Read Song of the Deep for Free Online Page B

.
    Its long green snake-like body flows gracefully as it watches me.
My father’s stories of leviathans used to give me nightmares, but this one
doesn’t look too terrifying. I wonder . . . could that giant shadowy creature
I saw in the trench have been a full-grown leviathan?
    “Hi there,” I say. He just stares at me, his long body undulating
behind him. “Are you lost? Your mother is probably worried about you. Maybe you
should go find her.” He touches his nose against the window. He’s actually kind
of cute, in a weird sort of way.
    “Really, I mean it. If she sees you here, she’s going to be mad at
me.” I turn and try to sail around him, but he just swims alongside me and gets
in front of me again. This time he swishes his tail back and forth as if he
wants to play.
    “Listen, I wish I could play, but I’m in a hurry.” He just swishes
his tail again.
    He taps my front window with a fin and then turns and swims off
ahead of me, stopping to turn his head back to see if I’m following. Is he
trying to play tag?
    Well, he’s going in the same direction I am . . . I guess it
doesn’t hurt to have a fierce-looking traveling companion.
    When he sees that I’m following him, he swishes his tail even
faster and darts forward into the darkness. I guess we’re playing tag after
all. I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel happier. For the first time since I
started out, I feel like I’m not alone on my journey.
    The little leviathan does a looping corkscrew turn in front of me.
Is he imitating what I was trying to do earlier? I can’t help laughing. He’s
such a little show-off. He turns back toward me as if he wants my approval. He
swishes his tail playfully, waiting for me to catch up.
    Swish. I’m going to call him Swish.
    ******
    W ith Swish
swimming along at my side, I sail past the steep rocky edge of the trench. It
feels good to see sand below me again. Swish suddenly races off, chasing
something. He disappears into the darkness for a moment, then races back toward
me. Only then do I realize what he’s chasing. It’s a fifteen-foot-long thresher
shark.
    I turn to get out of their path and the long-tailed shark speeds
past me. Swish stops chasing him and returns to swimming alongside me. Until
now I hadn’t realized just how big Swish is. The shark was barely half his
size.
    “I’m glad you’re on my side,” I say to Swish. The thresher shark
probably wouldn’t have tried to attack the sub, but it feels good knowing that
Swish is trying to protect me.
    Swish swims down along the seafloor, wriggling his long body back
and forth in the sand and making a snaking pattern behind him. He turns around
and looks at his creation, then at me. I think he wants me to do the same
thing.
    I glide downward, letting the sub graze against the sand, and
zigzag back and forth, trying to make a trail. Swish slides along beside me as
I go. I turn back around to look at the patterns. My trail looks like a creek
alongside a huge riverbed, but Swish wags his tail excitedly as he races around
in circles above our art display.
    “Come on, now,” I tell him, laughing at his antics. “We have
important responsibilities.” We turn back to the west and he swims alongside me
again. I think he understands that we’re going somewhere.
    Swish alternates between swimming by my side and scouting ahead of
me, looking for dangers to protect me from. In front of me, he stops suddenly,
staring straight ahead.
    “What is it this time, a deadly puffer fish?” I joke.
    Then I see what he’s looking at. There are thirteen tall
rectangular stones sticking up out of the sand, forming the shape of a circle.
Each stone must be at least twelve feet high. This couldn’t have been a natural
formation. I get a strange eerie feeling as I look at the circle of stones. I
wonder if this is an old merrow graveyard.
    Swish is staring into the center of the circle. He slowly backs
away from the stones as if he is scared of