*But where are you?*
That was a point. Where was he?
Somewhere in the South Pacific or Atlantic. That covered a hell of a lot of ocean.
The knowledge pressed against him, sudden and almost overwhelming, a crescendo of information he fought to make sense of. Tides and temperature and currents and stars and—
There.
He translated the flood of information into something he hoped Pania or Ataahua would understand.
*Got it,*Pania said decisively.
He was running out of time. The edges of his mind weren’t hazy; they were unravelling. He’d pushed things too far, the way his octopus used to, jimmying at the hinges until the whole thing fell to pieces. And… he wasn’t the only one.
The kraken was exhausted, too, more deeply than it had let him know. Plucking Carol from the sky, bringing them all here, had taken more energy than it had thought. And that energy was slower to return than it had expected.
They were both fading.
But Carol would be safe.
He couldn’t concentrate enough to speak to his parents, even if he had the heart for it. Their grief was too raw and new, and it would be an anchor on his soul. He had one thing left to do. He needed all his strength for it.
The kraken might not like it, but he’d held up its end of the bargain for it. And now it was time to hold up his.
To spend whatever time he had left in the dark and the deep, until the dragons called, or he wore down into that glint, that mote, then nothing.
He closed his eyes, if that was what he was doing. He wished he’d told Carol the truth. Wished it had all happened any other way than this. His octopus would have found a way, probably. A way to pull everything to pieces and find another way to put it together.
But his octopus was gone. There was only him, hoping against hope that he could ignore the fate bearing down on him.
All he could do was push Carol out of the way and take the hit himself.
Job done,he told himself, and let go.
*NO!*the kraken thundered, and everything went dark.
20
Carol
She waited for Moss as the night wore on. She waited while the stars wheeled slowly overhead. She waited until it was stupid to keep waiting, and then she cried and waited some more.
And then, as dawn slunk beneath the horizon, as unwilling to appear as she was to see it, she slept.
Stones grated together. She heard it half-dreaming, except she wasn’t dreaming. She was drifting. Water surrounded her, a deep current nudging her gently along. Where was she? She’d never seen rocks like this before, huge flat rectangles tumbled over one another.
Or had she seen them? The water tasted strange, but somehow familiar.Hadshe been here before?
But she would remember rocks like that. Would remember finding the gaps between them, the shadows that hid tunnels and passageways, the soft tickle of seaweed on her skin. The strange, glinting light ahead. Grasping the edge of one rock with her hands and—
Her hands?
She was in human form.
I can’t breathe underwater. But shewasunderwater, so deep the pressure held her like a blanket. Too far to surface to take a breath. Her lungs burned. Why wasn’t she in shark form?
This was a dream, ithadto be a dream, but she never tasted anything in dreams, and the water here tasted like finding your way home again, and it was all the way down her throat, choking gasps that made her breathe more water in, not home anymore, flailing helpless cold alone—
