by M H Ryan
“We don’t know of a way back to the mainland, but we’ve spent a lot of sweat, blood, and tears to make this a home,” I said.
“Emma, you are going to love the new shelter we built. It’s incredible, and the water on the island is to die for. And there’s a hot spring we can wash in. We’re learning to live out here and live well,” Sherri said.
“I’ve got a game on Saturday that I have to get back to. I mean, I don’t want to sound arrogant, but the team needs me,” Emma said.
The group kept quiet. We were just starting to get Cass to accept we were stuck on these islands, and now we had Emma to convince as well.
“Those fish people,” Cass said. “They said this was the furthest island away from this king. Why don’t we just keep going? We head out into that ocean and see if we can get… somewhere. Anywhere.”
“We are somewhere,” Sherri said.
“This isn’t somewhere. We’re in a place we don’t belong,” Cass said, her voice rising in volume. “I mean, this is crazy. Emma is kidnapped by…by fucking walking, talking…mermaids? This place isn’t meant for us. Didn’t you see how we almost died to those sharks, and wood-eating fish? This place hates us, and we need to leave before we all die.”
This argument had been made by Aubrey early on, and I had given it much thought.
“I agree,” I said. “These islands, these creatures, hate us. But they also hated you, Cass, and held you in a cave. They didn’t like Sherri and stuck her in a tree. Benji and I had early close encounters with sharks and boars, and much more, while Kara had been stuck on an island made of nightmares.” I took a breath. “What we’ve seen out here is a mixture of beauty and terror, and I think you’re right, we’re risking our lives every day out here, but we can’t abandon the rest of the women out there. They could be in trouble, just like we were, and if we sail off into the blue— and mind you, we have no idea what is out there, could be thousands of miles of open ocean—we risk not being able to help them.”
Cass rolled her eyes, but Emma stepped forward, looking at me from head to toe.
“You guys are searching for others?” Emma asked.
“Yes, it’s why we found you,” I said.
“Then we can’t leave,” Emma said. “We have to find the rest of them. We have to keep helping.”
“Just great. Another crusader,” Cass said under her breath.
“I agree, Emma, and we could use all the help we can get.”
“You don’t need to yank my arm. If my sisters need help, I’m there,” Emma said.
Cass groaned. “Well, can we at least get back to our shelter by nightfall? I mean, we haven’t even spent one night in it since we finished it up.”
“Yes, and the faster we can pack up some resources from this island, the faster we can leave. Now, a few of you get the huts taken down and stacked into the lifeboat. The others can collect food from the trees.”
“What do you want me to do?” Emma asked.
“Can you help Eliza and I dig this boat out?” I asked.
Over the thirty minutes, the girls had gotten both huts taken down and most of them stuffed into the lifeboat. It had wood and bamboo covering it now.
Eliza, Emma and I had dug some of the sand around the boat and thankfully the tide had come in a bit. The back of the boat lifted up with buoyancy for each wave.
With all the girls back at the boat, and us loaded up with as many goods as we could carry, I knew it was time to leave.
For a moment, I felt out into the deeper ocean. There was the static I had become familiar with but further out I felt the depth of the ocean going to seemingly bottomless depths. I didn’t need to ask Eliza what would happen if we went that way. If the watchers considered this the end of the world. It was probably for a good reason. There was nothing out there or the distances were too great to clear but there was a drawn to the unknown. When you lived your entire life with the magic of a smartphone and all the information of the world at your fingertips, there was little to explore. If you didn’t know what was on the horizon, a quick search would produce it. Now, we just had our eyes, ears and, well, Eliza.
I turned and faced the other way, back toward home. A faint whisper of the black smoke rising from the burning ship could be seen. The fire must have finally started to go out. If we were at the furthest point form this “king” then he or it was in that direction. Something I needed to keep in mind as I felt in my gut that at some point, we’d have an encounter with this ruler. If I could determine how and when that would happen, it seemed like a better plan than just waiting around, thumbs up ass.
It took another thirty minutes with all of us pushing and heaving, but we finally got the boat back on the water.
I jumped unto Luna first and helped up the women. With everyone on board, we set sails and headed for back home with a new member to our growing team.
We spent a good portion of the day sailing in that direction without much incident. It gave us all a chance to speak with the new girl. We also got to bombard her with questions. She had a great energy to her, and had more sayings than I could shake a stick at. More than half of which, I didn’t understand. All of that, mixed with her southern accent, gave an attractive and endearing presence. The other girls immediately respected her and had fun telling her the various wild stories of our adventures.
They told her the truth, but Emma seemed to question the tales. Hell, even as I heard them, they seemed unbelievable, and I was in the stories. While the stories might not be sinking in, she was definitely melding with the group. This seemed to annoy Cass, who mostly stayed next to the center shack and listened.
I kept back for the most part and had my sense open. I didn’t want to get snuck up upon by some creature of the deep, especially after Shaya warned us about an Anyck hunting us. Whatever the heck that was. Thankfully, the ocean felt calm. One thing that had been bothering me thought was Eliza. I’d noticed her getting fidgeting over at her station. She kept staring into the ocean and ignoring the conversations around her. Eliza loved hearing stories.
