Chapter 6
- Crat'ax -
Callie glances at me before she answers him.
The movement is small, but it tightens something low in my belly all the same.
She looks to me as if weighing her words, as if my presence is important.
I suspect she understands far more of what Mek’tor is saying than she lets on.
She is careful and clever. And that, too, draws my attention far more than it should.
“Many boats on Earth,” she says carefully. “Big ones. Small ones. Some that go on oceans.”
Mek’tor’s eyes gleam. “Perhaps ours will interest you, too.”
“She already knows about my boat,” I point out. “She has been aboard it for hours.”
“Yes, but—”
I step forward just enough to place myself between them, my shoulder nearly brushing Callie’s arm.
I feel the heat of her through the thin air between us.
Her scent is smoke, fruit, and something warm and living, sweet and strange.
It slides into my lungs and settles there.
“We already had juice. Enjoy it yourself, tribesman. It’s a warm day. ”
Mek’tor’s smile never falters, but something tightens around his eyes. “Of course. I only thought—”
“And it was a fine thought, although I don’t remember you ever offering me juice. Is there something special about Callie that makes you want to see her drink?” I smile to take the edge off my words. We both know what’s special about Callie.
“We so rarely have guests in the village,” Mek’tor whines. “And a woman guest… we want her to feel welcome!”
“Am I not making you feel welcome, Callie?” I ask, turning to her.
“I feel welcome,” she says in her beautiful voice, with the strange lilt to her speech. “Is nice juice, but now not… like? Need?” She looks at me as if asking what the correct word is.
“Want,” I tell her. “Now you don’t want juice. You heard that, Mek’tor? She says I make her feel welcome after all.” I give him a hard stare and tap the bottom of my spear on the planks to indicate that the conversation is over.
“Ah. Of course you do. Well, perhaps later.” Mek’tor inclines his head and withdraws, still smiling and still watching very carefully.
Callie exhales quietly once he is gone. “He want all guest feel welcome.”
“No, just you,” I correct. “Once a year we have guests here, when the jungle tribes come to trade. I can’t remember Mek’tor ever offering them juice.”
She frowns. “That’s… strange.”
“That he only cares because you are a woman? I’m not sure it is strange. Perhaps it is.”
We move on. I make a point of showing her the clever things now, partly because she asked, and partly because it steadies me to speak of craft and work.
The way the stilts are braced against currents.
The channels cut beneath the platforms so debris washes through instead of piling up.
The racks where fish are dried, and the large huts where they are smoked in the sweet beres wood that we have to paddle and walk for hours to find.
Callie listens intently. She crouches to examine knots and traces her slender fingers along carved grooves meant to direct rainwater into storage jars.
“This is good village,” she says. “Very strong.” She stomps her little foot on the floor planks.
“We learned the hard way,” I reply. “The first village was not this solid, they say. It was taken by a storm. The second one was torn up by another. Then we learned to build with wood that’s thick enough.” I slap the top of a thick pole that goes down all the way to the bottom of the bay.
Callie nods, thoughtful. Then she points toward one of the boats. “You have sails?”
“Sails?” The word is pleasantly smooth, but alien in my mouth. “For the boats?”
“So the storm push boat. Not storm. Small storm. Not need paddle.”
“Ah. Sails,” I say, using the proper word in my own speech. “So that the boat is pushed along by the wind. Yes, we know about those.”
Her eyes brighten. “You do?”
“Yes. Long ago. But we do not use them now. With oars, we are faster. The wind blows too weakly and often in the wrong direction from where you want to go.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Sometimes. With sail, wind blows boat where you want. Slow, but no need to paddle. Not tired. Many use on Earth. Go far. Go on ocean, easy.”
I consider this. I have felt the wind press against my chest and back during storms, strong enough to shove a man backward. The idea of harnessing that force is appealing.
“You could fish longer,” she continues, warming to the subject. “Trade with tribe far away. When wind is big, can be faster than paddle.”
I open my mouth to ask more.
Something slaps hard against the poles beneath the platform.
Once. Twice. A wet, heavy sound that I’ve heard many times before.
Plik the skirr hauls himself up onto the walkway with jerky determination, his slick body leaving a trail of water behind. He’s not large, not by the standards of the Deep, but he is stubborn. He clings to the wood and refuses to retreat, even when I push at him with my foot.
“He back,” Callie says. “Same as in boat? Plik?”
“I think so,” I mutter as I scan the horizon.
Plik often climbs into my boat, and sometimes he comes up on the walkway.
But he always dives right back in again.
Now he’s not budging, glaring at the sea and baring fangs I didn’t even know he had.
Still, his flat tail slaps against the planks. It could be a warning.
I shield my eyes against the sun. Then I see it.
“Attack!” I roar. “Ocean Big is attacking!”
The word carries across the platforms instantly. Men freeze, then move, dropping lines and grabbing weapons. Boats are cast loose. Boys are hauled back toward the inner walkways.
Callie’s hand closes around my arm. “What is it?”
“Stay here,” I order. “Don’t move.”
“I want—”
The sea answers before she can go on.
The water begins to heave, not with just waves, but with displacement. As if the floor of the ocean itself is rising. The bay bulges and froths. The surface splits apart under impossible pressure.
