Chapter Three
Eyes
Though Sariah had never been to the beach, Father had taken his brood to the lake quite often when he had a day off from sums and figures and dividends. Mother would walk around with a parasol and the youngest children attached to her, while Father took the oldest ones out to the middle of the lake and swam with them. Sariah had many fond memories of floating on her back, staring up at the sun, or splashing about with Frances, Lizzie, and Father.
There was only one problem: Sariah realized a bit too late that swimming in a lake and an ocean were a bit different. For one thing, the waves were unforgiving. They crashed over her and threatened to yank her all the way down to her bottom. It was a good thing that Nanny Eleanor had knotted Sariah’s skirts together, because if she hadn’t, Sariah could only imagine them getting tangled about her. She’d drown for sure.
One brutal wave brought Sariah down until her feet hit the bottom of the ground and she almost tumbled head over heels. She spun around and kicked once on the bottom—but her foot struck something hard, probably a rock. Sariah wanted to yelp, but some modicum of self-preservation held fast to her remaining air and kept her mouth shut. The murky water swirled around her—she opened her eyes against the sting of the saltwater—her lungs burned—she could almost see the top, though—
“Hunhhhh!” Sariah gasped as she surfaced. This was followed by a cough and a long spluttering as she tried to expectorate everything she’d inhaled. A salty taste lingered in her mouth and almost made her tongue seem to swell. Sariah spat again and ran the back of her hand along her mouth, but there wasn’t much good that could do. Every part of her was soaked and salty.
Another wave pushed her further along, though this one was gentler than the one that had nearly killed her. It placed her just one breaststroke away from the object of Sariah’s search. Before, it had been a mystery, an enigma, but now, it seemed to be her saving grace. She could hold onto it, rest, recuperate. Maybe even scream for Nanny Eleanor, although Sariah would be loath to do so. If Mother or Father found Sariah in such a compromising position, they’d ban all fun and games and send her to her bed.
“Your lungs,” Mother would declare in the middle of her fit. “You could have died! And who knows what damage you did to yourself—”
Sariah told the Mother inside her head to be quiet. They were in enough trouble without worrying about the ramifications of inhaling saltwater on her delicate lungs.
Sariah gave a final kick and winced at the stinging in her foot. She was fairly certain there would be blood, and, beyond that, she remembered what Father had taught her once about adrenaline. How sometimes it kept the body from feeling pain in moments of peril.
Yes, Sariah was sure that once her adrenaline wore off, she’d experience the full force of her injury.
But the door. Until the moment Sariah was floored by the pain, she was free to investigate it.
Her first observation was that it wasn’t, in the strictest sense, a door. It was more like a cage, though there was some kind of protection on it—plastic, maybe?—that covered it. With her uninjured foot, she scrounged about until she finally found a foothold. She could rest her foot on one of the thin bars that criss-crossed underneath the covering. In fact...Sariah stuck out her tongue in concentration and struggled for a moment until the covering tore just enough for her to stick all her toes in and wrap them around the bar. She was secure.
Now for some handholds.
She shoved her fingers through and broke through the initial resistance until she could wrap her fingers around the bars. Only once she was secure did she take a deep breath and let herself relax. Only one foot, her injured one, floated free. Though the waves beat against her, she was able to rest her head on the cage and close her eyes.
She had survived.
But why was this cage here? There was no way this was natural. Someone must have put it in here. But Nanny Eleanor hadn’t been here for years. Sariah didn’t know where the closest neighbor was…
She heard a faint cry.
It was almost imperceptible over the echoing of the waves, but at the same time, it was unmistakable. Maybe someone had always been crying, but she’d been too obsessed with her own safety to listen.
Sariah withdrew the fingers on her right hand and tore the cover a bit more. She could do that easily by just wiggling her index finger around until there was a hole wide enough to see through. Maybe it was just her imagination—some animal, or maybe just even an odd echo. But it wouldn’t hurt to check.
After all, pirates were brave. And life-or-death situations didn’t dampen their courage.
Sariah positioned her eye through the hole like she was looking through a spyglass.
And there, on the other side, was an eye looking right back at her.
Sariah gave a squeak and almost lost her hold, but a wave pounded her back and pushed her further against her little cage, like a monkey clinging to a very tiny branch. The force of the blow made her squeeze her eyes shut, and by the time she could see again, the other person had vacated her little peephole.
“Hello?” she whispered. “Are you there?”
She wasn’t sure what else to say, even if she was sure that wasn’t the right thing. Of course someone—or something, to be fair—was there. This was a cage. An animal was her most benign guess...but animals didn’t typically cry like she’d heard.
Another wave crested over her. It swept over the entirety of the cage and made it rattle, like the animal on the inside was trying to get out. But that was a lie, because whatever was inside was actually whimpering. Sariah could hear again once she banged her ears a few times to loosen the water there.
She peeked in again and saw the figure cowering in the corner. There was lots of skin—
A little naked boy. That’s what she saw inside the cage.
“Boy!” She attempted to widen the hole so that she could get her entire hand into there. She wasn’t sure what she would do then, but that was the first step. “Boy, are you okay?”
Wet, brown eyes looked up at her from underneath dark lashes. “No,” he bleated. “Of course not.”
“I suppose that was a rather uninspired question.”
