Drowning

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Adolphus attacked the control panel with hammer and pliers, looking for wire or cable sturdy enough to hold the weight of any of the children. Having been forced to admit that he could not rebuild the airship into a raft before they all drowned, he was working on harnessing himself and his siblings to one or two of the gas balloons that even now kept them from sinking into the underground river.

Mirabelle and Annabelle were helping him, but the younger two were struggling to keep the yeti’s head above the water seeping into their ship. The creature was huge and heavy, and showed no inclination to float.

“If Claire hadn’t taken all the line without a word to anyone,” Adolphus muttered, “we’d be flying out of this mess by now.”

“She must have had her reasons,” Mirabelle said. She wrenched open a panel, splintering the wood veneer. “Though I wish she’d told me….Ooh, here’s a cable!” She traced it through the wall of the little ship, her brother obligingly smashing through and prying open the interior walls with a hammer to recover the entire length.

“Gerhardt, you’re next.”

They had already fitted Bettina with a harness made of the boys’ suspenders. Mirabelle fashioned Gerhardt’s harness while Adolphus continued the search for supplies. Annabelle was crawling through the rising water prying up the floor on the assumption that there had to be belt drives somewhere. Too close to the yeti, she ripped up a section of floor that knocked the creature’s head under water. Bettina yelled and Gerhardt grabbed at the creature. Annabelle dove to help him and together they got it propped on a pile of broken floorboards. Their winter coats floated away, caught in the swirling current.

Annabelle stood up, surveying the destruction around her. Her hands trembled until she balled them into fists. She screamed and kicked a sheet of water at the yeti.

“Wake up wake up you stupid thing! We are all going to die down here and you’re going to die first if you don’t get up get up get up!” She threw herself onto the creature, shaking it and beating on its chest. Bettina watched, wide-eyed and afraid. Gerhardt steadied the yeti against her assault, but Mirabelle threw Gerhardt’s half-finished harness at Adolphus and grabbed her sister.

“Quiet love, quiet. We’ll do what we can and then we’ll go. I’m sorry for it too, but we are not going to let each other die down here.”

Annabelle let out another sob, then shook her head. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that Claire let the Count go and we have to leave the yeti to die.”

“It’s time to pull Claire back in,” Adolphus said. “Past time. Then we can use the line to harness ourselves to the balloons.” He peered at his siblings in the golden light of the algae lamp, the only light still working. “I’m afraid we’ll all have to pitch in and pull. We can’t help the yeti any more.”

More than one tear was shed as the children considered their options. To abandon a helpless creature to die made them sick at heart, but the water rose and Claire was gone, already lost perhaps, though no one would say it.

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This story began with On Grandmothers. The previous episode is Where is Claire? and the next is Into the Drink!