“Eliza,” I said, beckoning her to the back of the boat with me.
“Yeah, Jack?” Eliza said.
“What are you feeling?” I said, as Tiny Island came into view on the horizon.
“Umm, is it that obvious?
“You look nervous.”
“I’m not sure what it is,” she said, looking at her feet. “Something is coming up, Jack. Something bad.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because there is nothing we can do to get around it.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No, it doesn’t work that way.”
“For now, but I think if you push it, you can get stronger. Maybe strong enough to see the future in total clarity,” I said.
“Knowing what’s coming up isn’t a blessing, Jack,” Eliza said. “If we make the wrong choices, one of us is going to die.”
That seemed rather specific, and I closed my eyes, reaching as far out as I could until my head started to hurt. That’s when I felt it. A mass of creatures coming up from the deep. They were too deep for me to get a good feeling on what they were, but they were getting closer and quickly.
“Everyone, get ready. We have something coming up from the deep,” I said.
The girls moved to their stations, holding onto their weapons. Emma seemed confused and ended up standing next to Sherri. She grabbed a spear for herself but I could tell she really didn’t understand why she’d need it.
“Jack can feel things,” Sherri whispered. “If he says something is coming, something is coming.”
“Okay,” Emma said, skeptical.
They were closer, dozens of them, and they were massive. They weren’t angry, and soon I recognized them. The whale sharks. The first shark breached the water with gentle graze, the spikes on its back and massive dorsal fin cutting through the water. Its spotted skin made it easy to identify.
“Whale shark,�
�� Sherri said, breathing out in relief. “They’re not aggressive.”
“Not usually,” Benji added. “Who knows what these ones are capable of?”
“True,” Sherri said, keeping her hands on her spear.
Several more whale sharks breached the surface, and soon, there were a dozen or more of them swimming on the surface next to us. I reached out to the one I connected with earlier. She seemed concerned, almost protective, as if one of her young was threatened. A maternal instinct radiated out from her, feeling like a silk blanket.
Some of the whale sharks were scared and I couldn’t imagine what a herd of massive sharks could be wary of.
I reached out to the deep waters again and felt the presence of something that sucked the breath out of me. Deep below, there was something truly terrifying moving toward us. I knew the feeling of it, as I had felt it or something like it before. It had come from Cave Island.
“Something’s coming for us,” I said. “I think it’s the Anyck.”
Chapter 18
“I don’t think these whale sharks travel in pods like this,” Sherri said, studying with a nervous expression.
“These ones do,” Benji said.
The whale sharks were easily longer than our boat and probably five times as heavy. This might have been some highlight of a whale tour, but out there, in those waters, it became terrifying. It felt as if they had our lives in their fins.
“I think they’re here to help us,” Eliza said, breaking a silence that had built up.
“You sure?” I asked, grasping for the reassurance.
“Yeah, I think so.” She shook her head, as if unsure.
I definitely needed to work with Eliza on her powers.
I shifted my attention back to the monster in the deep. After feeling it, I knew it wasn’t the creature from the cave, but a relative of it, or an offspring. It might have been the son of the beast in the cave. The creature felt light and flexible as it got closer to us, and I was reminded of its many appendages.
“I think another tentacle thing is coming for us,” I said, and the girls that had fought one just days ago knew what I meant, their eyes widening in fear.
“Are you saying that monster you described is actually real and is coming for us right now?” Emma said.
“No, this one different and much bigger. It’s hungry,” I said.
“What’s the plan?” Benji said.
“Everyone get a foot under some rope in case it tries to grab one of us again.” I looked at Cass. Last time she had been unconscious, but a tentacle had nearly pulled her into the water. “If you see a person next to you getting grabbed, assist in cutting the thing off them.”
“What do we do if it collapses the boat?” Emma asked.
“And we go into the water with the thing,” Cass added, turning pale.
“It won’t get to that. If it’s close enough to touch us, it's close enough for us to stab and shoot it. We’ve dealt with this before.”
“Maybe it’s after the whale sharks,” Benji said.
As if in answer to Benji, the whale sharks in one combined movement, dipped under the water. The wake left behind rocked the boat from side to side and then the sea returned to the low, rolling waves. We all stood on the deck of Luna, silent and still.
“Shit,” Aubrey said.
The massive pack of friendly sharks felt like a nice buffer between us and everything else out there. With them gone, we suddenly felt more vulnerable.
“Fuck this,” Cass said and quickly retreated into the shack, throwing out a few things from it as she did.
Emma, on the other hand, held her spear with a firm grip. She looked confused and scared, but she was no coward.
“Jack, is it still coming?” Sherri asked.
“Yes.”
It didn’t go after the whale sharks, who were descending to the depths; it had a different objective—us. I faced the direction it was coming from off the bow. The sail fluttered in the wind, and a gust sent some ocean mist over us. I wiped my face, tasting the salt water on my lips, trying not to blink.
The one thing that kept running through my mind was Eliza saying that one of us could die. In all my time on these islands, I had never felt a more perilous situation. And I’d been in a cave with giant, coma-inducing snakes.
