Tiger's Voyage

by Colleen Houck

  The kraken hung from one tentacle; its soft bulbous mantle was pressed between stalactites, but it slowly slipped through like a blob of Jell-O, reforming itself to fit between the small spaces. Its skin pulled, and its eyes seemed to stretch. It oozed toward us—a dark, pulsing, fleshy monster. It looked hungry.

  It got stuck briefly, and we heard a scream of frustration. Goose bumps rippled across my skin, and I began kicking backward. The kraken saw me move and suddenly thrust toward us violently, using its tentacles to propel itself closer. It ripped its flesh in several places on the rough stone but didn’t seem to care. It was determined to reach us. Its body shifted, and I stared, fascinated as its beaky mouth snapped violently several times, ready to carve us up and scoop our bloody chunks into its mouth.

  Then it was free of the stalactites and its massive head ballooned into its normal shape. It blinked again and hung free in the water for a moment. Probably calculating which of us would taste the best. It was enormous. The elongated oval mantle was as big as a bus, and its tentacles were easily twice as long. It centered its attention on me, and my heart stopped beating.

  The creature shifted, angling its head down as if lying back, and began shooting arms out toward me. Then it suddenly stopped. Ren has raised his trident and was trying to get the monster’s attention. The colossal black orbs turned to him. Its eyes had the reflective sheen that only animals that live in the dark possess. As it turned, I noticed that the bright light seemed to come not from its eyes but from the paddled tips of its longest tentacles.

  As a tentacle moved past its head, I saw its posterior surface change color. Its purplish-brown skin briefly turned pale with black spots. I saw the funnel above its eyes shoot out a stream of bubbles as it moved again, thrusting out powerful tentacles. The water surged around us.

  Ren twisted the staff of his trident and shot three spear darts in quick succession toward the beast. One glanced off a moving limb, one speared a tentacle to the stalactite, and one grazed the mantle. Black blood clouded the area where the creature hung. With a quick move, it yanked its pinned tentacle away from the stalactite. Others shot out in every direction. I blasted one that wrapped around Kishan’s throat, but it hung on tenaciously. He began sawing at it and was successful in getting it off, but it tore away his breathing tube. Kishan reached for his backup and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  Ren and I pummeled the monster with lightning power and darts. The mantle expanded, and in a flash of light and a rush of water, the creature was gone. I swam in circles trying to see where it went, but with the lights off, it could have been anywhere. I kicked my legs and moved closer to Ren, figuring it might help if we fought back to back. Kishan had just started moving closer to us when the lights came back on. The kraken was right behind Kishan.

  Two fleshy limbs wrapped around his body and shook him in the water. One of his fins came off and dropped slowly into the chasm below us. Ren swam powerfully forward and thrust the trident into the largest tentacle. The creature squealed but held on. Kishan slashed with the chakram and, at the same time, I raised my hand to blast through it. That’s when I felt a tug. The beast had wrapped a limb around my waist and yanked me toward it at a frightening speed. Attacking Kishan had been a diversion. The creature pulled me aside and shut off the lights.

  Fanindra shot away from me like an arrow and disappeared. Suddenly, I was far apart from Ren and Kishan, who probably hadn’t even noticed I’d been taken. Suction cups gripped me hard, digging bony little pinchers into my skin, like acupuncture needles. I blasted firepower into the limb, but the only result was that the pressure increased. It had me around the ribs, and when it squeezed, I thought my lungs would collapse. The turbulence of the water increased the closer I was to the creature. Kishan and Ren turned on flashlights. I could see them, but they couldn’t see me. They had finally detached themselves and were searching for me, but I knew they’d never get to me in time. The monster curled its arm, and my perspective changed. I was now facing the mouth of hell.

  A part of my brain shut off, and I was able to analyze the creature from what seemed a safe distance. I could coldly calculate the manner in which I would meet my end. The mouth snapped open and closed. It opened and closed similar to a fish. The similarity stopped there. The orifice that I was rapidly nearing reminded me of the Sarlacc pit in Star Wars, a round black hole filled with several rows of sharp teeth. Three long green tubules shot out from the gaping mouth and began slathering my face and wet suit with an oily substance that I could only assume would help me to slide down its gullet easier.

