by John Morano
Kemar’s two friends strapped the container closed, and then the large, powerful man threw it overboard to the boy. The box hit the water, bounced in the boat’s wake, and began to float away from Kemar. The boy tried to swim toward it, but it was difficult to see just where the box was. Most of it was underwater, and sea foam washed over the lid, obscuring it. Like the voice of Son Ba, the box rode a current that carried it away from Kemar.
Beneath the boat, fish returned to Makoona to see what was left of their home. Although they lived in a large reef and the man-tide hadn’t fished this spot many times, the single pass of the scare lines had taken its toll on the precious coral. Beautiful stands of staghorn were reduced to rubble. An exotic patch of orange, yellow, and pink sea fans fell broken and lifeless on the sand.
The humans had cut their path of destruction through the heart of Makoona and through the hearts of all of those who loved their home. Those who’d once lived in snug coral cracks and crevices now desperately searched for some shelter to spend the night. As the sea darkened and shadows became long and fuzzy, nocturnal hunters would appear, a fact that only added more urgency to the displaced creatures’ quest.
Binti was lucky. She could fit almost anywhere, so she wasn’t as frenzied as her friends. Others, like Fraco, the large grouper, had little to fear from most sea creatures. But they were the exceptions.
Just as Kemar had done, Binti took some time to reflect on what happened earlier. She found a spot among a group of yellow brain coral, the perfect place to think. Binti changed her color, rolled herself into a tight ball, wrapped her arms around her mantle, and shifted the texture of her skin to mimic the pattern of the coral. The octopus had become a brain.
She also slipped two arms around a rock that jutted up underneath her, making it almost impossible for another to pry her loose, since Binti could lift many times her own weight with little effort. The octopus liked the idea of being anchored, especially when she was outside her den. Relaxing and reflecting among the brain coral, she scanned the area for food or foes before she started to move back to her home, which she hoped the scare lines hadn’t destroyed.
Directly above, Binti heard a loud splash, the kind of noise a large fish makes when it breaches. But when she looked up, all the octopus saw was some type of garbage floating on the sea. The swimming island that carried the man-tide was paddling steadily away from it. Binti watched the box roll and bob on the waves, waiting to claim it for a home should it sink and prove worthy. As the box drifted away, drawn by a weak current, Binti noticed something else. She could feel the vibrations in the water. A human was plodding along slowly on the surface.
It appeared as though the creature was chasing the garbage or perhaps the swimming island. But Binti could see that he would never catch either. The octopus smiled. For the first time, she understood an expression that she often heard on the reef: “I felt like a human off of land.” It suddenly made sense to her how out-of-place a human must feel in the sea. It was almost like being a fish out of water, she guessed. Binti reasoned that she belonged on land about as much as they belonged in the sea. Fish hadn’t been given feet and lungs, and the man-tide certainly didn’t have fins or gills.
It occurred to Binti that this human must’ve come from the swimming island. Perhaps he was fighting for his life. She watched to see if he’d cut himself on the sharp coral. If that happened, things would get really interesting, she thought. The way the human thrashed around probably kept him from sinking, but it certainly called attention to his presence and might even signal that he was injured or panicked—either of which was dangerous at dusk on the reef.
She saw the red seaweed waving from his torso. Was this an indication that this human was poisonous, like the conspicuous colorful gills of a nudibranch signaled? And then Binti realized that this might be the same human who released his line and saved the reef. She guessed that his school or pod or whatever the man-tide called it had abandoned him. Binti wouldn’t do the same.
The octopus assumed that for whatever reason, the floating container was important, so she changed color to an olive drab with flecks of sand sprinkled along her body, hugged the sea floor, and crawled under the floating box. She reached it easily, changed color again, and swam to the surface. Holding it tightly in her suckers, she towed it to the human who cared.
