15

EVERY ONCE IN A while, Eric yelled, “Gully!” Or, “Zeke, you rat! Come back this minute!” Or, despairingly as time passed, “I’m here. Here!”

Time was not really passing, he reminded himself, because nothing passed in Underwhirl. It was his own mind that made time seem to pass, that had learned time so well, it could not stop dividing before from after, now from then—even when there was nothing left to divide.

He yelled to let off steam.

“Aunt Opal! Mrs. Holly! Here I am!” Up in Twill, his voice would have made some mark, even if his aunt hadn’t heard. A gull flapping by might have looked at him warily. An echo might have started up. The air might have vibrated a little. An ant might have scuttled away. Here in this unmoving countryside, his yells left no trace of having been. Nothing received the noise and nothing reacted. Or if, somewhere, something heard, it paid no attention. It ignored him in the same way the ancient trees in the settlement had ignored him, because he was small and short-lived and their attention was fixed on the long-range view.

Eric turned his face to the sky. Overhead, schools of lampfish streamed and floated. Sometimes they came together in clumps, sometimes they drifted apart. Sometimes they were high up and small to the eye, sometimes they dropped low, eclipsing half the sky. Aimless they looked, mindless and meaningless, and yet Eric wondered if there wasn’t some pattern at work up there, some rhythm or order that might help him if he could only see it. It was the way of things in Underwhirl, he was beginning to understand. The pattern might not be easy to detect. In some cases, like the long-range tree conversations, it might be beyond the reach of ordinary, time-ridden senses. But, maybe, if he looked long enough, a key would emerge. Even now, sharpening his eyes, he noticed something interesting. Scattered as the lampfish appeared, they were all moving in a similar direction.

Eric sat up. As he watched, a haphazard mass made up of hundreds of fish began to assume peculiar forms in the sky. The sprawl gathered into a luscious-looking cream puff shape, then became a potbellied stove, then rounded again into a flushed moon that gradually began to flatten. Meanwhile, through all these transformations, the fish continued to drift in a counterclockwise direction. Their rotation was picking up speed.

Eric got to his feet. Now the rosy bodies were overlapped and beginning to blend together. Round and round the lampfish flew, their great mustaches rippling and entangling, whipping up the air. A light breeze blew down and crossed Eric’s cheek.

“Wind!” he cried, and reached his hand up for more.

There was more. In no time, a small gale was blowing across Underwhirl’s lands, and the lampfish had become a glowing wheel of current in the sky. Eric’s hair whirled around his head. He swept it back from his eyes and shouted with excitement. After the weight, the terrible stillness of Underwhirl, these old feelings of sweep and swirl, of drag and pull, seemed almost unbearably thrilling.

But something else was beginning to happen. The revolving wheel was changing. Its center was falling in, dropping with a funnel-like shape toward the ground while the rim went on spinning high above. Down and down came the whirling form, nosing here and there in a shortsighted way, as if it were searching for something. Eric knew what it was by now. He cried out for Gully one last time and, though the wind was strong, raised his arms in the air.

In a moment, quite gently considering the turbulence, he felt himself lifted. He rose off the ground and was held briefly at some calm center, as if his weight were being assessed and a certain balance sought. Then—whoosh—he was drawn upward, and though he knew that many lampfish surrounded him, they seemed to meld before his eyes into one great body that spun and spun him rosily up the spout.

For that was what it was, of course. The spout. The whirlpool. Even as Eric watched, it began to take more recognizable shape around him. He saw how its energy came from the lampfish alone, how their powerful swirl set a current in motion that drove up toward Twill like a furious drill. So, it was the lampfish who’d kept the channel open all these years, playing against the moon and the upper world’s rule of change. Lights the fish were, yes. And guides when need be. But before all else, they’d made the spouts for themselves. To escape from Underwhirl, Eric guessed, just as he was doing now. To break the iron grip of their world and rise up to the wild, free currents above. But, what was that?

“Gully?”

A vague outline of something was paddling toward him. He saw the glimmer of a feather, the golden flash of an eye. A rubbery thunk, thunk reached his ears, as of tarpaulin moving through water.

