LOW TIDE

LOW TIDE, by Conor DiViesti, Artwork by Carol Wellart

It was the last week of the low tide and the foreman was waiting for him. Horace limped back to camp alone, dragging the empty crab net behind him as first light crept over the horizon. Pools of quivering, tepid saltwater splashed beneath his feet and he stumbled more than once over the stinking seaweed that blanketed the barren rock.

“What the hell did you do to him, Horace?” the foreman growled as he approached. Horace spat and sat on the store-hut steps, the rotten wood bending underneath.

“I didn’t do nothing,” he said, using the uneducated speech of the crabmen. When he’d first arrived, the manner was forced. Once an awkward covering of his refined accent, it now felt as natural as his salt burned skin and wet feet.

“Look at him!” The foreman pointed to where Blue Pete hugged the railing, his boyish body shaking like a wet cat. What the hell did the foreman expect? Blue Pete was too young to be a watcher.

“The kid saw something in the dark and ran,” said Horace.

“An adult?” said the foreman, referring to the largest crabs, big enough to crush a man into jam with their anvil sized claws.

Horace shook his head.

“Said he saw a savage.”

The eyes that gave the kid his name were still wide with fear. Horace couldn’t say he blamed the boy. After a man went missing last month and was found tied to a rock with his insides hanging out, they’d all been spooked. Another reminder to Horrace of how far from his cultivated home he was. On these unmapped shores, men were as wild as the things that crawled up from the seabed.

“Ask me, it was driftwood,” said Horace.

“I know what I saw!” Blue Pete’s voice reminded Horace of the gulls. He hated him more for it. Blue Pete hugged the rail closer. “I ain’t going out again.”

After the dressing down, Horace made his way to the store hut to put away his gear. Tonight’s empty catch meant he’d have to bring in double tomorrow to pay for the use of his net and chainmail. They were, the foreman liked to remind him, the property of the Royal Crab Company.

Horace stepped out of the store-hut with a mind to head for the grog house and enjoy his treasured time to wallow.

The crooked door had barely banged shut behind him when something moved fast in the grey sunlight. Before he could shout, a hand clasped Horace’s mouth and threw him onto his back. Horace looked up into a thin and cruel face. His gut went to liquid as he saw the dawning light swim over molted crab-shell armour and felt the cold bite of the knife at his throat.

“This him?” said the savage, her words like the lapping tide.

God no, he thought. They’ve found me.

“Aye, that’s him.” The familiar voice tugged him back into his past, to the man he’d once been.

A second figure stepped into view. The savage hoisted Horace to his shaking feet, her green eyes piercing into him for a moment before letting him free.

“Horace, is it?” said the man who’d once been Horace’s closest aide. He held out a hand.

Horace considered running, though to where he couldn’t say. If his old life could follow him here, was there anywhere safe from his shame?

“Aye,” said Horace, taking his hand. “And you?”

“Desmond,” he said.

His name was not Desmond, as Horace’s name was not Horace. They’d been different men once. Proud men with known names. Names prefaced with titles like sir and lord. That had been years ago, before the battle. Before his failure and the trial.

Before the escape.

“Why in hell did you come here?” Horace breathed. “It’s too dangerous for us to be in the same place.”

“My dear captain,” said Desmond, squeezing Horace’s blistered hand until he almost cried out. “It’s time for you to make things right.”

###

Horace watched the savage, Severa of the Thick Claw, eat seaweed with her fingers from a woven net. The fire Desmond had kindled cracked and popped between them. They’d taken him into the tideland, away from camp and spoken not a word.

The day was crawling on. Soon the crabmen would be lining up for sunset rollcall back at camp.

“You ready to talk?” Horace asked. He found that he couldn’t look long at Desmond’s face. It brought up too much. Shame and guilt. Laughing memories of better times. Worst of all, the ghost of his old pride that died when his failure forced them both into hiding. “The hell are you doing here?”

Desmond threw a wet stick into the fire. It hissed and screamed. “Did you hear about the run that the Arbiter made this way?”

Horace nodded. The Arbiter was a navy sloop dispatched past the low tide to raid against the savages. Word was it went down with all hands in a storm barely more than a week ago.

