by EJ Altbacker
“DON’T SAY THAT!” Gray screeched.
“What will you do? Nothing?” Takiza asked in a mocking voice that seemed to scratch Gray’s mind.
“I don’t deserve this! I don’t! Leave me alone!”
But the betta continued hovering in front of Gray, his eyes boring into him. “Your friends will swim the Sparkle Blue because you can do nothing to prevent it. Your mother will swim the Sparkle Blue because you utterly failed. And your brother and sister will also swim the Sparkle Blue, again, because you were good for … nothing.”
“NO-NO-NO! Gray struggled against the harness, trying to swim away from Takiza. He didn’t want to hear this! He tried to flee from the betta’s cutting words, but the greenie harness held him tight.
“You have managed to lose the battle before you swam a single stroke. You will fail everyone you know and love—without even giving a token effort to save their lives from the horror that is Finnivus. He will do what he pleases with them … as I do with you right now.”
Gray shot straight at Takiza. If it weren’t for the boulder in the harness, he would have chomped down on the betta. As it was, his teeth came together in a thundering crash inches away from Takiza as he calmly hovered in the cold water.
The Siamese fighting fish shook his head in disappointment. “It’s a wonder you can feed yourself, Nulo. You are pathetic.” The little betta turned and slowly swam away.
“Come back here right now! This isn’t over!” Gray’s tears were gone, and he felt hot anger rising. Takiza was wrong to be so cruel, and he would admit that. One way or another, he was going to! “Don’t you show your tail to me!” Gray shouted.
“If you wish another view, I suggest you do something about it,” the betta said in a voice that made Gray grind his teeth. But he was still tied tight to an immovable boulder!
Gray tried shooting forward to snap the tether but was jerked to a halt. Takiza knew what he was doing when he wove it, and the greenie refused to break.
Then I’ll just have to lift it.
With colossal effort, Gray churned his tail as fast as he could. So much of the seabed flew up from his powerful tail strokes that Gray felt as if he were in a storm of silt and grit. But slowly, the boulder did rise. And out of that sandy cloud swam Gray. He chased after Takiza, swaying left and right as the fast current got a hold of the giant boulder hanging beneath him. “You’re not getting away that easy! You’re going to hear what I have to say, Shiro!”
Suddenly Takiza was again in front of his left eye, swishing his frilly fins in annoyance. “What is it you think you deserve, Nulo? Oh, do enlighten me. Tell me your thoughts so that I may bask in their genius.”
“First of all, you’re very sarcastic! It’s annoying!” Gray gasped, the weight of the massive boulder crushing him through the harness. “It’s not a fitting way for you to speak, and especially teach, you being so old and supposedly wise.” The strong, icy current wasn’t helping matters. And maddeningly, Takiza declined to swim in a straight line, making it even harder to keep up!
“So,” Takiza mused. “You understand that I am wise? Perhaps our training was not a total waste.”
“That’s—that’s—” Gray grunted as he followed the betta around a coral pylon. “That’s not the point I was making, you preening little puffer fish!” Takiza gave Gray a wounded look but let him continue. “This isn’t fair!”
“And who told you life in the open waters was fair?” Takiza asked. “Please let me know who that wise fin was so I may go for their learned guidance in matters both large and small.”
“There’s that sarcastic edge again,” Gray grunted, using the current to his advantage and clearing an obstacle that Takiza had swum around. “It makes you sound like a cranky shellhead. Is that what you’re going for? Because that’s what I’m getting.”
I’ll show him, Gray thought. I’m going to win this argument if I have to carry this boulder through the seven seas!
“And we do things because they’re fair all the time! If I have two fish and my friend has none, I would give my friend a fish—probably the smaller one—but hey, I’m pretty big.”
“Some would say too big,” Takiza added.
“That’s not the point!”
“Oh, please let there be a point aside from the one on your sizeable snout.”
“The point is, I shouldn’t be expected to do everything!” Gray yelled. “You know who should lead? You should lead!”
