“Awrigh’” said Flents, her amphibian throat expanding as she yelled over the roaring of the storm, “We may’ave a bit o’a problem.”
“It would seem so,” screamed Orpek back, the apocalyptic storm tearing at the surface of the wetland. The rat shifted closer into the tangle of dead branches they had moored their boat on, hand finding the handle of his nail beneath the freezing water as he remembered the last time he had been in such a place. The branches provided a little shelter from the hail of fist-sized droplets, the force of their blows that had threatened to bludgeon the two to death muted but the unrelenting soaking drip-drip-dipping from above chilling them both.
Nightfall was an hour away and the rain showed no sign of stopping. Flents shivered beside him. The wetlands here were freezing cold, fed by an icy river that ran southward toward the sea before finally mingling with the salt-water in this, an expanse of horizon that seemed unending. Not even a frog like her could last long in that water, even without the threat of the things that wandered in from the sea at high tide.
Orpek shook violently. He made the quiet calculation that if he did not get warm soon he would die.
“We must keep going,” he said, and Flents shook her head, as though not understanding. He said it again, making his throat raw as he screamed it. “WE MUST REACH DRY GROUND! WE NEED A FIRE!”
“ARE YE INSANE?” screamed Flents back. “THA BOAT’LL FILL UP LIKE A WATTER BARREL! WE’LL BOTH DROWN!”
Thunder rumbled above, just as a fresh gust of wind sent water droplets flying into the two, almost sending them slipping into the murky water beneath them. Orpek could see the branch they stood on, firmly affixed to the sediment, running down into the depths only for a few inches.
Worse, he could taste salt on his lips, and looking down the soles of his rear paws were wetted by the lapping of wind-pushed waves.
“THE TIDE,” he yelled, shaking so violently that he feared he would knock his own bones out his skin. “IF WE DO NOT MOVE, WE WILL DROWN!”
Flents pressed her eyes shut before grabbing Orpek’s arm, fingers pressing into the bone. “CAN YE SWIM,” she screamed.
“YES,” said Orpek. He did not mention the still summer pools, the shallow banks with sun-warmed sand.
“YOU BAIL,” yelled Flents. “I ROW.” She scrambled down into the water, waist-deep and her harness of camouflaging leaves billowing in the current around her. The frog grabbed the side of the boat, drawing it closer toward the two and holding it steady as Orpek clambered in, the narrow wooden vessel bucking violently. His shaking paws met the bucket under his seat, the rough grain of the wood registering distantly under the numbness. It scraped along the bottom of the boat, half-filling with water that was thrown out in a desperate flailing, scraping again, throwing again, the pounding of the rain making it seem utterly, utterly pointless.
What a miserable way to die, thought Orpek. Then, At least it is dynamic. Dynamic. The word bounced uselessly around his skull.
He looked up to find Flents already in and rowing around the shape of the branch that had harboured them. “ACROSS,” she yelled, the hissing of the rain on the water somehow louder than before. Orpek nodded, scarcely taking a break from his desperate flailing as a wave hit the boat broadside, death-cold saline water slewing over the side. The rat noted dimly that at least he could entirely fill the bucket now. The salt tasted like fear in the back of his throat.
The heaving of the oars and the desperate bailing reached a terrible, syncopated rhythm, the metre as fast as either could make it. Orpek could no longer hear the pounding of his heart, knowing he was breathing only by the burning in his lungs and the accidental mouthfuls of rain and sea that he spat overboard with the buckets of water. The wetland below was green-grey and filled with lurking shapes, rocks and earthen mounds that had been under the light of the sky only this morning now swallowed by the growing mass of the deep, the deep that perhaps would follow a rising tide forever, up and up, over the land, over the tops of the trees and down the deepest and safest burrows, up to swallow the moon and stars-
Flents was screaming at him. What…
“WAVE!”
The rat looked seaward.
Covering the horizon. Crested with foam as white as daisy-petals.
