Kelpshade Rays

Overview

Kelpshade rays lie buried in the sand under the great kelp forest of the Tidebound Reaches, the Kelpshade, where the returning runs rest before they turn for the estuaries. Each carries a barbed spine in its tail. A swimmer who settles onto one, or a gatherer who treads on one, learns of it at once.

Appearance

A kelpshade ray is a flat, round disc as broad as a shield, with a long whip-like tail and, partway down the tail, one or two barbed spines as long as a finger. Its upper side is sand-brown, freckled and mottled to match the sand, its underside white. Its eyes sit on top, with a pair of breathing holes behind them, and its mouth is underneath. It rests buried to the eyes in the sand, a faint outline the swimmer cannot see, and when disturbed it lifts off in a sudden cloud of sand and glides away, its edges rippling. It is silent.

Habitat and Range

They live on the sandy bottom under the Kelpshade and the other kelp forests of the shoal worlds, in the sandy shallows of island margins, and along the sandy shores of the Tidelace Coasts. They come into warm shallows in summer in numbers.

Behaviour and Temperament

A ray spends the day buried and feeds at dusk and night, digging in the sand for clams, worms, and crabs and crushing them with flat grinding teeth. It is shy and gentle and flees what it can. Only when it is stepped on, pinned, or grabbed does it whip its tail up and drive the spine in.

Life Cycle

Rays bear live young, a few at a time, in sheltered shallows in summer. The young are small copies of their parents. They live a long time, fifteen years or more.

Uses and Dangers

The spine drives deep, tears as it comes out, and carries a venom that brings agonising pain, swelling, and sickness; a strike to the body or the throat can kill, and a strike to the foot can lame for weeks or fester. Thaluren runs settling on the Kelpshade's sand and gatherers on the island shallows shuffle their feet over the bottom rather than stepping, so that the rays lift and flee ahead of them. Hot water eases the pain. The Thaluren eat the ray's wings, and the spine is used for needles and points.

Lore and Belief

The Thaluren teach the young who first come down to the Kelpshade to shuffle on the sand before they teach them anything else, and say the sand has eyes. Some run-lines hold that a ray's sting is a sign that the one struck came to the resting water without the right to be there. Gnome sounders say the rays bury themselves deeper before a storm.

Pearl-divers who work the kelp edges tell of the ray beds where the sand moves under a diver's feet and of a diver who stepped on a great old ray and never surfaced; the pearls of that bed are still there.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals