“Short for Coral. It was Dad’s idea. Mum named my older sister—Millicent—and Dad wanted a turn.”
“You got lucky, I think. Much nicer than Millicent. No offense.”
“Yeah, I agree. I don’t know what Mum was thinking.” Corrie finished the last bite of her sandwich, then her timer started to beep.
“What’s that for?” Zeb said.
“Gel’s done. I have to see if there’s any DNA there from our unicorn fish.” Corrie slid out of her seat and rushed to the galley to drop off her dishes in the sink as fast as she could manage with the rocking boat. When she entered the lab space, Zeb was right behind her.
“I’m curious,” he said with a sheepish expression when she looked at him. She laughed.
“It will be a while. I’ll find you when I’m done, I promise.”
Zeb nodded with a disappointed look and walked to the deck. Corrie got to work. She turned off the gel box, then suited up with a lab coat and gloves. The chemicals she used weren’t very friendly, and she needed to be careful on the boat. She slipped the gel into a lidded container filled with a staining chemical, then set the timer again and busied herself with her other samples. Her mind was squarely on the gel, though, and when the timer beeped, she dropped her other work and opened the container. Everything was more difficult in her makeshift lab, but she moved the gel into a tiny area on the counter that she had covered with a tent of black plastic. Inside, it was as dark as she could make it. She set up the gel on the ultraviolet light machine, the old spare one her lab used for cruises, and had a look. Her heart sunk.
Instead of a clear band in the gel, which would indicate that her DNA amplification had worked, there was an ugly smear of stained material that lit up under the UV light. She had nothing. Not only did they not have the unicorn fish in a tank, but they didn’t even have any genetic material to work with. It had been a faint hope, but a real one. And now, it was crushed.
Corrie threw out the traitorous gel in a hazardous waste container and peeled off her gloves in disgust. She thought she’d be used to the elusiveness of legendary creatures by now, having only ever seen the mermaid in person, but it was almost worse to come so close but not close enough. It was more palatable to deal with second-hand sightings and her data plots than to hold a creature in her hand and then lose it.
She came out onto the deck and saw Zeb leaning over the railing. When he thought no one watched him, he looked as despondent as she felt. Again, she wondered what his background was. There were too many holes in his “rich kid who likes science” story for her to believe.
She leaned against the railing next to him. Before he could ask, she spoke.
“Nothing. I didn’t get any DNA.”
He sighed and his mouth worked, but he didn’t ask about the unicorn fish again.
“Tell me more about your project,” he said. Corrie looked at him in surprise. Maybe he did really like science, after all. Zeb gazed at the passing forest on shore, but he seemed attentive. “How is the sampling going so far?”
“Great, really great,” she said. “Jules and I have the water sampling figured out. And the next two stations will be very different—one a sheltered bay, one a high-current zone—so that will hopefully give me great contrast with my data. I’m looking forward to collecting some pristine anemone samples instead of the sad specimens near the university.”
Behind Zeb, Krista gazed their way with an inscrutable expression. When she caught Corrie looking at her, she nodded and stepped back into the wheelhouse.
“Does your sister not like me?” Corrie asked. She was tired of Krista throwing her dark looks, and she wasn’t one to dance around issues. Zeb shifted with discomfort.
“No, it’s not that, she’s just—don’t mind her. It’s not you, I promise.”
“Good. I’m better at making friends than enemies. Enemies are just friends whom you haven’t gone to the right party with yet.”
Zeb looked surprised.
“Interesting creed. I can’t say I’ve followed through with that advice before.”
“Try it sometime.” Corrie grinned. “Everyone has a story, and with a little alcohol and good music, most can be convinced to tell it.”
Zeb’s smile faded and he looked out to sea once more. Corrie wondered why he was so closed off. It was hard for her to comprehend. She was open with everyone. She didn’t understand why someone would limit himself like that.
“What’s that?” Zeb gripped the railing and leaned out as far as he could. Corrie followed his eye.
“What?”
