Amphitrite

Three days later, Seabrook’s foot had healed enough that he could risk going into the sea again. Aja’s team loaned her to his team, because she was better at spearfishing than anyone else aboard the Colombus Islen, and his team needed to get bait for the long line.

They went spear fishing at Turtle Rocks, hoping to find some big barracuda—the large ones could be cut into ten pieces. They needed enough for thirty hooks.

They set anchor in twenty feet of water. In front of them stood the windward side of Turtle Rocks, like a spine that ran north and south about half a mile long, jutting up out of the sea. Birds nested among the crags and fissures above the waterline where waves smashed against the rocks. Below the waterline, a reef extended from the shallows into the deep. The sky was overcast, and it began to rain.

They back-rolled into the sea and cleared their snorkels.

Wearing wetsuit tops and carrying Hawaiian sling spears, they hunted along a ledge, right at the dividing point between shallow water and the beginning of deep water. Magnificent coral heads marked this part of the reef: giant brain and star coral.

In the shallows to their left, rows and rows of fire coral were lined up like yellow plates leading to a rock barrier. If a swimmer were to try to climb up on the rocky crest of Turtle Rocks, he’d have to scrape over dozens of sharp-edged plates of fire coral. Without a wetsuit, the fire coral would sting and slice a person to hell.

Normally, the reef looked beautiful: countless forms and vivid textures growing everywhere. Green and purple sea fans leaned and gently oscillated with the current. Stoplight parrotfish darted about like watermelon-size Easter eggs, and French angels, elegant in black and white, cruised over the coral city like tuxedoed grooms on the way to a wedding.

The overcast sky made the sea darker and grayer. The colors were almost gone. Also, the rain striking the surface of the ocean sounded like a ghostly waterfall you could hear underwater. The rain clouds made the marine world seem more dangerous, even sinister.

As Seabrook finned downward to thirty feet, looking into crevices and caves for decent baitfish, he wondered if a predator was coming in from the gray-blue deep behind him to feed. He had this concern whenever he went spearfishing.

Aja saw the barracuda first. Sometimes they were easy to spear because they didn’t fear people. They came close to look you over, especially if you were wearing something shiny, like jewelry or a watch.

She took a deep breath and finned down towards the ’cuda.

She pulled the spear back, stretching the rubber straps all the way, loading the weapon. She glided closer to the fish, inch by inch. Her arms held the spear motionless, fully poised to strike, and aimed at the barracuda’s head.

The silver fish angled to one side and opened its fanged mouth.

She adjusted her aim, following the target. She kicked her fins gently, angling forward, holding the loaded spear . . . holding . . . holding . . . her arm starting to burn . . . then she was in range.

She released the spear.

With a flash of steel, the spear tip went through the barracuda, just behind the eye. The fish died almost instantly. It was nearly four feet long and still looked alive as she finned over to Seabrook.

She showed it to him. They put their heads out of the water to talk, spitting out their snorkels.

“Nice fish,” Seabrook said.

“I got him right at the drop-off.”

“We should probably head back to the ship.”

“I want to show you something first.”

“Where?”

“Just over this way.”

He nodded. Aja tossed the dead barracuda in the Whaler and led Seabrook through the sea.

He had snorkeled around the Bimini islands many times by this point and knew the wrecks, reefs, and mangroves quite well. So he was surprised and initially dismayed by what Aja showed him.

Someone had dropped anchor on a gorgeous fifteen-foot coral head. It was a giant colony of boulder-brain coral, but now big chunks of it were missing—likely ripped out by a pleasure boat’s anchor. At least that’s what he thought at first.

He carefully inspected the coral head, and there seemed to be seven places where duffel bag-size chunks of coral were missing. On closer inspection, it didn’t seem like the type of damage an anchor would cause. The broken coral would be visible as rubble and debris under the coral head and in the sand around it. This was not the case.

The chunks of missing coral were entirely absent—like they had been removed from the sea. Maybe the damaged areas were some kind of bite marks?

Parrotfish ate chunks of coral, but even the largest were much too small to have caused anything remotely like this damage. Maybe a killer whale-size parrotfish on steroids could do it? But they didn’t exist.

Back in the Whaler, they took off their snorkel gear.

“That’s new,” Aja said. “When I saw that, I couldn’t believe it.”

“Right. It wasn’t there three days ago.” He took a drink of fresh water and handed her the water jug.

“I think I should photograph it,” Aja said. “Maybe there is some kind of parasite or toxin damaging it. If we get some pictures, we can show them to a coral specialist.”

The rain continued to come down. Without their wetsuit tops, they would have started to shiver.

“Yeah. Let’s come back and take pictures when it’s sunny and visibility is better,” Seabrook said. “I’ll also measure it. We should show this to Dr. Nixon and see what he thinks. At first, I was almost positive some yacht had damaged it with its anchor …”

He looked at Aja as he trailed off. Her wetsuit top was unzipped at the throat, and her deep black eyes seemed intense and pleasant at the same time. Raindrops glinted silver against her black hair and over her forehead and cheeks. Even though she was soaking wet, her face looked warm, as if lit by a lovely inner flame. She still had fins on her feet and a dive knife strapped to her right calf. Her legs were naked and tan and shiny in the rain. She still held the Hawaiian sling spear. The dead barracuda lay at her feet in a small pool of blood. Like the sea goddess Amphitrite, she was simultaneously beautiful and dangerous. She made his heart ache.

“But now you’re not so sure,” Aja said, finishing his sentence.

“Exactly.” He nodded.

Right from the beginning, it seemed like they could sometimes read each other’s minds.

Eleven months later they were engaged.

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