The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton's Lair Page 13

  ’Twas Friday morn when we set sail

  And we had not got far from land

  When the captain he spied a lovely mermaid

  With a comb and a glass in her hand

  Oh, the ocean waves may roll

  And the stormy winds may blow

  While we poor sailors go skipping aloft

  And the landlubbers lay down below, below, below

  And the landlubbers lay down below

  “You the boys going out to King Triton’s Lair?”

  We jumped.

  An elderly man was sitting outside one of the little shacks by the harbor, working away on a big fishing net made from small sticks and rope. “You the boys?” he asked again.

  He was very old, his skin wrinkled and folded like old cloth. His eyes were watery and unfocused as he looked up at us.

  “We’re on an expedition from the Academy for the Exploratory Sciences,” I said.

  “Idiots,” he replied.

  Zander and I glanced at each other. “What do you know about King Triton’s Lair?” I said.

  “I know a lot.” He snorted and went back to his fishing nets. “Why do you want to go there?”

  I decided we didn’t have anything to lose by being halfway honest with him. “We’re hoping we can find the shipwrecks and maybe the oil,” I told him.

  “That’s why I wanted to go, too,” he said. “And I almost died. The storm came out of nowhere. I barely knew it had started to blow before the ship went under. My cousin who was with me that day, he died in the sea.”

  I took out a map of St. Beatrice and the surrounding ocean that I’d scrawled on a scrap of paper. “Where was your boat when you sank?” I asked him. “Can you show me?”

  He looked up at me again and pointed to a place on the map and I marked it down. I could figure out the coordinates later, but it looked to be near to the location of King Triton’s Lair on Dad’s map.

  I thanked him.

  At first I thought he wasn’t going to say anything else, but as we started to walk away, he muttered, “You won’t find the oil. It’s just a story. But King Triton’s Lair is out there, the weather is out there. There is a song that the fishermen sing that goes:

  Don’t go down below, boys

  Don’t go down below

  For if you go with Triton

  You’ll never come up no more

  I turned back and met his eyes. “If you try to go there, you are as stupid as all the rest.” He was finished. He resumed his work on the net.

  Zander and I were silent as we approached a little stall selling fried fish and Ribby Fruit cake. We bought enough for everyone and brought it back to the Fair Beatrice.

  Coleman met us at the end of the day, and after we’d said goodbye to the others, we told him and M.K. about our conversation with the old man.

  “That’s Papa Madigan who you met. And he’s right, you know,” Coleman said. “I’ve been thinking about it all day, and this is crazy. I don’t know why the Academy is letting you do this. I don’t know why Leo Nackley is letting his son risk his neck. And I don’t know why I’m helping you. I agreed to Raleigh’s request to have you stay with me because of your father, but if something happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.” Suddenly, he looked over his shoulder and said, “Quick, follow me.”

  He steered us into an alley. We followed his lead and pressed ourselves against the wall. Coleman looked out, but no one walked by. “Okay,” he said. “This way.” We ran down to the end of the alley, took a quick left onto a busy street, and then ducked into another alley. “Out here and . . .” he stopped and looked back down the alley. “Okay, I think we lost him.”

  “Lost who?” I turned around but didn’t see anyone.

  “The man who was following us,” Coleman said. ”I think he followed us the day you arrived too, but I can’t be sure.”

  “But who is he?”

  “A BNDL agent, a spy—who knows?”

  “What kind of spy?” Zander said.

  “St. Beatrice is full of spies,” Coleman answered. “Indorustans, government spies. Pirates who want to know the details of Ribby Fruit shipments so they can seize them. Could be anyone. It could be me they’re following, but I think someone is interested enough in your expedition to be following you. I’ll say it again: I think you’re crazy. Why did they put you on Lazlo’s expedition, anyway? He doesn’t trust you. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why would they follow you?” Coleman was just a farmer. A fairly successful farmer who had spent two years at the Academy for the Exploratory Sciences, but still.

  “I am involved in certain political activities that make me a target,” Coleman said. “There are good people on this island who don’t like the things being done in their name.” Something about his face stopped me from asking any other questions.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  We spent the next two days working on the boat and getting ready to go. The night before our departure, Coleman told us to be home early for dinner because he had a surprise for us.

  “I bet it’s another Ribby Fruit cake,” M.K. said as we made our way through the bustling marketplace. “I love how it’s all crisp on the outside and then the fruit stays kind of gooey, like jam. Mmmm.”

  “Maybe he’ll send some Ribby Fruit cakes with us for the expedition,” Zander said. “After seeing all that salt cod and rice in the hold today, I’m starting to think we shouldn’t ever leave Coleman’s.”

  We found him in the kitchen back at his house.

  “Now for my surprise,” Coleman said, smiling mischeviously. “I’m actually quite amazed that we managed to pull it together. But . . . well, you’ll see. Follow me.”

  We didn’t so much follow him out to the terrace as push and run past him when we saw the lone figure standing at the far end of the railing, looking out over the water.

  She turned around.

  “You didn’t think I was going to let you have all the fun while I rotted away with the Snow Deer, did you?” Sukey grinned and wrapped M.K. in a huge hug. “You guys think Lazlo will let me tag along?”

