Chapter Twelve

SlugFlukes

Even in its battered state the beast bore an air of majesty, the likes of which Piper had never beheld in any living creature. Over fifty feet in length, its vast gray bulk reminded her of the Floaters she used to play with in the Kwi Coast surf and, for some foolish reason, the young Whistler pictured herself cruising along the surface in a “bow-spurt” created by the GhostFin’s powerful thrashings.

Still, she was nervous. She had saved the creature’s life, but in its shaken state it may yet harbor hostility toward anything that dared approach it. So Piper held her distance and waited in the foaming murk. The GhostFin absolutely fascinated her. Its face, grizzled and aged, bore the same rumpled look as old RamStrong. Yet there was also an air of gentleness about this behemoth of the open waters. She felt sure of that. But she had just witnessed the gray giant sending a twenty-foot-long Hunter splattering to its death with but a single swipe of its flukes. She was loath to draw closer.

Then Piper felt a wave of impulses beaming softly into her head: a visual image of her valiant rescue. She saw once more how cleverly she had duped the killer whale pack…how she had outsmarted the big she-Hunter and drawn it into a coy trap. The sound waves echoing toward her were quiet and gentle. A sense of warmth swept through the young dolphin now. She felt proud. She wished QuickFin could have witnessed her actions here, for he would have seen that his advice had not gone unheeded. And what other Whistler of Kwi Coast—even old RamStrong himself—would have dared defy those yawning jaws of death? Even the mighty Snag-Tooth were leery of challenging the powerful HunterKin. And reminded suddenly of another danger, Piper glanced around and behind, but a quick scan showed that the Snag-Tooth scavengers had followed after the small group of Hunters, staying just far enough behind to be safe should the fierce orcas suddenly turn on them. Likely the Snag-Tooth were waiting for the wounded young bull to falter.

Though the GhostFin bled profusely and was spent from the deadly attack by the orcas, he was still far too formidable a target for these sharks, the largest of them twelve-foot lemons and blues. The great bulk of the gray giant and the might it still wielded in its huge flukes posed more danger than they cared to risk, despite their own numbers. The wounded orca swimming erratically behind the small group of its own HunterKin seemed a more pragmatic victim. So they followed, waiting for the young bull to fall farther behind.

Piper now saw that it was through guile and cunning that one survived in the Open Sea—much more than through brute strength, or even speed. The blind fears which had previously plagued her throughout her exile had faded, and she felt herself filling with a sense of pride as she relived the rescue of the GhostFin. She had never realized she possessed such courage.

Then the young Whistler heard a gravelly voice that rumbled like the roll of distant thunder.

“Come, little friend, there is nothing to fear in me.”

It was the first friendly sound Piper had heard since she’d been cast out from Kwi Coast. So she forsook all sense of caution, trusting to the giant’s gentle tone, and fluttered in closer, trilling quietly in delight. The massive head of the GhostFin appeared to her like a craggy sea cliff, a shining orb peering out wistfully from either side. The gray whale waited patiently for a response.

“I…I am called Piper,” she squeaked softly, awed by the huge angular face that studied her with interest. Such intelligence she had never sensed in the presence of another living being. How could the HunterKin even think of slaying—worst of all—feeding on such a stately creature? For were not the BigFins and HunterKin and WhistlingFin all Spurters…all of the same lot? True, all those who dwelled in the sea must feed, but…

“You are different from the SongFins I have known in these waters,” rumbled the gray giant as a parade of huge bubbles burst out from his wide blowhole. “You’ve come far, for I have seen your breed only in the Eastern Seas.”

Piper was charmed by that name: “SongFins.” Was that what the WhistlingFin were called here? It pleased her. But the GhostFin spoke of her home as the Eastern Seas. Had she truly traveled so far that her own LongBeaked breed was rare in these waters? Piper had no sense of how far across the mighty Pacific she had gone. It was more than her young mind could conceive at the moment. But it mattered not. She had found a friend—one whose mighty presence overwhelmed her. She was especially taken with the GhostFin’s immense lower jaw, so much out of proportion with the upper half. And the whale’s stern snout fairly amused her, for it looked more like the rough prow of a large Floater. Piper felt sure that, in a rage, this BigFin, whose lower jaw alone dwarfed the largest of Whistlers, was capable of smashing a Floater to bits! He would make a terrible enemy.

She spoke again, cautiously and with all the courtesy she could muster. “How do you feel now…after your terrible fight with those HunterKin?”

The answer, of course, was quite obvious, for the deep gashes along his eyes and mouth bled freely, causing streams of discolored dark green blood to mix with the gray waters around him. His movements were erratic, due to his fins and flukes having been ravaged. But the GhostFin remained poised.

