Weekly Drabble #254: Shapes in Water (Patreon)

This week's prompts are 'turtle horror' from Lev Chusovitin and 'vicious, speeding aquatic death machines' from Burning Desire. A short tale about aquatic life. Enjoy!

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Shapes in Water:

The kelp forests off Atta Loua were prime territory for crowbill turtles; the water was clear and warm, the kelp grew rapidly and the hordes of sea urchins that threatened to destroy the forest were kept in check by the crowbills, their long necks and sharp beaks able to delicately snip off the urchins’ spines and then crunch through the hard outer test to get to the meaty insides. Atta Loua was one of the last few refuges of the endangered crowbills and the target of freshly-funded environmental studies and population monitoring.

That was why Lorena Lapland – ‘Ells’ to her friends – was diving here. She was part of the research effort, tagging and releasing crowbills to see how far the population would migrate. A few times a season, she’d go out on a larger boat with the whole team, and other members of the nearby marine science institute. They’d bring crowbills on board, weigh, photograph and tag. On some, they’d attach cameras to get a better look at the behaviours the crowbills exhibited in the wild. At least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, while they were getting some good tracking data, nothing much had been recovered off the cameras.

Twice – twice! – their local help had accidentally destroyed the recovered footage. Lorena could probably have done a better job, and she barely knew anything about computers or video software. If it wasn’t so bizarre, she would have said that they’d done it on purpose. The Sandstone Bay Aquatic Sciences Center were normally quite good, but ever since the project here at Atta Loua had gotten federal funding and brought in researchers from the mainland, they’d been ‘twitchy’. At least that’s what Lorena had heard from some of the others.

She had no idea why; Atta Loua was practically on the other side of the island from Sandstone Bay, undeveloped and unexploited. A hidden little slice of paradise where the jungle came right to the edge of the low cliffs, hollowed and honeycombed by caves and tunnels carved by thousands of years of tidal action. It was beautiful, but the locals wouldn’t come near it. There were all sorts of ghost stories about the area, fed by the occasional shipwreck. Vessels would get too close to the shoreline and become hung up on the reefs and sandbars that crossed the area. They’d either get torn open, or dragged down by the seasonal storms but as long as you knew what you were doing, it would be perfectly safe.

Lorena had been sailing since she’d been little and she’d taken her own small sloop out to the Singing Islands instead of flying like the rest. She didn’t have to wait for the SBASC or SBHSO to free up a boat or rely on a charter like the other expeditions did. She’d even taken some of her peers and friends out on the ocean for short jaunts. If Racing the Wind had been a little larger, she could have even used it to help with the tagging operations. Instead, Sandstone Bay had ‘advised’ her to restrict her excursions to local waters and only use official vessels for research.

That hadn’t been a problem at first, but the locals were indeed twitchy. They’d cancel missions at the last moment or cut them short with little notice. It was affecting the amount of research they could do and Lorena in particular chafed at that. The crowbill study was important; the sea turtles had lost more than 90% of their traditional living grounds due to pollution and human encroachment and their threatened population had already been driven to extinction across large parts of the world by poachers looking to serve exotic animal trades and traditions that required various parts of the crowbill. Atta Loua might be the largest extant community. If the species was going to survive, Lorena’s work needed to be completed.

Instead, she felt like she was being blocked at every turn for no good reason. Warnings about storms that never came and alerts for chemical residue in the water. It wasn’t just costing them time, but money too. Research like this was expensive; aside from the lost man-hours, the cameras and satellite tracking tags had hefty price tags. The delays and aborted launches had already resulted in two of those being lost. That was why she was here; one of the satellite tags had come loose from its turtle early. Not really that uncommon; things happened. The tags could be set to pop off after a few hours to several weeks depending on how much time you had and how much of the animal’s activity you wanted to catalogue. Some shark researchers used eight hours to see movements across a local area. She wanted to see if the Atta Loua crowbills stayed here or travelled throughout the Singing Islands.  The wider the range, the more likely it was that this group could help repopulate other areas... and the more vulnerable they’d be to poaching, pollution and predation. It wouldn’t help much if the turtles here at Atta Loua were protected but became fair game everywhere else.

Lorena was hoping to build a picture of their movements and range for better ecological protection. It was hard enough with the all the problems Sandstone kept causing, but if her equipment wouldn’t stay on, that could sink the whole project. She’d talked to her professor about recovering the tag and he’d talked to the locals and they said they’d do something ‘soon’. Well, she couldn’t wait for soon. They’d already lost equipment because they’d been waiting for the Sandstone authorities to give the go-ahead, gear they couldn’t replace.

