Nightpool

Chapter 12

“It wasn’t a whale?” Charkky said as he settled down in Feskken’s holt. The grass house was larger than those around it and crowded now to bursting with the otters of Rushmarsh and the six from Nightpool, and Teb, as well as a gaggle of cubs. Teb sat near the door, where he could slip out to tend his fire.

“Not a whale?” Mikk repeated. “A lone bull, following krill?”

“We don’t think it was a whale,” said Feskken. “It’s the wrong time of year for a whale to come in so close, near to Rushmarsh. There was nothing to draw it, no krill in the water.”

Teb was glad they weren’t out on the dark sea now, with an unknown creature lurking. He rose and left the otters and went to the old abandoned grass holt where he had built his fire, and sat hunkered before it, cheered by the burning driftwood and the boiling iron pot. He dropped in some wild onion, and that smelled grand, then the shellfish and lily roots. And then he sat alone, opening the steamed clams and oysters and stuffing himself nearly to sickness. Nothing had ever tasted so good, juicy, and hot, and the flavors of seafood and lily roots a hundredfold richer than ever they could be raw. He was almost finished when Charkky and Jukka and Kkelpin came to sniff the cooked shellfish, but only Charkky would try it. The other two watched him with distaste.

“It isn’t bad,” Charkky announced. But he didn’t take a second helping.

Jukka just looked at him. Kkelpin’s whiskers twitched with amusement. Later when Teb yawned and yawned and couldn’t keep his eyes open, no otter would come to sleep beside his fire, so he bedded down in the fresh rushes alone, feeling very cozy, and dreamed of building a fire pit in his cave. He woke to such brilliant red light he thought the holt had caught fire, but it was only the sunrise. They were off before breakfast, the little raft loaded, now, with a great hank of freshly dug lilies, dirt still clinging to the roots, and barely room for Teb to crowd aboard. Once out of Rushmarsh, he swam for a long way, keeping a wary eye on the open sea, then climbed back on the raft to warm in the rising sun. He was glad the weather had warmed; he would not be swimming in the winter, for already the sea had turned chill. He thought of getting his tunic out of the pack, then didn’t, and was almost asleep when suddenly the raft was rocking and the sea heaving as the otters raced with it toward the cliffs.

“Jump, Tebriel! Jump for the cliff!” Charkky shouted as a monstrous black shape foamed out of the sea, nearly on them. “Jump!”

He leaped for the cliff and clung, and climbed as the raft crashed against it and foam spewed below him; he prayed the otters were climbing, too. He slipped, snatched at wet rock, and nearly fell. Then the monster was beneath him, huge, storming at the cliff so the stone shook. Teb heaved upward, tearing his hands, and didn’t know afterward how he had moved so fast.

He stood atop the cliff staring around for the otters as the monster thrashed and heaved below: a giant three-headed sea hydrus. He backed away from the edge as it reared toward him; then he spun away and found a sharp stone, and wished he had a knife. But the pack was lost, and all in it. Down to his right, the raft had broken apart, and its logs were pounding in the waves that beat against the cliff. There was no sign of the otters, either on the cliff or in the sea. The creature remained still for a minute, looking, and then it thrashed up against the cliff again, rising higher in a spray of foam, the water pouring down its broad black body, and its necks stretched out so the three heads came over the top as he fled backward, each head as big as a pony, the faces terrible parodies of human faces.

The muzzles were longer than a man’s, the mouths broader, and the teeth close together and pointed. The eyes were men’s eyes, muddy gray and vicious, three sets of identical eyes watching and watching him with cold malice as he stood crouched, knowing it couldn’t climb, yet ready to run if it did, and to fight if it overtook him. The protruding mouths grinned and drooled, and the center one licked evilly. It wanted him—he could see it in its eyes, could feel its desire for him. An emptiness came in his mind as he watched it, as if something had been taken from him.

It watched Teb for a long time. It knew something he didn’t know, seeing him from some incalculable distance in time and space, Teb thought, and the emptiness within him grew, and the terror. Had it killed the otters? He felt sick, for surely it had killed them; and yet he was so very drawn to the creature, and wanted, in some incredibly sick way, to walk those few steps to the cliff edge, into its horrible reach. It looked at him for so long, he was cold and hot all at once, and then it smiled, all three faces smiled the same knowing, promising smile.

Then it sank down away into the sea.

Teb stood on the cliff’s edge, faint and sick, staring down at the empty sea. Blood flowed down his chest. He watched the sea and prayed that a brown head would pop up, and another, prayed for the otters with clenched fists; and the sea remained empty. His mind was filled with them, with their sleek bodies flashing through the sea, their laughing faces and dripping whiskers and their laughing dark eyes. He watched the sea for a long, long time, searching close in, far out among the waves, seeing only emptiness, staring down along the empty rocky cliff. Then at last he turned away, stricken with a cold, terrible grieving.

But he had gone only a few steps when loud splashing made him turn back to stare over the edge, and he saw the hydrus thrashing deep below the surface; white foam spewed up, its dark shadow lurched and twisted, and then the foam turned red.

It lurched to the surface and black shadows moved below it; one immense head thrashed up out of the waves, then the second, bleeding below the left eye. The third head surfaced in a pool of foaming blood, its throat slashed open.

The hydrus turned in its own blood, floundering. It moved out across the sea trailing red, and soon it was only a huge black shadow like the shadow of a fast-moving cloud.

