Through the Whirlpool (3 page)

“B
een looking for you, Weasel!”

As Jade jumped up to run,
Rena dropped her board, and her weight crashed into Jade like a toppling tower of bricks. Jade struggled, yet the older girl had her, twisting an arm behind her back. Jade shrieked in pain.

“
Come on, Weasel. Let’s go and have a talk back there in the dunes. Uufghh!” Kyle had swung his boogie board at her back.

“
Stop it, bully!” He was hysterical, his voice high-pitched with fear.

“
It’s okay, Kyle. We’re just playing.” The things you say. Rena ignored him then. Twisting Jade’s other arm behind her, she frog-marched her up the sand. Jade knew she was done for. The best she could hope would be to end up like Miguel, with a broken arm or worse. What an idiot! Why get on the unsociable side of someone with three times your killing power? If only she could teleport, find herself on a different planet. But they were closing on the dunes. She was in serious trouble. Teleporting did not exist. Soon Jade would not exist either. Kyle’s dumb screaming in her ears would be the final thing she ever heard.

Then a piercing whistle ripped through the summer
’s day, knocking a couple of surfers off their boards. For once, Jade felt relief—the one person around here who could roast and spit Rena as easy as look at her. The older girl let go of her arms, throwing her down. She spat out:

“
So you had to bring your mom with you for protection, did you? Well, stay scared, Weasel. I’ll get you soon. And it’ll be worse than when I took care of your South American buddy.”

Jade, rubbing her arms, couldn
’t resist: “I’m sure you will: you and your mates. That was so brave, what you did to Miguel—three of you against one guy half your size.”

Rena walked back and picked up her board. She turned and smiled at Jade, but there was nothing friendly there.
“Promise you, then, Weasel: when I deal with you, it’ll be just you and me.”

She looked for a moment at Jade
’s mother approaching down the beach. But the closer Joan got, the more Rena shrank into herself. She had lost her prey this time. Before Joan got anywhere near the spot where the three of them were standing, Rena turned on her heel and slouched away toward the other end of the beach. Jade realized she was shaking and sat down quickly to hide the fact. She stared at the sand, trying to pull herself together, remembering to say, while their mother was still well out of earshot:

“
Kyle, one word to Mom about that, and you’re history, okay?”

“
Jade, you’re always thinking I’m gonna go running to Mom. I’m not gonna say anything, but why is she after you? Have you done something wrong? Did you go up to the lab site? I bet you did, you and Darren and that Miggy-lorito zee-senyorrrito!”

Their mother was getting closer.

“What’ll you give me if I don’t tell Mom? Jaa-ade… girls who are grounded aren’t allowed to go surfing…”

“
Whatever, you can use my bike… for a week.”

“
A month.”

“
Two weeks.”

“
Hi, Mom!”

“
Okay, a month!”

Joan dropped her things on the beach beside them.
“Was that girl one of your friends? She looked a little rough.”

But Jade was already up and running for the waves, board under her arm, relief sending a rush of adrenalin through her body. While
their mum was cool on many fronts, some things you just didn’t tell parents.

Kyle came charging into the surf behind her, holding his boogie board out in front. He tripped as he hit the water and fell flat on his face in the shallows. Jade laughed. His board was way too big for him
, and he had no idea how to handle it, but anything Jade had, Kyle wanted. He had whined and whined until their mother bought him a board. She headed out into the waves, her brother in tow.

The feel of the dragging water around her was refreshing as she paddled out. She loved the exhilaration, sun hot on her back as she rode her board up a wave and crashed through the fringe of foam at its crest, falling down the other s
ide and heading on to the next.

It was only as she was paddling furiously in, building up speed to surf
that first good wave at just the right point, that her attention was caught by something in the silver-blue slope down which she slid… Something flashed and the world went black… She was careering down a dark glass funnel into the ocean’s entrails… the wave racing faster, curling tighter, tighter still... A boy’s laughter echoed as the universe groaned and swallowed her whole.

T
aashou entered the sandy cave, leaning on Lehd. Every year the mountain cost her more; this year had been the worst. She longed for a relaxing soak in the mineral baths of the community, but that could come later. There was work to be done.

“
Who saw the rift? How do you know? You were with me up on Kaa-meer-geh. You saw how quiet the mountain was.”

Yet before Lehd could answer, another voice spoke up:

“It hasn’t come through the mountain, but it is definitely the rift.”

Out of the cluster of
shahiroh standing in the cave’s center stepped the man who had spoken. He was older than Taashou yet stood straight and fit despite a certain haggardness of features. His only clothing was a tight-fitting suit made of brown kelp. It even reached up into a hood that melded seamlessly into the skin of his face. He wore gloves and boots that extended into stiff, finlike appendages.

“
Daakohn.” She smiled despite her weariness. “Daakohn-bhah-ehl-bhah-her, you are the only person who could make such a claim and have me believe it. I’m glad you are back.”

“
I won’t stay. My mount misses me already, but it’s good to see you, Taashou.”

“
So the rift? But how? If not through the mountain, for what purpose have we been camping on this barren lump of rock for so long? Kaa-meer-geh was the point of melding.”

“
This time it has come through the sea.”

“
It cannot be the same!”

“
Taashou, no living person on this world knows it as I do. Every molecule in my body shrieks at the recognition. It is the same for my mount.”

