Chapter 1: Still Water

The crocodile lay motionless in the murky water of his swamp.

Only his eyes and nostrils broke the surface, which was a flat sheet of greenish-brown scum dotted with bits of rotted leaves. The water around him was warm, the same temperature as his blood, so he felt almost like part of it. He could have been a log, or a knot of cypress root. He’d been there for a long time already. Waiting was easy when you were built for it.

He was hungry.

The thought was a slow, persistent pressure in his gut, not sharp yet but present. It was the reason he’d chosen this particular channel, where the water shallowed out into a weedy flat. Things came here to drink and to poke around for bugs in the mud. He watched. The swamp air carried layers of scent to his nostrils: wet earth, decaying vegetation, the faint sulfur tang from a gas bubble that had popped somewhere upstream.

Then he saw the heron.

It was a tall, grey-blue wader stepping through the shallows on stick-thin legs, its head jerking forward with each deliberate pace. It was looking for frogs, probably. The crocodile’s eyes tracked it without moving. He cataloged the distance, the depth of the water between them, the way the bird paused to stab its beak into a clump of reeds.

The pressure in his gut tightened.

He began to move.

It started with the slightest undulation of his tail, a gentle push against the water that slid him forward an inch. Then another. He kept his body perfectly aligned, his legs tucked flat against his sides to avoid any drag or splash. His eyes remained fixed on the heron, which had found something and was shaking a small, wriggling shape in its beak before swallowing it.

The crocodile drifted closer, a submerged shadow extending through the tea-colored water. He used the current, minimal as it was, letting it carry him while his tail provided the barest steering corrections. Twenty feet. Fifteen. The heron took another few steps, pecking at the mud now. It was a good-sized bird. It would make a decent meal, enough to settle the hunger for a while.

Ten feet.

This was the tricky part. The water here was too shallow to hide him completely. His back would break the surface if he went any farther without committing. He paused, letting himself sink just a little deeper into the soft muck of the bottom. Only his nostrils and the domes of his eyes remained above the waterline. The heron was turned slightly away, one leg lifted in mid-step.

He gathered himself.

Muscles along his flanks and tail coiled with a tension that was both patient and explosive. He judged the angle one last time. The bird would try to leap into the air, not run. They always did. He needed to intercept that first jump.

Now.

His tail whipped in a powerful, convulsive arc.

The explosion of sound and motion shattered the swamp’s stillness. Water erupted in a spray of brown foam as his bulk launched from the shallows. It was surprisingly fast for something so large, a lunge of pure acceleration that covered the remaining distance in a blur of wet scales and gaping jaws.

His mouth opened wide, revealing rows of conical teeth designed to grip and hold. He aimed for the spot where the heron’s body would be.

But the heron was already gone.

Its wings had snapped open at the first tremor in the water, a reaction honed by generations of near-misses. It didn’t even look back as it pushed off with its legs, launching itself upward with a frantic beat of its wings. The crocodile’s jaws snapped shut with a sound like a heavy branch breaking.

On nothing.

He crashed back down into the shallows, sending a wave of muddy water washing over the reeds. The commotion sent smaller creatures skittering away in all directions. He lay there for a second, half-submerged in the churned-up muck, as the heron gained altitude with indignant squawks.

He settled back into the water, letting it cool his overheated skin.

Failure had a particular taste. It was mostly swamp mud, gritty and thick on his tongue, mixed with the faint coppery hint of his own exertion. He worked his jaws slightly, clearing some of the sediment. The sharp, eager pressure in his gut was still there, unsatisfied. It grumbled at him now, a physical complaint.

Stupid bird.

He’d misjudged the distance by maybe half a foot, or maybe the heron had been more alert than it looked. Sometimes they were. He watched the grey shape disappear into the hazy canopy of cypress trees, still complaining about its interrupted lunch.

The crocodile remained where he was, floating low in the cloudy water. The adrenaline from the lunge faded, leaving behind the dull reality of an empty stomach and wasted effort. The swamp settled back into its rhythms around him. Insects resumed their buzzing. A fish jumped farther out in the channel.

He could wait again. Something else would come by eventually—a turtle, a coot, maybe a muskrat. Patience usually paid off. That was the normal way of things. Wait, lunge, eat. Repeat.

But today, the taste of mud felt more like boredom than routine.

He shifted his weight, his tail stirring up another cloud of silt from the bottom. He should find a deeper spot to float, maybe move to the other side of the bend where the turtles liked to sun themselves on a fallen log. The thought felt heavy, predictable.

He was just about to push off and drift downstream when a new scent reached his nostrils.

It cut through the wet blanket of swamp smells like a shard of glass. Sharp. Chemical. Nothing like rot or leaf-mold or algae. It was alien, and it carried on a faint breeze that came from the direction where the swamp trees thinned out—the direction of the human outpost.

