Nightpool (16 page)

Then it sank down away into the sea.

Teb stood on the cliff’s edge, faint and
sick, staring down at the empty sea. Blood flowed down his chest.
He watched the sea and prayed that a brown head would pop up, and
another, prayed for the otters with clenched fists; and the sea
remained empty. His mind was filled with them, with their sleek
bodies flashing through the sea, their laughing faces and dripping
whiskers and their laughing dark eyes. He watched the sea for a
long, long time, searching close in, far out among the waves,
seeing only emptiness, staring down along the empty rocky cliff.
Then at last he turned away, stricken with a cold, terrible
grieving.

But he had gone only a few steps when loud
splashing made him turn back to stare over the edge, and he saw the
hydrus thrashing deep below the surface; white foam spewed up, its
dark shadow lurched and twisted, and then the foam turned red.

It lurched to the surface and black shadows
moved below it; one immense head thrashed up out of the waves, then
the second, bleeding below the left eye. The third head surfaced in
a pool of foaming blood, its throat slashed open.

The hydrus turned in its own blood,
floundering. It moved out across the sea trailing red, and soon it
was only a huge black shadow like the shadow of a fast-moving
cloud.

Teb stood staring long after it vanished and
its blood had washed away in the sea. A huffing sigh made him turn,
and there was Litta, erect on her hind legs, gazing at him with
laughing brown eyes.

In her paw she held the rusty knife. He
grabbed her and hugged her, fishy breath and all.

And when she led him to the cliff, there
they all were, five brown heads bobbing, their whiskers dripping as
they stared up at him with huge grins. Litta handed him the knife,
then scurried down to them.

Teb followed, and when at last he stood on
the narrow beach the otters leaped out of the surf to push against
him, laughing. Charkky stood up to touch his face. “Hah, Teb,” he
said, grinning. “You escaped. You cut your chin, though.”

“It’s almost stopped bleeding. I thought the
hydrus ate you.”

“And we hoped it didn’t eat you,” said
Charkky.

“But what happened?” Then Teb saw the
leather pack, and the bundle of lilies beside it.

“Kkelpin grabbed the pack as it was
sinking,” Mikk said. “There are caves down there with air pockets.
We laid the pack out and found the knives. We’ve never used knives,
only sharp shells. The knives saved us. A hydrus doesn’t much like
to be hurt, to be bleeding in the sea. Maybe the sharks will finish
it off.”

“And,” Jukka said, “the lilies got lodged on
a crevice down below the underwater caves. The bow and arrows,
though—”

“It ate them,” interrupted Litta. “It
grabbed them and crunched them down.”

“Maybe it thought they were eels,” said
Hokki, giggling.

“Maybe it knew they were weapons,” Charkky
said, “and didn’t want us to have them.”

“Does it know that much?” Teb said. But of
course the hydrus knew, more than Teb could guess, knew deep things
that made him shiver. He looked out seaward, fear catching up with
him now, then looked down the coast toward Nightpool. The island
itself could not be seen for the jutting of the point at Jade
Beach. The otters knew what he was thinking, that he didn’t want to
get back in the water, was thinking of his legs dangling below the
surface, where anything could grab them.

“You can walk along the shore over the
rocks,” Mikk said.

“I will walk with you,” said Charkky. “We’ll
have to take to the sea when we get beyond Jade Beach, or go over
the point; the cliff falls away there steep and slick.”

Teb tied the pack to his waist and
shouldered the lilies, and they started out, Mikk galumphing ahead
of him and the other five diving swiftly seaward deep down, then up
and down along the surface, playing in the sea as if they had quite
forgotten the hydrus.

“How do they know it won’t come back?” Teb
asked.

“They don’t. But you can’t be afraid all the
time. Your chin’s bleeding again; press some seaweed to it.”

As they traveled, Teb tried to tell himself
one of the songs that had come to him so strangely, yet he found he
couldn’t. They were all gone suddenly, not one word would come
back, though they had all been there before the hydrus. They were
the only real memories he had. And they had seemed to him more than
memories, too. They had seemed a powerful link to someone else and
to what his future held. They had seemed to him a kind of talisman,
a prediction, just as Thakkur’s visions were predictions. Now they
were gone, the last thread with himself broken.