Teb stood staring long after it vanished and its blood had washed away in the sea. A huffing sigh made him turn, and there was Litta, erect on her hind legs, gazing at him with laughing brown eyes.

In her paw she held the rusty knife. He grabbed her and hugged her, fishy breath and all.

And when she led him to the cliff, there they all were, five brown heads bobbing, their whiskers dripping as they stared up at him with huge grins. Litta handed him the knife, then scurried down to them.

Teb followed, and when at last he stood on the narrow beach the otters leaped out of the surf to push against him, laughing. Charkky stood up to touch his face. “Hah, Teb,” he said, grinning. “You escaped. You cut your chin, though.”

“It’s almost stopped bleeding. I thought the hydrus ate you.”

“And we hoped it didn’t eat you,” said Charkky.

“But what happened?” Then Teb saw the leather pack, and the bundle of lilies beside it.

“Kkelpin grabbed the pack as it was sinking,” Mikk said. “There are caves down there with air pockets. We laid the pack out and found the knives. We’ve never used knives, only sharp shells. The knives saved us. A hydrus doesn’t much like to be hurt, to be bleeding in the sea. Maybe the sharks will finish it off.”

“And,” Jukka said, “the lilies got lodged on a crevice down below the underwater caves. The bow and arrows, though—”

“It ate them,” interrupted Litta. “It grabbed them and crunched them down.”

“Maybe it thought they were eels,” said Hokki, giggling.

“Maybe it knew they were weapons,” Charkky said, “and didn’t want us to have them.”

“Does it know that much?” Teb said. But of course the hydrus knew, more than Teb could guess, knew deep things that made him shiver. He looked out seaward, fear catching up with him now, then looked down the coast toward Nightpool. The island itself could not be seen for the jutting of the point at Jade Beach. The otters knew what he was thinking, that he didn’t want to get back in the water, was thinking of his legs dangling below the surface, where anything could grab them.

“You can walk along the shore over the rocks,” Mikk said.

“I will walk with you,” said Charkky. “We’ll have to take to the sea when we get beyond Jade Beach, or go over the point; the cliff falls away there steep and slick.”

Teb tied the pack to his waist and shouldered the lilies, and they started out, Mikk galumphing ahead of him and the other five diving swiftly seaward deep down, then up and down along the surface, playing in the sea as if they had quite forgotten the hydrus.

“How do they know it won’t come back?” Teb asked.

“They don’t. But you can’t be afraid all the time. Your chin’s bleeding again; press some seaweed to it.”

As they traveled, Teb tried to tell himself one of the songs that had come to him so strangely, yet he found he couldn’t. They were all gone suddenly, not one word would come back, though they had all been there before the hydrus. They were the only real memories he had. And they had seemed to him more than memories, too. They had seemed a powerful link to someone else and to what his future held. They had seemed to him a kind of talisman, a prediction, just as Thakkur’s visions were predictions. Now they were gone, the last thread with himself broken.

He followed Charkky in silence, feeling lost and afraid. He hadn’t very much more to take away. Had the hydrus done this, reached him in the most private, safest place he had? They made their way up the cliff so they could cross the point at Jade Beach rather than going in the water. Just as they reached the cliff top, a wind and darkness swept out of the sky filled with the dusty smell of feathers, and a huge owl came swooping across the top of his head, giant wings beating at him. Teb ducked as the dark bird banked in front of him, staring into his face with fierce yellow eyes; its screaming cry stopped his heart as it hovered over him; an owl as big as an otter and seeming twice that with its wings spread. Its red beak opened cruelly.

Then it laughed. A harsh, guttural laugh. It landed before him and folded its wings, and stared at him fierce as sin.

Charkky stood ready to run, but Teb just stared, because something about an owl made him feel comfortable, even though this owl was far from comforting.

Its stomach feathers were buff, but the rest of it was nearly black, mottled with flecks of rust. Its red beak was sharply curved, and its great ears extended to the sides of its head as if it were wearing a hat. Its voice was gravelly and hissing.

“Have you seen the black monster in the sea? Hydrus! I am searching for the hydrus. Three heads. Faces like men. I have been tracking it for weeks.”

“We’ve seen it,” Charkky said, cross from being frightened. ‘What have you to do with such a thing? Certainly you have no better manners than it has, swooping down on a person.”

The owl grinned and bowed, which only made Charkky scowl harder. “I follow the hydrus to learn its ways. Where it is bound. It moves ahead of the armies of darkness. Quazelzeg is its master. It drowns men by swamping boats, and it loves only darkness.”

“It attacked us,” Charkky said, studying the owl with curiosity. “We wounded it, and it went away deeper into the sea. Back there.” He pointed. “Just off the last point.”

The owl snapped its wings open and crouched to leap skyward.

“Wait,” Charkky cried. “You have something to tell of the hydrus. Thakkur will want to hear it.”

“Can’t wait. I must follow. I will return if I can, but now I must follow. . . .” He leaped then, with one whish of air and then in silence as he rose on the sea wind, and Teb watched him grow smaller as he sped east toward the open sea.

And inside Teb’s head the owl’s words echoed: “. . . it loves only darkness. . . . I must follow.” And it was as if those same words echoed in his own spirit and he, too, must, at some time near, follow the hydrus, follow darkness.