So Lorena had decided to take Racing the Wind out for a ‘personal day trip’. She’d checked the weather; clear for days, with even winds and low tides. The trip out to Atta Loua was a nice one. She liked moments like this. Just her, the sun, the wind and the waves.

It took a little time to find the tag; it had gotten tangled up in some of the seaweed at the surface, but the sloshing waves uncovered enough of it that the bright orange caught her eye. Lorena frowned as she pulled it on-board. Normal satellite tags were glued to the top middle of the turtle’s shell, but crowbills were among the smallest species of sea turtles, and the permanent transmitters that other species could carry without problem were too large for them. While a solution was being worked on, Lorena’s team had modified temporary tags. They were kept in a small casing on the crowbill’s back like other turtles, but instead of a heavy radio transmitter, there was a small data sensor that recorded location, speed, temperature, depth and other basic information onto a drive kept in a waterproof compartment. When the time was reached, the buoyant data tag would pop off and float to the surface, sending out a radio ping to announce its presence. The glue would slowly dissolve in sea water, allowing the empty casing to pop right off the turtle’s back.

With this, though – part of the tag was still connected to the casing. Lorena turned it over in her hands and frowned. It shouldn’t have come loose. It looked like the casing had been smashed and the tag had popped out. Well, at least she’d gotten it back. That was one thing that had gone right so far. It was still a nice day; she could get a dive in and see what was going on under the water.

She’d been gearing up when the radio had crackled with a call from the SBASC; someone had figured out where she’d gone. There was a chemical hazard advisory around Atta Loua.  Someone out there needs to learn how to read, the young thought with a derisive snort. The currents were running from Atta Loua to the site of the tanker’s wreck. Even if the chemicals could somehow travel against the current, it would take hours for them to get here. She was starting to think that the whole of Sandstone Bay was full of Chicken Littles.

Just a quick dive, take a look at the conditions and then she’d head back. Upwelling on the continental shelf brought up nutrients from the deep ocean and the currents pulled it through the Singing Islands, the shallow seas and sunlight warming it and making them one of the most biodiverse regions on the entire planet. The kelp forests here were among the largest in the world, and the ocean life largely safe from overfishing. And we still know so little about this region, Lorena thought as she swam down to the bottom. It was only a dozen or so meters from her boat, well-lit and calm.

The tall stalks of kelp waved back and forth with the tides, small schools of fish hiding among them. Kelp forests made excellent nurseries, providing sanctuary for young fish. The sandy ocean floor was alive with sea stars, shellfish and a small army of urchins that ruthlessly advanced upon the kelp to gnaw through the holdfasts and kill them, but as Lorena watched, a crowbill turtle glided out of the thick forest, its long neck extending from its shell, surgically slicing away a mouthful of spines with every strike. An avenue of attack opened, the crowbill cracked the urchin’s shell open and stuck its face through the test, gulping up the echinoderm’s innards as a horde of small fish flashed over to nab the drifting bits of urchin too small for the crowbill to bother with. Quickly done, the crowbill withdrew its head, leaving the urchin’s remains to be picked off by the smaller scavengers. It looked to be on the verge of going after a second, when it turned and swam back into the kelp. Just as quickly, the schools of fish investigating Lorena vanished. Except for the giant seaweed, nothing else was moving.

A chill went down the young woman’s spine. There was something out here, a predator large enough to scare everything into hiding. Despite that realization, she quickly calmed.

The Singing Islands were home to a few species of shark, but few of those were large or particularly aggressive. There were lantern squid that came up from the deep; they were big, intelligent and belligerent but they usually stayed around the deeper waters off the continental shelf, rarely coming into the islands proper. The most dangerous animals in the region were angler seals, but Atta Loua was on the south-eastern side of the island and their colony was on the north. It was unlikely that there was anything truly dangerous to her. That knowledge in hand, she turned to look expecting the gliding shadow of a reef shark or gulper fish.

Nothing.

The water was clear and visibility was excellent, but then, just at the edge of visibility Lorena saw a large, dark shape, keeping low to the sandy bottom. It was too far away to really tell what it was, but it wasn’t a shark or a squid and it was too slender to be an angler seal. It was about the size of a human – possibly more. Lorena couldn’t make out more than a vague shape. It wasn’t coming closer, pausing by an outcropping, still too far away for the diver to clearly see. A second chill tingled its way through her spine as a thought popped into her mind and wouldn’t leave.

