Child of a Hidden Sea

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “Kinda far from your home latitude, aren’t we, guys?” she murmured.

  When they were due east of the volcanic beach, the rowboat began to slow. The shadow below them vanished; the octopus surfaced, spat water all over her, and rolled the tips of its tentacles onto an oarlock, pulling itself up to peer at them.

  “Good girl, Lassie,” Sophie said for lack of a better idea. “If I had a fish, it’d be yours.”

  It dunked, resurfaced, dunked again.

  She turned on the light, shining it under the boat, looking. No sign of the thing that had been towing them, no sign of the bottom.

  Diving alone, in unknown waters. Stupid, stupid. Dive alone, die alone. And there was something down there. She looked at Tonio speculatively. But no—this was no time to be training anyone, and anyway she had only the one rig.

  “You know,” Tonio said. “The flailers would do what they could to make Bram welcome and comfortable.”

  “For his whole life.” She laughed weakly. “Maybe we could jailbreak him from Issle Morta.”

  “They’d scrip him to death,” Tonio said. “Their national honor—and their ability to protect future hostages—depends on their never letting anyone go.”

  So much for that. “Down I go, then.”

  “I’m sure Bram would prefer to—”

  “Live out his life on an intellectually barren rock? He’d lose his mind from boredom.” As she said it, she felt certainty descend. Cly might have the looks and charm of a TV dad, he might be a swashbuckling fighter judge from some exotic land. But that was all dream and vapor. Bram was her kid brother: That was real.

  She made herself take her time. She checked every bit of equipment twice: rebreather, dive computer, mask, the light and camera and the tethers clipping them to her arms.

  Half a click away, Nightjar was lowering its anchor.

  There was something directly ahead of them, on the surface. She brought up the camera.

  It was a sheet of wooden debris. A ship’s deck? Yes, part of one, from the look of it—out on its edge, the boards fanned out, undulating in time with the waves, and as she took it in she saw joins—nails—and a scrap of sail.

  Much of the raft’s surface was obscured by growths of a trefoil plant not unlike the ivy that choked trees in the Pacific Northwest. Here, it had obvious adaptations to a marine environment; its leaves had a cupped shape, allowing them to catch rainwater, and where the vines met the ocean they were slicked with translucent slime.

  “Algae probably,” Sophie said. “I’m guessing it’s a separate species in symbiosis with the ivy, protecting it from the salinity of the water.”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Kir,” Tonio said.

  The raft had all the bustle of a spring meadow. Caterpillars gnawed at the leaves here and there, and were eaten in their turn by keen-eyed shorebirds whose shape and markings reminded her of curlews. The birds ate the caterpillars and then snapped the half-eaten leaves off at the stem, tossing them away. Near the middle of the raft, whose surface area could have held a small playground or a huge house, the surface was bowed down by weight of a dozen or so Bonaparte’s gulls who were peaceably eating … what? Something plentiful, Sophie thought; had to be or they’d be fighting over it.

  Fanning out from the edges of the raft were random bits of driftwood and other stuff, tangled in the ivy and a bit of fishing net. The entangled bits and pieces had attracted mussels, at least four species she could see, and barnacles. The density of the structure was too consistent to have been random accumulation.

  They rowed to within ten feet of the raft’s leading edge.

  A triple not-quite-splash and three brown mammalian faces, hairy and heavily whiskered, surfaced aft of her. Otters. Their fur was blacker than any species Sophie was familiar with, and one had white patches on its throat. They regarded her with solemn curiosity as she found a spar, checked that it was really attached to the raft, and then tied up the rowboat. One of them tugged the rope, experimentally. Tonio splashed a little water at it.

  “They’ll make off with whatever they can get,” he said.

  She took video footage of the trio and then took a careful standing stance within the rowboat, raising herself up so she could examine and film the surface of the raft. The gulls in the middle had themselves a pond of sorts—a break in the floor of the raft where they were fishing up small invertebrates. They had a midden well clear of the water, a pile of lime and discarded carapaces that inhibited the growth of the vines around it. Insects whirled and crawled on their dungheap. They looked, from a distance, to be some species of cockroach.

