Alex Bell - Fighting with fire

‘Poor little sucker,’ Jesse said, looking at the octopus sadly.

‘What about me?’ Lex choked indignantly.

‘You’re still alive, ain’t you? No dead thing I ever came across made as much noise as you.’ Jesse shook the knife and the dead octopus slid off it and landed with a splat on the floor beside Lex, who drew back from it in panic, scrambling across the salty, wet boards.

‘What the heck is that thing?’ he asked, staring at it. ‘And are you certain it’s dead?’

‘Sure it’s dead,’ Jesse replied, shaking blue blood off the knife. ‘The rest of ’em ain’t, though.’

‘The rest of them?’ Lex repeated, horrified.

It was only then that he realised the long corridor they were in was absolutely crawling with little octopuses? on the walls, the floor and even clinging to the ceiling. And, for the very first time, playing the Game was not one hundred percent fun for Lex. For the very first time in his life, he felt some faint glimmer of sympathy for Lucius when he caught sight of a spider in the bath and trembled in fear just at the sight of it. Lex tried to tell himself that a spider couldn’t hurt you and these octopuses obviously could, but he couldn’t lie to himself, no matter how well he could lie to other people. The simple fact was that the octopuses could have been utterly harmless and he would still have felt horrified at the very sight of them. It was something about their squidgy heads and long, slimy tentacles? no living thing should look like that; it was just unnatural! They had squidgy heads for Gods’ sake!

‘Do you think they’re all over the ship?’ Lex whispered.

The cowboy shrugged. ‘Seems likely, don’t it? Probably been attracted by the air that’s still in here. But if we move quietly and don’t do anything to startle ’em, hopefully they’ll just stay where they are.’

Just the thought of an octopus dropping on to his head again like that made Lex want to flee the boat and take his chances in the sea outside. But, with a great effort of will, he pulled himself together. All right, so he was unused to this horrible, prickling sensation of fear crawling along his skin; he was unused to feeling irrationally repulsed by something; and discovering your fear of octopuses for the first time when you’re in a sunken ship that’s full of the little suckers is exceptionally bad timing. But that was what had happened just the same and there was nothing Lex could do to change it. He would just have to grit his teeth and bear it. Nothing? but nothing? was going to stop him from winning this round. If anything, Lex’s success in the previous Game had made him even more competitive than he’d been already, for he had a record to keep now. In the last Game he had won every single round. He’d never lost one yet and he did not intend to start now. The competition was tougher this time, for both Lorella and Jeremiah were bound to prove themselves formidable opponents. Lex could not allow anything to distract him. So he thrust his new-found phobia deep into the back of his mind, stood up, picked up another glowing starfish, cleared his head and tried to think.

‘Kala said we need to retrieve the captain’s medallion,’ he said. ‘So the chances are that if we find the captain’s skeleton, we’ll find the medallion.’

‘So what part of the ship will we find the cap’n in?’

Lex thought for a moment and then said, ‘It depends what sort of man he was. If he was a brave man, he would have been in his rightful place on the bridge when the ship went down. If he was a coward he’d have been hiding in his quarters-’

‘And if he was a greedy man, he would’ve been hiding in the galley!’ Jesse cut in.

Lex glared at him. ‘Don’t be absurd! No man, no matter how greedy, is going to rush down to the galley whilst the ship is sinking to stuff his face one last time. Besides, we just came from there.’

Jesse grinned. ‘I was only kidding.’

‘Well don’t! There’s no time for that!’ It was important to Lex to win the Game but it probably didn’t matter much either way to Jesse. Lex realised then for the first time that he probably should have offered the cowboy some sort of incentive earlier. ‘For every round we win, I’ll pay you fifty pieces of m-gold.’

Jesse crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Make it a hundred.’

Lex scowled at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to remind the cowboy that if it weren’t for Lex’s timely intervention, Jesse would still be rotting in prison, or else on his way back to the hangman’s noose that was waiting for him in the Wild West. But he didn’t have any more time to waste so he just snapped, ‘Fine!’

They could argue about it once the round was over. And Lex could always go back on his word later if it suited him. His offer of a reward seemed to have the desired effect, though, for now Jesse replaced the knife in his belt, rubbed his hands together gleefully and said, ‘So are we going for cowardly or courageous?’

‘Courageous,’ Lex replied. ‘They don’t tend to give medallions to cowards. We need to find the bridge.’

So they set off down the corridor, moving slowly, trying not to make any noise and tiptoeing carefully around the octopuses on the floor. Most of them were clinging to the walls but there were a few on the ceiling as well. Here, too, hung several paintings all showing the same octopus. There even seemed to be a large mosaic of one beneath the seaweed on the floor. Lex couldn’t help thinking the sea monster a strange choice of decor for the ship. He would have preferred beautiful mermaids, himself, or at the very least a few sleek, silver, friendly dolphins.

Lex was relieved to discover that Jesse seemed to be right? as long as they made no sudden, threatening movements, the octopuses seemed content to leave them be. Unfortunately it all went wrong when they reached the end of the corridor and opened the door, because a lot of water rushed out. It seemed that not all of the ship’s rooms were dry, after all. It poured out at them, knocking both Lex and Jesse off their feet and carrying them back a little way down the corridor. As sudden, threatening movements went, this seemed to be quite effective at frightening the octopuses who had been knocked into or swept off the walls. They latched on to Jesse and Lex anywhere they could get a grip.

Lex had one wrapped around his right ankle, one on his left arm, one slithering about trying to get a purchase on his chest and one dangling from his right wrist. They were all making that same awful high-pitched noise and it occurred to Lex? through his veil of horror? to wonder whether the little monsters might be poisonous. Surely Lady Luck would never put him in such a position, would she? But of course she would! This was a Game? death and danger were the point!

Suddenly, Lex felt angry. Falling gloriously to your death from a great height, or being dashingly killed by a ferocious, fire-breathing dragon, or getting heroically ripped apart by a band of werewolves was one thing. Getting squeezed and sucked to death by a bunch of horrible little octopuses was something else entirely. As Jesse seemed to be pretty thoroughly occupied with attempting to remove his own octopuses, Lex was going to have to save himself this time. He managed to get up, despite almost falling over again when there were more slippery octopuses getting in the way beneath his feet. The one that had been sliding around on his chest fell off but the two on his arms remained where they were and the one on his ankle actually started dragging itself up his leg!

Lex thought quickly. Unfortunately his knowledge of sea creatures was limited, to say the least. His grandfather had certainly never come across these octopuses? there was no mention of them in any of Alistair Trent’s chronicles. But Lex had read other chronicles, too. He was, in fact, always reading, whenever he got the chance. You could learn a lot from a book. And you could never be too well prepared for a Game. Not when a relevant piece of knowledge could make all the difference between life and death. This was the reason Lex had had an entire library installed on the enchanter’s ship before he’d left. It was also the reason he was currently carrying a book in his bag called The Mysteries of the Deep. He’d packed it as soon as he’d found out where the first round was to take place. It was quite a hefty thing and a great weight, causing the bag to dig painfully into his shoulders. Of course, there was no guarantee that the octopuses would be in there? one book couldn’t contain information about every sea monster, after all. But Lex was a lucky person and so he was sure that, if he could just get the book out, there would be some information in there that would enable him to deal with them.