of birds, fighting in midair over some nasty piece of something-or-other. With a snarl and a flounce she turned back inside. "That was some pretty smart thinking back there," Scuttle said, giving his great-grandgull a salute. "What now?" she asked. "Now? We go find Ariel"
Far far below the wine-dark waves upon which wooden boats floated like toys lay a different sort of kingdom.
Coral reefs were scattered like forests across the landscape, lit m dappled sunlight that had to travel a long and slow liquid passage to reach them. Long ribbons of kelp filled in for their Dry World tree equivalents. These bent and dipped gracefully in the slightest aquatic breezes, and were soft to the touch—yet tough as leather, sometimes with sharp edges. Fingerlike tips reached for the sun, photosynthesizing just like their landlocked brethren.
There were mountains in this deep land, too, and canyons. Just as rivers drained the surrounding countryside and flowed downhill in the Dry World, so too different temperatures of water flowed together, creating drifts and eddies. Fissures in the earth erupted with boiling water that blasted out of the hellish depths below—too hot for everyone except the tiny creatures whose entire existence depended on the energy from those vents, mstead of on the vague yellow thing so far above.
And everywhere, just as there were animals on land, were the animals of the sea.
The tiniest fish made the largest schools—herring, anchovies, and baby mackerel sparkling and cavorting m the light like a million diamonds. They twirled into whirlpools and flowed over the sandy floor like one large, unlikely animal.
Slightly larger fish came in a rainbow, red and yellow and blue and orange and purple and green and particolored like clowns: dragonets and blennies and gobies and combers.
Hake, shad, char, whiting, cod, flounder, and mullet made the solid middle class.
The biggest loners, groupers and oarfish and dogfish and the major sharks and tuna that all grew to a large, ripe old age did so because they had figured out how to avoid human boats, nets, lines, and bait. The black-eyed
predators were well aware they were top of the food chain only down deep, and somewhere beyond the surface there were things even more hungry and frightening than they.
Roundmg out the population were the famous un-fish of the ocean: the octopus, flexing and swirling the ends of her tentacles; delicate jellyfish like fairies; lobsters and sea stars; urchins and nudibranchs...the funny, caterpillar-like creatures that flowed over the ocean floor wearing all kinds of colors and appendages.
All of these creatures woke, slept, played, swam about, and lived their whole lives under the sea, unconcerned with what went on above them.
But there were other animals in this land, strange ones, who spoke both sky and sea. Seals and dolphins and turtles and the rare fin whale would come down to hunt or talk for a bit and then vanish to that strange membrane that separated the ocean from everything else. Of course they were loved—but perhaps not quite entirely trusted.
The strangest creatures of all lived in a city they built themselves, a kingdom m the depths.
Here no roofs separated the inhabitants from the water above or around them; creatures who could move in any direction had no love of constraint. All was open, airy—or perhaps oceany—and built for pleasure and the whimsy of the architect. Delicate fences led visitors into the idea of another place. Archways, not doors, opened into other rooms, some of which were above one another. Stairs were unnecessary. Columns, thin and delicate as stalactites in an undiscovered cave, supported "roads" that soared around halls and were decorated with graceful spires. Everything glowed white from marble or pale pink and orange from coral, or glimmered iridescently like the inside of a shell.
All this beauty was the result of many thousands of years of art, peace, and patience—and little to no contact with the rest of the world. If Atlantica was an unimaginable, dreamy splendor to the few humans who had gazed upon it before drowning, it was also unchanged by the centuries; magnificently, eternally the same.
The creatures who built and ruled this underwater world were long-lived and content, with nothing but time and aesthetics on their mmds, governed by longs and queens of the same bent.
Or so it had once been.
Now Atlantica was ruled by a queen who had seen another world, and been betrayed by it, and who would live with the consequences—forever.
The usual crowd gathered on the throne dais: merfolk of even* hue, several dolphins who