In my extra sense, the monster felt close enough to touch. It felt everywhere. I braced, thinking the thing might be directly under us. Then a few hundred feet ahead of us, a tentacle rose from the water. A few seconds later a half-dozen tentacles were moving around and above the water. They were a dark purple color and were as big around as my body and a good thirty feet long. The mass of the body stayed under the water, creating a large shadow below the surface. The thing was twice as big as the whale sharks, which were already massive. I guessed the thing had to be a hundred feet across. It could tear apart our boat, hell, It could swallow us whole.
That ominous feeling built up in me, and I froze, staring at the thing in the water. I wasn’t sure if our weapons could even hurt something so massive. The thing had a complex range of emotions, from curiosity to pure hate. One thing I knew for sure: it had no intention of letting us go by.
“Oh. My. God,” Aubrey said.
“Becky, look at her butt,” Benji said.
“Not now, Benji,” Aubrey said, pointing her spear toward the creature. “We can’t fight that thing.”
I moved the rudder hard to the right, turning the boat away. Its massive body moved with us, matching our speed and keeping straight in front of us.
“This can’t be real,” Emma said, looking at her meager spear and back to the sea monster. “We don’t stand a chance against that.”
“We have to try,” Benji said, placing an arrow in her bowstring.
“Come on, we’ve faced worse,” Sherri said, and somehow managed to sound sincere.
The tentacles slapped the water and then would lift back up as if it was drumming the sea. One hit from one of those things and this boat could be badly damaged, if not sunk. There had to be a way around or through this mess.
“Maybe we don’t have to,” I said and closed my eyes.
I tried to make a connection to the beast, and in doing so, felt a mental brick wall between us and then a sharp pain in my head. I winced and let go. I wasn’t strong enough to get through to a massive predator like it.
“I can’t get to it,” I said, out of breath.
“We’ll just kill it the old-fashioned way,” Kara said, glaring at the many-armed beast in the water. “Like Sherri said, we’ve faced worse.”
“I just want to let you guys know that this has been the best two weeks of my life,” Benji said.
“Don’t you dare start saying goodbyes,” Kara snapped, getting teary-eyed.
“Maybe there’s another way,” I said and closed my eyes again.
I felt the whale sharks, and then found her among the mix. She was the leader of the whale shark group, and a mother of several of the sharks. Taking a deep breath, I made the connection and sent the idea that this…thing…wanted to kill us. Then I sent the feeling that we were its children, about to be eaten by this predator. These thoughts hit the whale shark, and I felt a new determination in her and subsequently, the entire group shifted in attitude.
I wanted them to hate this tentacle creature and forced the feeling to them as strong as I could. My head throbbed at the effort, but I kept at it.
The shark pod moved quickly toward the monster, and I kept feeding in the hate against it. I needed them to protect us. A trickle of blood ran from my nose. It flowed into my mouth, but I didn’t want to break the connection. Not yet.
“Jack, you’re bleeding,” Benji said but she sounded distant.
The first shark swam at full speed, straight from the depths below, and impacted the bottom of the sea monster. The tentacle monster might have been bigger in size, but the shark had it beat in weight. It crashed into the bottom of the thing, hitting it hard. The tentacle monster rose
up out of the water, and we got our first good look at what it was. It could have been an octopus or maybe a squid. Its gelatinous body moved partially out of the water, tentacles flailing around in a frenzy. Its translucent skin let us see into its body, its muscles and innards. It made the thing all the more terrifying.
The thing’s anger raged white hot, and it quickly moved against its attacker. It wrapped a tentacle around the huge shark, pulling it partially out of the water. It pulled the whale toward its body as it neared, the gelatinous layers pulled back, exposing a giant black beak. Then the thing bit into it. A chunk bigger than me ripped away from the shark and floated at the surface. Blood poured from the shark, clouding the ocean around them with red.
It discarded the shark from its grip just as two more whale sharks hammered against the bottom side of the thing. They were both grabbed in the flailing arms of the Anyck. The first one quickly receiving a massive bite from the beak, followed closely by another chomp on the second shark. I reached for the sharks, regretting what I sent them into but they were already dead.
“We need to help them,” Eliza said in a whisper.
“You sure?” I said, already steering the boat away from the scene. I thought that if the shark distracted the Anyck for even a few minutes, we might have a chance of getting to the shallows.
“It’s the only way we all live,” Eliza said. “I know it.”
I nodded, trying to process what she was asking us to do.
Getting close to that monster seemed like a horrible idea, but ignoring it might be deadly. A creature like that could reach right onto the shoreline and snatch one of us up. If we had the help of the sharks, this was our best chance of getting rid of a creature like this.
“Are the sharks helping us?” Kara asked, looking back at me.
“I’m telling them to,” I said, hoping they would understand. I wiped the blood from under my nose and lessened my connection to the sharks. I was afraid that if I didn’t, it would kill me sooner rather than later.
“Jack, we need to move,” Eliza said.
I hesitated and then moved the rudder, sending us straight toward the tentacles.
