Nothing.

Movement, a slight rattle of a cowbell. There is a goat, half-hidden under the thorny tree. They look at you, inscrutable, their head heavy with horns. The breath. Or a sheep maybe. Time is slow…the breadth. The breadth? The breath. Something is

##

Still nothing.

Why can’t I remember?

As on that first morning, I’m wearing sturdy brown trousers and a ripped white shirt, now washed. In my pocket is a small stone, which I turn over and over in my hand. It’s granite, a riverstone or beachstone. How I know this, I don’t know. But I’m sure. It’s semi-regular, grey, smooth except for a dimple or crease that looks a bit like an eye, polished. It means something, but what, exactly, I don’t know. There’s nothing obviously special about it. Except that it’s not red. Maybe I just liked it.

Someone on the corner mentions the stupid tortoise and everyone laughs. I ignore them, keep my head down, continue down the street, hands in my pockets. I still can’t speak much Akašan. I speak a dialect of Laudanese. No one seems to know it, but it’s close enough to standard Laudanese, which some of the merchants speak. I know a few words in other languages, words to do with ropes, practical things. It seems likely I was a sailor. I’m a sailor. Am I?

I’m still not sure about ‘Droma’. I can’t even remember if I said it was my name, or if someone gave it to me. The first few days or weeks are foggy. I remember the woman, a room, the temple, the now familiar well. Sensations. A man shouting at me. Some of the words people said. I know those ones. I’ve been sleeping in the park for a while now. I wait until late, after everyone has left and the lamps have burned themselves out. The patrols know I’m there, but after speaking to me a couple of times they’ve left me alone.

Brother Peine is on the street up ahead. I’ve been talking to him lately. The priest is dressed in white robes and, despite the bone-soaking heat, wears a fur cap. Of course, at the time I didn’t realise who he was.

“Pay attention,” he says. “This place is not as it seems.”

##

##

Someone nudges him from behind and he realises the bowl is full and the server is looking at him, not unkindly. He goes and sits down at the table with the others. The old timber is worn smooth. The bowl is hot, warming his hands. Bits of green vegetables and gristle float on the surface, the smell is wholesome. He looks for a spoon, then remembers that there aren’t any. He sips the soup like everyone else, and munches the cucumber in his other hand. It is cool, crispy.

The cuts on his hands are healing. They’d been smeared with a thick cream, now mostly gone. He remembers that at least. The stern woman who helped him with his wounds and then firmly gestured for him to leave.

He hears the bells of the temple, and gets up and puts the empty bowl with the others.

Above the grey-green trees of the courtyard he can see the ziggurat.

##

His head throbbed. His arms ached. His whole body ached. He lay there, staring at the dusty red cobblestones. Hot and dusty. Street sounds, someone arguing angrily in another language, goats bleating.

He sat up slowly, wincing.

His eye was swollen. He put a hand to it groggily, took a sudden breath and let it out slowly. His other eye stopped blinking and he squinted in the light. He was sitting in an alleyway with walls of red earth. Sun beating down. He put his hand to his head and realised he was touching fresh scabs. His arms too: covered in dried cuts and bruises.

He was thirsty. His throat was raw, dry, as if he’d been shouting or screaming.

What? No. Where was he?

His tongue was moving.

##

I’ve scheduled this post, along with the first few episodes of Part 2, as I’m currently camping in the Daintree rainforest in Far North Queensland, one of my favourite parts of the world and a place I’ve been missing.

I’m excited to share Part 2, as it’s a real shift from Part 1, and takes some additional risks—I’ll be interested to hear what you think. More on that bit further down the track.

When we left our intrepid duo, Polly had tasked Tortoise with getting the recruits through stormy seas to the city of Akasha. If you want to remind yourself of those final moments, you can read the last couple of episodes: Episode 51, The Lifeboat, and Episode 52, The Kraken. You can also download the free ebook with all 52 episodes so far.

Thanks for subscribing! I hope you enjoy Part 2 of The Amazing Adventures of Tortoise & Gecko: The Temple of Silence.

Chris

Thanks for reading along, or dropping by, and for the reactions and feedback.

So far, serialising online has felt like the right choice. In terms of numbers, subscribers have risen over the year while readership has fallen—not a complete surprise. But it’s helped me stay focused on drafting the rest of the book, with an allowance for a few edits each week before posting an episode. I added a little more text here and there, but the total word count for Part 1 remains just under 50,000 words—a long novella or a short novel depending on your definition.

