She felt better once she was under. Deep enough down that the decompression sickness no longer affected her.

  Sirius had pulled her the whole way. He stopped at what she estimated to be about 10 metres down. Not quite as deep as she should be but deep enough.

  The moment they stopped he let her go.

  For a second she panicked. She feared that he was leaving her. His touch had brought her a sense of safety and protection.

  But he looked her directly in the eyes and gave her the ‘wait’ signal. His gaze flicked up toward the surface and then back on hers.

  She understood. He would have to go up to the surface for more air, and she would have to stay here. She wasn’t sure she could wait that long though.

  But before he went he pressed his mouth over hers and he gave her what he could. Then up he swam.

  Her lungs were burning by the time he returned but once more he offered her salvation in his kiss.

  Twice more, maybe three times, she was having trouble keeping count, they repeated the same thing. But on the forth trip, as his lips surrounded hers, he pressed something small into her hand. A vial. One whose shape she knew. It was one of his infusements.

  She uncapped it careful not to let the sand escape. She filtered the grains toward her skin. At their touch, maybe even slightly before, she felt the magic and she knew that too. He’d brought her shapeshifting power.

  But she had to be careful here. She had to get the animal right and she had to make the shift completely. If she passed out mid shift, things would not end well.

  Sirius swam up again as she considered her options. Her first thought was a dolphin but then she remembered what Sirius had said about them not actually breathing water. That meant they probably had lungs and if they had lungs then the pressure probably mattered too. Miles had shifted into a dolphin to go down but she hadn’t seen what form he’d returned as for the first trip and he’d stayed as an octopus on the second. There was probably a reason for that.

  The octopus though, that was an option. Miles had shifted into that at depth. She didn’t know a huge amount about the structure of an octopus except for what she’d briefly glanced at in one of Sirius’s books. The things had beaks and eight legs and suckers and they were smart creatures. That probably meant it would be easier to retain her mental processes. She knew enough she thought to try it.

  She waited until Sirius came back and gave her one more breath.

  He gave her a puzzled look then and nod toward the vial in her hand.

  She nodded back and then she set the sand free, gathering grains and pulling them in toward her palm as if it were a planet and they were the stars.

  She felt the magic start to work. She just hoped she had enough energy to see this through.

  For a moment her vision went black and she thought maybe she’d messed up but then she noticed shifting patterns of white and grey. It was as if the world had suddenly lost all colour. There was so much moving around her and in all directions. Somehow, while her colour perception had reduced, her range of vision has increased drastically.

  Slowly she found she could make out shapes, like the boats bobbing up above them, two of them now, and Sirius himself, although he looked very different. She could tell he was pointing up though and she knew that was where she needed to go.

  She couldn’t immediately feel her limbs, even though she could see them, and it took a moment for her to figure out how to control them. It basically came down to thinking about going in a certain direction and the next thing she knew she’d find herself just moving in that direction, her arms shifting around her as if they all had a mind of their own. But somehow it worked.

  She tasted rather than felt the water as it moved past her. It was overwhelmingly salty and slightly metallic. There was a fishy flavour to it as well but rather than feeling unpleasant, Amanda found it comfortingly familiar.

  Rising out of the ocean and into the air was an entirely different experience. For a second it was like when she’d first shifted into the octopus and her senses suddenly seemed diminished. The air tasted of a nothingness. Water was home and she had to fight an instinct to dive back under. They dryness of the air was uncomfortable.

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  But she was up, she was out of the sea. She was safe. Wasn’t she? Sirius was nearby and she trusted him.

  She shifted back, hoping that the risk of decompression sickness had been alleviated while in octopus form. If it wasn’t something that affected them then she was likely fine.

  That first breath as a person was something truly glorious. It took her a moment to remember how to swim and she dipped back under before breaking the surface again in a splutter. She felt Sirius’s hands briefly grace her skin, lifting her up, before letting her go again. The air was so wonderful that she had initially failed to notice that she was no longer wearing anything. She was surprised that the water didn’t immediately feel cold. It took a few more seconds for that.

  She found Sirius again nearby and marveled at the all the colours she could see, especially that emerald green of his eyes, a colour she knew so well now. For a second she felt blind in a different way, as if someone had cut off all the vision behind her. She could no longer just look over her shoulder without turning her head.

