At Kelpbone Steps, the morning tide was still low, and Mira was already doing the job she had claimed for herself. She stood on a damp black stair near the lower pools, her yellow oilskin coat bright against the stone, watching the waterline with quick, careful eyes. If she could check the tide pools first, before the dockhands came down with their baskets, she could show them she was not too small to be useful.
Below her, the pools glittered in uneven little pockets between the rocks. Seaweed beds waved in the clear water like green blankets, and that was where the tiny crabs, shells, and eggs liked to hide.
Then the water shivered.
A rushing school of shoreline fish flashed into the lower pools all at once, silver bodies turning side to side as they darted in tight, hungry loops. They were not nibbling at the edges. They were tearing into the seaweed beds, tugging and snapping until the green cover thinned and floated away in ragged strips.
Mira leaned forward so fast her wrapped feet slid on the wet step. One pool near the bottom was already half-stripped bare. A little crab scuttled out from under the last frayed weed and froze in the open. Mira could see it clearly now: if the fish kept going, the hiding places would be gone before the dockhands even reached the stairs.
She opened her mouth to call out, but the fish churned the water so hard that she was not sure anyone above could hear her. Bran’s rope coil lay on a higher landing, and Nessa’s warm bun tray sat farther up by the ovens, but neither of them was down here yet. Mira looked from the fish to the open pools to the stairs above and felt the whole problem pull tight in front of her. If she rushed in alone, she might scare the fish deeper into the pools. If she waited, the shelters might be stripped away.
She had to choose quickly how to get close enough to help without making things worse.
What happens next?
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