The Bell Underwater

At dawn a bell rang beneath the sea. Mira leaned over the rail, expecting a buoy. Nothing marked the pale water except a moving patch of foam. The compass needle shivered toward it.

“First tooth of the Broken Chain,” Bess said. “Bell Reef. We usually stay east.”

The map showed an island where the water rang. Mira checked their bearings twice, then asked Ivo for the sounding line. He passed it over without comment, though Rowan raised an eyebrow.

“Your chart says land,” the captain observed.

“My chart is old. The depth is current.”

She lowered the weighted line. Four fathoms. Then three. Through the clear water she saw a tower lying on its side, its windows crowded with silver fish. The bell swung in a broken arch whenever the swell passed through.

An earthquake had drowned the island. Mira sketched the tower, the shoal, and the channel around it, keeping her pencil moving when wonder tempted her to stare. Her uncle's little cross beside the island was not a harbor mark. It was a warning.

A sail appeared behind them. Resolute, large enough to ignore their narrow channel, was gaining through deeper water. Rowan asked whether Mira's measurements could get them across the reef.

“Not yet,” she said. “Slow down.”

He glanced at the pursuer. Then he called the order.

Ivo climbed into the dinghy with her. They sounded ahead while Bess inched the Lark after them. Beneath the boat, a mosaic street emerged from sea grass. A blue doorway stood without its wall. Mira thought of the people who had once carried bread through it.

“Don't make it a blank,” Ivo said.

She looked up.

“On your chart. My village was a blank on a company map. They said nobody lived where they wanted their warehouse.”

Mira wrote Drowned settlement beside her soundings. It was not enough, but it was true.

They found a channel scarcely wider than the brig. Rowan brought her through under shortened canvas, his easy grin replaced by complete attention. Resolute turned away from the shoal, forced into a long detour.

At the reef's far edge, the compass pulled toward a standing stone on a low spit. Cut into the stone was a spiral and an arrow pointing west. Below it, sheltered from the waves, a fresh knot of blue cord clung to a crack. Somebody had followed this route recently.