Kid vs. Squid by Greg van Eekhout

took no notice of me or Trudy or the Flotsam until Bike Lady cleared her throat.
    â€œFin?”
    â€œBusy. Cooking.”
    â€œFin, we caught these intruders—”
    â€œBusy. Cooking. Soup.” He continued stirring.
    Exasperated, Bike Lady tried again: “Fin, these children … they are
with the witch
.”
    â€œHmm. Come here and taste this.”
    â€œFin—”
    â€œSoup! Dinner! Taste it!”
    Bike Lady’s hands balled into fists, but she went forward and took a slurp. “Cabbage soup, yes, very nice. As I was saying—”
    â€œYes, cabbage soup. I suppose you are disappointed it’s not polar kraken,” the cook said. “Perhaps if somebody had caught a polar kraken, I would prepare polar kraken for His Royal Highness. Alas, His Exalted Majesty’s hunters were only able to spear three heads of cabbage, so that is what you will be served at His Extreme Grace’s table. Speaking of whom, where is our king?”
    â€œLeading a search party to find the princess,” she answered, her face turning red in frustration. “Andas these intruders have brought with them our most terrible enemy, I have no doubt they know the princess’s fate.”
    â€œWe do,” Trudy said, straining against the two Flotsam clutching her arms. “Shoal was swallowed by a monster fish. We’re her friends, and we’ve been trying to help her.”
    At that, the Flotsam gasped. Except for Fin.
    He offered his spoon. “Would you like some soup?”
    â€œNo, I would not like some soup! If you’re not going to help us help Shoal, then let us go!” Trudy was steamed, and in a roomful of angry Flotsam with trident spears and racks hanging with ugly cleavers, I didn’t think anger was a good idea. Not that I could blame her, but I wanted to make sure we didn’t end up as key ingredients in Fin’s pot.
    â€œSir,” I said, faking a reasonable tone, “we are Shoal’s friends, and she told us to come here because she said you were her family. We have the witch’s head with us, and she put the Flotsam curse on us. Whatever mess we’re in, we’re all in it together.”
    Fin took another taste of his soup and made a sour face. “It’s not even good cabbage. Concha, tell your guards to let the children go.”
    â€œBut Fin—”
    â€œDo it.”
    Concha, the bike lady, gave a reluctant nod, and her guards released us. All the moving parts in my arms creaked and popped as I stretched them, trying to restore circulation.
    â€œNow,” Fin said, “I would like to have a look at the thing in your bag. Will you permit me?”
    Trudy nodded. She removed her backpack and very carefully set it down on the kitchen counter. Concha and her guards held their breaths, spears ready, looking more scared than angry as Fin gently pinched the zipper and opened the backpack, just enough to peer inside.
    â€œWell, by Poseidon’s eye socket, that’s her all right.”
    He rezipped the backpack and motioned for us to join him sitting a long kitchen table. Spread across the scarred wooden surface was a big sheet of butcher paper covered in dark ink markings: lines, curves, circles that might have been planets, and scribbles lined up like math problems. Fin dipped a pen in a small, squid-shaped pot of oily black ink and scratched out some notations.
    â€œWhat is all this?” Trudy asked, examining it with her nose a bare inch off the table.
    â€œThis represents what has become my life’s work, done in service to my king: attempting to calculate Last Day, when the curse calls us back into the Drowning Sleep. It is dependent upon a convergence of hightide and deep ocean currents and planetary alignments. Every year I get closer to figuring it all out, but then Last Day arrives before I can solve it and we’re called back to sea, and no matter how cleverly I think I have hidden my