Chapter ii
I was frozen. The turtle had moved from lumbering beast to violent, thrashing, terrifying monster in seconds. My pack was destroyed. The turtle nuzzled its gaping beak into the remains, and pulled out a bag of brightly coloured baubles. The smell hit my nose hard and I suppressed a gagging reflex. The turtle noticed my wretch and swung its animated head towards me, and sniffed. A bauble glinted, propped inside the turtle's purple mouth. Then it was gone as the turtle crunched down, hard, obliterating the small colourful marble. The powerful jaws made me gasp a little, and still the turtle stared at me with a blank interest. The exchange between our eyes lasted, in my mind, for far too long. A seagull crawed and the moment vanished. The turtle had found what he had sniffed out, and began to blunder on again towards the glassy ocean, chewing loudly on the stench-ridden baubles.
After sitting dumbfounded for over a minute, I came to my senses and wiped my brow. My forehead was dripping sweat and I made things uncomfortable by accidentally massaging grit into it with my sandy hands. After a few minutes wiping off all the sand that had accumulated on my arms, face and neck, I examined my pack. All the baubles had gone. I would have to catch fish using trusty old methods, although I had never fished out here on this beach before. I'm sure the fish were the same as at the old Crystalwater. My fishing pole was in four pieces, scattered over the beach. Fortunately, the gnarled wood was not broken, and the pieces slotted back with satisfying clicks. I unbundled some line, which had become entangled around the roasted clamshells I had brought with me for supper. I reached for my dirk. How bent the dwarf had made it! It looked like I had unsuccessfully tried to prize open a locked chest with it. I ran a finger down the beaten blade—still sharp enough to do the trick, I suppose—and prized open the clams. The shell had retained the heat and a beautiful thick scent of baked seafood bloomed out. I sliced off a small nugget of zesty clam meat, avoiding taking too much of the fine spices I had laced them with, and wrapped the slippery piece around the lure.
I wasn't thinking, clearly. The smell must have attracted the nose of every giant turtle for a mile. I looked up, and sure enough four turtles were ambling my way. Two of them ungracefully bumped each other, but neither paid notice; they were all busy following their noses. I snapped the clam shut and buried it in the sand. The turtles carried on ambling for a moment, but then gave a look as if they had forgotten what their destination was, and one by one they turned off at tangents and wandered towards other aimless targets.
I guess I could have just attracted all the turtles I could and picked off the smaller, weaker ones, but I wasn't sure what a giant sea turtle would do if I attacked one of its brethren. How could I possibly get one single turtle alone? I wandered down the beach. It was deserted now. A few turtle tracks made their way between the shrubbery behind the beach to the water, and every now and again the placid waves were disturbed by a shell breaking the surface. I came across an upturned boat. It was small and covered in barnacles. I daresay it had been abandoned many seasons ago, and the weather had given it a fair beating. It still could be seaworthy.
I had other plans, however. Notably, it would suffice as the box for the age-old trap. I found a branch, twice the length of my arm, and propped up the hull. Using a bit more line, I attached one end to the branch, and moved a length or two out the way. The trap was set.
There's no bait! I thought. I had left my clambake buried in the sand down the beach. Curses. I grabbed my fishing pole with lure and cast off into the sea. An old trick for fishermen, this—stare at the water and see past the glint of the surface. If you keep your eyes trained long enough, they adapt and you can see through the water. It takes years of concentration to get the 'fishing stare' right, but once you master it, you can turn the opaque sparkling sea completely transparent without moving your eyes. It was a particularly sunny day, so the glare off the water was intense, but I managed to stare and concentrate hard enough until the water became totally clear, and the shimmering surface vanished.
Looking into this underwater world, I could see school after school of mindless, circling fish of many colours. Beautiful was the scene, and yet people walk past these shores and never see further than the reflection of the sun on the water's surface. This place was clearly an untapped resource. The fish were bountiful here. I could catch so many in a day as to feed the whole village for a week. Think of the money!
