Conundrum

bodies were still there, but Conundrum had no desire to see them. He turned away and looked up for some sign of the Indestructible.

: At last he found it, hardly visible at all in the distance, a dark shadow against the darker blue of the sea. Almost he thought he could discern a tiny shadow slowly rising toward it, and he imagined that this was Razmous or the chief being hauled aboard. He hoped that Sir Grumdish too had made it safely to the ship, despite the danger of the sharks.

This made him think of his own sharks, and looking up he confirmed that they were still there, slowly circling overhead like vultures in a stormy sky. Even if those onboard the Indestructible had noted where he splashed down, and even if they managed to lower him a rope, he doubted he would survive the ascent. He would be like a worm on a fishing line, an irresistible lure to all those hungry sharks as he rose slowly up toward the ship. They’d tear him to ribbons.

For a moment, he had a vision of a cleanly picked skeleton being pulled aboard the Indestructible, one skeletal hand grimly clinging to the rope.

Despite it all, Conundrum chuckled. This was no time to despair, he reminded himself. This was but another kind of puzzle to solve, one with higher stakes-much higher indeed. But a puzzle just the same.

Now that he had had time to take in his surroundings, Conundrum realized that the sunken ship lay on somewhat of a slope. The bow was clearly several feet higher than the stern. The closer he was to the surface, even by a few feet, he reasoned, the greater his chances of being rescued, and so he tried to make his way toward the bow of the sunken ship.

This was no easy task. Because of his unusual buoyancy, he was forced to adopt a hopping gait, not unlike the arrows when disturbed, gently bouncing along in a slow dream, his one lead shoe bump, bump, bumping with each protracted leap.

Perhaps it was this noise that awakened the creature sleeping in the ship’s hold. It had grown fat over the last few weeks feeding on those who had gone down with this ship that it now called home, and so it was sluggish and sleepy. It slithered slowly toward the open cargo doors, pulling itself along with its long black tentacles. First one, then another sucker-covered appendage writhed up out of the hold, grasping the doors to either side and heaving its huge bulk up to the light.

Of course, Conundrum was completely unaware of his imminent danger. The ladder up to the ship’s forecastle had been consumed in the fire; only the top three rungs remained, and these were far out of his reach. It occurred to him that he might use the copper kettle as a boost, and so he hop, hop, hopped toward it. If he could move the kettle over to the sterncastle’s damaged ladder, he might be able to reach the lowest rung.

He was just stooping to grab the handle of the upturned kettle when he heard a noise like a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. While clambering out of the cargo hold, the monster shoved open one of the doors.

Conundrum froze, his mouth gaping and eyes popping inside his helmet. His heart thundered in his chest, and his nose started to bleed again. His breast heaved in panic, he gulped the stale filtered air through lips suddenly dry as old parchment, a storm of bubbles erupted from his bladder-pack, and then he turned and saw the horror creeping from the ship’s hold. Lifting the side of the heavy copper cauldron, Conundrum crawled beneath it. It dropped down over him, shutting him in total darkness. His blood roared in his ears.

Unfortunately for the gnome, the giant octopus was used to prying clams from their shells. Before it took up eating sailors, it had dined many a time on oysters pulled from their rocky beds. Slowly, silently, it crawled across the deck of the ship. It sent one tentacle probing toward the cauldron, feeling under its edge for a grip so it could flip it over and reveal the juicy meat inside.

Conundrum screamed inside his fishbowl helmet when he saw a black tentacle lift the edge of the cauldron and writhe toward him. It was a high-pitched scream, a true blood-curdling yell, the scream of the rabbit in the wolfs jaws, the scream of the condemned mutineer as the point of a saber prods him off the end of the plank and into the shark-filled waters below. It nearly burst his eardrums. Conundrum jerked his foot out of his heavy iron shoe and used it as a weapon, smashing the intruding tentacle against the boards. The octopus jerked it back, leaving the tip of its tentacle stuck to the deck between Conundrum’s knees.

