Page 64 of The Kraken Games

“I can see that.” The kraken nodded, her lips tightening, but her eyes were not unkind. “Luna Storm.”

“Please, I can explain what happened,” Luna heard herself beg.

The kraken sashayed elegantly along the boardwalk toward them. “You’ve caused our folks a lot of trouble, Luna. Kai is indisgrace because of you,” she said finally as she reached the end of the little jetty.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Slowly, Hana’s eyes travelled over Luna, making her feel naked and exposed, as if she could see right into her soul. “Please, can I tie up my boat?”

Hana nodded. “Very well. But if Shen sees you here, he’ll chase you away.”

“I know. I guess I deserve that.” Luna unlooped the rope and threw it to Hana, who wound it around the post.

Luna was suddenly lost for words.

“So,” the other woman folded her arms across her chest, “what is your reason for causing so much mayhem?”

Luna battled a strong sense of injustice. It would be easy to protest angrily, pull back, retract into her shell, like she always did, but there was truth in Hana’s words. For all intents and purposes, shehadcaused mayhem.

Claiming the victory that Kai had gifted her, then the photos of his damaged tentacles being leaked. It looked terrible.

She bit her lip, and to her surprise the word “Sorry” spilled out. “I didn’t mean to hurt Kai. I just want… answers.”

“To what?”

Luna felt herself trembling. She huddled in the boat, hugging herself, and the two women surveyed each other solemnly. Behind them in the water, Torqua clicked. “Maybe I’ll leave you two to talk.”

Hana nodded.

He disappeared, leaving the women alone together. For long moments there was silence. Somewhere in the bullrushes a melancholy frog called, and a sea bird cawed high up above.

Hana sat down, cross-legged on the jetty, folding her hands in her lap. “Okay, tell me your side of the story, Luna,” she said.

Luna sought desperately for the right words, but there were none forthcoming except the brutal truth.

“Fifteen years ago, your people killed my family.”

Hana’s eyes widened. “No. That is simply not possible.”

“I was there. I know what happened,” Luna gulped out. “I spent hours holding onto a plank of wood, watching kraken destroy our boat, seeing my mom and dad’s lifeless bodies float out to sea.”

Hana’s shook her head. “I’m sorry for your loss. But it couldn’t have been kraken. You have been fed a lie, no doubt by humans… the sinkings stopped twenty years ago.”

Luna scrunched her eyes. “No, no. I’d just celebrated my eighth birthday. I’m now twenty-three. A whole lot of kraken were churning and thrashing in the water around us. They took my baby brother. I saw him… disappear in the tentacles of one of them.”

She saw a stiffening of Hana’s spine, her eyes shifted away.

“Do you know about this?” Luna blurted on a hunch.

Again Hana shook her head, still not meeting her eyes.

“It was a blue kraken. There were lots of them, all blue. And then they disappeared and left me to die along with my parents. Did you hear anything, anything at all? Please, Hana… try to remember.”

“They would never…” Hana faltered, took a deep breath. “If kraken kind knew you were out there, they would have saved you.”

“I was saved by a sea bird, not a kraken.”

“If this did truly happen, and I’m not denying your memories, Luna, it must have been another species that perpetrated it.”

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