“I thought I saw…” Zeb scanned the water, but his shoulders slumped. “I probably imagined it. After seeing the unicorn fish this morning, every flash looks like something strange.”
They stood in silence for a moment. Corrie looked down at the wake beside the boat. Her body stiffened and she squeaked out one word.
“Zeb!”
Racing beside the boat were three unicorn fish. They dipped and glided deep below the boat, their horns barely visible in the murky waters and only the occasional flash of rainbow colors winking up at them. Zeb froze, then he jumped back.
“Where’s the net?” he yelled. “Quick!”
Corrie raced to the aft deck and fetched the net. Her heart pounded. She pushed the net at Zeb, who lowered it carefully into the water.
“Don’t spook them,” Corrie whispered. Zeb didn’t respond to her obvious comment, and she bit her tongue. He positioned the net near the front of the swimming fish. Corrie figured the rushing water would push the net back and scoop the fish up at the same time.
With a tremendous jab, Zeb plunged the net deep into the water. Corrie couldn’t see anything for a few moments except white froth and the net whipping backward. Zeb hauled it out before the water could drag it away.
They stared at the net in disbelief. Its rope netting hung in tatters, and no fish flopped within.
“That damn horn must be sharper than it looks,” Zeb said. He brought the net on board and threw it on the ground. His face writhed with emotion before it grew stoic once more. He picked up the net and turned to walk to the aft deck. “Better luck next time. We’ll be on station soon. I’ll get the dive gear ready.”
Corrie blinked at Zeb’s contradictory reaction. Sometimes it seemed that he wanted to catch a unicorn fish more than anything, and other times it seemed that he didn’t care at all. What was his game?
ZEBALLOS
Jules was sitting on a folding chair on the aft deck when Zeb came around. Zeb brandished the net at him.
“We almost caught one, right now,” he said. “The damn thing slashed the net open with its horn.”
“What the hell?” Jules reached out to touch the net, but Zeb jerked it out of reach.
“The horns are poisonous,” he said. “If my mum was right. Better not touch.”
“Go figure.” Jules looked at Zeb for a minute. Zeb set the net down and ran his hand through his hair, trying to settle his emotions.
“What?” Zeb said when Jules continued to gaze at him.
“Do you want me to try fishing for one?”
Zeb stared at Jules.
“Yes, brilliant. I have no idea what they like. Try a couple of different lures.”
Jules got up slowly and stretched.
“Best case scenario, we catch a unicorn fish. Worst case, we catch dinner.”
Zeb climbed into the hold while Jules busied himself with finding fishing rods. They stored the dive gear down there, and a faint aroma of fish lingered that George Artino had never managed to scrub out. It evoked past summers in Zeb and calmed his nerves quickly. The scent, along with Jules’ fishing idea, allowed him to compose himself. By the time the boat slowed and Corrie came out of the lab, Zeb had assembled the diving equipment and was relatively tranquil.
“We’re on station,” Krista’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Depth of ten meters. Drop in anytime.”
“Suit up,” he told Corrie. She grabbed her dry suit from her bag and Zeb stripped down to his swim suit. Jules walked to the aft deck with a fishing rod.
“There’s speedo boy,” Jules said with a laugh. “When are you going to wear shorts like a normal person?”
“Never,” Zeb said. “I hate stuffing shorts into a wetsuit.” He also hated the extra fabric swirling around his legs when he swam without a wetsuit. It got in the way of all his senses.
“I can’t believe you wear a suit that’s only three millimeters thick,” Corrie said with a shake of her head. “I get cold in my dry suit.”
“I don’t get cold easily,” Zeb said. Truthfully, he didn’t need any protection from the cold. He inherited his mother’s imperviousness to the cool waters of the local seas, and he only wore the suit to avoid too many awkward questions. But he couldn’t bear to wear a suit that was any thicker than what he already owned—it was enough that he couldn’t feel the play of water on his skin, let alone feel the restriction of a thicker neoprene. He didn’t want her to dwell on his comment, so he quickly deflected. “What’s the plan?”