  I used my power to blast the kraken’s mouth. The beast shook angrily in response and clacked its razor beak several times. The long green tubules wrapped around my throat, waist, and arms, pinning them to my sides and drawing me closer. I was trapped. I couldn’t use my lightning power anymore. I was going to be eaten by the kraken. The tentacles squeezed me roughly a final time, shook me, and let me go, trusting that I was sufficiently incapacitated by the green tongues.

  I writhed back and forth, desperately trying to free my hand, but I was beaten. I couldn’t move. I tried to turn my head to see if Ren or Kishan were near, but I couldn’t twist enough. My mask was torn off as the creature shifted me. It was apparently going to eat me feet-first. I squinted in the murky water, trying to see without my mask. I thought I saw a golden blur near me, but I wasn’t sure it if was the trident or Fanindra.

  Something brushed my arm, a long sinuous shape. Probably another tentacle to give me a final tenderizing. My feet were in its open mouth. I kicked a leg, but my calf hit a serrated tooth. My leg burned. I had the Scarf wrap a bandage around this new wound, which was probably moot as the kraken was going to eat me any second. I waited for my leg bones to crunch, but the creature didn’t bite down. Maybe it was going to swallow me whole? An idea surfaced, and I asked the Scarf to tie both ends of its beak open. The threads raced up, wrapped around the creature’s body above and below, and then wrapped several times around the top and bottom of the monster’s beak to hold it open.

  The kraken thrashed and moved, shaking violently like a shark trying to rip the flesh from a whale. When its razor beak started ripping through the threads, I asked the Scarf to reinforce it, but I knew it was just a matter of time. The kraken would eventually get angry enough to bite through the thread all the way and cleave me in half.

  As my body was whipped back and forth in the water, I briefly wondered what my parents would have thought about the way I was going to die. I thought about the afterlife and wondered if people shared death stories. If so, I’d have the coolest story ever. You died in your sleep? Drunk driver? Cancer, huh? World War II? Well … yeah, those deaths are great and all, but wait till I tell you what happened to me. Yeah … that’s right … I said a kraken.

  I should have panicked. I should have drowned. But I just drifted in the wake of the surging limbs and calmly waited for the creature to swallow me. What was taking so long? Sheesh. Get on with it already.

  The kraken’s body gave off a strange sort of glowing light as if it had tiny winking bulbs under its skin. I could see its black outline in the water, barely.

  I felt like someone had thrown me into a giant washing machine. I could feel the smooth flesh of tentacles, the rubbery discs of suction cups, and the sharp sting of teeth as they whirled past me in the wash. I heard the screeches and felt the surging of the agitated water and the pulpy slick probing of the tongues as they continued to slather me in oil. I hung like a fish caught on a line, waiting to be reeled in—but something was distracting the fisherman. I cracked open my eyes and saw black whirling tendrils of blood.

  Wriggling shapes shot past me, one golden. Fanindra. She lit the area, although I decided I’d rather be in darkness. The monster loomed over me like a fleshy purple cloud in the water, ready to destroy me with the violence of a hurricane. I watched her as she swam over to a tentacle and bit. The creature shivered.

  More long shapes swam toward me—yello
w-and-black striped, black-and-white striped, gray, green, long, thin, thick—sea snakes. The cave was full of them. They attacked the beast, swarming over it like needles in a pincushion. In fact, I watched as several snakes followed Fanindra’s example. Some of them bit savagely into the purple flesh and wriggled their way inside. They moved under the squid’s skin like worms, biting and tearing as they went.

  The creature screamed and filled its mantle. Black ink jetted out from the funnel and coated me in warm waves. It stung my eyes. I quickly shut them and almost threw up as the funnel pushed water again. Suddenly, the kraken moved dozens of body lengths away from where it had been, dragging me violently along with it.

  In the confusion, the kraken loosened its grip on me. I had shifted out of its mouth, but it still held me paralyzed in the grip of its tongues. It was just in time too, because the monster’s movements snapped the threads clean through. It would have sheared me in half. As I pondered my lucky state, I watched the snakes that were still attached to its skin. I saw Fanindra bite the skin next to the giant, black eye, and the beast shook itself. Tentacles flailed back and forth in the water, desperately trying to dislodge the snakes.