The book could easily be much longer—certainly if it was told in a more straightforward way, with missing action and more traditional narration included, and would perhaps find more readers that way. But The Amazing Adventures of Tortoise and Gecko is a novel of four parts rather than a four-part series, and Part 1 is in most ways the simplest and least ambitious of the four. I’ve tried to keep it as short as possible while still establishing the characters and introducing some of the themes and formal elements the novel will be wrestling with in the remaining parts—as well as (hopefully!) telling a fun story.

By some measures Part 1 is a rough draft; one of the challenges of the rest of the book will be to show that different criteria could be applied. I’ll no doubt also (re)discover things that don’t work; my plan is to fully revise the book after all four parts have been published, and then find an editor.

Part 2 of The Amazing Adventures of Tortoise and Gecko, ‘The Temple of Silence’, will continue the story in a different register. If Part 1 was Winter (presto), Part 2 will be Summer (adagio). I don’t know if everyone will make the leap from Part 1 to Part 2 (and to Parts 3 and 4), but I hope so—I’m looking forward to sharing it with you. My secret hope is that the book will spawn six kinds of readers.

Partly to let ‘The Pegasus’ sit and breathe for a while, but also because I want to finish drafting all of Part 2’s episodes before I start posting them, the weekly posts will pause until July 2026, when regular transmission will resume for another year. For those subscribers who took out a paid subscription this year, thank you! Your contribution helps support the website, including the cost of commissioning new artwork to add to Yana Smolinska’s wonderful Pegasus figurehead. Feel free to pause your paid subscription until Part 2—I’ll send another update before the serial picks up again.

My marketing skills and inclination being what they are, subscribers have mostly come through emails to friends and family, so if you enjoyed what you read, please let other people know. The complete Part 1 is now available for free as an e-reader friendly PDF on the website and can be downloaded and forwarded to anyone. It’s suitable for older tweens, teens, and adults—I’ve told parents who’ve asked that if they think the first 13 episodes are suitable, then the rest of Part 1 will be too. I’ve been cross-posting on two younger demographic sites for original and fan fiction: Royal Road (with 3 subscribers, but higher pageviews than Substack, I suspect because Royal Road has better discovery) and Wattpad (where T&G has consistently ranked in the top 50 on the site for talking animals and fable, and 80% of its readers are under 35s in Nigeria).

Well, so long to 2025. Thanks again for your support—to find room for Tortoise and Gecko in your inbox is no small thing. I hope you had a good year, or planted some seeds for this year. All the best for Planet Earth 2026.

Take care, take risk,

Chris

Akar, who had reached the boat with Tortoise, was helping him brace the line, which was wrapped firmly round the bow bollard, and shouting at the others to hurry up. The ones who’d made it grabbed the others as they reached the boat and hauled them over the gunwales. Most of them hadn’t done it in rough seas before and Tortoise could see a few of them were shaky. Cadge half-fell into the ocean when he got to the boat but was quickly seized and dragged in by his crewmates. He wasn’t wearing any wet weather gear so was completely soaked: he would be a risk for hypothermia during the night. But the first principle is to stay afloat.

Tortoise realised they had stopped coming down. “Number off,” he ordered.

Akar: “One.”

Mahogany: “Two.”

Stone: “Three.”

Mfoniso: “Four.”

Jing: “Five.”

Jonah: “Six.”

Cadge: “Seven.”

Talulah: “Eight.”

Brigid: “Nine.”

Alinta: “Ten.”

They were aboard. A couple of them helped Tortoise with the line while Akar went forward and bent to slip the bridle—Tortoise and the others let go and the line vanished into the water. They were on their own now.

Tortoise stumped his way aft and took the tiller. The towering bulk of the ship was already moving away. “Make ready to bail,” he said, struggling to get the boat back perpendicular to the swell. Akar repeated it loudly to everyone, and they all reached for their pots and bowls. Tortoise felt a tightness in his chest. Everything was happening very slowly all at once. They were all there. Had he forgotten something? He kept a firm grip on the tiller, trying to watch all of them as well as the swell as they rose and fell in the rain, and the sea began to slop into the boat. The tiller was almost useless. They needed to—

“The sea anchor!” Akar and Tortoise shouted to each other through the rain. Akar nodded and pulled the anchor out from a locker near the bow. He quickly deployed it, the anchor disappearing into the water, and the bow slowly swung round until the boat was at right angles to the waves.