  A drag on her leg—the octopus had reached over the side and given her a tug.

  “Just getting the lay of the land,” she said to it, and it vanished, descending. To Tonio, she added: “Where’d all this come from?”

  “The otters. We call ’em wreck farmers,” he said. “They find a nice piece of floating garbage and build it out until—well, you see. In time it gets too big and breaks up, or there’s a storm.”

  “In the meantime it’s a temporary floating meadow,” she said. “In three dimensions.”

  “If we left the rowboat here overnight, they’d tangle it up good.”

  “This is an amazing phenomenon,” she said. “I could spend my whole life filming something like this. The relationships between the plants and the various resident species…”

  “Your friend seems to think you’re needed below,” he said, frowning at the octopus.

  “Right. Back to business.” She checked the housing on her camera and all her diving equipment. “Any idea how deep it is here?”

  “Bottomless, I should think, or good as.”

  Time to make what passed for a dive plan. “I’ve got three hours of air on this rebreather, Tonio, but I’m only going down for one,” she said.

  “An hour, Kir?” He looked doubtful. “You’d have to be a mermaid.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said, as much to reassure herself as him. “If Lassie takes off for the bottom or beelines for anything hazardous, I’m coming back up to make a new plan. But for now it’s down, forty-five minutes under, up. Keep it simple, right?”

  “Simple,” he repeated, in a tone that indicated neither agreement or disagreement.

  “Depending on how deep I go and how long I’m under, I may have to ease my way up to the surface. So if you see me sitting at depth doing nothing, don’t try to rescue me.”

  “And if it’s been an hour, and I don’t see you?”

  “I dunno. Worry?” There was no backup out here: If she didn’t come up, there wasn’t much he could do.

  He nodded assent and then, with a glance back at Nightjar, offered her a dagger, black in color and about half the length of her forearm.

  “I’m not sure I want that.”

  “Can it hurt to have it, Kir?”

  “I guess not.” On impulse, she hugged him. “Don’t let them steal our ride home.”

  She checked her stance again and then went over the edge. The otters vanished, one rolling up to slap its tail, beaverlike, on the surface. Treading, she adjusted her mask, took a few breaths, looked at her dive computer and set it to mark time.

  Then she went under, just three feet, looked up at Tonio and adjusted her buoyancy vest. She took the time to breathe, to show him she wouldn’t drown. It wouldn’t help anything if he came swimming after her in a panic.

  After about thirty seconds he raised his hand: Okay.

  She made a sign—”I’m going down,” it meant—and dropped to ten feet, then fifteen. There was no sign of whatever had been towing the rowboat.

  They were out in what should have been a sterile stretch of sea: clear water, bright light, decent visibility. The raft, though, was throwing off a lot of murk. If its surface had been a meadow, what had developed beneath it was something in the way of a city. Long streamers of seaweed stretched down from the surface, like the tentacles of a jellyfish, all alive with activity. The underside of t
he raft was encrusted with anemones; small fish hid within them, guarding clutches of eggs. Palm fronds dangled here and there; they, too, were encrusted with eggs. Three of the otters were worrying a loop of vine loose from the raft, working in tandem to shove another scavenged hunk of driftwood into its outer edge.

  The seaweed growing from the floor of the raft had had less spread than she would have expected—much of it was braided into itself, so that it tapered, exerting downward force on the center of the raft.

  Must be something heavy down there, Sophie thought. The weight would serve as a keel, balancing the whole structure. She wondered how long a raft like this would last in good weather. The pieces would break apart in a storm, sending the fish and flotsam everywhere. Then, presumably, the otters would regroup.

  She shone her light into the particulate stream. The octopus was returning from the depths.

  She took her time descending. She had no diving partner, unless you counted Lassie. All she could do was be careful.

