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

(28) Taiki: White Stone Walls

Leaving the silt behind feels vulnerable. I wait for Ande to pull ahead of me, then follow the eddies of her tail on the side that will keep me farthest from Sar and whatever intangible blood scent they're still tracking. I don't want to be here. It takes more than half my energy just to stay present, and even then, the unbearable compulsion to dive and hide on the silt again lurks right around the edges of my mind. Sar is ahead of us and Ande keeps her hand on her dagger. Both of those things help. I'd have fought this plan in its entirety if I'd gone in with a better mental state, but I don't have the energy for a full-blown fight with Ande right now. She wouldn't back down easily. I know that look.

Sar follows the blood trail in a broken pattern, tracing it as far as they can, losing it, finding it, and reorienting themself to keep swimming. That draws my curiosity enough to distract me. It's one of the patterns they've shown that's so completely unlike a shark, the contrast with their tail is almost jarring. A shark would swim straight. It might weave from side to side as it's swimming, but it would follow the blood trail with a single-minded purpose that Sar doesn't share. They second-guess themself, flinch on occasion, and check the water constantly. No blood-tracking shark would be so nervous or afraid.

Sar pulls up and turns a circle in the water. Then another one. Worry knots their forehead, and a spark of hope embeds itself in my chest that they've lost the trail for good. Then Ande points and signs something. Sar makes a vertical loop instead. They find the trail again, and this time, they swim down. We follow at a downward angle. It's like whatever creature made the current surged up from the ocean floor, then either dipped down again or leveled out so strongly, the water cascaded away beneath them. Sar gets more and more twitchy as we go. When something flashes in the water ahead, they recoil involuntarily.

It's a deep-sea fish. A line-fisher: the kind with a glowing lure that they wave around in hopes of attracting prey. The next time the light flashes, it's off to my left. The fish is swimming at top speed, back the way we came. Fish down here never move so fast. Then Sar stops so abruptly, even Ande stiffens. She swims to Sar's side, and they point ahead.

Hanging in the water is a ghostly curtain of tentacles. Each is long and thin, and they're moving upward together, slowly but smoothly. We watch until the last tips slide away into the darkness. Sar grabs Ande's arm and yanks her sideways. An orange bell has appeared below. It's slow. So slow, it pulses only once every ten beats of my racing heart. So big, a Kel my size could sit on it and trail their tail off its edge. Ande stares at it. Sar does the same. Their expressions are identical.

Horror.

"I've seen these in the shallow water," signs Ande.

Sar's throat bobs as they swallow hard. "Where?"

"In a ruined Karu village."

"Karu?"

"Little domed coral dens and a Karu spear? It was also an atoll. Just a reef and a lagoon."

"What did the dens look like?"

Ande draws one with the lights on her hands. It's absolutely Karu. I've seen the same kind a hundred times before.

"But most of them were destroyed," she finishes. "The whole village was."

I've heard of this in bits and pieces from her before. It's the last thing she should be telling a Sami-Kel—the likely cause of the destruction—but Sar's expression only grows more haunted. I don't know what's going on.

"How far from the islands?" they ask.

"Close. Just a few days, I think."

They stare at each other for a moment more, then Sar suddenly flips around and dives. Ande bolts after them. We still lose them immediately, but Ande spreads a hand out in front of her in an exact mimic of Sar's own current-tracking, and we follow their wake. It's our only guide until the paleness of the seafloor fades into view. There's something even paler up ahead.