Their course had barely steadied when the boat lurched, suddenly out of time with the rhythm of the troughs. They looked to backboard.

“A cross-sea,” Akar shouted. The wind was shifting. This was dangerous. The bow of the boat needed to face toward or away from the swell to limit the risk of being swamped or overturned. But the cross-swell meant that whichever way they turned, a wave would hit them broadside. The question was which way was worse. The boat rose up with the swell and they strained to get a good look to backboard and then to the fore before they fell into the next trough. The sky was black and the wind was up, white foam scudding across the waters and leaping from the caps. The rain lashed them. “We have to turn!” Akar cried.

Akar had better eyesight. But they needed the right moment. The boat rose and Akar and Tortoise looked again. Alinta shouted to the others: “Stand by to trim!” On the third wave, which was smaller, Tortoise waited until they were mostly down the wave then slowly leaned into the tiller; the boat groggily turned to backboard, but they didn’t quite come round before the new wavefront was upon them—they crested and fell roughly down into the trough. Then came the first cross-swell, which hit awkwardly, sloshing their lifeboat with water and foam and drenching them in salt. The ocean wanted them. They bailed frantically. Tortoise was gripping the tiller so hard he thought he might break it. The ocean and the rain was closing in around them, some of the recruits—several of whom couldn’t swim—close to utter panic. With quick wordless breaths, Alinta and Brigid shipped an oar and Brigid sculled while Akar adjusted the anchor line, and they turned some more. Tortoise craned anxiously for a view of the next wave as they rose up and fell again, fearing the worst. To have escaped only to drown! For the moment at least, Fortune favoured them, for within a minute or so the wind had swung round and, though they still had to bail on the cross-swell, it moderated a bit. The boat fell into a rough new rhythm, rising and falling with the crest and trough of the waves, which began rising again with the reintensifying wind. The rain poured. They continued bailing. Somehow in all this they must’ve drifted closer to the Pegasus, for someone suddenly cried: “The ship!”

The boat swept up and crested the wave, and Tortoise looked back into the cold, driving rain and the darkness of the storm. For the rest of his life, which was going to feel very long and be full of adventure and love but was probably going to be shorter than he would’ve liked, Tortoise would remember what he saw when lightning struck the Pegasus and lit up the Kraken, and the crew, fighting for their very lives.

####

“It’s in the water!” someone cried.

“Keep furling!” the bosun shouted. “Rubberneck when you’re dead!”

The Pegasus was moving well past the other ship now, which was shattered and listing in the rising seas. The crew who had abandoned ship a few long minutes before were desperately attempting to reboard with the help of their surviving crewmates.

A waister on the main deck turned from the gunwale, horror in his voice.

“It’s coming towards us! We’re all gonna die, we’re all gonna—”

The busun strode over, roughly turned the man around, and slapped him. “You wanna live, do you? Snap out of it. All of youse. Get moving now.”

The great wave was here. An enormous concentration of the mind all at once overtook us. Every sailor on the ship—and upon my life I do not embroider—every sailor fell at once into an intense awareness of what was before them and what needed to be done. And so we did it. We did what needed doing. In all my life, in all my years at sea, I have never felt more at one with a crew than I did right then. We sprang into action, with the utmost efficiency and purpose, without the slightest alarm, or should I say with complete alarm but without the slightest panic. Our best selves were present and accounted for: we knew what to do, and we did it. Rope, sails, wood, wind—the entire ship humming and coursing at every touch and turn. Easy does it, lasses and lads! That’s what I remember when I think back on it: Captain Polly completely at ease, looking on calmly, the wind in her feathers. The crew at work, the Pegasus straining in her harness as she ran before the storm. In truth, those minutes, though portending so much, though finite and unalterable, those minutes were a thing of beauty. I often dream of them, and am stunned to awaken in the soft light of morning to safety and comfort, the wind caught in my chest. To awaken, I almost want to say, to a lesser world. I cannot say if you would love those moments like I do, or feel what I felt in those moments of dark grandeur, only that—if you were me—you would treasure them, and know not what else to compare them to.

