The Reef
Authors: Mark Charan Newton
Contents
Prologue
She cut down through the water in a precise, controlled movement. Further down this trench, pressure began to stretch her skin again, and it was at this level that she would usually forget the colour of the sun, the brightness, even the concept of warmth. Distances began to mean less, became more abstract. In the deep, life followed a different set of values. You could see filter feeders, bichir, gouramis, but you could also taste the salt more, sense the movements of the water in thick, unavoidable drifts. And you were required to perceive things on an entirely new level.
She fell for nearly a quarter of the day through differing shades of darkness.
A shark followed a school of tuna that circled with the currents, trailing one another, and within a second she could no longer sense them, only the drag they had left in the water. Bubbles of oxygen shot along her skin, through her hair, and she looked up for them to have long gone. She regarded a trickle of oil, spilt along the floor, black on black, could sense it. Organisms burrowed into the sediment, extracting minerals. With compassion, she hoped that they were waving their antennae in delight-she liked to think everything was satisfied, at one with their existence. For a moment she floated above them, feeling, then swam along the ocean floor.
Towards glimmering lights.
They appeared at first as a blur, but as she came closer they took the form of viscous diamonds. Soon they were all you could see, dazzling, an unnatural phenomena, but it was home. There were thousands of them, arranged in neat lanes, rows, built around a framework that hadn’t yet presented itself clear enough.
At her side a vent spurted suddenly, forcing her to dive away as it vomited ultra-high temperature water, minerals. An explosion of heat, a change in currents. A moment too late and she would have been boiled, she knew that. However this needed fixing. It posed a danger to her, to the underwater community. Inside her head, she altered pressure. She generated a sound, called out through the water towards the lights. It was melodic, played along a certain scale, one that only her kind could hear.
Other sirens came.
She watched their shapes cut through the water until they were with her. With them they brought some encrusted piping. She couldn’t sense if it had been extracted from a dense ore, salvaged from a wreck, or sculpted from coral. Dozens of the women hauled it to the vent and in unison they lowered it. The end covered the vent that had spurted out the heated water. The piping warmed up. Heat flowed along it, back towards the light. She had removed the danger for the moment, and with another group of harmonics she sent the sirens back home, back towards the lights. In their strange tones, they talked amongst one another.
But through the water, there was a disturbing groan-a deep bass that was felt in her stomach more than she could actually hear.
All of the sirens spiralled to a halt, turned to face her.
They could hear it again, and she saw the panic on their faces. Thin gills between her ribs flexed and exposed thin, translucent flaps as she breathed heavily. She knew what she needed to do. It was beginning to awaken, and her efforts were not enough to keep it for much longer. A decision was made: she called out, singing her request.
And ordered her women to become fecund.
Evening: the creature watched the waves fall onshore, focussed on the detail of the froth as each one covered the beach of the island of Arya. Behind him, palm branches swayed in the light wind, fizzing. He tried to calm himself. The sea was approaching, the sound of the waves not quite matching their movements. He noticed that tonight they possessed little pitch. They oozed back and forth, repeating as the wind swells were broken by the reef. Both motion and noise were hypnotising. The moon cast reflections offshore, and the water around Arya broke it up into a scattering of light. A shadow remained up ahead, where the shallow water was broken, and it looked as if a boat had sunk, spilt its cargo.
It was the darkness cast by the reef.
Despite his learning, which ought to have reassured him, his heart was beating fast. Whether or not there was something in the air, he couldn’t grasp-but tonight it wasn’t the reef that was making him frightened. The creature took steps back until he was in light of the beach fire, and glow illuminated one side of his body. Other such fires lined the beach, a thick, tailed shadow by each of them. Ashes sparked regularly off into the sky. Salt and decomposition filled his nose. To his other side he noted moonlit sand and the shadows of the palms that punctured it. Jasmine was pungent, offered somewhere in the distance, somewhere he wanted to be. Anywhere but here.
But he ignored that because he was afraid, and once again he regarded the sea.
