Sea of Secrets Anthology

by J E Feldman

  The spot Omani had suggested leaving Damos had taken longer to reach than expected, and so had the swim to the rendezvous point, which Kurago was fast-approaching. At least Damos was safe. The young rascal was still sleeping as if he hadn’t care in the world. But the sleep spell would wear off around dawn. Since Darodreds were nocturnal, Damos shouldn’t pose any problems for the two manta rays who had begrudgingly agreed to watch him.

  Besides, Darodreds didn't care for bright lights like the sun. On the rare occasions when they ventured into the shallows, they grew torpid as the sun rose. Since Damos was stashed in a barrier reef, Kurago might not have to deal with the young Darodred for quite a while.

  The back of Kurago’s head tingled as the parley spell latched onto his mind and he put all thoughts of Damos aside for now. Questions poured in. They momentarily deafened Kurago until he lowered the volume on the telepathic link.

  No one had seen the ship pass and that distressed everyone, but no one was willing to accept any responsibility for that. Thankfully, the gathered dolphins, whales, and other large sea creatures quieted as his mental presence joined the parley. A crescent-shaped sandbar provided adequate space for those who preferred to come and go freely in and out of the water. A few gulls joined the seabirds perching on the atoll's lone palm tree.

  “We keep watch as before,” Omani was saying. She was at the edge of the gathering, where the water was deeper. “This changes nothing. We watch, but we must be more vigilant. My friends, we have become lax, all of us. For many generations there’s been peace and prosperity and safety here. And we’ve come to take it for granted,” Omani paused until the mental chatter died down.

  “Twice this night we’ve been tested and our watch found lacking. Once by the ship that passed and the second—” Omani’s gaze moved to Kurago, who was much closer to the sandbar amid a pod of dolphins. Her blue-glowing eyes were apologetic. “One of our charges came much too close to the Line That Cannot Be Crossed.”

  All eyes turned to Kurago for confirmation, and he reluctantly bobbed his head. Omani then spoke of the kraken’s domain. The seafloor plunged into a trench just before the waters that the monster claimed. The trench was a miles-deep line in the sand. No sane creature dared to cross it except that ship. It was now fair game for its guardian, the kraken. Thankfully Damos hadn’t made it that far.

  “It’s true. Kurago caught a young Darodred close enough to raise an alarm, but he reached him in time, and the Darodred wasn’t hurt.”

  “Damos is only a danger to himself,” Kurago said, sending a tight beam to Omani.

  Hopefully, the parley spell hadn’t just broadcasted that aside to everyone. It was hard to tell if it had because many of the gathered were partially submerged. If Omani had heard him, she gave no sign. She was right to tell all about Damos’s latest fixation. It was best if everyone kept watch for him and were prepared to divert him away from the kraken’s territory and that damned Veil. The search for it had killed too many sea creatures over the centuries.

  Were the two events related? Perhaps, but it was all academics at this point. They had a crew to rescue. Someone had to return to the One Continent to scare off the rest of the would-be searchers.

  “Changes come in threes,” whispered the sea as if in answer to the question hovering at the back of his mind.

  “Yes, indeed,” Kurago replied. His fins felt heavy. His duty as a Watcher weighed on him, and he started to sink until he used his caudal fin to propel him upward so he could breathe.

  “We must then split our efforts. Those close to the islands keep watching our other charges and those out here—my brethren especially—will keep a watch on our seafloor dwelling charges,” Omani was saying.

  There was scattered agreement and discord for a moment as arrangements were worked out over certain territories or sidelined for further discussion outside the gathering. But no one mentioned that ship or its crew. Were they all pretending neither existed?

  Doubts assailed Kurago. Were the Watchers in on whatever was happening out here tonight? It didn’t seem possible, but there was that ship and they kept mentioning Damos. Uneasy in his skin, Kurago swam in a slow circle, but the faces of his fellow sea creatures gave nothing away.

