“Sails?” The word is pleasantly smooth, but alien in my mouth. “For the boats?”
“So the storm push boat. Not storm. Small storm. Not need paddle.”
“Ah. Sails,” I say, using the proper word in my own speech. “So that the boat is pushed along by the wind. Yes, we know about those.”
Her eyes brighten. “You do?”
“Yes. Long ago. But we do not use them now. With oars, we are faster. The wind blows too weakly and often in the wrong direction from where you want to go.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Sometimes. With sail, wind blows boat where you want. Slow, but no need to paddle. Not tired. Many use on Earth. Go far. Go on ocean, easy.”
I consider this. I have felt the wind press against my chest and back during storms, strong enough to shove a man backward. The idea of harnessing that force is appealing.
“You could fish longer,” she continues, warming to the subject. “Trade with tribe far away. When wind is big, can be faster than paddle.”
I open my mouth to ask more.
Something slaps hard against the poles beneath the platform.
Once. Twice. A wet, heavy sound that I’ve heard many times before.
Plik the skirr hauls himself up onto the walkway with jerky determination, his slick body leaving a trail of water behind. He’s not large, not by the standards of the Deep, but he is stubborn. He clings to the wood and refuses to retreat, even when I push at him with my foot.
“He back,” Callie says. “Same as in boat? Plik?”
“I think so,” I mutter as I scan the horizon. Plik often climbs into my boat, and sometimes he comes up on the walkway. But he always dives right back in again. Now he’s not budging, glaring at the sea and baring fangs I didn’t even know he had. Still, his flat tail slaps against the planks. It could be a warning.
I shield my eyes against the sun. Then I see it.
“Attack!” I roar. “Ocean Big is attacking!”
The word carries across the platforms instantly. Men freeze, then move, dropping lines and grabbing weapons. Boats are cast loose. Boys are hauled back toward the inner walkways.
Callie’s hand closes around my arm. “What is it?”
“Stay here,” I order. “Don’t move.”
“I want?—”
The sea answers before she can go on.
The water begins to heave, not with just waves, but with displacement. As if the floor of the ocean itself is rising. The bay bulges and froths. The surface splits apart under impossible pressure.
I tighten my grip on my spear. Whatever is coming is not the tentacled horror of before. It is something far worse.
The water explodes upward in a heavy mass. The Deep heaves, and something vast forces its way toward the light, pushing the bay itself out of the way. Poles groan and platforms lurch. Men shout warnings that are swallowed by a sound like stone tearing apart.
A shape breaks the surface, black and jagged and wrong. It rises on six jointed legs that move with brutal precision, driving anarmored bulk upward. Sludge sheets off its carapace in slow, oily curtains. The shell is scarred, layered, and ancient, like a reef that learned to walk.
A living reef that could crush the whole village under it.
Its body locks into place against the platforms, and the water whooshes away from it, revealing claw after claw snapping open and shut. Each one is as long and wide as my boat. Beneath the forward plates, crystalline mandibles grind together and emit a thin, almost pitiful howl that crawls along my spine and makes the men flinch.
Heat pits flare along its sides, sensing us.
“Back!” someone yells. “It’s a krai!”
Too late.
