Butler Did It! by Sally Pomeroy

swam along the face of the
reef wall, variable currents made her progress treacherous and
tiring. She knew if she wasn’t careful, a sudden change in current
flow could easily push her back into a nearby branch coral thicket
that would leave her cut and bleeding in no time. However, she put
extra effort in every stroke until she was able to drop further
down the face into quieter water. At a depth of seven meters, the
current flow turned into a general upwelling from below that made
her adjust her buoyancy to accommodate its effect. She drifted
laterally along the reef wall using her dive light to illuminate
the holes and sea caves in the reef. Most were shallow with a
variety of creatures living a tentacle-to-mouth
existence.
    She drifted down near the bottom of the
reef wall, finding a ledge, which jutted out away from the wall.
Beneath it, a large cavern opened before her. Its tipped-down mouth
encrusted with fan coral and a colony of sea urchins that bristled
up at her approach. Only when she dropped below the ledge to peer
up inside the entrance with the dive light, did she discover that a
small beam of daylight could be seen streaming down from the roof
at the back of the cavern.
    This is interesting , she
thought, it is quite rare for a sea cave this deep to extend all
the way back to the surface.
    The cavern entrance was easily over
seven meters across and two meters high and extended at least
twenty-five meters back into the reef. From what she could see, the
interior arched up to nearly three meters above the surface of the
water before constricting back into a narrow chimney. This rose in
a series of ledges to the open top.
    Despite being nine meters below the
surface, the entrance had a perceptible current flow. While she was
still deciding to enter the cavern, the current slowly pulled her
inside.
    At first, she was startled and fought
the current. However, discovering that she had sufficient power to
defeat it, she decided instead to explore.
    Her mind raced as she tried to
understand the simple physics in operation in this strange realm.
The entrance to the cavern was surprisingly free of sea
growth,
    The current must be strong
enough to prevent sea growth from choking off the chamber. I’ll bet
it really flows in here at the peak of high tide.
    As she moved closer to the sunlight,
she quickly discovered that an abundance of sea life clung to the
walls and floor. Hundreds of clams with razor sharp shells
decorated the walls. A well-cropped kelp garden grew in the sunny
patch and several brittle starfish and crabs fought territorial
skirmishes over the shaded portion around it.
    It took her a minute or two to
understand.
    It’s a flooded blowhole! She
marveled.
    Floating in the patch of sunlight, she
made a slow 360-degree circle of the chamber. For the most part,
the recesses of the chamber were barren, all except one. Katherine
caught a flash of blue as the glass of her mask reflected some of
the sunlight into one of the darker recesses. Suddenly fearful, she
aimed her dive light into a three-meter deep fracture. A hideous
toothy face stared back at her. Her heart raced as she immediately
thought that the creature was a shark. Yet, it didn’t look like a
shark and it certainly wasn’t showing any signs of aggression. She
slowly moved to the left and again shined her dive light on the
creature. To her immediate relief she saw that it was a large,
mottled, chocolate brown fish with irregular scales that had a blue
iridescence. Its large copper-colored eyes reflected back her
light, giving them an eerie glow.
    Why, I bet it’s even more afraid of
me, than I am of it. She speculated.
    It turned to face her again, its mouth
slowly gaping open and closed as if trying to communicate, or at
least swallow something previously eaten.
    How big is this
thing?
    As if it were reading her mind, the
fish turned away from her light, hiding its head, but exposing its
body to her view. It was about one and a half meters