For a while, they poked around among her anchors, nets, and tattered sails. They were very interested in her Storyworld, especially the two rotting corpses inside the cabin. They pointed out that someone, certainly humans, had chopped gashes into the ship’s pale gray hull. They touched some markings on the ship’s side, saying that the markings were a name, but that they didn’t know how to read it. They seemed curious to know who those corpses were, and why they were padlocked inside. They also wanted to know why she was interested in them. Was it because she knew who they were?

The creature responded that she didn’t. She just liked their ship, which was a window into another world. It had fallen down slowly from that world, as if it were looking for her. It was as if the world above had blessed her.

The silbercows asked her if it was possible that she was a kind of keeper, just not the Keeper they’d thought she was. Could she be the keeper of the secrets of humans? The keeper of human sadnesses and failures?

The creature didn’t understand this, at all. She’d never considered humans, beyond that she liked their shiny, perfect, tiny things, she liked being connected to the world above, and she liked watching their flesh melt into bones. Also, her treasures were happy, not sad. I’m the keeper of their things, she said. I love their things.

The silbercows asked her if she understood that her treasures fell from another world because of calamities in that world; that if human things sank to the bottom of the sea, it was because something in the world of humans had gone wrong. We talk to humans sometimes who tell us about it, they said.

You seem to talk to everyone, she said, rather reproachfully.

We don’t talk to all humans, they said. Only the humans who are good listeners. The point is, humans might be able to tell us why there are bodies inside your Storyworld.

The creature was beginning to dislike the conversation again, and wondered why the silbercows were always so gloomy. I would rather talk about how sparkly my ring is, she said, stretching her tentacle out, wondering if she was going to have to start singing again.

But then something happened that changed everything. One of the silbercows, the one who didn’t talk, found the little metal egg with the sparkly circle and pin. He sprang away, shaking. When the others saw it too, they cried out, and sprang back with him.

What? said the sea creature. What is it?

It makes fire, they cried out. It makes the ocean disappear.

That little thing? she said, not believing them.