The Battle of Riptide

by EJ Altbacker

  “Keep down!” hissed an urgent voice. “Get low, or you’ll be seen!”

  Gray turned to the voice and couldn’t believe his eyes. “Onyx!” he whispered. The blacktip was a member of Coral Shiver’s Line.

  “Is he really here?” Barkley asked in a dulled voice. “Or are we dead?”

  “We’re not dead,” replied Onyx. “But we will be if you don’t stay quiet!”

  “SWIM LOW AND SLOW,” ONYX TOLD THEM. “Don’t churn up any sand, or they’ll see us. You think you two can do that?”

  Gray was flabbergasted! Even though he and Barkley were searching for anyone from Coral Shiver, it was still a shock to see Onyx. Was Gray’s mother nearby, too? Was she all right? There were so many questions to ask, but they couldn’t stop and talk. They were in serious danger.

  “We can do it,” Gray said, pushing the shocked Barkley forward. “Nice and easy.”

  “Always were a load of trouble,” Onyx muttered under his breath. The blacktip led them through algae-covered canyons of rock. Luckily there was plenty of waving greenie floating up from the bottom to hide their movements, as Barkley wasn’t swimming at his sneaky best. Gray risked taking a peek at the sun-mottled water above and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw no sharkkind.

  After another quarter-mile, they came to a sheltered area surrounded by colorful coral. Gray’s heart thudded louder and louder as Onyx guided them through a hidden swimming lane. It blocked the views from above and to the sides—just like the one leading into Coral Shiver’s old homewaters.

  The swimming lane jogged back and forth. It would be easy to lose your way, and that was the point. Gray’s mind raced as the path finally opened into a large central area.

  “Where are we? What is this place?” Barkley whispered. He was still stunned from the fight.

  Gray’s heart leapt when he saw Prime Minister Shocks, the old moray eel who had been the leader of the Coral Shiver dwellers since Gray was a pup. Morrison, the crusty old crab, was busy arguing with Timmons, the sea snail! Aqualina, the red tang, was speaking with Dundee, the sunfish! And there were others, too! Shocks saw Gray, and the eel stopped the conversation he was having with Kanter, the sea horse leader. Soon everyone was staring. It got so still and quiet, Gray heard the water whisking past the algae-slick rocks around them.

  “Hi, everyone,” Gray said in a soft voice.

  The silence remained deafening. Gray was about to say something else when he saw her. There, hovering off to the side by a blue coral spire covered with lumos, was his mother. She had been blocked earlier by the same pillar of coral. Now she stared at him as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

  “Gray?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat.

  Her mouth and nose barbels vibrated so much, he could feel the movement in the still water. It tickled a little, like when he was a pup.

  “Mom!” He swam to his mother, bumping her a little harder than he meant to. She skidded sideways and scattered a colorful group of tangs. “Mom, Mom, Mom!” he yelled. “You’re here! You’re actually here! I—I missed you so much!”

  “Shhh, it’s okay, Gray,” Sandy told him, rubbing his back with her tail.

  Gray felt tears well up in his eyes. “I can’t believe it’s you! I can’t believe I finally found you!”

  Onyx swam up to them both. “So, I picked up this wayward shark for you to question.”

  Sandy chuckled, crying freely. “Thank you, Onyx.”

  “Like a bad clamshell, this one,” the blacktip said with a grin. “I guess we can’t get rid of him. And maybe that’s not so bad.” Onyx looked over Gray from snout to tail tip. “He’s grown. Again. And learned how to fight.”

  Sandy grew concerned. “What do you mean?” she asked. Gray’s mom looked at him crossly, her barbels now pulsing as they did when she was mad. “What happened?”

  “I—we—didn’t want to. . . .” Shame reddened Gray’s face and his tail drooped. He had just sent another shark to the Sparkle Blue. It would have been unimaginable when he was a pup.