“BRACE YESEN!” howled Flents, and Orpek grabbed at the sides of the boat as Flents desperately hauled on the oars to turn to face the wave-
Stillness.
Below the raging of the wind and the rain the water was still, still as deep, deep stone.
As peaceful as death.
Orpek wondered if he had gone into shock, watching the bubbles of his air trickle up from between his teeth. It was too cold to feel anything. Too cold to care.
Flents-
He pushed against the water, struggling for the glimmer of light above him.
He had to help Flents-
Lungs hurting, hurting- alive, alive!
A hand, pulling him up. Flents- Flents! She was okay. She was-
He breached the surface.
“BOAT’S GONE,” yelled Flents, Orpek fighting to make sense of that as he fought to cough up more water than he breathed in. “HOLD ON TO ME! SWIM! SWIM! SWIM OR FREEZE!”
Another waved slammed into them, the world turned to churning bubbles roaring and hissing past his ears, and then they were bursting to the surface again, Flents saying something that was lost entirely in the terrible endlessness of the storm. Orpek’s world was the weakness of his muscles, the shape of Flents’ body as he clung to it, both of them no warmer than the water they fought against.
A third wave hit, larger still than those before, and Orpek squeezed his eyes shut as they went under.
He opened them again. In the last trickles of sunset light that pierced the deep, bladderwrack and green weed undulated sharply. Small fish, already questing the wetland after the surge of seawater, slipped between silhouette and shadow, eyes glinting, jaws full of sharp little teeth flexing mindlessly. Orpek turned his head, fighting to cover the blind spot behind his skull, but saw nothing but the endlessly shifting shadows.
But there-
Out to sea, in the deeper depths, something darker than the dark moved.
They surfaced. “SWIM,” spluttered Orpek, gasping for breath, kicking weakly against the current, water up to his outstretched neck. Behind him came the roaring swell of another wave as Orpek fought to make it further inland, away from the deep, on to any solid ground, any at-
Underwater.
Orpek turned back, eyes wide, and looked back to the ocean, never stopping his fevered kicking for a moment.
The dark shape loomed closer. Sharp, angular, closing in.
The surface again, wind-lashed spray and screaming rain. They went under again and this time Orpek found his legs pushing against the water as weakly as strands of twine.
Another wave and Orpek found Flents slipping from his grasp. The churning water flung him round and round, spinning, arms open, lungs fighting to keep the air behind his lips.
The shape grew closer. Orpek stopped fighting the current and, with the last trickle of his strength, drew his nail.
The rain pounded the surface above. Soft as a kiss.
Darkness came at the edge of Orpek’s vision. He saw teeth the size of mice, flat eyes as cold as corpse-flesh, scales that ran on, and on, and on…
His jaw slacked, and the breath left his lungs in a whisper. Blackness reigned behind his eyes.
Down, down, down. Down past the sweeping god-rays, past the warmth and flitting shoals of the upper deep, sinking down into the pressing tightness below where the light touched. Down, down, down, past the dark, seeming to sink forever…
Down to a pale seabed where he thought he would moulder forever, picked by the strange creatures below the sea, but instead he fell through it, fighting his limp body to swim, fighting his airless lungs to scream. But all he could do was see, see that there was nothing, nothing, nothing. There was nothing beneath the bottom of the sea. Nothing, forever.
Orpek woke up on fire.
“He alive,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Hey, hey- man, wakey wakey.” Orpek felt a firm and hard slap to the side of his face, followed by another. He coughed up water. “Stay awake, man,” said the voice again. “Don’t sleep here, don’t sleep now- hey!” another slap. Orpek opened his eyes and groaned. The few parts of his body that he could feel hurt more than anything and he was fairly sure that he had lost some of his mental faculties. He groaned again and tried to sit up, only to be gently pushed back down by the same hard thing that had slapped him in the face.
“Great that ya alive but don’t be jumpin’ up just yet, ay,” said the voice. Orpek opened his eyes and was greeted by something orange and very blurry. He blinked, again, and found that he could just about raise a paw to rub his eyes.
