Garth Nix - Drowned Wednesday

The bed was being taken straight towards the lightning storm. Every wave that it rode up carried it forward. There was no way to turn it, stop it or avoid the collision.

To make matters as bad as they could possibly be, the bed was made of metal. It had to be the biggest lightning conductor for miles. And any lightning that hit would go through Arthur on its way to connect with the steel frame.

For a few seconds, Arthur’s mind was paralysed by fear. There seemed to be nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing, except get fried by a thousand bolts of lightning all coming down at once.

He fought back the fear. He tried to think. There had to be something. Perhaps he could swim away … but there was no way he was strong enough to swim against the direction of the swell. It would be better to die instantly by lightning than to drown.

Arthur looked at the line of lightning again. Even in only a few minutes he’d got much closer, so close he had to shield his eyes from the blinding bolts.

But wait , thought Arthur. The ship that took Leaf went in this direction. It must have gone through the lightning storm. I just have to get through. Maybe Lady Wednesday’s invitation will protect me…

Arthur checked his pocket. But there was only the Atlas.

Where could the invitation be?

The pillows were long gone, lost overboard, but the sheets were partially tucked in. Arthur dived under the drenched linen, his hands desperately groping into every corner as he tried to find the square of cardboard that might just save him.

The bed rose up the face of a wave, but did not reach the crest. Instead, bed, wave and boy rushed towards the blinding, deafening barrier of thunder and lightning that was the Line of Storms. The defensive inner boundary of the Border Sea, which no mortal could cross without permission.

The penalty for trying was a sudden, incendiary death.

Arthur never saw the lightning or heard the water boiling where the bolts struck, the noise lost in the constant boom of thunder. He was under the sheet, a soggy piece of cardboard clutched in one trembling hand. He didn’t even know if it was the invitation from Drowned Wednesday, his medical chart from the end of the bed, or a brochure about the hospital telephones.

But since he was still alive a minute after the blinding glow beyond the sheets faded, he guessed it must be the invitation in his hand.

Arthur slowly pulled his head out from under the sheet. As he blinked up at the clear blue sky, he instinctively took another deep breath. A long, clear, unrestricted breath.

As the bed moved in the mysterious current, the swell it was riding subsided to a mere ten or twelve feet, with a much longer interval between waves. The wind dropped and there was no blowing spray. It also felt much warmer, though Arthur couldn’t see a sun. He couldn’t see any clouds or lightning either, which was a plus. Just a brilliant blue sky that was so even and perfect that he supposed it must be a painted ceiling, like in the other parts of the House.

Arthur took several more deep breaths, revelling in the rush of oxygen through his body. Then he took stock of his situation once more. The one thing he had learned about the House was that you couldn’t take anything for granted. This warm, rolling sea might turn into something else at any moment.

Arthur tucked the Captain’s disc back under his pyjama top and slid Lady Wednesday’s sodden and barely legible invitation next to the Atlas in his pocket. Then he braced his cast against the headboard, stood up and looked around.

There was nothing to see, except the sea. The bed rode too low in the water. Even standing up, Arthur’s view was blocked by the next wave. What he could see was much closer and immediately obvious.

The bed was sinking. Even in this calmer ocean, the mattress was now totally submerged, losing its buoyancy as it absorbed more and more water, the steel frame dragging it down.

It wasn’t going to sink in the next five minutes, but it was going to sink.

Arthur sighed and sat back down, water splashing almost up to his waist. He looked at the cast on his leg and wondered if he should take it off. It was very lightweight and it hadn’t dragged him down before, but that had been a truly panic-driven swim and it would be hard to swim any real distance with it on. But if he took it off, his leg might snap apart again or hurt so much that he couldn’t swim anyway.

He decided to leave the cast on and got out the Captain’s disc again. This time he just held it in his hand and tried to visualise the ship with the glowing green sails coming back to pick him up.

He hoped that was a good thing to visualise. At the back of his mind was a nagging worry that Leaf hadn’t been actually rescued but had gone from one trouble to another. What would the Denizens do to her? They would have been after him, not her. He hoped that since Lady Wednesday had sent him an invitation instead of an attack squad, she might be at least kind of friendly. But maybe that was just a sneaky plan to get him where she wanted. In which case, Drowned Wednesday might take out her bad feelings on Leaf…

If Leaf survived that line of lightning , Arthur thought guiltily. Surely that ship would have had some protection…

The bed gurgled under his feet and sank a bit more, reminding Arthur of his immediate problem.

“A ship!” he called out. “I need a ship! Or a boat! A better raft! Anything!”

His voice sounded alone and empty, lost amid the waves. He was answered only by the sloshing of the sea under, through and around the mattress.

“Land would do,” said Arthur. He said this directly to the Captain’s disc, but once again it didn’t appear to do anything. It was just a carving of a boat on a piece of whalebone.

No land came in sight. Though he still couldn’t see any sun, it got warmer and then positively hot. Even the sea water now constantly washing over Arthur didn’t cool him down. It was tepid and very salty, as he found when he tasted some on the end of his finger. He was getting very thirsty, and had started to remember all kinds of terrible stories about people dying of thirst at sea. Or going crazy from thirst first and hurling themselves into the water or attacking their friends and trying to drink their blood…

Arthur shook his head several times. It looked like he was already starting to go crazy, thinking of stuff like that. Particularly since he knew he couldn’t die of thirst in the House. He might feel like he was, and of course he could still go crazy…

Better to think of something positive to do. Like send a signal or catch a fish. If there were any fish in this strange sea within the House. Of course, if there were fish, there might also be sharks. A shark would have no trouble pulling him off the bed. It hardly qualified as a raft any more, it had sunk down so far.

Arthur shook his head again to try and clear away the negative thoughts.

Stop thinking about sharks ! he told himself.

Just at that moment, he saw something in the water not far away. A dark, mostly submerged shape. A shadow largely under the surface.

Arthur yelped and tried to stand up against the headboard, hopping as his immobilised leg got caught under a fold of sheet. This violent action changed the balance of the bed, and one corner went down several feet, releasing a huge air bubble.

This downward progress halted for a few seconds as air bubbles continued to pop to the surface, then the bed sank like the Titanic , one end briefly sticking straight up before it subsided beneath the waves. Arthur let go of it just in time and pushed himself away. He thrashed out a rough backstroke for a few yards to make sure he wouldn’t be sucked down, then trod water with one leg and his arms circling, as he frantically looked around for the dark shadow again.