast. It was all I could do to hold tight to the Loculus, which I did with both arms.

Cass, Eloise, and Marco were nowhere to be seen. All around me was blackness. I felt my body lurching wildly. I glanced at my oxygen gauge, which was at dead zero.

A moment later I felt my strap snap, and the gauge was gone. Along with the octopus. Along with my oxygen tank.

I tried to look for the others. My mask must have still held some air, because I was breathing. I was also shooting through the water like a cannon ball, unable to do a thing about it, clueless about where I was going. My flippers were yanked off my feet by the pressure.

Then, whatever held the mask on couldn't take the strain. It ripped clear off my face, and the water rushed in.

A
T FIRST
I
think Aly has been caught in the rain. Her face glistens with wetness.

But the sky is clear, the earth parched, and her eyes are clouded and sad.

I realize she is crying.

She has heard. She was hoping we would come, and now she knows we can't. She clutches the Loculus of Strength against her body, but it does not give her what she needs.

Now there is a knock at the door. The walls are thick, the windows barred.
It is time,
a voice says. The tumult has been put down. For now. The fields are clear and safe.

It is time to visit the Heptakiklos. To return the missing Loculus to its rightful place.

King Uhla'ar stands behind his queen. Here in Atlantis, home after his centuries of exile, he is a different man. Intelligent, reasonable. Aly's eyes focus on him, with frustration and disappointment. She has talked to him at length. Almost convinced him that Qalani's plan is doomed. That the past is the past and nothing can change it. That he must send her back through the rift.

But he cannot, or will not, stand his own against Qalani.

Aly looks my way.

I panic. Am I Massarym in this dream? Am I Karai?

I realize I am nobody.

I do not exist.

Aly rises. She holds the Loculus to her face. Following the Atlantean guards, she walks out the door.

A
LL THESE CENTURIES
underwater hadn't done much for the Mu'ankh's teeth. My bare, flipperless feet banged against a fang with three gaping cavities, and it cracked clear off at the base.

The tooth shot out into the sea through the open mouth, and so did I. Cass, Marco, and Eloise were tumbling along with me. The beast had ejected us.
Like a slingshot.
I could feel the water's frigid coldness against my cheeks. The Loculus was still tight in my hands, but I had no flippers, no tank. . . .

No mask.

I stiffened with panic, nearly dropping the Loculus. No mask meant no air. How long had I been holding my
breath? How much longer could I?

Why on earth wasn't I dead?

Cass, Eloise, and Marco were floating lifelessly in front of me. Their oxygen, like mine, had run out. I swam toward them. This seemed impossible.
How could I be functioning and not Marco?

I could feel the Loculus moving and I looked down.

In . . . out . . .

I was holding it tight to my chest.
That's
what was moving. I was . . .

No. Impossible. I couldn't be breathing underwater.

But my mouth was shut. My nostrils were sealed. What on earth had just happened to me?

The Loculus.

I let go of it briefly, letting it float in front of me. Immediately my lungs seized up. I grabbed it again and my chest began to move.

I was getting oxygen, somehow. Like a fish.

This was not a Loculus of Time Travel. But it was the Loculus we needed.

I quickly pulled back the sleeves of my wetsuit so I could grip it with my bare elbows. With one hand I grabbed onto Marco's wrist, with the other, Eloise's. I tried to maneuver myself so I could secure Cass's wrist with outstretched fingers, but he was floating away and I wasn't coordinated enough.

I felt Marco jolt back to life. It took him all of two seconds to size up what had just happened. I nodded my head frantically toward Cass, and Marco managed to grab his hand, too.

Marco still had his flippers. He began kicking as hard as he could.

The Mu'ankh was writhing in the sea bottom, sending up a dark cloud of mud that slowly plumed its way up the Lighthouse, enveloping it bottom to top.

I saw the lambda stone crack and break off. A chunk of wall crumbled. The great lamp teetered twice, and then rolled through the opening of its chamber. After rising from ruins, the Lighthouse was breaking apart.

We raced to avoid being hit by the fiery sphere or swallowed up in the debris. Cass and Eloise were breathing now, and the kicking of eight legs was gaining us more speed. Finally we emerged through the cloud of debris and into clearer water.

As I looked down, the Lighthouse of Alexandria collapsed completely, into a mushroom of yellowish-gray foam.

