It was growing larger. What used to be grease and fog pond-sized smear was now a small, sooty lake. Maya adjusted her binoculars on the black sludge hovering over the waves between Crow's Point and the lighthouse on the rocks. Wider than last week. Wider than yesterday. She noted the approximate dimension in her notebook, and lifted the binoculars to her nose. Her lashes brushed the viewers, blurring the image. She swiped the transparent glass.

A flash of silver under the black miasma. Water, no doubt filled with a school of passing fish—the little ones, herring or mackerel—sucked right up into the monster. The black cloud convulsed, roiling. Water rained, rust-dirty, from it back into the ocean.

A boat passed, slow and uneasy, giving large berth, as it returned to port. Captain Stutters.

It was a week since anyone had seen Todd. The old couple, the Kavinskis, had skipped town, apparently, going to live with family in Florida. They never said anything about the shadow out there in bay on sunny and cloudy days alike, but of course it was because of it. None of them ever said anything about the monster lurking on their doorstep, sucking up fish, and growing darker and darker, but Maya knew. No one ever said a word, but she knew.

Maya knew they thought about it. About it and nothing else. She refused to be silent. Had so since the beginning. Sooner or later the others would see something had to be done.

It was a beautiful day. Turquoise and gold as far as the eye could see above and below and far out past the dark smear of the town and the spreading oil-slick shadow as if cast by an invisible monster.

She folded her binoculars in their pouch, clenching her jaw tighter for courage. Then headed for the Sea Shack diner. The bell jangled when she walked in, door popping and squeaking when she pushed it too far open. She knew better than that. She knew she was supposed to come in quiet and unnoticed. The diner was red and white, red and white, with cracks showing in all the seats and edges of the linoleum floor, like a Christmas candy from childhood.

Townsfolk at the counter and tables hunched their shoulders, curled their lips and turned away from her.

Sarah rolled her eyes and slammed the coffee on the burner. "What'll it be?"

"Coffee." Maya slunk to the edge of the counter and perched onto the last stool.

"That's two-fifty plus a tip if you want to sit in here."

Harvey sniffed, snorted and smacked his hand on the counter. "You gonna let her sit here and bother good folk?"

"Come on, she can have a coffee," Ranger said from the kitchen window. He dropped two plates of steaming eggs and bacon on the wooden sill, doled out slices of golden toast, and rang the bell, despite Sarah standing at the counter watching him work. "Everyone who can pay can have service."

"When she runs off your other customers, don't cry to me about how this place has to close like all the others."

"Since we're the last diner standing, I don't have to worry about losing all my customers, now do I?"

Sarah set the coffee mug on the counter and sloshed the black drink in it. Black and white.

"Can I have some creamer?" Maya asked. Brown was better. Less bitter. And beige even better than brown. "So...any news from Todd?"

"Damn it, Ranger, I swear I won't stay here if you let any lost dog in off the street," Harvey muttered. Ranger ignored him.

"Should we have news from Todd?" Sarah asked. She was chewing gum to keep from smoking. Smack, smack, smack. No grey smoke. "He's a grown man, does what he wants."

"He left his dog," Maya said. "He wouldn't have done that on purpose. He loved Muttsy. Something happened to him and I was wondering if anything has been done. Did anyone call the police?"

"Did you?" Smack, smack, smack.

"Actually, yes."

"This should be good," Harvey said, dropping his newspaper. The half dozen other customers buried their noses deeper in their breakfasts. "And what did the police say?"

"They asked me to stop calling them." Maya sipped her coffee. Still too bitter to swallow. She dumped a snowbank of sugar in the cup and stirred. "The Kavinskis are off to Florida, so they're gone, too. I didn't know they had family there."

"Probably a lot of things you don't know," Sarah said.

"There's one thing I know. We have to talk about it."

"Jesus Chri—not this again. Ranger, tell her to leave or—" Harvey's words were interrupted by the clang-clang of the bell going wild and the high pitched squeal of the door shoved open as far as possible. Boots stomped on the floor

Captain Stutters strode in with the smell of fishy underwater death and rot on his rubber boots, like a character from a comic book. He was wind-swept crags and green slime. She dropped her gaze to her cup of coffee and the red, crack, red counter.

