Chapter 12

THE FORMER MEMBERS OF ROGUE SHIVER SWAM into their new

homewaters at moonrise. It wasn't like the Coral Shiver reef or the

landshark ship, which relied on greenie to hide their location. This wasn't

hidden at all. Since ancient times this shiver had been an unquestioned

power in the North Atlantis, and their location was well-known in the Big

Blue. Gray wondered aloud why the shiver didn't just move if they were

being attacked.

"So we can move from one place to the next like jelly drifters?" Goblin

asked, shaking his massive head from side to side. "My shiver has claimed

this territory from the time of Tyro. We're going nowhere."

"That's truer than you know," muttered Mari. Both Striiker and Barkley

stifled their snorts.

Goblin didn't hear, or he pretended not to hear, and continued, "Besides,

don't you think this place is worth fighting for?" The great white said the

last as they swam over the crest of a hill, which revealed a massive, sloping

cliff face that glittered with different colored greenie, each on a separate

terrace. The greenie was grown and tended this way! Incredible! The entire

Coral Shiver reef could have easily fit inside a small portion of this place.

At the floor of the cliff, long greenie grew in thick strands that were forever

scrubbing the lower crags, flowing back and forth with the currents. The

expanse in front of the cliffs where the shiver-gathering area was located

was even larger, with huge pylons of rock and coral. There were whales

here! And schools of giant manta rays! Both Gray and Barkley's mouths

hung open in wonder.

"I think I just swallowed a tooth," Barkley whispered.

Gray nodded to his friend. "You and me both."

"Wow," said Snork, waggling his serrated nose as he looked this way

and that. Barkley dodged the dangerous snout and decided to move a body

length away. The sawfish had ended up coming with them. Gray was glad

for that. Snork was a genuinely good fish. Striiker and Mari, having seen

the shiver homewaters before, didn't react much.

Goblin proudly swished his tail as if he'd personally carved out the

cliffs and planted the terraced greenie himself. "This is my home. Our

home."

Velenka swam over. "Now, I don't know about where you lived before,

but there are a few rules we follow."

"Hmph!" Goblin grumbled. "We do it to make the dwellers feel like

they have a say, but sharkkind run things around here."

"Of course we do," the mako said before turning to Gray and Barkley.

"In this area we don't hunt. It's a safe zone for everyone."

"Sure," Barkley agreed. "That's how it was where we lived."

Goblin jumped back into the conversation. "Ah, but if a dweller leaves

this area you can take it as a meal if you're hungry." The great white ground

his triangular teeth together and smiled.

"Really?" Gray asked. This sounded a bit awful. How could you talk to

someone one minute and eat him or her the next?

Mari knew what he was thinking and said to everyone, "Yup! You can

be having a perfectly nice conversation with a dweller, and if it drifts

outside the magical marker, you can have it for lunch! Literally. Isn't

Goblin Shiver nice?"

"We aren't supposed to be nice!" Goblin answered sharply. "Nice fish

get eaten! We're only as strong as our mariners, and they need to be fed."

While Gray liked Mari, he thought Goblin made a good point. If Coral

Shiver had been stronger, maybe it would still exist. He pushed the thought

from his head.

The rest of the day was spent on a tour with Goblin and Velenka. There

certainly was a lot to see. Thrash went out on patrol with four other shiver

sharks. They met other members of Goblin's Line returning from another

patrol: Streak, Churn, and Ripper. Ripper was a giant hammerhead and

Goblin's first. He had so many scars it was hard to find a section of his

massive body that was unmarred. Streak, a shiny blue shark that seemed

really angry, was third in the Line. Mari told him that Streak acted that way

all the time. But she said it very quietly, so the blue wouldn't hear. Fourth

was Churn, a whitetip who said, "Learn to love patrolling, pups," and

laughed as he passed.

"You've been scratched," Goblin told Gray. "Looks like my hide has

some bite of its own, eh?" Gray looked at his flank down by the tail. It was

gashed slightly, blood seeping from the wound. At the reef he would have

let it heal on its own.

