Sea of Secrets Anthology

by J E Feldman

  Snip’s eyes re-adjusted slowly. She felt, rather than saw the presence of the Cuttlefish as he emerged: an enormous form dwarfing them all. Snip blinked. She wanted to see more of Him. The ocean swayed with the behemoth, sand sliding across the sea floor over the tiny fish.

  Snip watched in awe as the sea giant emerged fully, white in a sea of darkness. Tentacles first, coiling and undulating as though conducting the sea itself. Where the tentacles thickened and joined in a cone, a beak, sharp and pointed nested in the centre.

  The tip of the soft flesh that was his body stretched down into the dark. Rocks trembled at the edges of the crevasse, widening the space as the great Cuttlefish emerged. As though he had grown larger in his hibernation.

  His tentacles coiled around them, so long Snip couldn’t trace where one began and another ended. The Cuttlefish clenched above her, pulsing the still sea, pushing the crowd back. With a great effort, the giant drew his tentacles in, rocketing to the surface.

  He took them all with him.

  Pressure assailed Snip, still clutched in the merman’s grip. Tentacles formed a sealed cage around them. Water rushing past her enclosure. She stared at the sea creatures sucked from the seabed with her. Mer-people held sharpened stone spears and pointed hooks tied to lengths of seaweed. Snip understood – they had prepared for this. Not like her. She shivered a little, staring at his huge beak – full of his first feed.

  The Emperor and Jones battled still. With a crunch Snip would never forget, the Cuttlefish broke their bodies until they disappeared, all but for a small swirl of green against the paleness of the Cuttlefish. Minute to such a huge creature. Snip swallowed a cry, straining upward, away from the beak. Outside the tentacles, the Kraken swam beneath her, trailing the Cuttlefish under its own steam.

  She sucked in water – it was warmer here, as they rose fast from the deep, protected by the Cuttlefish. But it was exciting, and she got to see the Cuttlefish up close! She couldn’t decide if she was excited or afraid. Snip had to tell Mum. She peered around, past the mer-people. She couldn’t spot her Mum anywhere.

  Maybe she’d been left behind? The warm water was suddenly chilly. She pressed into the merman, but he didn’t have the silky smoothness of her mother’s scales. She wiggled in his grasp. Old eyes peered down at her.

  “We’’ll be at the surface soon, little one. Then you will see a Whaler’s end.”

  Snip quailed. She didn’t want to see the Whaler anymore. Dead, sunken whales were enough for her. Snip tried to speak, but the water tasted foul. Filtered light from the surface brightened everything into a brownish haze. A large figure, almost as big as the Cuttlefish sat on the surface. A second joined it. Smaller shadows surrounded them. Snip gazed at the gap between the larger ones. Whalers; they would end up on the surface right between them.

  Snip wondered if they would be prepared, as the mer-people were. Would the whalers also have sharpened spears? Snip didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be home. Snip wished she had never played with the tentacles. A little bubble slipped from her lips, popping as they passed, so fast were they traveling. The boats on the surface grew closer.

  But the Cuttlefish wasn’t slowing. He pulsed again, speeding through the ocean. The world turned red and they broke the surface with a powerful eruption. Snip was flung high above the water. She gasped and choked, drowning in the air.

  A calmness seized her. She flew high above the two boats, chained together. One white, trailing red; the other almost as large. Its sides green and dark as kelp decorated with bright colours in a tall arc. People tiny as ants crawled the chains between the boats, people without tails.

  Mer-people were flung into the air alongside Snip, weapons held ready, snarls on their faces. The surface churned white, tentacles spreading over the boats, clutching and crushing them. The water rose like a peak, the ships on either side still tangled in tentacles, drawn to the pinnacle of the wave.

  The body of the Cuttlefish broke through the chains, splitting the two boats asunder. Its sluiced from the water exposing the paleness of a body never exposed to light. Its whiteness was quickly replaced with bright reds and blues pulsing around it’s body, tip glowing purple. Greens swirled over its tentacles. The magnitude of the Cuttlefish dominated all else, overshadowing the creatures, even the boats. All was insignificant next to Him.

