Maelstrom

CHAPTER 16

SEAN AND YANA kept searching for their children. He returned to the sea. She used Marmie's best sensors to probe for some sign of two young seals and an otter.

The Honus remained near the volcano, agreeing that it was making a very fine home for them, a comfortable one in keeping with the home in the memories that lay buried inside their ancient heads.

On board the barge and tug were several of the Mano'aumakua clan, chief among them their matriarch, Puna. Sean had found her fascinating, but Sinead didn't have much time for her. The old woman's smile, in spite of sporting few teeth, showed a strong family resemblance to her aumakuas.

Even though Puna was new to the planet and hadn't even been to a welcoming latchkay yet, she was trying to run things her way. It didn't seem to hurt anything since most of the Petaybeans simply pretended they didn't understand if she told them to do something they hadn't already intended to do, but it was irritating.

Once the sharks were released, the tug followed them out to sea, so the people aboard could see where they were to live.

The tall black cone bezeled in black lava rose from the sea as the boat chopped across the waves. An escort of diving, surfacing, circling, and feeding sharks played around it. Sinead couldn't help feeling as if she were to be the main course at a shark picnic. Bears, moose, wolves, and all manner of other wild things held no terrors for her and few mysteries, but the sharks gave her the willies. The sea was Sean's element and he could have it, as far as she was concerned. She used to feel left out that when their grandfather messed about with their DNA, Sean was apparently the successful experiment while she comprised a control group of one.

But she was glad now to be more or less normal. It made her life less complicated.

She didn't know if her partner, Aisling, could handle a woman friend who grew fur and needed to go for a swim below the ice pack periodically. Now, if Grandfather had made it so she could turn into a wolf occasionally, that might have been different.

Ah well, she had enough on her plate as it was.

Puna grinned maternally at her seagoing relatives. "They like it here. It is a good place."

Sinead nodded but privately thought it had been a good place before, but the other creatures were probably thinking the neighborhood had gone to hell now.

She watched three of the sharks dive and saw that they were converging on some hapless prey, but she couldn't see what it was, despite the clarity of the waters. She felt sorry for it, whatever it was. She was a bit surprised when a few moments later the water on the surface was dyed a deep indigo.

An octopus or squid perhaps? She thought their ink was black.

She had little time to think after that because suddenly the boat lurched and she fell hard against the railing. It listed severely onto its starboard side, spinning in a huge circle. She had a fleeting impression of Puna and the others thrown into the water amid the sharks, who were also whipped around helplessly. An enormous whirlpool drilled into the sea floor.

Suddenly, Sinead was torn from the boat and gulping frigid saltwater. She spun in an ever narrowing and deepening spiral as she was sucked downward to the bottom of the sea. At the same time she was being pulled apart, she felt crushing pressure from her burning lungs and freezing body. A primordial roar filled her ears, and her eyes were blinded with churning water.

By the time the whirling ceased, releasing her, she hung in its depths like a broken doll.

KUSHTAKA'S CITY WAS gone! Murel swam straight to where it had been. Only an open trough remained. The volcanic vents within the trough glowed dully, their heat momentarily dimmed by the push of cold water from above.

Murel blinked. Ronan? Ro? she called, but heard nothing, sensed nothing. Her twin was gone.

But when she looked up into what had been the vortex of the whirlpool, she saw her aunt floating in the water above her. For a second she didn't react except to think, What's Sinead doing here? She doesn't swim. Then she thought, more clearly, She doesn't swim! and rushed up to the drowned woman, grabbing her by the back of her windbreaker and hauling her to the surface. The water was full of sharks with people attached to them. The sharks had rescued their own human relatives, but the boat and the other Petaybean crew members were nowhere to be seen.

Murel had been so shocked by what happened to Jeel, the whirlpool, and the disappearance of the undersea city, that she hadn't realized what the maelstrom had done to the boat.

This was horrible, horrible. Without someplace solid to lay Aunt Sinead, without someplace dry to transform herself, she knew she had no hope of reviving her aunt.

Da! Mum! she cried into the sea and air, not knowing where her parents were or even how long she and Ronan had lain unconscious in the room in the underwater city before Sky awakened them. Sky, oh, Sky, another loss-her otter friend gone with her brother, her aunt, with the boat's crew. Everything was suddenly too awful to bear. It couldn't possibly be worse.

Then she saw the black fins bearing down on her. The killer whales had returned.