Chapter 26

IT WAS A PERFECT SUNNY MORNING IN THE WARM waters off the

reef and there were fish everywhere! "What a great time to be a fin in the

Big Blue!" Barkley exclaimed, the water whisking past his gills. Suddenly,

there was Yappy, right in front of him. Oh, the little flipper was such a

talker, but Barkley didn't even care! "Isn't it great to be alive?" he said to

the sea dragon.

"Snap out of it, already!" Yappy yelled. Well, that was rude! And then

the colorful sea dragon slapped Barkley in the face with his tail. And the

slap was really hard! Much harder than Yappy's little tail should be able to

deliver, anyway.

"Yappy, what are you doing?" he asked as the sea dragon began to fade

away like a ghost. "Hey! Where are you going?" But the sea dragon was

gone and the reef disappeared, too.

"Who the heck is Yappy?" Shell asked Snork as he hovered nearby, a

look of concern on his face. The bull slapped Barkley again with his tail.

"Okay, stop it," Mari told Shell. "He's awake."

"I think he deserves another couple whacks for getting us into this

mess!"

Barkley wasn't at the reef at all. It all came rushing back to him. The

ambush! The fight! And now they were—where?

"They put us in a cage!" said Snork before he could ask. Barkley looked

around. It was a cage of sorts, made out of a whale skeleton attached to a

coral reef. The ribs were the main bars, but razor-sharp coral grew between

the large gaps, forming smaller ones. Even Yappy wouldn't have been able

to wriggle through, although there was room for water to circulate so they

could breath. No way the coral was accidental! It had been put there on

purpose and then cemented in place to make the spaces between the whale

ribs smaller. How would a shiver make a deal with crabs, mollusks, and

whatever else, to do this? That was a question for another time. Right now

they were prisoners.

"Is everyone okay?" Barkley asked.

"We've all got bumps and bruises, but nothing too bad," Mari answered.

She hesitated for a moment, and then asked, "Do you think that Gray was a

part of this?"

Barkley answered instinctively, "No."

Gray couldn't. He wouldn't!

Would he?

Mari saw the doubt on his face and got worried.

Snork trembled. "I'm scared." Barkley patted him on the flank but

didn't say anything. He was scared, too.

"Okay, I'm getting us out of here!" Shell told everyone. The big bull

furiously churned his tail back and forth to gain speed and rammed one of

the smaller ribs of the cage. It did nothing except cause him to yelp "Oww!"

"Think you're going to bust your way out, eh?" came a voice from

below. A lichen-covered rock separated from a wall to which the whale

skeleton was anchored. But it wasn't a rock at all! It was some sort of fish

that looked like a rock! It said, "Not likely. Not likely at all."

This scared the kelp out of Snork. "Talking rock! Talking rock!" he

shouted, jamming himself behind everyone.

It was without a doubt the ugliest fish Barkley had ever seen in his

young life. Did they live at the reef, too? If they had, he would never have

noticed! The fish was dirty, with thin strands of moss and greenie waving

from its mottled brownish hide. Its scales, if they could be called scales,

were malformed; some bumpy, others wispy. It actually looked like

something that swam the Sparkle Blue for a while and came back to life

after not liking it. The entire group backed away from the fish, which was

only as big as Shell's front flipper.

This was ridiculous. It was just a fish, after all.

Barkley swam forward and Shell shouted, "Watch it, Barkley! That's a

stonefish. It's the lionfish's uglier and even more poisonous cousin."

Stonefish? Well, the name was right on, Barkley mused.

The dweller took offense. "Who you calling ugly, krillface? I'll slice

you good!"

"You're calling me krillface? I'll grind you up!" sputtered the bull.

"Just try it, bullhead!"

"No one is slicing or grinding anyone!" Mari said forcefully. "Let's all

calm down." She introduced herself and the group, then asked the fish its

name.

The stonefish used its stubby fins to flutter slowly in a circle. "Guess it

don't matter much since we're all goners anyway. I'm Trank." He shook his

head. "Youse fins got yourselves in way outta your depth, huh?" The

stonefish spoke with a weird accent. "That Velenka's a piece o' work, eh?"

"What do you mean by that?" asked Barkley.

"Only Velenka and Goblin know about this cage," Trank told them.

"And Goblin don't use the cage. Goblin eats youse if he's gotta problem

with youse. He's a direct flipper, if youse know what I mean."

Even though the situation was dire, Barkley became a little happier.

Gray didn't do it! It was the sneaky mako who was behind this. "Velenka! I

knew it!" he said. "And how did you get in here?" Barkley asked Trank.

Trank hemmed and hawed. He didn't want to say anything until Mari

reminded him, "Like you said, it doesn't matter, right?"

The stonefish nodded. "I'm in here because I know too much," he said.

"Gafin loaned me out on a job. I'm his best hitter, see?"

"What?" asked Barkley, not understanding.

Mari told him, "Trank's an assassin."

Barkley opened his mouth wide, but nothing came out. An assassin?

The stonefish laughed. "At least yer not all from the boonie-greenie.

Anyway, she makes a deal with Gafin for me to do one thing, then changes

her mind and wants me to take out the fifth in the Line, name of Hawley.

Well, that's not how it works, and besides, Hawley was a good fin." Trank

shook himself and a cloud of dirt fell away, floating down to the sand. "She

put me here and got someone else to do the job instead."

Barkley's mind spun from the sheer deviousness of it. He had heard

about the mysterious death of Hawley when he was in Goblin Shiver.

Velenka got rid of Goblin's best friend and put herself in the Line to be his

adviser! And now she was holding on to him and the rest of Rogue Shiver

in case Gray didn't do whatever she wanted.

Trank continued, more to himself, "Gafin's gonna be one angry urchin

if he ever finds out. Not that he'll get a chance, though. Once the Tuna

Run's done, she'll kill him, too."

"What's happening at the Tuna Run?" Barkley asked.

"The Run is where everything is gonna go down! That's where she

makes her move on both Goblin and Razor and takes everything for

herself." Trank chuckled. "After that, youse, me, and every dweller she

doesn't like is chum. Come to think of it, she and Gafin would make a nice

couple, if youse know what I mean."