I tighten my grip on my spear. Whatever is coming is not the tentacled horror of before. It is something far worse.
The water explodes upward in a heavy mass. The Deep heaves, and something vast forces its way toward the light, pushing the bay itself out of the way. Poles groan and platforms lurch. Men shout warnings that are swallowed by a sound like stone tearing apart.
A shape breaks the surface, black and jagged and wrong. It rises on six jointed legs that move with brutal precision, driving an armored bulk upward. Sludge sheets off its carapace in slow, oily curtains. The shell is scarred, layered, and ancient, like a reef that learned to walk.
A living reef that could crush the whole village under it.
Its body locks into place against the platforms, and the water whooshes away from it, revealing claw after claw snapping open and shut.
Each one is as long and wide as my boat.
Beneath the forward plates, crystalline mandibles grind together and emit a thin, almost pitiful howl that crawls along my spine and makes the men flinch.
Heat pits flare along its sides, sensing us.
“Back!” someone yells. “It’s a krai!”
Too late.
One massive claw slams into a row of boats and splinters them like dry twigs. Another strikes a platform squarely, and the wood shatters. Huts tilt, then slide, then vanish into the Deep, with screaming men clinging to them.
Callie!
My first instinct is to reach for her, to drag her away, to put my body between her and this thing. The instinct is useless. There is no safe place. The monster is everywhere, its reach measured in platforms, its weight measured in destruction. And this is as good a place as any.
“Stay!” I shout again, more fiercely. “Don’t move!”
I don’t wait for her answer, because there’s no time, and if I stop to think about this, then I won’t do it. I leap onto the krai.
The Deep surges beneath me as I hit the creature’s shell, feet skidding on slime-slick armor. The impact jars my bones, but I keep my footing. I thank the Deep itself that my spear is already in my hands. My impulse to show Callie my mighty weapon had a strange reward.
Or punishment, as the case may be.
I grasp the shaft with both hands and drive it down.
The spearhead bites into a seam between plates, and the shock runs up my arms. The monster shrieks, a sound like metal torn, and snaps a claw toward me.
I jump back as it closes right in the spot where I was standing, spraying me with cold drops of water. The hard snick tells me that it would have cut me in half.
I move. I must keep moving.
I dance along the ridges of its shell, planting my feet, wrenching the spear free, driving it down again and again. The plates resist, but they are not seamless. Cracks spread beneath the blows. Dark fluid leaks out, steaming where it hits the sun-warmed wood of the village.
Another claw slashes past me. One clean strike would cut me in half. I feel the wind of it brush my back.
The monster rears, legs thrashing, and I am thrown sideways. I roll, catch myself on one knee, and thrust again, aiming for the softer joint where shell meets limb.
It howls.
Then one claw reaches past me.
Right toward Callie.
I see her frozen on the platform, eyes wide, hands clenched at her chest. The claw stretches, inexorable, its sharp shadow swallowing her whole.
Something cold settles in me.
I leap back and land on the claw itself as it rises, feet sliding on wet armor, cut up by the endless hard growths that cover the Big.
I drive the spearhead into a crack between two plates and jam it in with my full weight.
The monster convulses, its claw jerking violently.
I cling, muscles screaming, and wrench the spear sideways.
The crack splits.
The monster recoils with a shrill, furious cry. I jump clear, hit the platform hard, and roll to my feet as the creature pulls back. Its legs fold up, and its bulk sinks as far as it can, which is not far right here.
The water churns as its immense shape retreats from the bay, escaping to the ocean, leaving broken platforms, floating debris, and stunned silence behind.
For a heartbeat, there is nothing but my own breathing.
Then Callie is against me.
Her arms are around my neck, her body pressed fully to mine, trembling. She makes a sound that is half laugh, half sob, and then her mouth is on mine.
The contact shocks me more than the battle.
Her lips are warm and soft and unmistakably deliberate. The taste of fruit and salt floods my senses. I freeze for a breath too long, then my hands rise of their own will, settling at her waist, holding her as if the Deep itself might pull her away.
She pulls back first, eyes wide, just as startled as I am.
“I—” she begins, then stops.
I don’t speak. If I do, I do not trust what would come out.
Men swarm us, voices overlapping. Hands clap my shoulders and thump my back. Praise rains down, loud and exuberant.
“Crat'ax! Your spear went right through it!”
“Truly a blessed spearsman!”
“The Deep favored your strike and your weapon!”
“Now let the men complain that your spear takes up too much of the tribe’s steel! Now they see why!”
I grin, satisfied that I survived. But Callie’s kiss is what really makes me elated.
Across the broken platform, Sprub’ex steps forward. His gaze flicks from the retreating waters to Callie and lingers there.
“Strange,” he says slowly. “That such a creature would attack us now. It has never come so close before. It’s as if there’s something new here. Something the Deep doesn’t like.”
Silence ripples outward. Eyes turn. Toward me. Toward her.
I feel the shift immediately. Curiosity is sharpening into suspicion.
I step closer to Callie without thinking, placing myself between her and the circle of men.
“The Deep tests us,” I say evenly. “It always has.”
Sprub’ex’s mouth twists. “Or it warns us.”