“Met one of her crew in Old Port still stinking of salt,” said Desmond. “Claimed to be the sole surviving hand. Good drinker, real navy.”

“I said, what are you doing here? You’re not stupid, so I know you understand how much danger you’ve put us in by coming.”

Desmond spat into the fire and kept talking.

“Said they’d captured a horde of treasure from the savages. Jewels clear as the moon. Showed me one, he did. The colour of fresh cream.”

“Great treasure,” said Severa. “Black Shell people are very wealthy.”

Horace could see where his old aide was going. It was insanity, the last desperate gasp of a man who’d been forced to the edge of the world. And it was his own fault.

I’m sorry, he wanted to say. I’m sorry and I want to make things right, but this won’t work.

Instead, “You’ve gone mad,” was what he said. “There’s no way we’d be able to find the wreck, and the tide is almost returned.” He turned to Severa as she slurped a ball of seaweed. “And her people will gut you before you get a mile in.”

She bared her seaweed clogged teeth.

“Please,” said Horace, standing. “Let me go back.”

“To the bloody company?” said Desmond, his voice gone hard. “God in heaven. You were my captain. Now look at you, digging in the muck for crabs.”

Horace looked at his feet.

“You owe me after what you did,” said Desmond. “You owe the three-hundred men of your command that are laying under the waves on the other side of the world. But I’m the only one left.” He turned back to the fire, letting bare the thing Horace spent every moment trying to forget. “Doing right by me will have to do.”

The battle. His life defining mistake, leading the King’s flagship into an ambush. His cowardice in fleeing the ship while his men fought and died on the blood-soaked deck.

He thought he’d been doing the right thing. The best of a terrible choice. He’d had a future then, a woman he’d planned to marry. How could he leave her to grieve and suffer in poverty if he died?

Lies. He’d simply been afraid. He’d lost her anyway during the trial for his dereliction. No one stays with a man decried by a kingdom as a coward and a traitor.

Except for Desmond. The man in front of Horace now, asking him to go searching the tidelands for treasure. The man who’d helped him escape into exile.

“It won’t work,” said Horace. “I’m so sorry, but it’s a fool’s errand.”

Desmond cocked his head, looking like the younger version of himself that Horace had known in officer’s school. “The sailor that survived the Arbiter was a gambling man,” he said. “Though not much of one after the gin. You remember how I play, don’t you? Cold. Razor sharp. The boy wouldn’t put up that cream-coloured jewel of his, unfortunately.” Desmond reached down into his jacket. “But he did have this.”

He tossed something into the dirt that landed hard, gleaming in the firelight. Horace recognized the small circlet. A captain’s seal. He’d had his own during the service. The firelight danced over the navy motto.

To death, loyal.

“The captain of the Arbiter went down with his ship, Horace,” said Desmond. “You use your ken on that and Severa here will guide us through the tideland to the Arbiter.”

Horace felt the pull of his God-given gift in his chest. The captain’s soul was practically begging him through the object. The gift of the ken had set him apart as one of the highest in the King’s service. It was also the thing that had led him into the ambush and cost him everything. An entire life. An entire person buried under the weight of years of exile and failure.

As a captain, the ken helped him lead his crew away from the deep’s dangers. Out of reach from swirling, trunk-thick tentacles and snapping jaws. Shown him where to strike at the pirates and brigands that harried His Majesty’s sea-lanes. Then, at the height of his country’s praise and admiration, it beckoned him into oblivion. The ken showed him a single outlaw sloop hugged into the waves by the weight of stolen wealth. Instead he found a sea-wall of enemy oak bristling with black cannons wailing at the horizon like wolfs’ snouts.

He hadn’t dared use the ken since.

Yet it could work. He could repay Desmond for his loyalty. He could clear his name, if not with the King than at least with his last remaining seaman and, God forgive him, himself.

Or the ken would betray him again, leading him and Desmond into death and starvation. The words settled it. To death, loyal.

“Okay,” said Horace. He bent down and picked up the seal. “Let’s go.”