  Fragments flew higher than Snip into the air. Metal twisted, piercing the sides of the Cuttlefish. It slowed him not at all. Mer-people brandished weapons, mouths agape, fighting in the air as though they floated in the ocean. The people without tails struggling and dying. Red flowing to the surface A silent cacophony viewed by a tiny god above.

  Snip tilted downward from the peak of her flight. Red stained the ocean and she understood what a Whaler was. A beautiful blue whale lay on her side harpooned by the largest ship. Sharp wheels churned through her flesh. Snip gasped in anguish. This was why the Cuttlefish had brought death to the surface.

  No matter what Davy Jones or the Emperor had whispered to him, the Cuttlefish had emerged to save the smaller beasts. She knew it. Nothing ancient could let such horror befall its folk, not if there was something that could be done to stop it. She choked again on the air and noise rushed back in, the chaos confusing her.

  Snip struck the surface, hauling in mouthfuls of hazy water tainted with salt and blood. The water churned white and red at the surface where merfolk battled those with legs for the ocean. Snip slipped sideways, pushed as though by a rip in the current. A man flailed his arms and legs, tangled in one of the merman’s hooks. His arm caught Snip and she listed, dazed. A small boat bounced over her head and Snip remembered there was no current; only the fight. The tiny fish didn’t want to be a part of this small war, but was engulfed in it anyway.

  More boats skipped above her with a constant droning. Snip stared, stationary in the sea as tentacles engulfed the smaller of the two ships. Green paint stripped back to silver metal as the hooks of the Kraken took hold. The boat folded like flimsy seaweed, its metal screeching beneath the strain. The Kraken stared at Snip under the surface of the ocean, its beak clicking frantically. Snip shimmied backward as with the greatest effort, the Kraken tore the boat in two, metal pieces dangling from tentacles either side of the small sea god.

  Snip darted off, lest she be the next victim of a tentacled god today. She wished again she were below, pressed against her mother’s scales, fins swishing around her, taking her home to clean water, and smooth rocks to play with.

  Jagged edges slipped past her, heading for the depths of the ocean. Snip watched the sharp metal sink rapidly, knowing it would hit the sea floor with a thud, twisted by the pressure of the ocean as it descended. Snip was glad the Cuttlefish had protected them on the journey to the surface, but worried how she would get home to her Mum. Would she also strike the seabed, twisted like so much metal discarded from the fight above? The surface was exciting – more so thank she has ever wished to experience.

  Snip dodged a spear thrust past her. She turned in time to see it stab a two-legged sailor in the chest. Red accumulated at his wound and drifted to the surface, adding to the haze surrounding the little fish. Snip wondered if she would ever taste clean water again. She blew little bubbles, rusty in the fog.

  They slithered through the thickened water, bursting upon the tips of the Kraken’s tentacles. It didn’t seem to bother him; he continued his rampage, wreaking havoc upon the ships, now wrenching towers from the deck of the larger boat. His eye found Snip and she froze beneath his glare.

  His eye seemed to ponder her as he shredded the second boat – the larger – into pieces. Debris sank past her. Snip felt another gaze on her and she looked up into the enormous face of the blue whale, still attached to the metal wheel ripping at her flesh.

  Red swept across Snip’s gaze. She wasn’t sure if it was from the blood of the last female blue whale or from her anger. She charged forward, fast as she could twitch her fins, tail slapping the water and broke the surface, deter
mined to free the whale from her metal cage before she sank to the sea floor.

  Snip broke the surface, white caps from the battle washing over her. Part of the Whaler still attached to its prey floated on the surface. Next to the whale’s large eye was a station with a red button – same colour as the blood staining the ocean, but separate from it. Snip sped up, shimmying through the waves to the button. She leapt from the water, spearing through the air only to fall short of her mark and slap back into the whitewash.

  Snip spluttered. She wasn’t strong enough or fast enough to jump that far. Heart wrenching for the dying whale, Snip swayed in the waves. She wondered if she could get closer, jump onto the boat from that distance. She backed away from the boat, giving herself a greater chance for speed. She flew through the water, fins working as hard as they could before the tiny deep-sea fish launched from the water, exoskeleton shining in the dim light of a dying day.