Corrie started to check the equipment on his back while she spoke.
“Dive down to the ocean floor, head east along the edge of the shelf until we see some plumose anemones. I’ll take some samples, and then we’ll head back.” She pressed a button on Zeb’s equipment and air hissed out. “You’re all set.”
Zeb checked over Corrie’s equipment, then they waddled backward to the edge of the boat in their flippers. Jules clipped his fishing rod to the railing and opened a door in the side of the boat for an easier drop. Zeb went first, his skin itching to submerse itself in the water.
He fell, and with a jolting splash a world of cool green enveloped him. His heartrate immediately dropped, and tension released from his shoulders that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. His head popped out of the surface, and he winced at the noise and light. Corrie was waiting, so he swam to the side, the tank on his back dragging him uncomfortably.
“Geronimo!” Corrie said, her voice muffled from the snorkel in her mouth. She fell backward with a huge splash, then bobbed up right away. Her eyes were merry behind her mask. “Ready, captain?”
Zeb gave the hand signal for down and let air hiss out of his jacket. It felt more natural to use hand signals underwater. Sometimes, he preferred it. Everyone loved to talk, talk, talk, all the time. Even Jules, while often content to let a comfortable silence reign, talked more than Zeb wanted sometimes. He missed that about his mother. They would go for days without saying anything aloud to each other. They spoke plenty, with little hand signs that she had made up, or with subtle cues in body language that his father had never understood, but spoken word was not their primary mode of communication. Zeb preferred it.
They descended into the dim, green water. He hated diving with a wetsuit and a tank. It was so cumbersome, restrictive, and noisy. He didn’t need any of it. True, he could only hold his breath for ten minutes, not the forty minutes that he could last with a tank of air, but there was nothing stopping him from diving multiple times. Not only that, but he couldn’t feel anything with the suit on. He was effectively blind to the delicate currents of water that told him so much when he free dived.
No matter. This was a job, like any other. He had led plenty of dive groups previously, under his father’s direction. When George had phased out of fishing, he had filled some of the void with charter trips. While the diving gear was uncomfortable, it was familiar.
Zeb followed Corrie’s lead. He was only there for emergency support, because no one should dive alone. Corrie had her mission, and he bobbed along in her wake like a towed dinghy. A school of perch floated beside him, and he snapped his head around. What if strolias were swimming here? He scanned the murky water, but no rainbow glimmer met his searching eyes. Maybe the fish were scared off by their bubbles.
There was a clump of anemones up the slope to their left, and Corrie swam slowly in that direction. She pulled out large-handled clippers from a mesh sack attached to her vest and cut a small frond off the nearest anemone. The anemone shrank into itself, but Corrie ushered the tiny white piece of material into a plastic bag before tucking it into her sack. She repeated this twice more, then indicated to Zeb to follow her.
They collected from three clusters before Corrie was finished. Zeb led the way back to the boat, his sense of direction hampered by his gear but still more acute than Corrie’s. When they surfaced, Corrie was beaming.
“That was an amazing haul! This is incredible. I could hug you, Zeb. This is the best week ever.”
Her grin was infectious. Despite Zeb’s worries, anger, and disappointment, his face cracked into a smile at her happiness.
“Glad I could help,” he said.
“I’d better take my water samples now. Wow, I hope I don’t mess that up. The dive was so good!”
Jules appeared at the top of the ladder he had attached to the side for them, and Corrie continued to babble about their dive to his appreciative ear as she ascended. Zeb felt the pull of the ocean when he climbed the ladder, like the hands of a departing lover. He felt it every time he came back to the surface, and his skin crawled with the need to feel the cool salt water on his skin, unhindered by neoprene.
He stripped off the offending material on the aft deck and shoved the gear out of the way. He would clean it later. He wrapped a towel around his middle and walked to the bow, leaving Jules and Corrie to put the collection bottle in the water with the winch. He slid a hand behind the life ring to extract a pair of streamlined flippers, the small ones that competitive swimmers sometimes used. On the bow, he ditched his towel, slipped on the flippers, and climbed the railing.
