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

(25) Ande: Death Water

Taiki is the first to find me again among the white stone spires, his hand-lights dimmed and his eyes averted. Something happened, and I'm suddenly intrigued. Taiki looks uncomfortable. Not scared, and not angry, but like Sar said something that finally got through to him. I might have to talk to them later to try to tease out what it was.

"Did you find anything?" signs Taiki, scrutinizing the barely-lit spires ahead of us.

I wait for Sar to join us before I answer.

"I think we found the palace," I sign then, and flare my hand-lights to their maximum brightness.

Taiki gasps. Even Sar's eyes widen. There's no way this isn't the white-stone palace the Karu queen saw, and I can see now why she called it that. The spires around us, including the one we're perched on, are twice my height already. In the arm-spans ahead, they cluster together, gathering into towers and ridges with thin strips of silt barely visible in between. A few dozen arm-spans past that, though, is a white stone formation that puts them all to shame.

The "palace" is so broad, my lights barely find its edges. Its skirt of spires surge together into a spiny mountain that soars up into the inky water. I see craggy ridges, spreading ledges, warped stone teeth, and towering, lonely spires. My light reaches up, and up, reflecting off the gleaming white until it finally fades among peaks still reaching for the sky.

The whole place has the majesty of an eel-Kel city, and the time-eaten feel of the ruins of Roshaska. Some of its most densely clustered towers are pocked like insects have been gnawing at them, if those insects were my size and could chew through stone. I can tell there are towers missing in some places. It's an odd erosion pattern, but this whole place is so fantastical, it's hard to dwell on it for long.

I shoot a glance at Taiki. "What comes after the palace in the story?"

"Deadly pools in the seafloor. Whatever that means."

I look to Sar, but they shake their head. They've drifted down to rest against one of the towers of this formation. They make it look casual, but we've been winding and dodging through formations for at least a quarter day, and they're probably feeling it.

"Are you good to keep swimming?" I sign. They nod and push away from the formation again. I turn to Taiki. "Do we know what direction we need to go?"

"Are we assuming this is the palace?"

"Would our direction change if it wasn't?"

He considers that for a moment, then signs a very disgruntled no and refuses to look to Sar when I do. I can't believe he's still sour about the fact that only they know which way to go. Before they joined us, I assumed I was the one most capable of petty grudges, but I've learned all kinds of things about Taiki over this last half-moon. He's not just suspicious of Sar. He's being shown up by a Sami-Kel in what's technically Shalda territory, and I'm convinced it's getting to him.

To be fair, I'm surprised I don't feel the same way. Probably because I never stood a chance at being useful here in the first place, but I doubt it's just that. I enjoy watching Sar make Taiki uncomfortable, and I'm genuinely curious how they do what they're doing. We've held what I'm pretty sure is a dead-straight course since the shrine, and the white-stone palace is proof of it. I've questioned Sar about it, but all that's done is convince me they're navigating with a sense I definitely don't have. Which is disappointing, but so long as one of us can lead us to the Seers, I'm content with teamwork. I've become the best at finding food anyway, so I'm not entirely useless.

There's nothing for us to do here other than reorient ourselves and keep swimming, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something. I look down one last time as we ready to leave, and that's when I spot it.