by EJ Altbacker
“But how do we know she’s on our side?” Barkley asked. “I mean, Kaleth is a prehistore.”
Takiza shook his head. “She follows her good king, Bollagan, who was sent to the Sparkle Blue by Drinnok. Drinnok will stop at nothing to be freed from the smaller ocean underneath this one. Thankfully, a seaquake sealed the rift.”
Barkley looked over at Gray. “That must have been how you got here!”
“I guess,” Gray said. “I don’t remember.”
“I have told you too much already,” Takiza added. “Do not mention any of this to Kaleth. Her mind should not be cluttered by the past.” The betta flicked a fin at Barkley. “Go to your friends. I have stunned the guardians and you should be able to slip away.” Takiza showed the way with his tail.
“You’ll be okay without me?” Barkley asked Gray.
“I’ll muddle through,” he told his friend. “Go. Bring them here. We’re not following her command on this. No way.”
Takiza shook his head but didn’t disagree. “If you must. But that is sure to put Kaleth in a terrible mood.”
“Then we’re even,” Barkley said. “Because I’m in a terrible mood.”
And with that the dogfish left them.
CHAPTER 12
EVEN WITH THE MAREDSOO THAT TAKIZA HAD given him, Barkley’s muscles ached from snout to tail. He doubted he could have made it at all without the healing and endurance-boosting properties of that special, deep sea greenie. The Seazarein’s kingdom was in the northern Sific and Riptide was in the southern Atlantis. While he knew the geography of the swim, Barkley hadn’t been prepared for the actual journey.
In a way, it was wondrous. He had seen sights he had never imagined: the marching of millions of shellheads on the ocean floor as they migrated, schools of sailfish leaping in and out of the Big Blue, whales singing to each other from miles and miles away. It was incredible.
Other parts weren’t so fun: cutting through the landshark waterway between the Sific and Atlantis, for example. They called it the Panama Canal. It was filthy! It took him an entire day to get the taste of oil and garbage out of his mouth. What exactly did humans think they were doing with their giant, metal ships, polluting the Big Blue like that? You never knew with landsharks.
And we probably never will, thought Barkley.
But finally, he reached the edge of the Riptide homewaters.
It was horrible.
There was a dark haze covering most of the main area, including the once-grand Speakers Rock. Even though he was hungry, his stomach lurched because the waters stank of dead, rotting fish. As Barkley swam closer, he found it harder and harder to breathe. It got to a point where to go any farther would be heading straight into the Sparkle Blue.
Hokuu had created some sort of dead zone where the water wasn’t safe. Some fish, mostly silver and brown “dumb fish,” had gone into it anyway and died. They floated in the murky water, their lifeless eyes milky white. The glowing coral spires, once so beautiful, stood gloomy gray instead of their usual vibrant blue, yellow, violet, green, orange, pink, or red.
The reefs, once teeming with all sorts of dweller life, had no movement. Barkley could see the blackened and rotting husks of the lumos and shellheads that had no chance of getting out of the area in time. The terraced greenie was all black and crumbly. And the majestic kelp curtain that had scrubbed the cliffs overlooking the homewaters for centuries had turned brittle and white. It moved stiffly, flaking off with every back and forth. Soon it would be gone forever.
Tears welled up in Barkley’s eyes at the destruction and loss of life.
“You okay, sir?”
Barkley’s fins and tail jerked, he was so badly startled. It was Peen, one of his ghostfins.
“I’m fine,” Barkley said, shaking his head while trying to squeeze the tears from his eyes. “Good to see you’re as quiet as ever.”
“I had a great teacher,” the small but tough hammerhead replied. Peen was too sharp an observer not to have noticed that Barkley had been crying but was a good enough fin not to mention it. “Would you like to hear my version of the battle on the way to Striiker and the others?” Peen gestured with his tail at the dead homewaters.
Barkley nodded. “Yes. Let’s move away from here. The flakes are getting in my eyes.”
“Those get in everyone’s eyes, sir.”
