The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

the camera, it smashes into pieces on the ceiling. Fuck. How will my work be recognized?

In the security line I’m pulled up with the submarine and thrown into the sloping rock, resulting in the air hose being ruptured and the small box in the belt breaking – the specimens are lost! The only oxygen left is in the suit and the mask. I draw my breath and hold it but that’s far from easy, for I’m being swayed to and fro in the water.

The Lagar Serpent thrusts Early Bird coarsely up to the surface, through the sand, routing rocks until it comes to a full stop on the beach.

I’m still under the surface and I’m afraid to move.

While the serpent struggles to release its teeth from the sub I get a couple of moments to think.

Why does it show itself now? How did it feel our presence so far away? What was it that pulled it toward us?

Then it hits me. The brooch! The serpent must have a special connection to it. I recall a passage in an annal from the fifteenth century, stating that lake serpents are hoarders. They gather trinkets, preferably shiny, into their lairs, fondling them and sometimes marking them with saliva or other bodily fluids. That way they can watch it, guard it, from afar. The Lagar Serpent’s hoard must be hidden deep in the cave but the chest it grew up in got a special place in the shallow entrance, maybe so the beast could fondle it, probably lick it, more often. And the brooch is a part of the entity that is the serpent’s origin. The chest and its contents, mainly the golden brooch, are the reason the serpent is here.

What was I thinking by taking it? Why didn’t I make these connections right away? My ambition blinded me and now I’m facing death.

I nearly can’t hold my breath in any longer.

Smacking its lips, the serpent turns to me where I’m floating up to the surface. It seems to have vented, almost appearing to be satisfied. Its movements are now unhurried. It moves up to me, halts and stares at the brooch. Not anger, but frustration, is in its eyes. It opens its maw and prepares to snap at me.

When I wave the golden brooch over my head it glitters in the waving beams of the setting sun that cut the shallow water. The serpent breaks off, closes its mouth and follows the brooch with peering eyes.

Perplexed, I stretch my arm as far back as I can and drop the brooch. The serpent loses interest in me, grabs the brooch with surprisingly fine mouth movements, lets its eyelids drop and strokes the trinket with the end of its tail.

Immediately I kick myself upwards, half swimming, half climbing the slope that leads up to the beach. The oxygenless air won’t stay in my lungs for much longer.

I look over my shoulder and see the Lagar Serpent hovering calmly in the shallows, seemingly absentminded like it’s remembering something. Then it opens its eyes, gives me a quick glance but doesn’t seem to want to pursue.

At that moment I rise up from the water. I crawl in the sand and throw myself up to the beach, try to stand up but fall back down, powerless, totally fatigued. Can’t see anything for the condensation on the mask. Can’t breathe. Suffocating. Try to unloosen the bolts that attach the mask to the suit’s corselet, but I’m shaking uncontrollably.

‘Aldis!’ Nyradur’s muffled voice slips into my consciousness. He rolls me over and tries to loosen the bolts. ‘Stay still!’

It’s taking him too long. I manage to muster up enough strength and determination to stretch my arms behind my back and use my slim fingers to finish the job.

Finally. Finally the damp spring air slides between the suit and the mask, caressing my cheeks. I take quick breaths and with shaking hands I throw the mask and helmet off me. My laughter is an unstrung cacophony. Finally I was face to face with the serpent and I’m alive to tell the tale… but I lost the specimens and the brooch, and the paracamera broke. The serpent will definitely abandon the cave since it’s been discovered. Was it all for nothing? I’m alive but is my career as a cryptozoologist over?

Nyradur’s wrinkly and now grazed face greets me. Through all this his bowler hat stayed on his head. ‘The cryptid has been Seen! Are… are you okay?! We Saw it!’

I ask him to turn around. At the mouth of the river the eyes and the top of the Lagar Serpent’s head stick out. It gives us a concentrated and malignant stare, clearly it has been waiting for the eye contact. For a few moments I look it in the eye, until I think I know what the serpent is doing. I think it’s telling us we’re not welcome back in the water. After a moment, it disappears into the dark.

The serpent didn’t seem hungry. Judging by the meat between its teeth it had already eaten, but it could have crawled up on land and ripped our heads off. Perhaps it’s just happy to have retrieved the brooch and wants to hide it in a new lair. Or maybe it has another reason for sparing us, one I can’t get my head around at this moment.

‘We saw it, yes,’ I say dully, ‘but did we really See it? We can’t prove it. We don’t have anything.’

Nyradur dips his hand into his coat pocket and takes out an incandescent stone. ‘The camera broke but the obscura stone was saved.’ He’s smiling from ear to ear. ‘And look.’ He points at Early Bird where it lies indented in the sand with the top hatch open. ‘Look at the biting holes.’

The holes form a semi-circle on the left side of the hull, and there are some on the keel as well. My submarine is destroyed. ‘You mean we could maybe gather saliva?’

‘Not only that.’ Nyradur hobbles to