  “They had no choice, Sandy,” Onyx told her. “I was watching the Indi patrol and saw them dive and attack. I figured it was Razor Shiver survivors—Razor’s gone, by the way—and then I saw these two.” Onyx flipped his tail in frustration and spoke to Gray. “I would have helped, but you were too far away. Where did you learn that move? Both of you fought well.”

  Gray looked over his shoulder at Barkley. Some of the dogfish’s color seemed to have returned, but he was still shaky, listing to the side a little.

  “I—I feel sick again,” Barkley muttered.

  Onyx tapped the dogfish’s flank with his tail to steady him. “It was him or you, Barkley. Did you want it to be you?”

  “We wouldn’t want that!”

  Barkley turned and saw his cousins. They were all there! Barkley started crying his eyes out as his family enveloped him. Seeing his friend flank to flank with his loved ones got Gray welling up again. Pretty soon he gave himself over to laughing and crying and rubbing against his mom. But he didn’t care. It felt so good!

  He even met his new brother and sister, Riprap and Ebbie. They were little nurse shark pups who couldn’t speak yet and mostly hid in the greenie, but they smiled at Gray. Both had the cutest little barbels of their own, just like their mother. He immediately loved them. What an overwhelming joy that his family was safe and sound!

  They talked for hours, catching up. Gray and Barkley didn’t get all the details of the attack by Razor Shiver that had destroyed Coral Shiver’s reef, but they didn’t really want them. Even now, it was obvious that most of the sharks and dwellers here were still dealing with the currents from that terrible day.

  It turned out no one in Coral Shiver knew the attack was really the work of Goblin and Velenka. Quickeyes, who had been first but was now leader of Coral Shiver because of Atlas’s death in the attack, wanted every bit of information. After the story, he looked to Sandy (who was now second in the Line) and Onyx (first) and said in a low voice, “One day, maybe we’ll get a chance to talk with those two.”

  Everyone in the circle knew that there would be no conversation involved. Gray hoped Quickeyes wouldn’t go looking for trouble. Even though the thresher was a strong shark, fighting Goblin wasn’t a smart thing.

  Gray and Barkley recounted all their adventures. Sandy puffed with pride when Barkley told them Gray was the leader of Rogue Shiver. She gave her tail a swirl and smiled as she had when he’d gotten a good grade in class. For his part, Gray was totally embarrassed. He blurted out, “It’s a really small shiver, though!”

  After a while, he noticed that everyone was listening—really listening. Quickeyes and Onyx were asking for Gray and Barkley’s opinions, weighing their words as if they were real shiver sharks. There was actual respect in their eyes when Barkley told everyone about stopping Goblin’s plan to take over the North Atlantis at the Tuna Run.

  After Barkley was finished, Gray asked, “Why choose this place? Why settle so close to Razor Shiver?”

  “It wasn’t planned,” Sandy answered. “We swam away as fast as we could, and this was where we stopped to rest. It’s hidden and can be defended, two things that were very important right then.”

  “Yes,” agreed Quickeyes. “It was the best we could hope for under the circumstances.”

  “Goblin once told me about sharks with markings called tattoos. They were named Indi Shiver, from the Indi Ocean. The sharkkind that fought Razor Shiver had those. Could it be them? The Indi Ocean is so far away.”

  “Yup,” Onyx said. “They’re Indi Shiver.”

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Barkley.

  “Because,” Onyx told them, as he turned and showed his own tattoos, “I used to be a member.”

  EVERYONE SETTLED INTO THE MAIN AREA OF the new Coral Shiver homewater
s to listen. There the spires of rock and coral were covered by yellow and green moss, trailing long strips of greenie as the current moved through the shelter. Onyx had quite a tale to tell. His own shiver had been conquered by Indi when he was just a pup, but it hadn’t been bloody.

  “Their king at the time was Finnivus’s father, Romulus,” Onyx told everyone. “He was a good and wise king who took in our wandering shiver, which was searching for better feeding grounds.”