“Mr. Cantrip! Is that you?”

“Ahoy! Ahoy!” came the answer, and Eric’s heart leaped. It was both, man and bird! They were approaching side by side along the spout’s slow-turning wall. Since this was now composed almost entirely of seawater, there was much floundering and not a little coughing and sputtering as the three came joyfully together.

“Watch the gull!” Zeke warned. “He’s torn his wing. I had the devil of a time trying to find him down there. He’d crept into a hole and couldn’t be spied from the air.

“But where were you!” Eric demanded, angrily. “You left me all alone.”

The old man shook his head and addressed himself to Gullstone, who had rushed headlong for Eric at the first sight of him and now crouched snugly inside his arm.

“How do you like that for a show of thanks? Here I perform miracles of search, find, and escape, and the boy complains about a few minutes left alone.”

“A few minutes! It was hours,” Eric said. “Or maybe even days. What were you doing going up in that fish? You made a spell, didn’t you. I saw it happen.”

“Up? Spell? What do you mean? You’re making me sound like some small-time wizard.” The fishcatcher winked at Gully, who gave Eric the sort of unreadable yellow stare that sea gulls are famous for.

“Gully! You’re no help at all! Whose side are you on anyway?”

Next, Zeke Cantrip was struck by another infuriating case of deafness. He would not hear a single word put to him, though Eric was dying to report his discovery about the lampfish and the spout, and to press the old man for more systems and schemes. Flocks of new ideas were rising in his mind, and new explanations for things he had seen in Underwhirl. But suddenly, there was no time to interrogate Zeke anyway, or even to feel relief at having escaped that leaden land. The spout had begun to spin faster.

All the while, the group had been slowly ascending with the current, moving around and up the bowl-shaped wall of the whirlpool. When Eric looked down, he saw the rosy glow of the Underwhirl lampfish shining up toward them. The fish had stopped rising and were now being left behind. As their warm light receded, the water itself cooled and then turned cold.

Looking ahead, Eric saw the watery walls over his head begin to churn and race, to bulge and tear loose from the confinement of their sides. These renegade surges crashed together, producing clouds of spray. Higher up, when the spray cleared, Eric could see mountainous swells and waves flying toward one another. They smashed together with such terrific force that the vibrations shivered the whole of the spout’s tremendous bowl.

Beside him, the fishcatcher clutched his arm. “Now, Eric,” he said, “final instructions before the fray. And listen carefully, for we’ve arrived amidst a storm.”

The old man’s face had turned as gray as the water around them, Eric saw. There was no sign of his usual teasing and good humor.

“It’s Twill, isn’t it? We’re coming home.”

“Aye, Twill. What else? Our marvelous coast.” The trace of a giggle flicked through his voice. Eric grabbed his shoulder.

“Tell me quickly,” he said. “Say what we need to do.”

Zeke Cantrip wet his lips and gazed for a moment at Gullstone. Then he spoke, low and fast.

“First, expect no help from the big fish above. They are as much at the mercy of Twill’s storms as you, and must guard themselves. A dwindling species they are, and know it all too well. Those who die above are replaced by those below, but in Underwhirl, as you have seen, nothing new is ever made. The cloudfish there are the last of the lot. Where they once rose in droves to our restless upper world, now they replace themselves frugally, one by one. So many in these later years have been killed.”

Over their heads, two giant waves collided and broke, sending strong ripples down the walls of the whirlpool.

“What else,” cried Eric. “Quick. Hurry!”

“Don’t try to hold the bird,” the fishcatcher went on. “He’s hurt already and would certainly be crushed by your arms when the big waves start. Let him go as he will, this time above all others. As for you, move with the swirl—don’t pit yourself against it. And if you make the ocean’s surface, howl and rage toward the sky.”

“Howl and rage!” said Eric. “But why? What shall I howl?”

“Anything!” shouted the fishcatcher. The current was beginning to carry them upward faster, and to drown out his voice. “Yell, scream, and shriek! The trick is to be heard, to show them where you are.”

“Who?” shouted Eric. “There’ll be no one out in this!” Despite the old man’s warning, he drew Gullstone against his chest.

