Daughter of the Deep

by Rick Riordan

My captor and I tumble backward—free-falling from the side of the Varuna. I get a glimpse of blue sky. I feel the thunk of our impact as we crash into the water. Then the cold sea closes over my face like the folds of a burial shroud.

Great. I’ve been abducted by two evildoers named Caleb and Dave. I wonder if the Land Institute yearbook voted them most likely to open a family restaurant or maybe a gardening center.

I guess Harding-Pencroft hasn’t always been easy for him, either. He’s the only Latter-day Saint at HP, as far as I know. How does a Black Mormon kid from landlocked Utah get interested in a career at sea? I’ve never asked.

“No, Miss da Silva. The main dude was not a cartoon fish.

This makes no impression on him. Dolphins are shameless goosers.

Given the choice between destruction or lasagna, I will choose lasagna every time.

Then Robbie Barr does the unthinkable. He stops the video playing on the TV. I guess he assumed the touch nothing order didn’t apply to entertainment options. As he rummages through the Blu-rays, an outraged howl erupts from one of the side corridors. A humanoid creature waddles into the room, flailing his furry orange arms. My god. It’s an orangutan. And he’s wearing a cooking apron decorated with smiley-face daisies. The orangutan bares his fangs at Robbie, then says in perfectly clear American Sign Language, NO TURN OFF MARY BERRY.

“Oh, dear,” he mutters. “I see you have met Jupiter. Please never turn off The Great British Bake Off. It is a religion for him, and Mary Berry is his goddess.”

When I explain how my brother died, I feel like I’m collecting ashes from his funeral pyre, clawing through the hot cinders of his life with my bare hands.

How to make twenty freshmen hyperactive: 1. Give them access to an espresso machine.

Jupiter picks up my napkin and puts it in my lap. Because, like most higher primates, he knows more about dining etiquette than I do.

“Hello, Nautilus.” I speak in Bundeli. That was Nemo’s native tongue. He would have grown up speaking it, along with English, back when India was under British subjugation. If Nemo spoke any language to his creation, I’m guessing he would have chosen the language he dreamed in.

Gem packs light. He only brings his regular sidearms, a Leyden pistol, a Leyden rifle, and a bandolier of high-tech grenades he found who-knows-where. No flamethrower, and he hasn’t dismantled the forward cannon to lug it along, either. For him, this shows great restraint.