###

The royal censors believed that fewer than one in one hundred thousand are born with the ken. There have been theories about its nature, but none made sense to Horace. What he knew, as one in one hundred thousand, was that it connected him with the souls of the living and the dead.

That, Horace knew, was as ugly a description as could be. Hold an object and the ken could show the gifted where those close to it were or had been. They could feel the owner’s intention as if it was his own. It made men and women like Horace great captains, detectives, and leaders.

But the ken could be fickle, Horace knew. The three hundred men of his command resting in the ocean knew it as well.

Horace took the captain’s seal in his hand at midday, after the savage had led them to some arbitrary rock she professed to be safe.

“In the service we did this alone,” Horace said.

“I want to watch your devilry,” said Severa of the Thick Claw. “Fake magic. Only the Mother beneath the rock has the true gift.”

“Speak of devilry,” said Horace under his breath, thinking of the disemboweled man they’d found. Everyone knew what the savages did to appease their heathen god.

“Do it,” said Desmond.

The desperation in Desmond’s voice pulled at threads of memory in Horace’s mind. He thought of his own journey to these barren shores. Two years of stowing away in rotting hulls, clutching his own body as half-drowned rats scurried over him and tore his flesh. He remembered deals done in the dark for passage farther from harm. The feeling of fear at night when a tree branch rapped against the window of an inn, echoing the point of a bounty-hunter’s knife.

What had Desmond suffered in those years because of him? Horace thumbed the seal and closed his eyes.

The ken was not slow, it never was.

He felt the bone shaking crunch of cannon fire on the shore. Men and women in crab shell armour torn to pieces. He tasted salt and sweat and the thrill of command. The savages they’d hired as guides rushed to settle ancient scores with the conquered tribe. His own men sang as they hauled heaps of jewels from the burning village. He had one in his hand that shone brighter than all. The colour of a dark green wave.

His crew was blood-drunk from the victory, delirious with rousing fantasies about how they’d spend the spoils. None noticed the stars had go out behind a cold cloud. Then the rain and the thrashing, shredding the mainsail like grapeshot. Panic as men struggled to keep the Arbiter afloat. She keeled and pitched. The splintering crack of wood and rope carrying off limbs. Twisted faces of men he’d known for years flashing in the thunderclap. Silent screams carried off by the mad gale. There was fear and then nothing.

“I know the direction,” said Horace. He pointed out to the west. “Desmond, I saw it,” he said. “A dark green orb, enough for us to live easy for the rest of our lives. You were right.” Desmond smiled back.

“Warmth and luxury. We’ll be on a beach in Sartoga soon enough.”

A world of possibility shone before Horace’s eyes. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this was his chance, both to right the wrongs of his past and get out of the crab infested tidelands for good.

Severa spat. “Bad country,” she said. “The people out there are killers.”

“I hired you to get us through,” Desmond said. “Tell me it can be done.”

She turned to Horace. “It is as you say it is, dark and green and beautiful?” Horace nodded.

“It can be done.”

###

The route over the tidelands was painfully slow. The savage considered every passage with bone-grinding patience. She cursed at them for each clumsy splash or stubbed toe. Horace grew sick of it. A lousy guide.

As the sun began to burn red and set, Severa stopped them with a flash of her hand.

“What is it now?” Desmond asked.

Horace watched two shapes move against the rock ahead of them. Their crab shell armour blended so well with their surroundings that Horace flinched as the two men rose.

Then their hands moved to the knives at their belt.

“What do we do?” Horace asked, his voice tight.

“Do nothing,” said Severa. “They are foraging. If we make no threat, they may let us pass.”

“What if they don’t?” said Desmond. His hand touched the pistol at his hip.

“I said do nothing!” said Severa. “Stay here.”

Horace watched the way her toes touched the rock before each step. She seemed to scuttle over the ocean floor. The savages looked at each other as Severa held up an open palm to them.

“You led us to this direction,” Desmond said to Horace, the accusation hanging in his words. Another ambush.

“The savage brought us here, not me,” said Horace. “And you asked me to use the ken, so I did!” Fear bloomed in Horace. Had he done it again?

“There’s nothing to it now,” said Desmond. “Do as the savage said, be quiet.”

