Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(24) Taiki: White Stone Spikes

I want to go faster than the pace we settle into by our second day of swimming, but the barrenness of the Shalda-Ki-Tu vetos all but our most energy-saving speed. I'm savagely glad, in a way, that Sar still isn't back to full strength yet. If they were, I'm sure they'd be swimming even more circles around us than they already are. They don't flaunt it, and Ande doesn't seem to mind, but spotting their shark tail out of the corner of my eye freaks me out more than I care to admit. In four days of travel, I still haven't adjusted.

We forage on the go now. It's useless to try to find enough in a single area: we need to roam so far anyway that we might as well just start moving. It's the second day, I think, when Ande asks Sar why they don't try to sing for food, given that they come from a whole people known for Nekta-singing. I think Sar's gotten the question before. They don't look offended, but they do shake their head.

"That's not something we do," they sign.

"Why not?"

"It's not..." They trail off, either searching for the right word, or the right sign for the word they're already thinking of. "Respectful. Or fair. We don't learn the songs for prey-fish."

Ande's face reflects exactly the surprise I try to hide. My tribe is the same. We learn to Nekta-sing for our Risi shoals because that's our only way of gathering them and moving them around, but we also have rules against using songs to bring them in for capture. That's with a steady source of food. In a territory as vast and barren as the Sami-sana, it's incredible that the Ashianti continue to enforce such a rule.

We keep our eyes on the silt more and more as the days wear on. It's hard to focus on the endlessly empty water as hunger sets in, creeping through my body until I feel sluggish and tired all the time. I'm used to being hungry like this, during the days between Roshaska and the start of the three-moon deep. But that hunger had an end point. It was also voluntary. We could take more from our Risi shoals if we had to, but it wouldn't be sustainable.

Down here, there are no Risi shoals.

I know we could swim to the surface if we had to, but it's a long, long trip, and we could easily drift and lose our way. Instead, we conserve energy, and share around any deep-sea food we find. The creatures down here all taste sweet, and even when Sar says they're okay, they leave me slightly queasy. I find myself craving squid again. Any flavor that isn't from the deep sea, really, or any texture that isn't soft and watery. Together with the insubstantial silt and the deathly still water, the sensory deprivation brings me dangerously close to weighing the Sami-sana against this place and preferring the shallow waters.

Ande also asks Sar whether we should be concerned about leaving trails across the silt. They just shake their head.

Time is so meaningless down here, I'm not actually sure if it's the fourth, fifth, or sixth day when something pale appears at the edge of our lights. It looks like a spike in the water, with a broad base and an irregular, lumpy point rising to waist height. I hold out a hand to slow Ande, but Sar slips past us and approaches the thing directly. It doesn't move. They circle it twice, then swim right up to touch it. Nothing happens. It seems to be made of stone.

Ande ducks beneath my outstretched hand. I make a grab for her tail, but either I'm slower than usual, or she's faster than I am. She joins Sar at the spike. They're now holding their hands over it in random places, a puzzled look on their face. Ande gives them a curious look and is directed to do the same. She does. Her expression morphs into the look that usually precedes her poking something, partly for fun, but not-infrequently because she gets the sense that I wouldn't advise it.

"Come try," she signs to me. "It's warm. And it's flowing."

I can't fake disinterest. I take my time joining the two of them, by which point they've located most of the places where warm water seems to be flowing out of the spike. Up close, I recognize the shape of the structure. I've seen vents like this on the flanks of fire-islands, spitting scalding water and building up rock cones year over year. I've never seen one this pale, though. And I've never seen one where the water was the same tepid body temperature as the sun-warmed shallows of the Karu-sana.