Littoral Magic: All Oceans Aglow, #1

"Gitxsanimaq-Ookl-Thipuuntzn-Tyypara-Mataxiae-

Haqipenxurn-Elludeenthi..."

...Great Ookl dreaming in The Blue, whose Ink colors the night sky; whose Eye always watches from the deep; by Your Will alone all obstacles shall be removed, and Your Garden Effulgent restored... *

* An imprecise ideogram-to hijna-to English translation of the scrawled Ulurii sand prayer (Eemsura) pictured above

Chapter 0

A Dire Predicament

Sleek ran for his life.

Almost there… the young river otter thought, breathing hard. He struggled to swallow in a parched throat. His lungs burned and wheezed. Just a little further now…

Sleek wanted to stop. Only a few blessed seconds to cool his smarting muscles.

But he dared not ⎯

From the blackness came a reverberating noise, like boulders grinding each other into grit. Fear brought bile into the otter’s throat, and fresh adrenaline surging through his limbs. Risking a backward glance, Sleek glimpsed the six-legged hunger hunting him with a singular intent. Its fury, indivisible from its personality, seared like a bloody star in the smothering cave-darkness.

This fury had many names: The Cruel Dweller. That Which Devours. Death By Rending.

The Voracious.

Oh…yurch, Sleek cursed, as the crimson light radiating from his enemy’s fiery viscera settled on his ashen fur. The profanity didn’t make him feel any better.

Redoubling his efforts in a desperate bid to outdistance his pursuer, Sleek ran faster than he’d ever thought possible, even with an injured hind-leg. His four callused paws made short work of the topple of cold boulders he was doomed to scale. Up, up he went, climbing higher and higher still. As Sleek limped and labored, the fateful decisions that led him to this dire predicament replayed in his mind.

It had held so much promise, the beginning of this theft ...

PART ONE

Three Tributaries

"In chambers deep,

Where waters sleep,

What unknown treasures pave the floor?"

Edward Young (1683 – 1765)

Ocean, Stanza 24

Chapter 1

Where Things Get Dark

First Tide nearly ended by the time Sleek got a chance to slip into the restless Blue and make for his objective. It’s now or never , he thought.

It required stealth to ensure no clan members saw him leave. A tricky feat, considering all the watchful eyes among the river otters, or Lontra. Sleek knew to be cautious. Binding blood-treaty with the Lutris ⎯ the rival tribe of sea otters that dared claim all local waters as their own ⎯ designated entering The Cave and returning to the surface with its coveted treasure as aijeer, forbidden.

As dawn approached, the crafty river otter put his plan into motion.

Misdirection and the pretext of a solo hunt presented the perfect cover. With his trusty ynth ⎯ a four-foot-long fishing-pole shaft spear ⎯ in webbed paws, Sleek swam from the towering crags of High Split Rock, the ancestral Holt, or home of his mustelid tribe, and headed in the opposite direction of the revered Cave.

All adult Lontra enjoyed solitary hunting as a needed reprieve from the constant noise and bustle of Holt life. The vast Blue allowed them a chance to frolic in a world of constant motion. It was a place where they could lose themselves amid the verdant tangles and perpetual undulations of the vast kelp forests, stalking prey esteemed or meager according to their whims.

Sleek could be gone until nightfall, three full tide cycles, before anyone would miss him. But only fools hunted alone after dark. The last thing he needed was the Den Sire, his father and Alpha ⎯ or Eehr ⎯ of the Lontra, sending out a search party.

When he’d reached a safe distance from home, Sleek changed course, sticking close to the tangles of swaying kelp rising from the verdant sea floor. Using them, and their accompanying emerald shadows to hide his movements, he swam for The Cellum, a wood and metal shrine revered by both Lontra and Lutris. In reality, this ‘place of prayer’ and contemplation was the wreckage of a human fishing boat wedged tight into the coastal cliff wall, across the cove from High Split Rock.

Accident did not ground the vessel, but divine intervention.

Or so the story went ...

Lontra legend attested that, uncounted seasons earlier, Old Father Fathom, in His inky wisdom, conjured a mighty storm to run the offending boat afoul of the upthrust rocks, thus concealing The Cave’s opening from those creatures wishing to exploit it. Sadly, over generations, the once glorious testament to Great Ookl’s preeminence had decayed to little more than a symbol. A sacred place now foreclosed by the whims of a hostile invader possessing no dignity, no couth ⎯ just blind appetite.