  At the top of her arc, Snip knew she wouldn’t make it. As she tilted forward, body heading for the water, Snip sighed, her fins hanging loose beside her body. She closed her eyes, preparing to re-enter the squalling sea, blood and salt mixing. Something grasped her sides and with a jarring thrust, Snip was sailing forward above the surface. She looked back, waving a fin to the merman who had tossed her into the air.

  Gasping air, Snip choked, gagging and drowning. She focused on the red button, aiming for it with all her tiny might. It grew closer and closer until with a thud she slammed face first into the button. An alarm sounded dimly as Snip slid down the side of the metal back to the water. She sucked in tiny gulps of sea water, spluttering on the iron tang so close to the whale.

  As she watched, the whale’s enormous silhouette jolted and slid free of the boat, the Whaler’s prey no longer.

  Snip closed her eyes, tired, floating in the white caps tinged pink. She let herself sink beneath the surface, water cold from her flight above it for the second time. Relics of the wrecks nudged her, but Snip kept her eyes closed, bumping about, sinking deeper. All she wanted to do was go home. Soon the surface was far above her. Snip squinted in the haze, watching it recede like a dream.

  The water cleared. Snip opened her gills and drank.

  Bodies bobbed about her as she plunged deeper, drawing in clean water. Open eyes in still faces stared at her in the silence of the ocean; some with tails and some without. Filtered light shone between the bodies, illumining faces old and new. White hair fronds tangled around her and she bumped against the old merman. She stared at his chest, snuggling, desperate for comfort, any comfort. But he too was still, arms hanging at his sides and she drifted away from his staring eyes.

  The Kraken sliced through the water, carrying its catch, debris from the broken boats torn from the surface along with it. Its eye fixated on Snip as it sank past her on its way to the deep and she wondered if it knew what she had done, freeing the whale. If it cared.

  Above her the surface stilled, light dribbling through in a reddened haze. A moment of pause cleared the roar from Snip’s ears. Then the light darkened, a great figure eclipsing the silhouettes of the remains of the floundering boats. When the surface shattered it took both fins and tails with it, those with legs left floundering at the surface or swirling to the deep without any way to return to the air that was fresher than the polluted seawater.

  Debris broken into thousands of tiny shards was sucked to the depths with the vengeful sea god, returning with his prey. Snip had a moment to notice the Cuttlefish had lost its colour – returning to the pale form she’d seen in the trench – before she was engulfed in a torrent of water. The ancient sea god was returning to the deep.

  Tiny eddies became awash of whitewater dragging Snip along with it. Swept between pale tentacles and scraps of boat, Snip wasn’t as protected in the plunge as they journeyed to the deep as she had been when they rose from the sand. Pressed on all sides, her head splitting, she sucked in bubbles instead of water, spluttering. Planks protruded into her space and she dodged them, coming eye to eye with the dead whale.

  A great welling filled her tiny heart. Snip stopped fighting the downward pressure, her fins sagging beneath the weight of the blue whale’s death, as though she’d aged an eternity. Letting herself be dragged to the seafloor with the behemoth she’d been so desperate to see.

  The trip back seemed much faster to the little fish. Her eyes adjusted quickly – or was it the lights of the ship tangled about the tentacles of the Kraken still working as he plummeted into the seabed? Sand rose around him.

  The darkness of the abyss loomed.

  Gripped with the calmness of her flight above the surface, Snip turned in time to see her mother floating at the edge of the crevasse. Their gazes caught and held for a moment before Snip was swept into the darkness. The Cuttlefish took its destruction to the bottom of the trench, ripping into the stone with its catch, removing their presence from the world.

  Snip floated in icy water, darkness blanketing sight and sound. It was quiet here, still and calm. Nothing more. Memories jabbed at the edges of her consciousness but she drifted away, content with the stillness.

  Just peace.

