Waves of tantalizing scent reached Newt. She licked her chops but forced herself to remain still, waiting. She listened to the scraping and grinding sounds while the shellfish smell made her drool.
The small sea-beasts wiggled on their bellies in the sand. They lurched up on thick legs and bumbled around until they fell against each other or the big one. From the forbearance the large beast showed the two, Newt sensed she was looking at a female and her young.
Newt marked the youngsters as prey, for they were small enough to kill easily. She would have to wait until their parent wasn’t paying attention. For the present she would settle for clam scraps.
Her hunger was no longer strong enough to blunt her curiosity, for she had eaten from the blubber-tusker’s leavings, and she was intrigued with this new creature. Though this beast ate shellfish, lived on the beach, and had tusks, its face, neck, and ears reminded her of a dappleback, and it was those attributes that made the strongest impression on her. Once she had seen a small mare with two spindly foals, and now this memory emerged as an image, coloring her feelings about the sea-beast family. She stared at the strange mare that swam in the sea.
This creature, whom Newt now thought of as a “seamare,” continued to wrench apart a huge shell with forefeet and tusks. The seamare’s black forepaws, with their wide tapering toes and the webbing between, were nothing like the flippers of the blubber-tusker or the hoofed toes of a dappleback.
The longer she watched the seamare, the more Newt focused on those odd, splay-toed feet. As she had once identified with an image of herself as the newt, so she identified the seamare with the image of those strange feet. To her, the creature became Splayfoot.
Newt stayed hidden until the seamare finished gorging on clams and fell asleep on a low sandstone shelf, with both seafoals sprawled nearby. Newt smelled a few savory bits remaining from the seamare’s feast of shellfish. Carefully she hobbled from her hideaway down through the rocks to the terrace where Splayfoot lay. She got so close she could smell the salty beast-scent and hear the seamare’s rumbling snore. Quickly she snatched up the nearest morsel and went for the next.
Suddenly the seamare’s neck muscles tightened as the beast lifted her head, her tapered muzzle pointing at Newt. With an ungainly heave, the beast swept both chunky forelegs around and heaved up her forequarters. From her open mouth came a booming roar that echoed between the rocks of the cove and made Newt skitter back with flattened ears.
For an instant the two confronted each other. With surprising speed, Splayfoot humped herself toward Newt, swinging her tusks. The seamare’s anger propelled her up onto her rear legs, and Newt discovered that they weren’t as useless as they had first appeared.
Newt hadn’t expected the seamare’s sudden transformation from belly-dragger to walker. Splayfoot had a clumsy gait, with out-thrust elbows and turned-in feet, but it served well enough. Now the seamare was a four-footed behemoth lumbering toward the enemy that threatened herself and her young.
With a mouth full of sandy clamshells and meat, Newt couldn’t use her teeth, but she wasn’t about to drop her takings. Gathering her hind feet beneath her, she leaped as high as she could, clinging and scrabbling at the rocks above.
Once she had gained a secure perch, she started to eat, looking down at the seamare. Unable to hold the shell down with both forepaws, she wedged one side of it under a boulder and held it there with her good leg while she worried the meat away with her side teeth.
Splayfoot strained her head back as far as her thick neck would allow and gave a bellow that almost made Newt choke on the rubbery clam flesh she was gulping. The agile youngsters scrambled back to their mother’s side as the seamare pointed her muzzle in the air and sniffed suspiciously. Splayfoot lumbered along on her belly, probing the way ahead with the long bristles on her muzzle and stabbing the sand with her tusks, as if she thought the menace might still be lurking there.
She snuffled among the scattered shells, putting back her ears and rolling her eyes. But instead of retreating from the place, as prey animals would when they caught the smell of meat eaters, the seamare gave a bubbling roar and knocked all the remaining shell fragments away with a powerful sweep of her foreleg. She opened her jaws and waggled her head, giving the lurking meat eater a good look at her tusks and teeth.
Newt decided that she’d had her fill of clam scraps. She smelled other things that might be edible, such as carrion and seabird eggs. But first she wanted to rest. She retreated as fast as she could limp back to her refuge at the foot of the weathered sandstone cliff.
Several days later, Newt was picking her way back down through the rocks after a successful egg-hunting expedition. As she licked yolk from her muzzle and turned toward her cave, she heard barks and growls, followed by the seamare’s bellow.
On the beach in the cove below, she saw Splayfoot with her two seafoals huddling at her sides. Five small animals with sleek, wet pelts and sinuous shapes surrounded and menaced the family. These small sea lions reminded Newt of the otters she had seen in the ocean, lolling in wave troughs. The otters swam with webbed toes and long, powerful tails, whereas these animals had clawed flippers and much shorter tails. Their ears were small and lay close to their heads, and their eyes bulged. Their muzzles were tapered, with powerful jaws and teeth.
Their bark was hoarse and throaty, unlike the cry of any creature she knew. Both forelimbs were short, the forefeet joining almost directly to the shoulder to form front flippers. The two rear feet lay so far back on the body that they suggested a fishlike tail, but the creatures could bound along at surprising speed by arching their backs. Newt wrinkled her nose at the fishy undertone in their smell.
Splayfoot heaved herself up on her hind legs with bubbling roars and honks, swinging her head with its armament of forward-thrusting tusks. The attackers answered with barks and yelps while they wove about their prey.
Newt felt a growl rumbling in her own throat. She had prowled among these rocks and terraces enough to think of them as her territory. For an instant the growling and barking made her hesitate. A creature bold enough to attack Splayfoot might well prove a threat to her. This made her snarl and put back her ears, rage washing away fear.
Newt sprang down from the terrace and skidded onto the beach in a spray of wet sand. A sleek form slithered at her and struck like a snake, driving its teeth into a rear foot. Yowling, she leaped, twisting herself to pounce backward. One paw landed on the beast, but one wasn’t enough. Newt’s opponent bared its teeth and barked at her with a blast of fishy breath, then scooted free to bite her on the tail.
Another barking raider grew bold and rushed Splayfoot in a series of bounding jumps. The seamare swung one leg in a clumsy blow that knocked the beast over. As the animal rolled, its forelimbs flapped in the air. In a bound, Newt was among the pack, lunging on one forefoot and challenging gaping jaws with a snarl.
She found out quickly that the enemies looked clumsier than they were. They dodged her raking kicks and worried her hocks, writhing around and underneath her. She seized one attacker by its thick scruff and threw it aside. Another, trying to tear her crippled foreleg, was met with a hind-foot kick full of open claws that left it squealing and bleeding, but still willing to fight. Newt found herself close to Splayfoot as the seamare clubbed the sleek forms that darted at her from under and around the rocks.
The larger seafoal jabbed out with its small, sharp tusks, while the smaller one clung to its mother’s flank. Splayfoot wheeled abruptly to fend off attack from the side, leaving the smaller seafoal unguarded. Bullet heads with large, bulging eyes turned toward it. Three sets of jaws seized its legs. The raiders hopped and scampered backward, dragging the bawling seafoal.