Into the Abyss (14 page)

“Come back here right now! This isn’t over!” Gray’s tears were gone, and he felt hot anger rising. Takiza was wrong to be so cruel, and he would admit that. One way or another, he was going to! “Don’t you show your tail to me!” Gray shouted.

“If you wish another view, I suggest you do something about it,” the betta said in a voice that made Gray grind his teeth. But he was still tied tight to an immovable boulder!

Gray tried shooting forward to snap the tether but was jerked to a halt. Takiza knew what he was doing when he wove it, and the greenie refused to break.

Then I’ll just have to lift it.

With colossal effort, Gray churned his tail as fast as he could. So much of the seabed flew up from his powerful tail strokes that Gray felt as if he were in a storm of silt and grit. But slowly, the boulder did rise. And out of that sandy cloud swam Gray. He chased after Takiza, swaying left and right as the fast current got a hold of the giant boulder hanging beneath him. “You’re not getting away that easy! You’re going to hear what I have to say,
Shiro
!”

Suddenly Takiza was again in front of his left eye, swishing his frilly fins in annoyance. “What is it you think you deserve, Nulo? Oh, do enlighten me. Tell me your thoughts so that I may bask in their genius.”

“First of all, you’re very sarcastic! It’s annoying!” Gray gasped, the weight of the massive boulder crushing him through the harness. “It’s not a fitting way for you to speak, and especially
teach
, you being so old and
supposedly
wise.” The strong, icy current wasn’t helping matters. And maddeningly, Takiza declined to swim in a straight line, making it even harder to keep up!

“So,” Takiza mused. “You understand that I am wise? Perhaps our training was not a total waste.”

“That’s—that’s—” Gray grunted as he followed the betta around a coral pylon. “That’s not the point I was making, you preening little puffer fish!” Takiza gave Gray a wounded look but let him continue. “This isn’t fair!”

“And who told you life in the open waters was
fair
?” Takiza asked. “Please let me know who that wise fin was
so I may go for their learned guidance in matters both large and small.”

“There’s that sarcastic edge again,” Gray grunted, using the current to his advantage and clearing an obstacle that Takiza had swum around. “It makes you sound like a cranky shellhead. Is that what you’re going for? Because that’s what I’m getting.”

I’ll show him, Gray thought. I’m going to win this argument if I have to carry this boulder through the seven seas!

“And we do things because they’re
fair
all the time! If I have two fish and my friend has none, I would give my friend a fish—probably the smaller one—but hey, I’m pretty big.”

“Some would say too big,” Takiza added.

“That’s not the point!”

“Oh, please let there be a point aside from the one on your sizeable snout.”

“The
point
is, I shouldn’t be expected to do everything!” Gray yelled. “You know who should lead?
You
should lead!”

“I cannot.”

“Can-not or
will
not?” said Gray, imitating Takiza as best he could.

The betta nodded. “There are limits to my powers. And I fear a greater threat than Finnivus now swims the oceans. So someone else must lead
this
battle while I counter that threat.” Takiza ruffled his fins as if the conversation were over.

The heck it was! Gray churned after the betta, catching up once more.

“Everyone looks to me like I’m the fin with all the answers. Why would they do that?”

“Perhaps it is because you are a megalodon and should not exist.”

“They don’t know that, and I didn’t ask to be a megalodon!” Gray shouted, his voice squeaking more than he would have liked from his straining effort. “I have no idea why Lochlan picked me to lead his mariners. Come on, they’re a
royal
shiver! Why would he choose me?”

“Because he knew you could stop Finnivus, just as I knew you could lift the boulder and carry that burden successfully, a burden that Lochlan himself never even got off the ground,” Takiza said matter-of-factly.

“It’s impossible. I can’t do it!” Gray yelled in reply.

Takiza motioned with his tail at the obstacle course. “But you already have.” The betta gave the harness a tail flick, and the whole thing fell off. Gray looked back and was dumbstruck at the distance he had moved the huge rock. It
was
impossible.

But somehow, he had done it.

“How …?” Gray asked in a whisper.

“How indeed, my young apprentice?” Takiza swam in front of Gray’s eye, looking him over, as if deciding something. In short order, the betta nodded and said, “Yes, I do believe it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for your favorite thing, Nulo. Answers. Lochlan gave leadership to you, rather than those with more experience and standing, because he thought you were the only one who could do the impossible. To defeat the unbeatable! He thought you were the embodiment of a legend.”