Sleek felt his Holt’s patron deity should intervene to rectify the situation. Yet, season after season hidden Liminal, the blessed Garden Effulgent, remained an occupied paradise, its once easily accessible miracles now beyond reach.

Apparently, their Old Father had more pressing concerns than the wellbeing of His subjects. Sadly... Sleek thought ...such are the whims of imaginary beings.

The young river otter arrowed through shallowing coastal waters toward his destination. Handsome by Holt standards, tiny ears, sharp golden eyes, and an arrowhead-shaped nose wreathed with sensitive whiskers graced a streamlined head the same diameter as his neck. Beneath his lower lip a one-inch white turritella shell ⎯ a decorative alcq labret piercing both otter tribes kept custom ⎯ signified his hunting prowess, bravery, and lineage. Nineteen tiny patches of vivid blue fur adorned the dark-gray pelt of his right forelimb. Short, powerful legs propelled him while a tapering tail, half his six-foot body length, stabilized his movements.

Ahead, a ceaseless procession of foam-crested waves arose from the Pacific and dashed against a barricade of massive boulders. Jutting jagged and guano-stained like the broken teeth of a great, earthen monster, these unyielding stones split the punishing waves into foam and mist.

Sleek, as did all river otters, felt more comfortable swimming with his head exposed above the water while using the three or four-legged paddling style of casual surface travel. But time couldn’t be squandered. So, he chose the faster ⎯ and more taxing ‘hunting stroke’ ⎯ the hind-leg and tail sweeping technique that kept his five-fingered forepaws, and the spear it held, free and ready. Sleek dove, his nostrils and ears closing to keep water from entering them, and with all haste slipped into the frothy tumult of immolating waves.

Competing currents jostled and buffeted the young otter. But Sleek, being a strong swimmer, soon passed unscathed through the saline gauntlet.

Beyond, an inner row of rocks loomed, smaller, yet far more numerous than the megalith vanguard. Carpets of thick kelp along with countless tufts of lush sea grasses and dulses further tempered the incoming swells. As a result, the wide inlet they protected had a calmer, almost wistful, surface demeanor.

The brave otter swam across this shallow cove of gentle waters and fertile tidepools.

On shore, the mysterious Cellum awaited as reward.

To Sleek and his mustelid kin the shipwreck seemed alien in both design and purpose. Gifted by a deity every bit as enigmatic and unfathomable as the human-built vessel ⎯ a strange place of straight lines, sharp angles and forced unions of wood and substances harder than stone ⎯ this foreign ‘thing’ conveyed more questions than answers.

Still, for all The Cellum’s secrets and ambiguities, Sleek held a begrudging respect for it. Untying the knot of its true nature would never be easily accomplished.

It’s just one of the mysteries The Blue dares us to understand, he thought, then winced. Yurch. I sounded like Father just then.

The young hunter scurried out of the lapping waves and onto the partially submerged stern of the boat. His wet, charcoal-gray pelt glistened. Hundreds of empty crab shells, pincers, feathers, and tiny fish bones littered the weather-beaten deck in abstract patterns and symbolic mounds. For Sleek, these ghaydn ⎯ reverently fashioned talismans offered as either prayer tokens to Old Father Fathom or banishment effigies meant to drive away The Cruel Dweller ⎯ were little more than superstitious trifles used to mollify the simple-minded devout.

Sleek chose a niche amidst a cluster of rusted crab cages to hide his prized ynth. The two tail-length silver and blue fishing-pole, shorn of eyes and spindle, boasted a stone-flattened metal hook tightly lashed to the tip with scavenged polymer line. In his paws, it proved both a versatile tool and princely weapon. It had slain countless fish, both great and small, harmless and deadly, during Sleeks ownership. Among his kin, only the hereditary spears of the Den Sire and Suckling Mother were superior.

But in the test to come, all weapons were useless. Nothing but speed mattered, and Sleek would need all four paws free for that.

The sneaky Beta, or Saia in his tribe’s tongue, crossed the sloping deck of the wreck towards its upturned bow. He squeezed through a slender gap between cliff wall and wooden hull and entered The Cave proper. Like a shadow in the water, he swam the one hundred tails of the low flooded tunnel to the boulder that sealed the deeper cavern from the outside world. Present, not by accident but evil design, the gouged and chipped limestone mass had been torn from its original resting place in the earthen depths and hauled to the surface by The Cruel Dweller.

Sleek saw where boulder and wall merged. The sheer power needed to dislodge, drag, and wedge this colossal rock into its current location outstripped his understanding. The boulders’ presence daunted. Yet, Death By Rending, for all its raw might, lacked a need for perfection. It should have seen, and sealed, the slit between boulder and ceiling.