  Twenty-five

  “We only heard five days ago,” she explained, once we were sitting at Coleman’s big dining room table eating the fish he’d grilled out on the terrace. “We were sitting in Reykjavik, waiting to go get the gliders, when we heard that a volcano along our route was erupting and sending all this ash into the sky. They decided it was too dangerous to go ahead, so they assigned the rest of us to other expeditions. I got Delilah to pull a few strings with Maggie so I could be on this one. I caught a ride on a cargo airship.”

  I’d forgotten how her eyes crinkled up at the edges when she smiled. “I just can’t believe you’re here,” I said.

  She grinned. “Me either.”

  We sat down to dinner and updated her on everything we’d learned.

  “I’m with Papa Madigan,” Coleman told her. “I think it’s crazy, but I know you Explorers. You won’t listen to anyone. It’s dangerous out there. There’s the weather and then there are the pirates.”

  “I’m not worried about pirates,” Zander said. “You said all they want is Ribby Fruit.”

  “If they’ve heard that you’re going looking for something that’s worth money, they may decide it’s worthwhile to follow along, just in case. There have been rumors about the government wanting to find oil out here. The pirates would like to find it first and charge the government a nice price to get it out.”

  “How would they get to the shipwrecks or the oil anyway?” Sukey asked Coleman. “They don’t have diving equipment. They don’t have M.K.”

  “They have their ways. Those Neos—” He smiled at Sukey. “They may have technology we don’t know about.” He leaned back in his chair and said, “Do you know what else the fishermen down at the harbor say about the ships that disappeared in King Triton’s Lair?”

  We watched Coleman’s face for the answer.

 
“They say that they were snatched from the sea and taken up into the sky by The Others. That anyone seeking the ships won’t find them because they’re no longer . . .” Coleman put his hands together and leaned forward, widening his eyes and lowering his voice. “On Earth.”

  “What, like extraterrestrials?” I asked. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Maybe the extraterrestrials will take the Nackleys away,” M.K. said. “That would be nice.”

  I laughed. “Coleman, why did Leo Nackley hate Dad so much?” I asked him.

  “Leo always wanted to be the best at everything. The problem was, your dad was always the best. He was the first at everything he tried. Leo hated him for that. But . . .” He hesitated.

  “But what?”

  “Well, there was always something mysterious about your dad. He would disappear at night sometimes, though he only got caught slipping back into the boys’ cabins once that I can remember. He was good.” He smiled. “I think he was meeting his girlfriend. I considered your father a great friend, but he did like his secrets. I think it drove Leo crazy that he could never figure out what your dad was up to. They were friends once too, but then . . . I never understood it, but then one day they were enemies.”

  We were all quiet. We could hear the water lap at the shore below us through the open terrace doors.

  Pucci had been drowsing out in the evening air and suddenly he squawked. “Someone there! Someone there!” We rushed out on to the terrace just in time to see a black-suited figure vaulting over the edge of the balcony.

  “Stop right there!” Coleman called out, but the figure was gone.

  “Who was that?” Sukey asked.

  “Who knows,” Coleman said. “A spy, an agent, a pirate. Whoever it was, he was standing right here listening to us. But let’s not talk about such things on your last night. Who wants some more Ribby Fruit cake?”

  “You don’t really believe any of that stuff Coleman was saying about extraterrestrials, do you?” Sukey asked me later that night. M.K. was inside watching Coleman and Zander play chess. I’d come out to look at the night sky and Sukey had followed me, bringing one of Coleman’s little carved shell whistles with her. As she tried playing a melody, the notes skipped across the water, which reflected a sky full of stars. There was a nearly full moon, and its image broke apart in the water and danced across the waves. I felt happier than I had felt in a long time.

  “No,” I said. “Of course not. I don’t know what’s out there, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t extraterrestrials. What I am sure of is that my dad wanted us to come here.”

  “So he can leave you another map?” Sukey asked.

  “Maybe.”

  She played a quick little “What Will We Do With the Drunken Sailor” on the whistle.

  “You’re good at that,” I said. “I had no idea you were so musical.”

  “Delilah made me take Deloian flute lessons when I was ten. I didn’t practice enough, but I wasn’t bad. I can still pick out a tune or two.”

  She played a few more little songs I didn’t recognize, and then we just stood there in comfortable silence, looking out over the water.

  “I don’t think Zander understands,” I said after a few minutes. “We have to do it. We just have to. It’s going to be really hard with Lazlo watching our every move, but we need to do everything we can. At least we’ll be rid of his father.”

  The side of Sukey’s face shone in the candlelight through the windows and I watched her profile, the now-familiar shape of her nose and cheekbones, the curve of her neck. “I never met your dad, Kit, but there must be a reason he’s doing this, that he’s leading you to whatever it is,” she said.

  “I wish he’d told us what it is.”

  “No, I mean you, Kit,” she said softly. “I think he’s trying to lead you somewhere.”

  I started to tell her about what the Explorer had said, but for some reason I stopped. I watched her fingers drum out a little rhythm on the railing, and remembered what it had felt like to hold her hand, that cold night in Arizona.

