The Shark Whisperer (12 page)

To Tristan's surprise and even greater relief, Hugh had thrown him an all-in-one combo tool, a sort of oversized Swiss Army knife. Unfortunately, the first lever he opened was a screwdriver, not very helpful in the situation. The second was even less so, a magnifying glass. Thankfully, the next tool Tristan pulled open was a small knife blade. He sliced through enough of the grass to escape its clutches and then leapt off the grab-grass onto the last sea creature stone he'd been on.

“Jeez, remind me never to do that again,” Tristan said. “Thanks Hugh.”

“No problem,” Hugh answered sadly. “It was my dad's. He used to carry it all the time and say ‘you should always be prepared.' I usually only use it to unscrew things or stuff like that, never to escape a grass attack or anything.”

“Oh, there it is. There's the next rock,” Sam said happily.

“
Now
she finds it,” Tristan said to Hugh, wondering if something had happened to his father.

By the time the three of them made it out of the jungle wall, only a light rain was falling. The squall had passed.

“Wasn't such a bad time to be in the wall, I guess,” Sam said, looking up at the brightening sky.

“Speak for yourself,” Tristan responded, staring at his legs. They were covered with tiny little slices, painful paper cuts from the grab-grass blades.

They went to their rooms in the Seasquirts bungalow, changed into their swimsuits, and headed to the lagoon.

There were several older campers already in the water when Tristan, Sam, and Hugh arrived. Some of them were practicing their swimming and diving skills. Others seemed to be searching for animals to communicate with.

“Here's a stingray,” one of the boys yelled. “I think it's saying it has a backache, something wrong with its spine.”

“George, they don't have spines, only cartilage like sharks,” responded another boy. “More likely it's telling you to leave it alone, or it will stick you with the spiny barb on its tail and give
you
an ache.”

“Oh, maybe you're right,” George said, scratching his head and backing away. “Hey, but check out that cormorant over there.” He pointed to a thin, dark brown bird swimming nearby. It had a yellowish beak and a very uncomfortable-looking, wriggling bulge in the middle of its long, skinny neck. “I think it's caught a fish that's too big. It must be choking. I know just what to do.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, yeah, just like Doc Jordan showed us—the bird Heimlich!”

As the boy moved toward the bird, it frantically shook its head and neck then dove underwater.

“Hey, where'd it go?” George asked, spinning around.

“I think you scared it off with your offer of medical assistance,” the other kid laughed. “I know you want to be a veterinarian and all, but maybe you should save your first aid for the animals at the Rehab Center.”

The cormorant popped up a few feet away from the two boys. The bulge in its neck was gone. Tristan thought it was staring at George with what seemed to be great satisfaction and—most likely—relief. The two boys then swam off looking for other animals for George to “save.”

Tristan looked to Hugh and Sam and smiled. “I guess not everyone is good at this communication thing.”

They all took a few gulps of the pinkish water from the bottles they'd brought along. Hugh made a face like he'd just sucked on a lemon.

Tristan laughed. “It doesn't taste
that
bad.”

Hugh shivered and shook his head. “I just need to get used to it, besides my taste buds are quite refined.”

Sam and Tristan rolled their eyes at Hugh, chuckling. They walked down the beach into the water. Hugh followed more tentatively.

“
Yaowww!
” Tristan yelped, sprinting from the water. “Cuts stinging! Saltwater.” He looked down at his legs. “Whoa.”

“What's wrong?” Sam asked.

“The grass cuts . . . they're disappearing.”

“What?” Hugh said.

“That's impossible,” Sam added as she and Hugh ran over to look at Tristan's legs.

“Yeah, I thought having feet like a duck was also impossible. Seriously, look, the cuts are all just about gone.”

“You know, some animals in the ocean can regenerate lost body parts,” Hugh noted.

“Oh yeah,” Sam agreed. “Like how a sea star can grow back an arm if it loses one.”

“Wonder if you could actually grow a new arm if it got chopped off or something,” Hugh pondered.

“Nice thought,” Sam said, shaking her head.

“Uh, don't think I want to find out,” Tristan said. “Wonder if we all have this healing skin thing now?”

Hugh picked up a small pointy rock and used it to scrape the back of his hand. “Let's see.” He walked straight into the lagoon with the other two following close behind. Hugh put his hand underwater. The
skin around the red scratch seemed to blur for just a moment. Then the redness and mark simply vanished. “Yes, I think we might all have it.”

“Hey, look Hugh, you're in the lagoon—no problem,” Tristan said.

“Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking about what was in the water, so it was easy.”

“Let's go see if we can find something for you to try to mimic and practice swimming,” Tristan suggested. But he could tell Hugh was still nervous. “Maybe we should float a little first, like this morning.”

He and Sam walked with Hugh into slightly deeper water. Together, the three of them laid back. Hugh was still pretty shaky.

“Just relax and breathe slowly,” Sam said.

After a few minutes they stood up and looked at their hands. Sure enough all of them had skin stretched between their fingers. Hugh studied his hand intensely, like a scientist examining a new species for the very first time. He lifted up his foot and nearly fell over trying to take a closer look at the skin that had sprouted between his toes.

With some friendly coaching from Tristan and Sam, Hugh slowly swam through the lagoon, staying in shallow water near the shore. Tristan and Sam worked on their turns, while Hugh practiced swimming forward without standing up every time he needed a breath.

