Jelly, page 21
I pressed my lips together and pulled firmly on my oars again. The shoreline looked almost the way I’d remembered it now, so familiar, a fantasy of what our lives could be. The white house near the cliffs looked perfect and still untouched. From here, the scorch marks on the walls looked merely like a shadow from the cliff above, the broken windows still seemed to promise the secrets of a lost civilisation. You couldn’t see the submerged houses, or the rusting, broken cars beneath the waves. You couldn’t see the abandoned rubbish in the houses, or the weeds growing in living rooms. You couldn’t see the shops with their magical colours and fabrics. You couldn’t see the rotting dead bodies of the kriks along the beachfront.
A tentacle flickered below us again, lingering this time, searching us out.
‘Are you all right, Martha?’ said James, between breaths.
‘Yes. I just want to get this over with.’
He pulled again, stronger this time, the little bubbles of water fizzing brightly against his oars as he cut through the murky waves.
Behind me I could feel the shifting in the light as the tentacles snaked gently around us, not touching us, but exploring and welcoming.
‘There’s no sheep,’ called Lana. ‘It’s eaten them all.’
We pulled again at the oars. The feathery, small feelers were beneath us now, stroking us and rippling with their strange emotions. They dragged us in, pulling us towards the body. Then there was a sudden tug.
‘Lift your oars up,’ I said. ‘Quick.’
There was a light bubbling sound beneath us, and the mesoglea started to ooze round the prow of the boat, pulling it in and fastening it to the edge of the Jellyfish.
James turned to me, white-faced, and gave a weak grin. ‘This is definitely going to go well. There is no chance we can fail.’
I smiled back. He reached out and offered his hand. I took it, gratefully. It felt rough, and dry and . . . just nice.
‘This is it, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
I stepped on to the mesoglea, and it gave a little under my feet in that soft way it always did, so familiar and comforting. There was that clinging thread of goo that stuck to your shoes as you took a step, and the smooth white surface. It felt like coming home.
But then James climbed on to the surface next to me, and a moment later there was that low vibration beneath the surface of the jelly. It was so subtle you could have missed it, but we were both waiting for it now. We looked at each other grimly.
‘Let’s go right to the middle,’ said James. ‘I’ll start digging, but you get the cans.’
I nodded.
He unstrapped his machete and set off towards the centre, near where the Big House had been. There was no trace of it now, but there were a lot of darker patches hazily visible through the flesh of the Jellyfish. The sheep? Had the Jellyfish had a feast? Or was something else happening? For a split second I pictured us being sucked down there, sliding into that jelly, being absorbed. But then I shook off that thought and grabbed two cans of the petrol.
James had already sliced a circle into the mesoglea. It was hard going, and I could see his muscles straining as he pulled the machete through, but it had to be here, because the jelly didn’t seal up so quickly in this bit of the creature. I pushed one of the shovels into the gash James had made, and started to lever it apart. With a sticky squelch, it gave a little, and I pulled away a large chunk of flesh. James put a shovel in on his side too, and started to lever there, pushing the shovel further and further into the slit. He grabbed the machete and cut at his section again. There was already sweat on his forehead, but his face looked determined. He pulled away another, larger chunk, bending down to lift it with both hands. He kicked it away across the mesoglea towards the sea. I put my shovel back in the slit and started levering.
Beneath us, the Jellyfish gave a little shiver.
I pulled away another chunk and threw it towards James’s piece. ‘I’m OK here,’ he said. ‘Go and get the rest of the petrol. Quick.’ He was cutting away at the bottom of our hole now. This was already further than we’d ever managed to dig before.
I ran to the boat. Not stopping to worry about weight – because we were probably dead anyway, weren’t we? – I climbed straight into it, lifting two more cans of the petrol and slinging a couple of pairs of curtains over my shoulders. I ran straight back to James and dropped them off there.
