Coral Waverly's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Coral Waverly combed the reef for the third day, hunting a name she had never asked for. Three sunrises back she had pulled a drowning sailor from a splintered hull and hauled him to a strip of pale sand. He had opened his eyes once, said something she could not hear over the surf, and gone still-breathing. Coral had wanted to stay. A patrol of gulls and boots came down the beach, and she slid back into the water before they saw her tail. Now she wanted legs. She wanted to walk up whatever dock he called home and say hello. But the coast ran for hundreds of miles, and she did not even know what to shout. Her red hair drifted around her shoulders as she circled the broken ship again. Its timbers leaned in the sand, cargo spilling from a split in the hull: coins, bottles, a dented cup. She had searched it twice for a logbook. The pages had turned to pulp in her hands. "Coral, up here." Her best friend clung to the mast, six legs braced, claws full of colorful beads he refused to drop. Chabastion Tidecaller was not from her ocean or any ocean she knew; he had washed in on a green tide two winters ago and stayed. His shell was blue and pink and always a little too cheerful for the moment. "You are going to wear a groove in the reef." "I need a name," Coral said. "One name." Chabastion's antennae twitched. He looked away. "About that—" An indigo arm shot out of the hull's shadow and wrapped his middle. A second arm took his claw. The octopus poured itself over the deck, speckles glittering, eye fixed on the beads. Chabastion squealed. Coral dove. She pried one arm loose, then another. The octopus squeezed harder. She pressed her thumb to the soft spot between its eyes the way her mother had taught her, and it let go all at once and jetted off into the blue. Chabastion sagged against the mast, counting his legs. "Six. Good. Six." "You were going to tell me something." He would not meet her eyes. "I know who he is." Coral went still. "The sailor." "His name is on a crate in the hold. I saw it the first day. I did not tell you because—" He waved a claw at the open water. "Because once you know, you go. And then what happens to me?" "You come with me." Chabastion blinked. His antennae lifted. "Oh." "Say the name." He said it. Coral repeated it twice, tasting the shape. It was a small, ordinary word, and it changed the size of the ocean. She took Chabastion's claw and pulled him off the mast. "Which way to the harbor town?" He pointed north with two arms at once. Coral turned her tail and swam.