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

(5) Taiki: Across the Rocks

Neem knows Roshaska better than I do. I make for the nearest exit, but he veers down a side branch before we reach it, and I just barely keep pace. By my own estimate, we pass where the city wall should be almost immediately, but the tunnel doesn't end. The dens around the city center connect to it in places, and Neem is getting us across that outer stretch without needing to go outside.

Now I pay sharp attention to the tunnels. We're moving much too quickly for me to do any useful memorization, and I wish for Sar's direction sense so I could at least know which way we might be headed. Still the tunnel doesn't end. We follow routes that seem designed for this kind of passage, and the longer we swim, the more that explanation sticks in my mind. I don't know the layout of Roshaska well enough to say if this is common, because I don't know the layout of Roshaska at all. But there are current-roads outside that whisk a person through the city if they know which way they're traveling, and there's no reason to believe there's nothing similar on the inside.

Neem slows. I'm so locked onto his every movement that I do too, almost automatically. We weave through several more complicated tunnel networks, then stop at an exit. There's nothing but darkness outside. Neem has dimmed his lights to almost nothing, and I've done the same without thinking; we cast just enough illumination not to run into the walls. I can't tell what we're facing outside. Neem shrinks back around the corner. I do the same as a vibration creeps across my skin, somewhere below hearing level.

Gutu sings again. Her voice is higher than the one we heard around Osogo, but like every deity and demigod, it carries a lower register that deepens the resonance of the call. It shakes my bones. I grit my teeth to keep them from rattling, and pull back from the wall in a vain attempt to stop the vibration. It carries through the water just as strongly. In that moment, I'm scared for the coral-block of Roshaska, already old and cracking. It's withstood millennia of sea-quakes, but I've felt sea-quakes, and a demigod's song can rival any of the smaller ones.

I can't tell how far away Gutu is singing from. Neem and I wait, tense and silent, for the call to fade. Then he flickers his lights and dives out the exit into the pitch-black water. I sprint after him. We're almost at Roshaska's edge. In what feels like heartbeats, we've plunged over its external walls and made for one side of the canyon. It's dangerous to stay low with diving Kels, but demigods are a different matter. Gutu can't attack us without running headfirst into the rocks, giving us time and cover to get away.

That's probably why Neem doesn't head all the way up the canyon, which would retrace the path my people normally take. He breaks off partway up instead, and circles around beneath the drop-off rather than along the top of it. Before we've even reached the open rock face, I know something else is wrong. A current passes along these rocks, intersecting with the one coming down the canyon over and through Roshaska. It's a slow one, but right now it's not moving like it's supposed to. It's not moving at all.

I want to sign to Neem, but the rock has already fallen away beneath me. We're exposed. Neem's lights are barely visible up ahead, and I don't know how sharp Gutu's eyes are, but even this feels vulnerable. No one is following me, so I turn mine off completely and try to keep my gaze from sticking to the open water where I expect a demigoddess mouth to appear at any moment. She's a filter feeder, like Hahalua, but that didn't stop Hahalua from taking Kels, too.

Unless she didn't. It was never confirmed—only suspected given the proximity to where Hahalua had been seen also acting strangely before. And while Andalua has a stronger track record of wiping Kel tribes from the depths of the ocean, I'm not taking chances.

We're midway across the distance to where Neem must know these people are when the water begins to move again.

I shoot forward and grab Neem's tail. He must not be paying attention, because he startles hard and whips around like he means to attack me. He catches himself just in time. I motion for him to fall flat against the rocks like I have. He's supposed to be the battle-trained one. He worked with the Sandsingers for years. But maybe that doesn't matter when your tribe is dead. Or missing. Neem's eyes flit desperately back towards where the Kel tribe must be. These might be his people. It's impossible to know for sure if or when a tribe has disappeared, and I absolutely need to stop thinking about this, or my fear is going to drive me forward again, danger or otherwise.