Free Dive

by Emma Shelford

  “Spiky?”

  “Unicorn fish is kind of cumbersome to say all the time,” Corrie kneeled and arranged some objects on the deck floor. “It needed a name. Do you have a better one?”

  “Any name would be better than Spiky,” Krista muttered. She looked at the fish, and it tapped the glass with its horn. “But sure. Spiky works.”

  Corrie carefully placed a small cutting board in one end of the tank to divide part of it in half.

  “What’s the idea?”

  “It’s called conditioned place preference.” Corrie pulled out her notebook. “It’s a test for memory and cognition. We’ll put a piece of jellyfish in one side as a positive stimulus, and I’ll tap the glass if it goes to the other side as a negative stimulus. Then, we’ll see if it prefers one side over the other. See if it can differentiate between them. We know absolutely nothing about this creature, so any information we can get is interesting. I need to take a few more notes on its physical features, as well. Did you check out the ventral side, its underside? It’s slightly flattened and almost cupped. I wonder what it’s for.”

  They spent the next half hour doing all the tests that Corrie could recall from her animal behavior class in undergrad. By the end, Krista was smiling and talking to Spiky. Corrie pretended not to notice, but inside she was flabbergasted at Krista’s display of a softer side. She left the last test and her notebook for Krista to complete and went into the lab to finish an analysis.

  Her phone indicated she had an email. It was from Robert, her friend in the sequencing lab. Corrie almost dropped the phone in her haste to check it.

  Hi Corrie, I got the samples this morning, and lucky you, I had time to amplify and run a gel. The fish primers I used didn’t work, but I have a few more to try. I’ll keep you posted. Robert

  Corrie turned off the screen and stared out her tiny window at an island beyond. Robert must have made a mistake. Maybe his chemicals were old. The fish primers should have worked. What else was the unicorn fish, if not a fish?

  Unless they really were dealing with a legendary creature. Corrie jiggled her leg in thought. This was why she hadn’t told her supervisor yet. She needed to know more about what they were dealing with before he found out. Corrie’s interest was well and truly piqued, and she didn’t want her cryptozoology and biology sides to intersect quite yet. How could she explain the fish? Where would it fit on an evolutionary tree, if she couldn’t even get the DNA sequenced? It had to fit. Nothing on this earth couldn’t be slotted into place, ordered and accounted for. She needed more evidence, more answers, more proof, before she brought the unicorn fish to her supervisor’s attention. She needed more answers for herself.

  KRISTA

  Krista wrote the last finding in Corrie’s notebook and snapped it shut. The unicorn fish twitched.

  “Sorry, Spiky,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She reached into her pocket and withdrew a piece of jellyfish. She held it over the top of the tank and dropped it gently into the water. The fish’s horn crested the surface as it snatched the jellyfish with its mouth and swallowed it whole. Krista smiled.

  “Have a good snack, Spiky.” She stood and dusted off her jeans. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  Krista dropped off the notebook with Corrie, who was frowning at her phone, then wandered through the galley. She snuck a piece of cheese from a cutting board while Jules was at the stove then raised her eyebrow when he huffed at her. She took an exaggerated bite and chewed slowly while staring at him. Jules waved her away with a knife.

  “Get out of the kitchen, woman. This is my domain.”

  “Refreshing words,” she said. “But my family is paying for this cheese, so I’ll eat it whenever I want.”

  She turned toward the wheelhouse and smiled at the exaggerated sigh from behind her. Jules might be an idiot, but he wasn’t half-bad company. She couldn’t handle him for long, of course, but a week on the boat was manageable. Having Jules on board kept Zeb happy, or at least more grounded.

  Zeb was at the wheel, driving to their next station. His hair was still damp from his latest post-diving swim. Krista tried to ignore it. She perched on the foldout seat.

  “Corrie might know what she’s talking about, sometimes,” she said with another bite of her cheese. Zeb gave her an incredulous look.

  “High praise, coming from you. Why, how did she impress you?”

  “We ran some tests, looking at how the fish reacted to different things. We collected some interesting information. I don’t know what it all means yet, but still.”

