Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Jackie
The vessel is coming straight for me.
I reach for the net cutters on the bench beside me, which is absurd. What am I going to do, threaten a kraken with bolt cutters? But this is the only weapon I can think of, so I lift it above my shoulder, both hands wrapped around the handle.
My heart beats fast, so fast it hurts as the current carries me to the open sea and the kraken vessel approaches.
The vessel closes the gap between us in minutes.
Up close, it's even stranger than it looked from a distance.
The hull isn't painted. It isn't fiberglass or wood or metal.
It's something else entirely, dark and slightly iridescent, and it flexes with the swell in a way that makes my skin crawl and fascinates me in equal measure.
It's alive. Or it was alive once. Or it's something in between that I don't have a category for.
The figure on deck steps to the rail and I see his face and my stomach drops through the hull of the boat.
I know him.
He’s the kraken that came to my porch and asked me questions about Orvik.
Kael Kelpwise.
The man who let Orvik take the fall for his crimes. The smuggler, the liar, the sworn brother who broke every oath he ever made. And he is standing ten feet away from me on a kraken vessel while I drift helplessly in the current toward the open ocean.
Not my best day, I would say. Not. The. Best.
As his skiff runs parallel to mine, somehow moving over the current with grace and impossible agility, I twirl the bolt cutter over my head in warning. I may go down, but I won’t go down easily.
He glances at my pathetic weapon and his tentacle hair snaps in my direction as the corner of his mouth twitches with amusement.
Ha, ha. The human is adorable. I can almost hear his thoughts.
"Tie off." He tosses a line across. It lands on my gunwale with a thump. "The current shifts in a few minutes and you'll be pulled farther out."
I don't move. I just stare at the strange line at my feet for a few long seconds. It’s wet and glistening, with tiny crustaceans running across the braided threads, which at first looks like seaweed, only it resembles no seaweed I’ve ever seen.
"I'm not going to hurt you." His voice is deep and he speaks with a thick accent, his rolling R ending in a sort of trill like a bird. "You can tie off or drift to the mercy of the ocean. Your choice, but decide now before it’s too late."
I look at the line on my gunwale. I look at the open Atlantic stretching northeast behind me, empty and wide and getting wider. I look at Gannet Rock, already too far away.
I tie off.
The moment the line goes taut, the drift stops. His vessel holds against the current like it's bolted to the ocean floor, and my skiff swings alongside and goes still. After twenty minutes of fighting the water, the sudden calm makes my hands shake.
Then Kael does something I don't expect.
He goes over the side of his vessel, diving into the swift current.
The moment he hits the water the transformation begins.
I've seen it once before, with Orvik in the cove, but it feels different observing it in another kraken.
More threatening, somehow. His skin shifts to a deep charcoal, dark under the surface in the absence of the bioluminescent patterns.
His tentacle hair fans out, and his gills open along his ribs like dark slits in stone.
He dives under my skiff.
I feel the hull shift. A pressure from below, steady and enormous, and then the boat begins to move against the current.
Back toward the rock formation. He's using the water as something to work with rather than fight against. His vessel follows alongside, moving on its own without anyone at the helm, as if it knows where to go.
I just go down on all fours on the deck and watch it happen, too stunned to even formulate a thought.
I grip the side of the boat and watch the water churn around the hull as Kael pulls both vessels toward Gannet Rock.
It takes less than five minutes. Kael surfaces once we're in calmer water on the lee side of the formation, pulling himself onto the rail of his vessel, water streaming from his tentacle hair. He's breathing hard but controlled. His gills retract as he settles back into his land-dwelling shape.
He doesn't say anything. He just sits on the rail and waits, looking at me.
"Why are you here?" I ask. "Did you follow me?"
"Yes." Kael meets my eyes, his gaze direct. No charm, no calculation. Just a flat statement of fact. “I’ve been following you for a few weeks now.”
"That’s stalking and it’s creepy."
"Call it what you want." He shrugs. "You land dwellers are hard to understand. How am I supposed to know if you’re Orvik’s mate or not if I don’t watch you both?”
Okay. I’m not sure how to answer that. Is kraken culture that different? It might be. Orvik told me that his people live on the ocean and rarely even meet with land dwellers. Kael might simply not know how to interact with us.
“Well, on land, we introduce ourselves; we don’t follow people without their consent.”
Kael seems to ponder that for a bit. “If I had asked you to let me follow you around and watch your house, would you have agreed?”
Touché. He got me there.
