Around them, strange, frothy speckles of white floated on the ocean’s surface. Barclay didn’t think much of it—not until they rowed toward the beach, where there were so many speckles that the water was more white than blue. It reminded him of pouring two colors of paint into the same cup, the way they swirled together. Goath writhed and squirmed away from it.

“What is this?” Barclay asked, reaching down to dip his fingers in it.

Tadg grabbed Barclay by the wrist and wrenched his hand away. “Don’t touch that,” he snarled. “It’s a weeping tide.”

Barclay shivered at the spooky name. “What’s that?”

“It’s an algae bloom,” Ulick explained. “Algae is a type of plant that grows in the water, like seaweed. When there’s too much of it, it creates what we call a bloom. This kind here, the white kind, is actually caused by a Trite class Beast. And it’s carnivorous. Put your fingers in, and all you’ll be pulling out is bones.”

Barclay scooted nervously to the center of the boat.

“I thought weeping tides only occur twice a year?” Viola asked.

Of course Viola had heard of the weeping tide. Which meant, once again, Barclay was the odd one out.

Ulick nodded. “Normally they only come on Midsummer and Midwinter. Because that’s when Lochmordra rises. He’s what causes the blooms.”

Viola whipped her notebook back out of her bag and jotted down Ulick’s words. Barclay really wished he’d brought his books now.

They rowed until they reached the beach; then Ulick carefully climbed onto the sand and dragged the boat—with the four of them still inside—far from the eerie white water. Fish bones were scattered across the shoreline, picked clean of any meat.

Once they’d all safely disembarked, they trekked across the dunes to town. Or, at least, what was left of it. Glannock was snuggled on a field of lush green grass, though the streets were mostly flooded now. Tiny water-bug and minnow Beasts swam in the puddles, and a few buildings still smoldered slightly.

“It looks like there was a tidal wave,” said Yasha. He pointed to a trenchlike divot that sliced through part of town, then to another farther down the road. “And those are the spots where Lochmordra struck down the buildings.”

Barclay examined the trenches in surprise. They didn’t look like the tracks or claw marks of any animal he’d seen before. They were long and snakelike. But Lochmordra couldn’t have been a snake, because the trenches didn’t connect to one another.

“What does Lochmordra look like?” he asked.