The silhouettes of sharks drifted above his head. He swam down from the light, through air bubbles that stimulated his skin, past the photic zone in search of the ocean floor, the dark. A school of tuna swam in a circular column away from another shark in a never-ending chase. His tail heaved behind his stout legs, propelling him further down into the black. Each variant movement he made took him to within a grain of salt to where he wanted to be. His heart rate doubled, tripled.
He stopped, hovered in the gloom. Schools of luminescent fish dazzled him, and they flipped at high speed before soaring away. He shuddered, his long hair drifted around his head. He felt vulnerable suddenly, with a vague awareness of something, but he couldn’t figure out what. Why didn’t he listen to the others? They were right to think him foolish for wanting to find out for himself.
In a controlled thrust he swam to a piece of coral, did not touch it. Instead he simply stared at the strange substance. It was rock and animal and plant-that was what the doctor had told him, at least. It was precious. Life forms worked together, linking in vast and complex systems. And everything benefited.
The temperature fell further, not from his descent, and he shuddered. He regretted the decision to try and see what was down there, to find and penetrate the trenches the other side of the reef. The others warned him not to go so deep. He turned in a slow arc whilst looking around in an alert state, his eyes sealed shut by a translucent film. Bubbles rose from below, regular palpitations of air jetted along his skin, tickling him. He kicked his tail down, pushed up through the dark waters. Then he paused, as if in a trance.
He could hear the faintest of melodies. It was coming from deeper waters. The tune released him from his fear, he felt revived, the waters became warmer. Uncontrollably, he became aroused as the melody became more intense. His heart seemed to stop, suspending him in the waters, helplessly.
The fires burned lower, more driftwood was hauled on. The creature watched his own shadow grow with the flames. Determined to see the night through, his eyes were fixed on the tide, which came in further on each push. It fizzed on the rocks, the sand, the sea plants that lined the shore. He examined the surface of the water for discrete changes, or for any signs of the one whom swam in to investigate. Everyone knew he would not return.
The tide gradually approached the beach fires and the foam began to soak some of the driftwood before receding to ebb. His eyes were heavy, and spits of salt from the sea and the wind stung them. Halfway through the night, drizzle sparkled in the air. The mist of water was fresh, and his skin shivered. The night remained calm and the rhythm of the tide was soothing. The sound of the surf was monotonous. For how long would he have to stay here, to do this? Night after night? How long until his kind could rest easily?
A song rose above the sea.
He heard something tender, deep in his head. He focused on the water, tried to follow the waves, but couldn’t. He walked forward, unable to feel the sea lettuces squelching beneath his feet, then touched the foam of the water, continued out into the sea. Still the melody played in his heads, more intense than before. He became aroused, could see that the rest of his kind were following him. They all waded out pushing the water around them as it reached their chest. The movement of the sea was sluggish, pushing him like driftwood. He was standing firm, tensing the muscles in their legs as they waited for the melody to climax, something it seemed to promise.
He glanced down into the water to see shining eyes staring back up at him, felt hands touch, caress, stimulate, crept up his thick legs. A primitive sensation flooded his body.
And, fatally, his kind was drawn further out to sea, underwater, suffocating him. In his final moments he was aware of his, of the pain, but he was disconnected, concerned with only the melody.
Morning: Doctor Macmillan bent down in the sunshine on the section of beach that was further up from the rocks. He looked at what he first thought was some strange, new piece of coral washed ashore, but stumbled back after had had brought it close. He recognised the segment of bowel, frowned, then noticed further organs, dry, open, next to the remains of the bonfires.
Even at this early hour his bald head perspired. Would he ever get used to this temperature, despite his years based here? A firm, onshore breeze aired his shirt. He turned towards the dense palm forest that was yards away from where he stood to see if there was anyone there. There was no one, nothing. The forest stood calm.
He couldn’t work out why he felt frightened, as if his routine had been consciously watched. He walked further along the shore as the fine, warm sand squeezed between his toes, headed towards the sun. Holding his hand up to his eye, he saw one of the ichthyocentaurs.