Once upon a time, in a small sleepy village tucked into a sandy bay, there lived a community of fishermen. Every morning they sailed out into the wide blue ocean to catch fish, and every evening they came home to share stories round the fire. They believed they knew everything there was to know about the sea.
But one breezy afternoon, the ocean decided to show them one of its greatest secrets.
A young fisherman named Kai was walking along the shore when he spotted something strange glittering in the shallow surf. It looked like an enormous silver ribbon, dancing and twisting in the waves.
“Everyone! Come and look at this!” Kai shouted, waving both arms.
They all came running, their boots splashing through the wet sand. And as they got closer, their eyes went wide.
Stranded there in the shallows was a creature from the very deepest part of the ocean. It was a giant oarfish — longer than a canoe, with shining silver scales, brilliant red fins that trailed behind it like long oars, and a magnificent crown of crimson tendrils upon its head.
But the beautiful creature was in trouble. It was injured, and scraping against the sharp rocks, flopping weakly as it tried to work its way back out to the deep, safe water.
The Omen of the Deep
The fishermen began to whisper nervously among themselves.
In the old stories, an oarfish was known as the Messenger from the Sea God’s Palace, and it almost never left the dark water far below.
“Don’t touch it!” gasped an old fisherman with a long grey beard. “My grandfather told me that seeing a living oarfish on land is a very bad omen. They only come up when something terrible is about to happen.”
“Yes!” cried another villager, stepping back. “It means doom for our village. We must leave it alone!”
But Kai was looking into the oarfish’s large dark eye. It looked so sad, and so helpless.
“Omen or not,” said Kai, “it’s a living creature, and it’s hurting. We can’t just stand here and let it die on the sand. Help me!”
Seeing his kindness, the other fishermen looked at one another — and then they nodded. They put their fear aside and waded into the shallow water. Together, straining with all their strength, they lifted the heavy, slippery silver giant and guided it back out towards the open sea.
The Shadow in the Waves
Just as the oarfish slipped into deeper water with a happy flick of its tail, the sky seemed to darken. The water round their legs turned suddenly, bitingly cold.
Out of the deep blue haze, an enormous shadow rose towards the surface.
The fishermen froze.
It was another oarfish — and this one was a true monster of the deep, at least twice the length of the first, stretching away into the water further than any of them could quite believe. Its great red crown shimmered like fire in the afternoon light.
The huge creature came slowly forward and placed itself between the fishermen and the smaller, injured one. Then it stopped, and looked at them with its enormous, ancient eyes.
Nobody dared to breathe. Nobody dared to move. It felt as though time itself had stopped.
The Retreating Sea
Then, all at once, the giant oarfish turned and dived, and was gone.
And as it vanished, something terrifying began to happen.
A strange, eerie silence fell across the beach. The seagulls stopped crying. And then, with a long low SHHHHHHH, the ocean began to draw back.
The water pulled away from the shore at an unbelievable speed, rushing backwards into the deep as though somebody had pulled an enormous plug out of the bottom of the sea. The fishermen watched in horror as wet sand and rocks and flapping flounders — all the things that were meant to lie far beneath the waves — were suddenly left lying bare and dry.
The sea was disappearing.
Kai’s heart pounded. He remembered the old warnings.
“The water’s pulling back!” he shrieked. “That means a great wave is coming! RUN! Get home! Get everyone to high ground!”
The Great Crash
The fishermen did not look back. They turned and sprinted across the sand as fast as their legs would carry them, shouting for every soul in the village to climb the steep mountain behind the houses.
Just as they reached the safety of the rocky cliffs, they heard a sound like a thousand claps of thunder.
BOOM!
They turned, and gasped. The ocean had come back — but not gently. It came as a monstrous wall of water, a wave taller than any of them had ever seen, and it crashed down upon the shore and swallowed the whole beach and swirled about the empty docks.
Thanks to the warning of the retreating sea, every single villager was safe, high up on the mountain.
And as they stood and watched the ocean below, they understood at last. The oarfish had not come to bring them doom. It had come to tell them that the earth far beneath the sea was shaking.
From that day on, whenever people tell stories about a giant oarfish seen near the shore before a great wave, they remember the day the silver giants of the deep saved a whole village.