Moonfin (30 page)

Clambering up the ladder and onto the deserted deck, she ran her hand across the boom and sails, her memory flooding with days long ago with her dad and brother. It was hard to believe it had been four years since she walked these creaky planks. She scuttled over to the chronometer where it sat in a waterproof case next to the wheelhouse, broken, and displaying the time of ten minutes after ten—the exact time the last report came through to the mainland.

“It wasn't difficult to capture this rusty bucket,” a greasy voice carried across the deck.

Lizzy swung around to find Lee lurking in the shadows, his arms crossed, a grisly grin stretched across his waxy face.

“Her crew never saw it coming,” he jeered.

“How did you get—”

“I thought I heard someone gasp upstairs. Good thing Dr. Krell didn't catch you, or he might've made you into a charming addition to our island exhibits. Tell me, though … how
did
you escape the pits? You should be digested by now.”

“I—uhh …” She began to boil inside.

He studied his fingernails languidly. “It really is such a bother that you're still alive. Now I will have to take care of you myself …”

His words bore into her brain like a searing hot poker—it was the same hypnotic throbbing she had felt once before during the gimpit run. Then it hit her like a pop quiz in math—

“
You
tried to drown me
!” The fury bubbled up, and she tried to stuff it back down, but it gushed past her defenses like magma from a volcano.

Lee chuckled and it felt like a brain-splitting boom box trapped inside her head.

“Pathetic little Lizzy. You were a blubbering mess that day, I must say,” he mocked. “These human families are so ridiculous—thought you would have discovered that walking around on those two stumps of yours.”

His smile faded.

“You really don't know,
do you
?”

“Know
what
?” Lizzy gave him the most hateful look she could muster.

“My first clue was when you spoke to that infernal octopus in the pool beneath the aquarium.” He tapped his forehead rapidly, the sharp
thump-thump
ripped loudly through her skull. “And when I dragged you into the sea, I saw you take a breath from that conch shell—that was very clever! Then there was that whole shark debacle…. Shara is such an amateur.”

“What about the shark? Were you there?”

Lizzy tried hard to piece together his words—that Lee was, in truth, the eel that tried to murder her. It was hard to think straight with this blasted marching band inside her head!

“I had hoped we could be
friends
for Jade's sake, you know. Your sister and I have become
very close
.”

Lizzy managed to laugh through the immense pain.

“I don't think Jade likes disgusting eels much,” she said derisively. “Besides, I don't know what you mean—”

“Stupid girl!” he spat viciously. “I know that you are Glimmruyn! You cannot hide it from me!” He started toward her in a rapid lunge, eyes glowing fiercely and skin speckling black. The change was instantaneous, and in seconds the powerful eel wrapped his murky flesh-trunk around her, pulling her to the mast and trapping her in place.

“SNIRCHER!” Lizzy exhaled out of her squashed lungs.

“Tsk, tsk, you should have stayed put in the pits—far less painful way to go,” he sneered, squeezing her tighter.

Whispers like tongues of fire licked at her brain. The pain she felt at seeing the Sundancer helpless filled her heart with a rabid rage. She tried to resist with all her might, but felt herself slipping away into the red-hot pool of anger.

“That's right. I can feel the hate within you like a black poison!” he leered nastily.

Lizzy writhed within his tight grasp, fighting her way back to reason.
He's a Snircher … his power is in magnifying the bad feelings … get a grip on your emotions and he will lose …

“I see your lies for what they are! You fill up our minds with the worst part of human emotion until”—she paused to catch her breath, trying to keep her cool—“we think that's who we are.” The anger washed over her like a firestorm. The pain was so real—she almost expected to look down and see blisters erupting on her skin.

“
Hissssss
, I do no such thing! It
is
who you are!”

“LIAR! It's only a
feeling
. Humans are stronger than that! You make us
think
we aren't. It's all an illusion to hide the truth—that we have
power
over you.”

“Your fury makes me the more powerful one!” he shrieked. Stinking, putrid spittle oozed from his pores and splattered across Lizzy's face.