  “Would you believe I got woefully lost?” he remembered Damos saying, feigning ignorance about where he was, and what he was doing. There had been a forced lightness to his tone. The young Darodred had seem touched in the head and not at all himself.

  “We’ll watch the shores,” said a member of another dolphin pod, interrupting Kurago’s speculation. Were they in on this too?

  One of the gulls flew off. Feathered creatures generally ignored the doings of the sea creatures, so their attendance was quite strange. Were they part of this too? One of them could easily have led a ship out here.

  “We’ll watch for other troublemakers on the islands in case they come in multiples,” Luthiel said.

  His dire tone suggested they did. The blue whale wasn’t usually this dour, but he was a friend of Omani’s. Why was he bringing the conversation back around to Damos again?

  Through the parley spell, emotions sometimes passed, but only if they were felt by many. Right now, a general dissatisfaction permeated the link, but it lightened into a desperate hope whenever Damos was even tangentially referenced. That blasphemous idea nosed around the periphery of Kurago’s mind again and it was only strengthening as he floated there.

  Somewhere between the gulls’ suggestions and Kurago’s troubling thoughts, the gathering had broken up into groups by species to work out the details.

  “Can you deflect our young friend? Is that even possible?” asked Omani, once again bringing the conversation back around to Damos. She just barely concealed her desperation.

  Kurago swam over to her before answering. “I’d have better luck taking on a great white shark.” Especially if what he suspected was true: many of the Watchers wanted Damos to do what he did best—prove the lore was as fallible as its keepers. But this time, it was true. Why were they so set on this?

  Kurago remembered that disembodied voice. It hadn’t said who had been called.

  Omani blew out a long-suffering sigh. “Then we’ll have to resort to more nefarious methods, I guess.”

  Was she against the others’ plan? “And what precisely would that entail?” Kurago asked. He had no idea if his speculations were staying put inside his head or if he was broadcasting them.

  “How’s your storytelling skills? Think you can rewrite the whole myth about the Veil and send our young friend safely in the wrong direction? That way he’d be safely hunting around for it where it isn’t, and we can throw up as many obstacles as needed until he matures. He will eventually mature, right?”

  Omani waited patiently for a response while he sorted through her words for the answers he’d suspected all along. Someone had put Damos up to this. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d dream up on his own.

  “No, he knows too much for that to work, and I think there might be a higher power at work here.”

  Before Omani could reply, he told her about the disembodied voice, its message, and what he thought it meant, but he kept his suspicions to himself for now. Omani was his friend and she deserved the benefit of the doubt.

  “This is a lot to take in all at once,” she said. “If what you’re saying is true, then we need to save who we can and keep Damos away from the Veil.”

  “And that voice?” Kurago prompted.

  “I need to think about that.”

  “I’m not sure we have time for that.”

  “Damos can’t rebel forever. If we keep him away from the Veil, he will mature eventually and outgrow this need to explore and test his boundaries,” Omani said when the silence between their minds had dragged on for too long.

  “Not if he’s meant to do this,” Kurago hastened to add. But even as he sent that thought down the parley spell to Omani, part of him wanted Damos to keep pushing the boundaries of the restrictive wo
rld they’d all been born into.

  Over the years, Damos had proven parts of the lore false. As each tenet fell into his curiosity, the Watchers had stopped enforcing them, and that had left more time to devote to raising their young. The entire Watcher arrangement had been passed down through the generations. None of them had signed up for this; their ancestors had. This duty had been thrust on Kurago when he was still a calf, and his heart just wasn’t in it anymore. Was Omani’s, or was she arguing now just to prolong the tête-à-tête?

  “Kurago? Are you even listening to me?”

  “All this talk of the Veil reminded me about the ship and its crew. If the squid leaves anyone alive, we must save them. Later, we can talk about Damos. He’s not going anywhere for a while.”

  The urge to swim back so he’d be there when the Darodred woke momentarily overtook Kurago, but he tamped it down. Changes came in threes. Perhaps he’d find the third one with that doomed ship.