Kemar watched the red container drift off. It moved much more slowly than the boat, which was now nothing more than a speck on the darkening horizon. Things didn’t look good for the boy. He smiled to himself as he realized Phan had dropped him not unlike the way he’d released his scare line. However, Kemar’s action gave life, whereas Phan’s was intended to take a life.
Kemar hoped he wouldn’t sink as quickly as his weighted scare line did. The boy had seen his family and his country die. But deep down, Kemar had always believed that he might rise above the mess that was happening in his homeland, that one day he would live a truly wonderful life, a tribute to all those who perished too soon to live their own dreams. It seemed to him now, floating on the quiet, cold sea, that there would be no tribute. His young life would end here.
He was bumped hard, jarred from his thoughts of doom. He couldn’t see what it was, so Kemar backed away, paddling slowly but deliberately. It felt like a large, muscular fish, one that would surely find him an attractive target. The boy was afraid to look at it, afraid that he would see the open jaws of a great white coming at him. He hoped it would just go away, but instead, it slammed into him a second time.
The creature knew Kemar was there, and it seemed to be pursuing him. It was becoming difficult to see in the deepening darkness. The boy hoped it might only be a nearsighted turtle bumping into him. He’d heard of turtles getting stung in the eyes while they eat jellyfish and then mistaking people for other turtles. Whatever it was that found him was unquestionably large and hard.
Finally, Kemar mustered enough courage to face the creature. He turned and saw a large, hard . . . cooler. It was half submerged. Kemar threw himself on top of it. The container was buoyant enough to support the boy’s thin frame. The red cooler had a white lid. It was old. The plastic had been patched, and the lid was held in place with a tattered green bungee cord. Kemar had seen this cooler before. He was the one who’d patched it. It was the box Son Ba used to store some of her most precious possessions.
Kemar remembered what his mother had told him when she lost her closest friend, a woman named Ba Elle. “True friends are hard to find and harder to lose,” she’d said. Son Ba and Mir Ta were true friends.
The boy threw his arm over the box. He could feel the bungee cord swollen with salt water beneath his fingers. He stroked it for a moment. It felt secure, solid. And then the cord stroked him back! It was an octopus’s arm!
Kemar gasped, whipped his own arm away from the cooler, and slid back into the water. Then he saw Binti. She’d turned bright red, like the box. An involuntary wave of blue pulsed through her body. The octopus reached out three arms and pushed the cooler toward the boy. Shocked, Kemar grabbed the cooler’s only handle. When he grasped it, Binti turned brown and jetted off, disappearing into the dark deep.
Although Binti did have quite an impressive array of defenses, they were most effective when she was in a reef or on the ocean floor. An octopus is extremely vulnerable in open water. Binti had taken a huge risk for the human because she sensed he’d taken a risk for her. It was a principle that she lived by, one of the basic teachings of the spirit-fish: “When one acts honorably, one should be treated with honor.”
Binti dropped to the bottom and began her slow crawl home, a wonderfully tight crevice nestled between two rocks that opened into a snug little den. Only another boneless creature—or one so small as to not concern Binti—would be able to access her den. Even though the octopus knew this, she always paused before entering. She liked to study the surroundings to see if there was any evidence that something had visited her lair, or worse yet, that something was inside or waiting nearby.<
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The octopus could tell if the stones or shells she piled outside the coral crack had been disturbed. The sight looked as pleasingly pristine as she left it. Still, Binti lingered. Something told her not to enter. It was the voice. Lately, the octopus was working hard to pay attention to it. She found that her inner voice often gave her good council, so she began to listen for it. It seemed that the more Binti sought the voice, the more she found it. “Listen, and you shall hear,” Fraco had once told her.
There was one predator who might be able to enter Binti’s home. It was long and slender, sporting a huge, gaping mouth lined with twisted coral-sharp teeth. It was, unfortunately, her most lethal enemy, the moray eel. The morays were loosely tribal. They lived amongst themselves, never socializing, never using the same cleaning stations as the rest of the reef. They were mysterious and aloof. And they were deadly, especially to an octopus. The fear of the moray swam deeply within her, so Binti waited.
