Unwritten Books 2 - Fathom Five
F
ATHOM
F
IVE
THE UNWRITTEN BOOKS
F
ATHOM
F
IVE
by James Bow
Copyright © James Bow, 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Barry Jowett Design: Alison Carr
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bow, James, 1972-
Fathom five / James Bow.
Sequel to: The unwritten girl.
ISBN 978-1-55002-692-4
I. Title.
PS8603.O973F48 2007 jC813'.6 C2007-900859-3
1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 07
We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program
and
The Association for the Export of Canadian Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on recycled paper
www.dundurn.com
The author gratefully acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council for assistance with this project through the Writers’ Reserve Program.
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For Vivian
ARIEL:
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have and kiss’d
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
FERDINAND:
Where should this music be? i’ the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o’ the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father’s wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But ’tis gone.
No, it begins again.
ARIEL
sings
:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
— William Shakespeare:
The Tempest
C
ONTENTS
“P
eter! Storm’s coming!”
It was a beautiful day. Peter slid across the ice in the wading pool in the middle of the deserted park. The sun shone through the frozen willow tree. Ice coated its branches and it clicked like a wooden wind chime as it shifted in the breeze.
Fiona sat shivering on the bench. She pointed to a towering purple cloud approaching from the northwest.
“Come on, Peter; storm’s coming. Probably more freezing rain, so let’s go home.”
Peter slid up to her, beaming. “But it’s still sunny
here
.”
“Not for long,” said Fiona. She reached out. “Come home, now.”
The nine-year-old took his babysitter’s hand.
Together, they walked along the crusty snow, avoiding the smooth and slippery asphalt path.
As they approached the street, Fiona looked up.
“Your parents are home!”
Peter saw his parents climbing down from a streetcar. Dad took Mom’s arm as he helped her to the curb.
A horn blared. A pickup truck slid forward, its wheels locked. His father looked up.
There was a sickening thump.
Fiona screamed and ran, skidding and slipping on the ice.
Peter fell on the ice-hardened asphalt. A pain shot up his arm.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
***
Peter’s eyes snapped open. The light of an October morning seeped past his blinds and into his bedroom. His sheets were twisted around him. His cheeks were wet.
He touched his face, and stared at the moisture on his fingertips as if he had never seen it before.
His clock radio switched on with a babble of voices. He groaned and whacked it silent.
The house was quiet and cold. He frowned at the silence before remembering that he was the only one at home. His uncle was off to Chicago on business, and wouldn’t be back until early next week, just in time to celebrate Peter’s sixteenth birthday.
Peter threw on jeans and a Maple Leafs’ t-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt and tried to make his hair look less like a haystack. What
had
he been doing in his sleep, skydiving? He only remembered falling. He tossed the comforter over the knotted sheets and went galumphing down to breakfast.
He was scraping the hard butter over a rapidly disintegrating slice of toast when the school bus horn blared outside. He shoved the toast into his mouth, grabbed his battered school bag and his windbreaker, and sprinted down his walkway just in time.
Some of his fellow students called his name as he walked down the aisle of the bus. He nodded at them and sat in an empty seat near the back, staring out the window and trying to swallow the lump of toast.
A moment later, the bus stopped again. The door opened, and a cardboard box on legs wobbled up the aisle and stopped beside Peter. Suddenly, the box lunged at him and bonked him in the nose. He grappled with it as Rosemary swung off her backpack and dropped into the seat beside him. She was wearing jeans and a bulky grey cardigan sweater. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take it back, now.”
His mouth glued shut by toast, Peter did his best to say, “That’s okay, I’ve got it,” with his eyebrows. He didn’t think he was successful, because she answered, “Science project. You know, those electron shell balloon models we were working on on Saturday? It’s not heavy, but it’s kind of awkward.”
She slid the box onto her lap, glanced at him again, and pushed her glasses further up on her nose. “Are you
still
eating breakfast?” The quirk on her lips was a dare for him to laugh.