  “Helping with the science, now?”

  “Yeah, well, I wanted to make sure she didn’t hurt Spiky.”

  Krista pressed her lips together after the fish’s name passed her lips. Damn. Zeb wouldn’t let that one pass. True to form, Zeb let out a snort.

  “Spiky? You named it?”

  “Corrie did,” she defended herself.

  “You used it.”

  “Shut up.” It was ridiculous, her care for the fish. The way it looked at her, though, with hopeful eyes and a tilt to its head, like it wanted to tell her something… She shook her head in disgust at herself. It was a fish. She ate them for dinner. Not the ones with horns, but still. She changed the topic to one that would wipe all mirth from Zeb’s face.

  “What are we going to do about Matt?” she said. Zeb frowned.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “I do,” she said. Zeb looked at her and she elaborated. “You drop me off on his boat, I beat him up, you get the fish. Done deal.”

  Zeb shook his head with a small smile.

  “Have you seen the size of him? I know you’re scrappy, but I’m pretty sure he’s not going to act the gentleman with you.”

  “Okay, we follow him down a dark alley, you, me, and Jules jump him, tie him up, and leave him on the police station doorstep with something illegal in his pocket.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, I’m brainstorming here. Honestly, Zeb, try to keep up. Contribute a little.”

  “I’d like to avoid any scenario that involves us attempting to beat up the modern-day Viking,” Zeb said. His smile faded. “But I don’t know what to do about him.”

  There was a rustle at the doorway, and Corrie entered. Zeb stiffened, and his body oriented itself in Corrie’s direction. Krista narrowed her eyes.

  “Trying to figure out what to do about Matt?” Corrie said. “I’m out of ideas, too.”

  “Dead end after dead end,” Krista said flatly. “We’ll have to decide soon, though, or else your time on the boat will be up.”

  Corrie sighed.

  “Keep thinking, I guess. Hey, could one of you give me a hand? I want to change the water in Spiky’s tank. It’s getting a bit murky.”

  “I can,” Zeb said quickly. “Krista, could you take the wheel?”

  Krista nodded, and Zeb followed Corrie out the door. Krista frowned. Zeb was acting strangely around Corrie, and she didn’t like it. Anything out of the ordinary with Zeb was perilous. He was extraordinary enough.

  CORRIE

  “I think Spiky is excreting something,” Corrie said over her shoulder as Zeb followed her through the lab to the aft deck. “There’s a bunch of slime on the bottom and sides.”

  “Don’t touch it,” Zeb said quickly. “It’s probably what causes the hallucinations.”

  “No worries there.” Corrie pulled out two sets of latex gloves from her pocket and handed Zeb a pair. “I brought protection.” She smiled playfully at Zeb, who looked down in confusion. Was he shy? Maybe innuendos weren’t advisable with Zeb, at most her colleague, at least her sponsor. Living with these three people on a small boat for five days made Corrie forget how little they knew each other. She cleared her throat.

  “Let’s transfer the fish into a bucket. I’ll scrub the tank and we’ll pour the water overboard then fill it up again with the saltwate
r hose. It should be quick, and the fish will have a nice clean home again.”

  Zeb nodded and fetched a bucket.

  “Can I slide it right into the tank?” he asked.

  “Yep. Less traumatic than a net.”

  Zeb dipped the bucket into the fish’s tank. Though it squirmed away from the bucket, Zeb managed to trap it in a corner and scoop it up. Corrie grabbed a sponge she had tied to the other end of a short net.

  “Give me a minute to scrub away the worst of this slime.”

  The slime was translucent and colorless, and slid off the sides of the glass tank easily. It clung with a vengeance to the sponge, however, and it took Corrie a half-minute of swishing and banging to dislodge the worst of it from her cleaning tool. Zeb disappeared while she was cleaning and reappeared with a different hose.

  “There’s no way we’re picking the tank up,” he said. “And I don’t want that slime on my deck, especially if it’s toxic. We’ll siphon the water out and dump it directly into the ocean.”

  “How are you going to start the suction?” she asked.