The crocodile went still again, but this time it wasn’t the stillness of waiting for prey.

His tongue flicked out, tasting the air more deliberately. Beneath the ever-present mud and mildew, he could separate it now: a clean, acrid odor that made something behind his eyes prickle with curiosity. It wasn’t food. It wasn’t anything he could name from his world of water and decay.

It was just… different.

The hunger in his belly grumbled again, reminding him of practicalities.

But the new scent lingered in his snout, intriguing and utterly out of place. It suggested corners of the world that didn’t follow the simple rules of wait and lunge.

He lingered at the edge of the shallows, torn between the dull promise of another hunt and this strange new thread in the air. The mud still coated his palate. The memory of snapping jaws on empty air was fresh.

Slowly, he turned his head, following the fading trail of that chemical tang on the breeze.

The hunger could wait a little longer.

He lingered at the edge of the shallows, torn between the dull promise of another hunt and this strange new thread in the air. The mud still coated his palate. The memory of snapping jaws on empty air was fresh.

Slowly, he turned his head, following the fading trail of that chemical tang on the breeze.

The hunger could wait a little longer.

The scent was a thin ribbon in the heavy air, but it was distinct. It smelled like cleaning, but not like the soapy plant-foam otters sometimes used. It smelled like something that had been burned in a very specific way. His curiosity, normally a dormant thing concerned with tidal patterns and prey behavior, twitched awake. It wasn’t a drive as primal as hunger, but it was persistent. It asked a simple question: What is that?

He abandoned the hunting flat.

Pushing off from the mucky bottom, he slid into deeper water, his tail giving a few lazy sweeps to propel him into the main channel. He moved with purpose now, though not with the explosive speed of a hunt. This was a different kind of stalking. He kept his body low, his progress creating only the faintest ripple on the surface as he navigated the labyrinth of waterways he knew by heart.

The chemical scent grew stronger as he traveled upstream, toward where the swamp began to fray at its edges. The water here tasted different—less of peat and more of silt runoff from the cleared land beyond. The trees were younger and more sparse, letting in wider bands of hazy afternoon light. He passed familiar markers: the half-sunken skiff with the hornet’s nest in its bow, the giant cypress knee that looked like an old man’s face, the bend where the water lilies choked the surface every summer.

He knew this border zone. He’d observed it from a distance many times, usually at night. The sounds were different here—not just frogs and insects, but sometimes a distant mechanical grind or the hum of wires. The smells were layered: gasoline, cut grass, cooked meat. Today, the new scent overpowered those older notes.

He entered a narrow creek, its banks steep and muddy. The water was shallow enough that his belly scraped the bottom in places. Up ahead, the green wall of cattails and sawgrass gave way to a harsh line of sunlight. The end of the swamp.

The crocodile slowed to a drift.

He nosed into a thicket of reeds at the creek’s mouth, using them as a screen. From this vantage, he could see the transition. The lush, chaotic growth of the swamp stopped abruptly, as if sliced off with a giant knife. Beyond was short, struggling grass and bare, packed earth that stretched toward a line of low, blocky buildings in the distance. A human outpost.

And there, maybe fifty yards from the water’s edge, was the source of the scent.

A chain-link fence marked the boundary, sagging in places where vines had pulled at it. Just on the other side stood a large metal container, painted a fading green. A dumpster. Its lid was propped open by the sheer volume of refuse spilling out from within. Bags of trash had split open, scattering their contents across the ground in an untidy halo.

The sharp chemical smell was strongest here, mixing unpleasantly with the expected odors of rot and decay. It was coming from that pile.

The crocodile observed for a long time. His eyes scanned the open ground between the water and the fence. No movement. The buildings were quiet; it was still daytime, and humans tended to be indoors or moving in their loud machines at this hour. A few birds pecked at the garbage, but they were just sparrows and starlings, no threat.

His curiosity tightened into a single point of focus. The smell was in there. He needed to know what made it.

Leaving the water was always a calculated risk. He was heavier on land, slower, more visible. His world was buoyancy and stealthy approach. Land was clumsy and exposed. But he’d done it before, usually to haul himself onto a sunny bank to regulate his temperature. This was different. This was crossing into a space that didn’t belong to him.

The hunger in his stomach chose that moment to clench again, a sharp reminder of his failed hunt. It tipped the scales.

With a slow heave, he pushed his forelimbs onto the muddy bank. His claws—thick and blunt for digging and traction—sank deep into the soft earth. He hauled the rest of his bulk forward, his tail dragging a wide trough through the mud and reeds. Water streamed from his scales, darkening the dirt beneath him.