Slowly now, the entire cauldron began to rise as though lifted from above. Conundrum dropped the shoe, and suddenly buoyant, found himself pressed against its underside of the cauldron. To his wonder, he found that an air pocket had formed here, and with each exhalation of bubbles it grew larger and the cauldron rose higher. It was only a few inches off the deck as yet, hut continuing to rise.

Dimly sensing this, the giant octopus paused. The cauldron was now a foot above the deck, now two feet, now a yard, and steadily rising. The monster lunged forward, grasping at the empty deck with all eight of its tentacles, searching for the juicy meat that it knew was hiding there. Its suckers gripped the deck and tore loose the boards, searching for its victim, ignoring for the moment the cauldron rising above it as it would ignore the discarded shell of a hermit crab.

Conundrum watched this violence occurring mere feet from the end of his nose. His instinct was to hold his breath, but when he did that, the cauldron began to slow in its ascent. With each breath, a cloud of bubbles erupted from his bladderpack, and it was the growing pocket of air that these created inside the upturned kettle that caused it to rise. As Conundrum clung desperately to the inside of the kettle, he realized that his only hope was to panic, perhaps even hyperventilate. He set himself to the task of breathing as rapidly as he could, and slowly, but ever more quickly, he rose above the deck of the ship inside the overturned cauldron.

Higher and higher he climbed, until the entire length of the ship was visible below him. The giant octopus squeezed its massive bulk through the newly-torn hole in the deck. Still searching for the gnome, it vanished into the ship’s dark hold.

The light grew brighter by stages, the water less murky. Shafts and beams of sunlight lanced downward, dancing as the waves rippled overhead. A shark, long and steely gray, slid by beneath him, unaware, perhaps thinking him some weird new jellyfish.

Suddenly, his ascent stopped as though he had struck a wall. For one panicked moment, he thought something had caught him at last, and then he heard waves lapping against the outside of the cauldron. He had reached the surface.

One problem remained-how to get out. There were still the sharks to consider, and Indestructible was probably hundreds of yards away from him. It might even have sailed away, thinking him lost forever, another victim of remorseless Chance (ever the greatest enemy of the gnomish people). It might even be sailing past him now, completely unaware that their crewmate floated beneath that curious copper kettle. If so, his only hope was that the kender had survived and was on deck to beg the commodore to stop and investigate a strange buoy bobbing on the surface.

And then a new danger presented itself. The waves increased in size, and as they lapped against the kettle, it commenced rocking back and forth. If the waves grew any larger, the cauldron might tip over. Its bubble of air would then escape, and it would sink, leaving the gnome stranded on the surface, food for sharks. Conundrum pressed the palms of his hands against the inside of the kettle, trying to help keep its balance in the rising sea.

Just as he was getting comfortable with the ever-shifting balance, something clanged against the kettle, almost upending him. He yelled, for he knew that the kettle had collided with the Indestructible. He could hear the commodore shouting curses at the helm. The cauldron, with Conundrum inside it, bumped down the length of the ship. Conundrum tried to call for help, but his voice inside his helmet inside the cauldron was so muffled that he doubted anyone could hear him.

A pair of hooks suddenly splashed into the water beside him. They sank a moment, flashing in the water, and then jerked upward, snagging the lip of the cauldron and lifting it streaming from the sea.

“You’ve got her!” Commodore Brigg shouted to the boom hand. “Swing her aboard now!”

While one gnome cranked the winch that lifted the cauldron, another swung the boom round and deposited it upright on the aft deck, all done so quickly that there was still seawater sloshing inside it.

“Good show!” the commodore shouted, then turned to Razmous, who stood at his side, still wearing his frogsuit and wringing water from his topknot. “You were right. It’s a fine cauldron. Should come in handy.”

The kender nodded, shaking water from his ears.

Then Conundrum stood up inside the cauldron, spilling water onto the deck. Razmous gaped proudly, and the boom operator screamed once, high and sharp, then fainted, certain he had seen a ghost.