Taashou looked around at the bare cave
that was their home, had been since Daakohn had come back to them all those years ago. Openings around the walls led to rudimentary sleeping chambers and storerooms, with torches and blubber oil lamps for lighting. For meetings and meals they stood or sat on mats in this wide space. But that was it. The red mountain offered little more.

“
So how?”

He shrugged.

“I know only that the rift has reappeared. This time it has come as a sort of tunnel through the sea, or whirlpool.”

“
A whirlpool? I wonder if that will be any more tolerable than through fire?”

“
It is the worst experience any living creature could bear. Fire or water, nothing in this world prepares you.”

“
Prepare… if we could. We cannot even know…”

“
It explains the imbalance we have felt in the ocean all this spring.”

The newest speaker was also one of the
shahiroh, clad like Taashou in blue, yet twenty years or so her junior. “We have felt the pull, but it was just a strangeness. We could not define it…”

“
That could not be,” Taashou answered the man. “There is a natural equilibrium that establishes when the rift opens. Your strangeness comes from another source.”

“
I agree with Bel-geer,” said Daakohn, “I too have felt it… a lessening of life, or of the life force. It is pulling strongly at Shah. Taashou, I was seventeen when I experienced the rift and knew nothing of its nature. Yet I who then was the youngest am now the oldest, and I feel that this time it is different.”

“
Have you located the region?”

“
Somewhere about two to four days northwest of the Sacred Isle—with a good wind.”

Taashou was silent for a moment. Then she spoke:

“Seven of our young people have just been summoned to their initiation. We must protect them during their ordeal. Once sea-nomad-becoming has finished, we will turn our attention to this.”

“
That may be too late,” Daakohn warned.

“
I have made my decision.”

“
We may not have such a luxury of time as you imagine.”

“
It is the risk I take.”

“
The risk all of us bear.”

J
ade was hurled and bumped upside down, head over heels, every which way, sand and salt in eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Finally, she was scraped, rolled, and washed into the frothing shallows, buckets of sand filling her shorts, a gallon of sea water down her throat. She could have, should have, handled that wave effortlessly. She got up warily, checking to see who might have seen her get dunked by such an easy wave. Rena was now down the other end of the beach with the older surfers. This time at least she had been spared.

It was that
vision of a watery abyss that had overcome her, spiraling down into the horrific dark... a sort of waking nightmare. She knew it had something to do with her dream on the beach, and with that colored algae that had slopped into the water around her from Rena’s launch. A kind of whirlpool, only faster, darker... and that groaning. It had been triggered by colors. She had seen a brightly colored spot on the beach: her mom, wearing that ridiculous swimsuit, looking like an unfinished Rubik’s cube somebody gave up on.

She looked out to sea. That was when she
noticed the clouds. Like no weather pattern she had ever seen. The entire sky was swirling around, as if some huge basin of cloudy liquid had just had the plug pulled and was spiraling down the drain. Except that this was upside down, and those clouds looked like they were being sucked up into the sky. Below them, on the horizon, the three towers of the experimental biofuel station almost seemed to center and anchor the billowing formation over their particular patch of sea.

Farther
in, she caught a flash of bright orange. Kyle was paddling into the path of a huge wave that threatened to eat him whole. He turned his board just at the wrong time, valiantly attempting to catch it. The wave towered high above, menacing and immobile. Then it came crashing down, an avalanche of foam under which he disappeared. His orange boogie board shot vertically up out of the water like a rocket from a submarine launcher. A few seconds later, his body tumbled up onto the beach in a swirl of surf. Well, at least she was not the worst surfer out that day. She called to him:

“
Kyle, I’m going inshore!”

“
I’m not. There’s a whole pile on their way. Look.”

“
Nah. Those are tiny. Don’t go out beyond your depth, okay?”

Jade waded in, ran up the
beach, and threw herself down on her towel. Now she could see her mom’s horrendous swimsuit up close.

Joan beamed:
“Do you like it?”

It was the grossest thing
Jade had ever seen. Radioactive green. Purple and orange lizards, or alligators—she could not tell which—swarmed across it. Every second animal was wearing a bright yellow sunhat, or holding a bunch of pink flowers. Just looking at it brought on her queasiness. She looked away.

“
Yeah, it’s nice, Mom. We can tell the lighthouse keeper on Point Mauri he’s out of a job. We’ll just get you to stand up there every night and shine a torch on you.”

Joan hit her with her red and purple floppy sunhat, frowning mock
angrily: “Such a charming girl I’ve raised!”

Jade closed her eyes and lay back, then
giggled: “You could even double as an outdoor disco. Only thing missing are the strobe lights!”

Her mother ignored her:
“This’ll interest you. We’re in the news!”

Jade sat up and watched the newscast on her
mom’s phone.

“
MAURI COVE LAUNCHES ECO-FUEL,” rolled the headline over video images of Mauri Cove and surrounding coastline as a commentary droned, “Last night, quiet Mauri Cove took a giant step toward the development of an ecologically harmonious society when Synengine Energies launched its new synthetic fuels laboratory. Synengine Energies is a multinational group with installations in over fifteen countries.”

The picture snapped to Mayor Robbins
’ rosy face: “Their choice of our town as a base for this experimental facility is a great boost for local employment. We must support this bid for a clean, green future in this wonderful region.”

Then a harder visage appeared, cloaked in dark glasses, under which Jade read
, “Dr. Norman Hagues, CEO, Synengine Energies Inc.” His voice sounded like gravel under car tires: “We are proud to be collaborating with the people of this town to create more jobs… a better future for your kids in a more loving, trusting world…”