  “All right. Her Tentacular Squidness must be done sinking it by now. With any luck, she’s already en route back to her post by the Veil, leaving the sea open to us.” Omani blew an exasperated breath through her blowhole.

  “Will the whales take the survivors back to the One Continent? It’s a bit too far for a dolphin to go while so encumbered.”

  “I’ll ask for volunteers if we find any survivors. That giant mollusk is really good at smashing things and humans break much easier than their ships.”

  That was true. “Drowning isn’t a good way for any creature to die,” Kurago said as he swam alongside Omani. His sleek dolphin body gave him a speed advantage, making it easy to keep pace with her.

  “No, it isn’t. Life is breath. Without it, you’re nothing but chum and something will eat you.”

  As air-dependent mammals, they guarded those breaths and paid close attention to how long they could hold them. Both inhaled deeply through their blowholes before submerging. It was time to see what was left of that ship if there was anything besides debris. He sent a silent prayer for the crew’s safety in the direction of the Veil and the One God somewhere on the other side.

  If the Veil was truly a magical gateway, why did it need to be guarded at all?

  Something tugged at her, but Svetalia ignored it and kept blowing into the fulgurite to sustain the westward wind filling the sails of her ride. Exhaustion had dulled her senses and muted the creeping cold of someone else’s magic on her skin and scales. The unseen mage’s spell washed over the ship in barely visible blue waves. They bumped into Svetalia, knocking the fulgurite from her hands. It tumbled into the sea.

  The wind she’d called switched directions. Without the fulgurite, she couldn’t reclaim it, and what magic Svetalia had was locked in her accursed scales, but she couldn’t draw it out.

  Magic-Kind indeed. Her entire race was a cosmic joke, and that mage was probably laughing at it if he or she even knew she was there. Svetalia reached for another fulgurite then stopped. She might still need them to reach her goal. The one she’d dropped was gone—either swept away by the sea or captured by the unseen mage.

  Svetalia scanned the sea and saw no one except her and the ship that was unknowingly towing her in its wake. But someone had wrapped an unknown spell around the vessel. Svetalia didn’t know much about magic beyond calling the wind and summoning a storm. What was the castor’s aim?

  She got her answer a moment later. The sea bubbled, then millions of droplets shot skyward. They reflected the starry sky as they blotted it out.

  When they reached the upper atmosphere, they condensed into dense clouds, then the cycle repeated as the sea continued to feed the brewing storm. More droplets rose and condensed into sheets of colloidal fog that enclosed the ship. It was time to go before that ostentatious display drew a reprisal.

  The Watchers must be near because they couldn’t allow that ship to reach the Veil. All along, she’d planned to use the inevitable fight between the Veil's guardians and the ship's crew as a distraction to slip away. Svetalia untied the rope harness she’d fashioned about her waist, and the current grabbed her as she slid free. The ship had taken her as far as it could and she refused to depend on a capricious mage whose goals might not align with hers.

  Instead of swimming away as she'd intended, something stopped Svetalia. Perhaps it was a premonition of doom or a movement her subconscious flagged as dangerous, but something caused her to go limp and let the current take her where it pleased. She’d lived long enough to respect the warnings her senses sent her, and they were screaming at her now to lie completely still. Be like a piece of driftwood carried by the sea.

  That split-second warning saved her life when an impossibly long tentacle dropped onto the ship. With a deafening crash, it nearly split the hull in half. Debris rained down, missing her by inches as that tentacle rose to deliver another blow.

  Svetalia strained her eyes as the sea washed over her face, and she bobbed up enough to catch a quick breath before it pulled her under again. Another tentacle shot over her head, missing her by a man-length. The ship shuddered and spat several dark spheroids into the dark sea, but they had no effect on the monster.

