Darwin’s Devils

Clockwork Nessie, Part 3

More water shot straight into the air, dousing the ceiling and squirting through the narrow opening.

“There must be a fissure beneath the water.” I spoke aloud to calm myself.

The effect dissipated, however, when the surface boiled and churned as massive air bubbles ascended. I chewed my bottom lip as I surmised a logical explanation.

“Gases from the bottom feeders…that’s all it is.”

Until ‘all-it-is’ suddenly broke the water’s surface and stretched its long neck. Higher and higher it rose until the creature’s head found the beacon of sunshine in the roof.

I flattened myself in the shadows of the cavern’s wall and held perfectly still. I had never seen the likes of such a creature except in fairy tales.

The beast’s head rose to nearly ten feet. Shiny silver scales, decorated with long dripping strings of seaweed, covered the neck. It reared back in a graceful arch as the creature expelled noisy bursts of water through the hole in the cave’s ceiling. The silver head possessed sharp angles where I would have expected smoother, gentler lines. The jaw formed nearly a right angle on either side as it extended upward to the tiny holes that might have been ears or gills. Along the middle of the back, silver and black-tipped bony plates, like the dorsal fins of a shark, paraded the length in ever-increasing size until they disappeared below the water. A few caught and reflected the sun’s light. The dimensions of its submerged parts eluded discovery.

(To Be Continued)

The Cave

Clockwork Nessie, part 2

With no worries of water-logging my shoes, I could wade through the shallow water instead of taking the longer route over higher ground. Sarah and Thomas chose that path, putting them even farther behind.

My father discovered the coastal cave years earlier. Because its entrance faced inland and could only be reached at low tide, I doubted many knew of it. I only discovered its existence after his death by reading his journals and deciphering his encoded entries. Why Papa had felt the need for such secrecy, I found perplexing.

Resigned to exploring the cave on my own, I broke into an easy jog, and soon reached my destination.

Beyond the tidal pools and into the winding curves of the cave, nearly one hundred eighty degrees to its entrance, lay a much larger body of water. I had tested its depths enough to know it to be quite deep. Its edges extended beyond the reach of the natural light, but a small aperture in the overhead rocks illuminated its nearest shores.

A hiss followed by a geyser of water from the usually placid subterranean lake sprayed me where I sat taking measurements of a colony of sea urchins.

“Darwin’s devils!” I scrambled back from the water’s edge.

(To be continued)