I made all the trips in a whirr of panic. You know when your head is focusing clearly on your task, but the rest of what you see is all blurry? I was in that state of adrenaline. But it was only on the last trip, when I’d already taken all the curtains, and ten of the cans, and even the matches, that I looked up at Lana and Kate. They were out of range of the tentacles, sitting there, staring at us. The pretence of the casual magazine-reading was over, and they were just watching, silently. I could see from their positions that they were riddled with tension. They had a rope tied to their boat, and the other end was tied to ours, because we’d had this mad idea that they could just pull us to safety. Even as we’d tied the rope on I think we’d all known it wouldn’t work. But just then, I realized something that might.
‘Cut the rope,’ I shouted.
Their faces scrunched up in confusion.
‘Cut the rope!’
‘No,’ Lana shouted back. ‘Bog off.’
‘Cut the rope,’ I repeated. ‘I’ve got an idea.’ I could see Kate starting to cry. ‘I think I can use it for something to save us,’ I shouted.
Lana reached up, and I think her hands must have been shaking because it took her a few attempts to untie the rope. It fell, and quickly I gathered it in through the curious feelers. I shoved it straight into one of the cans of petrol. Some of the petrol sloshed out, over the edge, but I made sure that all of that rope was submerged before I ran back over to James.
Around him, there were piles of melting, oozing, translucent flesh, reforming themselves back into the Jellyfish. There was also a low, trembling vibration. It was constant now, a hum that you could feel right inside you. I scooped some of the piles of flesh away, throwing it back towards the sea.
James was standing inside a pit of Jellyfish blubber. The walls around him were leaning in, and were running with slow trails of glutinous liquid. A ripple ran across the surface. From the corners of my eyes, in that adrenaline fog, I could see the angry swishes of the tentacles crashing through the air. ‘We’ve got to do it now, James.’
‘Just one more.’ He looked up. His hair was wet with sweat, and there was a sheen of slime over his T-shirt.
‘No. Now,’ I said. I passed him the machete.
He took it, and sliced in deeply, leaning down and pulling firmly through the flesh. There was another sudden rippling wave of jelly across the surface, just where I was standing. Above me, the shadow of one of the larger tentacles passed overhead, so close I felt its wind.
James jammed in his spade, levering the flesh apart. ‘Now,’ he said.
I jumped down, shoving in one of the curtains, and then another one. I reached over for the first can of petrol, carefully soaking all of the material.
There was another sudden whisk of cold air above us as the tentacle came back. We both ducked sharply, and for a minute it felt like I wanted to stay there, hunched inside the Jellyfish.
‘Quick,’ said James, and I could hear that he was panting with fear.
I grabbed the rest of the curtains and threw them down.
‘Keep low,’ I said.
The vibrations beneath us had turned to a rumbling menace that made even the petrol cans vibrate.
‘Get out of the way,’ I said to James as I started pouring two cans of petrol over the curtains. He grabbed another couple.
Thwack! The ground shook as a tentacle smashed on to the mesoglea next to us.
We crouched down further in the pit. I undid all of the lids on the cans and tipped them so that they sloshed down on to the material. There was a pool of petrol covering the curtains now, and we were both having to clutch on to the mesoglea, exposing ourselves to the flailing tentacles, in order to avoid getting it on our shoes. I had the final can ready.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Go back to the boat.’
‘What?’
‘Go now.’
He paused.
‘Trust me! Wait for me there, but get the oars ready.’
He ran. Keeping low, and still clutching his machete.
There was another sudden thwack behind me, and the ground shook again.
I pulled the rope out from the can quickly, splashes of petrol coming with it and soaking into my jeans.
There was another whooshing of wind from overhead. There was no time for thinking. I grabbed a shovel and quickly tied one end of the rope around it. Then I threw it into the petrol pool. It disappeared beneath the liquid.
I waited for the tentacles to do another swoop, and then I ran towards the boat, unfurling the petrol-soaked rope behind me. Beneath my feet, the mesoglea was roiling and rippling with urgency and confusion.
James was lying down in the boat, trying to avoid the rage of the Jellyfish, but we didn’t have much longer. I leapt in, pulling out the box of matches from my back pocket. I was covered in petrol but, right then, being burnt alive seemed like a less painful way to die than being whipped across the sea by a giant tentacle.
