It burbled up through the water. As I passed over more of the flagstones it got louder, clearer. Old-timey big band music. A male vocalist kicked in, singing with gusto:

Over the sea, let’s go men!

We’re shovin’ right off, we’re shovin’ right off, again…

“Hey!” I shouted, climbing back up on the raft. “Radio! Where are you, HEY!”

The song kept playing, an underwater tribute to nautical travel.

“Are you kidding me…” I looked around, frantically, this way and that. I boarded the raft and used the higher vantage to see if I could find the Radio.

There. Underwater, flat against the paving stones. Facing upward in its nest of vines. A round speaker, a knob, the little tuning window. The flowers bloomed underwater in waves of different colors, blooming and contracting, over and over in different patterns. My raft was drifting right towards it.

I ran. Well, I took a long step, anyway, straight off the raft and splashed frantically for the Radio. When I was over it, treading water, I tried diving down to touch it. This was my radio. It wasn’t a trap, it was mine. Mine. The music boomed from the speaker.

My fingers brushed the tuning knob. The Radio finished its song. I surfaced to gasp in a breath. “Where the HELL you been?”

Drifting up from the bottom of the sea: “Owen realized, with icy clarity and a feeling of deep shame, that taking that tone with his good friend the Green Radio was unwarranted.”

“I need help and it’s your job to get it!”

“Entertainment with infrequent commercial breaks is extremely helpful. Owen knew this and yet still found the energy to complain.”

“I need to get food and water, to get out of the sun, and I know you can do it.”

“The Green Radio was glad to see Owen Walsh too, rudeness notwithstanding.”

“God DAMMIT. They died! They died getting me out here, Radio, and don’t you make a mockery of that! I don’t know what rules you follow but THERE’s a new one, the prime directive!”

Long silence now. The raft drifted past me. The one with the thigh bone on it, you know, that one.

The Green Radio’s vines contracted, the flowers closed. The light in the little tuning window dimmed, went out. “Yes,” the Radio said, booming up through the water.

The vines curled up, vanished into dust, billowed away. The Radio was gone.

“Jerk,” I said, and swam to the raft before it floated away from me entirely.

The heat of the day didn’t last. Clouds boiled up, seemingly from nowhere, or perhaps I’d fallen asleep. But the sky was full of black thunderheads that pelted me with stinging rain. It was easier and more comfortable if I hid underwater; otherwise the rain hit hard and was unrelenting.

The storm kept going. It must have been hours, because when the clouds finally parted the shafts of sunlight were slanting from an entirely different direction. They shone on the ocean ahead of me.

Something was moving in that spotlight. Dramatically lit, that was certain. Very artistic. Something waving, a flag? I triangular flag.

No, dummy. A fin. A fin as tall as I was.

I scrambled up onto the raft. I grabbed my bonus femur.

The surface of the water vibrated. A tone like a tuning fork. That tone went high, low, then more complex. It made a sound. Words.

“They died.” I jumped. It was speaking, whatever it was, the noise was forming words. Vibrating on the water. Tiny, intricate curved ripples danced on the surface.

The thing came closer, that six-foot fin. Beneath was the body: long, gray, like a flat school bus, longer. Tiger stripes, subtle coloration, slightly darker and brighter than the rest of the thing. The stripes moved, like one sees on cuttlefish in Youtube videos about how interesting cuttlefish are. Forming patterns.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“They died,” the water said again. It was the thing, the animal beneath, speaking. It had to be. “Food.”

“Howdy,” I said. Because we’re all friends here. “Nice day for a swim.”

It didn’t circle my raft like a shark would. It was big enough to make an entire circle with its body, all by itself, like a colossal eel. That fin flapped and waved. The stripes on it flickered and danced.

“I need help. Food. Prime directive.”

“Things are tough all over.”

The easy, lazy swimming thing coiled around the raft, maybe twenty feet away. It was all awful, soft length, heavy and muscled and covered with faint, pale scars. I was at the center of a circle it had made with its own body. It was all gray flesh, gray and smooth, with flickering stripes. A long, flat ventral fin brushed the flagstone beneath the thing.

Something bumped the raft. I didn’t see what it was; I was surrounded and didn’t know where to look.