“No,” I say pointedly. “But I would have told you that if Orvik matters to you, then you need to go see him, not stalk his mate.”
Kael stares at me, but I get the distinct impression he thinks I’m being fussy for no reason.
“When you took the skiff out alone, I followed.” His tone suggests that he thinks he is being perfectly reasonable. “I wasn't going to let Orvik's mate drown because she's too stubborn to call for help.”
The words land harder than they should, probably because they're accurate.
"You left the black coral on my doorstep," I say.
"Yes."
"Orvik said it was a kraken token and it could mean many things, both good and bad."
Something crosses Kael's face. Not quite pain but adjacent to it. "I left the black coral as a gesture of friendship and goodwill."
He looks at his hands. "I left it for you, Orvik's mate. I thought if he found it, he might understand that I didn't come here to fight."
Kael's tentacle hair hangs heavy and still. "I’m here to make amends for my sins."
I look at him, sitting on the rail of his vessel, and now that I’m not mortally afraid, I can see him more clearly. He looks tired and sad.
I don't trust him. But I don't think he's lying either.
Then I remember why I’m out here in the first place. The injured bird is still there, still trapped and at risk of drowning.
"There's a gannet on the windward rocks, tangled in fishing net," I say. "The tide is coming in and it's going to drown if someone doesn't cut it free."
Kael looks toward the formation. His tentacle hair shifts, reading something in the air or the water that I can't perceive.
"I can get you there," he says, nodding. "My vessel can hold position on the windward side."
"Then take me in."
His vessel navigates the windward currents like they aren't there, pulling my skiff along with his.
The water that spun my skiff and dragged me past the formation doesn't register.
The hull adjusts to the swell in subtle organic movements, flexing with the current rather than resisting it, and Kael holds position alongside the rocks without anchor, without effort.
The gannet is still on its ledge. The water has risen since I first spotted it. What was two feet of clearance is now barely one. The bird's head is up, its beak open, its dark eyes tracking me as I climb from the towed skiff onto the wet rocks.
"You have maybe fifteen minutes before the tide reaches that ledge," Kael says from his vessel.
"I only need ten."
I climb. The rocks are wet and sharp and I slip once before I find my footing. The gannet watches me approach and goes rigid, one free wing lifting in a half-hearted threat display. It's exhausted. The monofilament is wrapped tight around its body and left wing, cutting into feathers and skin.
"Hey," I say, keeping my voice low and steady. "I know. I know this is awful. Some very inconsiderate fisherman left his trash where it doesn't belong and you're paying for it, and that's not fair. But I'm going to fix it."
The gannet strikes at me, a sharp jab with that long beak that catches my forearm through the glove. I don't flinch. I've been bitten by worse. Captain Peck got Orvik right through the webbing on his hand and that was a much bigger bird with a much worse attitude.
I work the net cutters through the debris, strand by strand, talking the whole time in a low, soothing tone.
After a few minutes, the gannet goes still under my hands.
Finally, the last strand of netting comes free.
I check the wing carefully. The circulation is compromised but the bone feels intact under my fingers.
This bird will fly again. Not today, but eventually.
Getting it in the carrier is the hard part. It protests loudly, stabbing at my hands, flapping the free wing, making noises that are half fury and half terror. I talk it through, firm and gentle, and get the carrier closed. A screaming bird is a bird with fight left. A silent bird is a dying bird.
This one has plenty of fight.
I climb back down to the skiff with the carrier on my back and my hands bleeding from cuts where the rocks and the monofilament got through my gloves. The tide has risen another six inches. The ledge where the gannet sat is dark with water now. Ten minutes later and I would have been too late.
Then I'm back aboard my boat and the carrier is secured. My hands are shaking, and I press them flat against my knees and take a deep breath. I look at the man sitting on the rail of his kraken vessel six feet away from me.
Kael didn’t move a muscle all that time. He just watched me as I freed the bird and climbed back aboard my human boat.
The cove is quiet. A gannet screams above us. Another one answers.
Then I see Kael's face change.
His tentacle hair snaps rigid. His eyes go wide, fixed on the water at the mouth of the cove. He rises to his feet in a single fast movement, and what crosses his expression is something I would call fear if I thought a kraken could feel it.
I turn.
The water underneath my boat is glowing.
Not reflection. Not sunlight. A deep blue-green luminescence rising from below the surface, getting brighter, getting closer. I stare at my own patterns to see them glowing, pulsing in response.
I’m about to call out when the entire ocean explodes with salt water and fury.
Orvik found me.