"Morning," Ranger called. "How was it out there?"

The captain shrugged and eased his old bones—that was what he was always calling his legs—onto a stool, far from Maya. "Pickings were slim, but the season will get better. It will get better."

"The sea shadow had plenty of fish fresh from the water this morning."

Maya's words arched through the diner and fell to ringing silence.

Nervous snickering from a booth.

"Sea...shadow?" Captain Stutters asked. "Sarah, can I get coffee, pancakes and bacon?"

"Stop ignoring it, would you?" Maya asked. She shoved her cup to the side and put her notebook in its place. "By my calculations, it's more than tripled in size since it first showed up. Tourists are gone, Todd is missing, the Kavinskis say they went to Florida, but I doubt that very much, it's sucking all the fish out of the water. You see it, too. You all see it. Why can't we talk about it?"

"We see it?" Sarah asked.

Ranger cleared his throat, arm resting on the sill. "Honey, if you're going to bug my customers..."

"No, let her talk about it if it makes her happy," Captain Stutters said. "These old bones aren't walking anywhere. So talk."

"We have to fight back. We have to get rid of it somehow."

"Get rid of the, what did you call it? Sea shadow?"

"Yes. It feeds from the waters, so my solution would be to cut off its source of food. Simple and effective. Black and white. Black and white."

"Black and white? I'm not following. Is that your solution?"

"No, plastic. Plastic is my solution." No one was looking at her. Sarah and Ranger stared at their work, wiping and cooking. In the booths and at the counter, the townspeople were studying their greasy plates, squiggles of eggs and crumbling bits of toast, fat shining bacon and sausages. She had to make them see. "We use sheets of plastic to cover the water and cut the shadow off from its source of food. Plastic is killing the oceans, but it just might save us."

"You want to cover the sea in sheets of plastic. It's a big place, you know. That's a lo, lot—" Captain Stutters, who hadn't stuttered since dropping out of high school at fifteen, repeated lot. He swallowed.

Maya focused on his yellowed whiskery face hair, and his mouth pressed tight. He laughed. "It's a lot of ocean out there."

Harvey and Sarah scoffed. An older lady in a back booth waived, blue-handed, for Sarah. "Can I get this wrapped up to go?"

"Sure thing." She pulled a startling white Styrofoam box from under the counter. "Ranger, we're starting to lose people out here."

Maya threw three dollars on the counter and hopped to the floor. "If we don't cut it off from its food source, it will keep growing. Is that what you want? For that thing out there to grow? Would you people look at me? Because one day, that black shadow will come to land, believe me, like some doomsday mist and swallow us all. I don't understand why—"

"Time to go, Maya, we've listened long enough." Ranger swept through the kitchen door, wiping his hands on his stained apron. She didn't wait for him to push her out.

"Yeah, I know. I'm going. I'm going to try and find the Kavinskis. And Todd. You'll see. You'll all see I'm right about this." She stormed out, and blinked, blinded by the bright light.

So much sunlight should cut right through mist and shadows, no matter how thick or black. Why didn't they believe her? Plastic would do the trick. Huge sheets of plastic. It smothered everything else, they could make it work in their favor for once. She could buy the plastic. If she sold some of her mother's antiques.

Head to her chest, she rounded the diner for the cluttered side-street. Dim and claustrophobic. She hurried through it, back into the light of the day at the end. At her mother's house, she used the hidden key to sneak in, quiet and unnoticed.

Her mother was upstairs, parked in front of the TV in her bedroom. Characters barked and cawed with laughter from a cheap sitcom. The whole house was baby pink and blue with fluffy cream touches. Maya pilfered an old cabinet for the silver candlestick holders. She was Jean Valjean, determined to be a hero to the miserable, small-minded, dying inhabitants of this lonely island and near-deserted town. From the window, light glared bright as sun flashed on the white silver.

Sell the silver, buy the plastic, borrow a row boat and put it out. Keep it afloat long enough to starve the shadow. She could figure this out. Her fingertip stroked the cold, smooth skin of the candlestick.

