Sessurea, sensitive to her moods from their long companionship, writhed up to join her. Silently he joined in her sweeping survey of the sea floor. They let their eyes open wide to the faint moonlight that reached these depths. She studied the lay of the land by the faint luminescence of both serpents and minute sea life. Something.

“You are right.” Those were the first words Sessurea spoke. He left her side to undulate gently down to a particularly uneven piece of sea bed. He turned his head back and forth slowly. Then, to her consternation, he suddenly grasped a large frond of seaweed in his jaws and tore it loose. He flung it aside, seized another mouthful and dealt with it likewise. “Sessurea?” she trumpeted questioningly, but he ignored her. Clump after clump of seaweed he tore free and discarded. Then, just as she was sure he had gone mad, he settled to the bottom, then lashed his tail wildly, disturbing the muck of decades.

Her call and Sessurea’s strange antics had awakened some of the others. They joined her in staring down at him. He uprooted more seaweed and then thrashed again. “What is he doing?” asked a slender blue serpent.

“I don’t know,” she replied woefully.

As abruptly as he began, Sessurea ceased his mad writhing. He flashed swiftly up to join them. He sleeked himself through a grooming turn before wrapping her excitedly. “Look. You were right. Well, wait a bit, until the silt settles. There. Do you see?”

For a time, she saw only drifting sediment. Sessurea was out of breath, his gills pumping with excitement. Then, a moment later, the blue beside her suddenly trumpeted wildly, “It’s a Guardian! But it cannot be here, in the Plenty. This is not right!”

Shreever goggled in confusion. The blue’s words were so far out of context, she could not make sense of them. Guardians were guardian dragons. Were there dead dragons at the bottom of the sea? Then, as she stared, the vague shapes amidst the drifting silt suddenly took a new form. She saw. It was a Guardian, obviously a female. She sprawled on her side, one wing lifted, the other still buried in the muck. Three claws had broken off one raised forepaw. Part of her tail thrust up oddly beside her. The statue had been broken in a fall; that much was clear. But how had it come to be here, beneath the sea? It had used to stand above the city gates of Yruran. Then her eyes discovered a fallen column. And over there, that would have been that atrium that Desmolo the Eager had built, to house all the exotic plants his dragon friends had brought back to him from the four corners of the earth. And beyond it, the fallen dome of the Temple of Water.

“The whole city is here,” she trumpeted softly.

Maulkin was suddenly in their midst. “A whole province is here,” he corrected her. All eyes followed him down toward the revealed remnants of the world they could almost recall. He wove his way through them, touching first one and then another of the exposed landmarks. “We swim where once we flew.” Then he rose slowly toward them. The entire tangle was awake now and watching his gentle undulations. They formed a living, moving sphere with Maulkin at the center. His body and his words wove together as he spoke.

“We seek to return to our home, to the lands where we hunted and flew. I fear we are already here. When before we found a statue or an arch, I pretended that chance had tumbled a coastal building or two. But Yruran was far inland. Below us lie the sunken ruins.” He looped a slow denial of their hopes. “This was no minor shaking of the earth. All features have changed beyond recognition. We seek a river to lead us home. But without a guide from the world above, I fear we shall never find it. No such guide has come to us. North we have been, and south we have been, and still we have not found a way that calls to us. All is too different; the scattered memories we have mustered are not sufficient to this task. We are lost. Our only hope now is One Who Remembers. And even that might not be enough.”

Tellur, a slender green serpent, dared to protest. “We have sought such a one, to no avail. We grow weary. How long, Maulkin, must we wander and yearn? You have mustered a mighty tangle, yet many as we are, we are few compared to what we once were. Have they all perished, the other tangles that should be swarming now? Are we all that is left of our people? Must we, too, die as wanderers? Can it be, perhaps, that there is no river, no home to return to?” He sang his sorrow and despair.

Maulkin did not lie to them. “Perhaps. It may be we shall perish, and our kind be no more. But we shall not go without a struggle. One last time we shall seek One Who Remembers, but this time we shall bend all our efforts to that quest. We shall find a guide, or we shall die trying.”

“Then we shall die.” His voice was cold and dead, like thick ice cracking. The white serpent wove his way to the center of the serpents, to twine himself insultingly before Maulkin. Shreever’s mane stood out in horror. He was provoking Maulkin to kill him. His insolent postures invited death. All waited for judgment to fall on him.