The stealthy Saia felt determined to exploit this oversight.

Sleek scaled the coarse surface of the boulder and wiggled into the slit. Caught in the taper, he exhaled, flattened his supple body, and pushed. Cool stone scraped his back and belly as strong limbs propelled him through to the other side.

Hmm... Easier than expected, he thought and jumped to the passage floor. If my luck holds out, this theft will be just as simple.

A beam of muted sunlight speared the boulder crack, breaking the perfect gloom of the passageway. Sleek scanned the shadows ahead, sniffing and listening with a hunter’s focus.

Nothing awaited but more rocks and puddles. The coast was clear…

Sleek scampered onward, confidence bolstered by the simple conquest of the boulder. Outside light faded rapidly, then, abruptly, the tunnel floor fell away into darkness.

Sleek crept forward and peered over the edge. In the feeble light, his keen predator-eyes spotted a multitude of jagged places upon which to twist an ankle, break a limb, or snap a spine.

One careless misstep and his thieving career would end before it even started. The thought of tumbling head-over-tail down the slope, cracking his face and teeth against each rock as he fell, sent a shiver down Sleek’s back.

Fear would not deter him, however. Resplendent treasures that would cement all his romantic hopes and dreams awaited discovery somewhere beyond this subterranean midnight.

Sleek steeled himself ⎯ Ready or not, Liminal, here I come ⎯ and began.

Carefully, the Lontra scrambled down the treacherous slope of barnacled rocks, the soft glow from the blue ureola on his wrist the sole rebuke to the crushing darkness. The living bracelet, woven from a rare species of bioluminescent soft coral, attested to Sleek’s Beta status among the romp, or clan residents. As the sole child of The Holt’s ruling Alphas, he inherited all the privileges and responsibilities accompanying that rank.

The wan glow of the wristlet struggled against the murk, illuminating two tails in all directions. Only four meager feet, yet it could still mark his position to hostile eyes. Sleek considered removing it... but decided against the idea.

I’ll be in and out before Death By Rending even knows I’m here, he thought with confidence. I won’t make any mistakes.

Sleek’s acute predator nose twitched at the fetid tang of rot wafting up from the shadows. Somewhere far below, flesh decayed to liquid. The odor offended the otter’s sinuses and made his golden eyes water.

A lifetime in the sea had acquainted Sleek with the myriad smells of death. Though pervasive, he never got used to them. And how could he? They were a constant reminder of how The Blue would never grant a painless demise.

This stench evoked the terrible promise of ten thousand different agonies.

The distressed Lontra shivered. Which agony will finally claim me?

After an hour of careful descent, Sleek reached the bottom of the slope. To his relief the passage leveled out and vanished into aphotic mystery. Only his breathing and the plink-plink of icy water dripping from the ceiling broke the profound silence.

Sleek took just three steps into the subterranean drizzle before the glow of his wristlet revealed the source of the reek ⎯ skeletons. Dozens, maybe hundreds, all heaped and piled from years of accumulated tragedy.

Worse still, scattered amongst the bones lay the remains of recently dead sea otters, bloated harbor seals, and the withered forms of gulls and fulmars that had blindly dashed themselves to death against the walls. All the carcasses lay strewn about in macabre, postmortem sodality. Though the odor of decomposition hung heavy, no buzzing myzee ⎯ the ubiquitous and bothersome kelp fly ⎯ were present: they could never travel so far below the surface to reach this putrefying banquet.

This grim sight chilled Sleek’s heart. These animals, had they but reached Liminal, would have evolved in splendor, and discovered their True Names. They could have told their own life stories, found their own voices, sung their own unique songs.

Their deaths represented ambitions unrealized. Dreams unfulfilled. Potentials wasted.

And, to add insult to injury, an unglorified grave.

Once, not so long ago, the bodies would have been reverently collected and set adrift into The Blue where current and tide would decide their final resting place. But this courtesy had ended with Liminal’s theft. Now, this aggregate death did but one thing... offer a warning:

⎯ Beware those who seek the Light. Turn back while you still can ⎯

Sleek tugged his whiskers in customary respect for the dead. Poor, poor Monoah, he thought. They’ll never know the joys of speaking or thinking. What a shame.

In those earlier days of his education, the first lessons were the simplest.

Three domains divided the world: the ocean, called The Blue; the sky, named The Above; and the land, known as The Still. All life began as Monoah, or the ‘Unaware.’ Sleek was taught Monoic animals were blind to any larger reality outside the ‘kill or be killed’ hunter-prey relationship.

