Chapter 6 - Eyeshines

“Living longer than your progeny serves no purpose unless something eats you in order to procreate or feed their progeny.” - LeeRan Sing, Scientist & Scholar

“I know he can do it.” The sonar penetrated the murky blackness of eternity.

But Rory knew he was dying. Was he already dead? He drifted sideways not up. A current had grabbed him, a tidal pallbearer carrying him, delivering him to the rocks. Air! He needed air? This meant he was still alive, for another moment or two. From a thin crevice in the rock, two ink black eyes gazed at him. Intelligent and aware they seemed to know his death was imminent. A sharp rock bit deep into his flesh. Air! Red clouded from the wound. Those dark eyes seemed to contemplate his death and maybe its next meal. Rory stared back. Better to die as meal for something than to whither and husk on some dead beach he thought as consciousness surrendered to darkness. A soft spongy hand grabbed his face.

Reeg reached the sandy bottom. His son was gone. The waters were still. Four dead Stingerfish gently drifted in the still cold waters like black angels of death. Prick, prick. The Stingerfish that killed his son only got two stings off before Fisher Reeg flipped, grabbed it and crushed the life from its eighteen limbs.

“Rory where are you?” he sonared.

Quessa picked up the water pulse. “Rory where are you?” She screamed but no sound left her mouth. Tears ran down her face and were swallowed by an onslaught of seawater. Her mouth gurgled. The sky was dark blue even through the shallow water near the beach. Her other children? Air! Hands lifted her from the water and she shuddered. Heaving up water she struggled to check her other remaining offspring. Everywhere bodies, faces, hands, legs, voices and finally her daughter’s face and her baby son safe in her arms. No harm would come to her only son. Silence. Blackness hazed over and controlled her brain.

Rory’s eyes broke the surface. His nose, mouth and gills remained below the water the rocks at his back. He scanned the surface to find his fellow new Fishers as they “slept” face up on the water’s surface. The fathers held each sibling in place and all breathed on their own.

Rory where are you? Sonar waves entered his body. He looked to the beach and saw his mother spin and fall. Fellow villagers rushed to her aide.

A webbed hand touched his red-blotched shoulder and lifted him from the sporting water. Fisher Gohg-pour turned the boy to face him. A white octopus lined with pink veins sucked on Rory’s face. Rory breathed evenly as the octopus inflated and deflated over his mouth and nose. Inky black invertebrate eyes alive with intelligence panicked at the site of the adult Fisher. Several tiny pops were heard as the octopus freed itself and dove back to the water for safety.

Rory sucked in air and released the white and blue oyster from his grasp exactly where the eight limb-fish lifesaver had entered the water. Below the surface, a blurry shifting image of dark eyes and tentacles darted in, snagged and pried apart the bivalve mollusk. Meal secure, the killer cephalopod that freely saved Rory’s life vanished in a cloudy screen of black ink.

Under the waves, Fisher Reeg saw the surface of the water and refused to swim toward it. His son could still be alive! An octopus swam defiantly past him. It must have sensed his urgency and knew he wasn’t hunting. Its eight suction-cupped tentacles switched direction in dance-like unison. The octopus made a sharp turn and headed towards the rocks and shelter. It didn’t ink him? Fishers had a tendency to ignore eight limb-fish. Octopus was edible but the rumors of their intelligence kept the fishing of them to a minimum. As for underwater breathing aides, Fishers had gills and lungs so they weren’t needed. Unless your gills were not functioning! Rory! Reeg bolted for the surface with the speed and agility that made him the dominant Fisher.

Fisher Reeg burst from the sea that tried to kill his son. His thin muscular body left the water and entered the air. Drops of water fled his skin, gills and net-mesh clothing and re-entered the ocean. He was momentarily airborne. Arching his back he returned with a dive.

Fisher Gohg-pour sent a sonar pulse to Reeg.

“Rory is alive.”

Fisher Reeg caught the sonar message and regurgitated it out in a sonar scream that even a Preen in the highest nest should have heard.

“RORY IS ALIVE!”

Quessa floated in the dark. Drowning was her greatest fear. Yes for her, but more so for her children. Blobs of colors crackled and sparked around her. Each time she tried to focus on one, it disappeared and then returned to her peripheral vision. Stubbornly she continued to chase them. Drowning was a peaceful merciful death. There were worse ways to die…

A whisper? A whisper came to her. Then a scream. RORY IS ALIVE! This outcry of joy grabbed her and jerked her back to the Fisher beach. Her eyes returned to the dark blue sky and the cheers of her fellow villagers. Someone pulled her up to a sitting position. She felt her daughter and baby son nearby. They were safe. Her vision cleared and the rocks, the water, the silhouetted Fishers came into view. One Fisher, not her mate, held a child triumphantly above his head. Another show-off, leapt and dove, leapt and dove in one continuous high arched circle. Fisher Reeg, her mate and lover, was uncontrollably ecstatic.

For the next hour or so as the sun left the sky, the sporting dive was the most energy filled it had ever been. First a game of elimination was played. The Fishers were divided into four teams and Stingerfish were to be thrown at their opponents. One stinger trained, new Fisher was placed on each team. Gloves, nets or poles could be used to catch or toss the fish, above the water only. You were eliminated when you felt you had received enough stings to become a liability for your team. Of course the new Fishers were quickly eliminated and sat on the rocks, in the cool air.

Tending their own wounds now, they watched as their teammates battled to the finish. Glen placed a red-blotchy and swollen hand on Rory’s sore shoulder. He knew Glen had made a difficult decision to save Lehm Ki and he would not fault him for it. It was after all the correct one. Rory nodded to him. Glen smiled and returned his attention back to the sporting dive elimination. The game play was fierce, competitive and perilous. Like most things Fishers did. But this was how they survived. And Fisher Reeg, a natural athlete, was the last Fisher left swimming that day.