Another bump. The raft rocked wildly. “Howdy,” said the water.

Its voice was my voice.

My heart was knocking in my ears. I’d been in the water with sharks before, surfing back home. We’d called them Men in Gray Suits. Hilarious, right? This wasn’t a shark. This was a long way from a damn shark. Sharks just wanted to be left alone, and to score something to eat, and they could get confused about their meals. Sharks didn’t trash-talk.

“I need help. Food.” An eye. A single compound eye like an insect’s, green and iridescent, regarded me, gliding past. Vertical eyelids with a pale nictating membrane tucked in the bottom corner. Was that its head? Did it have a head?

Okay. Okay. This was an opportunity. This was an alien intelligence. Probably. We could work it out. The crab-person, the Maker, had been reasonable on the beach that day, right?

“I don’t want you to eat me,” I said. “I want you to talk to me. Tell me about yourself.”

“Yourself food.”

“I’m aware of that. Let’s see if we can work together. What have you got to lose?”

“Lose food,” it said reasonably.

The circle had been slowly tightening. Five feet away from the raft. Another bump and I was clinging to the scorched logs with my arms and legs. Rough bark abraded my skin. “Go away, please.”

Another bump. Bigger, more force. The raft almost rolled over. “Nice day for a swim.”

Something hissed.

With a loud, meaty THUNK, a black cylinder sprouted from the center of the fin. It leaked sparks like a firework, bright and hot and fierce. It hissed and burned. A runnel of blood stitched down from the thing. A wound.

Then the cylinder exploded with an unimpressive pop. Blood sprayed my face. The air filled with a smell like rotten eggs, and gray smoke puffed around the fin.

The tuning-fork water voice warbled and ceased. The tall gray fin now had a bloody circle neatly punched through its center, perhaps two feet in diameter. Its edges were black and sparkled with dying embers. It reminded me of the holes in the walls of Harrigan’s cathedral.

More hissing. A bolt of something hot and angry shot by my head, leaving a trail of yellow sparks. Another. More of the things thunked into the body of the being circling my raft. They exploded, leaving gaping wounds, or they didn’t explode for whatever reason, and just hissed and sparked, burrowing deeper with the force of sparkly rocketry.

Heroic, cinematic music boomed from the sea floor. It was a piece I recognized: the William Tell Overture. Then it switched up: the Ride of the Valkyries. The radio was interrupting its own songs.

The un-shark-thing uncoiled, slowly fleeing. It was too long to escape in a hurry. More rockets hissed by. They fizzed through the water, somehow, leaving trails of boiling bubbles, and pierced the vast gray body. Pop. Blood bloomed in the water. Pop pop, huge ugly wounds, water filling with billowing red.

A needle was bobbing above the surface of the shallow sea, like a walking miniature skyscraper. It gleamed in the sun: dark metal with rivets in art-deco curves. Other shadowy masses filled the water around it. Crazy shapes and colors on the things, no two alike, all different, all individual sea monster art projects.

And all firing those vicious little rockets. They arced above and through the water. Not at me, apparently, but one mustn’t take these things for granted.

The stately gray beast moved off like a subway leaving a platform, slowly picking up speed. It was wounded, and the new porthole in its fin seeped blood as red as my own. Sorry we couldn’t work things through, bro.

The Green Radio, somewhere, taunted with another of its old songs:

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear,

And he shows them pearly white

I looked at the Makers. I adjusted my vision, looking more closely: they blazed with the more-than-purple light, as Jeff Harrigan had. Souls.

I turned and gave the same stinkeye to the thing they’d chased off: That light was blazing from the long gray body. Souls for everyone involved this afternoon. Hooray.

The gang of Makers approached. The tall needly one came closest. An impact shook the raft: chunk. A kind of iron hook, a sort of jointed chicken foot, was now gripping the center log of my vessel near one end. Its shiny fingers tightened with a clicking ratchet sound.

The needly art-deco Maker scurried off. A metal chain unreeled from its brushed-metal shell, unwinding from a little hatch. The art-deco crab began moving along the sea floor. After a moment tension in the chain twanged and the Maker began towing me at a decent rate of speed. All the rest of the Makers in the group flanked us.

We’re shovin’ right off for home again! sang the Radio.