Yet The Garden Effulgent we call Liminal is the great healer of blindness, Suckling Mother instructed her son and his milk-brothers Swims Past, Nimble, and Watches in the teaching den. Sleek hung on her every word, but only when he wasn’t play-wrestling with the other kits. By partaking of its gifts are the lucky afforded the chance to climb out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of awareness, continued Suckling Mother. And what do we call those who achieve this ascension?

Envorah! Sleek and his milk-brothers shouted together, when they stopped their rumpus long enough to listen and learn.

Excellent, children. And what does Envorah mean?

We Who Speak!

And what do we call those Garden Blessed who’ve eaten from Liminal proper?

Aanandi! the kits proclaimed.

Sleek smiled at those memories, gleaned from a carefree time when only spirited lessons and mirth mattered. Sadly, those bright days were long gone.

As the lessons continued, Sleek was taught that for many creatures inhabiting The Blue, including the Lontra, being Envoric provided a common foundation. It defined who and what they were; each mind unique, yet sharing a singular, empathic unity.

It took but a single particle of Liminal’s light to uplift an animal above the shoals of skittish Monoah. Just a nibble. Merely a taste of the magic.

Envoric animals were often (but not always) larger, stronger, faster, and longer-lived. Evolved minds pondered abstractions, discerned symbolism. Bronzed eyes radiated emotion. They shed tears. Digits lengthened and became dexterous. Air-breathers enjoyed greater lung capacity. Lontra and Lutris hunters often held their breath for over fifteen minutes.

This elevation increased in direct proportion to the amount of magic ingested. Sadly, it did not last forever. Without regular consumption of Liminal’s magic the enhancement dwindled, leaving in its wake a sorrowful awareness of what the animal had lost ⎯ like the salts of an evaporated tidepool; a sad residue of what was once alive and thriving.

This intellectual waxing-and-waning ⎯ the ‘Tides of Awareness’, or Kleaa ⎯ permeated all aspects of Holt life. It started in the womb as a ‘carryover essence’ gifted by their mothers and deepened through suckling. Ebony irises changed into bronze as a kit developed. Once weaned, only direct pryzoic ingestion allowed an otter’s mind and body to continue to progress.

But this evolution, once a common right, was no longer guaranteed.

Since the Garden’s capture by The Cruel Dweller, and the magical drought that followed, all Envorah knew the sorrow of gradual physical and mental decline. Other than death or crippling injury, all fears underscoring their lives were subordinate to a waning Kleaa. And some few Lontra, Sleek among them, considered a painful demise a distant second to any lost sapience.

Sleek glanced back up the hazardous incline, taking a moment to appreciate the scope of the obstacle he’d just conquered. The cloud over his heart lifted as the young otter reveled in his surefooted skill.

Mourning the dead could wait. Sleek still lived and had a theft to perform.

The next challenge waited deeper in the darkness ⎯ navigating the labyrinth known as The Winnow.

Chapter 2

A Very Long Drive

A re we there yet? Ayana Outerbridge groaned.

She purposely soured her voice with that annoying brat-tone she knew Mother hated. But Ayana didn’t care. Not today. She wanted to spread her misery far and wide, like heaping shovelfuls of petulant manure. She felt it her right as an angry thirteen (soon to be fourteen)-year-old.

"For the umpteenth time ⎯ no! Hayley snapped, glaring in the rearview mirror at her cantankerous daughter. A silken, teal scarf wrapped her meticulously ⎯ and quite expensively ⎯ straightened hair whenever she drove with the windows down, lest the wind mess it up. And that was a strict fashion no-no. I told you: not until six PM at the earliest. More like seven. And that’s if we don’t stop for lunch and eat in the car. We’re not even close. Stop asking."

"We’ve been in this stupid car, like… forever."

Ayana knew this trip would take at least twenty hours of steady driving. Trapped in a wheeled rust-box for a full day (...God, this is pure misery...) chewed on her soul. She couldn’t resist complaining. Besides, what else could she occupy herself with? Pleasantries and idle conversations with her mother?

Not this year. Or the next...

Or ⎯ maybe never.

Ayana grumbled. It’s like they live on the moon, or something. It’s ridiculous.

You’ve said that. More than once.

Summer vacation of 1984 had arrived two days prior... and with it, the tenth consecutive annual visit to Ayana’s grandparents’ homestead on the rugged Pacific Northwest coastline. Lost somewhere between the densely timbered border of Oregon and Washington State, it was a soggy domain of briars and berries. An evergreen world of mold and mildew and misery ⎯

Deep, deep Sasquatch territory.

