Despite the novelty, she found herself kind of bored. Apart from a lot of kelp and some fish, there wasn’t much to look at. A starfish, orange against the dark rust of the pipe, momentarily distracted her. But she’d seen lots of starfish (although admittedly they had mostly been dried and decorating the walls of beachside restaurants), and this one was unremarkable apart from the fact that it was alive.

She looked down, to the side of the pipe, and saw what appeared to be white and black flowers growing in a small patch in the sand. Intrigued, she tried to get closer to them. As she neared, however, the flowers retreated into themselves, disappearing and leaving behind only short, naked stumps like dead fingers. Amazed, Caddie waited to see if they returned. A moment later, one of the fingers expanded and tiny filaments emerged, blooming into a white flower. Caddie reached out a gloved finger and touched it, sending it back into hiding.

What the hell is that? she wondered. She looked for Brian, wanting to show him the remarkable find. He was a few feet away, waiting. She pointed to the flower-things, and he swam over to look. When he saw what she was pointing at, he shook his head as if to say, “I know what those are.” Then he turned and swam off.

Caddie wanted to stay and wait for the flower-things to come back. She was surprised that Brian was treating them so casually. She wanted to know more about them. Brian, however, seemed to want to keep going.

Now as they swam she looked at the ocean with new eyes. It was as if the flower-things had granted her some magic powers. Like those girls in the stories who get grease in their eyes and can see the fairy world, she thought. And she did feel now that she was in some other world, one filled with things she’d never even imagined.

A crab, its back decorated with bits of shells and strands of kelp, crawled across the pipe. Meeting another crab, it raised its pincers, and the two danced around one another until the second crab, smaller and with a bright orange carapace, seemed to fall down the side of the pipe like a skier caught in an avalanche. It caught itself and sat, motionless, on the skin of the pipe, its tiny mouth working busily.

It was, Caddie saw, a world of conflicts and intrigues. Its citizens, most of them weirdly beautiful, carried on oblivious to the world above. And she, Caddie thought, was equally oblivious to their world. It had never occurred to her that so much life not only lived beneath the water but went on beneath the water. She felt she’d discovered an entirely new civilization where before she’d seen only darkness and wet.