She kicked harder to catch up with him. A glance at her gauge showed that they were at fifty feet. It was the deepest she’d been. When she looked up, she couldn’t see the surface, although shafts of sunlight penetrated the water and she could see quite a distance ahead of her.

She was surprised when the pipe suddenly came to an end. They paused, and while Brian fiddled with something on his computer, Caddie peered into the open mouth of the pipe. A large fish, long and thin, looked back at her. It was resting on its stomach, the fins on either side moving slowly, as if it was fanning its brown mottled skin. Its mouth was open, and she saw that it was filled with a row of tiny, sharp teeth. Large dark eyes watched her warily. What are you? Caddie thought at it, but the fish only blinked its eyes and fanned more rapidly.

Brian tapped her on the shoulder and pointed, indicating their new direction. Caddie followed him across a barren stretch of sand, the landscape dotted with the occasional sea star but nothing else. Already the sea stars had become overly familiar to her, and she let her eyes pass over them in search of more interesting sights.

A few more kicks brought them to something that took her breath away. A cluster of rocks rose from the sand, and all over them huge white flowers bloomed on stalks thicker than her arm. They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, she thought. The flowers, some of them at least three feet tall, swayed like palm trees. The top of each was capped in cauliflower-shaped petals (she could think of no other word for them) seemingly spun from cotton.

Brian swam up and over the rocks, hovering just above the strange things. Caddie followed, trying her best to maintain her buoyancy and not crash into the flowers. When she was over them, she looked down. They’re anemones, she thought. Not like the tube anemones, or the short round ones, but they’re anemones.

The anemones’ petals were moving in and out. At first she thought they were just being moved around by the water, but then she saw that the movements were deliberate. The anemones, like dozens of ghostly conductors, were making music only they could hear, drawing water into their open mouths. They’re eating, Caddie realized, and the idea thrilled her.

Brian led her over the field of anemones. It felt to Caddie as if they were soaring over snow-capped mountains. Below them the anemones floated like clouds. She was disappointed when they reached the other side of the rocks and returned to the plain old sand. But Brian swam around the far edge of the outcropping, and Caddie saw that in addition to the anemones, the rocks were covered with nudibranchs, crabs, and many other things that roamed the anemone forest like jungle animals.