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I’d encountered a few large ocean creatures during my surfs, but nothing like what I discovered tonight.
I always surf at night. The waves are bigger under the moon and no other people are there. The latter is nice when I don’t get any weird men catcalling me in my surfwear. My suit is modest in that it’s full body, but it’s skin tight like one would figure, outlining the fact that I’m fit and attractive and feminine, which leads to the catcalling.
Screw them, I’m married to the ocean. It’s impartial to those who surf it, homes the greatest creatures on this planet, and doesn’t give me creepy side-eyed looks when I walk by with my board. So I surf at night, when the moon is bright and the little crabs are scuttling away from my feet and there are no other people.
This particular night was a bit different. I love ocean creatures and have encountered a few bigger ones. But the biggest I’ve seen are stingrays and I’ve never encountered a shark.
But that was about to change.
I had been riding the waves for a good hour. I decided to catch one to the shore to have a break, and I did just that. The wave started well, then decided to break early, taking me under with it.
I’ve had my share of tumbles, so I was able to recover and get myself and my board back to the shore, if on my hands and knees. I knelt on the sand, panting, water dripping from my shoulder-length brown hair, and deciding that I’d done enough for the night, when a subsonic thrum vibrated the ground and a glassy glint up to my right caught my eye.
I ignored it for a few paces to haul my board ashore where it wouldn’t get washed away, then looked for that glassy glint again. Shiny things on the beach could lead to some interesting finds, after all.
At first, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. I walked laterally around the glint, which seemed to be part of a larger mass of… something. I guessed a rock formation, but the silhouette looked too smooth. Sand dune? The glint became brighter as I moved back toward the surf, where I could tell it was near the top of the dark mass it was part of.
Then the clouds cleared, letting the full moon reveal the beached monstrosity.
My eyes widened to the size of the moon above me while my jaw hit the sand below me. The mass… it wasn’t a rock formation… nor was it a sand dune.
It was a shark. Bigger than any shark I’ve ever heard to exist.
The subsonic sound thrummed the sand again. The glassy glint sparkled at me and widened.
I inhaled sharply and staggered back.
The shark was alive , and it was looking right at me! The sound I was feeling was it breathing, the glint was from its yellow eye reflecting the moonlight.
I took one step back, another, felt the beast breathe again, then took off, scooping up my board and running back to my usual setup spot on the beach. I stuck my board in the sand and instinctively tightened my ponytail before seizing up my stuff and turning to leave the beach for the night, maybe not to come back for a few days.
That catlike yellow eye burned in my brain, bringing a pang of instinct.
Instinct to help.
The image flashed again, solidifying a certainty of conveyed pain and desperation.
I have no children, but I’ve often been told my maternal instinct and drive is just as strong.
And it was being cranked into overdrive the longer I thought about that yellow eye.
My lips pursed and my jaw clenched. I finally made up my mind and dumped my stuff to the sand. Half a minute later I had my camera strapped to my head, silently watching my wary trek back to the shark.
The ground rumbled under my bare toes. I moved to the spot by the surf where I knew it could see me, all while repeating to myself how insane this all was.
There was no yellow glint. My mouth opened, then closed, then opened again and croaked out a “Hello?”
The creature’s flank lowered in time with another thrum through the sand.
I tried again. “Hey!” I called, louder than I intended.
Yellow light sparked over me as the eye snapped open and the thrumming increased. My breath caught in my throat but I forced my feet to stay where they were.
I gazed into the yellow light. My eyes began to feel funny.
I don’t know exactly how I was able to see what I did, but the eye began showing me things.
This creature was old. Older than anything I knew. It had seen the very movement of Earth’s crust. It had done battle with giants just to survive. It had been feared, hunted, revered, and worshipped. Its instinct was to survive. No matter what, it had to survive.
And now here it was, beached, wounded, suffocating, afraid for the first time in its long, long life, and asking me for help.
I blinked, breaking the spell.
The sand thrummed.
I licked my dry lips and dared to step closer to this awesome beast. Its skin from snout to tail matched the royal blue of the ocean, and white purer than snow draped like an apron across its belly. It lay on its side, sunken at least a foot into the sand. At least three of my 5’11” selves could stand on each other’s heads to just barely reach up and brush the top of the beast’s shoulder.
Its length was even more impressive. Four massive, muscular, oddly human-like limbs lay pointed toward the surf, and a tail longer than the torso twitched under the sand where it was buried. The jaw was limp and partially open, allowing me a view of the teeth wider than my body and longer than my arm.
The collector part of me thought about crafting a knife from one of those teeth.
I shook the thought away. I’m trying to save this beast, not poach it.
Another breath thrummed through the sand. I was three steps from being able to touch the shark’s muzzle. Two. One. I reached out and gently rested my fingertips against the skin.
The shark let out an audible whine. A low, pitiful sound I didn’t believe should be possible from an Ocean Lord.
‘Ocean Lord’? Where did I learn that title? Did it belong to the shark?
My hand settled fully on the blue skin. It was dry and cold, and shivered under my touch. I brought up my other hand, then gently leaned my cheek against the creature. I could feel a slow pulse and slower breathing. I hadn’t questioned how this shark was breathing air, I just knew that it was, and that the action was unnatural to it, causing it to make that thrumming wheeze and slowly suffocate.