The waves were turning fierce. Mr. Cantrip was rolled away from them. He was tossed and turned around like a twig in a gale, and sucked out of sight and thrown near them again. Gullstone screeched when he saw this, and beat his wings, breaking Eric’s grasp. Then, finding himself suddenly airborne, he veered toward the fishcatcher. He landed with a squawk on his shoulder and clung with all his strength.

“Away, you crazy bird. There’s no use staying with me!” the old man roared, trying to knock him off. “Save the boy, do you hear? Go and gather the crew. Fly off and bring them here. Fly, I say! Fly!”

“No, Gully! Come!” Eric cried in a panic. Even as he did, a wave bore down on them from above. Gullstone flapped weakly into the air as it broke over their heads. Eric was blinded by a tremendous gush of surf and felt himself thrown and twisted and dragged through the water. When he got his eyes open again, the bird was nowhere in sight and the fishcatcher had been cast a great distance away.

“Mr. Cantrip!” he choked out. The waves were driving them apart. “Zeke! Where’s Gully?”

In answer, over the crashing water, Eric heard a sound more terrifying than the roar of any storm. Faint it was at first, just an intermittent chuckle and hoot. But gradually the laughter broadened and grew continuous, and as the fit came full force upon the old man, he twisted and shrieked in the waves and seemed barely able to keep himself afloat. Finally, from far across the water, a voice rang out powerfully above the water and wind.

“Farewell!” it cried. “Till we meet again!” And then, from further away, “Keep your eye on the sky!”

After this, there were no more sounds, though Eric yelled repeatedly and begged for an answer. He was in grave danger, often so buried in the troughs of waves that he could not tell up from down. Whenever he could, he gave a shout in what he thought to be the skyward direction. But he was out of breath most of the time, always gasping for air before the next terrible wave.

“Rage!” the fìshcatcher had said. “Howl! Show them where you are!” But how can you rage when a sea rises against you? At such times, it is hard enough simply to stay afloat.

By now, Eric had come out on what he supposed must be the ocean’s surface. The air was so full of salt spray and the swells were so mountainous that at first he did not see how wide the sky had spread overhead. He was being pushed away from the whirlpool’s center, however, and the fury of the water was beginning to die down. Not that he was out of danger. His strength was failing, and his arms and legs had turned numb from the frigid water. He was more at risk than ever of sinking under the waves, and in another few minutes might well have given up and let himself go. But his blurry eyes spied something in the sky. It came through the gray storm clouds and raced toward him. A huge flapping bird it appeared to be at first. But as the creature approached, Eric saw that it was composed more of belly than wing and was accompanied by numbers of small winged figures that flew at its head and along its flanks.

Winged figures! Eric closed his eyes and looked again. Underwhirl’s weird sights had certainly rearranged his mind. They were plain and ordinary sea gulls, of course!

“Here! I’m here!” he tried to yell.

The formation passed over him and went on to circle the whirlpool’s center. Now Eric saw that the strange bellied creature was none other than a big net held aloft in the bills of at least a hundred gulls. It slapped and blew in the storm winds as it went over the spout.

“Help!” Eric cried, waving feebly. He felt comforted to know that Gullstone had fought through to Mr. Cantrip’s crew. The bird, at least, was safe on dry land. As for Eric, he was beginning to sink. His arms and legs were rebelling. They refused to move when he issued an order.

“Swim!” he commanded. They lay like logs in the water. “Thrash!” he cried. They settled lower and limper. It was as if he no longer had charge of his body, as if he were a captain doomed to go down with the ship. And he did go down! He had just slipped under the water when three scout gulls caught sight of him and alerted the net carriers with squawks.

In seconds, they were above him, dropping the net, scooping him up. Compared to a lampfish, he must have seemed featherlight. He came out of the water with a zip and a flash. And though, afterward, Eric tried to remember his remarkable trip to shore, and even imagined looking down gratefully at Twill’s foaming coast, in fact he saw nothing more that day than the inside of his own eyelids. He did not get six feet into the air before he passed dead out from exhaustion and fright.