It was a good thing she did. When Binti saw the two eyes peering out of the crack, she knew she had a problem. Something was in her home. And it probably wasn’t afraid of her, because by now, it certainly knew it was in the home of an octopus and had chosen to remain. Binti watched. The eyes slid back into the shadows, and then they reappeared. Was it looking for someone? For her?
She studied the creature. It didn’t have a moray eel’s eyes—tiny, red eyes with narrow slits set closely together. The intruder seemed to be smaller than Binti. Her territorial ’tude took over, and the octopus decided an eviction was necessary.
She approached the entrance to her home, rose up slowly, and stretched her body across the crack. Making sure the intruder couldn’t escape out the emergency exit, Binti reached an arm around the rocks, stuffed the tip into the escape hole, and attempted to scare the interloper into fleeing out the main opening.
The creature didn’t move. Binti reached her arm deeper into the rocks. She slapped a sucker on the creature and felt that it was a fat fish. But as she tried to tug it out, it wouldn’t budge. The animal was wedged solidly between the rocks, apparently having grown dramatically larger since it had entered.
At that point, Binti knew who was in her home. She was in no danger. Only one fish could make itself thin enough to slip into her coral hollow and then swell into a size that could not be removed—a blowfish. It had to be Hootie.
Binti heard a muffled monologue vibrating off the rocks. She withdrew her body from the opening.
Hootie was screaming at her quite clearly and rather loudly. He emerged, shouting, “What is wrong with you? This goes beyond reefanoia. Now you’re worried about blowfish?”
“I didn’t know who was in there,” Binti explained.
“I’m in there, that’s who. You were expecting a whale shark?”
“Well, what were you doing in my home? What do you need?”
“Need? What do I need? So a visit from me means only that I must need something?”
Embarrassed by her suggestion, Binti backpaddled, “No, I . . .”
“What do I need? Isn’t that just beautiful? And why shouldn’t I be in your home? It’s a lot safer waiting in there than waiting out here—that is, of course, unless some demented reefanoid octopus overreacts to a little social call. You don’t mind that I rest in your rocks instead of floating out here in the open where any predator with a craving might be enticed by my tender tailfin?”
“Trust me, your tailfin is the last thing anyone would bite.”
“This is precisely why you don’t have many friends!” the blowfish bellowed. “You treat us like sand.”
“I don’t have many friends because I’m an octopus. I’m a solitary creature.”
“You say that’s the reason, but that’s just an excuse. What came first, the turtle or the egg? Do you not have friends because you’re solitary, OR are you solitary because you don’t have friends? Think about it . . . I’m telling you, eight-arms, you don’t know how to act around coralized fish.”
Binti could see that Hootie was going to swim with this as long as he could, so she decided to submit to the clambasting rather than fight it. It was the only way it would ever end. She managed to tune out the boisterous blowfish until she heard him say, “So, that’s the thanks I get. I find the shell you’re looking for and you hunt me?”
“You found my shell?”
Trying his best to stay away from the coral, Kemar floated with the cooler beneath him. The coral frightened him as much as anything in the sea. While it was stunning to behold, Kemar had also seen what coral cuts could do.
Wounds from corals on his former shipmates often infected quickly. Many corals also dispensed toxins that could easily cause one to drown. And blood in the water from fresh cuts was the last thing Kemar wanted. He found it difficult to kick his legs and still avoid striking the hard pillars below.
The rapidly setting sun didn’t make the boy’s situation any more hopeful. The darker it became, Kemar worried, the tougher it would be to see him (not that anyone would be looking for him). And that would decrease his already slim chance of rescue.
Like the cooler he clung to, the boy’s thoughts began to drift. He saw irony in the fact that when he lived on the boat fishing the sea, he was the ultimate predator. But now, exposed, alone, and totally without defenses, Kemar had become the ultimate prey. For the first time in his life, he began to see just who actually ruled the sea and how precarious man’s place at the top of the food chain really was.