“I understand the words you said, but not the way you said them.”

Takiza sighed, irritated. “It’s always two strokes forward, then one back with you, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand that either. I’m really,
really
tired.”

Takiza made an exaggerated groan. “This is why my advice for you to keep quiet is so very wise in your particular case, Nulo. Listen, as I attempt to enlighten you. I shall now recite an ancient prophecy, known by only a chosen few, Lochlan and myself among them.

Gray looked at Takiza and repeated the verse to himself.

The line “
raised in warm Caribbi waters, by coral adored, by coral abhorred
” was freakishly specific to him, as he was from Coral Shiver, loved by his mother but also banished at one time. Gray’s tail twitched as he asked, “And you—
you
—think
that
is about me?
You
think that?”

“One never knows about legends,” Takiza answered. “They are irritatingly unclear. But the verse does seem to be speaking of someone remarkably like you, in an uncomfortably similar situation to the one we find ourselves in today.”

“And Lochlan believed this? Believed in me?” Gray asked.

“He did,” Takiza answered. Then after a moment, he added, “As do I.”

“Wow.”

Takiza began swimming off. “I am done teaching for the day, Nulo. But there is no reason you cannot continue to learn as you make your way home.”

BARKLEY WATCHED AS THE TWO SHARKS FROM
Hammer Shiver, Sledge and Peen, went through the greenie in the Hydenseek, a dense kelp field off the Riptide homewaters. They were making the same mistakes he did when discovering what worked and what didn’t to swim with stealth. When Gray hurled this promotion at him—forcing him to create a new kind of sneakier scout—Barkley was sure Gray was doing it because he was mad at his own situation.

Just the same, Barkley soon found out that leading was
waaaay
harder than he had ever imagined. He didn’t know how Gray held up at all under the strain of being the big fin for the entire armada. Barkley was older by a month—a fact he loved to remind Gray about whenever he got the chance—but even if he liked to consider himself more mature, he was finding it impossible to lead just
ten
sharkkind, much less every single shark living in the Riptide homewaters.

“Too fast!” Barkley yelled after slipping directly over their dorsal fins. Both sharks were surprised by his sudden appearance and twitched as if they’d been shocked by an eel. “When you’re swimming against the current, you have to let the greenie
slide
past you, or a sharp-eyed guard will notice it’s not moving the right way.”

The hammerheads weren’t thankful for this information, or even embarrassed for being totally startled. Just the opposite. They were angry.

“Oh, yeah? Then we’d fight whoever found us!” said Peen, the smaller, more aggravating hammerhead. The second, Sledge, was much larger. He added, “This sneaking around isn’t for us. It’s for jellies and turtles!”

Barkley seethed. The hammerheads were mariners, and while they wouldn’t physically harm him—Grinder gave them strict orders to obey—they didn’t take him seriously at all.

Stupid Gray! Barkley thought. Why is he making me do this, anyway? To show what a giant failure I am at everything?

“Fins up!” Barkley yelled as gruffly as he could. He thought that the stern tone would make him sound tougher. Upon hearing his new voice the first time, though, Mari had asked if he had a cold. But at least Mari
wanted
to learn.

And then there was Snork …

“Yes, sir!” the sawfish shouted. “Right away, sir!”

While Barkley appreciated the sawfish volunteering,
his enthusiasm wasn’t helpful. In fact, it made the other tough mariners respect him even less. Everyone except Mari chuckled.

“You’re all acting like you don’t want to be here,” Barkley began.

There was a snicker from inside the small company. Someone in the back coughed, “We don’t!”

Oh, boy.

It had taken a few days of watching the mariners drill to make his choices. Barkley had seen something in each of these sharks that said they could be taught how to swim silently and unseen. When he got down to actually choosing, Barkley found that sharkkind, even of the same type, swam in very different ways. There was a small sub-set, usually those sharks who were smaller or slower when they were pups, which swam more efficiently and smoothly than the others. Normally, being small or slow would be a huge disadvantage, and those sharks mostly wouldn’t make it to adulthood. The Big Blue was tough that way. You could either have lunch or
be
lunch on any given day. But the sharkkind that
did
overcome those deficits knew how it was to be weaker than those around them—and
still
survive.