I drifted my lure towards a particularly volatile troop of orange fish. They looked like sage or possibly mudfish. I'm sure a culinary delight for turtles. They were moving in very fast clockwise circles, I drifted my lure in time to their movements. After only a few minutes, one bit hard and tugged eagerly on the line. With a professional flick of my wrists, the taut line twanged and the lure reeled out the water, mudfish in tow. I had my dirk ready and waiting, and held it tight as the fish flew out the water towards me. I skilfully skewered it as it flung through the air. I pulled the lure and hook out of from its cheek; it stared mournfully at me, wide-eyed, mouth agape. The knife had run it through so precisely, it could not even writhe, and it died without much consternation within a minute. I slid the knife out, and rubbed off the excess slime with a left-over piece of linen cloth.
The sun was hanging between the sea and the sky, turning the horizon into a warm amber, and the sky above me a deeper blue. I could only see one cloud, wispy and lonesome, as I removed the eighth fish from my dirk. In between bites, I had left my fishing rod alone in the sand, and used a flint pebble to knock the dirk into a straighter alignment, on a large sandy rock. I had a varying degree of success. The dirk was straighter indeed, but small scratches and indentations danced along one edge.
It was time to catch my first turtle. One had ambled alongside me earlier, and passed my collections of mud and sagefish without any hint of interest. Using some tinder I had in a pocket (the rest of the tinder had been lost when my pack was savaged), I gathered some sticks and kindling from the beachfront and the shrubbery, and started a small fire using the flint. Not caring too much for preparation or appearance, I flung a fish straight on the flames. After a few minutes, a glorious thick smell of sage wafted down the beach. The cooked fish's eye popped, signalling that it was done. I tossed it under the boat and waited.
The water was disturbed and bubbled. A shell emerged, followed by a head. A lone turtle had answered the call of cooked fish. Like me, cooked sagefish does not smell as appetising to turtles as baked clams, which hopefully explains why only one turtle was interested. Still, I hadn't planned on the size of the turtle.
As it emerged from the deepening orange waters, I gathered how immense this potential catch was. It was twice the size of any other turtle I had encountered (the first turtle, that ripped my pack apart, was the smallest of the day). Its head was roughly the size of my torso and its shell was nearly the size of the boat.
I hadn't entered this into my logistics. How was I supposed to ensnare something that was larger than my trap? The turtle curiously poked its head under the wooden boat and clambered its way in, nearly knocking out the carefully-placed branch. It barely fit inside the hull and I took a deep breath as I yanked the line, jerking the branch out from underneath its resting place. The boat came crashing down. The turtle made a brutish gargling sound, and yelped. The boat was just heavy enough to weigh down the turtle, and large enough so the edges had dug into the ground.
I had trapped my first turtle. And it was massive. Now all I had to do was kill it. Through a worn hole in the stern of the row boat I gazed in and saw the helpless turtle. The darkness inside the boat had calmed it, and it lay motionless, staring out of the small hole where my eye was now pondering it. I would need to cut its throat, but I couldn't fit my arm in through the hole, let alone reach past the huge leathery neck and find the jugular.
I had another idea. Although it did not seem that it would end cleanly. I would need to prop the boat up so the turtle would poke its head through, and then drop the heavy load on its neck, hopefully breaking it. I tried this. The turtle instantly nipped at my fingers as soon as I placed them under the rim of the bow. Had it been accurate, I could be missing my index finger by now. I counted my self lucky and used the branch to lever the boat.
As soon as it was an inch or two off the sand the large beak began to truffle through. The head was knocking hard against the wood and I thought the weakened boat may give way to the brute strength of the turtle. It didn't, but the turtle managed to nuzzle its head out the widening maw. I saw my chance and wrenched the branch away, dropping the heavy wooden stern with a dull sickening thud against the turtle's head. I head the loud snap of what I thought was a dry twig broken underfoot, but it must have been the turtle's neck, as the poor thing lay motionless; dead.
I felt almost as sorry for its passing as I did the fish. It had looked so confused and befuddled as it lay trapped in its gaol-cell. I heaved the boat up and over the turtle. The fish lay uneaten by the dead turtle's head. I pulled a strip of warm cooked fish flesh and chewed it morosely as I began to carve up the giant dead turtle.