  Without really thinking about it, I reached out for her. But she was already stepping away from the railing, and I was left standing there with my hand out as though I was waiting for someone to walk up and shake it. Sukey yawned. “We have to be up early,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Okay, goodnight.”

  I stood there for a long time after she left, listening to the tiny splashes of fish jumping out in the silvery ocean, the words I hadn’t said stuffed uncomfortably in my mouth.

  Twenty-six

  By noon the next day, we were ready to go. Coleman said he’d see us off down at the harbor. The mood was tense and silent as we passed the marketplace. I looked behind me and caught sight of a black-suited agent following us at a distance. I nodded toward him and Coleman frowned.

  “I wish you weren’t going. If anything happens to you . . .” Coleman said.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ve planned well. We have an excellent boat, Joyce is about the best captain we could ask for, and we’re not going to do anything stupid. If it even starts to get rough, I’m sure we’ll head for safer waters. Mr. Wooley won’t let us get hurt.”

  “I know, I know.” But he still looked worried.

  We had almost passed the market when an old woman, walking the opposite direction and carrying a basket of Ribby Fruit on her head, knocked into me, hard. Both of us fell to the ground, and as I reached out to help her up, she grasped my forearm and leaned in, whispering, “Saylor’s Spice Stall. North end of the market. Now.”

  Then she smiled apologetically, collected her Ribby Fruit, and went on her way.

  “You okay, Kit?” Coleman asked.

  “Yes, fine,” I said. “But I just thought of something I have to get from the market. I’ll meet you at the boat.”

  “What is it?” Coleman looked confused.

  Zander and M.K. were up ahead, but Sukey was standing next to me and I whispered in her ear, “The Explorer. He wants to see me. Now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Bewildered, she nodded, then mouthed, “Be careful.”

  I took off through the nearest alleyway. I was pretty sure that I could get to the market through one of the small alleys that ran behind the big houses lining the street. I ducked through, then stopped, pressing myself to the wall, to see if the agent was still following me.

  It took a couple of minutes, but sure enough, two black-suited agents came slowly past my hiding place. I pressed myself into the wall and prayed they didn’t come down the alley. I counted to sixty before peeling myself away from the wall and running further along. I turned right, then left, following the sounds of the voices, and pretty soon I was in the marketplace. People crowded around me, laughing and talking and singing. I could smell rotting fruit and spices and flowers from the stalls. I went along as quickly as I could in the thick mass of people, looking for Saylor’s Spices, and finally found it next to a fruit stand at the far end of the row of stalls. I assumed the Explorer would meet me there, so I pretended to browse the packets of red and golden powders stacked along the table and was surprised when the scarf-wrapped old woman standing behind the counter lifted her eyes and said, in the Explorer’s voice, “They followed you. We don’t have much time.”

  “I know,” I said, barely moving my lips as I looked at the spices, mother-of-pearl whistles, and little trinkets on the table.

  “I wanted to tell you good luck,” he mumbled, adjusting the scarves wrapped around his head and busying himself straightening up the piles of spices and things while I pretended to consider the little packets. “Are you ready? Do you think you can do it? Do you think you can get away?”

  “I don’t know. Lazlo will be the problem, but with the four of us, I think we can figure something out.”

  “I heard a rumor that they’ve got someone inside the expedition, to keep an eye on you and your brother and sister. Lately, I’ve been
wondering about . . . well, watch Kemal Asker carefully. And BNDL may not be content with a spy. They may send someone to follow you.”

  “Kemal?” He nodded. I searched the market for agents, and then I met his eyes. They were pale, blue, watchful. “I’m worried,” I said. “Everyone keeps saying how dangerous it is.”

  “I guess we just have to have faith. In your father. That reminds me. Here’s something for you to take with you. A good luck charm, I guess. Don’t lose it. It was Alex’s. He asked me to give it to you. If you got this far.” He took a beautiful mother-of-pearl whistle, carved into the shape of a sea turtle, down from a nail on the wall. I felt the cold metal of his clockwork hand as he handed it over. I could hear it click and whir faintly as it moved. The whistle was bigger and more beautiful than the ones I’d seen at Coleman’s. I hung it around my neck and tucked it beneath my shirt. He looked up quickly. “There they are. Get down to the boat. Now. This is goodbye for a little while, I think.” He pulled the scarf up over his face and turned away. “Go. Good luck.”

  On my way back to the water, I took the whistle out and held it, rubbing my thumb over the carved designs, feeling the cool smoothness of the ocean. It felt heavier than the ones at Coleman’s house and the surface was soft and dense, like soap. I tried it out, blowing a single, clear note as I went.

  I reached the harbor to find everyone standing around on the dock. “Sorry,” I panted. “She spilled Ribby Fruit juice all over me and I had to go clean up.”

  I scanned the group, confused. “Where’s Mr. Wooley?”

  M.K. hoisted her backpack onto one shoulder and met my eyes. “He isn’t coming. He’s too sick, and he said it wouldn’t be safe for him to be in charge when he can’t stand to be up on deck.”