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

(5) Ande: Half an Ally

I've heard Nefinti come up three times now. Each time I've wanted to know more, and each time, the conversation has veered off in a way that makes asking further questions impossible. It's the second island to go like Kuna. Inhabited one moment, empty the next.

"Tell me more," I sign.

This girl—I suddenly realize I don't know her name—is a quick and animated storyteller. I can tell she's got a wickedly bright mind, and beneath her shyness is a clear-eyed drive that courses like a river through a rock gap. Even the shyness quickly vanishes.

"It was terrifying. I didn't know much about the Karu at that time, but people said they held Nefinti so strongly, nothing should have been able to beat them. It was one of their central islands. We had to circle around it on our way back from that raid. I think it was Ruka who realized the patrols were gone. Keshko investigated, and found the island completely empty. Well, except for Nekta and jellyfish. Lots of jellyfish. It was recent, too. There were signs that people were right there even half a day before. But Keshko didn't find anything that could have made everyone abandon the island so quickly."

"Was it destroyed?"

"No. Totally intact."

Just like Kuna. This is a new kind of disappearance, then, different from the ruins we've seen so far. I'll have to ask Sar if they've ever encountered anything like this.

The girl keeps going. "And then Makeba and Loba had some kind of exchange, and I didn't see it, but Ruka did, because she told them it wasn't a good idea. To tell the Alli—"

She cuts off abruptly. Her eyes go round, and she touches a hand to her mouth like she just said more than she's supposed to.

I decide to take a risk. "I know about the information trade."

"Oh, you do?" She's relieved. Naive. "Well, Makeba wanted to tell the Alliance that Nefinti was empty before the Karu's North Faction found out"—I didn't know there were multiple Karu factions—"but Ruka said that was a bad idea. Something about instability and enemy attention in the whole area, when there was still an island with villages nearby that we wanted to sing down. Or that Ruka and Neem did, anyway. Makeba said it would be too hard to reach those people anyway, and that the fighting here would give us better chances farther up the island chain. Ruka and Neem didn't like that."

It makes a cold kind of sense. Makeba knows—perhaps better than anyone—that her group alone can't save all the islanders before the prophecy's end. She's begun to cut her losses, focusing on villages with the highest chance of survival. I can also see why Neem and Ruka would oppose that kind of sacrifice. Neem empathizes more but calculates less than Makeba. And Ruka... Ruka would have exposed herself as wanting to stall the onset of war.

"So what happened?" I ask.

"Everything fell apart. Makeba confronted Ruka about something to do with the Ashianti, and I think there was other news, because Arcas came up. I don't know why. I didn't understand enough of it to follow what was going on. Ruka got angry. I don't think I've ever seen her like that. Makeba told her to leave, and she did. Keshko went after her. They didn't say anything that whole time. I think Neem called after them, but they didn't even look back."

"Did Neem leave, too?"

"Not then. He and Makeba kept fighting, and things were really tense because they were down to six members and had lost both their scouts. I'm training as a scout, but I'm not as good as Min or Keshko were yet. We came back to the camp, and Neem and Makeba weren't talking for a long time. We decided to try to find more members before the next raid, but almost none of the people we talked to would come. None of the Shalda, and just two other islanders. Neem said he might have more people in his tribe who would join, so he tried to get in contact with them... but his tribe was gone."