  King Romulus let them become part of Indi, and Onyx was put to work as a hunter when he was barely older than Gray was now. Later, Onyx became an Indi mariner and swam with the armada, which was nicknamed the Black Wave. “That’s how I got my tattoos,” the blacktip said. He showed the markings that Gray and Barkley had long ago thought were just odd but natural—and totally gilly. But now that Gray had seen the black wave pattern up close, as well as in battle, he didn’t think they were cool at all.

  “So you know them?” asked Gray. “You know Finnivus?”

  “I saw him many times while he was growing up. He’s a couple years older than you. Since he was the prince, I tried not to go anywhere near him. He was a spoiled brat.”

  “Obviously, he’s gotten worse,” Sandy remarked.

  This was an understatement, of course. “One day, I was hunting with King Romulus and the royal court, including Finnivus. We both went after the same fish. I was young and jelly-brained. I should have let the prince have the strike, but I beat him to it. Finnivus got mad and ordered my death.”

  “What kind of shiver is this?” Gray asked incredulously. “It was a fish!”

  “They have their own rules, and I dishonored the prince,” Onyx replied. “Their laws may be harsh to us, but according to them I was wrong.”

  “But you’re still around,” Barkley said, pointing with his fin. He seemed to be doing better since their escape earlier in the day. “What happened?”

  “King Romulus would never disgrace his son by taking my side in front of the royal court. He told a commander to carry out the prince’s order. Maybe Romulus knew he wouldn’t do it, maybe not. But the commander swam me out of sight and let me go. He said to never come back. So you see, Gray, you’re not the only one who’s been banished.”

  “Tell them about the commander,” said Quickeyes.

  “Ah, here’s where it gets interesting. That commander’s name was Whalem.”

  “That’s the name of the shark Finnivus called the mariner prime,” Gray said thoughtfully.

  Onyx nodded and swished his tail. “Exactly. They are one and the same.”

  “You’re sure?” Barkley asked. “Are you positive?”

  Onyx nodded. “You don’t forget the shark who spared your life.”

  “Do you think you could talk with him? Make the mariner prime get Finnivus to change his ways?” asked Barkley.

  Onyx shook his snout back and forth. “Whalem would never disobey his king.”

  Barkley whipped his tail through the water. “He spared your life, didn’t he? Isn’t that disobeying?”

  “Or, was he obeying a king who secretly told him to let me go? I don’t know.”

  “You were a member of the armada,” Gray said. “Do you know how they fight? What their weaknesses are?”

  “Sure, I know their formations, but that’s not enough. Their mariners are well-trained, and in the hands of a good mariner prime, which Whalem is, they are unbeatable.”

  The group spoke for another hour, before everyone drifted apart. Gray and his mother went off alone. The day had brought one huge surprise after another. Gray wondered if he could bear one more, but knew he must take up the subject. He pointed at Riprap and Ebbie, still hiding in the greenie. They were intensely interested in their giant big brother but too shy to swim up close.

  “Riprap and Ebbie are so cute,” he told his mom.

  “Aren’t they?”

  “Much cuter than I am,” Gray said evenly. He didn’t want to upset his mother, but he had to continue. “They have barbels, just like you, and fan-shaped teeth, just like you. I don’t have those. . . .”

  His mother’s barbels twitched in a way that Gray had never seen. He didn’t know if she was angry or hurt or thinking. Then she finally said, “I’ve been waiting for this day. In some ways, I hoped it would never come.”

  Gray forced himself to be patient while his mother gathered her thoughts. It was obviously hard for her.

  “The truth is I found you, alone and scared in the ocean far, far away.”

  The words passed momentarily without Gray realizing what they meant. But then he did. “So . . . you’re not my mother?”

  Sandy rubbed his belly with her tail. “Of course I am, Gray. I raised you and fed you and loved you. I’ll always love you. I’m just not your birth mother.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and were carried away by the tide.

  It felt like the Big Blue was spinning round and round, and Gray was tumbling tail over snout.

  “I know this is hard, but I love you. You can tell me anything, Gray. Even if you’re mad at me, it’s okay.”

  “I’m not mad, Mom. I just have so many questions,” he hiccupped.

  “I know,” she soothed. “I’ll answer what I can.”