Severa spoke with the savages in their clicking, watery language. She gestured to Horace and Desmond. Their voices grew louder. Horace feared things had gone sour, but after a few words they calmed again. Severa turned to them, the smile on her face looking strange after her usual demeanor.

“Come,” she said. “Greet them.”

The savages were as rough looking as Severa. Their faces were cracked and salt stained, their beards soaking and their smiles thin and toothless.

“You know these lads?” Horace asked.

“Their people and mine had bad blood before,” she said. “In my absence it appears we’ve become friends again.”

There was a heaviness to that word. Absence. The tone was familiar to Horace and it made him uncomfortable.

“Thought they all hated us,” said Desmond.

“They do,” said Severa. “Look how empty their nets are.”

“And that’s our fault?” Horace asked.

Severa nodded.

One of the savages produced a small bag of crab shells from his belt.

“Their people’s shells,” said Severa. “The touch will bring us together.” The savage handed the bag to Severa, who felt its weight before passing it to Desmond. Horace shrugged and held out his hand.

The ken rushed through him the moment the shells touched his flesh. As it pulled him down, panic took him. Only once before, in the battle, had it called on its own.

The smell of cleaned shell was heavy in his nose as he crawled over the ridge. He saw the enemy. Two ironmakers and one of the Thick Claw standing a mere spear’s throw away. Proof that the Thick Claw had gone against their word and sided with the invaders. Spilling their blood would please the Mother beneath the rock. The fools were so distracted by Urolla and Const that they would never see the attack coming.

He stood and raised his spear.

“Starboard side!” Horace called. “Boarder!” Desmond spun around on instinct. The savage stood, his spear cocked.

Desmond drew the pistol and fired. Hot gun smoke burned the damp air. Horace felt his neck crack backward as something hit him. A twisted face burst through the smoke, rage burning in the man’s eyes. The savage pinned Horace against the wet ground. His vision flashed.

A knife raised.

Something hit the savage in the neck and his eyes bulged. Hot blood showered Horace, almost pleasant in the cold, itching wet. Severa kicked the man over and lunged at the other.

Horace rolled in a daze and saw Desmond slam the butt of his pistol into a skull. Horace spat blood and tried to stand.

A shout in the smoke. One of them had Desmond on the ground. Horace drew a shelling knife and stabbed blindly, hoping to hit something. The knife slid over crabshell before finding flesh under the arm. The savage threw his elbow into Horace’s nose. He reeled and tried to tear the savage free, but the man felt like stone. Horace watched as the savage tore from Desmond’s grip and put a knife in his ribs.

Horace was failing again.

The savage choked and fell. Desmond scrambled free, back resting against a rock. The savage had no new wound but rolled on the ground as if in a fit. Foam bubbled at his mouth. His eyes stared up at the cloudy sky.

“No! Look away!” Severa shouted.

Desmond and Horace turned to see their guide walk over the last bodies.

“What’s wrong with him?” Desmond asked between ragged breathes. “I did not strike him.” Horace approached, heart still racing from the fight.

Horace heard something crack and the man’s mouth hung at a gut-turning angle. The sounds he made was like bubbling waves receding from the shore. Severa pushed Horace back.

“No, no, no. Why did you come out here?” she said to the twisting man. She snapped back to Horace like a snake. “I said look away!”

“What the hell is going…” Severa drew a knife at Horace.

“Look away, or I swear I’ll kill you. Your magic be damned.”

The ramrod clattered by Desmond’s side as he aimed the loaded pistol at Severa.

“Step back, savage,” he said.

She looked at him, cruel eyes wondering if she could make it to him before the pistol-ball made it to her. The gurgling savage on the ground went silent.

Something moved under the corpse’s teeth.

First, the legs reached out, scraping at the man’s teeth and lips. Then the carapaces and the claws, flecked with blood. A bundle of limbs blossomed over the tongue. Ten crabs, each no bigger than a king’s coin, scuttled from the man’s mouth. The creatures spun in all directions, scattering amongst the rocks and disappearing underneath.

Severa fell to her knees, bobbing softly and speaking as if in prayer. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she said. “They’ve seen it.”

