The king of the crabs came with the second high tide of the day.  Crushing sandcastles with each step, it was hard to imagine he did this by accident. In fact, judging by the smile that played at his sharp jaws, it was safe to say he found enjoyment in the destruction. With a great red claw he adjusted his crown, which sat upon his wide shell. His six running legs carried him across the beach, leaving craters, as his back swimming legs dragged behind, unearthing large piles of sand and forming trenches that the ocean water followed him in. Also following the king crab was an entourage of smaller crabs. It took several to keep the king crab’s royal cape from dragging in the sand.

When he spoke, he sounded as if he were still in the sea. Water gushed from his mouth and the stench of dying algae followed. He bellowed, “Choral, my dear, the time has come for us to marry.’

Though Choral the crab seemed disgusted with the idea, the king crab turned to scurry back to the sea as if the matter had been decided. As he did, a couple of the crabs holding his cape were flung away. When the king saw that his cape had touched the sand in their sudden absence, he kicked with his back legs and buried the two crabs beneath heavy wet sand. The king then laughed as the crabs struggled to free themselves.

Choral looked to her friend, Melody, the mute banshee, with pleading eyes but with no solid arms with which to shoo the crabs, she could do nothing to help. A cast of crabs surrounded Choral and then lifted her up and carried her first to the shoreline, then into the water, and finally all the way down, down, down to the bottom of the ocean.

It was an old coconut hermit crab that was to wed Choral to the king crab. He was an old family friend of Choral’s and  seemed as displeased with the marriage as she was. So large, this old hermit crab had long ago given up shells for none were large enough to house him and his back had grow hard. His heart, though, had never grown hard and he remained a kindly crab. His claws were nearly the size of the king crab’s and he feasted upon a coconut after snapping it in two with a simple squeeze. Smaller crabs scurried for the coconut scraps. Seeing them, the old hermit crab cut more of the coconut off and offered it to them. The king, too, ate a coconut but seeing a hungry little crab, he did not share. In fact, he was quite cruel and instead grabbed the little crab and gobbled him up whole. He laughed and one of the poor little crab’s claws remained stuck in the kings great mandibles. The other crabs retreated, leaving their scraps of coconut behind and none dared point out the king had food in his teeth.

The time before the wedding was filled with many more cruelties. The king crab stepped on an old fiddler crab when he was underwhelmed with the fiddler crab’s wedding music. The king also ate the entire banquet of food meant for the guests.

When it came to Choral he made her sing until she felt she could sing no more, and then demanded that she continue. Whenever she did get a break, friendly crabs offered Choral what little food they had, and Choral thanked them. All seemed pleased to have her there, except for the great old hermit crab who could see how miserable she was.

Come the wedding ceremony, the king demanded it be rushed, as the food was already gone and he was bored. It seemed it was almost done until the great hermit crab asked, ‘Does any crab object to this union?’ He paused longer than he ought to, though the fearful gathering of crabs said nothing. Just as he was about to continue, a sweet voice said, ‘I object. I do not wish to marry this monster.’

‘How dare you!’ the king bellowed, looking around for the source of the voice. ‘I’ll eat you alive for this treason!’

He soon came to realize, though, that it was his bride-to-be, Choral, who objected. His anger did not quiet with this knowledge—it raged.

‘You?’ he yelled. ‘I’m a king of my word. I will eat you whole for embarrassing me like this!’

The king raised a great claw high above him and then brought it down, meaning to crush poor Choral, but he was stopped. The old hermit crab had caught the king’s massive claw in his own.

‘How dare you!’ The king growled. He attempted to pull his claw free, but could not as years of climbing coconut trees to get food for the other crabs had made the hermit crab strong, and years of being waited upon made the king crab weak despite his immense size.

‘Your people starve,’ explained the hermit crab. ‘There is not even algae for them to eat.’

As the hermit said this, the king pulled an algae cake from under his crown, a hidden snack, and ate it with relish. ‘Then let them eat cake.’

‘They will,’ the hermit crab said, the king’s claw still pinched in his. ‘Crab cake.’

He squeezed and crushed the king crab’s claw. White meat filled the water and one by one the guests grabbed a piece and ate as the king cried out in a rage, ‘My claw! I’ll get you for this!’

But it was the king whom the smaller crabs got. Starving, they grabbed at his eight legs and pulled, tearing them from the king. The poor little crab the king had gobbled up whole was alive and crawled out of the king’s mouth. The other crabs ate until the king crab was nothing but a crown, which they offered to the hero hermit crab, their new kinder king. As his first order as king, the hermit crab let Choral return to the beach and her friend Melody, whom she could never tell exactly what had happened in the cold ocean depths. But dinner would be on her.