He followed Charkky in silence, feeling lost
and afraid. He hadn’t very much more to take away. Had the hydrus
done this, reached him in the most private, safest place he had?
They made their way up the cliff so they could cross the point at
Jade Beach rather than going in the water. Just as they reached the
cliff top, a wind and darkness swept out of the sky filled with the
dusty smell of feathers, and a huge owl came swooping across the
top of his head, giant wings beating at him. Teb ducked as the dark
bird banked in front of him, staring into his face with fierce
yellow eyes; its screaming cry stopped his heart as it hovered over
him; an owl as big as an otter and seeming twice that with its
wings spread. Its red beak opened cruelly.

Then it laughed. A harsh, guttural laugh. It
landed before him and folded its wings, and stared at him fierce as
sin.

Charkky stood ready to run, but Teb just
stared, because something about an owl made him feel comfortable,
even though this owl was far from comforting.

Its stomach feathers were buff, but the rest
of it was nearly black, mottled with flecks of rust. Its red beak
was sharply curved, and its great ears extended to the sides of its
head as if it were wearing a hat. Its voice was gravelly and
hissing.

“Have you seen the black monster in the sea?
Hydrus! I am searching for the hydrus. Three heads. Faces like men.
I have been tracking it for weeks.”

“We’ve seen it,” Charkky said, cross from
being frightened. ‘What have you to do with such a thing? Certainly
you have no better manners than it has, swooping down on a
person.”

The owl grinned and bowed, which only made
Charkky scowl harder. “I follow the hydrus to learn its ways. Where
it is bound. It moves ahead of the armies of darkness. Quazelzeg is
its master. It drowns men by swamping boats, and it loves only
darkness.”

“It attacked us,” Charkky said, studying the
owl with curiosity. “We wounded it, and it went away deeper into
the sea. Back there.” He pointed. “Just off the last point.”

The owl snapped its wings open and crouched
to leap skyward.

“Wait,” Charkky cried. “You have something
to tell of the hydrus. Thakkur will want to hear it.”

“Can’t wait. I must follow. I will return if
I can, but now I must follow. . . .” He leaped then,
with one whish of air and then in silence as he rose on the sea
wind, and Teb watched him grow smaller as he sped east toward the
open sea.

And inside Teb’s head the owl’s words
echoed: “. . . it loves only
darkness. . . . I must follow.” And it was as if
those same words echoed in his own spirit and he, too, must, at
some time near, follow the hydrus, follow darkness.

It was spring before the owl returned. They
did not see the hydrus again, though a watch was kept at all times
from the high ridge above Thakkur’s cave. Winter settled in early
and fierce, cutting the warm autumn away with sheets of
blizzard-cold wind, and the seas grew huge and pounding, so all the
otters, even Thakkur, moved out of the seaward caves into those
overlooking the inner valley.

Teb moved into Charkky and Mikk’s cave,
bringing his new gull-feather blanket, to the envy of both otters.
On the coldest nights they all three slept under it. He supposed he
smelled as fishy now as the otters did, though he was still aware
of their fishy breath at night. It was nice sleeping close to their
warm, silky smoothness, and they were all three cozy and snug even
on the stormiest nights. Both Charkky and Mikk had come to like
cooked shellfish, and the three of them made their fires on the
little beach below the south cliff where the waves rolled by at an
angle. Hardly anyone came there. Twice a day they boiled up a
succulent meal in the black iron pot. But it was here that
Ekkthurian and Gorkk and Urikk appeared suddenly one evening from
around the bend of the cliff, their black eyes flashing with fury
and their teeth bared.

“I thought I smelled a stench,” said
Ekkthurian. “Fire! It is fire! A vile human habit. And what are you
two doing, Charkky and Mikk? One might expect it of a human, but
young otters do not play with fire.”

“We are cooking supper,” said Mikk evenly.
“Go away.”

Charkky stared at Mikk, amazed. It was not
the custom to be rude to your elders. And then, taking heart from
Mikk, Charkky showed his teeth to the sour old otter and gave him a
low, angry growl.

“Thakkur said we could cook here,” Teb said.
“He said I could make a fire.”