“I cannot.”
“Can-not or will not?” said Gray, imitating Takiza as best he could.
The betta nodded. “There are limits to my powers. And I fear a greater threat than Finnivus now swims the oceans. So someone else must lead this battle while I counter that threat.” Takiza ruffled his fins as if the conversation were over.
The heck it was! Gray churned after the betta, catching up once more.
“Everyone looks to me like I’m the fin with all the answers. Why would they do that?”
“Perhaps it is because you are a megalodon and should not exist.”
“They don’t know that, and I didn’t ask to be a megalodon!” Gray shouted, his voice squeaking more than he would have liked from his straining effort. “I have no idea why Lochlan picked me to lead his mariners. Come on, they’re a royal shiver! Why would he choose me?”
“Because he knew you could stop Finnivus, just as I knew you could lift the boulder and carry that burden successfully, a burden that Lochlan himself never even got off the ground,” Takiza said matter-of-factly.
“It’s impossible. I can’t do it!” Gray yelled in reply.
Takiza motioned with his tail at the obstacle course. “But you already have.” The betta gave the harness a tail flick, and the whole thing fell off. Gray looked back and was dumbstruck at the distance he had moved the huge rock. It was impossible.
But somehow, he had done it.
“How …?” Gray asked in a whisper.
“How indeed, my young apprentice?” Takiza swam in front of Gray’s eye, looking him over, as if deciding something. In short order, the betta nodded and said, “Yes, I do believe it’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for your favorite thing, Nulo. Answers. Lochlan gave leadership to you, rather than those with more experience and standing, because he thought you were the only one who could do the impossible. To defeat the unbeatable! He thought you were the embodiment of a legend.”
“I understand the words you said, but not the way you said them.”
Takiza sighed, irritated. “It’s always two strokes forward, then one back with you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand that either. I’m really, really tired.”
Takiza made an exaggerated groan. “This is why my advice for you to keep quiet is so very wise in your particular case, Nulo. Listen, as I attempt to enlighten you. I shall now recite an ancient prophecy, known by only a chosen few, Lochlan and myself among them.
“He shall come from the depths
of oceans prehistore.
He will face an evil empire
as from the ancient lore.
Raised in warm Caribbi waters,
by coral adored,
by coral abhorred,
a megalodon will arise
and win the unwinnable war.”
Gray looked at Takiza and repeated the verse to himself.
The line “raised in warm Caribbi waters, by coral adored, by coral abhorred” was freakishly specific to him, as he was from Coral Shiver, loved by his mother but also banished at one time. Gray’s tail twitched as he asked, “And you—you—think that is about me? You think that?”
“One never knows about legends,” Takiza answered. “They are irritatingly unclear. But the verse does seem to be speaking of someone remarkably like you, in an uncomfortably similar situation to the one we find ourselves in today.”
“And Lochlan believed this? Believed in me?” Gray asked.
“He did,” Takiza answ
ered. Then after a moment, he added, “As do I.”
“Wow.”
Takiza began swimming off. “I am done teaching for the day, Nulo. But there is no reason you cannot continue to learn as you make your way home.”
BARKLEY WATCHED AS THE TWO SHARKS FROM Hammer Shiver, Sledge and Peen, went through the greenie in the Hydenseek, a dense kelp field off the Riptide homewaters. They were making the same mistakes he did when discovering what worked and what didn’t to swim with stealth. When Gray hurled this promotion at him—forcing him to create a new kind of sneakier scout—Barkley was sure Gray was doing it because he was mad at his own situation.
Just the same, Barkley soon found out that leading was waaaay harder than he had ever imagined. He didn’t know how Gray held up at all under the strain of being the big fin for the entire armada. Barkley was older by a month—a fact he loved to remind Gray about whenever he got the chance—but even if he liked to consider himself more mature, he was finding it impossible to lead just ten sharkkind, much less every single shark living in the Riptide homewaters.