It can see me, but it knows I can’t see it.

Lorena had been sailing and diving since she’d been a young girl. She’d been confident of her abilities but something about the situation felt wrong. She didn’t want to be here any longer and the impulse to ascend back to the boat was strong, but experience kept her down on the seabed. Ascending was the most dangerous time for a diver. It was when you were most vulnerable and some instinct or flash of intuition told her that doing so now would provoke an attack.

But by what? She didn’t know. It had to be an angler seal. They were dangerous and had no qualms about attacking humans. Like cats, an angler seal would kill even if it had no intention of eating its victim, especially during the breeding season when males would preemptively eradicate all potential threats to their harems and females would do the same to any possible danger to their young.

She had a diving knife on her waist. She’d never had to use it for anything except cutting lines or prying rocks loose and clams open, but if she had to, she’d-

Something darted by in her peripheral vision. Lorena spun around, but all she saw was the wafting of the kelp. She looked back and the shadow was still there, poised at the outcropping in a manner very unlike a seal. Watching her. She looked back and caught a glimpse of something moving through the kelp stalks, a dappled grey-blue that blended into the water. Her first thought was that it was another person, maybe a free diver visiting the area and messing with her... but it was too fast for a human and she thought she saw a long tail that ended in a lunate crescent.

Lorena glanced back. The shape by the rocks was gone. Before she could even begin trying to understand what was out there, the chill deepened, making it feel like she was naked in polar waters. I’m being hunted.

She had to get out of here. She would have retreated into the kelp, but there was something in here, and it was faster than her. Instead, she kicked up and swam for the shadow of her boat up above. She’d barely made ten feet before something hit her in the back, knocking her sideways. Fire lanced down her side, but even more important was the realization that her air hose was cut. Red mist started to surrounded her and she knew it was her own blood. She drew her knife and spun, but there was only the rippling of the kelp as something vanished into the forest. Her eyes widened as near the bottom and, just for a second, she saw what looked like a face staring back at her. Bleeding and running out of air, she didn’t have time to ponder and Lorena kicked frantically for the surface. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw movement, impossibly fast, almost human in shape and then something grabbed her leg.

It felt like teeth sinking into the meat of her thigh, and Lorena swung blindly with the knife. She didn’t hit anything, but it forced her attacker to let go. The young woman didn’t look down. She didn’t dare. The boat was so close... Her free hand broke the surface and grabbed at the ladder behind the sloop. Her right leg felt like lead, but panic gave her strength and she started to climb out of the water-

Something grabbed her left ankle. It was a hand! Lorena screamed and kicked at her attacker with her bleeding right leg, but she couldn’t dislodge them. It was strong, too strong. She looped her left arm around the railing, howling as whatever had her tried harder to drag her back into the water. The knife!Her mind screamed at her.

She stabbed the hand holding her and it let go. Lorena scrambled up on the deck of Racing the Wind, pulling the ladder up behind her. Panting, she looked over the side. Bobbing a few meters from the sloop were a pair of young women, only their eyes above the water. Their skin was a blueish-grey and they stared with baleful hunger for several moments before vanishing back beneath the waves.

Lorena dragged herself towards a first aid kit, the deck slick with her own blood. Her right leg was shredded and cold numbness was spreading out from her back. She put a tourniquet around her thigh to stem the blood loss and pulled herself into the wheelhouse, grabbing the radio. “Mayday. This is Racing the Wind,” she said, rattling off her coordinates. “Mayday, mayday. I’ve been attacked by... I don’t know... Mayday...” she repeated before blood loss caught up with her and the world turned dark.

A rescue helicopter found Racing the Wind just in time; the sloop was holed below the water line and starting to sink. The official explanation was that it drifted into one of  Atta Loua’s reefs and began taking on water. Lorena Lapland was found barricaded in the wheelhouse and airlifted to Saint Mitchell Hospital. Her condition was deemed to be the result of a snake bite; ocean mambas were known to live in the area and they had a potent neurotoxin. In lower doses, it could cause temporary psychosis. She’d been bitten on the ankle, become disoriented and injured herself on rocks and reefs before managing to get out of the water.

“You were very lucky,” she was told several times.

As she lay in the hospital bed, looking at the scars on her right leg that she was still sure couldn’t really have come from a reef, she could only nod. “I guess I was.”