But Goblin said, "Go with Velenka and get that fixed."

Mari immediately said, "I'll swim him over there."

But the great white shook his head. "No, you won't."

The thresher glared but bobbed her head to the shiver leader and

obeyed. Velenka flicked her tail for Gray to follow. With a last look at

Barkley, he went.

"You have no clue what getting a scratch fixed means, do you?" she

asked with a chuckle. Gray didn't but wasn't about to let the mako know

that. He swam past a small reef almost entirely covered by starfish. There

must have been thousands in a pile, and these stars were much bigger than

the ones at the reef. Everything was bigger! It took real effort for Gray not

to gawk like a pup at all they passed. She continued, "By treaty, any dweller

who dies in the area is given to the bottom feeders, including sharkkind.

Waste not, want not." The rule was the same in his homewaters, but it

always made Gray a little queasy. He knew the muck-suckers were just

doing their job cleaning the Big Blue. And he guessed it was better than

seeing the carcass of one of your shivermates slowly decay into

nothingness. But it was still creepy. "In return, they do things for us."

They swam over to an area where there were many fish, urchins, and

crabs. There also seemed to be a few recently injured fish, but amazingly,

their wounds had been repaired somehow. Gray had never seen anything

like it before.

"The shiver requests help!" she announced loudly before turning to him.

"I have to go find payment. Be back soon."

A large yellow surgeonfish came over and swam around Gray's cut.

"Ah, not too bad," she said. "We'll have you in and out in no time. I need a

doctor here!" A doctor fish joined them and began nibbling on the edge of

his wound.

"Hey! What's the big idea?" Gray shouted.

The surgeonfish swam in front of his left eye. "My name is Oceana, and

I'm your surgeonfish. Hold still. We can't fix this if you move around."

Oceana flicked out razor-sharp spines from the back of her tail and

gently cut the ragged edge of Gray's wound. Another doctor fish joined the

first and ate the remains. Gray tried not to move as this tickled a little. It

was also kind of disgusting.

"We have surgeon and doctor fish at the reef. Had, I mean," Gray said.

"But I've never seen any do this!"

Oceana chuckled. "Not every surgeon or doctor fish can. You have to be

trained, usually in an ancient shiver's homewaters. The best are the shivers

that allied with humans in the olden days."

"You mean landsharks?" Gray asked. "Sharks and landsharks were

friends?"

The surgeonfish nodded at his amazement. "Landshark. Such a rustic

term. Anyway, we have the finest treatment for wounded sharkkind and

dwellers in all the Atlantis. This is literally cutting edge, and you wouldn't

see it if you grew up in some out of the way backwater. What we're doing is

clearing away the dead and infected skin so we can suture the cut. Hold

still." Gray didn't want to ask any more questions, as he already felt like a

jelly-brain, but suture the cut? What did that word even mean?

He watched and found out. When the gash was cleaned, it did seem to

feel better. An old sea turtle swam up carrying a crab on its back. The turtle

hovered as the shellhead, with amazing dexterity, inserted and tied off

several urchin spines, knitting both sides of the cut together. It was

amazing!

In a moment Velenka came back with a fat haddock in her mouth. She

chewed it several times and let it sink to the rock bottom as the crab

finished its work. The doctor fish nibbled on the edges of the knitted

wound, smoothing them. After they finished, the dwellers descended on the

fresh fish.

"Paid in full," Velenka told Oceana and her assistants. The mako tapped

the urchin spines in Gray's flank. "Those will work their way out, or you

can come back and have them removed. But then you owe them a fish."

"Thanks," he said. The wound felt better, and the oozing blood had

completely stopped.

"Come on," Velenka said to Gray. "Let me show you some of the

shorter patrol routes. If you feel well enough, that is."

"Do I!" he told the mako. Gray wanted to see everything! Luckily, it

seemed Mari and Striiker were completely wrong about Goblin Shiver.