Elise and The Astonishing Aquanauts Read online

  For Sammi

  Special thanks to Jules Verne, Lester Dent, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jacques Cousteau, Don Buffa, Bill Whalen, Cindy Welch, and Ruth Cobb for the inspiration.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dad

  CHAPTER TWO

  Le Jardin de la Jeune Fille

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ten Years Gone

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The City of Light

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Marionette Man

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Crab and Le Bat

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Graveyard of Boats

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Watching The Girl

  CHAPTER NINE

  Candy Store

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Man of Many Eyes

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Not Today

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ozwold

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Renny and Robert

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Take the Blade

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Scynda

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  My Field of Slugs

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Grand Ball at the Top of The Tower

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Lost Old Man

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hunger

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Silk Act

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Death Tunnels

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Dinner Bell

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Hall

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Exile

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Curious?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Nursery

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Monstrous

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  To the West

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Praetor Agrunctus

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Night Flight

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Sheep and The Oyster

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Our Last Restaurateur

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Little Ship We’ve Seen

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Great Lady at The Bottom of The Empty Sea

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Into the World Below

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Wandering Haven

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A Shotgun Blast to The Face

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  At the Peak of Ebon

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  So You Want to Save The World?

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Make Ready

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Choices

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  To the North

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The Old One in a Jar

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Apparently There’s a Plan

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Raid on The Ship of Dreams

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Such Cost

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Destroyed

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Bloody Death and Rainbows

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Ancient

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  She’s Changed

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Be Impossible

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Good Night and Sweet Dreams

  Author Bio

  CHAPTER ONE

  DAD

  ‘And the cathedral was not only company for him, it was the universe; nay, more, it was Nature itself. He never dreamed that there were other hedgerows than the stained-glass windows in perpetual bloom; other shade than that of the stone foliage always budding, loaded with birds in the thickets of Saxon capitals; other mountains than the colossal towers of the church; or other oceans than Paris roaring at their feet.’

  —Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, 1831

  THIS IS THE story of a young girl who risked everything to bring back the ocean.

  Did she succeed?

  Well, as her friend Jules once said, “There are no perfect endings, but there can be good ones.”

  *

  He chased her through the surf and they laughed as they ran and played on the last day of her Dad’s life.

  The sky was blue as the sea. There were flashes of white from seagulls and gold from the sun. Warm water splashed around their ankles.

  He was carrying more weight than when he was young, there was gray in the unruly hair, but his eyes twinkled and he was still a boy in a man’s body.

  He was her Dad.

  She was Elise St. Jacques, eleven years old and blond as the bubbles in Dad’s cheap beer.

  The beach stretched on for miles of white sand and palm trees.

  Her Dad barked and growled as he chased her through the surf.

  “Mad dog! Mad dog!”

  Elise laughed so hard that her belly hurt. Dad was closing in and she knew there would be a fierce tickling or perhaps even a bionic airplane spin if she didn’t get away.

  He was on her and Elise was lifted into the air.

  Yep. Bionic airplane spin. The blood rushed to her head, and the beach became a blur, images repeating and repeating as her Dad spun tight circles with her in his arms.

  They both fell into the surf, disoriented and slightly nauseous.

  The water was warm and little minnows nibbled at their toes. Soft curling waves broke near them every few moments. Elise could feel the crunch of periwinkle shells under her hands. She sifted through the sand and watched as the little shells popped up then burrowed back into the mud.

  Where did they go? How deep was their little world? What was it like there, in a place of shiny crushed shells, of flowing water, of darkness and sudden light?

  “Hey Goofus. What are you thinking about?” His voice was deep and rich. He could magically create all kinds of funny voices, weird characters, and funny dialects. She didn’t understand exactly what her Dad did for a living, but she knew that he used his voice for commercials and shows. Nothing big, nothing famous, but that’s what he did. It was kind of cool and made for spectacular bedtime stories.

  Elise smiled at her Dad. Goofus. That might annoy her when she got older, but now it made her laugh.

  “I want to be a periwinkle,” she said.

  “Ok. You’re a periwinkle.”

  With that, Elise dove face first into the watery sand, digging as if she was a pony-tailed mollusk. She came up, cheeks covered in mud.

  “Changed my mind. There might be monsters under there.”

  Dad stared at her for a moment.

  “You never know, I suppose.”

  Elise’s eyes grew wide.

  “You mean there might be monsters under there?”

  There was a silent heartbeat, then her Dad laughed.

  “Nothing that Les Scaphandriers couldn’t handle, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re afraid of monsters? I thought I taught you better,” her Dad said. He splashed her with water.