How long would it take to die? Choking, writhing, searching for life?

She tiptoed from the house, pulling the door shut behind her. Green-leafed trees and untrimmed bushes crowded over the house and path in the back yard and the pot-holed drive. She rounded the corner of the creamy, dirt-streaked house.

Blinding pain hit her forehead.

She woke up in smothering darkness. Water sloshed on wood. She was soaked and shivering.

A box. She was in a black box. Water tipped with the rocking waves and the stench of underwater rot filled her nostrils.

She screamed and banged on the lid and sides.

Boots stomped closer. "All right, yer awake. Let my old bones get over there."

She shielded her eyes from the noon sun as the lid lifted. Captain Stutters gazed down at her. She tried to jump up and vomited on her chest instead. The water on her face was sticky and she wiped it. Red and black on her fingers. Drying blood. Red and black.

Turquoise paradise above.

His yellow-stained face loomed in her hers. Slime showed in the corners of his eyes. "You shouldn't have been so chatty. We don't want to do this, you know."

"Couple of slick bastards, aren't you? Is this what happened to Todd and the Kavinskis?" Because of course, there was Harvey, his puppy-dog jowls bulging and rat's eyes staring off to the cobalt sea, anywhere but at her, standing by the small helm of the boat.

"I don't know what yer talking about." The Captain pulled her up. Her legs buckled. The blow to her head left her spinning and weak.

When he wrapped the rope around her hands, she fought back, though, and bit his hand.

"Pull her off me! Now hold still. Goes easier like this."

"Easier for who? I understand why it's been growing so big, you've been feeding it. For how long?"

"Maya, my dear, you are crazier than a bat on a drinking binge. And you really, really, shouldn't have been so chatty. It's a small town, and people don't like waves when they are on dry land."

"Cap, maybe we should head for the Lee Side, drop her off at the police station," Harvey said. It was muttered, though, as if he wasn't even able to convince himself.

"Grab her feet. It's better for the town this way, you know it."

Maya kicked Harvey's knees, her wet shoe marking the denim navy. Cursing, he stepped sideways.

She screamed for help, but the dark bumps of the houses and buildings would never hear her. The boat was already at the bay's end, between the line of rocks at the old lighthouse, white, and the ancient remnants of the water wall, twisted in a bird-like sculpture called the Crow's Point, black.

The shadow sludge hovered near, she could feel it crawling for her.

"Get her in the water, come on!" Captain Stutters yanked her back, dropping her on the boat's wood planks. Fish guts shivered in grey lumps and coated her hair. She kicked, screaming again. Harvey caught her feet and sat on her legs to wrap another rope around them. A life-preserver was attached to the rope.

They wouldn't let her sink out there.

"No, please no!" She managed to twist free for one sweet second. A puffy cloud, heather grey-white and soft came into view of the endless sky.

She tumbled upside down and careened into the cold, cobalt water.

Captain Stutters turned from the sight of the young woman thrashing in the water. There wasn't much time now, he'd learned his lessons and it had almost cost him his own life. He cranked the key, revving the boat engine and twirled the helm for the port.

Harvey was planted starboard, watching.

"We shouldn't have done it like this. No good will come of it. That girl—no one deserves this."

"Shut yer mouth about it. Done is done. You had all morning for regrets."

"That's the fourth one in less than a month. And she was right. It's growing out there."

"I said, shut yer mouth," Captain Stutters snapped. When would these people learn? As he had?

"No. I can't. We have to talk about it. There has to be some other solution, like she said. Maybe the plastic...To keep that black thing on the water from growing."

Captain Stutters glared forward. From this viewpoint, the dark town floated on the shimmering light waves above the line of water. Emerald green of the island all around. A sludge-black town hovering above the water.

"Hey, we have to talk about the sea shadow, Captain."

"You really shouldn't be so chatty, Harvey." The captain hunched his shoulders away from Harvey. "You really shouldn't be so chatty."

Slime shivered and shifted on the deck as waves rocked the boat.

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