“Really?”
Zeb swung his head around. Krista leaned against the outside of the wheelhouse with her arms crossed and a disbelieving look on her face.
“What?” he said. “Corrie’s busy. And I want to see if I can find a strolia. They’re everywhere these days, apparently.”
Krista was not deceived.
“You really can’t hold out for one week?”
Zeb rubbed his arm unconsciously.
“I’ll only be a few minutes.” He didn’t wait to hear a response. Instead, he straightened, took a deep breath, then dived into the waves with hardly a splash.
The relief flooded his body, and his heartrate dropped once more. Cool water caressed his bare skin with a thousand tiny touches, each current a slightly different temperature and salinity. Instantly, he could sense the lay of the land, where the currents rushed by in the strait, where there were pockets of stagnant cave water, where rock formations interrupted smooth wave action. A ling cod moved in a lazy spiral nearby, and Zeb felt it without looking.
It wasn’t quiet down here, although it was a different quality of sound. There was a distant roaring gurgle of waves on the shore and moans and clicks of creatures both swimming and attached to rocks. Far in the distance, a porpoise pod whistled among themselves. These sounds were what Zeb heard in his dreams.
Once his body had equilibrated and he felt centered and peaceful, he kicked himself forward. Water rushed past his skin, telling him new information with every thrust forward. He closed his eyes and scanned for fish-like disturbances.
Three rockfish to his left, perch above, and octopus in a cave nearby, but nothing unusual, nothing that would indicate strolias. An empty moon snail shell gleamed on the sand below him, and he kicked down to pick it up. He already had a few moon snails, but this might be his largest yet. It would look good on his shelf at home. Mindful of Corrie’s sampling time and his promise to Krista, Zeb swam for only a few minutes before turning back in resignation.
The boat was a dark oval above him, its shadow looming large on the seafloor. Zeb swam up to the bow then stopped. There was something attached to the hull. He swam closer.
It was small, about the size of his outstretched hand, with a str
eamlined cover to reduce drag. Zeb ran his fingers on the smooth surface and tried to find a handle or way to open the cover, but there was nothing.
The cover pulsed. A shudder ran through Zeb’s body, and at the faintest edge of his hearing there was a low moan. He stared at the device in astonishment. Had the noise come from it?
Zeb waited for another minute. The device pulsed every ten seconds, but nothing responded to the noise. Was it some sort of sonar that his father had installed? He wondered where in the wheelhouse the instrumentation was for this device, then he scowled. His father was too secretive for his own good.
Zeb surfaced with a huge gulp of fresh air. Krista peered over the railing.
“Over this side,” she said with a wave. “They’re still sampling.”
Zeb struck out for the starboard side, where Krista had left the ladder installed for him. He crept swiftly up the ladder, the pull of the ocean a familiar ache as his body slid out of the water. Corrie had her back to the bow while she fiddled with the collection bottle. Jules grinned at him then gave a thumbs up. Zeb rolled his eyes at his friend and went to find his discarded towel.
MATHIAS
Matt looked around. His nose didn’t wrinkle in disgust, but it was a close thing. A short chain-link fence surrounded the front yard of a tiny bungalow. It enclosed ratty grass, bare mud patches, and piles of junk. He counted three open refrigerators, five bicycles, and an old Ford pickup on blocks. The only life thriving in the yard was a multitude of yellow dandelions.
The house was in a similar state of mismanagement. Bedraggled curtains hung behind grimy windowpanes, and one window was boarded up altogether. Paint peeled off the wooden slats of the siding. Matt compared the bungalow to his snug little house that he had bought last year. While a similar size to this one, Matt cared for his first home carefully. Bianca liked it too—she said it was a perfect little starter house—although she clearly expected to get a bigger one when they moved on with their relationship. Matt hadn’t planned on it, but he supposed she might have a point. Too bad, though, he really loved the little house, with its white trim and snug woodstove.
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