On their second dive, Pazel and Neeps kept each other in sight. They got much farther, too, for they swam for the wreck the instant they jumped. Pazel saw now that there were paths through the kelp forest: neat paths, almost like roads. In a flash of light he peered down one long avenue and thought he saw colonnades, and statues of men or animals, and moving shadows that were not cast by the kelp. But there was no time to linger. Greatly afraid, he made himself enter the wreck.
Inside was a terrifying chaos. The forces that had cracked the Lythra in two had also swept through her, blowing cannon through bulkheads, wrapping chains around masts, impaling skeletons on broken beams. There were skulls rolled into cabinets and wedged behind doors. There were skeletal hands in barrels, and clouds of silt, and an obscene fanged fish that lunged each time the darkness fell. Pazel struck at it desperately with his hook. How could anyone find a thing down there?
When the two boys again returned empty-handed, the Volpeks exploded. 'IF YOU DON'T FIND SOMETHING NEXT TIME, DON'T COME BACK AT ALL!'
Neeps kicked the water into a froth. 'You try it, you daft, ugly, bellyachin' baboons! Want to fight? Do you?'
Just then Marila surfaced beside them with a hideous gasp. 'Mintu… gone… he's gone!'
She was in agony; she had been under twice as long as the boys. They had to hold her head above water.
'Where did he go, Marila?' Pazel squeezed her arms. 'Tell us where!'
'The arch!'
'I saw it!' Neeps cried. 'That coral arch? Why the blazes did he go through there?'
Marila gasped and sobbed. 'Followed… couldn't find him… awful place-'
Her whole body began to convulse. More irritated than concerned, the Volpeks tossed her onto a bench. Pazel and Neeps looked at each other. There was nothing to say. They were not ready to dive, but they had to. No one else would even try to save Marila's brother.
Down they went for the third time. Pazel too had glimpsed an arch: an opening in a long, towering reef-wall, some distance from the Lythra. He couldn't imagine why Mintu would have passed through it. Had he glimpsed something beyond, a treasure he couldn't resist? Had he seen the Red Wolf?
Pazel arrived a few strokes ahead of Neeps. He saw now that the arch was actually quite deep-a tunnel, in fact, about twenty feet long. Barely a yard between the roof and the seabed. Not tempting in the least, but Neeps was poking him as if to say, Swim, or get out of the way! He swam.
It was worse than he feared. The tunnel floor bristled with sea urchins, black living pincushions whose spines burned like acid at the merest touch. There were also clots of translucent orange worms dangling from the roof, flexing sucker-like mouths. The only possible way through was the exact center, kicking fast lest one rise or sink, but at the same time keeping one's hands and feet very close. The orange worms writhed obscenely. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.
Yet somehow Pazel emerged unscathed. Beyond was a sandy clearing, a meadow in the kelp forest, broken here and there by red coral and towering rocks. There was no sign of Mintu.
Neeps emerged with pain in his eyes. Attached to his leg was a fat worm, already darkening with his blood. It took them several precious seconds to rip the creature loose, and a mouthful of Neeps' flesh went with it. Pazel looked at the wound, the suppressed horror in Neeps' face, the long cliff of coral stretching away left and right. This was madness. They had to go back right now, before their lungs burst and Neeps lost too much blood. Then Neeps went rigid. He grabbed Pazel's arm and spun him around.
Half a dozen sea-murths were swimming their way, faster than sharks. They were the strangest beings Pazel had ever seen. They looked like humans, girls in fact, but their limbs curved and coiled like no human limbs, and the sun struck rainbow colors where it touched their skin. Long, white hair streamed behind them, and their eyes were luminous silver. Their clothes seemed wraps of milky light.
In no time the boys were surrounded. The murth-girls had beautiful faces but very sharp teeth. Were they smiling? It appeared so, but did smiles mean friendship or menace to a sea-murth? In one sense it hardly mattered: they were out of air. They had failed Mintu, and would be lucky to escape with their lives. Pazel gestured at the tunnel: Now. Then a murth-girl touched his ankle, and the world changed.
A feeling of golden bliss ran up Pazel's leg. He could breathe! He knew it instantly, and without the least fear opened his mouth and filled his lungs with water. It was as effortless as breathing air. One of the creatures must have touched Neeps as well, for there he was, mouth open, grinning like a perfect fool. Their hearing had changed, too: they could hear water rushing through crevasses, the squeak of eels, the growl of a passing drumfish. Above all, like a silver music, they heard the laughter of the murth-girls.
'Look at them smile! They had even less air than the first ones!'
'I like these better. Almost grown, they are.'
'Which one for a husband, Vvsttrk? He he he!'
'That one is short enough for you. But the dark one likes you better, I think.'
The boys trod water, back to back, as the murth-girls flitted about them in circles. Neeps put out his hands, laughing as the last bubbles of air escaped his mouth. Then a girl stopped face to face with Pazel. She had a teasing smile, and hundreds of tiny kulri shells braided into her hair. One delicate hand touched his face, and he knew somehow (the gold was rushing through him again) that it was the same girl who had touched him before.
'Mine,' she said, and her sisters laughed.
Then Pazel said, 'Have you seen a small boy?'
She was gone. They were all gone. Pazel had barely caught the murth-girls' looks of terror before they vanished into the kelp.
Neeps turned to him angrily. 'What did you do that for?'
'Me?'
'They just laid the sweetest magic I ever heard of on us, and you scare 'em off? What rude thing did you say?'
'Nothing! Didn't you hear me?'
'Sure,' said Neeps. 'I heard, Skrreee-glik-glik-scrreeeeeeee!'
'What?'
'Come off it, Pazel. You were speaking Murthish.'
Pazel covered his ears. Oh no.
There it was: the purring. His Gift had started up again, and taught him their murth-tongue. But how long ago had it begun? All these days of noisy imprisonment, buzzing insects, storms. What if these were his last few hours-or even minutes?
'Neeps,' he said, 'you've got to listen carefully. I told you how my Gift works? How it always ends in a fit, where I can't talk or understand anyone, and those horrible noises blast me? Well, it's going to happen again.'
'No worries,' said Neeps, who had calmed down already. 'I'll take care of you.'
'Don't let the Volpeks scream in my face! Tell 'em it's something natural, like the hiccups.'
'The hiccups. Have you seen yourself, mate? Not even those boneheads will-Pazel, look!'
Neeps pointed into the gloom. About sixty yards away, against a great black rock, stood the other half of the Lythra. Her shattered beam-ends anchored her in the sand. Her figurehead, an angel, spread her barnacled wings and gazed forlornly at the sky. A row of gaping cannon-shot wounds ran down her hull, straight as punches in a leather belt, as though she had been fired on at point-blank range.
And gazing from one of these holes was a young boy.
'Mintu!'
He waved, and his voice carried faintly to them. 'Pazel! Neeps! They changed you, too?'
A murth-girl's shy, mischievous face appeared behind him.
Mintu laughed. 'She's my friend!'
The boys were so delighted to find him alive that they forgot all about Pazel's impending mind-fit. Swimming toward the wreck, they heard the musical laughter again from inside the kelp forest. When the next spell of darkness came they saw the murth-girls glowing faintly in the weeds.
More laughter above. There were the other missing boys: dangling from the Lythra's main topgallant, holding a slender murth by hands and feet so that she swayed between them like a hammock.
'Why are there only girls?' Neeps asked. 'Not that I'm complaining, mind.'