“ERRF!—that's gross!” she gagged.

Then thinking he could drag Lizzy to the sea and drown her as before, the Snircher plunged into the water, his eel trunk completely engulfing her small body. Swimming down, down, down to the ocean floor, he began to squeeze the life right out of her. But what he didn't know was that her Glimmruyn abilities were growing stronger, and it was water that unleashed her power.

Lee sent a bolt of electricity through his belly, attempting to knock her unconscious. But this energy only accelerated her change. The transformation started as bubbles of light, her long brown curls flashing bronze and her eyes awash to the deepest color of moss-green. Her arms and legs changed to a fiery translucence, which increased her speed and strength by a hundredfold. Lizzy glanced down and she could see her raiment clearly: it was as the kelp beds that danced in the sea—a luminous green with streaks of gold undulating across the front of her body.

A momentary look of panic crossed the eel's face.

Oh nooo
! This wasn't the result he expected! The little human girl in his grasp couldn't change into what she did! He sent another shock through his eel trunk—a grave blunder—for Lizzy's magnified power thrust it back like a lightning bolt bouncing off a mirror and jolted it back through the eel instead.

CRACK
!

He fell limp. His body crumpled senseless, paralyzed by the electrical overload.

Lizzy wasn't entirely sure what just happened.

She stood lingering over his helpless form, a battle raging inside her. Torrid hatred made her want to kill the evil Snircher eel in the worst, most painful way, as one would squash a rattle snake in their yard. She no longer cared about anything else but to make him pay for her pain and loss. And she, in that split second, would use her powers to do it …

The Snircher recovered in a snap, still looking very confounded. He winced in pain and looked down to find blistering scorch marks streaked across his trunk.

“
What are you
,” he seethed venomously. “The Glimmruyn do not have that kind of power!”

He lunged at her, eyes full of death.

Out of nowhere something cut through the water—a giant blurry beast—and swept by Lizzy, who posed no threat to her, and chomped the giant eel in half. She must've been mighty hungry, because not a minute later, she gulped down the other half in an instant with a quick
sluuuurp!
Lizzy watched in stunned silence as Moonfin finished her meal and swiftly returned to her resting spot on the seafloor.

“I guess we can't be friends now,” she mumbled coolly into the bubbly waters.

Then Lizzy chased after the sea dragon into the vast, deep pool, zipping and swirling through the water, her Glimmruyn abilities giving her amazing maneuverability. And though she still wasn't sure what was happening, she did feel more and more at ease in the ocean, understanding better what Xili had tried to tell her earlier. She was no longer afraid.

Moonfin lay quietly near a very large, half-opened, cross-hatched gate, her long body rising and falling with steady breathing. Lizzy stayed back a good distance and studied her, awestruck. She was easily the size of a small battleship, covered in a tight armor of mostly crimson and celadon hues with glints of gold throughout. A series of dorsal fins lined her back. Four great flippers, all edged with razor-sharp claws, lay flat on the seafloor. It was her tail that clued Lizzy into her unique name: the fin was a fully formed, horizontal half-moon.

Her face was the most frightening of all. Not an ugly sort of frightening, but the kind that majesty and strength inspired. Several bendy horns, Lizzy wasn't sure how many, maybe twelve, grew from her face. Some looked like bone; others looked fleshy. Waves of ridges flowed up her forehead to where two long whip-like antennae emerged in place of where ears might have been. Her mouth was unnerving, with rows of teeth sitting above the lips and jutting upward. Anything that went near those jaws would be doomed—that eel didn't have a chance.

Moonfin's eyes remained shut—she was taking a nap after her filling lunch. Now was Lizzy's chance to get close enough to unlock the chain around her ankle. She circled around back as quietly as possible and found the leash that tethered Moonfin to the seafloor. Ever so gently she crept up to her flipper, which, although the size of a tree, was the narrowest part of her shackled leg.

Lizzy considered the lock for a few moments.

“Okay, I see it, there's a sliding bolt with a key-hole for manual release. No problem, but—OH NO! Where's the key!”