Sariah blew a limp piece of bang from her forehead, but it was so damp that it refused to budge. It was in moments like that when she could remember Lizzie’s teasing words: there are no uninspired questions, Sariah. Only questions that you haven’t thought long enough about yourself.
Sariah made a list of her next questions: are you okay? Obviously not. He was crying and in a cage. Are you hurt? Possibly, which would be why he was crying, but there was no point in learning that until she could get him out of his prison. No other questions seemed as pertinent as his escape, save one:
“How did you get in there?”
“I swam in. I didn’t see the cage and the door was open. Then it slammed shut once I was in here. It’s some kind of contraption—I don’t know how it works.” The poor thing gave a few more sniffles as he choked on his own tears.
Another question: why was he naked? But the water was up so high inside the cage that Sariah’s initial assumption might be wrong. His chest was certainly naked, but she’d heard of boys that went swimming like that. Perhaps he had on swim trunks that she just couldn’t see.
“Well, we’ll get you out of here. Don’t laugh, but—I was playing pirates when I came in here. My sister Frances says sometimes you need to pretend things to give yourself strength, and…” Sariah sucked in a breath before she was doused by another wave. She hacked a few times before she was able to find her voice again. “...I think I’m going to need the courage that being a pirate brings.”
The boy had said he’d swam in, which indicated that there must be some kind of a hidden entrance. It had fallen behind him, and it must have locked—though Sariah wanted to be sure of that herself before assuming a panicked boy was smart enough to just lift a gate. She took a deep breath and, clinging to the metal bars, lowered herself down.
She could see the gate once she was under the water. It wasn’t much of a surprise that the boy hadn’t seen what he was swimming into. It was covered with seaweed and crammed behind some rocks that hid the fact that it wasn’t natural. It was too clever, really. Whoever had put it there was trying to disguise it.
But why? That was a question Sariah couldn’t rightly wheedle out on her own. It could be a fisherman or someone hunting some larger fish or mammal. She tugged on the closed grate and found it lodged tight.
There would be no rescuing the captive that way.
Sariah scurried back up and took a deep breath once she surfaced. She rested her forehead against the bar for a moment. What would Lizzie do? No—that wasn’t helpful. Lizzie gave very good advice, but, as far as Sariah knew, her sister had never been in a situation like this. There was no use trying to figure out what Lizzie would say. Sariah needed to figure out what she was going to say.
Go to the top!
That was it. If there was no way from the bottom, maybe there would be something from the top.
Sariah finished the short climb—just two more foothold shifts until she had made it all the way up the top. Except for a few anomalies, now the waves couldn’t reach her, though they still sprayed her from time to time. And from either side, Sariah could climb up onto a little rock ledge to rest on. Behind the cage was another grotto as well. Who knew where the cave descended to—an underground chamber, filled with skeletons? The last resting place of the treasure of Davy Jones himself?
But to get to the treasure, Sariah would need her—her new guide. One of Davy Jones’ prisoners, locked up in a heinous cage.
She gulped as she stood up quivering, wet legs. Yes. That would do it. She would save the captive and make him her first mate.
But the top provided no clues at how to get him out. The metal bars were still as numerous as they were on the sides, and even if Sariah could break the canopy, no one could squeeze through their little gaps.
She would just have to think of an upside-down solution: a colloquialism coined by Frances when the sisters needed a unique way of solving—
An upside-down solution!
“That’s it! I’ll get you out!” Sariah cried. She dropped down to her knees. “We’ll wobble this cage until it tips over. Then you’ll be free to swim out again!”
The boy raised his wet face and swiped at what could either be droplets of ocean water or tears on his cheeks. “You think it’ll work?”
“Who knows until we find out?” Sariah glanced at the water on the other side of the cage. It looked deep, and so long as she didn’t hit her head on a rock…
“Move all the way to the back and start pushing with all your might!”
Sariah moved so that she was standing on her edge. All her weight was here, on this side.
“One...two...three...push!”
As her newfound friend pushed, Sariah jumped. She nearly lost her balance and swung her arms upon her landing as she tottered over the precipice. The whole cage had shifted and left the ground, but it had promptly smacked back down.
At least there was promise to her little venture.
And pirates weren’t scared of anything.
Jump. Push. Jump. Push. The two continued in tandem until, after the fifth attempt, the whole cage gave way.
Sariah shrieked as everything toppled over. She splashed into the stagnant ocean water on the other side and sank to the bottom. It wasn’t very deep, and she was able to pop back up before she worried about drowning. And she hadn’t hit her head, which was another positive.
Instead, she surfaced, a victory cry already on her lips. “We did it! We did it!”
She scampered over the fallen enemy and—
And gasped.
“You—you’re—” she stammered.
The boy lay in the waves, free at last, but his bottom lip still hadn’t quit quivering.
“Thank you,” he whimpered, but Sariah missed his gratitude in her own incredulousness.
Her mouth wide open, she pointed at something red that peeked out of the water. There was no pretend: no more pirates, no more imagination. The thing in front of her was as real; at least, as far as she could comprehend it.
“You’re a mermaid,” she breathed.
“Merman,” the boy squeaked.
His crimson tail flicked once above the water as Sariah did an awfully un-pirate-like thing and fainted dead-away.
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