Calling to the water around me for perception, I exhaled a tiny mouthful, tracking the bubble as it wobbled past my belly and towards my feet. Water ripped apart and sewed back together as the air pocket forced its way to the distant surface. Air is mischievous underwater, lurching and teetering. As tactile as a slippery eel swishing through my fingers, I felt the bubble climb.
And felt something else stir as well.
9
Maren
The stillness in the watermoved.
It heaved in slow motion, a silent rumble of rock and flesh, and though the backwash of such movement didn’t reach me, it rippled through my call to the water.
A clicking reverberated past my skull. Sharp. Soft.
Then nothing.
The air cavity in my chest tightened, constricting me in the cold. But a more immediate threat called my attention. The hairs raised along my nape. I froze, listening. Instinct urged me in the opposite direction of the bubble. Something lurked above—something big. Something quiet. I sank down, landing in murky silt. Velvety, like silk. It yielded to my infiltration, as though happy to wrap around me and keep me secure. Head angled up, I waited for a sign of where to look. Where to escape.
My hand brushed something cold. Hard. Long and thin, ending in a rounded curve like a giant fishhook. Smooth grooves ran below my fingertip, shallow facets along one edge. Almost like…a rib bone.
With a creeping acuity, I realized it was.
The water shifted again. Billowed and leveled.
Click. Click. Click.
I called out to the water again, droplets reporting their location in time and space, drawing my surroundings like a map in my mind. The muddy sea floor, riddled with snapped cartilage, a graveyard of silk and bone. The walls of a cave arched high, jagged with rocky tips. My single, small bubble, caught in a serrated roof.
Crouched overhead waited a tangle of bent legs. Faceless and massive. Leering at me, two fangs clicking together. Fangs longer than my body. Its long, jointed arms stretched out, feet ending in sharp claws. Slowly descending to where I lay.
My blood ran as cold as the cavernous sea. I made to dart away, and the sticky sap of mud held me tight. The thing froze, sensing my motion, and then began to inch closer. I wriggled and shoved—a fly caught in a web.
It clicked. And then lunged for me.
I pointed a hand at the fangs and blasted.
The sudden momentum of current yanked me out of the mud. I tumbled in my own river, flipping upside-down and sideways, my arms scrambling to swim, tail caught in gyration. Any awareness of surroundings collapsed. I collided with the craggy roof, and over the rush of water in my ears, I felt a crack.
Flesh and tendon flattened against me. Its ribs arched into spindly legs, long and slender, as though the ribcage had been stretched into stilts. It shifted, devoid of muscle or fat, naked skin wrought tight around bony joints.
I rolled over the top of it, the ceiling slicing my shoulder. It twisted, a claw ripping my tail, as fast as light or sound—though it made neither.
Every beat of my heart shattered in my ears, the only sound I could make out in the hollow silence. I faltered, charging in the other direction. The ribcage skittered along the roof of thecavern, legs churning, claws gripping rock, noiseless except for the tick of its mandibles.
Click, click, click.
I shot another burst blindly from over my shoulder. Roaring, the water peeled away from my call, though the running ribcage gripped the rock with its claws, huddling into the wall only a few feet away, its balance intact. It slashed at me in response, a blow that sent me head over tail. Pain sliced across my back, clean and burning.
There was nowhere to go. I couldn’t follow the bubble. The warm current had lured me through a labyrinth under the sea, and I didn’t know the way out. Pelting down the open cavern, I felt thethingrunning alongside me, legs pumping in angular tandem. It reached for me with its claws and I cut a tight corner, tail blazing out of its grasp.
Just as fast, it scrunched and then jumped, gliding through the water, and landed in front of me, spearing the sides of my waist.
Hooks embedded under my skin. I pitched to my side, shredding through the dermal layer of my stomach and tail.
It held on, bringing me to its fangs.
They snapped at me, pincers inches from my face, the noise sharp and fast and instant, severing my thoughts so loudly it stunned me out of motion. My head might’ve split in two. Dazed, I called to the water with a limp hand, if only to understand whether I was already dead, and felt it rear to strike again.
I twisted away. The fangs missed.