  One of the otters paddled close, investigating. It put out a covetous paw to one of the cords clipped to her dive belt.

  Suddenly the octopus was there, mantle spread in a clear threat, flashing red at it. The message was clear enough: Get back, get back!

  Sophie saw one of its tentacles was truncated, a stump.

  The otter retreated.

  She imagined it responding in a squeaky cartoon voice: Hey, relax, I was just having a look!

  Lassie led her farther down, closer to the braid of seaweed that hung like a curtain from the raft. Here and there fish had gotten entangled in the braid and been unable to work themselves free; they hung, staring dead-eyed, from the vegetation. She moved slowly, shining the light before her, watching for bits of net. As its beam took in the dark cord of vegetable matter she thought of the Estrel, and the lantern made of Captain Dracy’s father’s skull.

  Sixty feet down, she found what was weighting down the braid of seaweed: a dense strand of matter she was tempted to call a root ball, dead and tangled. Invertebrates writhed within.

  A heavy object, wrapped in sacking and six feet in length, was wound into the ball and affixed by the vines. Sea worms roiled in and out of it.

  A shroud, Sophie thought, some sailor’s body. She made herself breathe slowly and film it. Of course the otters would bind in any source of nutrients they could find.

  The octopus snagged her again: Come on.

  Okay, she thought. She was eighty feet down. It better be close, Lassie.

  Ninety.

  A hundred feet.

  A hundred and ten.

  She’d been deeper, but not alone, not in unfamiliar waters.

  Now the octopus stretched out again, rippling again. Threat?

  She turned a slow circle, shining her light in every direction. Nothing.

  Then she kicked, swimming closer to the root ball.

  Oh no.

  This corpse wasn’t wrapped up. It wasn’t exactly human either.

  The body was twenty feet long and combined human and reptilian characteristics. It had the upper body of a woman, but instead of legs her hips merged into a long, black, reptilian tail. It—she—reminded Sophie of the iguanas she’d just seen on the surface.

  Another magically transformed person. And those were shackles on its wrists. Another slave?

  One of these may have been towing the rowboat, she thought. It was about the right length, and what remained of its muscles looked bulky enough. A tail that long would make it a strong swimmer. She had no gills that Sophie could see.

  It had been dead for a while.

  Under the body’s breasts hung a combination of purse and lockbox, a heavy container affixed with heavy, criss-crossing straps that buckled across her chest. Seaweed and vines were twisted around it; the otters were doing their best to make the body, and her bag, a permanent part of their makeshift keel.

  Was the dead woman in cahoots with the octopus? Sophie tried to reckon whether Parrish would have told her if slaves were involved in hiding Yacoura. He’d only mentioned the octopus, who was currently sitting on the box, caressing it, probing the lock with its tentacles.

  Don’t guess: observe. She shone the light up and down, examining the dead woman.

  The body was wearing a heavy tunic and a helmet, one shaped like those little skullcap motorcycle helmets. It had been pulled askew, its strap stretched somewhat over the face, whose eyes were already gone.

  The distortion of the strap had tightened it around the dead woman’s jaw … and there was something caught in her mouth.

  Sophie let her camera drift on its tether for a second so she could switch the light to her left hand. Using the dagger Tonio had given her, she cut the helmet’s strap, letting the helmet drift away. An otter darted in immediately, claiming it for the raft.

  The body’s mouth relaxed, saving Sophie the grim task of prying it open, and revealing enlarged, pointed teeth. As the lips gaped, the sea washed out the remnants of bloody foam and something else—a rotten, rubbery hunk of flesh with suckers—part of a tentacle.

  Ah ha! Sophie thought. So maybe you tried to take the heart from Lassie here. You did take the heart. And she fought back. Poor woman. I hope I’m wrong about you being a slave; I hope you had a choice.

  If one of these things had towed her rowboat to the raft, it wouldn’t be far away.

  So stop fooling around. She got to work on the entangling vines and then unbuckled the lockbox, taking it slow.

