Small-five’s first awareness of what was happening to her came as a result of a mistake. That particular mistake came from greed, which served as an excellent first lesson for her developing brain: stupidity is forgivable, provided you learn from it.
She and her sisters should’ve paid more attention when Nine-point spotted a stray Eurenu in the night that was nearly as big as they were, floating into the safety of an ice crevice with all the haste that their flabby bodies were capable of. Of course, the sisters pursued – that mass of fleshy jelly could feed them for a day or more each. Of course, they barely fit through the tunnel the boneless thing had squeezed itself into; though it opened into a relatively spacious cavern just past a bodylength. And of course, even as they caught up to their food and tore out its defensive slime-sac, a creaking filled the water behind them and All-fin was nearly snared by the delicate, knife-edged legs of a large Nohlohk that had seated itself over the entrance to its little hideway.
Panic set in, of course. Small-five and her new sisters had spent months upon months in the open sea, where the closest thing to a confined space was to be surrounded by Fiskupids. To be suddenly and aggressively hemmed into a tight cave was something altogether different, something that none of them would have tolerated for long even back during their days on the reefcolony, and immediate reaction was four separate shades of panic, sliding frantically from side to side in shades so bright that they hurt each other’s eyes.
Too-close-too-big-too-too-bright-all-hurts-stuck-here-can-it-reach-us? flashed Dim-glow, her damaged fin twitching uncontrollably with the force of unpleasant memories of their first Nohlohk encounter.
No-it-can’t-no-it-can’t-won’t-can’t-won’t-no, stammered out All-fin, reassuring no one, including herself.
Stay-still-can’t-reach, said Small-five, and that calmed them all down a bit. The Nohlohk’s legs really couldn’t stretch far enough, try as it might. They were trapped, but they were in no immediate danger; not unless they panicked and tried to make a break for it. It wouldn’t work. Not with a captor that size – it must have been sleeping here for months to let this miniature prison form around it. It was probably starving, and disinclined to release food.
Need-out-need-out-need-out, said Dim-glow. Out-out-OUT, the last flash-pattern nearly dazzling her sisters.
Quiet-stop, said Nine-point, jabbing her with her proboscis. Wait.
The sisters waited, and Nine-point struggled for a moment, trying out new patterns before she found one that fit the concept she’d just discovered. A bit like a hunt, but broader, stranger.
Idea.
Her lights rippled as she looked to Small-five. You-smallest. Swim-close-swim-very-low-near-legs-in-legs-reach-back-out-and-in-taunt-bait.
Small-five drew in on herself, lights dimming. Why-hurt-kill-will-catch-me-
No-won’t-smallest-quickest-most-easily-worried-escape-fine. soothed Nine-point. Bait-and-we-stop-it-do-it-go-NOW-before-it-settles-in. All-fin-Dim-glow-listen-while-she-does-it-you-will-
Small-five couldn’t see the rest of the conversation; she was focused on her new, suicidal goal. The Nohlohk seemed to grow as she approached the outermost reach of its legs, even shrunken in on itself, hiding in its icy carapace. Tiny little glimmers of light sparkled at her from inside it; eyes masquerading as refraction from her glowshine.
Was she inside its reach now? It was large, but what if it was short-legged? What if she was already well inside its grasp now, and it was patient? What if it had fallen asleep and they would never catch its eye until they passed below it, easy prey? What if they got away and one of them died and the others hated Small-five for it? Would they drive her away and leave her to starve and be eaten under the ice? What if
The Nohlohk struck, turning empty water into a swarm of needle-legs and hunger. Sheer fright was Small-five’s only instinctual saviour, and then only by inches – she jerked backwards quicker than thinking, and felt the cold, sharp touch of a thousand claws brush gently against her snout. Blood filled the water in front of her nostrils, making her dizzy with fright.
Now-now-NOW-GO, called Nine-point, just on the corner of her eyes, glowshine fierce as midday sunlight. Down from above came her sisters, proboscises snapping and darting as fast as the Nohlohk’s legs, rushing right over its stretched-out web of razors and into its surprised face, smashing into its ice-plates.
The Nohlohk responded as its instincts demanded: immediate retreat. In a half-an-instant the maze of cutting-edges was gone, yanked back into its shell with such force that the suction yanked Small-five into its face, almost collided with Dim-glow on the way.
Go-run-flee-hurry-run-run-run-SWIM! called Nine-point, still burning-bright. Her sisters did as they were told, rushing past the confused predator quick as thinking. Nine-point followed last, and took the tip of a claw in her tail, leaving a pretty cut that made Small-five feel the pain in her snout all over again.