The storm was rising around us. The cry went up and I held onto the gunwale as the ship heeled suddenly round and the deck plunged precipitously. With a faint cry someone tumbled from a fighting top down into the big waves. I looked around to see if my other shipmates were safe, and glancing abaft the starboard beam I saw suddenly a small boat in the sea, the great back of my friend Tortoise at the tiller. He was facing the darkness of the storm, but my heart leapt. He was alive!

I looked to the fore along the tilted starboard gunwale, just in time to witness a waking nightmare—for out of the sea and over the gunwale boiled a horror of which I cannot speak, so small were the bodies of my living comrades, their blades like toothpicks in their hands, so great the many-handed horror’s seething fury and monstrous, devouring form. I picture it still, its gargantuan rings pulsing with unearthly light. It was time.

Horror boiled out of the sea, and hell followed.

##

Next episode: The Kraken

“No, don’t do that,” Polly said.

Things began to move very quickly once the ice kraken attacked the whaler. It’s grey-green arms reached up and grabbed the harpooners, dragging them kicking and screaming into the water. Other arms, monstrously long, shot up around the whaler’s mast and pulled the entire ship towards it. The whalers cried out in alarm and terror as the rigging began to snap and tangle.

Polly turned to Aberra. “We can run before the wind, but when it gets to us we need firepower,” she said. “We need as much of it as possible in the line of fire.”

The sailing master nodded grimly. “So we give it something to climb. We beam reach to starboard and broach at the last possible moment. We’d better hope it attacks or we’ll be thinking about keeling over.”

“Ice krakens don’t mess around,” Polly said.

“Then we take in as much sail as we can and the rest as soon as we heel. This storm might be on us before it is.” Aberra shouted orders and the deck crew got to work. “Stay focused on the bloody sails,” he added, half to himself.

“Modura, all gunners to starboard. I’ll call it on the pipe. Reload and fire if you can. Sasha, I want sharpshooters in the fighting tops and on the afterdeck. Aim for the eyes. Things will be busy, but even one shot could do the trick. Ọya, I want you on the foredeck. We need calm.”

The other ship’s mizzenmast snapped and splintered. The kraken flickered a greenish blue. They could hear men and women screaming. The mast toppled.

“Umah save us,” someone said fervently.

“An ice kraken,” Geoff said. “Holy mother of God.”

Tortoise turned to Gecko. “What’s the difference between a kraken and an ice kraken?”

“No time for difficult questions!” Polly was standing at the quarterdeck rail overlooking the main deck. “Now listen up lasses and lads! Our very lives could be at stake! Remember: it’s good to be afraid, it keeps us frosty, but a block of ice will sink the ship. Watch each other’s backs and chop those tentacles faster than the cook. No offence, Cook.”

Polly looked around at everyone present. “This is the best crew in the Seven Seas. Prepare to be boarded.”

#

“Tortoise, I’ve got a job for you,” Polly called out, as everyone got to work. “Where are the rest of the recruits? Get them up here now.” She disappeared into her day cabin.

Tortoise looked around to see who was present. Heavy drops of rain began to hit his face. Most of the recruits were waisters; the ones who weren’t already busy looked back at him expectantly.

“I’ll find the others,” Alinta said. “I think I know where they are.”

“Thank you,” Tortoise said. “Meet back here. Hurry.”

Alinta dashed off, and the rest of them moved up to the quarterdeck.

Tortoise looked around for Gecko. He couldn’t see him; he’d probably gone up the shrouds with the other lofters. He looked across to the whaler. The kraken’s body had emerged from the ocean a little as it pulled itself up, water pouring off its back. The rain front had reached the whaler and paused over it like a grey sheet veiling the whaler and her grisly new crew member—glowing blueish green in sudden fits and starts—as if the very spirits of the air wished to conceal what was within.

A few muskets cracked, but the creature itself made no sound other than the violence of its plaything being methodically taken apart. Some of the crew had managed to launch one of the boats, casting off before it was full, and dozens of sailors were jumping into the sea now, others who had been thrown from the rigging crying out in the water or drowning silently. Tortoise shuddered. Would the kraken really attack the Pegasus? Everyone seemed to think so. But why? Why couldn’t they rescue them? He looked away, breathing heavily.

What could Polly possibly want him to do?