  “Very carefully,” he said. Before Corrie could ask what he meant, Zeb stuck a hose end in the tank and lay down on the deck. He put his mouth to the other end and sucked air through the hose.

  “Zeb!” Corrie said, scandalized. “What if you get a whole mouthful of toxic seawater in your mouth?” He clearly hadn’t taken the safety courses that she had. He shrugged and sucked again then shoved the end of the hose through a drainage hole in the bulwark. Water gushed out and splashed into the sea beyond.

  “See? It worked. No slime in my mouth, either.”

  Corrie shook her head. The tank emptied quickly, and while Zeb curled up the hose, Corrie filled the tank with clean water. She gently poured the fish back in, and it swam in circles to examine its clean home.

  “There you go, Spiky,” Corrie whispered. “Nice and clean.”

  Corrie looked up at the sound of a hose being dropped to the ground. Zeb hung over the side of the boat, his jaw slack.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed.

  Corrie leaped to his side and followed his gaze. In the wake of their boat, a disturbance cut the waves in a boiling turbulence. Then, a tentacle appeared above the surface.

  Corrie gripped the railing with white fingers. The only thing she could think at first was how enormous the tentacle was. It was at least twenty feet long, and that was only what emerged from the sea. It was a bruised-looking reddish purple, with almost translucent suckers from the tip of the tentacle to the base. It flailed and curled, and a hill of water mounded beside it as if something were about to surface. But nothing emerged, and the tentacle sank into the frothing waves.

  “What the hell was that?” Corrie squeaked. She could hardly push the words out. There was no air in her lungs. “That was so big! What could it have been? The biggest a Giant Pacific Octopus can get is usually a fifteen-foot arm span, and that was easily five times bigger. Maybe Architeuthis, a giant squid? Their tentacles can be forty-three feet long, which still isn’t big enough, but that’s the biggest cephalopod there is. But they don’t come to the surface unless they’re dead, and that was definitely not dead. No way. What else could it be?”

  Corrie tried to stop her babbling, but in her shock, it was all she could think of to do. Zeb simply stared, mouth open, eyes scanning their wake for another sighting.

  “I’m going to get my camera,” Corrie blurted out. Documentation. That was key. In science as in life: pics or it didn’t happen. She raced to the lab and grabbed her camera from its hook. She took a frenzied moment to thank her overly orderly self then leaped back outside.

  “Did you see it again?” she gasped. Zeb shook his head.

  “Should we turn back?” he said, more to himself than to Corrie.

  Corrie’s immediate thought was hell, yes. If this wasn’t validation of her blog, then she didn’t know what was. Then her logical brain took over. That tentacle was huge. How big was the creature underneath? Sailors’ stories of sea monsters attacking ships floated through her mind, and she gulped. Was turning back really the smartest plan?

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Corrie said. “But maybe we shouldn’t. How big was it, exactly? Could it be dangerous?”

  “That’s what I was wondering,” Zeb replied, his eyes still scanning the ocean.

  “But it’s right there.” Corrie jiggled her leg. How could they pass up this opportunity? But how could they put themselves in so much danger? “But sea creatures can be unpredictable. Did you ever see that video of the whale breaching onto that huge sailboat?”

  “Yeah.” Zeb’s normally stoic face twisted with indecision. “Yeah, we probably should keep moving.”

  “Why was it here?” Corrie asked. Her mind, stalled by shock, started to click forward once more. “Does it have a cave here? Is there something it’s hunting for?”

  Zeb finally tore his gaze away from the ocean at Corrie’s question. He focused his pale eyes on her.

  “Hunting,” he said slowly. “What would it be hunting?” His eyes slid to the tank with Spiky inside, now covered with shade cloth. Corrie gasped.

  “Do you think it was attracted to Spiky’s slime?” Her heart thumped at the notion—it felt right—but she let her science brain take over. “It’s a far-fetched theory, but one we can certainly test. Let’s collect some more slime and throw it overboard.”

  “How much do we need?”

  “As much as we can get. If the tentacle doesn’t reappear, then either it isn’t attracted to the slime, or we didn’t put in enough and we’ll have to try when we have more.”