Orpek found himself surrounded by crabs.
“Eyy,” said the closest crab. A few of the others waved.
Orpek tried to speak but instead hacked up more water, the salt stinging his tongue. “My- cough- friend,” he managed, but the crab took his hand and gently laid him back down.
“The slimy one am asleep,” he said. “Rest now, ay, ay. Ye safe.”
The rat, fur filthy with salt, bruises showing through, shivering violently, slipped back into sleep. He had just enough awareness about him before he drifted off to note that the ground beneath him seemed to undulate, not unlike a boat.
Orpek dreamed of the sea again.
When he awoke again the wanderer found himself ravenously hungry. He sat up, happy to find that a good amount of his strength had returned, and looked around himself.
All around him were waves. Orpek looked down and saw wooden slats, below which was nothing but water. He looked up and saw a small, round roof. Next to him was his pack, securely lashed to the floor and looking rather soggy.
Orpek squinted and looked all the way about him. He was alone, the crabs who he remembered now vanished, and he appeared to be in some kind of wooden tower. There was a great mist around him that made it impossible to tell how far from shore he was.
Perhaps this was what happened after death, though Orpek thought that his situation was decidedly too strange for that to be true. He peered about again. Mist, the four posts of driftwood holding up the roof, the still water, the dull glow of the sun…
“Ey, you up!”
Orpek looked about.
“N- no- down here- here- hello!”
Before him, just the edge of his shell protruding from the water, was the crab from earlier. Orpek gave him a hesitant wave.
“Good day,” he said, the script of his usual greeting coming back to him in drips and drabs. “I am Orpek. I am on a journey west.”
“Good to meet you, Or-pek,” said the crab, mandibles picking over the syllables of Orpek’s name. “I am Klesckan. We dropped your friend, Flents, back home a few hours ago.”
Orpek closed his eyes briefly in relief. He would have liked to have said goodbye, but he understood Flents' desire to see dry ground again.
“I believe that I may owe you my life,” said Orpek, bringing himself into a more upright sitting position with a humph. “Though I remember little past almost being eaten by some… immense sea-beast.” The rat shuddered.
Klesckan, as far as Orpek could interpret his crustacean expression, seemed slightly baffled. “…The storm really took it outta you, man,” he said. “Just- stay there, a mo’.” The crab retreated below the water with a plop, only to re-surface a second later. “And dinnae panic,” Klesckan said, gesturing to Orpek with a claw. “Everything am fine, aight? She na gonna eat’cha.”
“I-” said the rat, curiosity burning more than his hunger, but Klesckan had vanished again.
Then the sea started to drain away.
Orpek staggered to his feet and grabbed a post, grateful to find his nail at his side as the tower beneath him rocked, revealing a latticework of struts woven around with laddered netting, dripping into the swirling, churning sea beneath. Other towers rose from the confluence, a tangle of complex roofs of netting winding in and around each other like barnacles. Narrow streets revealed themselves, crabs crawling over and through the buildings and each other, the sound of work and play in good cheer emerging from the fearful deep. Orpek whirred around and found himself at the pinnacle of a city, far above them all, the tower he stood in merely the steeple of a thin pyramid beset with rooms and ladders and sideways walkways, and crabs, crabs everywhere he looked, orange and cream and some green with algae, some wearing the coiling shells of sea-snails, some bedecked with shining sea-glass, glistening with moisture in the growing sunlight, and there- at the back of the city, a tailfin, piercing the waves, back and forth, back and forth.
“A great sea-beast,” whispered Orpek, and laughed, long and hard.
He looked down to the bow of the city and saw a great, quiet eye looking back at him, and understood.
The fish seemed to smile at him before turning their head and pushing on through the water, as steady as a heartbeat.
The city on the back of the great sturgeon slipped below the waves again until only his tower remained, that which had been fearsome in the confused, unclear dark now known as a friend and fellow wanderer.