Ayana didn’t remember exactly where on the map they lived, although she had ample time to learn. Why bother? she wondered.

Her grandparent’s house always seemed like an abstraction. Geographical coordinates were unimportant. Only the fact Ayana had to spend three solid months exiled there, hundreds of miles from friends ⎯ or, more precisely, the few friends she still managed to keep ⎯ mattered.

True, they’d celebrated birthdays (both for her and for Father) and even Independence Day. But Ayana had no say in the matter, and this year felt like a punishment instead of a vacation. Familiar pleasures of salty sea breezes, sandy beaches, woodland hikes, and slippery tide pool rocks did not blunt the isolation she felt. Nor did it compensate for the mediocre cooking, the lumpy beds, and the tedium of endless chores.

And, worse than all that: constant reminders of a happier decade never to return.

Those sweet-turned-sour memories splattered Ayana’s soul like a cow-flop hurled by a demented circus clown. Everyone was laughing about it ⎯ everyone but her.

Ayana stared out the dust-speckled window as bucolic scenery rolled past.

Lazy cows grazed within wire-fenced pastures of green and gold (…boring…). Live oaks and the occasional lonely farmstead studded the dun hillsides beyond (… pfft, so stupid…). Flyspeck towns with silly names and modest populations flitted past, seen, pondered, and promptly forgotten (…just like my life…).

It’s too damn hot back here, Ayana groused. I’m literally dying.

Early-June weather steadily pushed the border between ‘tolerably warm’ into ‘melting-into-your-couch hot’. To make matters worse, the aged station wagon’s AC had once again gone on the fritz. If the car deserved a name, it would be ‘Fritz’, hands down. Yes, Fritz.

Just stop, Hayley’s voice cracked in warning. She had been subsisting on strong, sugar-sweetened black coffee from a thermos for the last six hours, and neither her stomach, nor her nerves, could contend with her daughter’s attitude. Her frustration grew equal with Ayana’s belligerence. For Heaven’s sake, if you’re hot then roll down the window. God. You’re driving me bonkers.

Ayana landed a frustrated kick to the back of the front passenger seat. Her scuffed, navy-blue Keds snagged the duct-taped hole in the brown upholstery. She cursed under her breath (that certain F-dash-dash-K word that drove her mother into a killing frenzy.)

What was that?

Nothing, Ayana lied, then cranked the handle and lowered the dusty window. Warm wind found her tawny-brown face and ruffled the curls of her fawn hair. She blinked the rush of incoming air from hazel eyes.

Now, was that so hard? Hayley asked.

Ayana scowled and sucked her teeth. Yes.

Hayley threw a frustrated gesture at the slow-moving dairy truck plodding ahead of them. Oh, come on. She angrily mashed the horn four times. Give. Me. A. Break!

They’d been stuck behind this automotive tortoise for the last forty miles. Its logo ⎯ a piebald cow painted across the rear doors ⎯ taunted her with a cheerful, anthropomorphic grin and a ridiculously inflated udder. The driver must have thought going ten miles under the speed limit somehow safeguarded the delicate cargo of milk and cottage cheese. The pace put a severe crimp in Hayley’s schedule ⎯ until, after another ineffective salvo of horn honks, the salvation of a passing lane appeared.

Yes. Thank you. Hayley flicked the turn-indicator. About damn time.

She checked the side mirrors and hit the gas. Fritz accelerated past the truck, overworked engine laboring. Hayley kept an anxious eye on the temperature gauge. The jalopy tended to overheat at inopportune moments. Two extra jugs of coolant stashed in the trunk served as necessary insurance. The dairy truck shrank in the rearview mirror.

Satisfied with her new momentum, Hayley eased off the gas. That’s better.

The mottled black and white fur of the absurd bovine mascot mouthing its lame corporate slogan ("It’s udderly fantastic!") as it passed stirred a sour reaction in Ayana. Gaze settling on a bare right forearm, she sighed at the procession of nineteen white splotches speckling the top of her hand all the way towards her elbow. The first started between her middle and ring fingers, and then in a haphazard pattern, crept up, up, up for all the world to see. Focal Vitiligo, a depigmentation condition in her epidermis was what the doctors called Ayana’s affliction (What the hell do they know, anyway?) She just called it cruel.

From an early age her parents tried convincing Ayana the ‘milk drops’ on her arm were special. Magical, somehow; even when they itched. And thus, by inference, she was somehow exceptional. For a while, the ruse worked. Her vitiligo were the Kisses of Angels or Faeries or Pixies. As she aged, these milk drops were rechristened ‘dew drops’, which seemed even more special and cherished.