  Sirius reached out for her, offering her a hand.

  “I’m alright,” she told him.

  She could see him give a relaxed smile at that. Together they swam for the nearest boat. Their original boat. Sirius pulled himself up first then turned around to offer her a hand.

  She hesitated. “Uh… kinda naked here,” she pointed out.

  She heard someone snigger from behind him. But Sirius simply reached off to the side and then returned a moment later holding his coat. He dropped it over the sides so it’s tail end only just reached the water but so she could climb up under it hidden from view.

  The problem was, she was tired and the side of the boat was high up.

  “Stinger, hold this,” Sirius said.

  A moment later, with both arms free, Sirius reached under the coat and lifted Amanda up onto the boat. Stinger dropped the coat onto her, keeping her hidden from view of anyone else. Then Sirius wrapped her tightly in it and pulled her into a warm hug.

  The coat was comfortable, if more than a little oversized. Soon she shifted her arms into the sleeves. They hung down well past the end of her fingertips but she didn’t mind. She took a moment then to look about.

  At the other end of the boat, a tired looking Riki was clutching his head. A second long boat had been deployed and sent out to meet them. Ryan and Brutus had jumped aboard that one, along with the two now apprehended men from The Piper. Stinger had swapped with them and was standing in the middle of the original boat.

  “Pinto…” Amanda started.

  Sirius nodded and replied grimly, “Yeah, I know.”

  “Sam killed him,” she finished just to be clear. “I’m guessing Morgan doesn’t have a necro on board?” She knew it was a long shot.

  Sirius shook his head. “None that could could pull one off successfully by the time we got him back up. And definitely not without a sacrifice.”

  “We’ve got a sacrifice,” remarked Stinger giving the other longboat a pointed look as it travelled away from them and back in the direction of the main ship.

  Behind him, Riki shook his head. “Remember George?”

  Stinger grunted.

  Still shaking his head, Riki added, “If Flynn couldn’t do a permanent resurrection on George seconds after he went down, he’s not going to be able to do Pinto now.”

  “He didn’t use a sacrifice then,” rebutted Stinger. But his reply brought no lift in the atmosphere.

  Amanda knew enough about necromancy to know it needed to be done quickly. Blood magic would buy a necro time but the drop off rate wasn’t linear. The more minutes that had passed the more blood a resurrection required even for a good necro and it didn’t sound like they had one of those.

  “What happened up here?” Amanda asked. They appeared to be waiting for something and she also hadn’t seen Miles on either boat.

  “Sam tried to use me as a hostage,” Riki explained. “Ryan attacked him anyway, with magic, a little too forceful and I got knocked out in the process. But they got him. He didn’t hurt anyone else.”

  Amanda was about to ask about Miles when her question was answered as two sets of scuba gear were thrown into the boat, followed a moment later by Miles. He glanced at Amanda. “Hey, you’re alright?”

  “You get everything?” Stinger asked.

  Miles nodded.

  “That’s Pinto’s gear?” Amanda observed, wondering why they hadn’t also brought his body back up. Miles must have had to go deep to retrieve the rest of the stuff.

  “Yup,” Miles replied.

  She glanced at Sirius, unsure if it was right to ask. But Sirius seemed to guess at her question. Softly he said, “The proper burial place for a sailor is the sea, assuming he has no family to return him too?”

  Stinger nodded in confirmation of Sirius’s question. “If we bring him up, we’d just be sending him back down again.”

  They were all silent for a few minutes then Stinger took a seat and grabbed an oar. “Right, let’s head back to the boat.”

  The others did likewise and soon they were heading back toward the ship.

  The other longboat had already made it and everyone on it was in the process of disembarking. Nearby, three large containers hung off the edge of the boat on ropes, the last three containers currently being emptied.

  Amanda looked back, trying to find the spot they had dived, the spot where Pinto now rested forever, but it blended into the surrounding ocean, infinite as the sky above.

  As she stared at the sea, one of the further away rock formations out of the corner of her eye suddenly lifted out of the water and took to the sky.

  She turned her attention toward it, thinking at first she was imagining things. But as she watched large leathery wings unfold and spread a coat of black across the blue, she had no doubts about what it was that had sunken the ship they had just salvaged, and this was definitely no kraken.