I stroked a hand across the shark’s muzzle, remembering too late that their skin is like sandpaper. I pulled back with a gasp, wincing at my scraped and bloodied hand. My fingers twitched and I felt a cold tendril of electricity slither under my skin, leaving faint blue marks like rivulets of water.
Wonderstruck, I looked back to the shark. The blood from my hand was glowing blue on its skin. It shifted and tilted its body, landing on its stomach with its arms beneath it. Sand dropped from the skin in sheets, filling in the indentation of where the shark used to lay.
It huffed deeply. One of its yellow eyes opened and zeroed in on me. The iris sparkled and shimmered with a stream of blue.
I was once more entranced by the eye, seeing the Ocean Lord in its glory, commanding the tides and their currents with its right hand.
Then I saw another figure, this one called the Heaven King, throwing great strikes of lighting and voicing its fury through storms that churned the ocean out of the Lord’s control.
The last thing I saw was a lightning bolt striking the shark in the side, then a whirlwind tearing the Ocean Lord from its domain and throwing it to land to die.
I finally blinked. The rest I knew, not because I saw, but because the shark needed me to know.
It was here, on the beach, because the beach was the threshold between Ocean and Mountain. The Mountain Chief had done all it could to return the Lord to its place, but the beach was a no-man’s land between the two realms, where neither ruler had command.
So the Ocean Lord’s only option was to get the help of a creature that could pass freely between all three realms.
A human.
Me.
The Heaven King had struck the Ocean Lord’s right arm, the arm it used its power with. But now my right hand was cut and the water in my blood could let me use the shark’s power to get it back in the surf.
My mind froze up.
How… the ocean… control it?
The thrum under my feet turned rhythmic. Was the Ocean Lord laughing at me?
It wasn’t as complicated as I thought it was. I knew this without having to think it. I just had to reach out. Be the Ocean Lord’s right hand.
It would do the rest.
I gazed into the yellow eye one last time. I could read the expressions like an open book. There was pain, desperation, and utter exhaustion, but all that was being crept upon by that bright blue flame of hope.
The cold rivulets of blue under my skin filled me with determination. I turned to the ocean and stepped in, passing through the water until it reached my knees. I glanced back at the Ocean Lord, then stretched out my—its—right hand to the ocean.
Now it was the ocean that thrummed around me. The tide pulled like a giant rolling pillow, splashing over the Lord and making its hide shimmer with blue. With each lap of salt water, the Ocean Lord lifted itself out of the sand and turned toward its home. Its right hand dragged through the beach, bright blood from its wound dripping down.
I stood still and kept my hand lifted.
The Ocean Lord fully pulled itself free of the sand and began edging toward the water. I could see that it was impeded by its wound and being forced to breathe air.
It pressed on, regardless. With me as its right hand, strengthened with each crashing wave, the Ocean Lord came close enough to stretch its forelimbs into the water. The edges of its silhouette glowed with shimmering blue and silver light that got stronger the further it floundered into the ocean. Shining rivulets like the ones in my arm washed away from the Ocean Lord’s body and flowed through the waves in hauntingly beautiful patterns.
The beast’s head passed me and I caught a glimpse of its gills. They shifted and moved with each passing wave, catching oxygen and clearing the Ocean Lord’s fogged mind. Next was a long stretch of rough, yet shiny blue skin, pushed ever forward by powerful legs.
Before I knew it, the shark’s tail thrashed as it finally breached the shallows and made it to deeper water. A large wave crashed into me, forcing me to kick like mad to keep my chin above the water.
Then I was kneeling on the beach, the wave having receded and washed away my wound. I stood and looked out at the horizon, watching the glowing rivulets follow the shark’s wake through the waters.
I kept watching for some minutes as the soft lights began to dissipate. Suddenly, just when I thought my adventure was over for the night, the Ocean Lord leaped from the water.
Time froze into slow motion. I could tell that the shark had gotten bigger, likely showing off its true size. I could see water run off its hands like pure crystals. Its entire body glowed with beautiful whites and blues. Its limbs were no longer splayed and limp, but tucked tight and precise to its sides. The way it spread its hands allowed the moonlight to glint off stunning ivory claws and fine webbing between the fingers. I had a feeling it was showing off a bit.
I saw the Ocean Lord’s tail curve into the air as a waving sign of thank you. Then time resumed and the massive shark crashed back under the waves with an immense splash I could feel in the pit of my stomach.
“You’re welcome, Ocean Lord,” I said.
I stood in awe of the experience until the moon began to sink below the horizon. Startled by the time, I hurried back to my bag and board when I realized my camera had been on my head the whole time. I unstrapped the thing, then looked at the screen and realized it hadn’t been recording. I’d never pushed the button.
I muttered a swear for the missed footage. The camera got tossed into the bag and I reached for my board.
My hand touched something cold and smooth with sharp edges. I picked it up carefully and held it up to the moonlight.
A shark tooth, outlined with shimmering blue and silver, sat in my palm. A string of deep royal blue passed through the root, turning the tooth into a necklace. An insignia in the shape of a wave was engraved into its surface.
I set the tooth around my neck and it settled between my collarbones. I smiled at it, brushing a finger over the insignia as I gazed over the Ocean Lord’s domain.