But once Ayana entered the public school system, and her peers caught a glimpse of her enchanted dew drops, what had once been special became torture. The name changed once again, and not for the better. Kids were mean; always had been, always would be. The ‘dew’ devolved into ‘glue’, and though Ayana pretended the hurled insults held no venom (Nice Elmer’s-arm, or Did a bird poop on you, or what?) they secretly smarted like the bee sting that could threaten her life.

A fatal trait potentially inherited from her father...

Ayana heaved a sigh, tap-tapped each glue drop with her left thumb and index finger, and quietly counted to nineteen. She found herself engaging in this childish game whenever stressed or bored.

Hayley heard the dissatisfied exhalation. Her deep brown eyes found Ayana’s tetchy reflection in the rearview mirror. Why don’t you read a book?

If I read in the car, I’ll puke. Ayana snorted at this clueless suggestion. Is that what you want?

"Fine. Then count cars. Or look for birds. Or take a nap. Just do something, anything, instead of complaining."

A desired arrival to the Grandparent’s by suppertime had forced them to leave home at the unholy hour of 2:13 AM, and by then they were already thirteen minutes behind schedule. Nothing but vampires and insomniacs were up and about at that hour. Luckily, Hayley packed Fritz and filled the gas tank the night before. Ayana had dragged herself, zombie-like, from her warm-bed and slid into the cold backseat of the station wagon, its rumbling engine-lullaby coaxing her back to dreamland. When she awoke one hundred miles later, the dashboard clock read 4:36 AM.

Now it said 8:36 AM. Exactly four hours (...that’s so weird...) had passed.

Ayana had been awake every tedious minute, and mile, since. She stretched, elbows popping. A lingering exhaustion now swept over her like a wave. Her drooping eyelids felt like lead weights. Mom had deduced her condition and managed a decent suggestion.

Ayana laid her head against the back seat cushion. That’s once in a row, she mumbled and shut her eyes.

Ayana woke, yawned. She glanced at the dashboard clock through gummy eyes ⎯ 10:28 AM. Hunger bit at her stomach.

When can we have lunch? she asked the back of her mother’s scarf-wrapped head.

Another two hours, Hayley answered. Once we make the interchange and stop for gas. You hungry?

"No. I asked because I’m not hungry."

Hayley ignored the snide reply. I packed apple slices in the cooler.

Apples? Pffft. How original.

Ayana reached into the trunk, found the old green Coleman cooler, liberated the apple slices from the zip-locked bag within, and munched away. Tart, crunchy, and oh-so-cold, they refreshed. Still, she did wish them sweeter. Could use some cinnamon and sugar.

Plain is better. Hayley’s tone carried the whiff of an impending argument.

Whatever.

At least two more hours until the coast (...my sad excuse for a life ticking away in this stupid car...) and Ayana felt morose. To pass the time, she tallied roadkill as they whizzed by at a steady sixty MPH. Some animals she could identify ⎯ skunks, raccoons, opossums, the occasional unlucky farm cat ⎯ but most were pulverized into anonymous meat, left to ripen under a merciless sun for clouds of hungry flies.

Ayana felt sorry for the poor critters. They should’ve stayed inside their woodland burrows, instead of trying, like the chicken of that tired, dumb joke, to cross the road.

The world, she recently learned, or perhaps relearned, loved nothing more than ending life. Mother Nature’s perpetual chore of making life inevitably concluded with the perpetual taking of it. Ayana read all about it in National Geographic: a mass death here, an extinct species there; environmental disasters ⎯ both natural (and more frequently, manmade) ⎯ everywhere. A staggering ninety-nine percent of all earthly life had already gone the way of the dodo. The roadkill Ayana idly counted proved the world had a billion years to perfect this passion.

So, what did her life matter in the grand scheme of things?

What did anything, really? Pretty dark stuff, she mused.

A memory rose, unbidden, and presented itself before her mind’s eye: a man in a red flannel shirt and baseball cap sitting beside her on a shady park bench. The man was her father. It was summer, she was six, maybe seven years old, and wailing at the top of her lungs after seeing a baby bird, dead in the grass.

C’mon, Pipsqueak, Father cajoled, but gently. Don’t be sad. It’ll be all right.

Will it, Dad? Will it really? I don’t think so.

Though she spoke the words aloud, Ayana barely heard them leave her mouth…

But Hayley did.

