Chapter Fourteen

The Killer Imps

Piper was shaken by her big friend’s cryptic warning. Her curiosity of the Killer Imps had been piqued once more. With each passing day the GhostFin’s manner had grown more sullen, and the sizzling caution he had just uttered was the most he had spoken since entering the dark, moody waters. So she followed without question, and SlugFlukes was not displeased by it.

Soon they cruised through a murky sea, stained by a slimy ooze that felt alien to the water itself. SlugFlukes appeared somewhat accustomed to it, though Piper wriggled in discomfort at its very touch…her first experience of swimming through waters streaked with oil. A recent storm had stirred the sand and mud up from the bottom and strewn it all about. The surface was chilly and unpleasant, and the entire coastal region was still under a grim cloudy sky. It was a day that bore ill tidings.

It was not long before they heard the shrill piping of the Western WhistlingFin. SlugFlukes, having once again anticipated the difficulty Piper would feel in resisting the strong urge to follow, grunted a warning for her to contain herself. When the dolphins were a mile away, Piper echoed onto them. There were twelve playful Jumpers, light and sleek and active, very much like herself, the sort RamStrong used to chase away from Kwi Coast. They careened in the choppy surf as they cruised along the shoreline, the way Piper always had in the past. She grew restless and anxious.

Farther on, Piper and SlugFlukes sallied through the hazy sea until finally they saw the small pod. Piper’s first glimpse of the playful dolphins sent tremors of excitement through her. These were the first Whistlers she had caught sight of since she had watched Thane SilverFlukes paddling away from her the day her exile began. They were beautiful! She liked them instantly. A mad desire to follow swept through her; she wanted to swim with them, hunt, play—even drill if necessary—anything to be with her own kind again! What harm was there in what they were doing, where they were going? What doom? She could see nothing wrong here.

Once more the sage old gray whale anticipated Piper’s reaction. He rumbled another of his bleak warnings for her to stay by his side.

“But they are in no danger,” protested Piper testily. She beat her tail annoyingly at the loping swells that tussled them both about. “You must be mistaken, good SlugFlukes,” she said, wagging her beak back and forth.

“FOOL!” roared the old gray whale. “You know nothing of the evil in these waters! Do you think I have brought you here just to let you play with a band of silly SongFins?” His craggy head shook as he spoke, and the dull gray of his eyes swirled like a brooding storm. “They are doomed—do you understand? Doomed!” He thrashed his enormous flukes emphatically, causing a flurry of whirling eddies to fly out from its wake. The force of it sent Piper spinning sideways several times. For that instant she was frightened by the fury of her giant companion; but a benign look from the whale assured her it was only a chiding—that his patience had but worn thin.

“This little band is going to be slaughtered. They will die in the ambush the Killer Imps have prepared for them,” SlugFlukes said in a more subdued tone, for he saw that he truly had alarmed the youngster with his outburst.

“Why don’t you warn them?” asked Piper meekly.

“Because they never listen. They think SlugFlukes is a mad old fool who tells such tales because his tired brain has gone on too long. Do you think so too?” he boomed.

Piper wagged her head no.

“Ah…there we are,” said SlugFlukes. “You see that school of GillFin they are following?”

Piper looked and saw a swarm of brownish-red fish, all with bright yellow tails. She was puzzled. Were these the mighty Killer Imps the GhostFin spoke of with such awe? Why, they seemed hardly a match for the smaller GillFin she herself often hunted. Was the old GhostFin beyond his years? Had he gone mad, as she had thought of the old Commodore?

“What do the Killer Imps do to my kind?” Piper said quietly, not sure why she was asking.

“They slay them and eat them,” SlugFlukes said bluntly. “And they do other dread things that none in the sea can truly understand.” He thundered along, only some fifty yards from the streaking pod.

Piper trembled with growing perturbation, though not fully knowing why.

“There is much to learn here now,” he said. “Ask no more questions, but watch!”

So Piper followed in silence, confused by the perplexities of this great GhostFin and his cryptic words. They were roughly a hundred yards from a rocky shoreline that was being bombarded by an onslaught of sizzling breakers. The Jumping Whistlers were making for a small dark cove. They were closing on the odd yellow-tailed fish—and the spinner dolphins’ apparent lust for the meal reminded Piper of the Snag-Tooth horde that had descended upon the sinking orca carcass.

“The little yellow-tailed GillFin always swim into these shallows when the sea is angry,” said SlugFlukes. “The Imps know this. They also know that the SongFins will follow the GillFins in there, for the Killer Imps and the Jumping SongFin both feed on them.”

That explained the yellow-tails, thought Piper. But where were these deadly marauding Imps that SlugFlukes kept speaking of?

She did not have long to wait for the answer.

No sooner had the Jumpers zoomed into the shallows when suddenly the murky cove was swarming with Humunz—Land Dwellers who sprang out from behind the nearby rocks! Some of them swung large sticks and clubs that were thick and blunt; others wielded long, sharp poles.

Piper watched in horror at what she beheld next. The shrieking men scurried around in the shallows of the cove, jabbing their pointed sticks into the midst of the confused spinner dolphins, while those who bore the heavier sticks clubbed the helpless Whistlers over their heads. The pathetic cries of the trapped dolphins reached Piper as she huddled closer to SlugFlukes.

“I tried warning that very group,” muttered SlugFlukes. “They laughed at me. They said the Land Dwellers were their friends because their Floaters always led them to the best feeding zones, because they had seen the local Humunz hunting and killing the Snag-Tooth. Now see their friends,” he said gravely. “Do you believe the horror of the Killer Imps now, my little Eastern SongFin? Is old SlugFlukes so mad…eh? Or does he know the sea?”

Piper trembled. “Oh…SlugFlukes, I am so sorry for ever doubting you!” cried Piper. She could not bear the pitiful screams and whimpers of the tormented pod any longer—or the grisly howling of the predatory little fishermen. Her blood chilled, and for the first time in her life, Piper understood hate.

“Let us be gone,” said SlugFlukes, “for I have long been sickened by this.”

And the two turned and swam away from the Dark Cove.