Not-worth-the-food, said Dim-glow.
No, agreed All-fin, gingerly prodding herself to check for scrapes. Needs-more-care-wary-frighten. She shook herself. But-still-idea-good-worked-think-ahead. Any-others?
Nine-point was running through her glowshines, each a little weaker and smaller than usual. She’d flared bright enough to tire herself out for hours, even with the meal of the Eurenu to fuel herself. None-now. Think-when-needed. Tell-you-then. She stretched, long and slow. You-too-next-time-help-idea-think-ahead-plan.
That was Small-five’s first encounter with an idea. They seemed useful, and she wondered how you got them.
She found out herself three days later.
The problem was a Rimeback. It usually was.
Rimebacks had one grand virtue, but an innumerable amount of vices. Tasty, but hard-shelled in their ice-carapaces, so they stuck in your mouth if you weren’t careful. Tasty, but quick and canny in the water, expert at dodging just barely out of reach. Tasty, but only entering the water to feed on the tiny organisms of the polar seas.
Perhaps there was only one redeeming feature to them, but it was quite a large one. They were soft, smooth, and delicious. Small-five would have eaten ten of them if she wasn’t even hungry, she would’ve hunted them if they were as filling and nutritious as ice. A single mouthful of Rimeback. stripped of its deathly-cold insulating fatty layers that kept it coated in a sheath of ice, would make up for an entire month of tasteless, filling Eurenu consumption. If it weren’t for the energy you had to expend to chase down the little pests.
Small-five had just followed All-fin in a particular intensive Rimeback chase while Nine-point and Dim-glow watched. After a whirlabout chase through pack ice that had nearly led the two sisters to bite each other at least four times, the nuisance had found itself a snug perch on top of a small berg, where it hung just out of proboscis-reach, chittering taunts at them as they chipped vicious holes in the ice with lunge after lunge.
Go-away-give-up-stop-come-find-food, said Nine-point.
Agreement-come-stop-that-small-not-worth-eating-anyways-come-on, said Dim-glow.
Stubbornness was the catalyst for Small-five’s immediate decision to get that Rimeback at any cost, given spine by her growing awareness that the size gaps between them were narrowing. The rich food and pause from movement offered by the polar seas had finally let her begin to catch up on her stunted growth, and Nine-point no longer made her seem shrunken by comparison.
No-will-HAVE-it! she shone fiercely. Will-HAVE-it-All-fin-come-here-drive-it-near-to-me-now-stab.
All-fin responded dutifully. The Rimeback skittered upwards, away from both of them, and stood on its back legs, puffing out its air sacs in pride and calling triumph in its squeaky little voice.
Amusement rippled down Dim-glow and Nine-point’s sides. Small-five wriggled in frustration. Knock-it-over-knock-it-over-knock-it-over! she blared.
Too-big-too-heavy-stop-it, said All-fin. Done-all-you-loud-stop-it.
Small-five jabbed at the iceberg again – pointless, except as a stress release.
A chip broke off, and smacked her on the head.
And then, as her sisters laughed at her, she felt the world turn simpler. It was so obvious all of a sudden that she felt if she shook herself, the idea might fall off like a clinging parasite.
Carefully, slowly, gingerly, Small-five poked at the berg-chip with her proboscis. It bobbed.
Cautiously, steadily, warily, Small-five wrapped the muscular body of her proboscis around the lump of ice. Her sisters were saying something, but she didn’t notice.
Quickly, before she could forget what she was doing, Small-five whisked the chunk of iceberg into the air. It smacked off the berg a third of a body-length from the Rimeback, which squalled in alarm and scooted higher.
All four sisters looked at what Small-five had just done, and thought about it.
Try-again, they all agreed, and the next ten minutes were, for the Rimeback, both the most confusing and terminal of its life. It dodged, it scurried for cover, but before long all four of the sisters had learned how to accurately lob a piece of ice and had it surrounded, without cover, without hope, and very shortly, without a shell or any of the most succulent bits of its insides.
They shared it equally. It tasted better than anything they’d had before.
Good-idea-of-tool, hummed Nine-point. Good-idea-good-Small-five-smart.
Small-five thought that was a good new word for her. If she couldn’t be small anymore, she’d be smart. It sounded like a good thing, if it meant she had ideas, and the ideas were like that.
The third time Small-five encountered an idea was also the third time she met others of her own kind that were not her sisters.
It was unlike the others from the start. Her first chance meeting had been a clumsy blundering into the path of an unfriendly sister-group. Her second, swimming right into the faces of her near-sisters. The newcomers – a bit bigger, a bit rowdier, and three in number – were approached from a distance, first seen as strange glowshines at the far edges of a deepwater upwelling under the crystalline grasp of an ice shelf’s edge.