  Something touched me, and I flinched but then felt a hand squeeze my arm. Ren grabbed a green tongue and removed it from around my neck. The powerful muscle began to wind itself around his arm, but he tugged hard and got it off. Kishan swam up to us and sawed through the green tubes. Slick, oily liquid gushed over us as he severed the tongues from the creature’s body. He freed my legs while Ren freed my arms. Kishan wrapped an arm around me in the distressed swimmer grip and started swimming away, tugging me along with him.

  Bent on violence, Ren swam up to the beast. He thrust the trident deeply into the creature’s maw over and over again. Black blood rushed out in a cloud, and soon I couldn’t see him anymore. Kishan pulled me closer to the rock steps. After we reached them, we turned and watched as the creature jetted murky ink again. The last we saw of it was the blinking lights on the tentacle pads as the kraken descended into the dark chasm below. We waited anxiously another few moments until we first saw the gleam of the trident and then Ren making his way toward us from the black cloudy water.

  Sea snakes shot out of the chasm by the hundreds and hovered in a wriggling cloud nearby, Fanindra at the head. A small light high above us indicated a way out. We swam up. Kishan led with me gripping his hand. He broke the surface in a white tiled pool and reached down to pull me up. Ren shot out next to me and removed his breathing apparatus. We all sucked in several deep breaths. Kishan tugged me to the side of the pool. He carefully removed the tank and my flippers and began checking me over.

  “Are you okay?”

  The question made me laugh hysterically until finally I could shake my head. “No.”

  “Where are you hurt?”

  “Everywhere. My leg especially. But I’ll survive.”

  He took his diving knife and cut off the leg of my wet suit to inspect the damage. I’d used the Scarf to create a bandage. Wes had taught us to leave the bandage on and keep putting more bandages on until the blood stopped. It wasn’t bleeding through, so I had hopes that it wasn’t that severe of an injury. I had the Scarf wrap another layer, and Kishan squeezed my arm.

  “How bad is it?”

  “It could be worse. I think it will be okay.”

  He nodded and stood, looking around.

  We were in an underground room, completely enclosed except for a set of stairs. I grunted in pain, and then padded on bare feet to the stairs, limping, and looked up. The stairs were too small for a dragon. It must be able to change into a man like Lóngjn. Motivated to hurry while the kraken was licking its wounds, I started up slowly, favoring my strong leg and the brothers followed.

  At first, I leaned heavily on Kishan and bit my lip trying to control the pain. After one flight, he growled and picked me up, carrying me up the rest. We climbed. Ten floors. Twenty steps per floor, but Kishan wasn’t even breathing hard. When we finally reached the end of the stairs, we stepped out onto the stony roof on top of the ruined castle. Kishan carefully set me down on a rocky bench, and he and Ren approached the head of the sleeping blue dragon.

  “Wake up!” Ren roared.

  The dragon shifted and snored. A cloud of fog descended on the brothers.

  Kishan shouted, “Get up. Now!”

  The dragon huffed and cracked a lazy eye. What do you want?

  Ren worked his jaw angrily. “You will wake and speak with us, or I will ram this trident into your fleshy throat!”

  That got the dragon’s attention. The fog turned black, and the dragon whipped its head around and bit the air. It narrowed its eyes.

  You may not speak to me in that manner.

  Ren threatened. “I’ll speak to you in any manner I wish. You almost killed her.”

  Killed who? Oh. The little girl? I never touched her.

  “Your filthy beast did. If she had died, I would have come up here and killed you.”

  She obviously didn’t die, so you should be happy. I warned you that the task was hard.

  Kishan stepped forward. “Give us what you promised.”

  The dragon moved a heavy limb and bared its neck. Take it then.

  A large disk hung from the dragon’s neck by a thick leather cord. Kishan stepped forward and, using the chakram, freed the disk. The brothers turned and headed back to me.

  The blue dragon shifted its bulk noisily. Don’t I get a thank you? Qnglóng said. After all, the sky disk is no trifle.