It was at that moment she noticed the shadow of a dinghy moving above her …
and so did Moonfin
, who swung around like lightning, red eyes glowing, and growled furiously. Lizzy could feel the full force of the monster's rage flooding her heart, and she thought she might burst with the power of it.

Moonfin lunged at the moving shadow and toppled the little boat over, spilling its two occupants into the sea. Jeff and Kai came plunging downward. She lifted her flipper, about to whack them cold, but Lizzy panicked and shouted some word, and looking back on it she wasn't even sure what it was, but was something like “
Aparasazna
!” and felt it meant, “Forbidden!” She was sure Moonfin didn't even hear her at that moment …

Moonfin abruptly halted, flipper frozen above them mid-smack! A very sudden change washed over her face. She looked …
confused
? She lowered her flipper, her eyes shining softly, and spewed a snarling, smoke-filled grumble before settling back down on the seafloor.

Lizzy didn't know what would happen next—whether Moonfin would eat them or not. She moved fast as Jeff and Kai came hurtling toward the deadly jaws and grabbed them both, dragging them back up to the boat. And that's when Lizzy noticed it, the scales around their necks glowed with the same red and green colors as Moonfin's armor.

Jeff and Kai broke the surface, holding onto the dinghy to catch their breath, exhaling terror-filled cries.

“What happened?” gasped Jeff. “One minute I thought we were goners, the next she totally ignored us—”

“What are you both doing out here!” Lizzy cut in angrily, coming back to her human form as she surfaced. “You're going to get killed!”

“Lizzy—you dropped the key before you ran off to that shipwreck,” coughed Kai. She held up her wrist with the clinking key circling it. Jeff shimmied back into the boat and Kai followed him. Lizzy hung onto the edge to steady the rocking, reaching out her hand.

“Give it to me, then. I want to get her out of this cave before we're discovered!” Kai slid the key ring onto Lizzy's wrist.

“But there's a problem!” cried Jeff. “After you ran up the beach, we looked over the chain system that holds Moonfin. The metal isn't forged from around here—from earth, I mean.”

“I know that already! Iddo said it was forged from an asteroid core. Anything else? Quickly!”

Kai and Jeff looked at each other uncertainly.

“From what we could tell, there's a pin leading from the shackle and piercing into her flipper. If you unlock it with the key the wrong way, it sets off an explosive that will tear her flipper apart—and us along with it,” said Jeff, looking defeated.

A trap!
The realization hit Lizzy full force.

“That way it slows her down so he can follow her blood trail.” She sank down, the air knocked out of her.

“There was more, but we only just got that part of the data before the system went completely dead,” said Kai.

Lizzy's eyes suddenly brightened, remembering something.

“Kai, do you still have some of that gum from the Chiroptera Café?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I'll explain later, just give me whatever you have left.”

Kai pulled out a small handful of drenched gum and handed it to Lizzy, who squished it into a ball in her palm. She swam like a bullet cutting air down to the chain that fed from the shackle around Moonfin's foot. It was a long shot, but taking the gum, she formed the rubbery wad into a stringy ring-shape and wrapped it around the chain. It fizzed and bubbled and ate right through the metal in a matter of seconds.

“Good ol' polyisobutylene,” she said, smiling. “You're a brilliant little octopus, Iddo!”

Lizzy gingerly slid up to Moonfin's side, who didn't move, except to slowly turn her head and peer at Lizzy mournfully. She pressed both hands against the armored fin to find a language they could both speak in. No words came, but a steady stream of pictures filled her mind instead. Lizzy saw her battles fought in the sea cave … and she saw her babies.
Oh, dear, so much sadness.
She had almost forgotten about the calf in the Quarantine Room. They all died save the one. It's how Krell had kept her obedient for so long.

“So you have a heart after all,” Lizzy whispered to her. “You're free now. Go! Swim through the gate!”

The chain was cut, and the gate stood half open, plenty of room for her to fit through, yet Moonfin didn't budge an inch. She just looked over at Lizzy with sad, baleful eyes. Why didn't she jump at the chance to charge out to sea?