I knew we were getting close to the surface. For one thing, the water was beginning to grow lighter. For another, I was no longer crazed with fear. I was thinking about the awesomeness of what had just happened. We had the seventh Loculus. We had found every single one—woo-hoo! But if I thought about that too much, I wanted to cry. Partly
because one of the found Loculi had been lost again. But mostly because that made me think about Aly and the fact that we had failed to get her back. Whoever had told Herman Wenders about the powers of the Loculi, they'd sure gotten this one wrong.

I couldn't stop thinking about the Lighthouse and the Mu'ankh. Even though the beast had eaten us, I wished we'd managed to escape without killing it and destroying the Lighthouse. How cool would it have been to have a team dredge it up? People from all over the world would come to be amazed. As a bonus, their kids could drag their parents to a massive aquarium where, behind a thick Plexiglas wall, the great green beast would eject TV sets from its mouth on cue. We could call it the Mu'ankhseum. Or not.

Marco was exhibiting his happiness in more Marcoish ways, like letting go every few moments and doing loop-the-loops and dolphin imitations. Which always made us nervous, because whenever he stopped holding on to us, he had to hold his breath.

During one of his stunts, I had my eye on him so intently that I was only vaguely aware of a shadow passing over us. I heard the distant rumbling sound of its motor but didn't pay it much mind. But I did notice that Marco had stopped in the middle of a somersault. He was just hanging upside down, waving to us.

I had half a mind to veer away. Forcing him to follow us
would teach him a lesson not to show off. But I didn't have a chance even to try. Because something swept up from below us, forcing us off our course.

I looked down. A massive flash mob of fish and crustaceans was pressed against our feet. A fish mob. They were packed together, squirming against one another, and we were swept upward with them. Cass and Eloise struggled to hold on to my wrists. In a moment we had been pushed up against Marco.

He wasn't floating in the water upside down. His foot was caught in a net. A net big enough to catch all of us and about a gazillion fish. Marco reached down and freed his foot, lunging out with his hands to grab the Loculus. The choked expression on his face softened as he start to underwater breathe like the rest of us.

“Where are we going?” Eloise mouthed.

The only answer I could give was “Up.”

We finally broke the surface into the hot sun. I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the brightness. We were being hauled up the side of a fishing boat in a net. Dying fish slapped at my face and body frantically. Cass, Marco, and Eloise had finally fallen away from the Loculus and were fighting with the silvery swarm, laughing and screaming at the same time.

I opened my mouth to breathe in my first breath of air, amazing air!

But nothing came in. I began to choke. I felt my face turning red. I looked up to the ship, where the entire crew had gathered to gawk at the humans in their catch. I heard Cass shouting for help. I tried to shout, too. But I could feel myself passing out.

“Let go!” Marco said.

I was frozen in fear, barely hearing him, sinking helplessly into the mass of fish.

“The Loculus!” Marco said. “Get your hands off it, Brother Jack!”

He was making his way toward me through the fish, part swimming, part crawling. I saw his fingers close over the Loculus—and the next moment it was flying up over the railing of the fishing boat to the utter bafflement of everyone on board.

“Kaaaachhhh!”
A cough exploded from my mouth. I began gasping uncontrollably, taking huge, deep, gulping breaths. I felt like my throat was going to rupture and my lungs explode.

Marco held tight, coaxing me back. “It's all right . . . just breathe. . . .”

“What . . . happened?” I finally managed to croak out.

“Dude, you have to think like a fish,” Marco said. “The Loculus gives you something they have. You can dance around forever underwater and get your oxygen just fine. But look at them now, right? By next week they're going to
be breaded and formed into tasty little fish sticks. Because they can't breathe in the air. And when you're holding that Loculus, neither can you.”

I thought about it a minute. I felt my lungs expand and contract. I took a deep whiff of fish.

It was the most beautiful smell I'd ever experienced.

For some reason, I burst out laughing. Seeing the goggle-eyed expressions on the faces of the fishing crew only made it worse. I began to howl uncontrollably, and that made Cass and Eloise crack up, too.

As we collapsed into giggles on the deck of the ship, Marco stood up and held out his hand to one of the crew men. “Dude!”

The guy's face was tanned a deep brown. He had a thick black-gray mustache and narrow blue-green eyes. “Dude?” he said, shaking Marco's hand. “So you are American. Tell me, why are you with my fish?”

That did it.

Cass, Eloise, and I were rolling on the floor, paralyzed with laughter.

“Well,” Marco said, putting a hand on the guy's shoulder, “it's kind of a long story.”