They swam away from the wrecked homewaters, and Peen told Barkley about the grisly battle between Hokuu and Riptide’s forces. The camp Striiker set up was about an hour away, and it took all of that time for the hammerhead to fully explain the horror of the day. Quickeyes, the former leader of Coral Shiver, was dead! Their mariners had suffered almost two double droves’ worth of losses, four hundred sharkkind, swimming the Sparkle Blue. That was half of their forces! Barkley was speechless by the time a patrol of Riptide mariners found them. Seeing who he was, they took him to Striiker.
The big great white gave Barkley a friendly but sorrowful bump to the flank when they met. “Glad you’re back. Maybe you can help me figure out our next move. Hovering here in the open isn’t going to cut it. Once the last of the wounded are cleared for long-distance swimming, we’re leaving.”
Mari and Snork joined them. She swam with difficulty. But worse, her tail drooped and she seemed haunted. “It’s good to see you, Barkley.”
“Mari, are you okay?” he asked the thresher.
She nodded as Striiker hovered by her protectively. “Of course she’s okay! You should have seen her, face-to-face with that demon frilled shark. Mari got a little squeezed, but she’s gonna be fine.”
“Yeah, she’ll get better,” Snork said, keeping a brave face. “You watch. We all will.” Then the sawfish burst into tears. Mari patted him on the flank with her long thresher tail.
“We’re thankful to have survived,” she said. “So many others didn’t.”
It was clear that Mari was hurting from more than her injuries. The terror of the attack had left invisible scars as well. Striiker seemed at a loss, and even Snork was quiet. The great white motioned with a fin for Barkley to say something.
“So, Velenka,” Barkley sputtered, saying the first thing that entered his mind. “Why do you think Hokuu wanted to free Velenka?”
“I don’t know,” Mari answered, grinding her teeth. “But it has to be something important.”
“There aren’t many sharks that I don’t want to swim with,” Snork told everyone. “But that Velenka? Something’s wrong with her.”
What did Hokuu want with Velenka? Barkley wondered. It was baffling. Why would the prehistore nightmare Hokuu need the mako at all?
“BARKLEY!” shouted a surprisingly loud but high-pitched voice. “It’s really you!” The group turned as Yappy the sea dragon zoomed into their midst. “Now that Barkley’s here, I bet we’ll gather up everyone and stop that rotten sea worm! Boy, Barkley, you should have seen Striiker leading the mariners! He wasn’t afraid at all! He went straight at them!”
Striiker snorted at Yappy’s unsinkable enthusiasm. “Yeah, that didn’t work so well, Yappy. But we’re talking about important things here—”
The sea dragon flitted between everyone. “I know! That’s why I’m here! I think we should ask my cousins from the Dark Blue to help us! They’d be great in a fight! Oh, you should see them! They’re as big as Gray, and that ugly worm would wriggle into the seabed if he saw them! Do you want me to call them?”
“That’s a great idea!” Snork said, waving his bill around excitedly.
“Sure, Yappy,” Barkley said. “Why not? We can use all the help we can get.”
Striiker was too busy shaking his head to even mind that Barkley was making the decision when it should be his because he was leader of Riptide Shiver. But who really cared who made the decision about Yappy’s imaginary giant sea dragon cousins that live
d in the Dark Blue?
At least everyone was smiling.
Then Barkley saw Gray’s mom, Sandy, swimming over. She wordlessly glided over with tears in her eyes. “I’m glad you’re here, Barkley. Does Gray know?”
“Of course he knows! He was worried sick about everyone here. Especially about you and—” It was then that Riprap and Ebbie made their appearance, zooming from under their mother’s belly and pattering Barkley with baby snout bumps. “There you are! Your big brother misses you very much! You know that, right?”
Riprap let out a “yawwp!” and Ebbie nodded shyly.
“It was terrible,” Sandy said.
Barkley looked at each of them. “Gray wishes he could be here with you. He really does.”
Striiker snapped his tail in the water, loud. “Wishes? Wishes? Why didn’t he come back? I can’t believe he left us in the first place! We coulda used him in the fight, that’s for sure! But to not come back now? Are you kidding me?”