On land, his perspective changed completely. The ground felt solid and unyielding under his belly. The air was drier, carrying scents more clearly but also making his eyes feel gritty. He lay still for a moment, listening. Only the birds and the distant drone of a generator.

He began to move toward the fence.

His gait on land was an awkward, sprawling walk, his legs pushing his body forward in a low-slung crawl that kept his belly close to the ground. It wasn’t graceful, but it was surprisingly quiet when he took care. He used what little cover existed—clumps of weeds, dips in the terrain—advancing in short bursts followed by pauses to listen.

The chemical smell grew overpowering as he neared the fence. It was layered with other things now: spoiled food, something sweet and fermented, the sour tang of rotting paper. He reached the chain-link barrier and stopped, his snout almost touching the metal. Through the diamond-shaped holes, he had a clear view of the dumpster and its spilled contents.

Up close, the dumpster was massive, a corroded metal beast overflowing with human detritus. He saw crushed cans, plastic bottles gleaming in the sun, tattered fabrics stained with unknown substances. And there were flat, rectangular objects scattered among the mess. Books. Magazines. Their pages were swollen with moisture and torn.

One of them, a thick volume with a dark blue cover that had split along its spine, lay partly out of a torn black plastic bag. The wind fluttered its pages slightly. That seemed to be where the sharpest part of the chemical smell originated—from the book itself, or from something spilled on it.

The fence was an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. It was old and poorly maintained. Near one post, the bottom had rusted through and been pulled upward by an animal—raccoons, most likely—creating a gap just large enough for something determined to squeeze underneath.

The crocodile assessed it. He would have to dig a little to widen it for his broader body. That would mean noise and movement.

He looked back toward the swamp, a dark green sanctuary just fifty yards away. He looked at the quiet buildings beyond the dumpster. The risk was real. If a human saw him here, out of the water and this close to their things… he knew enough to understand that would be bad. They had loud tools that could hurt from a distance.

But the scent was right there. And beneath it all hummed that low-grade irritation from missing the heron, from the taste of mud in his mouth. This was something he could investigate on his own terms, without relying on the stupid luck of a bird’s timing.

He pushed his snout against the loose section of fence near the gap. The metal links rattled softly. Using his head as a wedge, he shoved downward, forcing the gap wider while his front claws scraped at the hard-packed dirt beneath it, loosening stones and soil. It took several minutes of slow, deliberate work. The sound of scraping metal seemed deafening to him in the open air.

Finally, the space looked wide enough. He took one more long scan of his surroundings—still clear—and then began to squeeze through.

It was a tight fit. His rough scales caught on the wire edges for a moment before he pulled free, emerging on the other side of the fence into the human zone.

The ground here was different: drier, dustier, littered with small bits of gravel and broken glass that glittered dangerously in the light. He ignored them, his attention fixed on the dumpster just a few yards away now.

The intoxicating aroma enveloped him completely here at its source—that sharp chemical signature layered over decay. He moved forward with deliberate slowness, his claws leaving deep impressions in the dusty earth as he closed the final distance to the overflowing bin.

The intoxicating aroma enveloped him completely here at its source—that sharp chemical signature layered over decay. He moved forward with deliberate slowness, his claws leaving deep impressions in the dusty earth as he closed the final distance to the overflowing bin.

The dumpster loomed over him, a wall of stained metal. The smell was almost a physical presence now, a complex cocktail that made his nostrils flare as he tried to parse it. Rotting vegetables, something metallic, the sweet-sickly odor of spoiling dairy, and cutting through it all, that clean, acrid note. It came from inside.

The heavy lid was propped open by a bulging bag of trash, but it hung at an angle, blocking his view of the bin’s deeper contents. He needed to see.

He lifted his head and nudged the lid with the broad front of his snout.

The metal creaked loudly on its hinges, a protesting groan that seemed to echo in the quiet afternoon. The shift in weight dislodged the bag holding it open. The bag tumbled out, hitting the ground with a wet thud and splitting apart, spilling more garbage across the dirt. The lid swung fully open now, banging once against the dumpster’s side before settling.

A small avalanche of refuse followed: more plastic bags, crumpled papers, a broken chair leg, and a cascade of coffee grounds and eggshells. The crocodile ignored the mess at his feet, his eyes scanning the newly revealed interior.

The dumpster was a cave of human waste. He saw crushed boxes, tangles of plastic wrap, empty containers with colorful pictures faded by the sun. And there, nestled among the damp cardboard and wilted lettuce heads, was the object that held the scent.

It was a thick, rectangular thing, bound in a material that was neither leaf nor hide. Its cover was a faded blue, but a large patch of it was stained a peculiar yellow. The spine had cracked from use or mistreatment, revealing the white threads that held the layers together. It lay open partway, its pages fanning out like the petals of some strange, papery flower. On the visible page were grids of symbols and diagrams of tiny, interlocking circles.