  A noise interrupted her rest. It became a cry that echoed inside her head like an itch she couldn’t reach. Snip twitched, flapping a lazy fin. The cry grew louder. Grumpy, Snip opened her eyes.

  Grains of sand and grit assailed her, still swirling at the edges of the abyss.

  “Snip…Sniiiiip!” A muffled sob accompanied the cry.

  That was annoying. Snip had no more room for anything that hurt her heart. Not after – no, she wouldn’t think about it. The cry came again, a long, strained wail. Is that what I sound like? The tiny fish resolved not to whine any more. She’d tell Mum as soon as she found her…Mum.

  MUM.

  “I’m here!” she cried out, squiggling in the white fronds of the anemone.

  No, not anemone, Cuttlefish. Awareness shot through the little fish, startling her out of her daze. Over the edge of the abyss. Hovering above the blackness, Snip wondered if she had dreamed her adventure. Sand lay still upon the seafloor; rocks were as they had always been.

  “Snip.”

  The hoarse whisper came from behind her. Mum. It was a voice the tiny fish would have known anywhere, strained as it was. Even in a dream. Snip wondered how long she had been screaming. She turned slowly, blinking sand from her eyes. The seabed was littered with wreckage and debris. Dim light shone from beneath a tangled mess of metal sheets and long tentacles, curled with hooks. Green paint still clung to them. The Kraken, as he had settled on the seabed clutching his final kill.

  Snip floated across the trench from her mother.

  She stared for a moment, still wondering what was real. Sucking in a great breath of deep seawater, she flung herself into her mother’s fins. Her scales as silky smooth as she remembered. Fins covered her head, tails swishing together. Snip closed her eyes.

  Snuggled against her Mum’s side, Snip swam slowly back home, remembering every grain of sand, every rock. She avoided looking to the blue whale’s carcass, draped across the sea floor. Nor did she look at the spear heads, scattering the sand, sinking beneath the grains. She ignored the darkness behind them, encroaching. Certain she would never visit the trench again.

  At least until the salty water was no longer tainted with the tang of blood.

  Meg Boepple

  Biography

  Meg Boepple is the pen name of an author who writes fantasy, romance, and inspirational women’s fiction. She wrote her college honors thesis on the works of JRR Tolkien and has been looking for evangelism and eucatastrophe in stories ever since. She lives in Fort Worth with three feline companions/editorial assistants: Her Majesty Sparkles the First, Ambassador-Plenipotentiary Peanut the Cowardly Lion-Hearted, and Lady Pistachio “KitKit” Sharpclaw, aka She Who Kneads Boobs At Midnight.

  Daughter of the Sea King

  Meg Boepple

  Waiting rooms must have been designed to make people so crazy
that by the time their wait was over, they’d be willing to endure anything just to escape the boredom. At least, that’s the conclusion Sean McMann had come to. He’d spent so much time waiting for boats, trains, and VIPs that he’d become an expert in waiting.

  According to his cell phone, exactly four minutes had passed since he’d last checked it. Not even a new Facebook notification marred its shiny lock-screen.

  He twisted his silver claddagh ring around his third finger, watching the pointy facets of its tiny crown disappear and reappear, then disappear again. Each spin sent strands of Tuatha magic weaving into the atmosphere in wispy shimmers of potentiality.

  The ring was tight. Again.

  It had been resized six times already since he’d first started wearing it as a child. And every time, it slid back onto his finger changed in more ways than size alone. The magic felt more powerful. The invisible chains it forged became more binding. The weight on his hand and his heart multiplied with every microgram of silver.

  Surely it was fitting that it needed a seventh alteration to ease the physical constriction on his muscular, adult-sized hand. Seven being the number of completion.

  “Come again?” His traveling companion Moira Selkirk glanced up from her Kindle’s WaPo app. Her blue-gray eyes, as changeable as the sea, gazed at him with open curiosity.’’

  “T’was nothing.”

  “Since nothing is all we’re doing right now—” She gestured at the giant room that held a thousand of their fellow cruise ship passengers. “You might as well explain yourself. There’s still at least a half hour before embarkation.”