Ekkthurian scowled at the three of them and
began to kick sand into the fire and the cookpot. Teb watched their
meal ruined and did nothing. It was not his place, as an outsider,
to defy Ekkthurian. He kept his anger in check with great effort,
even when the thin otter turned on him with lips drawn back, his
eyes slitted and his ears laid flat to his head. “Not only do you
make fire, human boy, you bring other evil as well.”

“What evil?” Teb stood his ground, daring
Ekkthurian to bite him.

“You have brought human weapons to
Nightpool. Not only knives, but you assist the otters themselves in
making a bow. It is against the ways of the animals to have such
things.”

All three stared. How did Ekkthurian know?
Mikk had found a fine piece of oak washed onto the beach, and they
had, indeed, been carving out a bow and fashioning shell tips for
arrows, the two otters working carefully at this new skill and very
pleased with themselves.

“The bow isn’t hurting you; it might even
help you someday,” Mikk said reasonably. “And the fires don’t hurt
you, either. Why can’t you leave Teb alone?”

“He does not belong here. No human belongs
here. He has turned Thakkur’s mind. Thakkur had no business
allowing him in Nightpool.”

Teb stared at Ekkthurian, then turned away
and emptied his cookpot onto the fire, drowning the flame and
ruining their supper. Then he climbed the cliff beside Charkky and
Mikk.

They ate raw food that night. But the next
day, at Thakkur’s direction, they built their fire right on the
ledge below the cave and cooked their supper there before a ring of
curious, arguing otters. And it was then that two factions began to
grow, one fanned by Ekkthurian’s fury, the other angered by his
interference, until all over the island, otters were arguing.

Teb supposed Ekkthurian’s little group had a
right to be critical if they wished. But did they have a right to
try to turn others against him?

“It will pass,” Mitta said. “Thakkur will
deal with it.”

But it doesn’t take many folk to make misery
when they speak with hatred. Teb and Charkky and Mikk and the
younger otters kept more and more to themselves, and this did not
please Thakkur. He did not want the island divided. Then the owl
returned, and for a while the quarrel was forgotten.

With the coming of spring the colony had
moved back into the caves on the outer rim, and though Teb missed
Charkky and Mikk, it was nice to have solitude, too. The owl came
swooping directly in from the sea one evening, dropping low along
the cliff like a great black shadow, to darken the cliffside
doorways and startle the otters at supper. His scream brought them
out onto the ledge, staring. Teb had been sewing a pair of
sharkskin flippers, fitting them to his feet, and he jammed the
needle into his finger hard when the first cry came. He ran out to
see the red-beaked old fellow flapping and scolding at a band of
strapping cubs that were leaping along the ledge after him, huffing
and swearing. The owl banked again, saw Teb, and turned back to
land on Teb’s shoulder, almost throwing him down the cliff. The
young otters were on Teb at once, clambering up his legs to get at
it, shouting words Teb didn’t know they knew. Farther along the
ledge he could see the white otter emerge.

“There he is,” shouted the owl. “It’s
Thakkur I want to see.” He swept away, and Teb followed, running,
and at Thakkur’s cave, the owl flew straight in and landed on a
high shelf, his great ears straight out with anger as he stared
down at the clambering youngsters who had followed. Thakkur stood
looking up at him, his whiskers twitching with amusement.

The owl glared. “Your young haven’t any
manners at all. I didn’t know otters could swear like that.”

“They can when they think the clan is
threatened,” Thakkur said. “You must be Red Unat. I have heard of
you. Old Bloody Beak, I’ve heard you called.”

The owl’s ears twitched. He scowled at
Thakkur, then opened his beak in what might be a smile, though it
looked more as if he would eat Thakkur. “Old Bloody Beak it is,
Thakkur of Nightpool. And I have heard a tale or two about
you.”

Otters had gathered thick in the cave.
Charkky pushed close to Teb, his whiskers stiff with interest.

“Did you find the hydrus?” Thakkur asked.
“Did it die from the wounds our otters gave it?”

“I tracked it by disturbances among the
fishes, a great empty swath and the little fish all adither on both
sides. I tracked it to Mernmeth, and there was blood on the waters
there.”

“Mernmeth,” Charkky whispered to Teb, “is a
drowned city north and east, where a great shallow runs out.”