  “Did you know I’m a megalodon?”

  Sandy’s mouth hung open in surprise. Her barbels moved left and right as she shook her head in wonder. “I didn’t. But I knew you were special.”

  Special. There it was again. Only this time it just added to the storm of confused feelings Gray was having. He was beginning to hate being special. “Where do I come from?”

  “The place I found you was almost in the Dark Blue. It was deep and ancient. The very mountains shifted, and there was a huge volcanic eruption. It became so bright, it was like a red sun had fallen into the ocean. I almost died. And there, in the dark, with the water tasting of sulfur—I found you. That’s why I named you Gray. The entire Big Blue seemed gray that day.”

  He couldn’t help it and laughed. “You named me Gray because the water was mucky and stank?”

  His mom gave him a little tail slap to the flank. “That is not the reason.” She grew quiet before continuing. “It seemed like the ocean itself changed so it could have you swimming in it. It was incredible and terrifying. But most of all, it was a day unlike any I’ve lived in my life. I knew right then it was my job to take care of you.”

  Gray hugged Sandy with his tail for a long time. But then he asked his last question. “So my parents could be alive?” Gray wasn’t sure which answer he wanted to hear.

  Sandy shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think so. If there was another megalodon in the ocean looking for you, I would have heard about it. And I stayed in the area for a long time to make sure. I think your parents died saving you. You see, they must have also known you were special.” This time the word didn’t feel so bad.

  Gray asked his mother not to tell anyone about his being a megalodon, and she agreed that keeping the secret was a wise thing for now. That was a mystery for another day. Right now, Finnivus was threatening everyone Gray cared about. That problem demanded all his attention.

  But there was one more thing. . . .

  “Can I still call you Mom?”

  “Of course, you can!” Sandy said, her eyes leaking tears. “Always and forever, Gray.”

  WHALEM WATCHED AS THE RAZOR SHIVER prisoners were herded from their homewaters, each bull between two armada sharkkind for the long swim to the Indi Ocean. There they would be broken down before being raised up into Indi Shiver mariners. Right now, the prisoners’ fins drooped, and they swam listlessly, having been easily taken apart in battle. Of course they lost. This shiver was no more than a gang of thugs. And to only allow one type of sharkkind into membership? That was foolish.

  Whalem had o
nce tried to get Finnivus’s father King Romulus to allow dwellers into the Indi armada as equals. That was the one time there was a total disagreement between them. Romulus thought that only sharkkind should be allowed into his glorious armada. Dwellers could serve in different ways, as the blue whales or lantern fish did, but could not be Indi armada mariners. Whalem thought the advantages that a swarm of eels would provide far outweighed the fact that they weren’t sharkkind.

  “Mariner Prime, you called?” asked one of Whalem’s commanders, a bull shark. A commander led each of the four battle fins of the armada, but this was the only bull among them.

  “I’d like you to talk to the prisoners,” Whalem told him. “Calm them. Make sure they don’t do anything stupid or Finnivus will have them for lunch.”

  “He might, anyway.”

  Whalem let his commanders speak on even terms when they weren’t in official settings. He believed the sharks who fought flank to flank with him deserved this measure of respect. But it wasn’t the time for this sort of talk in the ranks. “What do you mean by that, commander?”

  “I—I . . .”

  “Surely you aren’t suggesting that the king would dishonor Indi Shiver by harming surrendered prisoners?”

  The bull cast his eyes downward, dipping both head and tail. “No, Mariner Prime! I misspoke.”

  “Plainly, you’re tired from the battle.”

  “Yes, Mariner Prime!”

  “I don’t want you saying any such thing to the other commanders, is that clear?” Whalem said, making his eyes like volcanic rock. He could not afford to let rot like this begin. Once started, it was impossible to stop.

  “Yes, Mariner Prime!” the commander answered, dipping his head once more.

  “Now, see to the bulls,” Whalem told him. “I’m sending you because you are a bull yourself. So it’s up to you. Will you help me save their lives by making sure they join Indi Shiver happily and without reservation?”