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yellow fish swam so close it brushed my ankle with its tailfin, I went into motion. Driving the spear through the water with all of the force and precision I’d been taught, I felt my spear connect with something other than sand. Blinking salt water out of my eyes, I felt my mouth open when I looked into the water and found the yellow fish on the end of my spear.
    I’d done it. I’d passed all island survivalist skills at last. Just as I was opening my mouth to let out a little hoot of excitement, I felt something else brush past my ankles. This wasn’t so small though.
    Instead of a shout of excitement, one of fear rose out of my throat as the large gray body of a shark came into view. The shark must have been the reason for the fish acting so erratically. It must have been near and drawn even closer by the blood I’d just spilled into the water from my fresh catch. Another scream spilled from my mouth.
    Run, Jane . The beach is only a few meters back. Just run.
    The words cycled through my head, but I couldn’t move. Fear struck me frozen as the sight of the shark’s fin cut through the surface.
    A crash of water sounded behind me right before I caught sight of something breaking into view beside me. “Are you okay?”
    I didn’t have time to process what he’d just said before he threw himself in front of me, wound his arms around my body, and rushed me up to the beach. Water surged around his body, my heart pounded in my eardrums, and every second that passed seemed to span an entire lifetime. We were halfway to shore when he cried out, his eyes squeezing shut in pain, but he kept rushing me out of the water and didn’t stop until I was on dry sand.
    “Stay here,” he ordered. After taking the spear from my shaking hand, he kicked the fish off the spearhead and turned back toward the water.
    He wasn’t moving right. His steps were uneven. Right before he charged back into the water with his spear in hand, I noticed his calf. Tiny rivers of blood were winding down it, swirling into the water before his leg disappeared beneath it. He’d been bitten. By a shark.
    The same shark he was swimming back into the water with.

7
    Jane
    “ N ext time you get bitten by a shark, don’t go back into the ocean after it. Okay?” I lifted an eyebrow as I continued to wash his bite with fresh water. He hadn’t so much as flinched or grimaced once as I tended to his wound after I’d finally managed to get him out of the water.
    “And next time a reef shark comes swimming around wanting the fish you just speared, give it to the shark.” There was an edge of humor in his voice. It seemed funny I could already pick up on that since I’d only learned he could talk a whole hour ago. “And, by the way, you shouldn’t have even been out spear fishing by yourself.”
    I smiled at him as I soaked a piece of torn fabric from my lab coat back into the bowl of water. “Listen, I know we’ve been a bit preoccupied tending to shark bites and roasting said shark on a spit”—I eyed the crackling fire and the giant fish skewered above it, sizzling as it cooked—“but I don’t want to forget to bring up this thing about you talking. In words and everything.”
    As if reminded of it, he turned the shark over the fire.
    In the end, it had only been a four-foot reef shark—hardly a man-eater—but it had tried to take a chunk of his calf flesh. When Tarzan had appeared out of the water a few minutes later, dragging a shark with his spear driven through its head, my jaw had almost hit the sand. Who just dove into the ocean with a shark that had already taken a chunk out of him, then wrestled it to the death and dragged it out like it was no big deal?
    “It was hearing your scream, I think,” he said, staring into the fire. “Everything just came crashing back when I heard you scream. Bits and pieces have been coming back ever since you arrived, but it was all still kind of foggy, just out of reach.”
    It was so strange to