She glanced at the rearview mirror, saw her daughter ⎯ eyes locked somewhere in the middle-distance ⎯ hold a silent, one-sided conversation. Ayana’s doing it again, she thought. She tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore the little spasm of worry in her belly.

The grief counselor Hayley insisted Ayana see once a week for six weeks ⎯ it was all the therapy she could afford ⎯ had assured them both that imagining a dead loved-one, and talking to them, was perfectly normal: ‘It’s simply a manifestation of Ayana’s grief and regret,’ the counselor said with a clinically indifferent demeanor. ‘A coping mechanism. When she has sufficiently processed her grief, she’ll stop.’

Hayley sighed as her eyes returned to the road. She had to have faith the counselor was right. After all, she’d paid the woman an exorbitant amount. There was no point interrupting and questioning her daughter during one of her ‘quiet banters.’ She would only deny, deflect, and then go silent. Just let it be.

Miles and minutes ticked by. The station wagon sped through a grove of eucalyptus trees. Ayana wrinkled her nose at the sharp, menthol cough-drop smell wafting through the half-open window. As she watched the trees zip past, amber bark peeling from creamy trunks in long strips, Ayana decided ⎯ then and there ⎯ that she didn’t care much for trees.

Or rocks. Or woods. Or beaches.

Yesterday she did. But no longer.

She concluded the act of enjoying something (or anything, really) was inappropriate now that Father was dead. Filling the void left by his passing felt somehow... disrespectful.

Thirteen months had come and gone since a tiny insect killed the strongest person in Ayana’s world. The balding, bespeckled doctor at the emergency room decreed with an almost antiseptic detachment how Father had succumbed to …a severe allergic reaction to bee venom… A flaw in his physiology no one knew about ⎯ until it was too late.

But did the reason even matter? No. Not really.

One minute, Ayana had a father. The next ― POOF! ― she didn’t.

And the World? It didn’t care a single, solitary iota.

Ayana looked at her nineteen glue drops, subconsciously double tapping each one. And why should it? she thought. Aren’t people just bugs to be crushed? Or bees to be swatted?

Fritz sped past a roadside sign displaying the distance in miles to the Podunk towns of Jarvis, Valley Creek, and Clementine. None had populations greater than five hundred... but at least they were towns with grocery stores and sit-down restaurants. Maybe even a movie theater or video arcade.

Not like where Ayana’s grandparents chose to live. The Outerbridge family farmstead sat along an isolated stretch of wooded, coastal road at the end of a twisty, mile-long gravel drive, marked only by an old-fashioned metal mailbox on an innocuous wooden post. Their home, a throwback to an early retirement-world almost devoid of modern technology, boasted no VCR, no cable box, and no gaming system. Their closest neighbors lived twenty minutes away. By car.

The nearest town ⎯ the rustic flyspeck of Grovert, population a whopping two hundred and six ⎯ lay a full hour north. Every other Sunday, Grandma and Grandpa would make the trip to the Grovert American Legion post for their ‘Big Night Out’ ⎯ an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet and heated Bingo binge.

Once upon a time Ayana looked forward to visiting her father’s parents. Their remote woodland kingdom became, after the chores were done, a veritable playground where she could climb trees, explore tide pools, fly kites, and horseback ride. It all seemed to last forever.

Now, everything felt small, gray, and fleeting.

Everything except her anger.

For thirteen months it had burned big and bright like a fiery briquette lodged in her chest. It hurt to keep it locked away, but she didn’t know how to let it out safely ⎯ and so it remained there, scorching her soul, slowly cooking her from the inside out.

She often felt like exhaling that smoke. She wanted to fill the car with it. Choke the world with it. But she kept the soul-fumes to herself, like a dormant volcano fighting back eruption. Outside, another roadside smear of fur and bone, the latest example of the world’s deadly plan, caught Ayana’s eye as it sped past.

That’s seventeen, she sighed, and then saw yet another carcass. Eighteen.

Chapter 3

Willful Disobedience

For Gloss, the chill morning offered an exciting promise.

Little more than a shadow flitting between the leafy spires of the emerald kelp cathedral, she stalked the Lutris hunting band ⎯ or graehl ⎯ at a discreet distance. She used all her natural guile and time-honed skill to avoid detection.

Her thick pelt of ashen fur kept a thin layer of warm air trapped against her skin. An outer layer of clinging air, the shuuhl, danced across Gloss’ streamlined body, slippery and mercurial. The bevy of silvery bubbles it dispensed in her wake was the only thing that might expose the young sea otter in the tangles of current-jostled kelp.

