Steph's Outcast

There is a low rumble along the shore.

My senses flare with alarm. I immediately grab Pak into my arms, holding him against my chest. He clings to me as I turn, and I notice out of the corner of my eye that Steff grabs the food basket. I want to tell her that we need it, but then there's an enormous sucking sound that rolls down the beach and I forget everything else.

I watch in frozen horror as the water rolls back, as if tugged backward. I keep expecting the waves to move forward again, to curl over and surge toward the sand once more, but instead, it just keeps going back, and back, and back, until I feel as if I have never seen the water recede so very much. A great swath of the beach is exposed, the sand redder here than ever.

As I stare, the water surges forward again, and I see it.

Legs. That is the first thing I see. Like one of the creatures that scuttles along on the beach with many legs, the thing rising from the ocean has handfuls and handfuls of legs, all of them soft and yellowish and dripping with red. The legs wriggle and slide through the water, touching the sand, and then pull the massive body of the creature forward.

I cannot look away. Even when the water surges and brushes at my feet again, I cannot stop staring. I have seen nothing this big. The other clans have built huts for themselves upon the shore, but they pale in comparison to the creature that pulls its heavy body from the water, the sucking sound following it as it beaches itself. It is as big as a pool.

No, a lake. An enormous lake, and this creature's body would take up all of it.

Even now, I hear faint screams as the thing pushes itself onto the sand. The body is dripping with seaweed and algae, the top of it rounded like the shelled clams that Pak and I used to find in the tide pools. The clusters of legs wriggle along the beach, hauling it forward, and I see two stalks with large, rounded blue eyes swiveling around, searching for…something. A narrow head, shaped like a blade, pushes onto the shore, and I watch as it lowers, nudging at the huts clustered at the far end of the beach.

With one move of its head, it pushes one aside. The entire thing tumbles over like a stack of pebbles, and I can distantly make out someone running out of the hut.

Steff makes a sound of alarm in her throat, moving forward. I can tell she wants to help. But as one of the creature's flailing tentacle legs pushes into the ground and shoves sand aside, I realize it is dangerous for her to go back to them. The creature stands between us and her clan.

She makes a helpless sound in her throat, looking at me. "Hafta helpem!" Then she goes still. Her eyes widen and she stares at something behind me.

The sucking sound grows loud once more, just like it did when the water receded and the creature came out.

It is not alone.

I do not turn to look. I grab Steff by the arm, and clutching my son, we run for the cliffs.

10

STEPH

In an instant, the safe bubble of the ice planet is shattered.

Logically, I know this place is dangerous. I know this is a rough environment and it could kill us for any number of reasons. I just never thought one of those reasons would be a Godzilla-sized mollusk rising up out of the water and showing up on the beach. I stare at it in sheer horror, because it looks like something out of a nightmare. There's a hard, turtle-like body, but instead of turtle legs or fins underneath, there's dozens of wriggling snakelike arms that it uses to propel itself up the beach. The head is a thin blade that reminds me of a pterodactyl from back in Earth's prehistoric past, and the entire thing is the size of a city block.

It's staggeringly large.

I always thought the cove we call home was spacious, but this creature takes up almost all of the room on the sand. With one slither forward, it crushes the longhouse under a tentacle and continues its way forward, knocking aside huts as it does.

Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get killed. I bite back a terrified whimper as the thing surges forward again. Every instinct in my animal brain screams for me to run away. To flee to the hills. But I can't abandon my tribe. I have to do something. I clutch the basket of food in my arms and look over at Juth, helpless. Pak has his arms around his father's neck and he looks terrified. I know just how he feels. "We have to help them!"