Dropping my end of the rope on to the mesoglea, I lit a match and threw it. The rope went up immediately, a trail of flame leading towards the centre of the creature.
‘Give me your machete,’ I said.
The Jellyfish seemed suddenly to sense what we were doing, seemed suddenly to realize.
There was a brief lull, and the vibrations stopped, the tentacles paused in mid-air.
‘Get ready,’ I said.
And then it was like it breathed. A giant wave of jelly flesh rippled towards us. The tentacles rose, flicked back, their muscular strength readying for attack.
I cut into the jelly holding us to the edge. But even then, I was ready for the hit.
Then . . . there was a dull, distant thud. A boom.
‘Go!’ I screamed.
James started to row, and I scrabbled for my oars.
Behind us, the Jellyfish seemed to inflate, heaving up and getting bigger, and bigger.
We pulled, and pulled, and pulled. The rhythm of our terror was faster than any race you could ever imagine.
We were past the tentacles and near Kate and Lana before the first explosion happened.
39
I don’t know how we got back exactly. I remember the way the Jellyfish looked, of course, its body huge: stretched thin and bulbous, the tentacles drooping, floating on the waves like ragged plastic bags. But I don’t remember dragging ourselves back through the water again. That part of the story is really fuzzy.
At some point we got into the same boat as Lana and Kate, and I can remember the thudding explosions, each one inflating another side of the Jellyfish so that it bulged out awkwardly, tilting. Then the air would release and the mesoglea would shrink back, shrivelled and sagging.
We were almost at the submerged houses before the big explosion came, the one which ripped through the creature, finally tearing it apart. With a loud boom the Jellyfish ballooned out on all sides, then there was a high squeaking, whistling noise and half of the creature peeled off, as though melting away. It floated at a strange angle for a couple of seconds before dropping beneath the waves.
But Kate was determinedly facing the other way, looking at the shore and not at what was going on behind us, her shoulders hunched and flinching against the noise. ‘Look,’ she said, and she is the first person I definitely remember speaking. She pointed to the wavelets lapping against the shore.
There, on the edge of the water and the land, was a herd of jellyfish, small and delicate, their bodies pulsating gently with the rhythm of the water. Pale, translucent, each one had a whiter starred core, around which a perfect circle of glistening, jellied flesh danced just underneath the surface of the water. Swaying in time with each other, their tentacles flickered out below them like the strands of seaweed growing along the walls of the houses. As we pulled the boat in, one of them was thrown forward by a wave on to the old tarmac of the road; and as the water withdrew, it stayed behind. Harmless. Vulnerable. Along the shore there was a line of others, lying like blisters on the road, whitening and dying in the sunlight while in the water the rest of them waited, floating wherever the current went.
Behind us there were two larger explosions, and lumps of jelly flew through the air, scattering into the water with little raining plopping noises; but they were too far away to reach us. As they fell, they sank straight beneath the water, disappearing beneath the calm, opaque, sea.
‘We’ve got this, haven’t we?’ I said. ‘We can really win.’
‘We’ve always had this,’ said James. ‘We’ve always been in control. It’s just taken us a while, that’s all.’
‘The stories don’t end like this though, do they? The ones with the mermaids and kraken and selkies and stuff,’ I said. ‘They end with people happily living under the sea, peacefully, with the enemy.’
Lana was standing on the seaweed-covered wall of one of the ruined houses. She paused and looked down into the room below, wrinkling her nose.
‘No, they don’t,’ said Kate. ‘You weren’t listening. They end with a wedding . . .’
James caught my eye for a second and started to laugh before looking away. He covered his mouth with his hand.
‘. . . and it’s a wedding between one of the sea creatures and one of the humans.’
‘Well I’m not going under the sea. And I’m not marrying a flippin’ krik,’ said Lana. ‘You can if you want, Kate. Actually, that seems like just the sort of man you’d be interested in.’
Lana kicked at one of the jellyfish, its flesh wobbling and wetly blubbery.
