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

(37) Ande: The Prophecy

Taiki has frozen at the sight of whatever island the Seer just showed him. He looks like he's seen whatever called in the deep around Osogo.

"If it's yours, touch it," I sign again.

Taiki lifts a shaking hand and almost second-guesses himself before touching the image. All three symbols in front of him shatter. He hugs himself and moves back. That's not where we need him. Now I'm the only one up front, and unless the Seer can see via those light patterns, I don't have any way to communicate with it. It has no eyes. I can't speak enough to be understood. Sar can't speak at all. And now Taiki seems to have been deactivated. He's still staring at the place those three images were a moment before, his expression haunted.

If I'm the Singer, though, maybe this is my responsibility. Swallowing hard, I evaluate my options. The Seer's light returns to it, presumably bringing back whatever information it just gathered. If that's the way it communicates, maybe I need to find a way to interact with that light beyond just touching it and watching it shatter. I swim forward half a pace to position myself in front of the Seer. It processes the light slowly, weaving it between its hands like a living snake. I clear my throat a little, and try for a simple phrase.

"Can we talk?"

The Seer's head twitches towards me. It can hear, then, though that's not much use unless I figure out a way to communicate with my extremely limited spoken vocabulary.

"In sign?" I ask, making sure to flick my intonation up at the end to make it a question.

A mote of light pulses in the Seer's hand, splits into two, and flies towards me. Two small flicks hit my shoulder. That could be either a yes or a no. I'm surprised I can feel the light. The Seer, meanwhile, builds up the magic in its hands again. When the blob is big enough to make sand-structures with, the Seer casts it out into the water between us. This time, I reach out. I have nothing to lose by touching it unless the Seers mean us harm, and even if they do, Taiki knows the healing song. If the light shatters, meanwhile, I'll just have to find another way.

It doesn't shatter. It reaches my hands and envelops them like seaweed in a rock pool. When I separate them, the blob splits with them. The giddy thrill of realization hits me. The Seers don't communicate by sight. They communicate by shape—representative objects and patterns, or covering us with light to deduce what we "look" like. If the Seer understood me, it's giving me a way to speak to it in sign.

What do I say? I freeze for a moment, petrified by the weight of speaking to a legendary being about something as monumental as the prophecy. But I can't back out now. I lift my hands and sign, "Multiple versions of the islanders' prophecy have spread around the ocean, and we don't know which one is real. Can you tell us the original?"

My heart trips in my chest as I debate adding anything else before I try to send the light back to its owner. I decide against it. I need an answer before I ask further questions, and I don't want to ask too many upfront if they come with a cost, or if the Seer can't process them all so quickly. I copy the hand-flick the Seer used to send the light to me. It flies off my hands. I hope I said everything I should have. I hope the Seer doesn't turn around and leave. I hope our questions aren't limited.

I hope I haven't messed this up.

The light returns to the Seer's hands. It engulfs them like it did to mine, and there it stays. The Seer's mouth remains silently open. It has to be a song. All the legends say the Seers sing.

The light around the Seer's hands pulses in irregular patterns. I watch them closely, and get the strangest feeling that they're somehow replicating my signs. This lasts about as long as my signing did. Or at least, I think it does. Time distorts when I'm nervous, and I'm about to choke on my own stomach right now. At last, the light fades, then winks out altogether as the Seer closes its mouth. The Seer raises one hand towards me as though telling me to wait, then turns very slowly back towards the canyon. It disappears down into the darkness.