###

She had not made it easy, but Severa finally succumbed to bindings. As they continued toward the wreck, Severa made grunting noises through her gag but Horace and Desmond gave her no notice.

The horror of what they’d seen had shaken them. Horace now believed everything he’d ever heard about the savages. They consorted with devils, surely.

Still, neither man had the stomach to kill her and they feared letting her go and tell tales to the other savages.

As they neared the wreck of the Arbiter, Horace stopped them.

“What is it?” Desmond asked. “We’re close, aren’t we?”

“When the savages attacked,” said Horace. “I saw them first through the ken.”

“Aye, and a smart move, that.”

“No, you don’t understand. It was out of my control.”

He’d said similar words years ago at the trial. The judges hadn’t believed the excuse then, nor had Desmond. None but Horace had ever said the ken could disobey command, much less lead the captain of the fleet’s flagship into an ambush.

Desmond sighed and touched the bandage at his side. “When this is done,” he said, “and we each have our share of the fortune. You will go your way, and I will go mine. I’ve had enough of you.”

Horace saw himself as Desmond did, protecting his bets. If the jewel weren’t there, he could say the ken had lied to him. The captain could again relinquish all responsibility. That sentiment would make Horace hate a man too.

Only he wasn’t lying, and he feared that he was again leading Desmond to danger.

Severa grunted beside them. “Almost through,” said Desmond. “Once we have what we need, we’ll let you go.”

“Desmond,” Horace said as they continued. “Something isn’t right.”

“It’s you,” said Desmond. “You’re afraid.”

###

The Arbiter lay sprawled on its side, the incoming tide lapping at its beams. Green things grew on its rotting frame and at the mouths of the black cannons that yawned at the sky.

They prodded Severa forward, nearly breaking into a run with excitement. Their joy soon turned sour as they searched the hull from prow to stern. They found nothing save the rotting corpses of the crew, half eaten and dissolving from moisture. How long had it been since the ship went down? Two weeks perhaps? Fear clutched Horace’s bones as he thought of the possibility that the captain’s body had been swept away or devoured by scuttling crabs.

None of the corpses they’d found were the captain’s, nor did they find anything of worth. Least of all the sea-green jewel.

Severa laughed as she sat on the deck and watched them return from each cabin empty handed. She rolled her head back on to the upturned gunny and looked at the night sky.

“Use the ken,” said Desmond. “I don’t want to hear about your misgivings. Use it.” He handed Horace the captain’s seal. Horace took it and reached his mind inside. He braced for the tide of feeling.

Nothing came.

“There’s nothing,” he said. “It isn’t… I can’t feel anything.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Desmond.

“Why would I?” Horace shouted. “I’ve come this far with you! If I go back to camp, they’ll try me as a deserter. I’m telling you I cannot feel anything.”

“Do it again.”

“You don’t understand,” said Horace. “It’s never felt like this. It’s like trying to break the surface of water but finding no end to it. There’s… nothing.”

Desmond walked forward and grabbed him by the neck. “Stop it, coward. God help me, I should’ve left you to hang.” His voice was shaking. “What am I to do now?”

“Mhmhm!”

Severa was turned away from the ship, jerking her head off into the darkness.

Desmond let Horace go and the two ran to the edge. Horace lifted an oil lamp. Pale light swept over the dry ocean floor, reflecting off the pools and glistening rocks.

Something moved near the boat. Lamplight caught black eyes buried in a horse-sized carapace that rose from the muck as ten massive legs crept out in the dark. In the crab’s claws it pulled a carcass. The body’s clothes were nearly dissolved but were darker than the uniforms they’d found on the other bodies.

Might have once been captain’s blue.

“That could be him,” said Horace. “Maybe the jewel is on the body.”

The crab stopped a moment to nibble on the corpse.

“How in hell do we get close to that?”

“Mhmhm!” Severa shook her head at them. Desmond leaned forward and removed her gag. She coughed and spat.

“I can get it,” she said. “Unbind me!”

“That thing will cut you to ribbons,” said Desmond.

“They are the Mother’s children,” said Severa. “We have a different relation with them than you.”

