The Deep

8

HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN “tonight”? Lost in the endless madness of the Remembrance, we all starve, unable to nurture our bodies. Our bodies wane but our minds swell with pains too large to contain. Such imbalances cannot last.

Foolish Zoti, to think there is ever a way to guard against harm, to protect prosperity. Everything ends. How she would cry to know what became of her legacy.

We wajinru live Zoti’s ignorant lie for centuries, convinced our castles in the deep can shield us. The ocean is more than our home or birthplace. It is our heaven, too. For we were knit together by the powers of its life force. When we die, it is where we remain. Therefore we nurture it as it has nurtured us. We bring life to it as it brought life to us.

This is our covenant, maintained for years, until we are Basha.

In the old days, when we discovered a ship that threw our ancestors into the sea like refuse, we sunk it. Now we will sink the world.

There is chatter about dead children.

“Is there anything about this in the History?” Omju asks. “Something that can tell us how to proceed?”

Someone else asks, “Basha?”

“Historian Basha! Honored one!”

We hear them call us, our name ringing out through the water, but we are too entranced in a remembering to respond, one made by the third historian. The History troubled her so deeply that she did not believe it. She thought it was a trick of the ancestors, a test she had to pass. The third historian wondered if a woman called Zoti really had seen bodies cast overboard into the sea, left to drown.

When she went upward to see if it was true, she was snagged by a hook and lifted onto a boat deck. She tried to heave in oxygen through her mouth and nose, but she didn’t know how. Suffocating, she half passed out. The two-legs (they were real!) tried to grab and handle her, but she was more awake than they thought, and she bit every one of their throats until they died. She flopped and crawled to the boat edge, using her front fins to pull herself forward. With one powerful but painful thwack of her tail fin, she was back into the sea, having cleared the short wall.

She did not see the supposed surface dwellers who abandoned bodies of their own kind like an emptied-out clamshell, but she had no trouble believing the two-legs were capable of it after seeing them in the flesh.

This truth, that two-legs were cruel and unusual, was the most important lesson of the History, and the third historian vowed to protect her people from them.

“Basha!”

We awake from the remembering as they call our name, head aching and body overly alert, overly sensitive.

“We need your great knowledge, Basha,” said Omju.

We don’t care for Omju at all, who always comes to us with his silly questions, but is also always so certain of his way. He presents himself as knowledgeable, as the keeper of traditions. He is the closest person wajinru have to a leader or queen. His made-up council agrees with whatever he wants.

We do not answer his questions. We barely acknowledge that he is speaking to us at all. Mostly we do this because it makes him reconsider his self-importance. Smiling, we turn and swim toward—something.

Restless energy builds up in us, wanting to explode. Our amaba used to call this spoiling for a fight. And it’s true, we always were, always still are. We don’t know what to do with quietness, with peace. Life in the deep has never suited us.

Amaba says we came out gnawing and biting. Chewed our own cord away. But it never filled us. We never wanted milk. Only meat.

We didn’t get along with others, finding their conversations slow and inane. Our mind moved so quickly while the world passed by slowly.

When we found out we’d be taking on the History, we were glad. For once, there was something that could keep up with our racing thoughts. When the previous historian transferred the rememberings to us, we sparked alive with the feel of the past rushing into us, making sure no part of us was ever empty again.

Where the History saddened others, we felt only a glorious, burning anger. We liked the challenge of it. It suited us. Anger was our favorite emotion. We were at home in it. It gave us purpose.

As we swim into the dark city, we attune ourselves to the chatterings of others. They want to know what could’ve caused such a thing, the deaths of a small group of wajinru children. We feel fears and anxieties rustle against our skin. Their confusion skims our scales. What mighty beast could bring down three wajinru children so deep in the ocean? We are the apex predators of the entire sea.

Clueless wajinru gossip as they wander the waters. They would know the answer to this question if they lived beyond the bubble of wajinru cities, if they listened to the things we had to say more than just when it was convenient. We cannot understand a people that would willingly choose to cut itself off from its history, no matter what pain it entails. Pain is energy. It lights us. This is the most basic premise of our life. Hunger makes us eat. Tiredness causes us to sleep. Pain makes us avenge.

We are not wajinru if being wajinru means distancing ourselves from pain. We embrace pain, seek it out.

We make a path through the water, people splitting their parties to accommodate us. They fear us. This reaction doesn’t bother us. We aren’t to be trifled with. It is good that they recognize this.

After several strokes, we see a muted orange light. It’s Ephras holding a bioluminescent cretuk, and we swim toward him. An explosion had burned Ephras badly enough that he has difficulty feeling around anymore. What happened to him was the same thing that had happened to the children, though he’d been spared death. Still, he needs the aid of the light to properly see without being able to sense words and objects against his skin.

“You came,” says Ephras.

“Of course.”

Ephras gestures for us to follow him, then begins swimming toward his den a mile outside the city. He has to move slowly and carefully, unable to navigate without the aid of the light.

“I thought perhaps the council might be holding you up, keeping you away,” says Ephras.

“The council has no hold over me,” we say.