“Oh, I am much better now than earlier,” he said in a booming, humorous voice. “And make no mistake, little SongFin, eh…Piper—if not for your courage and wit…” He did not finish the thought.

Piper ruffled her flukes in pleasure, mildly embarrassed by his praise.

“I am curious how you have come to be here, this far from your Eastern Seas—and all alone,” the whale continued. “But as your need for air is greater than mine, we might best find our way above the waves first, mmm?”

Piper was relieved, for her lungs felt as if they might burst at any moment. So, together, whale and dolphin soared for the surface. Piper broke the waves in her usual flamboyance, careening high into the air while tossing herself over in an elegant back flip. Meanwhile, the old whale smashed through the rolling swells, causing a mountainous waterfall of foaming blue. He blew a gusty spray of vapor and water out from his blowhole, which rose at least ten feet into the afternoon air. He watched Piper silently, thinking that she was indeed a coastal SongFin, though that seemed unusual for her LongBeak breed. She seemed to bear many of the traits and antics of the Jumping SongFins who roamed the Open Seas and often frequented these very western waters.

Above the surface, the two cetacean cousins resumed their thoughts together.

“My name is SlugFlukes, aptly so for my slowness. That is why the HunterKin find me such tempting prey. We GhostFins keep a lagging pace, at best. And as you saw, our skills as fighters are limited to lucky swipes with our tails…or a good head-on ramming. It is not often we are fortunate enough to strike as I did, with your help. But when we do, it reminds those killing brutes of our might…and for a brief while they lose their stomach for the fight.”

SlugFlukes spoke as slowly as he moved; his grinding voice sounded like a great freighter cranking up in port, every word being uttered from his blowhole with a meticulous deliberation. “There are few of my kind left in the sea. Quite possibly, I may even be the last of them still here in these waters. And if not for your courage, little SongFin…Well, in time, I shall repay that kindness.”

Piper wagged her white-lined forehead back and forth, the two cross-marks on her brow fairly twitching as she spoke. “There is nothing to repay, eh…SlugFlukes. Any SongFin would have—”

“No, my little white-finned beauty,” said SlugFlukes, regarding her with quiet admiration. “I have long roamed these Western Seas, and have visited the Eastern Seas too. The SongFins of the East are a brasher breed than the more timid ones here—but make no mistake: not any of your kind would have acted so boldly. And though you might say you did so merely for the sake of companionship, what old SlugFlukes feels is truly in your heart cannot be hid.”

Piper was amazed how much this magnificent giant could perceive. How could the HunterKin—with all their supposed intelligence—fail to recognize the wonder of such a creature? This huge Spurter might easily have taken her help for granted and abandoned her to the mercy of the enraged pack. But he had stayed to protect her, knowing well that his tormentors might have resumed their attack, or signaled help from others of their own not far off. Theirs was a breed renowned for its fierce pride and rarely did the HunterKin depart without their quarry. For like any other creatures of the sea, they too needed to eat. Piper felt certain they’d have taken it out on her for foiling their hunt, had the GhostFin not remained.

And now this SlugFlukes, as he called himself, wanted to befriend her. For the first time since her exile from Kwi Coast, the young Whistler felt comforted. She welcomed the gray whale’s friendship—and his protection. She had not forgotten that last threat from the large orca bull. And she felt sure such fierce creatures did not bluff.

“How is it you have strayed so far from your Pod…Piper?” asked SlugFlukes, interrupting her thoughts. “SongFins, as I know them, rarely travel alone…especially so far.”

The GhostFin’s eyes sparked with a glow of wisdom gathered over many seasons. Piper felt certain he was older than Commodore RamStrong or the other Pod Elders. She wanted to tell SlugFlukes everything—her loves, her hopes, her fears…there was nothing she wanted to hide, for she could learn much from him. So she nodded, and together they dove beneath the waves, making a bizarre pair indeed.

And Piper told her tale.

She spoke to him of Kwi Coast, and of Commodore RamStrong, and of her Pod’s strange Code. And as she explained the dark fears the Clan held of the Snag-Tooth—and what LoFin the Rover had told her of those fearful scavengers that plagued the weak and the wounded—the lumbering old whale, still bleeding from his many cuts, wished the SongFin would hurry on to another part of her story. He knew the porpoise was accurate in its knowledge of the toothy predators…and that it was only his great size and strained efforts to bear the pain by swimming casually, that kept a distant trailing dozen of the silent killers from soaring in and having at them.

