Runa hoisted the circular raft from the wall and hurled it to him. While the seconds passed, she hollered, “What do you mean ‘something else’?”

At that, the roar sounded again, closer and louder this time. Viola’s light flickered as she shook with fear. At the bow, Tadg was frozen, his mouth open in a small, petrified O.

“Something big!” Ulick called back.

Runa slammed her fist on the stern’s rail. “Ulick! Don’t tell me this is Loch—” She glanced over her shoulder at her apprentices, and a tremor of terror shot through Barclay. Did she mean the sound came from Lochmordra, the Legendary Beast of the Sea? “What Orla warned—”

“No,” Ulick answered, appearing at the rail on a ladder. Yasha was slung limply over his shoulder like the day’s fresh catch. “I don’t think it’s that.” He dropped Yasha to the flooded deck, and Yasha gasped and choked out lungfuls of water. Then Ulick marched to the wheel, which Barclay was all too happy to return to him.

“We’re really gonna need that wind, my boy,” Ulick said darkly and, for the first time, quietly. He didn’t want anyone else to hear. “I don’t care if ya snap the ship in two, so long as we move.”

“What is it?” Barclay rasped.

“Take a look over port side.”

Heart pounding, Barclay dashed to the edge of the Bewlah and peered into the shadowy waters.

An eye the size of the entire ship stared back at him.

Barclay screamed and floundered away from the rail. The Sea was not the adventure he’d been waiting for. The Sea was a nightmare.

Barclay raced back below the mast. Wind! he thought, but he was so frightened that he might’ve actually shouted it. Like Ulick had said, he didn’t bother trying to control the wind this time. He blew them forward with all the power he had, no matter how much the rickety ship could take.

“That’s it! Well done!” Ulick called.

Suddenly, whatever was below them began to emerge from the ocean’s depths. The Bewlah was swept out of its path as it rose, rose, and rose. Barclay stifled a second scream as the monster’s face appeared. It had coarse, gray skin covered in bumps, and its head was long and narrow, almost beak shaped. It looked as large as a mountain.

Its hungry white eyes roamed over their ship to where Viola’s coat glimmered in the light of her Lore.

“It’s a Silberwal!” Ulick exclaimed.

Silberwals were famous for being the largest Beasts in the world.

Tadg, seeming to regain himself, shouted at Viola, “Put out your light! It’s a whale dragon! It likes shiny—”

The Silberwal opened its mouth endlessly wide, until the Bewlah stared down a vast, dark tunnel lined with bristly teeth.

“Oh, that can’t be good,” Ulick said, spinning the wheel faster and faster.