Tristan was swimming underwater over the white sandy bottom when he noticed a narrow zigzagging trail. It looked like the trace of some small creature
that couldn't crawl straight or kept taking the wrong turn. He could understand how that could happen. It was hard to swim in a straight line or know exactly where he was. There weren't any yellow lines or road signs underwater. The winding trail in the sand led Tristan to a baby queen conch with two white stalked eyes poking out from under its two-inch-long shell. He stopped and concentrated, but didn't pick up any feelings or thoughts from the young snail. When he dove down to get a closer look, the creature withdrew nervously into its shell. Tristan decided to let the anxious youngster get back to its sandy wanderings. He swam to a nearby patch of thick-bladed sea grass. There seemed to be little life within the undersea meadow until he hovered quietly overhead and watched more closely. Soon he saw small fish darting between the grass blades and tiny crabs scurrying over the sand. Then he found a bumpy pumpkin-colored sea star nestled in the grass. It was the biggest one he'd ever seen, the size of a dinner plate. He dove down.

Right next to the sea star was a four-inch-long yellow seahorse. Its tail was curled monkey-like around a blade of grass. Tristan examined the peculiar creature. It had a miniature horsey snout, a round belly, and tiny transparent fins fluttering at its sides. As Tristan moved, the seahorse's eyes followed him, weirdly rotating in its head like track balls. And as Tristan watched, the seahorse suddenly turned a mottled green color—the same shade as the surrounding sea grass.

Tristan surfaced and called to Hugh and Sam. The two teens swam over.

After seeing the seahorse in its camouflage attire, Sam looked to Hugh. “You should try to mimic its coloring.”

“Yeah. I guess I could. But I don't really know what to do. I mean should I try to communicate with the seahorse or just think color change? Or do I need to stare at the color of the seahorse before anything happens? Is there a test pattern I need to run first, like a printer? I mean . . .”

“You're beginning to sound like me,” Sam laughed.

“Just go down there and see what happens,” Tristan suggested.

Hugh paused, still appearing to consider his options and deciding on the best plan of action. He also kept looking around nervously, obviously worried about what other creatures might be around.

“C'mon, just
try
it,” Tristan urged.

Hugh dove down and stared at the seahorse. It stared back, its eyes again spinning bizarrely in its head. Tristan and Sam dove down to watch.

Back on the surface, Tristan said, “So, what happened?”

“What do you mean what happened? You saw, nothing happened.” Hugh answered.

“Try again,” Sam encouraged. “Maybe you need to reach out to it with your hand, like with the octopus.”

Hugh dove back down and this time gently reached out toward the seahorse with one hand. As his fingertips
neared the creature, the color of his hand and arm seemed to flicker. It then turned the same mottled green as the seahorse.

When they were back on the surface, Sam said, “You did it!”

Hugh looked at his now human-skin-colored hand. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

They spent the next half hour practicing their underwater skills. Hugh concentrated on trying to communicate with the seahorse and sea star, and getting the skin on his arms and legs to change color. Each time he actually got his skin to color morph, it only lasted for a few seconds. Sam and Tristan stayed nearby working on their swimming skills and trying, though unsuccessfully, to read the thoughts of a large red crab they'd discovered resting in the sea grass. Sam abruptly stopped swimming, stood up, and glanced around with a strange look on her face.

Tristan stood up as well. “Hey, what's wrong?”

“I just got a really weird feeling. Like something was headed this way. Maybe it's the dolphins? I thought I heard them.”

“I didn't hear anything,” Tristan said, looking around for Scarface or Toosha.

Sam put her head underwater, cocked it to the side, and listened. She then made a kind of clicking noise, like they'd heard the dolphins make underwater. Moments later her eyes went wide and she surfaced, shaking her head like she was trying to get water out of her ears. She ducked back underwater and made the clicking noise again.

“Oh my God,” Sam cried out on the surface.

“What's wrong?” Tristan asked as Hugh came rushing over.

“I don't believe it,” Sam said.

“Don't believe what?” Hugh questioned. “What's going on?”

“No idea,” Tristan said, looking at Sam.

“You won't believe it,” she said to them.

“Yeah, not if you don't tell us,” Tristan replied. “What won't we believe?”

“I . . . I think I can echolocate.”

“What?” both boys asked in unison.

“And we are about to have some visitors,” Sam added, looking out toward deeper water.

“What kind of visitors are we talking about?” Hugh asked nervously.

“Uh, the kind that have pointy dorsal fins,” Sam said.

“Oh, you mean like dolphins?” Hugh said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“No, she means like those,” Tristan said, pointing to three dark dorsal fins slicing through the water toward them.

The three teens huddled closer together.

“What should we do?” Hugh asked Tristan, on the verge of all out panic.

“How should I know?”

“You're the shark guy,” Sam said.

“Oh yeah, okay, don't panic,” Tristan said silently repeating the same thing to himself.

“That really helps,” Hugh said sarcastically.

The sharks split up and dove. Two went to the left of the clustered teens and one to the right. Tristan ducked underwater. The now circling sharks were sleek, lemony-brown on top, and pale underneath, with a blunt snout and round black eyes.
Focus
, he said to himself,
stay calm
. Tristan wasn't exactly sure how this whole communicate-with-sharks thing worked. Then he got a very distinct feeling. He popped his head up for a breath.