“You should pretend to tolerate them more. You don’t want them as enemies,” says Ephras, but it isn’t really advice, more a general observation.

“If they ever decide to make themselves into a problem, I’ll address it at that time. Until then, I won’t worry about it,” we say, happy to follow Ephras wherever he leads us. He is the only living thing in the world for whom that statement is true.

The water grows quieter and stiller as we move toward the outskirts of the city. We don’t like the silence, the emptiness. Except now, when it is with him.

“You don’t worry about anything,” says Ephras, “save that you secretly worry about everything.” He shakes his head then twists his body into a sequence of elaborate spirals. We watch him intently, thrilled by the wild beauty of it. There are others not far from us; otherwise we would swim more closely to him so that our bodies were touching, grazing against each other as we pulsed forward in the water.

Generally, historians are not to take lovers. It is seen as a distraction from the sacred task of protecting the History. We have no interest in laws or customs. The wajinru are in no position to tell us what to do. They’d do well not to ask anything of us and be grateful for what we occasionally choose to give them.

When we arrive at Ephras’s den, we embrace him, our bodies curling together. No one else can pull tenderness from us like this, make us weak with longing. It is a weakness we cherish.

Before him, it was only anger that could bring us to a tremble. Ephras showed us there are other ways to live on the brink.

We mate until we are spent.

“So,” Ephras says.

“Don’t.”

“You need to tell them who’s behind this,” says Ephras.

“They won’t listen,” we argue.

“Make them listen. The council has explicitly come to you for help. I would say they’re ready to hear what you have to say.”

It’s an illusion of open dialogue. They want an easy answer. A quick trick to fix the problem of the recent attacks upon us. They want me to tell them it’s some barely known underwater creature, and if we just do this, we can beat it.

But these explosions, these strange hot-fire beasts who take us by surprise, they reek of the two-legs. Two-legs don’t live in the deep and therefore can’t be fought in the deep, not with the weapons they obviously have.

“Children are dead,” Ephras says, leaving our embrace.

We nod. “And more will die. Perhaps even most of us. But they will not do what’s necessary to prevent that.”

“Then convince them to do it. Or convince others and we can do it without the council. People believe in you.”

“They fear me,” we say.

“Wajinru will do what you say, regardless of the council’s recommendation,” Ephras says.

We circle Ephras’s den. Can’t stay still. Claustrophobic, we swim out into the sea, where the water is much colder.

Ephras comes after us, but he’s forgotten his cretuk lantern and stumbles into us clumsily. We grab hold to steady him, our fins on his shoulders. We feel every nook and cranny of him as the sensation of his body moving in the water sends waves against our skin. We rest our head on his shoulder.

“Basha. Please. I don’t want to die, and I could not bear it if you died. Or my amaba, or any of my pod. My siblings. I have never seen or felt anything like that—what did you call it?—bomb, in my entire life. We are not ready. We must prepare. We must do something. I’ve never been this scared of anything.”

He weeps as we hold each other with our front fins. We will ourselves not to be bent by his words, but truthfully, we would die for him. And we will always do anything he asks of us.

Omju and the council do not listen, but other wajinru do.

We go to the sacred waters and wait. When we are here, people come. We need not even call them. The sense memory of the Remembrances is strong enough in them that the slightest tweak in the water alerts them of our presence even miles and miles away.

When Omju arrives, he calls this gathering unauthorized. “Unauthorized by whom?” we ask.

“Me!” says Omju.

“And who are you?” we ask.

We shoo him away as he tries to answer. The sacred waters fill with wajinru despite his claims. People are worried about the recent deaths and know instinctively that a new world is coming. They believe we will have answers where the council doesn’t.

“Wajinru,” we begin, addressing the masses gathered around. Perhaps twenty-five thousand. Perhaps more. “Seventy-five years ago, under the time of the previous historian, beings from above came down into our waters caged in metal fish to scout what lay beneath here. They came multiple times, but claimed only one life. An older wajinru woman who was caught up in the metal fish’s spinning back fin. She died in such agony that the historian felt it, swimming toward her to capture her memories in time.”

They gasp as we speak.

“It cut her up into pieces. In the rememberings, I have been her as she died. I know intimately what it feels like to be spun by blades to death. But as I tell you this, the most important thing to know is: This is not even a speck of what the two-legs are capable of.”

“Two-legs?” several call out.

“They are surface dwellers. They do not live in the sea, but on the land, and they walk on fins that split all the way up to their thighs, called legs,” we say, leaving out other details that they’re likely not ready for.

“Those who came before were scouters. Their purpose was to see what gifts of the deep they could steal from us. Below us, deep beneath the sand, there is a substance they crave. It is their life force. Their food. They feast on it like blood.”

The crowd of wajinru shudder at that imagery. “What is it? What is this thing?”

“I know not its name. Only that we are rich with it, and they would mine it from us like scavenger creatures picking off bones,” we say. “For whatever reason, they left us in peace for some time, but they are back now, with weapons. They have spent the intervening years honing their special tools. What they did then was beyond what any of us can understand. Think what they can do now.”

