“Are we there yet?”
“A little further west.”
The bottom was still mostly rock, but there were patches of dirt supporting a few small weeds in spite of the depth. They followed a low ridge for close to half a kilometre, stopping when it rose suddenly to within a few metres of the surface.
“This is the place,” Diana said, sweeping the light over the rock. “Somewhere close and… Sam, what are you doing?”
He was floating motionless, nose-to-nose with a good-sized herring. “Staring contest.”
“You can’t win.”
“Cats always win.”
“I don’t think fish have eyelids.”
Sam’s tail started to lash, propelling him forward. “You cheater!”
Diana couldn’t be sure, but she thought the fish looked slightly sheepish as it turned and darted away. “Never mind that!” she yelled, as Sam took off in pursuit. “We’re right on top of the Summons, so I’m thinking– given where we are – that we’ve got to find a wreck.”
“In a minute!” Sam disappeared around the edge of the shoal. “I’m just gonna teach that cheating fish a…”
“Sam?”
“Found it.”
“Found what?” Diana demanded as she swam after the cat. “Oh.”
Much like Main Duck Island itself, the shoal rose to become a nearly-vertical underwater cliff on the north side, but fell off in layers to the south. On one layer, about a meter and a half up from the bottom, the skeletal prow of an old, wooden ship jutted out from the ridge, huge timbers held in place in the narrow angle between two slabs of canted rock and preserved by the cold of the water.
“Well, this is…”
“Obvious,” snorted Sam. “Big hunk of rock rising toward the surface. Exposed wreck. Probably been a hundred divers down here every summer.”
“Probably,” Diana agreed, swimming closer. “But this is where the hole is, I’m sure of it. Somebody did something sometime recently.”
“Oh, that’s definitive,” Sam sighed, following her in.
The hole she’d been Summoned to close was not part of the wreck, but in the rock beside it, where a narrow crevice cut down into the lake bed.
“Isn’t the word hole usually more of a metaphorical description,” Sam wondered as Diana floated head down and feet up, peering into the crevice.
“Usually. Still is, mostly.” The actual opening between this world and the nastier end of the Possibilities stretched out on both sides of the crevice, but it was centred over the dark, triangular crack in the rock. “There’s something down here.”
“I’m guessing fish poo.”
“And you’d be right.”
“Eww.”
“But something else, too.” Tucking the flashlight under her chin, Diana grabbed onto a rock with her left hand and snaked her right down into the crack. “Almost…”
“If you lose that hand, are you still going to be able to use a can opener?”
“I’m not going to lose the hand!”
“I’m just asking.”
Sharp edges of rock dug into her arm as she forced her hand deeper, her jacket riding up away from her wrist. One fingertip touched… something. Even such a gentle pressure moved whatever it was away. A little further. Another touch. She managed to finally hook it between her first two fingers.
“Uh, Diana, about that sea serpent…”
“What about it?” She’d have to move her arm slowly and carefully out of the crack, or she’d lose whatever she was holding.
“It’s either heading this way from the other side of the wreck, or the Navy’s running a submarine in the Great Lakes.”
“I pick option B.”
“And you’d be wrong.”
Time to yank; she could always pick the thing up again. Unfortunately, a sharp tug didn’t free her arm. Bright side, she managed to hang onto the thing. Not-so-bright side, approaching sea serpent.
Wait! If her arm was stuck, then she didn’t need to hold the rock, and if she didn’t need to hold the rock…
She grabbed the flashlight and aimed the beam toward the wreck, hoping it would be enough. Pulling power from the Possibilities over a hole would not be smart. There were worse things than lake monsters out beyond the edges of reality.
Framed between two rotting timbers, green eyes flashed gold in the light. Mouth gaping, the sea serpent folded back on itself and fled, the final flick of its triangular tail knocking a bit of board off the wreck.
“Looks bigger up close,” Diana noted, trying to remember how to breathe.
“You think!” Sam snarled, paws and tail thrashing as he bobbed about in currents stirred up by the creature’s passage.
“Maybe it was just curious.”
“Sure it was. Because you get that big eating plankton!”
“Whales do.”
“Some whales do, and that was not a whale! That was a predator. I know a predator when I see one!”
Diana tucked the flashlight back under her chin and reached out to stroke the line of raised hair along Sam’s spine– the Possibility that allowed them to move and breathe underwater granting the touch. “You’re shouting.”
He speared her with an amber gaze. “I don’t want to be eaten by a sea serpent.”
“Who does?”
“Who cares?” he snapped. “The point is, I don’t. Let’s get that hole closed and get back on dry land before I’m a canap?.”
Diana had to admit he had a point, although she admitted it silently rather than give him more ammunition for complaints. The serpent was about ten metres long and almost a meter in diameter. A five-kilo cat would be barely a mouthful. The sooner she got the hole closed, the better.
Carefully, but as quickly as she could, she worked her right hand out of the crack and, when it was finally free, dropped a fragment of bone into the palm of her left.
“The graveyard of Lake Ontario,” Sam noted solemnly, his cinnamon nose nearly touching her hand. “There’s more than just ships at rest down here.”
“Not every body washed ashore,” Diana agreed, with a sigh. “I’m betting there’s more of this body down in that crevice.”
“You think it got smashed and that’s what made the hole?”
“I think someone– probably someone diving around the wreck – smashed it deliberately, and that’s what made the hole.”
“You need to get the rest of the bone out.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “I do.”
“Great. Considering how long the first piece took, we’re going to be down here forever, and that serpent’s going to come back, and it’s going to be kitties and bits. You’re the bits,” he added.
“Thanks, I got that. You’re not usually this fatalistic.”
“Hello? Lake monster. Cat at the bottom of Lake Ontario.”
“You worry too much. Now that I’ve got one piece out, I can call the rest to it. It’ll be fast.” She held the hand holding the bone out over the crack and Called. Other fragments floated up, danced in the water, and, after a moment or two, formed most of a human jaw.
Suddenly conscious of being watched, Diana whirled around to see a herring hanging in the water. “What?”
Silver sides flashing, it swam about two metres away then stopped, turned, and continued staring.
“Is that your friend from before?”
“We’re not friends,” Sam snorted. “Get on with it.”
Diana studied the jaw. “There’s a tooth missing.”
Sam looked from the curved bone to the Keeper. “A tooth?”
“Okay, a bunch of teeth and the rest of the skeleton, but right here… see where the reformed jaw is a different shade?” She touched it lightly with the tip of one finger. “There was a tooth in there until recently. Whoever did this cracked the jaw and took the tooth.”
“Why?”
“People’ll notice if you come up from a dive with most of a jaw, but you can hide a tooth.”
Sam licked his shoulder thoughtfully, frowned when his tongue made no impression on his fur because of the Possibilities keeping him dry, and finally said, “Cats don’t care about the things we leave behind.”