Next came competitions of speed, agility and strength. Again Fisher Reeg won them all except for strength. That was the one skill he had yet to master. Glen’s father, Fisher Gohg-pour won those.

The final events, all with sea-creatures and plants, came at sunset and high tide. Glowing bioluminescent jellyfish lit the water as bug hungry swim-fish jumped around the Fishers. Oil-eel chases were Rory’s favorite game and he had even caught one, once for a few very brief seconds of victory.

Then an enemy rode a wave over a flat rock and entered the sporting water arena. It was blood red with a mouth full of multi-rowed teeth and a pointy fin. Crimson sharks were not only voracious eaters but fierce fighters. Fortunately this one was momentarily confused by its still-water confines between the rocks and the reef. The new Fishers bolted for the shallow waters over the reef leaving this foe to the Fishers. On the hunt for a meal, the crimson shark dove. As did its hunters.

The four new Fishers reached a shallow pool and waited. Ten Fishers had followed and formed a protective ring around them. Before they could set and search, one Fisher, Kera, was yanked beneath the water with a swift tug. She was gone. Crimson sharks could swallow a small Fisher in one gulp. Luckily she was very small, possibly the smallest and nimble, thus she avoided the rows of teeth and ended up deep inside the shark’s gullet.

Pausing to gulp its evening’s meal was the last mistake the crimson shark ever made. Fisher Reeg darted under its now full belly, slitting it with a small tortoise shell dive knife. He was gone that fast so its blood never stained him. The gaping bloody line ran the length of the shark’s white underside. Fisher Gohg-pour ripped the animal open with bare webbed hands. The muffled crack of several cartilaginous ribs echoed to the reef. Reeg and Gohg-pour had done this before.

Unscathed, Fisher Kera cut herself free from the thick walled abdomen and re-entered the freedom of the dark water. She made certain that the gash also released twelve premature baby sharks from the safety of mother’s uterus. Several Fishers hooked the still smiling mother shark corpse. Others gathered the pink thin-skinned newborns from the red cloud of their mother’s vital fluids. Tonight the Fishers would feast.

The moons and the jellyfish illuminated the coral reef. Eyeshines glinted in the crimson shark’s eyes as it was dragged onto the shore. Celebration fires already burned brightly on the beach. Four new Fishers today. That would have been a good month for the Fisher village.

Thoughts were sent by sonar through the water. “Lucky day. Great day. Four Fishers. An omen of the future. Crimson shark for dessert, Mmmm.”

The remaining Fishers carried shellfish, swimfish, jellies, seaplants, and various caviars as they all departed the water, save two.

Alone and together the two men swam through the many vibrant colors of the coral reef, teeming with life. No land flowers or plants could match the vigor and brilliance of the living and breathing undersea garden of the Fishers. Reeg, the dominant Fisher, tried not to stare but the look on his son’s face was irresistible. Both men were aglow as a jellyfish drifted past them.

It was their final dive as father and son for today and forever.

Fisher Reeg and new Fisher Rory waded from the water. Each man carried an eight limb-fish. The village watched in silence as they walked to the largest of the breading pools and gently placed the two frightened octopi into the most sheltered of all the reef’s tarns. Together these smart creatures would spend the rest of their lives eating and breeding in complete safety free from fishing or predation and under Fisher protection.

Rory smiled up at his dad to hide his disappointment. He dove in to save me.

Reeg looked to his son and was awash with guilt.

“Were you supposed to let me die, Dad?” Rory asked.

“Yes, it wasn’t a game.”

“Really?”

“A Fisher must drown before he can live,” he answered.

“What does that mean?”

Reeg shrugged, took his son’s still blotchy shoulder and turned to join the village celebration. But the watery bloop of something breaking the water’s surface made the hunter in Fisher Reeg turn. His eyes narrowed…

He caught a glimpse of them over the moonlit and jellyfish sparkling water.

Eyeshines.

A few, then hundreds, then thousands of glints beyond the beach, beyond the reef and just behind the rocky teeth that protected all of their lives, stared predatorily at them all.

The entire village shifted its attention to the focus of Fisher Reeg’s vision. A wave-like murmur of death never heard here before lapped onto the beach of these peaceful and prosperous people.

A thin and wiry bearded Human crawled from the ocean and onto the rocks. A white blue veined octopus covered his mouth and nose. A man Reeg would come to know as Krence, First Seergnot waved his arm and gave the attack signal for the onslaught of the Horde to begin.

Giving an order no one ever thought they would hear, Reeg, the leader of the soon to be extinct Fishers led his water breathing peoples into the calm reef waters around the village. Grabbing any weapon they could find they all entered to do battle. None retreated or stayed behind except the air breathers, which were Human or the avian flightless Preen. They both had defensive positions and went to them without a word.

Reeg and Rory glanced at Quessa. She couldn’t, wouldn’t stop them. A water fight was their best and only chance. They all knew of the Horde though no one ever survived it.

“I love you both!” she called out as the Fishers submerged.

She joined the other lung-reliant ones as they gathered weapons to prepare for the inevitable land assault.

Moments later, Reeg watched his oldest son, Fisher Rory die at the claws of a snake-faced, lizard-like Whipt. Fisher Rory fought bravely and well for a man of only 9 cycles. A moment after his death he received Rory’s first and last crystal clear sonar words.

“I’m proud of you too dad. Love you...”

The wave was gone. His heart felt punctured but his body remained unscathed and Fisher Reeg fought on alone.

Next Chapter: Chapter 7 - Hollow Bones