You could have heard a fish fart. The whole room was completely silent. It was properly awkward. Staring Crone had never stopped doing her thing, of staring into the distance, so it was never like she was definitely talking to us. But now it wasn’t clear whether she’d stopped talking to us. Then, for no reason at all, there was a sudden release, and everyone just started to clap crazily.

‘This is brilliant!’ said James, excitedly beating his fist on the Jellyfish’s surface. ‘I can’t believe it!’ What the . . .’

‘If she wants to just carry on staring at stuff and then coming forward every so often and saying something amazing, then that’s OK with me,’ said Lana. ‘I’ll even take her her food.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said James. ‘This is the best thing ever!’

My cheeks hurt with grinning. I mean, the idea that those old stories might actually be true? And that this whole big killer jellyfish thing might not be new? It was amazing! Also . . . it sort of made sense, weirdly, or more sense than most of the other theories people had come up with, anyway.

‘Thank you very much.’ Dr Jones stood up. ‘Very much indeed.’ She frowned at us, her matted brown hair tied back neatly with a natty orange strip of plastic. She raised her hands and the crowd settled down slightly, but there was still an undertone of excited muttering. ‘I think we probably all have a few questions. Would you be prepared to take them?’

Staring Crone moved slowly, now focusing her stare down towards her audience. Her long grey hair parted as she did so; beneath, you could see her white chapped lips and almost-glowing black eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Some.’

‘I’ll start, if that’s OK?’ said Dr Jones. ‘Why do you think the stories should be treated as fact?’

‘There are too many of them,’ said Staring Crone. ‘It’s just uh, a pattern. Some of the stories are ancient so they will have been changed over the years as they were told in different forms. But uh, the two big problems we’re facing are common to the stories. We’ve got creatures on land who kill humans – the kriks – and, uh, we’ve got giant sea monsters with multiple tentacles that sound like giant jellyfish. We humans are in a mess right now, but I don’t think it’s the first time it’s happened.’

‘Sorry?’ said Dr Jones. ‘You don’t think this is the first time it’s happened?’

Staring Crone tilted her head slowly towards Dr Jones, so that her hair fell over her face again. There was a pause before she spoke: ‘Noah’s Ark.’

The room immediately erupted into chaos again. This time, there was no way Dr Jones could control us. People were standing up and shouting, some people were laughing crazily, I think both Lana and James were just making random noises of amazement.