  Corrie’s hands trembled as she put on gloves and collected her sponge, still amply covered with slime despite her attempts to remove the gooey stuff. Zeb, in contrast, moved with swift, jerky motions, as if trying to suppress his eagerness. Corrie didn’t know why he bothered. She would have jumped through the roof if they’d been under one. They were near a sea monster, a real-life sea monster, she was sure of it. Her heart pounded almost painfully in her chest. She was too young for an excitement-induced heart attack, right?

  Corrie swished the sponge in the bucket of seawater that Zeb held out for her. She looked up at him.

  “This is incredible,” she whispered. “Can this really be happening? I’ve been searching for so many years. The unicorn fish, this tentacle—these are legends coming to life. Are you my good luck charm?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Zeb said hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “Are you ready for round two?”

  Corrie nodded.

  “Let’s do this.”

  ZEBALLOS

  “Wait,” Corrie said. She raced into the lab. Zeb gripped the bucket tightly. What was she doing? With every second, they were driving further and further away from the brigar. It couldn’t be anything else. The suckers, that maroon skin—his mother hadn’t told him many tales of the brigar, not enough to know whether it might be hunting strolias, but she had told him enough to recognize one when he saw it. He clenched the bucket and took large, steadying breaths, trying to compose himself before Corrie returned.

  She did in a moment, holding out an eye dropper.

  “No point in wasting slime if a tiny bit will do.” She filled the eye dropper with water from the bucket. “Let’s see how sensitive this beastie is.”

  Zeb was unconvinced, but he kept his mouth shut. What he wanted to do more than anything was to pour the entire contents of the bucket overboard and see the tentacle once more. He was tempted, almost beyond resistance, to dive in and look for the brigar with his own eyes, but he knew that was a terrible idea. Aside from revealing his strangeness to Corrie, his mother’s stories had been clear: the brigar was not to be underestimated. It was huge, hungry, and could rarely be reasoned with.

  Corrie leaned over the edge and emptied the eyedropper into the waves. Zeb wedged the bucket behind some rope and glued his eyes to the wake
of the boat.

  “How long until it can taste the slime?” he said, half to himself.

  “Depends how sensitive it is,” Corrie answered. “Sharks can smell blood from three miles away. If we don’t see anything in,” she checked her watch. “Two minutes, I’ll pour a larger amount of slime water in.”

  “There!” Zeb stopped breathing again. The water behind the boat bubbled and frothed in a pattern inconsistent with the lines of their wake. Corrie fumbled with her camera.

  “Come on, come on,” she breathed. “Show yourself, beastie.”

  As if it heard Corrie, a dark tentacle looped above the surface of the water. Zeb’s heart stuttered. Corrie’s camera clicked again and again. The tentacle slid back into the sea, and the surface waters closed behind it as if it had never been there. Corrie turned to Zeb with shining eyes.

  “Can you believe it?” She threw herself at him and gave him a swift hug. Zeb barely had time to respond to her warm body pressed against his before she pushed away. “A unicorn fish and a sea monster? And they’re clearly connected somehow. I don’t know whether the tentacle thing is super hungry and really loves to eat unicorn fish, or maybe it’s a different relationship, not predator-prey. Maybe they have a symbiosis of some kind. What could it be? How can we find out?” She checked herself and spoke in a slightly calmer voice. “Of course, there might not be a connection. We only tried putting the slime water overboard twice. The next time we do it, we might not be near a tentacle thing, and it won’t be able to sense the slime. Unless there are lots of tentacle things everywhere…” Corrie gazed into the distance with awe.

  “Your pictures,” Zeb said urgently. “Can I see them? Zoom in?” Now that the brigar was gone again, he ached to see evidence of it. His mother’s voice swirled in his head, snippets of stories echoing in his mind. First the strolias, now a brigar—what next? And how could he find his next creature? Krista would kill him for thinking of it, but now that he had seen two creatures from his mother’s stories, it had only whetted his appetite. He needed to see more, know more. This was only the beginning.