#

Polly emerged from her cabin wearing her sword. She took the whole ship in with one quick glance, then turned her gaze to Tortoise.

“Tortoise, you’re getting the recruits off the ship. Head east to the coast, then south to Akasha. Find a tailor named Iñana and give her this.” She held out a bracelet, perhaps silver.

He stared at it, then slowly took it.

Polly put her hand on his shoulder. “Tortoise, are you with me?”

She held his gaze. He took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

“You know what to do. Remember Gudge. Use the stern jolly boat. East then south. Go.”

Tortoise nodded and turned to Cadge. “Wait for Alinta and meet us there.” Cadge nodded. Tortoise looked at the frightened recruits. “That means the back of the ship,” he said. They all stared at him. “Run.”

They ran.

##

Next episode: The Lifeboat

He’d had a strange dream during the night. He lay there in his bunk and thought over the dream. It was strange. The dream was about snorkelling on a reef on a hot sunny day. He was a child, and somehow he was able to swim. The reef was in shallow water and close to the beach and he felt safe: he was swimming with one of his friends, another tortoise.

The tide was going out and they came in to explore the rock pools. Somehow he had a glass jar in his hand, and he scooped out a tiny fish from one of the pools. He lifted the jar up to the sky to look. They were the colour of sand and glinted in the light. He decided to name the fish. He was proud of the name in the dream, but now it seemed odd.

Why had he dreamt about naming a fish?

Tortoise sat up and began meditating.

#

There were many changes on the Pegasus. The ship herself was different, for one. And with so many dead from the battle with the Black Remora, and many having settled square and retired to a quieter life in its aftermath, the ship’s complement had scores of new faces, with many of the younger members of the old crew in positions of authority. Ọya was First Mate now. One of the gang had asked about Molly the first day they were back aboard, and everyone had gone quiet and looked away.

“She went home,” someone said.

Tortoise, of all people, had been put in charge of the greenest lubbers, the ones who had signed up in Lagh. He’d protested, but Polly had brooked no disagreement and impressed upon the recruits that they needed to listen to his every word. He focused on teaching them the names for things, their first knots, and what they needed to know about safety and the general running of the ship, as well as making sure they were where they needed to be when they needed to be there.

He soon realised how much he’d learnt in his time aboard—he hadn’t even known what the stern was, or which was starboard and backboard, never mind the difference between aft and abaft, or tacking, gybing, wearing, and heaving to. It was strange going into his old room and seeing them all there around the card table. They were all so young and eager for action. And—surprisingly—they seemed to like him. They called themselves the Red Tails, even though none of their tails were red, and made lots of in-jokes that Tortoise didn’t understand. He oversaw their work as waisters, though they mostly trained and did chores. He felt protective of them.

The rest of the gang had new roles and old. Dee was teaching the Red Tails how to fight. Ibrahim took them for the principles of sailing, and Miguel for gardening and food preparation. Penny and Penguin initially weren’t given teaching roles, but after they protested to Ọya, who asked what they knew how to do, Penny decided on book-keeping, and Penguin chose science.

Gecko didn’t protest. He was spending less time with all of them, including Tortoise, and Tortoise felt sure he was up to something. He seemed to have changed since Ghustloch, but Tortoise wasn’t sure what exactly was different about him. He’d tried to ask him one day, but Gecko had been vague and said that he’d lost some money gambling in Lagh. Maybe that was true, but that wasn’t what Tortoise had meant, and he was pretty sure Gecko knew that. One day when he and Gecko were sitting in the sun and talking, Gecko asked him what he thought of Captain Polly, and why he’d returned to the ship. Tortoise thought it an odd question. He told Gecko that he’d returned to the ship because he trusted Polly, and his friends were all here.

On his time off, Tortoise took to reading in the library. Sometimes he wondered if he’d changed, too. He never used to remember his dreams.

#

It was a high-pitched ringing sound. At least, it seemed like it.

#

Tortoise was reading in the library when Dee knocked on the open doorway. He looked up.

Dee smiled. “Hey, Tee. Sorry to interrupt—just returning a book.”

“Sure,” Tortoise said, making some room as she squeezed past and reached up. Dee turned and plonked herself down in the opposite alcove.

“This is comfy! Can see why you spend time here.”

“Mm, it’s quiet and warm,” Tortoise agreed. “How are you? I feel like I see you but don’t see you. If that makes sense.”