“Too fast!” Barkley yelled after slipping directly over their dorsal fins. Both sharks were surprised by his sudden appearance and twitched as if they’d been shocked by an eel. “When you’re swimming against the current, you have to let the greenie slide past you, or a sharp-eyed guard will notice it’s not moving the right way.”
The hammerheads weren’t thankful for this information, or even embarrassed for being totally startled. Just the opposite. They were angry.
“Oh, yeah? Then we’d fight whoever found us!” said Peen, the smaller, more aggravating hammerhead. The second, Sledge, was much larger. He added, “This sneaking around isn’t for us. It’s for jellies and turtles!”
Barkley seethed. The hammerheads were mariners, and while they wouldn’t physically harm him—Grinder gave them strict orders to obey—they didn’t take him seriously at all.
Stupid Gray! Barkley thought. Why is he making me do this, anyway? To show what a giant failure I am at everything?
“Fins up!” Barkley yelled as gruffly as he could. He thought that the stern tone would make him sound tougher. Upon hearing his new voice the first time, though, Mari had asked if he had a cold. But at least Mari wanted to learn.
And then there was Snork …
“Yes, sir!” the sawfish shouted. “Right away, sir!”
While Barkley appreciated the sawfish volunteering, his enthusiasm wasn’t helpful. In fact, it made the other tough mariners respect him even less. Everyone except Mari chuckled.
“You’re all acting like you don’t want to be here,” Barkley began.
There was a snicker from inside the small company. Someone in the back coughed, “We don’t!”
Oh, boy.
It had taken a few days of watching the mariners drill to make his choices. Barkley had seen something in each of these sharks that said they could be taught how to swim silently and unseen. When he got down to actually choosing, Barkley found that sharkkind, even of the same type, swam in very different ways. There was a small sub-set, usually those sharks who were smaller or slower when they were pups, which swam more efficiently and smoothly than the others. Normally, being small or slow would be a huge disadvantage, and those sharks mostly wouldn’t make it to adulthood. The Big Blue was tough that way. You could either have lunch or be lunch on any given day. But the sharkkind that did overcome those deficits knew how it was to be weaker than those around them—and still survive.
Once these formerly weaker sharkkind grew into their bodies, they had learned something extra in the time the odds were against them. That also meant they were very hard to control.
Especially by me, Barkley thought. He took a deep breath. “Well, I’ll let you in on a secret—I don’t want to be here, either! But we’re under orders, and they come straight from the top. So let’s make the best of it.”
Mari watched him from the ranks. In her eyes Barkley could see that his speech needed something else. But what? “Your lives depend on what I’m teaching here, and how well you learn it!” Snork was smiling and waving his bill in agreement. Barkley saw he wasn’t getting through to anyone else, though. “So get your snouts in that greenie and do it again!” The gathered sharks swam into the field, joking and tail slapping each other, not taking it seriously.
They don’t take me seriously, he realized once again.
Barkley saw Grinder shake his head in disgust and swim away from Silversun, who hovered outside the training area, watching. Barkley had chosen three of Silversun’s Vortex mariners to be in his special force, along with the two from Hammer Shiver. The rest were Riptide fins he already knew. But aside from Mari and Snork, they didn’t hold a high opinion of Barkley either. The Vortex Shiver sharkkind, though—a mako, a blue, and a bull shark—were the most receptive.
Of course they are, Barkley thought. They’re led by a small port jackson shark. They don’t judge me by my size because they don’t judge their leader by his size.
How did Silversun manage that trick?
“Mari, swim topside and yell out when you spot anyone! Last one found gets to leave early!” This did get a whooping, enthusiastic reaction from the recruits. Mari waggled her long lobed thresher tail at him and nodded.
Barkley swam over to Silversun. The Vortex leader waggled his pectoral fins in a greeting. “Interesting lessons, subcommander.”
Barkley returned the greeting. “Yes, as you can see, I’m new at this. I need to get through to them, so, umm, this is kind of awkward, but can I ask—”
“I had to fight the biggest one,” Silversun said.
