And The Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness

Author:Patrick Ness [Ness, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2018-09-03T18:30:00+00:00

22

“A MASSACRE,” TREASURE SAID, STUPIDLY, pointlessly, for it was all there to see.

“But they’re intact,” said Willem, her eyes wide and fearful. “The hunters have taken nothing from them.”

“It is a message,” said the Captain.

The night sea ahead of us was darkened by the blood of at least fifty whales, their bodies – yes, intact – bumping against one another. The moon lit them up from below, making shadows against the night.

“How can all of them have been hunted?” Treasure asked, fear in her voice. “What happened here?”

“It is a message,” the Captain repeated. “From Toby Wick.”

The float of bodies was starting to quiver as the sharks took their feed. We knew what we had to do, but we were reluctant. We couldn’t stop them from eating our dead any more than we could stop the thousands of birds already rising to the under-surface of the Abyss to do the same, but there were personal tokens to gather, families to be informed at a later time, perhaps even salvage and cargo to be rescued. We did not waste.

Unlike men.

“As much as we can,” said the Captain. “All of it, if possible.”

It wasn’t possible. The sharks were too many, eating too fast, and though they skipped out of my way as I approached, the gap behind me swiftly closed again with hungry mouths and blind, stupid eyes. Plus the blood, all the blood, meant we were swimming in a confusing, shifting murk in which even echolocation was of little use. Still, we pressed on.

With my mouth, I gathered mostly coral engravings – our form of identification and how we exchanged money for goods – but also the jewels some of the older generation wore in their scars, adorning them with pride. I gathered small foodstuffs and at least six heater crabs, putting them all in the slings of my harpoon harness. The water grew darker, and so did my mood. I found several defensive harpoons, all unused – all? What did happen here? How big was the devil we were chasing? – but there was little time to think. I merely kept gathering, as did the others, trying to reclaim as much as we could before the bloodied and flesh-filled water became intolerable.

Then I came upon the child.

Normally our young were the easiest pickings for the sharks – their size, their vulnerable surprised cluelessness – but this one was tucked under the fins of her mother, out of immediate sight. I wouldn’t have found her myself if I hadn’t been recovering another heater crab that turned out to be dead, too. The child was little more than the length of my harpoon, too small to carry anything but the toy starfish she held tightly under her fin.

The mother had clearly tried to protect her, used her own great body to shield her baby from whatever calamity had come from the Abyss. The larger whale had a bloody wound down from her blowhole, already being made larger by twisting sharks, but the little one didn’t have a mark on her.

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