But the sun was high, the water still. He took in more air to dive again. Soon he saw the domed, speckled shape of an abalone in the blue murk. He kicked downwards, trying to stay in position as he slid the screwdriver’s blade beneath the lip of the shell. Sometimes the animal felt these attentions and suckered onto its perch, becoming harder to remove; multiple dives would be required to wedge it off. But this time Ned was quick: he speared the screwdriver in against the rock and flicked the abalone loose before it sensed him. The shell floated free, and as he grasped it he saw a shift of mottled colour, close to his hand.

It didn’t zip away like most fish would. Nor did it bob and waft like a squid or cuttlefish. Ned resurfaced, gulped air, went back down. At first he saw only reef and water, but then it happened again—the nervous retreat of blue-brown texture behind a flat, vertical rock. He swam forward, and saw the truth of it: a large leatherjacket.

It faced Ned, huddled against the rock. The spine on its forehead had risen, and the fish had angled its body to point this weapon at its pursuer. The thing was more like a horn than a spine—the leatherjacket a small aquatic unicorn.

Ned floated before it. He’d only ever seen these fish as by-catch. They were hauled in foul-hooked, no fight in their flesh, and spat loud grunts as they flapped against jetties and decks. He’d thought them senseless, pointless creatures. But this water-cloaked leatherjacket was thrumming with fearful energy. Its horn-spine rose higher. Its body shimmied with tightly held power. Its mouth opened, showing a row of teeth.

That was when the quoll and the chicken coop found their way back to him. The leatherjacket’s defences shot them into his mind. The quoll cornered, rearing. Its spots so bright in the morning light, its wound-blood and dark fur and glinting bone. Its mouth erupting with hissing screams and shining teeth. Its fury. Its panic.

Ned’s chest burned, half with a need for air, half with something else, crimson and heavy. The fish lunged towards him. He kicked up to the surface.

When he broke the sea’s skin he gasped, sucking air. He wiped his eyes, blinking at the salt, the sunlight. The abalone he’d levered free was still in his hand; he was surprised to see it there, the pucker of its muscle squirming in his palm.

As he reoriented himself to this drier, heavier world he looked back to the cove and saw the young woman who’d been distracting him of late. She was lying on the rocks, framed by the high cliffs, a hand raised to guard her eyes from the light, and then Ned was not thinking of teeth or fear but only of the sun, the heat, her skin.

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