The GhostFin had scanned their almost magical emergence earlier and had tried not to give off any telltale distress signals, absorbing himself, instead, more fully in Piper’s remarkable story. He listened with great interest as she spoke of her brother, QuickFin. Her obvious love for him made the old whale sad as he guessed how much she dearly missed him. And it was with amusement that SlugFlukes listened to her go on about Buffer and the mixed opinions she had voiced of the swaggering young bull’s odd courtship. It made him think back to well over forty seasons…when he had courted a young she-gray in the topsy-turvy way in which only youth can blunder so gracefully. This, too, made SlugFlukes sad. For he also recalled the fate of that young gray, and how he still mourned her.

They paddled on over towering oceanic mountain ranges and cloven valleys and long undersea meadows. Sometimes they rolled to the surface to breathe, and Piper noticed SlugFlukes did not need to do that as often as she did. But most of the time they stayed beneath the waves and enjoyed the dazzling frontier of the sea. And as they passed through a colored fog of drifting seaweed and floating algae, Piper quietly mentioned the dreadful Black Waters—and the terrible Cold Lord, Arkitu, who “ruled the sea’s abysmal depths.”

For the first time since she had begun her tale, SlugFlukes reacted, giving a strong shake of his big flippers. He seemed about to interrupt, but then thought better of it. Piper took it as a sign that it might be best not to discuss the Cold Lord too much, especially here in the midst of the Great Sea with nightfall not far off. So she moved on to the tragic attack on the Basker and how she had come to be banished for her “treachery against the Pod.”

SlugFlukes grew especially somber during this part of the tale. The account of the Basker fascinated him more than anything else. Never in his lifetime had he heard of such a Clan of SongFins. What cruel reasoning, he thought, could warrant casting a young innocent like this gentle creature to the mercy of unknown terrors? Why, this barely half-grown SongFin knew almost nothing of a world in which she should have been romping freely her entire young life. Who would ever believe that a band of intelligent SongFins could be foolish enough to isolate themselves—and near a cove, of all places. And to entertain such mad superstitions…that was not at all like their breed.

“Well I must say, Piper, this pod of yours is quite, eh…rare,” rumbled the old whale as they rose above the surf and glimpsed a flock of frigate seabirds soaring toward the red of the setting sun.

“Was LoFin right, SlugFlukes?” asked Piper eagerly. “Was she right about the Snag-Tooth? Are they really just mindless scrap eaters?”

“Well, eh…hmph! Not really. That is, not entirely,” said SlugFlukes.

Piper felt dejected. Wasn’t there anyone who knew the truth about them?

“That is,” continued SlugFlukes, “your friend the Rover is not entirely wrong, either. It’s just that the Snag-Tooth are indeed rather crafty hunters. They have roamed these seas even longer than my kind—or any other Spurter, for that matter.”

Piper remembered LoFin mentioning something of that sort, but the Rover had not seemed particularly clear on it. The porpoise had told her of things she had heard; the old gray whale, who had seen so much more, spoke of what he knew.

“Why, once the Snag-Tooth were masters of the seas!” boomed SlugFlukes.

Piper was shocked to hear that.

“There were even some that grew to be as large as me—even bigger!” he emphasized huskily, flaunting his massive fifty-foot frame.

And with that, Piper thought back to the giant of a Snag-Tooth that had stalked her weeks earlier. She shuddered. What had SlugFlukes just said? That the Snag-Tooth were once masters of the seas? Wasn’t that what old RamStrong had always feared? Now she was truly confused. Did the Snag-Tooth want their “rule” back? And was it the Spurters that had overthrown the Snag-Tooth so long ago? Did the Snag-Tooth now want revenge?

“But that was all long ago, before the time of even my eldest ancestors,” said SlugFlukes, aware he may have frightened the youngster terribly—for he caught the look of horror on her thin face. So he felt it best not to tell her that he had seen the White Giants of the Snag-Tooth race, some as large as the HunterKin—some even larger. Large enough so he himself would have fled them.

And Piper, in her eagerness to befriend the GhostFin, had left out certain parts of her odyssey…including the monster that had followed her. Such things, like her terror of the dreadful Black Waters, were too frightening for her to yet speak of completely. Despite her resistance to the ways of Kwi Coast, Piper had still succumbed to the strength of many dark fears that had been implanted in her since birth.

SlugFlukes widened his mouth like a yawning sea cavern. Streams of filmy baleen draped down from his upper jaw while he took in a generous heap of drifting little krill creatures, the first of many batches he would feed on. It was necessary for so large a beast to feed often, for it took massive portions of his miniature prey to nourish his forty-ton frame.