“Totally! That’s how I feel too. I kinda miss being on the road.”

“The trees.”

“Yeah, the trees, the mountains. Rivers. Butterflies.”

“Me too.”

“Also not knowing what was going to happen that day. And being in it together. I mean, we are here too, of course. But it’s different. We don’t talk like we used to.”

Tortoise thought about it.

“I remember talking with Gudge about that,” he said. “About not knowing what was going to happen.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was okay not to know what to do, as long as you’re sure of something. I wish I’d written it down. I’ve kind of forgotten the way he said it.”

Dee was quiet for a while. “I miss him,” she said. She huffed a little, and when she hurriedly wiped her face Tortoise realised a sudden rush of tears had welled up.

#

One day Tortoise and Gecko were on the afterdeck when the ship sighted a prize, their second since leaving Lagh and returning to their old hunting ground. It was mid-afternoon, with storm clouds brewing on the horizon.

The captain had decided that there was enough time to capture the ship, and so they made chase.

Tortoise felt restless. He’d never liked battles, but he liked them less and less. Especially since Ghustloch he’d been trying not to think about some of the things he’d seen. The ship was still some way off. The Pegasus had the weather gauge, and would catch up with them, but it would take hours.

Tortoise and Gecko were leaning against the taffrail watching the waves.

“I’m thinking about going home,” Tortoise said suddenly.

“What?” Gecko said.

“I’ve been thinking about going home,” Tortoise repeated.

“Why?” Gecko seemed genuinely surprised.

“I miss the island.”

“But there’s nothing there,” Gecko said.

“My house is,” Tortoise said. “I miss the garden.”

“I know, but I thought that this was your home now. Isn’t it? What about all of us?”

“I don’t know,” Tortoise said. “I don’t think I’m really a pirate. I’ve been wondering where Song and Mole are now. They were my friends too. Haven’t you thought about leaving the ship?”

Gecko looked taken aback. He looked away. “Maybe,” he said. “Once or twice. But not to go home. Just for something different.”

Tortoise didn’t know what to say. Neither, it seemed, did Gecko. They stared into the ocean.

#

The prize was closer, but still a couple of hours away. Tortoise’s stomach was squirming, but he couldn’t stay seated for long. He wandered about, this way and that, then went below deck. He knew he should be with the recruits. But he just wasn’t ready to put on a brave face.

It was only when he was almost there that he realised he was making his way to the galley.

#

Polly and Ọya were discussing plans on the quarterdeck.

“I don’t like the look of that storm,” Ọya said. “He’s on the move and in the wrong direction.”

“I agree, sir,” Aberra said from behind the wheel. The sailing master and his antlers towered over both of them, even Ọya.

“We’ll see,” Polly replied briskly. “It’s good to shake out and put the new recruits through some paces. Maybe this one’s a smash and grab.” Polly turned. “Ah Gecko, just the hand I wanted to see. A quick word.”

#

It was getting darker, the clouds thickening, and the wind starting to pick up. The prize was much closer.

They were passing Gibbet Island, little more than a rocky peak, and on the other side came upon another ship hove to. It was a whaler processing a large whale carcass floating alongside it, some of her crew on its back flensing the blubber. They were working quickly.

“Captain?” Ọya asked, passing the spyglass.

“We’ve missed our chance with the other one, at least before the storm,” Polly said. “But I doubt this one has more than food and oil, and we’re fully stocked. Time to batten down the hatches and heave to. Let’s have a closer look on the way past. I don’t recognise her.”

The Pegasus began battening.

“She’s fresh out of the dockyard by the looks,” Ọya said. “Laudanese.”

“Sir,” Aberra said with sudden alarm. “That’s two dogwhales they’re flensing. This far north? Ai! Have they lost their minds?!”

Polly raised the spyglass again. She tensed. “Dogwhales. Fools and damn fools. Aberra, get us out of here now.” Polly raised her voice. “Deck and marine officers and mates to me. Where are Modura and Tortoise?” Bells rang.

“What’s wrong with hunting dogwhales?” Ọya asked.

“Dogwhales aren’t the problem,” Polly said. “It’s what eats them.”

There was a commotion on the whaler, and their bells began ringing as well. Something was surfacing near the whales.

Ọya frowned. “What’s that?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” Polly said.

##

Next episode: An Ice Kraken