‘At least they’re big and muscular, Lana. And I bet they’re really nice underneath their shell,’ said Kate. Lana dipped her foot into the water and kicked a small jellyfish out on to the road. It didn’t seem to make a noise as it landed, and it spread out softly, its body sinking into the tarmac.
‘What happens after the wedding?’ said James, still smiling. ‘Do any of the stories say that bit?’
‘No . . . I don’t think so,’ said Kate.
‘Because I don’t think a krik would have great conversation skills. And . . . you know . . .’ He winked.
‘What?’
I think we all did know, but Kate tilted her face to one side as though she was really puzzled, and Lana looked at him with a frown, daring him to say it.
‘Well . . . I don’t know if you could have . . . erm . . . kiss a krik. Could you?’
‘Kate?’ said Lana.
‘How would I know? I don’t want to kiss a krik! Why are you even asking me?’
‘Actually, they do have a slit in their shell, in that bit that grows right over their face,’ said James. ‘Kate, you could kiss their shell slit and maybe touch their crabby tongue!’
We all started to laugh. Somehow, it was now just really, really funny. I mean, it wasn’t funny at all of course, and we all looked around us a little bit as we were standing there, just in case, but that didn’t stop the tears of comedy, or those pains in my stomach from too much laughing. The kriks were funny now. Funny.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It might take us a couple of hours to get to the castle.’
I lifted up one of the garden forks; Kate and Lana bent down to grab theirs. James tucked one water pistol into the belt of his trousers, and slung another two over his shoulders.
‘Shall we get changed now, do you think?’ said Kate. ‘I want to wear that gold dress.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘We might get dirty on the way. We can get changed when we see the castle.’
‘Did you pack a mirror for our make-up?’ said Kate.
‘No,’ said Lana. ‘But it’s OK. We can just do each other’s.’
James passed everybody a box of matches.
There was another explosion from the sea, but none of us turned round. We didn’t need to see what was behind us. I reached out for James’s hand, and I clasped the fork tighter in the other one. Beside me, Lana picked up the rucksack.
‘This time,’ I said, ‘let’s go along the road.’
Standing there on that sand-covered tarmac at the edge of Long Street, we could see the road stretching straight up, past the houses, into the hills beyond. The birds still circled over the fields, and the sheep still ambled across the top of the cliffs. We couldn’t see where the road went, and we couldn’t see the castle. But it went away from here, and away from the Jellyfish.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the staff and students of Luckley House School for the role so many of them have had in this book. I am very lucky to work in an environment where creativity is an active part of the curriculum, and where any crazy schemes I have had for promoting literacy have been so supported by staff. I appreciate the freedom and encouragement given to us by the best senior management team I’ve ever worked for: Jane Tudor, Sally Hills, Ian Vallance and Claire Gilding-Brant.
The English Department and library are obviously amazing (Elaine, Katie, Rachel, Liz, Darshan and Angie), but I’d particularly like to thank all the students who have inspired me to finish what started off life as just an unusual lesson resource. So many of you have helped me with your (often brutal!) criticism and I have genuinely learnt so much from writing alongside you; I hope some of it has made me a better teacher as well as having improved my writing! I’m sorry that, despite your enthusiasm for her death, Dr Jones survived. In earlier drafts, following the Year 9 vote, she did die. Dr Jones, thanks so much for your scientific advice and apologies for ignoring most of it. I hope the fact that I didn’t kill you off (and also the fact that the character’s nothing like you!) will mean you’ll forgive me!
A particular thanks to the fabulous Rachel Leyshon for being a brilliant editor. I’ve learnt so much from you and you’ve been so much fun to work with (I am confident there are no possible jellyfish jokes which you haven’t made!). I’m also grateful for the suggestions made by Kesia Lupo and Barry Cunningham, as well as the copy-editing of Helen Jennings. My agent, Claire Wilson, has been unfailingly kind, supportive, and has also given really useful input to the book. One of the things I’ve realized from the experience of working on Jelly is how many people are involved in the publication of a book. Thanks so much to Laura Myers, Rachel Hickman and everybody in Chicken House that I haven’t mentioned!