He continued his tale after he strained the gobs of tiny delicacies from between the filters of his fiber-like baleen strands, then spewed out the water. “It is likely that the early Snag-Tooth resented the coming of the first Spurters, for it brought to the seas a greater cunning. Now there was more to survival than natural hunting skills, for the Spurters had an edge over all the GillFins—including the Snag-Tooth. Many of the sea resented the early Spurters. They thought of our kind as freaks that belonged back on the land, since we have to rise to the surface to breathe…so it is to this very day. ‘HalfGills’ they called us. Intruders! And when the Snag-Tooth saw that these ‘intruders’ nearly matched them in size—for the Snag-Tooth back then grew far larger than those of today—they felt threatened. Even some that roam the seas now are thought to feel that way about us. And it is no lie about those silent killers being a cruel and ruthless lot who bask in their power over weaker beings. Just look at their harsh hunting ways.”

SlugFlukes paused a moment, as though he was reconsidering his next thoughts. And while he did, Piper marveled at how much of what he had said so closely paralleled the very words of LoFin. Her respect for the chatty Rover increased. And though the porpoise clearly was not as versed on the lore of the sea as SlugFlukes, she still knew more about it than all the supposed learned minds of Kwi Coast. Never again would Piper doubt LoFin’s wisdom.

“What about the Great Invasion, SlugFlukes?” asked Piper.

“Oh, I don’t foresee any sort of war the Snag-Tooth might be planning. No, your roving friend was right about that—the Snag-Tooth would only wind up quarrelling so much among one another they would probably chew each other to bits in one of their Mad-Eating crazes. And that, my fine SongFin, is nothing to scoff at. It is one of the few times you will actually see them band together. It is a fiendish lust for blood that draws them, along with the frantic sounds of those expected to bleed. That is what lures them into those terrible ‘Fury Packs,’ as your Commodore calls them… not revenge or any desire to rule the sea. The Snag-Tooth cannot control their madness any more than they would be able to settle down long enough to organize themselves.”

SlugFlukes’ scarred face grew very dark and his gray eyes flashed coldly again. “But I caution you, Piper…Do not underestimate their cunning! Whether it’s a lone Snag-Tooth or a small band that has even accidentally grouped together, all are as sly and dangerous as a pack of HunterKin. They may be wild and unruly, even simple, but they are not stupid!”

Piper trembled as SlugFlukes pounded in that last point. “Then there really is no cause to quarrel with them, is there?” She snared a small herring as she spoke, twisting it deftly in her long mouth, then swallowed it in a twinkling.

“Of course not,” grumbled SlugFlukes. “Nor was there cause for your brute of a Commodore to order your Pod to slay the Basker you told me of. That creature was no more menace to you than I am. Your clan was behaving more like HunterKin, not SongFins!” rumbled SlugFlukes. And as he spoke the last few words, his gentle old features seemed almost to twist into a scowl. The gray whale’s barnacle-crusted face flushed with a dark wave of anger, and his fins tightened. “And as for your terrible Black Waters, I suspect where that folly has come from, too.”

The young dolphin bristled uncomfortably at that. SlugFlukes noticed and softened his tone.

“All I can say, Piper, is that there are indeed many dreadful creatures and queer mysteries that lurk in the Cold Depths—where the SongFin should not venture anyway—but in my entire life, I have never known of a ‘Lord Arkitu who rules them all.’ ”

Of all the GhostFin had reflected on, only the Black Waters maintained the same frightful effect on the superstitious youngster. And though it did her well to hear old SlugFlukes scoff at much of it, Piper knew that, by the dark of night, it would take more than their talk here to quell such inbred fears.

“SlugFlukes?” called Piper, as they surfaced again. She fluttered nervously, wondering if she were asking too many questions. She could see the old GhostFin was tired and that his wounds bothered him a good deal more than he let on. She had noticed him scanning the distance earlier, likely for signs of the band of roving Snag-Tooth that had picked up on his trail of blood. But the scavenging pack seemed to have gone on in search of smaller, easier prey. She sensed the old whale’s pain as she scanned in directly on his movements.

“Is it the HunterKin, then, that we…SongFins need fear most? Are they our greatest threat? After all, they hunt and kill other Spurters and…nearly slew you, and…” Piper stumbled over her own words, not knowing quite how to say what she was thinking. “I mean, I’m sure the HunterKin have slain many GhostFins and SongFins and Rovers…”

SlugFlukes grew silent and pensive. He stopped. They were about twenty feet below the surface, directly beneath a swarm of globby jellyfish whose thousands of colors defied imagination. He gazed squarely at her with one of his great oval eyes and regarded her thoughtfully.

“No, my brave little SongFin,” he said softly. “Our worst enemies are the Killer Imps. There is nothing in all the seas so foul and cruel as they.” SlugFlukes paused, his broad, weathered face looking as if it were holding back a silent scream of rage. “They murdered my entire Pod.”