“We saved each other, so we’re practically kinfolk.” The voice began to disappear in the howling wind, and I could barely hear the final words. “Just call me Uncle C.”
“Tristan! Tristaaaan!”
I was falling again. Whatever that place was, whoever that voice was, it all got driven to the back of my mind when I opened my eyes to a nightmare.
Gum Baby’s back was stuck to my wrist as if it were glued there as we continued to tumble down the fiery tunnel. Luckily she was holding on to Eddie’s glowing green journal for dear life. Swirling below us was a dark, boiling sea, so horrifying that even my screams started screaming. Wind whipped my cheeks and pulled tears from my eyes. I squeezed them shut. Whatever was going to happen next would happen—I didn’t need to see it.
Splash!
The impact drove the breath from my lungs. My skin prickled. The water temperature bubbled a few degrees above comfortable—not scalding as I’d feared, but hot enough to scare me. Panicking, I opened my mouth to cry out in surprise, and water surged inside. I swallowed by accident and it burned on the way down. Swim! I told myself. Swim, Tristan, or you’re done for.
I forced my eyes open and tried to figure out which direction was up. Blurry light flickered in the distance. My legs kicked me toward it on their own, my lungs screaming for air, and I clawed my way to what I hoped was the surface. Shadowy shapes streaked past, and—oh, man—something slimy brushed my ankle.
I’d had it by that point. This was how Tristan Strong was going to meet his end? In a giant dirty hot tub?
Just when I thought I couldn’t go any farther and my chest felt like it was going to explode, my head broke the surface. I coughed and spluttered.
“Blech!”
My mouth tasted like old pennies and warm spoiled milk. Yeah…think about that flavor.
“Gum Baby?” I called out hoarsely. I kicked and paddled, doing my best to tread water as I sucked down air, and looked around in confusion. “Gum Baby, where…?”
The question died on my tongue as I took in my surroundings.
Fires burned on the sea. Not little fires, either, but massive walls of flame that licked high into the air. The current carried infernos everywhere, and their bright blazes turned the water into swirling oranges and reds. Steam hissed up from the surface and collected into clouds a few feet above my head. Through an occasional break in the mist I could see that it was still nighttime. And there, high above, the fiery tunnel we’d fallen through scarred the sky.
I looked down. Lights twinkled on and off in the depths, and at first I thought it was the reflection of the stars. Then I saw a long shadow pass underneath me—a leviathan somehow lit from beneath—and I gulped.
Where the heck had we landed?
“Bumbletongue!” The cry came from behind me. “Help! Gum Baby can’t sw—glublublub. Gum Baby can’t swim!”
I tore my eyes away from the shape below and whipped my head around. Sure enough, there was the little thief, flailing in the water a short distance away. I paddled over, a million questions fighting to be first out my mouth.
Gum Baby floated on her back, hugging the journal tightly like a life preserver. Her little legs kicked helplessly in the air, and a tiny fire burned on one foot. I splashed her to douse the flame, then grabbed the journal and lifted it—with Gum Baby still attached—out of the water with one hand. I hoped it wasn’t ruined. (The book, not the doll. She could float there forever for all I cared.)
“About time!” Gum Baby, now hanging on from below, coughed and glared at me. “What took you so long? Gum Baby ain’t a fish. Come on, we have to—”
“Where are we?” I asked, cutting her off.
“What?”
“Where are we? What happened? Did you see a shadow thing, with the voice and the smells, before we splashed down? Why am I floating in an ocean of fire, and why are there stars under us, and what happened to my backpack?”
Gum Baby waved one arm and a wet glob of sap plopped into the sea. “Shh. Gum Baby don’t know what you talking about half the time, and the other half she ain’t got the patience. No time to answer all those questions. Well, maybe there is, but you drain me. Like a straw. Here you come, and—fwoop!—all my energy is gone.”
I growled and shook the journal. She nearly lost her grip.
“Okay, okay! Stop messing around. Gum Baby don’t feel so good.”
More sap plopped down as if to prove her point. As I continued to tread water with only one arm, I gave thanks for Dad’s swim training. He used to make me do laps in the local community center pool when it was too cold outside to go running.
I tilted my head, trying to get water out of my ears, and for a second I thought I heard a drumbeat and clapping. But that was silly. I turned back to my sticky little companion.
“Where. Are. We?” I asked again through gritted teeth.
“Shh. Gum Baby’s trying to tell you, now ain’t the time for talking. If they hear us, we’re in trouble.”
“They? Who’s they?”
Just then, a splash sounded in the distance, and Gum Baby shushed me again. She stared into the fire and fog, her wet black curls plastered to her carved wooden head. After a second, she relaxed.
“Can’t be so loud,” she muttered.
I didn’t know if she was talking to me or to herself, but either way, it wasn’t reassuring. I blinked salt out of my eyes and spat out another mouthful of sour seawater. I’m going to need eight bottles of mouthwash after this, I thought.
“What is this place?” I asked. “Some sort of underground salt lake? I didn’t think Alabama had these.”
“What? No.” Gum Baby looked surprised, as if I should know. “This ain’t no Alabama, wherever that is.”
“Maybe Mississippi, then?”
“I don’t know no Mrs. Ippy, and you can tell her Gum Baby said that.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Look, enough with the flappy-lip jibjab. We need to hurry before—”
There was another splash, then another that sounded even closer, and Gum Baby froze up.
“They’re coming,” she whispered.
“Who is they?!”
A rippling sound echoed across the water. We both turned to see a column of floating fire curving through the water toward us, and with every second it picked up speed. The ripples it made turned into flame-capped waves as a long, gnarled shape sliced up through the surface and into the air.
My eyes nearly fell out.
“Holy—”
“Ship!” Gum Baby screamed.
A vessel unlike any I’d seen before rose from the deep. Its hull was two giant white hands cupped together, the fingertips touching at the prow. Knobby knuckles poked out along the side. It had no sail, just a single bare mast that jutted up mid-ship, a daggerlike tower that cut through the curtains of steam. No one could be seen on deck. It was just a weird hand-ship the size of a yacht, sailing without a captain, roaring across a burning sea toward us.
Oh, and it wasn’t made of painted wood, like I’d thought.
“Those are bones!” I yelled at Gum Baby.
“Stop shouting and swim, fool!”
The spooky ship creaked as it listed to one side, turning to sweep down on us. Horrible sounds floated to us across the waves: a thousand sufferers moaning and crying out. Desperate. Infuriated. Scared. Hungry. I didn’t know who—or what—was making the noise, but I wasn’t planning on sticking around to find out.