“We saw,” said Horace, thinking of the crabs crawling out of the dead savage. “Maybe she’s right. These people might have their own kind of ken with the crabs.”

“I don’t trust her,” said Desmond. “There’s something wicked about her that I should’ve considered before I’d hired her.”

Horace watched the crab as it receded further from the light. He didn’t trust Severa either, not after what he’d seen and the knife she’d bared at him, but they were so close.

The jewel was there, and it was the only thing that could make things right with Desmond.

“Let her do it,” said Horace. “The savages attacked her as well, perhaps she didn’t set the trap. She wants her cut as much as you and I.”

Severa nodded viciously. Desmond drew his knife, hesitated. He pulled the pistol from his belt and cut her bindings.

She was over the side so fast that Horace feared she had taken to escape. Then she slowed, approaching the crab with her hands out. The beast dropped the body and reared its claws in a show of posture.

Words floated through the dark as Severa spoke to it. Her legs crept forward toward the body, eyes always on the crab.

Desmond took aim the with the pistol. Severa’s hands slid into the dead captain’s coat.

Her arm came away and her hand glinted dark and green against the lamplight.

“She’s got it!” Horace said, slapping Desmond on the back.

Severa glanced back at the ship and then bolted into the dark. Horace swore. Desmond aimed and fired, but the ball cracked by her feet, spraying rock into the air. Horace and Desmond leapt over the side.

The crab reared, snapping at them with its huge claws. They scattered, fleeing around it to follow Severa. The lamplight bobbed and threw the world into dizzying chaos.

She sprinted up the side of a crag and they climbed after her, the lamp hanging off Desmond’s beltloop. She fought like a netted crab. Fists smashed into their faces, knees and fingernails against their skin.

“Bastards!” Severa shouted. “Invaders!” She was making for a dark hole in the rock that gaped like the mouth of a cannon.

Horace bit her wrist and the jewel came free. Severa scrambled over Horace to seize the jewel but Desmond grabbed her. Horace felt his foot slip.

The momentum caught them all, and they tumbled through the hole into the dark beneath the ocean floor.

###

Horace coughed, tasting blood. Pain shot through his limbs as he tried to stand. He blinked but only darkness remained. Desmond moaned somewhere beside him. Horace felt around until he touched the wet cloth of Desmond’s shirt and helped him stand. It took a moment for them to fiddle for the lamp, but they managed to light it.“Your side,” he said. Blood leaked freely from Desmond’s stab wound.

“It’s alright,” Desmond grunted. “Where is she?”

Severa’s body lay near them, crumpled into a heap.

“God… A true savage after all.”

Desmond shook his head. “Do you have it?”

Horace raised his hand. The jewel shone brilliant even in the dim lamplight. Horace wanted to laugh aloud, but it didn’t seem right.

“Can you climb?” Horace asked. Desmond spat and tried to speak, instead he shook his head and clutched the stab wound that bled at his side.

“Alright, alright,” said Horace, trying to think.

“Even a savage is smart enough not to go down a hole without knowing a way out,” Desmond wheezed. He didn’t sound good.

“Can you make it?”

“I’ll have to.”

“Real navy,” said Horace, helping Desmond up. His old shipmate smiled over bloodstained teeth.

The cavern twisted and turned. Water curled down the rocks from the surface, reminding Horace that the tide would soon return to swallow the land.

Desmond began to slow, leaking blood all the way. Horace put an arm around his friend to help him on. Friend. The word felt right again.

They did not speak, nor argue about which way to go. Each corridor seemed as good as any other. A sinking feeling began to settle in Horace’s stomach as he realized they might not find a way out.

“Is it true what you said on the Arbiter,” said Horace. “That you regret helping me escape?”

Desmond grunted against the pain at his side. “More than once I’ve thought it,” he said. Horace struggled to steady the dying lamp. It would run dry soon.

“Then why did you do it?”

Desmond stared into the dark. “You were my captain.”

Horace tried to thank him, but the words caught.

Desmond stopped. “Horace!”

Two children stood at the end of the corridor, each nude as babes. They looked back at Horace and Desmond before hurrying out of sight around a bend.

