The Glass Harvester

The last day of my vacation in Portugal, my cousin Rui and I took his old fishing boat out past the Algarve cliffs. The sea was a sheet of green glass, and the fish were biting like crazy. By late afternoon, we had nearly filled the cooler with sea bass and bream. Rui grinned, wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘One more hour, then we head in.’

As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, Rui told me to pull the starter cord on the motor. It wouldn’t budge, as if rusted solid. I cursed under my breath, yanking again and again. Then I heard it—a low, thrumming drone, like a swarm of bees, growing louder. I looked up, expecting a tourist helicopter, but what I saw made my blood run cold.

A plane, if you could call it that, descended from the clouds. Its body was the color of a drowned forest, streaked with veins of dark green. Under its wings, instead of roundels, were pulsing crimson circles that seemed to bleed into the air. It passed directly overhead, and the air around us turned icy cold, raising goosebumps on my arms. The plane wobbled, banked sharply to the left, and with a sickening lurch, plunged into the sea not fifty meters away. There was no splash, no explosion—just a faint hiss, like steam hitting water.

Rui grabbed the cord and yanked. The motor coughed and roared to life. Without a word, he gunned it toward the crash site. We cut the engine and drifted in silence. The water was calm, but beneath the surface, a dark shape moved. It was enormous, gliding with an unnatural grace. As it rose, I saw it wasn’t a plane at all. It was a giant manta ray, easily six meters across. But its skin was not normal. It was translucent, like dark green glass, and beneath that skin, I could see the silhouettes of fish—dozens of them, floating inside its belly as if suspended in amber.

My breath caught. The ray’s wings rippled, and I noticed the crimson circles under its ‘wings’ were actually puckered openings, like gills, but they glowed with an eerie light. As we watched, one of those openings flexed, and a stream of tiny silver fish shot out, swimming away in a frantic school. The ray then turned its huge, milky eye toward us. In that eye, I saw something ancient and hungry. It opened its mouth—a vertical slit—and a sound emanated, not through the air, but directly into my skull. It was a high-pitched, crystalline chime, like breaking glass, and it made my teeth ache.

I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. The ray began to circle our boat, slowly, its wing tips breaking the surface with a wet slap. Rui fumbled for the motor cord, but his hands were shaking. The ray’s pace quickened, and the water around us began to churn. I grabbed the boat’s gaff hook, a steel pole with a sharp end, and held it out like a spear. The ray lunged, its open mouth gaping. I thrust the hook into its flesh. The point penetrated, but instead of blood, a viscous, black liquid oozed out, and the ray let out a sound like a thousand panes of glass shattering at once.

It veered away, diving deep, and was gone. The sea grew calm again, and the chime faded. Rui finally got the motor running, and we sped back to shore, not speaking until we reached the harbor. As we tied up the boat, Rui looked at me, his face pale. ‘What was that?’ he whispered. I shook my head, unable to answer.

That night, as I packed for my flight home, I glanced out the window. The sea was black, and for a moment, I thought I saw a faint red glow beneath the waves, pulsing like a heartbeat. I closed the curtains, but the image stayed with me. I haven’t slept soundly since. And every time I hear the tinkle of glass, I feel cold all over, and I wonder: what else is down there, waiting beneath the glass-calm surface of the sea?