A textbook. A chemistry textbook, though he had no word for such a thing.

His eyes fixated on it. The sharp smell was strongest here, emanating from the stained cover and the glue of the binding. It was mixed with the scent of paper—dry and woody, but also with something else, something inorganic and precise. This was the source. This flat, static object was what had called him away from his swamp.

He didn’t understand its purpose. It wasn’t food. It wasn’t a tool he could use for digging or breaking shells. But his curiosity had crystallized into a single imperative: take it.

He needed to get it back to the water, to a place where he could examine it without the exposure of this open ground. He leaned in, his jaws opening slightly. He was careful. His teeth were meant for gripping and crushing, not for delicate retrieval. He couldn’t afford to puncture it and have its contents spill out into the mud.

He lowered his head and gently closed his jaws around the middle of the book. His teeth pressed into the cover but didn’t pierce it. He felt the firmness of it, the layered give of hundreds of pages compressed together. New smells flooded his mouth as he lifted it—the dry-dust scent of paper, the sharper tang of the colored ink on the pages, and underneath it all, that pervasive chemical note from the stain. It was a taste of something utterly alien, a world of organized knowledge reduced to pulp and glue.

He had it.

He backed up slowly, the textbook held crosswise in his mouth like a giant, awkward stick. It was heavier than it looked. Turning his bulk around on the dusty ground was difficult while trying to keep his prize level. He scraped a half-circle in the dirt, his tail acting as a pivot.

A noise made him freeze.

From one of the distant buildings, a door slammed. A human voice called out, too far away to understand the words but jarringly loud in the stillness. The crocodile remained motionless, the book in his jaws, every sense straining. He heard footsteps on gravel, moving away from his position but still too close for comfort.

The open ground between him and the fence gap seemed much wider now.

He didn’t wait. Moving with a speed that belied his awkward land-gait, he lumbered toward the fence, his body low. Gravel crunched under his claws. He didn’t look back. The instinct to flee conflict was older than curiosity.

Reaching the gap, he shoved himself through without ceremony, the wire links scraping harshly against his scales this time in his haste. He emerged on the swamp side and didn’t pause, heading straight for the inviting dark line of the creek water.

He hit the shallows with a splash that sounded terribly loud to him, mud and water churning around his legs as he waded in. Only when he was fully submerged, his body disappearing beneath the brown surface with just his nostrils and eyes and the blue corner of the textbook above the waterline, did he feel a fraction of safety return.

He began to move downstream, back into the heart of the swamp.

Swimming with the book was a new challenge. It wanted to drag in the water, creating resistance. He adjusted his grip, holding it more firmly, and used strong sweeps of his tail to propel himself forward while keeping his head elevated to keep the prize dry. The strange scents of paper and chemicals leaked into the water around him, creating a tiny wake of alien aroma that dissipated quickly into the tea-colored murk.

He didn’t take his usual routes. He chose narrower, more overgrown channels where the canopy closed overhead, plunging the world into green twilight. He moved with urgency until the human clearing was far behind and the only sounds were the life of the swamp: frogs beginning their evening chorus, insects whining over stagnant pools.

Finally, he reached his den.

It wasn’t a cave in the traditional sense. It was an undercut bank beneath the massive, sprawling roots of an ancient cypress tree, where the water was deep and dark. The roots formed a tangled ceiling above a submerged hollow just large enough for him to curl up inside. It was hidden, private, and safe.

He slid into this space, turning around so he could face outward. Here in the dappled gloom, he finally loosened his jaws and let the textbook slide onto a relatively dry shelf of mud and root just above the waterline.

It lay there, a stark rectangle of human creation against the natural chaos of root and soil. The cracked spine faced upward. In the dim light filtering through the root lattice, he could still make out some of the symbols on the stained cover: letters and numbers arranged in a purposeful way.

The crocodile settled himself half in the water, his chin resting on the mud shelf beside his prize. The adrenaline of the journey ebbed away, leaving behind a throbbing curiosity that was now satisfied in one way but ignited in another.

He had followed the scent. He had found its source and taken it. The mystery was no longer distant; it was right here in front of him.

He extended his snout and nudged the book with it. The pages rustled faintly. The chemical smell was milder now in the damp air of his den, blended with earth and rotting wood. He nudged it again, flipping it closed with a soft thwump. On the front cover now, clear in a bar of fading light, were words: PRINCIPLES OF MODERN CHEMISTRY.

He didn’t read them. But he stared at them for a long time as dusk settled over the swamp outside his hidden den, his mind quieter than it had been all day, focused entirely on this strange artifact he had stolen from another world