They followed the children, struggling to keep up. The air changed. The stinking salt rot of exposed seaweed gave way to a sweet but reeking scent that reminded Horace of cooked roe.

The children took a last turn that opened into an immense cave. Water dripped freely from the roof like rain, stinging their eyes with sea salt.

The children said something in the savage tongue and hurried off to join a larger group that had congregated near a pool of water.

When Horace looked up to the direction they moved, his mouth gaped in fear.

A thousand glistening eyes sparkled in the cave. Firelight danced, failing to illuminate the mass of the great carapace that rested yards away. The creature’s huge claws moved slowly as the procession advanced toward it. The great crab was bigger than any living thing Horace had ever seen, the size of the Royal Fleet’s flagship. Bigger.

As the children approached it, the great beast rocked on its coral throne.

The children knelt below the crab as a sound like a bursting fishnet echoed through the chamber. A rush of shining orbs, each as brilliant as the one Horace held, came forth from the crab. As Horace watched the children gather them, he saw that these were much smaller and cream coloured.

When they had each retrieved a jewel, the children lifted them to the crab and swallowed them whole.

Horace remembered the crabs that had crawled from the dying savage’s mouth. He looked at the sea-green jewel in his hand, larger than all the others, and then up at the monstrosity before him.

“That is her last birth.”

Severa approached from behind them. She hobbled forward, clutching a broken arm. Desmond breathed quickly beside Horace, unable to speak.

“She’s come to the end of her life,” said Severa. “The last of her children will be born as ours age. And then nothing. It all ends.”

“The Mother under the rock?” Horace said. She nodded.

“It’s the sons we birth for her, but we give them our lives and in return we take some of hers to feed us.” She raised a finger toward Horace. “Your kind take too much and give nothing back. But that,” she said, staring at the green jewel. “That is her daughter, her only daughter. That you will not take.”

The rock wall moved around them. From the dark came men and women clad in crabshell with drawn knives and spears.

“A snake from the start,” said Desmond.

“We searched for the stolen egg for many nights,” said Severa. “It was a gamble to rest our hopes with an ironmaker, but you with your magic, you brought me to it at last.”

“Don’t let them take it,” said Desmond, yanking on Horace’s shirt. The savages closed in around them. “Let’s go, captain. One last run at it.”

Horace looked down at the jewel in his hand.

The ken rushed, hit hard and uninvited. A hand strangled his throat and submerged him in cold saltwater. Horace thrashed in his mind, trying to centre himself in the churning psychic confusion.

A thousand eyes woke in front of him. The great crab. The Mother under the rock. He felt her, knew that it had been her that had manipulated his ken to lead him toward the jewel. Then she had cut him from it when he’d finally found it.

He felt her pull the tide back, as she had done each year for a hundred years. The waters receded, following the example of her mother, and her mother’s mother before that all the way to the beginning of the world. She watched with pained resignation as the savages ate her male children, knowing it was the price paid for their bearing the eggs within their bodies.

She watched in anger as the ironmakers stole her scuttling children to sell on far off shores. They had never paid the price.

She let him go, and he burst from the surface of his mind to breathe greedily.

“I say, let’s go! Now!” Desmond was aiming the pistol at the encircling savages, keeping them at bay. It wouldn’t last long, soon the bravest among them would take the risk.

“We have to give them the jewel,” said Horace.

“What? You fool, they’ll kill us anyway.”

“I know they will,” said Horace. “But we can’t make it through them.”

“Coward,” Desmond screamed. “Bloody coward, just as you always were.”

Horace yanked the pistol out of Desmond’s hand. His friend tried again for the weapon and Horace struck him in the jaw. As Desmond hit the ground, his eyes pleaded.

The savages lunged.

Horace lifted the jewel to his mouth and swallowed it.

The egg ran soft as milk as it touched his tongue and slid down his throat. Horace had once heard about the feeling a man experiences after being pulled from icy water. A cold so intense that it became an irresistible warmth. As the great crab’s daughter settled in his flesh and took root, he knew the feeling.

Horace raised the pistol and pressed the muzzle against his chin. The savages froze.