This uja, or female ⎯ a true beauty among her Lutris tribe ⎯ moved when the graehl moved, surfaced for breath when they surfaced, stopped when they stopped. Gloss used the water’s natural aquamarine murkiness and shoals of knotted seaweed to mask her silhouette from any curious eye. She’d tucked her lambent ureola into one of the natural pouches formed from loose skinfolds under her forelimbs as a precautionary measure. The wristlet’s amber light, signifying her humble Epsilon, or Loyc, status amongst the Lutris as an unmated female, would give away her position like a beacon.

Gloss knew well the twin imperatives of stealth and camouflage. Being a simple uja meant she could not openly swim with any graehl, let alone hunt with them. She could not wear the hunter’s alcq (although her lower lip, secretly pierced many seasons earlier, filled her with defiant pride), nor even touch a spear that had taken prey. The rigid gender-caste laws, hereditary and almost instinctual, governing the behavior of the entire Lutris population, called The Raft by friend and foe alike, made such rebellious acts forbidden.

Getting caught would earn her a painful, disciplinary ear or nose-bite.

Or perhaps something far worse...

The graehl ⎯ comprised of six streamlined, ureola-adorned uju-males of various ranks armed with calcified baleen lances and wearing shark tooth lower-lip piercings ⎯ remained unaware of Gloss’s presence. The keen-eyed sea otters were too busy searching the Oorum for suitable prey. The optical verge, where dappled green light and water turbidity diffused all objects into a single blur at the edges of vision, played a vital role in the existence of every marine animal. Not just a perceptible vanishing point, the Oorum marked a threshold where the seen transitioned into the unseen, where the real and imaginary whispered secrets to each other ⎯ where the living and dead coexisted one final time.

The Lutris scanned the subaquatic terrain in earnest, their bristly whiskers feeling for any change in water pressure that might discern nearby quarry. To their frustration, the expanses of rainbow-hued corals and the ubiquitous tufts and tangles of leafy nooree ⎯ the Envoric catch-all word for all species of seaweeds, grasses, dulses, algae, and kelp ⎯ hid nothing worth pursuing.

Still, they kept hoping. And, with their keen bronze or golden eyes, kept looking.

Several days earlier, a brief summer downpour washed many land-locked nutrients into The Blue, invigorating the plankton and krill which drew hungry shoals of smaller fish. These in turn brought larger prestige game ⎯ giant sea bass, tuna, ocean-phase salmon, goliath groupers, and the blood drawn aorxa, or deadly shark ⎯ all graehls preferred to hunt.

Yet today those chosen prey remained hidden from the spear toting Lutris.

Gloss’ impatience for a kill far outstripped that of the males. They hunted because they could. She hunted because the rules declared she couldn’t. And though she must follow the graehl in secret, by taking the risk she not only honed her stalking skills, but she also positioned herself to slay any prey flushed from its hiding place by their mustered lances.

The ynth she wielded with such proficiency held a special place in her heart. Crafted from calcified whale baleen by the paws of Fearless, her father and Eehr-Alpha of the Lutris, the rigid shaft had belonged to her older sibling Grabber, before he went missing over two hundred tides earlier. This spear, shorn of bristles and boasting a stone-filed, serrated point, had on its first outing skewered a hundred-pound tuna.

Now twice as sharp, it could easily do so again. Gloss longed for the chance to try.

What good is the ynth if you’re never allowed to use it? she mused.

The graehl halted. Their collective body language suggested something alarming. They drifted in a tighter formation ⎯ back-to-back-to-back ⎯ raising lances in a defensive posture.

Something’s coming, Gloss thought with a twinge of unease. She ducked behind an algae-softened boulder crusted with orange sea stars and peeked around its curve to watch.

Soon, three shapes materialized from the Oorum like aquatic ghosts. They swam towards the graehl, their outlines clarifying into a trio of proud Irounga.

Two piebald harbor seals, earless and doe-eyed ⎯ each a full tail longer than the largest adult sea otter ⎯ dutifully followed a massive black sea lion. Lacking the proper anatomy, they carried neither ureola nor spear nor net. The Lutris looked like pups in contrast.

Seals, regardless of their species, were considered Irounga, or ‘free swimmers’. Yet all were subservient to their colossal master, the immigrant southern elephant seal known as Diuun Dunn. As robust as even the black sea lion appeared, he was little more than a child when compared to the immensity of his corpulent liege.

Gloss watched the seals glide towards the sea otters. These are our hunting waters, she thought, tightening the grip on