  “I’m not afraid.” She splashed him back.

  “Well, it’s ok to be afraid as long as you can control the fear and make it dance. Right?”

  “Just like Jules Valiance.”

  “Exactly. They say he once played tag with giant electric crabs just to know what it felt like to get the shock pinch.”

  “Awesome. Tell me.”

  And so her Dad spent a few minutes telling Elise the thrilling and unlikely tal
e of Jules Valiance and the dreaded electric crabs, of the mad chase among the sunken sky taxis, of the flirty little mermaid who teased Jules as he swam, and of the last second rescue at the hands of the rest of Les Scaphandriers, the League of Astonishing Aquanauts, the greatest secret of the sea.

  France had led the way in oceanic research and Elise’s Dad was a geek for that sort of thing. The brave souls who dared the depths wearing copper helmets and breathing air from hoses were known as Scaphandrier, and her Dad had been obsessed with them. His den at home was adorned with sepia tone photographs of bold expeditions, of strange sea creatures, and of submersibles welded from iron and steel.

  It wasn’t much of a leap for her Dad to spin bedtime stories for little Elise that transformed these vintage marine explorers into something fantastic and larger than life.

  By the soft amber light of her night-light, Dad had told Elise hundreds of tales of The World’s Below and Between, of its heroes and villains, of its strange creatures, of the legendary Scaphandrier and their amazing champion, Jules Valiance.

  *

  Who is Jules Valiance?

  To the world at large, Jules Valiance is a man of supreme intelligence and absurd courage, the leader of those astonishing aquanauts, Les Scaphandriers.

  He is strong and lean, his hair a mass of blonde dreadlocks, his green eyes sparkle like gems in a weathered face forged in copper by countless tropical suns.

  Legend and birth records show that he was raised in Antibes and honed his aquatic skills at the hands of oceanic masters both infamous and obscure.

  Blessed with a remarkable singing voice, he can shatter garden gnomes with his pitch and given time, transform sugar into taffy.

  The martial arts skills of Jules Valiance are a unique style of savate infused with gleanings from Elvis. This makes him one of the most dangerous and unpredictable men alive. Strangely, his first and third toes are deadly weapons.

  He is one of the few men in the world who can speak the language of the dolphin, specifically Atlantic Bottlenose, thanks to relentless practice and the peculiar deviation in his septum.

  Jules dated Madonna, just for a day, and created “break dancing” during an unfortunate incident with an amorous sea wasp.

  His bouillabaisse is legendary but can only be eaten once. No one knows why.

  Jules Valiance has no use for mimes or chicken nuggets.

  *

  Jules Valiance was epic.

  “Time enough for stories later, Goofus. Let’s grab breakfast.”

  The warm air felt good on their skin as they stood and made their way back to their beach towels.

  Elise loved the weekends. No school, just going to the beach with Dad. She had never known her Mother. It was just the two of them in the world and that’s all she knew and that was fine. These were the best days, endless in the moment and then as quick as a hummingbird wing. These were the days she dreamt of as she slept. These were the times that kept her warm, like the sun on a beach afternoon, that drifted in and out of her thoughts, haze on a hot summer road far in the distance, always there and always out of reach.

  These were the days she missed, the days with her Dad, but he died on that day at the beach.

  His heart gave out in the surf as he swam.

  Elise was playing in the waves and she turned to see him floating face down in the water.

  At first she thought it was a game, but it wasn’t. This wasn’t a game at all.

  Dad didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.

  We take life for granted, as a given, as a constant, but it isn’t, not at all.

  Bad things can happen fast.

  She screamed and strangers came to help but Dad was dead and there was no saving him.

  Elise went into shock and the people had to pull her away from her Dad’s body. The rest of the time was a blur of faces and flashing red lights and horror and things she didn’t understand.

  He was gone, and he never came back.

  It can happen quickly, as you know, that fade from light to dark.

  She had no Mom that she knew. No other family. Now she had no Dad.

  She was alone, but her Dad had created a will and it sent Elise to Paris, a place she had never been, a language she didn’t speak, a country she understood only in bits and pieces from his stories.

  He always told her he would live in Paris when she left him for college. He told her it was the best place in the world.

  A city of light, Dad had called it.

  Now there was just darkness. Airports. Strangers. Trains. Cold rooms. Miami. New York. London. Days blended into night and then again into morning.

  Then, Paris.

  And that’s how Elise St. Jacques ended up at Le Jardin de la Jeune Fille.

  The Girl’s Garden.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LE JARDIN DE LA JEUNE FILLE

  THE GIRL’S GARDEN was a hidden building on a cobblestone side street deep in the Isle de la Cite and it had been there for over 150 years.

