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

(26) Taiki: Less Than Silence

I draw a mental line between the white-stone palace and the dropped block of stone to figure out our next direction. It's the same way Sar is still leading. It's a small consolation that I could now hold an accurate course even without them, at least until we get far enough from the palace and turn around enough times that I lose the way again. After the last white stone spikes, we're back to the endless plain. Here, I can't even look for more white-stone blocks: the silt is so soft, and the First Days are so long ago that I don't think we could unearth another block even if we knew the right place to dig. I go back to watching the water.

The plain's monotony chafes even harder after our brief respite from it. I feel like we're swimming in circles. Andalua knows, we might be: Sar could lead us wherever they wanted, and we'd never know the difference. The trails of deep-sea creatures are my only landmarks, and they're few and far between. It only takes a day for the hunger to set in again. It slows me down until the cold water feels thicker than water should be, and the time between sleeps loses all meaning again. Time in general loses all meaning. If everything down here moves so sluggishly, I'm starting to see why deep-sea Shalda live so long.

I look up wearily as a lick of a current brushes my face. Ande is doing sea-cucumbers beside me, rolling slowly like she finds it fun to watch the seafloor turn upside-down and sideways. Sar is just wandering. They're always wandering. They never sit still or swim straight, and to be completely honest, I've given up letting it bother me. If they cover more ground than Ande or I, at least they might find more food.

The current wafts over me again. I lift my head. The moving water isn't from Ande or Sar. It's not a different temperature, either; there's no death-water vent anywhere nearby, which is good, because a vent giving off a current this size could definitely kill us. I've heard of deep-water currents before, though. The deep-water Shalda like to swim in them. They say the water there has more to breathe.

The current begins to weaken again. This time, my mind wakes up to the fact that something is off. Deep-water currents are supposed to be steady. This has now pulsed twice.

Currents don't do that. Eddies do.

"Stop," I sign.

Ande does, on her back, and gives me a quizzical look. Sar pulls up and floats in place with a slow back-and-forth rippling of their tail. I hold perfectly still in the water. It's still moving. Stirring, barely, but after the utter stillness we've been swimming through, it's a motion as clear as surface waves. It slows to near-stopping, then begins to build again. I brighten my other hand and hold it out over the seafloor. The silt, ever so slowly, begins to drift.

The eddy is coming from above, and it's not small. My tiredness and sluggishness both roll back like a wave off the beach. I've only ever felt Hahalua move the water like this.

"Get down. Lights off."

The water goes dark. Ande flips over and settles beside me. I'm glad Sar is farther away. Enemy or otherwise, I don't want a Sami-Kel near me when I've just lost a sense. I've spent almost my whole life in the Shalda-sana, but the darkness down here is so absolute, it's like some great creature has swallowed the actual darkness and left nothing—nothing—behind. There are no stars in the water. The silt is just hand-lengths from my face, but there's nothing where its pale glow should be. I can feel it, but even the hand I lift in front of my face just isn't there.

I focus on my other senses to anchor myself. The current-eddy is still rolling over us. The silky squish of the mud spreads over my stomach, chest, and tail: so soft, I almost can't feel it even though I'm probably a finger's length deep in the silt. There's something a little firmer under my left hip. A piece of debris from above, or a creature embedded in the ground below. The current strokes my back. Even though I habituated to it long ago, I can suddenly taste the water again. There's nothing special in it, except...