The Battle of Riptide Read Online Free Page A

they’re still around?” Barkley got a little more excited when Gray smiled. “You think they’re still around! Somewhere between here and our old reef! Of course! Close enough where it feels like home, but far enough to get lost!”
    â€œSo?” asked Shell. “So what? Does anyone else get this?”
    â€œThe thing you don’t understand is that
nothing
can stop Yappy from talking,” Gray said as Barkley nodded in agreement. “If they were just moving from place to place like drifters, we would’ve picked up their trail.”
    â€œHow do you know they didn’t just leave the area entirely?” Shell asked. The big bull shark rubbed his rough hide on one of the broken beams of the landshark ship, clouding the water with a mist of tiny wood particles.
    Striiker sneezed and glared. “How many times have I told you not to do that?”
    â€œBut my flank itches!”
    Gray slapped the great white with his tail, stopping the argument before it began. “Coral Shiver wouldn’t have gone off to the Sific or someplace on the other side of the Big Blue.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” asked Striiker. “We were ready to go to the Sific to hide from Goblin.”
    Mari swirled her long tail as she did when thinking intently. “But we didn’t. Once sharks find a place that feels like homewaters, we do like to stay there.”
    â€œThat’s true!” said Snork. “I don’t want to leave here because I like it!”
    â€œLook, I know you think you’re good at sneaking around—” Striiker began, but Barkley cut him off.
    â€œI
am
good at sneaking around,” the dogfish said. “But I know what you’re worried about. We’d have to skirt the edge of Goblin’s patrols and go through part of Razor Shiver’s territory. But it’s not like I haven’t done it before, you know, like just before I got back tonight.”
    â€œBut you weren’t leading Gray,” Shell commented. This did quiet Barkley as it was true. It was also the main reason why Gray didn’t go searching for his mother and Coral Shiver in the open waters with his friend. Gray was too large not to be noticed on a long swim. But this time he wouldn’t stay behind.
    â€œI’m not sticking my snout in the sand and going turtle while you swim into danger,” Gray said, smacking his tail against the hull of the landshark boat with a BOOM! “I’m coming with you and that’s that.”
    Barkley gave Gray a little snout bump and asked, “So when do we leave, big fin?”

    The answer turned out to be immediately. Gray wanted to wait until Barkley got some rest, but the dogfish wouldn’t hear of it. The journey from the North Atlantis to the edge of the Caribbi Sea took nearly two days. Not because it was that far, but because Barkley insisted he lead the way and swam so
slooowly
it was unbelievable. He knew the patrol routes of Goblin Shiver by heart. That was the easy part. It was after that, when they got to Razor Shiver territory, where things really slowed down. The dogfish took Gray through thick green-greenie and tight lava canyons whenever he could.
    â€œSharkkind hate swimming through areas like this,” Barkley whispered while heading into yet another field of thick-beyond-belief blue-greenie.
    â€œAdd me to the list because I hate it, too,” Gray answered quietly. It was awful. This type of greenie felt like it would catch in his gills or wrap around his tail and send him to the Sparkle Blue. There were stories of haunted greenie that would reach out and snare you if you weren’t careful. If a shark couldn’t swim, he couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t that type of greenie, though. It was, however, a kind that tickled Gray’s snout unmercifully.
    The dogfish seemed to have no trouble whatsoever moving through it, which made Gray simultaneously proud of his