“You will do no harm to this man,” he said, nodding to Desmond. “Or the daughter dies with me.” The savages stopped cold.

###

The water was calm and the gulls cried as Desmond rowed toward the dock. He’d made this same trip many times in the year since he’d escaped from under the bare ocean floor. Only today, the foreman was there to greet him on the dock. “Got a visitor,” the foreman said.

Desmond wiped sweat from his brow and squinted against the dying sun. “Who?”

The foreman shrugged. “Some savage.”

That wasn’t uncommon. After their disastrous adventure into the low tide, the savages’ attacks against the Royal Crab Company stopped almost immediately. Some in camp had whispered drunkenly that Desmond knew something, the newcomer who’d wandered in from the surf a few nights after that odd fellow Horace went missing. Desmond had kept his mouth shut and let them think what they wanted.

The crabmen continued their own raiding parties for a few weeks, that vigilant work of rooting out the enemy – even if he didn’t show his face. Yet they found nothing for months. When the tribes finally did appear, they’d brought no weapons or hate but instead shells, fish, and seaweed binding.

Nothing strangled good caution like the prospect of money, Desmond knew.

The trade that followed led to a treaty and soon more and more savages intermingled at the camp as the weeks crept by.

Desmond sucked on his teeth. No, it wasn’t uncommon for a savage to be on the mainlaind. What was uncommon, however, was a savage coming to see him.

If it were up to Desmond, the company would’ve wiped them from the shore during high tide and collected every damn crab to sell back at the King’s capital. Treaty be damned.

Severa was leaning against the wall of his cabin when Desmond arrived. He stopped a moment, fists tightening at his sides. He let them relax and then opened the door. She followed him in.

Severa looked around the tiny shack, inspecting every bob and trinket. An ensign’s cap hung from the wall, a musket over the furnace. Flowers he’d picked inland sat in a copper pot. She smelled them and recoiled.

“It’s rude of you to come bother me,” Desmond said and handed her a cup of tea. “Your time with us civilized men hasn’t earned you manners.” Severa took a clumsy sip, first flinching as she had with the flowers. Then, she made an inquisitive face, nodded, and took another sip.

“Trust me, I had no great urge to see you.” Her eyes began to wander again. “It was what he wanted.”

The words hit Desmond in the gut like a broadside.

“He’s dead then.”

Severa nodded. “You knew that when the tide went out,” she said. “A new Mother has been born to pull back the water.” She studied his face. “You haven’t forgiven him, have you?” Desmond set his cup down on the table.

“See that plank of wood up there?” Desmond asked. She craned her neck to the highest part of the wall where a blackened piece of splintered oak hung. “That is a piece of the flagship that he and I served on. The largest ship of war ever constructed. I was the first officer, he the captain. We were the pride of the King’s navy.” Desmond looked down and saw his aged reflection waving back it him in his tea, distorted as a dream. “Now I check buoys in a rowboat, and I’ll do that until I die because of him.”

“I told him that you didn’t deserve this,” said Severa. She drained the last of her tea and set it down.

“What?” Desmond asked.

She pulled a small bag from her belt, woven from treated seaweed. “He wanted you to have it sooner, but we couldn’t allow it until the new Mother was born.”

Severa handed him the bag, then turned and headed for the door.

“He never slept easy, you know. From the day we brought you to the surface until the day he died to birth the Mother.”

The flimsy door rattled closed behind her as she left the shack.

Desmond stared at the bag in his hand. It reeked of seawater and crab shell. He set it on the table and heard its weight against the wood. The milk white, jewel-like eggs rolled out of the bag as he opened it. They shone, brilliant as any bauble adorning the King’s crown. Set before Desmond’s eyes was a fortune enough for a new life.

He caught sight of something else underneath. Faded metal, worn and rusted. The engraving was cold to the touch as he ran his thumb over the wording on the captain’s seal.

To death, loyal.

The End

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Conor DiViesti is a writer from Toronto, Ontario. His work has appeared in Aurealis and Montreal Writes.

Carol Wellart is a freelance book illustrator from Czechia, creating images predominately with the wildlife themes, nature studies, and fantasy characters.