There, in front of Olivia, blinking slowly in a blinding spotlight, are two giant round eyes rimmed by black plastic glasses. The eyes rest above a thin mouth above a full midnight-blue robe. Olivia can’t tell where the robe ends and the darkness begins. The circle of light, which appears to be controlled by this robed being, illuminates only two faces: the one with glasses, and that of her brother, Oliver.

“OLI!” Olivia yells, elation dawning on her along with the realization that the robed creature must be here to help because she’s no longer bound up and the sack has been removed from her head. “You’re here!” She runs forward and grabs Oliver’s skinny frame in a tight hug. She feels the hard plastic of the Nintendo Switch dig into her torso, as if she needed further confirmation it’s really him. Somehow that thing remained attached to his body as it became covered in scales. Unbelievable

“You’re squishing me!” Oliver protests and Olivia lets go of him. She steps back to survey her brother and the mysterious robed creature standing next to him. She counts four sleeves on the robe. The long, slithering fingers on the bottom two hands are moving in a delicate, repeated pattern around what looks like a giant glass marble. The two top hands have the same long fingers but they are still, resting on what she imagines are the creature’s hips, concealed beneath his flowing garment. Olivia follows the robe’s line up, up, to the face again. The bespectacled eyes roll dramatically and the little mouth releases a shuddering sigh of exasperation. Olivia suddenly gets the impression the creature is angry with them. Maybe not angry, exactly, but frustrated because it perceives them to be… incompetent, she decides is the most appropriate word.

The creature is trying to ask her a question.

“So? I suppose you do not know where you are or where you are going?” The voice is warbly and high-pitched at the same time. It makes Olivia feel defensive and like panicking a little. She wishes she could get to her bubblegum right now, but it must be buried somewhere beneath all the scales. She says nothing. Neither does Oliver. “Well?” The voice prompts.

“We know this is the land of Mermaids,” Oliver offers in a small voice, sounding like he’s guessing. The creature’s eyebrows rise almost to the point of liftoff from the forehead.

“Mermaids?” the voice scoffs. “You mean Narwitches, my little lost Earth-child.” Oliver didn’t have time to object to being called a little. “Well, you have forced me to bring my work down here, haven’t you? With all your misguided swimming about, you have forced me to leave my post. It is hard enough watching the antics of little jumpers like you from afar, now you have forced me to come rescue you!” The robed being sounds deeply offended, but also secretly a little glad to be useful and important enough to stage a successful rescue mission. There is a pause, and then, “Well? What do you have to say for yourselves? Are you going to thank me, at least?!”

“Thank you?” Olivia says tentatively, shielding her eyes from the bright spotlight. She sees it is bobbing slightly and suddenly wonders if this is one of those giant fish with the glowing tentacles — the kind that only live deep, deep below the surface of the ocean. She is intrigued by this thought and moves a step closer to see.

“Sounds like you are not sure,” mutters the being in the robe, “Ah well, you are welcome anyway. Now let us get out of here.”

“Is that — ” Olivia is still distracted, “is it an angler fish?” She asks. “I’ve read about them. They live in the bathypelagic ocean zone, and they dangle a light in front of their prey to… eat them…” she trails off, suddenly worried that this rescue is another trap.

“Well do not talk about him as if he is not here! This is Artie. He intends to prove himself useful in your escape from this place. Isn that not right, Artie?” The robe turns with a light swish and steps to the side a little so Olivia can see the fish. Artie’s hideous face is made more harrowing by the eerie glowing light illuminating jagged teeth and an upturned nose, like a pig’s snout. Olivia does her best to cover her gasp of horror with a shy smile.

“Hello Artie,” she says in her most polite voice. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She hopes this one can’t read her thoughts, or he’d probably change his mind about helping them (if that’s even really his intention). She hopes she sounds cordial and demure, the way her mother taught her to introduce herself to new people — regardless of how scary they looked.

Artie says nothing, but the robed being appears to have instated himself as the intermediary: “He is pleased to meet you, of course, but we have not got time for this! We have to get inside his mouth. Artie is a trusted emissary, and he can get us past Mother’s checkpoints.” The way he says ‘mother’ makes Olivia think the robed being knows how frightening this underwater dictator can be. She wants to ask about the crabs and all the creatures on the reefs who allegedly serve Mother in perfect freedom, but the robe is clearly in a hurry. Plus, there’s the more pressing question of what he’s just instructed them to do — did he say get inside the anglerfish’s mouth? Olivia cannot envision herself squeezing in past that broken comb of tooth-spikes without throwing up or passing out, or both.

“Come now, little children,” says the robe. “By Her grace, we will just make it.” He looks nervously at the marble orb in his lower two hands. It is spinning at a rapid rate, its clear surface peppered with occasional ribbons of cloud that look like stripes as they zip past.

“By whose grace?” Olivia asks skeptically, “Mother’s?”

The robe scoffs.

“No, of course not. I mean by HSE’s grace: Her Supreme Eminence.” There is an air of importance and grandeur around the robed creature as he says it. “I cannot make time for this!” He yells then, suddenly catching sight of something indiscernible in the surface of the marble orb. He reaches forward and grabs Olivia’s wrist. Into her palm, he thrusts something small and square and soft which Olivia recognizes instantly as the little grey book from the floor in Paul’s room. She doesn’t have time to look down at it because one of the four long-fingered hands grabs her firmly by the chin and forces her to meet the robe’s piercing pale-blue gaze. (A Seer’s eyes are the pallid colour of a washed-out sky. The experience of looking into them is like everything you’ve ever lost come back to you, and like losing it all over again in the same inscrutable second.) “Child, do not you ever let go of this again,” Olivia hears a high-pitched whisper rasp in her ear. “Do not let anyone know you misplaced it. Your survival depends on it. Yours and the young brother in your charge. Do you understand?”

The grip of the fingers squeezing Olivia’s wrist is so tight she feels herself losing feeling in her fingertips. She nods mutely and he loosens his grip a little, but pulls her forward toward the fish’s mouth so aggressively she can’t resist. She sees another of the four hands grasping Oliver’s wrist. The other two hands never cease their quick, neat, meticulous movements around that round, marble-like object. A moment later, the anglerfish’s light is replaced by blackness and a horrendous stench like rotting flesh. Olivia’s free hand brushes along what feels like tiny bones and then flesh. She retracts it, holding it close to her body once she realizes that she doesn’t need to swim. They are being moved by Artie’s giant benevolent body.

Olivia grasps the soft material of the passport as tightly as she can in her right hand. Don’t let go, she reminds herself. No matter what, don’t let go. The passport is growing warm again, then hot, almost scorching the flesh of her palm. DON’T LET GO, she wills herself, wishing she could see well enough to pull her sleeve over her hand to cushion her skin from the burning sensation.

“Oh, and by the way,” says the warbling, high-pitched voice inside the robe to her right, “I am Vellie. It is not like you had time to ask, you know, while I was saving you from certain enslavement and death at the hands of the most brutish dictator the seas of the Narwitches’ world have seen.” Vellie sounds injured in a self-righteous way that makes both Oliver and Olivia feel they owe him an unpayable debt — and that he wants them to know it.