Strangers-go? asked Small-five as they approached.
Strangers-talk-wait-and-see-maybe-run-maybe-fight-bigger-but-we-more, replied Dim-glow, eyeing the newcomers. They were a few months older than Small-five and her sisters, showing itself not just in their greater size, but also the breadth of their fins; the sprouting of small strange whiskers near adjacent to their mouth, a pair on each side; and the confident, deep-set light of their glowshines, sustaining effortlessly a degree of brightness that Small-five had to exert pressure to achieve. She wasn’t sure whether to feel fear, resentment, or awe.
The two groups met near the upwelling’s center, at something close to equal distance between their starting points. This was very much intentional, guessed Small-five. Nine-point might not be so much larger now, but she was still the leader of the sisters for a reason.
Greetings-and-speakings-to-you-and-your-smalls-with-many, said the leader of the strangers. Something was off about her glowshine, her cadence just a touch wrong. Her words were like what Small-five knew, but different. She wasn’t sure if she liked it. Or if her sisters did either, judging by their wary and stiff swimming.
Name-Flare-forwards-three-pulse, continued the lead stranger, still holding a position of perfect, loose-finned relaxation, and-Rescinding-gleam-against-right-flipper-and-Soft-shine-top-to-botom. You-share-or-we-fight?
Nine-point moved a little closer, just short of attempted intimidation, but enough to show she wasn’t shrinking. Share-a-bit-you-stay-that-side-we-here-if-predator-comes-alarm-flares-all-points-then-scatter.
Good-and-safer-and-surer, agreed Flare-forwards. Hunt-good-and-eat-well-agreement-made-and-alarm-will-call. She glowed softly on all marks, then turned about and departed back to her own side of the upwelling, sisters in tow.
Never-seen-talk-like-that-where you learned? asked Small-five. Learn-on-reefcolony?
Never-known-copied-her-added-predator-watch-idea, said Nine-point. Don’t-want-look-stupid-young. Old-chase-young-away-no-food.
The idea of a bluff that didn’t just trick your opponent’s senses but also their ideas seemed very strange to Small-five. Nine-point had just made someone else think that the entire world, in this one way, was wrong – and even included Small-five in it by mistake. It seemed too powerful for how easy it had been.
Come-food-comes, called Dim-glow. Beneath them, rising slow but sure, were the first prey of the night.
So learned Small-five, in bits in snips. She learned to move things that weren’t her, and use them. She learned to think about times that weren’t the present, and plan for them. She learned to think about what others were thinking or not thinking, and what that could mean. By the time the summer sun lay pinned in the sky above the icebergs, she could think about her own thinking, even if she wasn’t quite sure about it. Yet.
At that time, the plentiful bounty of the deep cold began to slow as warmer currents pervaded it. The upwellings slumbered, the ice melted, the hunt-and-be-hunted of life under the ice slowed and dawdled. And Small-five and her sisters grew lean, yet no less in cunning – they’d ingested the chemicals of the things from the deep cold for a full half-year, and the paths their minds were set upon were unbarred and fixed. Intellect was assured now, which would’ve been small comfort now even if they’d known it; all they knew was that their hunts were longer and poorer, and their predators hungrier and faster to jump – a Crheeh almost took the four of them in a single pass, saved only by the chance of Dim-glow’s glowshine sparkling upon its teeth rising from below as she turned to scold All-fin for something pointless.
And as the warm came, so went the Fiskupids. Frozen in their icy coffins, a hundred thousand embedded inside the heart of every berg that broke loose from its brethren, they drifted north inside the mountains of melting ice. Millions would die pointlessly, melted loose in icy waters where there was no hope of the eggs each tiny corpse carried reaching a warm seabed to rest upon. They left with nearly as grand a guard as they had arrived with; each iceberg trailed by a swarm of scavengers preying upon still-frozen Fiskupid bodies as they fell loose from their tombs. Only the deepest burrowers would survive the trek.
Not that Small-five knew this. The polar seas were growing into their bare summer season – gulfs of open, lifeless water speckled with oases of ice, where refugees huddled for food and shelter. Caught between remaining in the widening gulfs of starvation or migrating deeper into the heart of the pole, where the water ran cold enough to freeze glowshine under your skin, they made the only choice they could. She and her sisters turned to the north and once more followed in the wake of the Fiskupids, – once an endless wave of life, now a silent, frozen rain – sadder, hungrier, but wiser. And still learning.
They were less than two months away from realizing just how much they would have to learn.