“Gray was threatened by Kaleth to stay put!” Barkley shouted at the great white. “He would have fought every finja in the place, but Takiza told him not to!”
“I don’t like it, but Gray must have a reason,” Mari said.
Sandy asked Striiker, “Do you really think my son doesn’t want to help?”
“Of course not.” The great white sighed. “I’m sure he feels terrible. I’m mad because I don’t know what the heck to do. And I’m supposed to be the leader here. How’s that for leadership?”
“Very good,” Sandy told him. “Sometimes admitting you don’t have the answer is the best thing.”
“That still doesn’t give us a current to swim,” Striiker said. “We need hunting grounds for over a thousand sharkkind, their families, and the dwellers staying with us.”
Snork swished his tail. “Could we team up with Gray?”
Barkley nodded. “Exactly what he was thinking, Snork. We go to Gray’s new pal, Kaleth the Seazarein. Oh, you’ll love her, Striiker. So nice. And as you might have heard, she thinks I’m especially great.”
“I can imagine,” Striiker said, rolling his eyes. “I’m not joking, Barkley. We can’t go there if the Seazarein is against it.”
“Well, Gray says different,” Barkley told everyone. “We can’t stay in Fathomir, but she didn’t say anything about hovering next to her homewaters. It’s the safest place you could find. And probably the only one that can feed us all.”
“Barkley, I don’t know,” Mari said. “Won’t Kaleth be angry?”
“Some sharks are angry no matter what,” Yappy offered.
Snork nodded, and Barkley had to dodge his serrated bill. “Boy, that’s the truth!”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Yappy’s right,” Barkley agreed. “Besides, who are we going to listen to? The Seazarein or Gray?”
“I vote Gray!” yelled Yappy.
“I like it,” Striiker added. “Plus, we have no other options.” The Riptide leader shouted to his mariners, “Form everyone up! We’re going for a little, fin-stretching swim to the northern Sific!”
CHAPTER 13
THE SEAZAREIN WATCHED IMPASSIVELY AS GRAY fought two of her best finja guards. Though they were well trained, if they didn’t have the element of surprise, Gray was more than a match for them. And one of the two was Shear, the captain of her guardians. Gray put his superior size and quickness to good use, ramming the prehistore tiger in the flank before plowing the other, a bull shark, into the seabed below. The two finja guardians dipped their snouts to her and left as Gray waited for her judgment.
Kaleth stretched her fins. “It seems you can take care of yourself in a fight. For that we can be thankful, at least.”
“He also did passably well in solving the dispute between AuzyAuzy and Hammer Shivers,” Takiza reminded her.
Kaleth tilted her head to Gray, acknowledging this. “There are other matters in the seven seas that haven’t been solved, such as the disagreement between the orcas and sharkkind in the Arktik. And Hokuu is an entirely different subject. I doubt he will show himself outside our borders and challenge either of you to single combat.”
“Agreed,” Takiza said. “We should not wait for that.”
“If Bollagan were here, he would end this in a day,” Kaleth declared, slapping her tail against a massive formation of green brain coral. “He would know what to do.”
“Wait, so he’s alive?” Gray asked, genuinely curious.
The Seazarein was puzzled, but Takiza was staring icy death at Gray.
Oh, he told me not to say anything about that! Gray realized too late. The two-against-one fight with the finja had taken a lot out of him, and he was dizzy from the effort. But Gray knew he had just made a big mistake.
“What do you mean?” Kaleth asked. “Why do you think Bollagan is gone?”
“He means nothing!” Takiza snapped. “He once again speaks when he should remain silent!”
Kaleth stared at Gray, her eyes boring into him. He tried to cover his mistake and stammered, “I don’t know. It’s—it’s been a while since you’ve talked, right?”
The Seazarein swam forward. Kaleth was a good tail fin larger than Gray. He didn’t know if he could win a fight if she attacked him. She gazed levelly at him and asked once more, “Why do you think Bollagan is dead?”
“I—I don’t know!” Gray said, but his eyes went to Takiza.