  Ren picked me up and turned his head slightly toward the dragon. “Neither is she.”

  I looked up into Ren’s blue eyes. His livid expression calmed somewhat, and he pressed his forehead against mine for a brief moment. Then he passed me to Kishan, said, “Help her,” picked up the disk, and started down the stairs.

  17

  Remembering

  I protested that I could try to walk, but Kishan ignored me and carried me down the stairs. My leg had started bleeding through the bandage, and I asked the Scarf to wrap it several more times until the bleeding stopped.

  When we finally got to the pool, Ren was already waiting for us. I didn’t relish the thought of getting back into the water with the kraken again, but I gamely slipped on my tank.

  Kishan had just offered me his goggles when Ren interrupted. “Her goggles are here. So is your other flipper. Fanindra brought them up.”

  A golden head popped out of the water. I leaned over to pat her head, and she slid over my arm. Kishan checked the gauges on my tank as Ren slid into the water.

  “Her tank’s low.”

  “We’ll share,” Ren replied.

  I watched him drop all his weights, but he still couldn’t achieve buoyancy with the sky disk. It was too heavy. When I expressed concern, he turned away and said, “I’ll manage.”

  Ren took the bag I’d made with the Scarf and positioned the strap across his chest while I equalized the pressure in my ears.

  “We’ll have to be quick,” Kishan warned. “We’ll just swim across and get out of here as fast as we can. If we run into the kraken again, just turn around and swim back here. We’ll figure out a different way to get back to the yacht. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He smiled and kissed my nose before lowering his goggles. I took an experimental breath on the regulator and dove through the hole in the pool, following Ren. Fanindra stayed close to me as we descended. The sea snakes swarmed to welcome her back and surrounded us as we swam.

  It was dark again without the light of the kraken, but Fanindra seemed to know the way. She gave off just enough light that we could see ourselves cocooned in our sea snake bubble. I kept my eyes peeled for the kraken, but there was no sign of it. Still, it seemed like giant eyes were watching our progress and I expected a quivering tentacle to snatch me away to oblivion.

  My nerves stood on end. I felt like I was one of those dumb high school girls in a scary movie that opens doors she should
n’t, putting herself in harm’s way, deliberately taunting the monster chasing her. The only difference was, I wasn’t making out with a boyfriend in a haunted house or wearing a miniskirt.

  We crossed the black cavern without incident and made it back to the small passageway. Ren entered first, surrounded by wriggling snakes. I steeled myself to follow.

  By the time we’d made it through the other side, my air tank was empty. I gave Ren a signal, and he nodded, handing his regulator to me. I sucked a deep breath and passed it back. We did this a couple of times until Kishan emerged from the passageway. He touched my arm and nodded, indicating that he would share with me now so Ren could lead on.

  Being underwater without my own air was frightening. It was all I could do to stop myself from swimming wildly up. I knew there was nothing above me but rock, but the intense survival instinct to head for the surface was compelling. The only thing that kept me grounded was Kishan’s solid presence at my side.

  I kicked and followed Ren. The light was getting brighter. The murky water changed from midnight black to dark indigo and then, thankfully, to the clear turquoise blue of the open ocean. Finally, we turned a corner and I saw the cave opening ahead and the late afternoon sunlight slanting into the water.

  Kishan passed me the regulator, and I took a breath. The air hissed and stopped flowing. His tank was empty too. He gave me a signal to wait and smiled in reassurance. He swam after Ren, who returned and pressed his regulator into my hands. I took a breath and handed it to Kishan.

  The three of us moved slowly out of the cave toward the surface, sharing one tank of oxygen among us. The sea snakes, released from escort duty, darted quickly away for the open ocean. Many of them twined their bodies with Fanindra’s as they passed her. A moment later, they were gone.

  Kishan took a small breath. Ren’s tank was almost empty. He signaled this, and we looked up. We’d have to make a break for it. Kishan handed me the regulator so I could take the last of the air. I shook my head, but he insisted, and I took a final breath and started swimming for the surface. I let my breath out slowly as the water became brighter and brighter. I needed air. I wasn’t going to make it.