The sacred waters are not holy and silent after we speak. It sounds like the bustling city. Constant movement, constant conversation. “Then what do we do?” someone asks.

We have been waiting our whole lives for someone to ask such a question. “We fight.”

The council wields more power over wajinru than Ephras said. They convince them we are simply dramatic, so maddened by the rememberings that we make up lies.

“A metal fish with a spinning tail fin with land dwellers inside?” Omju says. “It is something only a foolhardy, stubborn man like Basha could make up. He wants a war because he was born for battle. Do not listen to him.”

Ephras holds us tight as Omju makes the announcement that the wajinru will not be fighting. They will set up perimeters to protect our waters, but nothing more, because anything else would be excessive, would be entertaining the fantasies of a madman hungry for blood.

We are hungry for blood, that is not untrue. We may well be mad, too. We swim and swim until a remembering takes us to Zoti, the moment she saw a living two-legs thrown overboard. We come out of the memory angrier than we were before. We cannot settle.

For days we swim and swim without cease, without rest. We only pause to eat, and we purposefully seek out big, challenging prey. We know that Ephras is worried for us, especially with little means to find us.

It’s the sound of death that finally draws us back home. There’s a thunderous roar that near deafens us. It stuns our scales and we cannot orient ourselves. We spin in a dizzy loop for ages, passing out then waking again. Screams call us from the distance. The deep smells like burnt things.

When we make it back to the city, we pay no mind to the carnage. We are only looking for Ephras. At least his body. Please let there still be a body. We need to hold it one last time.

After that we will find Omju, if he is not dead already, and devour him.

“Basha!”

Ephras is alive. He is well, sustaining no injuries but the one from his previous encounter. Hundreds of others are not so lucky. We fume. Not even Ephras can calm us, and soon we are shooting sparks of electricity through the water, stirring it up with our rage. We want to fight, but as hungry as we are for battle, we know it would be foolish to proceed alone.

We consider abandoning reason when more die, as our restraint is nearly overwhelmed by the desire to fight back. Another batch of a hundred die in a blink. Then thrice that much in an assault on a small village on the seafloor. We wait to be numbed by it, for the grief to become so much that we no longer feel it. That point never arrives. Our numbers reduce, and the rage grows.

We know we need to fight, but how? We have been humbled.

It is not long before our sprawling city is gone. All traces of dwellings, ash. Omju says we need to go outward, to expand to other sections of the deep and build there. We tell him what’s really necessary is to go upward.

“We must go to them. Fight them. The ocean made us. Therefore it will take care of us,” we say. “We must simply call on it.”

Omju tries to interrupt us, and we hurl our body toward his, signaling a fight. “If you want to be king of the wajinru so badly, then be willing to fight for it. Be willing to fight me for it,” we say.

Not one to further sacrifice his reputation to the onlookers already disappointed in him, Omju shows his teeth. Like us, he is small and agile, but we have the benefit of generations of wajinru fighters and warriors. We know everything they know. We’ve learned all they’ve learned.

We go for his throat, and he is done, his breathing apparatus inside our own.

“There has been a change in regime,” we say. There will be no more foolish leaders. No more councils. We are the historian. We carry the sacred rememberings. Who but us knows enough to lead?

The wajinru are no longer frightened of us. They are emboldened by what we represent: war with the creatures who cut our population in half. “The two-legs will not stop until we are extinct,” we say. “Like salmon, like the mighty hammerhead, monk seals, various sea turtles, fin whales, and so many others. Are you ready to take back what belongs to us?”

Amassed in a single unit, a chorus, we swim upward. The warmth from the sun-touched waters weakens us, and we rest for days before ascending higher.

We pass on rememberings to them. They must have the depravity of the two-legs fresh in their minds. Ephras swims next to us. He is never out of our line of sight.

Many cannot survive the rush of light and heat. Is the sun any different than the bombs? With all the pain so fresh, many choose simply to sink and die. The others we stir to action with more memories. Psychically linked, we are stronger. Our connection makes us a beast mightier than the blue whale.

We swim upward and upward, bodies in formation. We are arranged in rings, a circle of forty over a circle of forty over a circle of forty and so on. We move in a spiral as we ascend, creating a twister in the water.

Not all of us survive. For some, the shock of the near pressureless water compared to the deep is too much, and they die. Two-legs wage war against us, even as we’ve left the place they want so badly to claim as their own. They know we’re coming for them.

The power of our upward motion agitates the water into a protective cyclone only wajinru can enter. Our shared fury makes us stronger. We continue to rise.

As we near the surface, we lose sight of what we are doing. We are not Basha anymore. It is like we are in every remembering at once. We are every wajinru. As one, we make the ocean waters rise and create a tidal wave that lifts us high above land.

This is the first time the other wajinru are seeing the two-legs outside of the Remembrance. They are shocked by their faces, similar in many ways to our own. They know what we have known since taking on the History. The two-legs are our kin.

This does not make us more gentle. It has the opposite effect. We send endless waves of salt water onto the land, flooding the whole earth. This is only our first assault.

We remember.