Kaleth put everything together and whirled to face the betta. “My king is dead! And you knew!”
The guardians appeared, but the Seazarein flashed her tail for them to go. “Leave us!” she shouted.
“By chance, I was in the under-waters as it happened,” Takiza told her. “I could do nothing.”
The Seazarein’s mighty tail drooped. She allowed herself to sink almost to the ocean floor. “My king swims the Sparkle Blue.”
Gray saw that Kaleth must have greatly respected, even loved, the leader of Fifth Shiver. She swished her tail morosely, causing sand to swirl upward. She peered at the fine grains of silt as they floated around her. “So, Astol is the new leader of Fifth Shiver. He’s a bit prissy for my taste, but intelligent, I suppose.”
Takiza shook his head. “Astol does not lead. Drinnok does.”
This got an immediate reaction from Kaleth. She shook her massive fins and swam in a slow circle, thinking furiously. “Impossible! That brute was fourth in the Line. He could never have beaten Bollagan or Gray-noldus in single combat! And then there’s Jokinin—he’d have to worry about her, too.”
“Drinnok staged a coup, Kaleth,” Takiza told her gently. “He killed Bollagan, and his frilled mariners sent the rest of the Fifth Shiver Line to the Sparkle Blue.”
“All this time and not a word about this?” the Seazarein roared. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Takiza didn’t reply and during the silence Gray asked, “Who’s Graynoldus?”
Kaleth looked at the betta, then him. “And now this.”
“I had hoped to avoid this and many other things, but the current flows as it will,” Takiza replied.
The Seazarein explained, “Graynoldus was your father, Gray. He was royalty and served in the Line of Fifth Shiver. You look very much like him. He was a good shark.”
“So this takeover happened and my dad got me out?” Gray asked. It didn’t seem possible. “Is he . . . alive?”
Takiza shook his head. “He would not have sent you through the passage alone. If he lived, he would have joined us at Fathomir.”
Kaleth scowled at the betta. “It was you,” she accused. “It wasn’t an earthquake that sealed the passage. It was you.”
“I had no choice,” Takiza confirmed. But he didn’t ruffle his fins like he did when he believed himself right. Plainly, the decision weighed on the betta. “It was chaos. Bollaga
n and his allies were dead. I heard Drinnok planned to invade the Big Blue that day. The fins following him all shared the opinion that these waters should be conquered by Fifth Shiver. I had to seal the passage.”
“And you didn’t trust me enough to say anything,” Kaleth stated.
“We had known each other for only a short time,” the betta told her. “I do apologize. But I could not take the chance that you agreed with Drinnok’s point of view.”
Kaleth frowned. “All this time you’ve been whispering in my ear, offering advice. All this time. And you said nothing!”
“You shouldn’t be mad at him,” Gray put forward.
“SILENCE!” roared the Seazarein. “You are my Aquasidor and have a dispute to solve for me in the Arktik!”
“I will attend him,” Takiza said, dipping his snout.
“You will not!” Kaleth yelled. “It’s high time we see if he can do this job alone. You’ll stay and tell me everything you’ve been hiding.”
Takiza gestured at Gray. “Do not punish the boy for my actions.”
“You forget yourself!” Kaleth shouted. “Either come with me now or never swim into Fathomir again! Choose!”
“I can do it,” Gray told the betta as confidently as he could. “Shiro, I can.” He nodded far too many times, though. Any chance they had of stopping Hokuu would be ruined if Takiza and Kaleth weren’t allies, so Gray couldn’t allow that. Not when opening his big mouth was the reason for the fight.
The betta nodded and dipped his snout to Kaleth. “I am here to serve,” he said.
“You’d better be, Takiza!” she answered, swishing her tail in short, angry strokes. “You’d better be!”
CHAPTER 14
VELENKA PEERED UPWARD FROM HER HIDING place in the thick greenie as the Riptide Shiver sharkkind passed by. Though she hated sticking her snout in the sand like some muck-sucker, sometimes it was the best thing to do.
Like today.