“What?”
“You swam over to find out how I came to lead my shiver,” the port jackson said. “It’s a good question for you to ask at this time. It shows understanding of your specific problem, and a keen mind to know where the answer might hover.”
“So, you’re really smart, then.” Barkley swished his tail back and forth.
“That remains to be seen,” Silversun told him with a smile. “Hopefully, smart enough to not end up with my head on Finnivus’s feeding platter.”
“Okay, back to what I wanted to ask. So you beat someone up?”
“Yes, I did,” Silversun said. “I’m not proud of it, but it had to be done. That shark is now first in my Line.”
“The huge hammerhead?” Silversun’s first was the biggest hammerhead anyone had ever seen! “That giant? You won a fight against him? Are you a Takiza-like, magical battler?” Barkley asked.
“Oh, no,” Silversun laughed, shaking his blocky head. “I’m terrible at fighting!”
“But, then—how?”
Silversun glided closer to Barkley. “He would have ripped me apart in any fair fight, but I knew I needed to lead the shiver. I knew I would be better at it than him. You see, being the leader was the only way to protect my family, friends, and everyone else in the shiver.”
“You cheated!”
Silversun waggled his tail sideways, meaning not quite, but kind of. “When the day came, I made sure that everything that could be in my favor was in my favor.” Barkley thought that over, and Silversun added, “If you want them to listen, you need to prove to them you’re worth listening to.
Barkley nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks, Silversun.”
Mari called out another shark that she saw in the greenie. Over half were spotted in the short time Barkley was gone. In the real world, that would mean they were now dead.
They just have to be better, Barkley decided, as he swam over to them.
“Okay, everyone form up!” he yelled, forgetting about using his gruff voice and saying it normally. “I have a new drill that I think you’ll enjoy. It’s called, ‘Beat up Barkley if you can!’”
Someone in the back said in a loud voice, “Now there’s a drill we can get behind!” and everyone laughed.
Mari’s eyes popped open. “Are you sure—”
“Yep! Today’s your lucky day!” Barkley excl
aimed. All the tension in his spine disappeared with an almost audible whoosh. “And before we start, go ahead, tell me what you really feel about what I’m trying to teach you.” Barkley stopped right by the larger hammerhead, Sledge.
He became wary, as if Barkley were trying to trick him. He stiffened into attention hover with his eyes straight ahead and yelled, “Subcommander! I don’t know what you mean, sir!”
Barkley slid around the two Hammer Shiver sharks. “I’m not that kind of a flipper, to get you in trouble with Grinder. You have my absolute permission to tell me exactly what you think of my lessons. That is, if you’re brave enough to do that to my face.” Barkley swished his tail in a way that Gray told him was really annoying. “Well, are you?”
“You … want the truth?” asked Sledge.
“I do!” yelled Barkley in his face. “So out with it!”
“I hate this assignment!” the large hammerhead said, getting louder as he went on. “I was gonna be right in the thick of things when we faced Indi armada! I coulda been the one that sent that chowderhead to the Sparkle Blue! But instead, here I am, nosing around in the greenie like some kind of krill-faced muck-sucker!”
There was dead silence from everyone. Sledge looked embarrassed, afraid he’d gone too far.
But Barkley took it in stride. He swam before his small company, feeling better than at any time since he was promoted. “Do the rest of you feel the same way?”
There was a weak, mumbled agreement. “Come on, you puffers! I asked: Do the rest of you feel the same way? Yes or no?”
This time there was a tidal wave of loud agreement. Barkley nodded, swimming in front of them. “I’m gonna let you rejoin your units. If you can beat me in the greenie. Any and every one of you that successfully tags me with a move that would send me to the Sparkle Blue gets out of this assignment—with my permission.”
There was excitement from the crew for the first time. There was even some respect in their eyes.
“But—and there’s always a but—whoever I tag stays with me until Tyro comes and says you’re done, with no more complaining. Do we have a deal?”