Kemar hugged the cooler. It was his lifeline, and he didn’t want to lose it. Since he had no idea where he was going, he gave up splashing and kicking. The boy tucked his legs against his body. It kept him a little warmer, kept his appendages away from the coral, and most importantly, diminished the appetizing appearance that two dangling legs with ten tasty toes could present. He floated quietly with the current and prayed that he’d make it to morning. After that, he didn’t know what he’d do.
The nighttime wasn’t a bad time for Binti. Almost impossible to be seen in the daylight, at night, the octopus was even more difficult to spot, but so were the predators. Yet at the same time, night could also be an easy time for the octopus to eat and a more difficult time to be eaten. While she couldn’t go so far as to say she liked it, Binti didn’t mind the night.
Usually, she preferred to sit in a crevice or a cave, unseen and unnoticed, which makes sense when the sun is out, but at night, the octopus often got bolder. That’s when she’d move along the reef, venturing out to the deep drop-off where the coral disappeared. Along the way, she’d dine mostly on crustaceans.
Sometimes, she would stop and chat with a friend or two. It was a good way to hear if a new shark or a family of barracudas was in the area. Binti always asked about moray eels too. She could usually taste traces of slime in the water or feel their ripples when the eels were roaming, but a little extra research never hurt.
Fish who rarely left their small patch of reef, certain gobies, damselfish, clownfish, and others liked to hear what Binti encountered during her nighttime feeding forays. However, there really wasn’t much that she could ever tell the cleaner gobies. They were the kings of gossip. No creature in the sea knew more about what was happening than the gobies, and yet the little fish never left their home.
The gobies knew so much because information came to them. They ran the most successful cleaning station on the reef. And everyone knows how much chatter goes on while fish wait in line to have their gills raked. The gobies heard everything first and often repeated it first as well.
Binti slipped under a broad table coral, hugged the edge of a giant clam, slid across a sponge, and emerged within fins of the fields of one of her favorite friends, Ebb the damselfish. Ebb was the original underwater farmer. Aquaculture was his thing. His kind had been farming the seas while the man-tide still had tails.
The territorial algae agronomist was busy chasing off a much larger rainbow parrotfish, who actually had no interest in the damsel’s crop. But that made li
ttle difference to Ebb. He had no intention of allowing anything to get close enough to his precious algae to express an interest.
Ebb screamed, “Swim clear of my algae, Parrot-pirate! I see that look in your eyes! Never seen algae this green before, have ya?”
The indignant fish could only muster, “Well, I never.”
“I know, that’s what I said. You never seen algae like this.” Then Ebb thrust himself at the solid parrotfish and tore a scale from its belly. The fish raced off into the reef. Ebb, poking fun at the fish’s sleeping habits, taunted, “Cover yourself in mucus and go back to sleep! I’ll have no squatting on my rocks!”
Binti dropped down from a large purple sponge, turning brown as she settled on the ground next to Ebb. “Relax, Ebb. That fish isn’t interested in your crop. You know it prefers coral.”
“Sure, it’s easy for you to just go with the flow,” the cranky cultivator countered. “But I need to set an example. Otherwise, that parrot will wander back, and I know she’ll bring others, and they might nibble my crop. Then I’d have to drive several fish away instead of just one. It’s a slippery slope.”
“I doubt it’s really that serious a situation.”
“I’ve seen it before!” Ebb cried. “They always come back—never alone—and they never leave my pasture the way they found it. Clam it! I owe it to my algae!”
Ebb rarely got worked up about anything other than crops. He did, however, get worked up about his algae quite often. Binti understood that there was nothing either of them could do about it. The cantankerous damselfish was created to be crazy about his algae; it was the way of the water, part of the spirit-fish’s grand design. So, in spite of her friend’s protests, Binti went with the flow anyway, enjoying Ebb’s enthusiasm.
“Well, I’ve never brought anyone out here,” the octopus pointed out.