  No rush, don’t rush, do it right the first time. Could the octopus really have killed something this big?

  She’d have to hope so. There was another out here, at least one.

  Probably not more than one, right? I mean, Lassie couldn’t hold off twenty of them.

  Where was it? Why hadn’t it come down here and got the lockbox while Lassie was fetching Sophie?

  Maybe Yacoura’s not in here. The chest strap came loose and she took the bag, turning her back on the body before tackling the assortment of smaller straps and locks. There was a velvet bag inside. She snuck a peek, and caught a quick glimpse of spellscrip. A sense of cold power roiled through her as she touched it, a indifferent and deadly force—the power of earthquakes, avalanches, indifferent crushing deaths. The octopus unfurled, caressing it … and then let it go.

  Okay, Bram, you’re just about saved. Sophie wrapped the inscription, feeling more than a little relief as that feeling of sheer force abated. She forced the inscription into her wetsuit, tucking it between her breasts. It would, she hoped, be invisible.

  As she pondered the question—why hadn’t the other lizard-thing come for it?—she fiddled with the lockbox, rebuckling it, closing it up tight.

  The corpse had no gills. Maybe the creatures couldn’t function at this depth. Or maybe Lassie had done a good enough job of hiding the corpse that it didn’t know where to look.

  Either was plausible, as theories went.

  If it’s the depth, it’ll be waiting farther up.

  She clipped the lockbox to to her dive belt, checking twice to make sure it wasn’t interfering with her scuba gear. Then she checked her dive computer. She’d been down here for forty-two minutes, at a hundred and ten feet.

  Not great. She’d need two stops.

  She did the circle again, shining the light up, down, around, and took a second to think through her ascent. She wanted to come up clear of the raft, and she needed to stop twice. Once at twenty feet, for two minutes—no big deal. But she’d have to sit at ten feet for over twenty minutes.

  There was nobody to help her if she got decompression sickness—

  —or attacked by half-human monsters.

  Dive alone, die alone. Bram’s voice, in her head.

  Well, she had Lassie, right? The octopus showed no sign of abandoning her.

  Nothing for it—she couldn’t just shoot up to the surface unless she wanted the bends. She would take it slow, photograph the root ball, shoot the diversity of life on the seaweed colony
, maybe get a little otter footage too and keep her eyes peeled.

  Right. Slow ascent to twenty feet. She kicked up, one two, leisurely rise. She checked the dive computer again, watched for monsters and nets.

  She marveled at the root ball as she passed it. Its upper edge was at a depth of ninety feet, where the last streamers of seaweed were bound tightly into one another and there were bones and shells and even rocks stuck in round structure of dead vegetation. The otters swam around tending it, poking runaway bits back into the holes in a sort of ongoing reverse game of pick-up sticks.

  It was an elegant, beaver-like feat of engineering. The ivy got going above on a piece of floating wreckage, the weeds started growing below. They used the ivy runners to tie in more and more biomass.

  The more weeds it can support, the more life it attracts. The otters get shellfish, shelter, and all this stuff gets a nursery. The bones and heavy material wound in at the bottom provide minerals for the vegetation and weight to stabilize the raft. Anything that floats goes up top to keep it in the sun.

  She could spend her whole life examining this thing, she thought. Despite Bram’s predicament, she felt a wave of something like love.

  The diversity of fish species taking shelter in the raft’s shadow was enormous—not quite as impressive as what she’d find on a well-established coral reef, but she saw many of the same species, mixed in with animals that looked similar: batfish for sure, and goby. There was no coral and thus no parrotfish, but she saw more anemones, growing on the scavenged spars and on long shreds of torn, scavenged sail. And at least a few cleaner fish stations, she saw—thirty feet above her a ray wafted in place, getting its parasites munched away.

  She took another look around for monsters, saw nothing, and checked her watch.

  She spent two blessedly uneventful minutes at twenty feet, filming.

  She’d just kicked up, making for ten feet, when the iguana-man made its appearance.