  Elise had been there exactly 346 days, but she felt as if she had been there since the beginning.

  The brick was faded white and gray with dark wood along windows and doors hand-carved by craftsmen long since dead. It looked out over the tiny café where Elise could watch old men sip drinks and argue with each other over newspapers. From her window she could see the bookstore full of mystery, the boulangerie Le Bat, the office, the produce displayed like tropical flowers outside of the corner shop.

  Our Lady of Paris, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, was a stone’s throw away and her bells rang to welcome every new day without fail.

  Elise learned that in France the first floor of a building was what Americans called the second floor. Why there was such a difference she didn’t know, nor did she care. It mattered, though, that the window of Elise’s room on the third floor could open just a crack and would invite the wonderful smell of Monsieur Belfre’s baked bread to drift in on the rise of the sun.

  It would have been nice if Elise could eat Le Bat’s bread rather than the stale stuff served with each meal in the clattering cafeteria.

  She rolled to her side and considered her room. It was big enough for one, but there were four girls to a room at The Girl’s Garden. Elise was given the bed by the window, not out of kindness, but because it was the loudest and draftiest. The street sounds of cars and delivery trucks would begin at sunrise every morning except Sunday, and on Sundays the girls would all go to Notre Dame for prayers.

  The other three girls were sleeping.

  They were awful.

  Juliette snored and was prone to talking in her sleep. Her words, half muttered, were difficult to understand. Now and then, though, it was clear she was having a conversation about dental floss. On awakening, she never remembered dreaming about dental floss.

  Juliette was the nicest of the three, less prone to cruelty towards Elise, but not a friend. The nicest thing about her was she tended to ignore Elise.

  Agnes, on the other hand, was unpleasant, heavy and dull in a sinister way. She wore atrocious pink-rimmed glasses and had enormous teeth that seemed to take up most of her face. Biot did her bidding and would just as soon insult Elise as look at her. The insults were always in French, and as Elise had grown better at understanding the language the two had made their comments more cruel.

  Their words, spat out over meals, in class, or at the play yard, cut like broken glass.

  “The idiot American can’t do anything properly. Her father killed himself of shame at having such an ugly and stupid daughter. Better if she had died with him. Better for the whole world.”

  In the dim light, Elise could make out the dark wood of the armoire, the sheen from the posters that decorated the walls, and the skeletal coat rack.

  Somewhere outside her window a car horn made a brief noise. There was a tick tick tick of a clock, the beating of her heart, the soft whisper of her breath.

  Elise was wrapped in the blanket her Dad gave her when she was small. T
his was one of the few things from the old days she still possessed. The blanket was special, not just because of memory, but because of its soft fabrics patch-worked together into unusual patterns, its mosaic of embroidery that seemed to be stitched of gold, and its toughness.

  The blanket had not a single blemish or torn thread, despite everything it had been through. Dad made her promise she would always sleep with it to keep away the monsters.

  When Elise had arrived at The Girl’s Garden the Sisters had taken away all of her things. The Sisters ran the Garden with ruthless and cold efficiency. That first day, Elise had been terrified, confused, and without hope. The Sisters had done little to make her at home. They snatched away her belongings and rifled them for contraband. They berated her for mistakes beyond measure. One of them had grabbed the blanket. Elise wouldn’t let go, and she kicked and screamed with all of her strength. A towering woman that Elise came to know as Sister Viverette saw the uproar. There had been a heated discussion, and then they had made the one exception. Sister Viverette returned the blanket to Elise and promised that there would be no more trouble.

  They had taken all of her things, but not her blanket.

  As the days went by Sister Viverette made a point of checking in on Elise when darkness came and the girls were settling in for bed. While she smiled little and often seemed unsteady because of too much wine, Sister Viverette was the one person at The Girl’s Garden who showed Elise any kindness at all. In fact, it became routine for the Sister to tuck Elise in and make sure that her special blanket was wrapped tightly for the night.

  There was little comfort at this new home, and Sister Viverette was stern, but those moments of kindness before sleep meant a great deal to Elise.

  *

  The alarm clock rang before the sun came through the window. It was a noisy old thing, an antique round creature of glass and brass they would need to wind before going to bed each night. The sound was a tray of silverware rolling down a cliff.

  Elise eased out of bed, holding her blanket around her. The others were moving as well. Biot was quick to be first, always skittering like a spider. Slow Agnes sat on the edge of her bed and stared dully at the wall. She looked like a pig that’d been struck between the eyes by a bowling pin. Juliette staggered to the armoire to retrieve her uniform.