PART OF MY BRAIN – the part that is responsible for the squeak – goes into overdrive. But I ignore it.
Violet has just disappeared underwater.
And she hasn’t come back up!
I heave a desperate gulp of stinking air into my lungs, race down the mound of wrack and rot, and throw myself into the water.
It’s so abysmally cold and dark, I wonder for a moment if I’ve died without noticing. But then I bob back up, and roll over. I reach down as far as I can, frantically swooshing my hand from side to side in the depths, and I find something. I don’t have time to think what it is, I just pull and pull, and watch as Violet bursts up through the surface, her face covered in seaweed and hair.
She gasps and coughs, and I try to swim with her, back to the corridor and to safety. But our clothes are too heavy with water, and the cold has its hand on my heart. I manage to shrug out of my coat and pull Violet out of hers, but we make no progress doing this, and it’s all I can do to help Violet up onto the buckled bulkhead in the centre of the pool.
I feel my foot wedge into a tight space deep underwater as I do this, and my trousers snag. I try to get up beside Violet, but it’s no good.
I’m stuck.
All around, lit by the magical light of the malamander egg, seawater is spraying into the cavern as the tide continues to rise. We have just minutes to either get out of the wreck or learn to breathe underwater.
But my leg is stuck fast.
So this is probably the worst time for what happens next to happen. But it happens anyway. With a great burst of foaming water the malamander surges up through the surface of the pool.
The monster is enormous, bigger even than I realized when it was charging us in the corridor. The spines on its back bristle and vibrate, and webbed ridges jut from its arms.
In its claws it is holding the broken body of Boathook Man.
The old sailor isn’t dead – the curse must still be at work – but he has clearly lost the fight with the monster. His haggard face is white and awful above his yellow beard, and he lies helpless and foggy in its scaly arms.
Sebastian Eels, holding the egg, looks at the malamander. His face breaks into a sneer.
The monster, seeing the egg glowing in the man’s hands, gives out a great, shrieking roar and drops Boathook Man. It rises up in the water, throwing its arms wide as it prepares to lunge.
So Sebastian Eels shoots it.
Simple as that.
He drops to his knee, braces his gun and releases one carefully aimed harpoon with a th-TOUM! of compressed air.
The malamander quivers all over, its lunge suddenly ended before it began. The harpoon has buried itself deep between two of the monster’s scales, where – now we look closely – a slim opening in its armour can be seen.
Inside the opening, something is pulsing: the creature’s heart.
The malamander gives another roar, weaker this time, so Sebastian Eels shoots again.
Th-TOUM!
Another harpoon, in exactly the same place.
Th-TOUM, th-TOUM, th-TOUM! as three more find their mark.
Then there’s a hiss of empty air, as the auto-reloading gun runs out of harpoons. A look of alarm spreads over the face of Sebastian Eels. But then he relaxes as he sees the malamander give a violent shudder.
Its arms fall, and it twists onto its back. The five steel shafts of the harpoons are clustered together in the gap in the monster’s scales.
Straight through its heart.
With a gurgling sigh, the malamander twitches one last time, and then goes still. It slips beneath the water and its lamp-like eyes go dark.
It’s dead.
“Not such a fearsome beast, after all,” says Sebastian Eels, standing and replacing the harpoon gun in its holster. “Once you know where to hit it. What a shame you can’t be here, Peter, to see this.”
And he turns the fiery crystal egg in his hands.
There’s movement in the water, as something rises up beside the corpse of the monster.
It’s Boathook Man.
He looks awful, his twisted body half submerged, his skin raked over with great gashes and slashes. Staring open-mouthed at the body of the malamander, he turns to Eels. “The egg…”
He reaches his arms like a beggar. “Your promise…” he croaks. “Set … me free!”
“Ah, my old friend,” says Eels. “I did indeed promise to free you from your curse. And you deserve it, I suppose. Even though it was I who destroyed the monster.”
“Set … me … FREE!”
Sebastian Eels holds the egg in his two hands. He murmurs to it in a voice too low for us to catch, and its light blazes. Mist boils again from the water all around, swirling and twisting. But instead of gathering around Sebastian Eels on the nest, it encircles Boathook Man in the eye of a storm.
Before our astonished eyes, we see Boathook Man lifted out of the water. His ruined form straightens, his wounds close up, his clothing mends. His beard shrinks back to a neat trim, and his face fills with colour. The boathook on the end of his right arm evaporates, and a new hand appears in its place, pink and perfect.
And now, where once had been a ghastly wreck of a human, a healthy and shipshape naval officer – in the prime of his Victorian life – is set down on a girder.
Boathook Man has gone, and in his place is Captain Kraken.
“It is a marvel!” declares the captain, gazing over his remade body. “My nightmare is ended.”
“Perhaps,” says Sebastian Eels. “But, I wonder, has mine begun?”
“What do you mean by that?” says Captain Kraken.
“Well, you wanted the egg for yourself once,” says Eels. “Maybe you will try to take it again now.”
“I paid the heaviest price for it,” the captain replies. “I lost everything – my ship, my fine men, even my family in the end.”
“With the egg,” Eels says, in a taunting voice, “you could wish it all back.”
“Perhaps, but the egg is not made for the likes of you or I,” says Captain Kraken. “I see that now. It will destroy anyone who tries to use it. I never want to see the damned thing again in my life.”
“Ah,” says Eels with a leering smile, “then your wish is my command.”
And he raises the egg, whispering to it.
Sea mist swirls again, and the water in the cavern starts to boil. But no, it’s not the water this time; it’s something in the water.
It’s the body of the malamander.
As we watch, the scaly corpse of the monster quivers and splits, and dozens of fleshy tendrils shoot up from it. They wrap themselves around the arms and legs of the astonished Captain Kraken, and begin to pulse and thicken, becoming tentacles.
“What are you doing?” cries the captain. “You promised —”
But a purple squid tentacle slaps across his mouth, and cuts off his words. The man struggles, but more and more tentacles are bursting from the sea now, wrapping him tightly, as the body of the malamander is transformed into a mass of writhing, quivering sea life.
“I think I liked you better with the hook,” says Sebastian Eels, his face alive with fascination as he watches his terrible creations. “Or shall we try something else? A crab claw, perhaps?”
And with his words, mist swirls around the captain’s new hand, which elongates and crusts into a blue and red crab pincer. At this, the captain begins to struggle frantically. With a huge effort, he manages to cut through one of the tentacles using his new claw.
Eels, maybe sensing some danger to himself in this terrible game, whispers urgently to the egg in his hands. Light pours from it as the magic responds.
Captain Kraken’s body trembles and ripples, then collapses into a mass of squid and jellyfish and sea slime. Now the water is filled with a riot of new sea life, splashing fins and writhing tentacles. Something like an arm, with something like a giant crab claw at the end of it, reaches feebly towards Eels for a moment, but then loses its form, tumbling into the water as sea urchins and starfish.
The light from the egg dims again, and the thrashing in the water dies down. The bodies of both the malamander and Captain Kraken are gone, transformed into countless sea creatures that swim away into the rising sea.
“The power of life and death.” Sebastian Eels gazes in triumph at the magical object in his hands. “My every wish made true.”
“Is there a P-p-plan B?” I stammer to Violet, my teeth hammering together with the cold as I cling to the last of the bulkhead. “Now would be a g-g-good time for a Plan B.”
But Violet isn’t there.
I look around groggily, this way and that. Violet has gone!
But then I spot her.
She is swimming towards Sebastian Eels.
