“VIOLET,” I SAY, hoping my voice sounds like I won’t take any nonsense, though I know it actually sounds desperate and squeaky. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Herbie,” says Violet. “But this might be my one chance. This might be the only way I can find out what happened to my parents. My only way to find them.”
“Violet, the tide is coming in,” I say. “There is an angry man with a harpoon gun somewhere. There’s another man with a boathook for a hand, and somewhere, in case you’ve forgotten, is an enraged sea monster who cares very much about that thing in your hands. Now, I’m sorry about your parents, I really am, but if we don’t get out of here now, we’ll end up the same as them: gone, never to be found again.”
“No!” Violet cries. “Not never to be found again!” And she stares into the crystalline surface of the egg.
“Show me,” she murmurs, as if answering a question only she can hear. “Show me what happened.”
The sea mist in the cavern begins to move, swirling towards Violet. More and more of it boils from the water as it gathers into a vortex that encircles the nest, moving faster and faster. The egg, still in Violet’s hands, glows brighter than ever.
I want to tell Violet to stop. I want to knock the blasted egg out of her hands, and bring her safely back to my little cellar in the hotel, with my leftovers lunches and my cosy fire. But the sea mist is already like a tornado around us. All I can do is grab my cap with both hands and wonder what will happen next.
I don’t have long to find out.
“Show me!” Violet is saying, louder now. “My parents. Show me!”
The mist twists and a tunnel forms, directly in front of us. An eerie silence falls as the tunnel widens. Then, through the tunnel, we can see an image – the beach at Eerie-on-Sea – bathed in moonlight.
I’m amazed to see such a thing, but part of my mind is still logical enough to wonder why we’re being shown the beach at all. We could just go outside to look at that. But then I realize it’s not where we’re being shown that matters, it’s when.
A man and a woman are walking up the beach. Behind them, I see the silhouette of the battleship Leviathan. It’s midwinter’s night, twelve years ago. It’s the night Violet’s parents disappeared.
The man is wearing a tweed jacket, which is soaking wet, a tie, spattered with sand, and rubber boots. He’s also wearing a smile.
It’s Peter Parma.
“Dad!” Violet gasps.
The woman beside him is wearing rubber boots too, and a long waterproof coat. She also seems happy, despite being as wet through as her companion.
“Mum!”
But it’s clear they can’t hear Violet. Everything we can see through the tunnel is a replay of past events.
“It’s wonderful,” says the woman. “A real live malamander! A completely new species, never before described by science.”
“Yes, Bron,” says the man, putting his arm around her. “But you realize, of course, that you can never tell anyone. So you can forget naming it after yourself.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it!” laughs the woman. “Just knowing it’s there – that such a thing is possible – that’s enough for me. And as for the egg…!”
“The egg,” says the man quickly, “has to be forgotten completely. No one should get hold of something like that. The malamander lays it for someone else, for its mate. Who or what that mate is we may never discover, but no one must ever try to steal the egg again.”
“But is it completely safe?” says the woman. “With that creep Sebastian Eels after it?”
“Eels understands less than he thinks,” says the man, with a snort. “He knows it only lays the egg on one night of the year. And he knows it devours it the next morning. But he’s an arrogant fool. I don’t think he even realizes the creature hibernates all summer.”
The woman shakes her head.
“Technically, it doesn’t,” she says. “To ‘hibernate’ means to sleep through the winter. The malamander sleeps through the summer, so the word you’re looking for is ‘aestivate’.”
“Don’t get sciency with me, Bron.” The man grins. “I’m immune.”
“No, Peter, you aren’t.” The woman smiles back. “And you can’t tell anyone, either, don’t forget. That means you can’t publish your book. You’ve done all that work for nothing.”
The man looks suddenly downcast. “You’re right,” he says. “I can’t.”
“You give away too much. You even describe how to kill the malamander! Imagine if Eels ever got hold of that information.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” The man perks up. “I’ve hidden that particular page where he’ll never find it. And as for the rest, well, I’ll lock the manuscript away when we get home. Then, one day, I’ll let Violet read it. When she’s all grown up.”
“We should get back,” says the woman then. “I feel bad for leaving Violet with that friend of yours.”
“We could hardly have taken a baby into the wreck of a battleship.”
“No, but I don’t really know your friend.”
“Don’t worry,” says the man. “I’ve known Wendy for years. She’s fine.”
“OK, but –” the woman’s voice suddenly takes on a tinge of anxiety – “shouldn’t we be able to see her by now? Didn’t she say she’d wait over there on the harbour wall?”
The man takes a torch from his pocket and flashes it over to some place off to the side. Some place Violet and I can’t see through this tunnel into the past.
“What woman?” Violet says, turning to me. “What woman are they talking about, Herbie? Who is Wendy?”
But all I can do is give a shrug to end all shrugs, and look back at the scene before us. The scene where now Violet’s parents are running.
“Wendy!” Peter Parma is calling. “Wendy, where are you?”
And then the scene switches to the harbour wall, where Vi’s parents are staring down into the water below. Beside them are two pairs of shoes, but it’s clear they have more urgent things to think about than changing out of their boots.
“Where is she, Peter? Where’s our daughter?”
Peter Parma’s face takes on a sudden expression of fear. “Sebastian!” he says. “He said I’d pay a heavy price if I kept my discoveries from him. But surely he wouldn’t…”
“What do you mean?” Violet’s mum looks frantic. “He threatened you?”
“Wasn’t there another boat?” says Peter, pointing down the quayside to the water. A single motor launch is bobbing there. “There were two when we got here.”
Just then, far out on the horizon, a motor coughs into life. A small fishing boat is just visible in a bank of approaching mist. It turns and heads out into the open ocean.
“Oh, dear gods!” Violet’s dad gasps. “Sebastian, what have you done?”
Then Violet’s parents are running.
“No!” says Violet, still clutching the egg and shaking her head. “This isn’t right. I wasn’t taken away in a boat. I was left in the hotel.”
Now, through the tunnel, we see Violet’s parents running down steps in the harbour wall, to the motor launch. In a moment, the engine roars and the launch – with Violet’s parents aboard – speeds off to where the fishing boat has already vanished from view.
“Mum, Dad!” Violet calls, tears streaming down her face. “You’ve misunderstood. I’m right here! Don’t go!”
But both boats have disappeared in the bank of fog.
The scene fades as the tunnel collapses.
The mist begins to dissipate.
“No!” Violet cries. “This is wrong. I don’t want to see the past. I want to see now. I want to see where my parents are NOW!” And her face twists in fury as she grips the egg even tighter.
The mist roars back around us, angry red now, whipping Violet’s hair, and nearly throwing me off my feet. A new tunnel starts to form.
I see something in the tunnel, something like trees – trees with giant leaves. There are two figures walking, stumbling, searching. The image begins to grow clearer…
But it doesn’t get the chance.
The tunnel of mist breaks apart as Sebastian Eels bursts through it, his chain mail gleaming as seawater pours off it, his helmet lights blazing. He grabs the egg with one hand and punches Violet in the face with the other. Violet falls back, dazed, and slides down the slope of the malamander’s nest.
She vanishes beneath the water.
And now Eels has the egg, his jubilant face bathed in its fiery red glow.