  A purple bar dropped from the now-roiling heavens, connecting the sea and sky for an electrifying moment before the lightning faded, leaving afterimages of a meat-cloak with eight arms and two terrifyingly long tentacles. It took a moment for her tired mind to process what she’d seen, but when it did, she almost laughed. It was the colossal squid’s giant cousin, the kraken.

  If she stayed still, she could float right past it, and it might not see her. Plenty of debris was doing just that. The massive squid popped its mantle above the water line just long enough for its watermelon-sized eyes to scope out its prey and its eyes lit up, casting a pale glow on the wrecked ship and the sailors both in the water and those still clinging to debris.

  There was nothing she could do, even if her quest didn't trump everything. They would all drown, and those who didn’t would wish they had because there was no land for a thousand miles, at the very least. Svetalia closed her eyes and prayed for the many souls about to die as she floated westward.

  Perhaps, she’d see them on the other side. But unlike those dead seamen, she planned to crossover and come back with her prize. After that, nothing would ever be the same again.

  Winter Lawrence

  Biography

  Winter lives in the moment and loves nothing more than being surrounded by her family, her fur-babies, and a ton of great reads! When she doesn't have her nose stuck in a book, she's usually thinking up faraway, fantastical worlds or she's cooking up a storm in the kitchen!

  Her short stories are available in the Merry Krampus, Downfall, and Gothic Grimoire anthologies on Amazon, and her upcoming novel, “Eve 2.0: The Ultimate Gaming Experience,” is due out in Summer 2019. It’s the first book of The Gamer Series.

  To keep up with Winter and all of her adventures, you can visit her on Facebook or online at www.winterlawrence.com.

  Dolphins and the Ditch

  Winter Lawrence

  June 4, 1994

  Noon, off the coast of Puerto Rico…

  As we near the beautiful, white-sanded beach, a thought suddenly occurs to me: we probably aren’t allowed here. As John guides the boat closer to shore though, I don’t bother asking for clarification. In the past three years, I’ve learned a lot about him—like the fact he won’t tell me the bad stuff about my father, even though I’m starting to get an idea of what evil he’s capable of. Of course, John tries to shield me from all of that, which I guess is his job. He is my bodyguard, after all—not that he calls himself that; he just says he likes looking out for me.

  Now that I understand how dangerous my life is, I’m glad for him. And I’m grateful John has always taken me on “field trips.” It’s his way of getting me out of harm’s way. Today, for instance, we’ve left the expensive villa my father had rented on Puerto Rico to explore the tiny, beautiful tropical Isla de Mona. I overheard John and my
father talking about how it’ll be the ideal place to take me since no one, technically, lives on the island. It’s a natural reserve, so they sold the trip to me on the pretense I’d get to see some cool wildlife.

  I know the truth of it. Dad has a “meeting,” so there are going to be some shady characters hanging around the villa. Granted, they could very well be the nicest folks on the planet, but now I know my father is an international arms dealer, I can’t imagine any of them being decent people—I mean, nice is one thing, but when you make a living selling and buying nuclear weapons and military-grade equipment on the black market, you can’t possibly have a clean conscience.

  I’m just my father’s daughter and since I know the truth, I can barely look myself in the mirror.

  “Petra!” John calls as he drops the bow anchor, his thick, Ukrainian accent always funny sounding to me even though, technically, it’s my native tongue too. “Get ready to head ashore!” he bellows, then he makes his way to the helm so he can reverse the boat.

  I stay seated, waiting for the anchor to grab. When we finally jerk to a semi-halt, I get up and make my way to the stern. In terms of yachts, this is the smallest I’ve ever been on. The old Petra would have scoffed about being on such a quaint little thing, but times have changed and I now fully understand where my father’s money comes from—I get that the extravagant lifestyle I’ve come to enjoy was funded by the fall of the Soviet Union. I’m only ten, but as an “abnormally intelligent child” I get that it’s basically blood money. Granted, my ten-year-old brain may not be able to fully comprehend the enormity of those implications, but I’m wise enough to know that it’s bad—and that by association, I’m bad for having enjoyed it.