The Last of the Wilds

She gave him a measured look. “So it’s better that they spear me than you?”

He grimaced. “I didn’t mean that. But it is a danger.”

“Then... we give them something else to aim at. I know! I just thought of it. Something that will not only get them to look, but make the divers get out of the water too.”

“What?”

“A flarke.”

He paled at the mention of the fierce sea predator. “How are we going to find one of them and persuade it to eat them and not us?”

She laughed. “We don’t have to. I’ve seen the singers’ flarke costumes up close. They’re made from spikemat spines. We’ll find a big one and break off a few spines. Then we’ll tie them to your back. You swim around like a flarke - far enough away that their arrows can’t reach you. The landwalkers will be too scared to get into the water.”

He was silent and she could tell that he was impressed. After a moment he gave her a big grin.

“Yes. That would be fun.”

“Let’s find us some spikemat fish,” she said, and, not waiting to see if he followed, dove under the water.

Spikemat fish were common in every reef. It took them moments to find one with spines as big as a flarke’s. Breaking them off was not easy, and she felt sorry for the creature as it slowly crawled away from them, bleeding from where they had ripped out the spines. The spines would grow back eventually, however.

She had expected that attaching the spines to Rissi’s back would be the hard part, but he solved the problem by cutting himself a strip of wide leathery sea grass and making it into a vest shape. He drilled holes through the base of each spine with his knife, then pushed the spines through the back of the vest and secured them with another thinner spine threaded through the holes.

Out of sight of the boats, Rissi practiced swimming up and diving down again so that only the spines broke the surface.

“You’re kicking your feet up out of the water,” Imi told him.

“If I keep them together, it’ll look like a tail fin,” he replied, grinning.

“Flarke fins go sideways, not up and down.”

His face fell. “Oh. Yes. That’s right. I’ll keep my feet down then.”

“Are you ready?”

He shrugged. “Are you?”

She nodded. “Yes!”

“Let’s go then - and be quick. Who knows how long they’ll believe this for.”

They swam back to the boulder and watched the landwalkers long enough to be sure they knew where each was. She looked at Rissi expectantly. He stared back at her, then nodded. Without a word, he sank under the water.

Her heartbeat began to quicken as she watched for him surfacing again. When the spines finally rose out of the water she held her breath and looked to see if the landwalkers had noticed.

They were all hard at work.

The spines broke the surface again, but still the landwalkers didn’t notice. Rissi moved back and forth, sometimes slowly, sometimes diving under the surface abruptly. Imi realized he had probably seen a flarke before and was mimicking its behavior.

A shout drew her attention back to the landwalkers. They had finally noticed the spines. She grinned as they stopped working and milled anxiously about in the boat. One pounded on the outside of the boat with a hard object. She could hear the dull sound of it. A head appeared beside the boat and she felt a surge of triumph as the swimmer hastily climbed aboard.

My turn, she thought.

Taking a deep breath, she dove under and swam hard in the direction of the boats. Her heart was pounding with excitement, fear and exertion by the time she saw the elongated shadows above her.

Looking down, she almost let her breath out in amazement.

Her father had once taken her outside the city to show her a forest. She had looked up into a tangle of branches and leaves. It was a sight she had never forgotten. Now, gazing down at the branches of the sea-bell plants swaying gently in the sea current, she knew what it was like to look down on a forest from above.

It was also like looking at the night sky. Growing from every twig and stem were faint pinpoints of light. Swimming closer, she realized that these were the sea bells. Each was filled with tiny grains of brightness.

She hadn’t known that they glowed. As she reached the swaying strands and their burdens of light, she stretched out and touched one. It was surprisingly soft - nothing like the hard translucent bells she had seen before. She took the knife Rissi had loaned her and carefully cut through the stem.

As soon as the bell was severed from the stem, the light died. She felt a pang of guilt and sadness. It seemed a shame to disturb the plants. They were so pretty.

She then thought of her father and all that she had gone through to get here. She began cutting more bells. While Rissi had been making his flarke costume she had made a rough bag out of another leaf of sea grass curled into a cone and pinned with short lengths of spine. She put the bells in this.

A splash above her drew her attention upward. She saw a silhouette of a landwalker and her heart stopped.

The diver’s back!

She held the bag closed with one hand and dashed away.

They must have worked out they were being tricked! Or maybe the costume started falling apart. Or—

Something pressed into her face. It slid across her skin, enveloping her before she could react. Rope. Fine rope woven into a net. She threw out her arms but felt the net curl around them.

Don’t panic! she told herself. Now that she was caught she was conscious of the growing need for air. She had heard stories of Elai that had drowned, tangled in landwalkers’ nets, but also others of how people had freed themselves. She knew if she thrashed about, she’d only become more tangled. I must stay calm and work my way free.

Looking at the net, she saw that the spaces in the weave were wide enough that most fish could swim through. It extended to either side in a curve that suggested it surrounded the sea-bell plants. What that implied set her heart racing again. Had these landwalkers put it there to keep off predators, or Elai?

She did not want to find out. In one hand she held the bag of sea bells. In the other she held Rissi’s knife. She needed both hands to cut through the net. Holding the bag in her mouth, she sawed at the net until she had made a hole big enough for the bag. She pushed it through and let it go. It slowly sank to the sandy bottom.

Now she began to cut her arms free. Just as she had released one arm, she felt a tug through the net.

She looked up, her heart sinking with dread as she saw the net was slowly moving upward.

Not yet! she thought, as she set to sawing at the weave frantically. Another tug came and she felt the strands tighten around her. She slashed at them. An easing in water pressure told her she was moving upward. She realized more of her was outside the net than in it. Yet still the tangle of it around her legs pulled her upward, feet first. She saw the surface rapidly approaching. Felt the looming hulk of the boat nearby. Heard voices.

She felt a surge of panic and hacked at the net. Something caught the blade and it slipped from her grasp. She twisted and grabbed for it, but her fingers closed on water. Sunlight flashed on the blade once before it sank out of sight.

The net tightened on her legs as she was hauled upward.

No! She shrieked into the water and twisted about to claw at her legs, but the next pull lifted her into air. She gasped in a fresh lungful then tried to reach up to her ankles again. Free of the buoyancy of the water, she didn’t have the strength to reach them. She heard voices above her. Angry voices. One of them barked a word.

Then hands were clawing and pulling at her. She struggled and struck out, shrieking in terror. The hard edge of the boat rolled under her, then she fell onto a flat surface.

The hands left her. She stopped shrieking and stared up at her captors, panting with fear. They stared back