Mama Cascade spoke to her in a secret language of bubbles and blinks. At first it was pretty nonsense, but the longer Arwa spent underwater, the more she understood. Mama Cascade taught her the names of the currents and all the creatures within them. She taught Arwa their deepest fears and secret commands, and she demonstrated the proper way to request their help.
“I tell you this because you are mine,” Mama Cascade said fiercely while they warmed themselves upon the rocks. “These are secrets of the down below. Do not forget it.”
On the fifth day, Arwa opened her eyes, and the underwater world was more colorful and dazzling than she had ever imagined.
On the seventh day, Arwa no longer needed the breathing apparatus.
On the eighth day, she could speak.
Smoke rose from the south, curling thick and white over the treetops. Arwa didn’t see it until she surfaced in search of a midday meal.
“Mama Cascade!” she called, her voice hoarse from disuse. “Fire downriver!”
A stream of bubbles was her only answer, but it was enough. Arwa swam with breathless speed. She skimmed over and around obstacles with a steady and complete knowledge of where each one would be. The fish, the eels, the stones, the driftwood—if it entered the Bombio, it entered her awareness.
Arwa completed in half an afternoon a journey that had taken her three days on foot. When she reached the village of the Bitumb, she found most of her people already assembled in the hollow.
It was Shanto who spotted her first. Arwa stepped onto land, nearly collapsing at the weight of her own bones, and Shanto rushed to hold her up.
“Are we injured?” Arwa demanded.
“No, the smoke is from the west. Howler territory.”
Arwa grimaced. Howlers were a cruel bunch. The Bitumb killed them on sight, but it would be foolish to assume the invaders made any distinction between river people and forest people. If the Howlers were taken, the Bitumb were next.
Shanto’s arm was strong across Arwa’s back, but her voice was soft when she asked, “Did you find her?”
“I did.”
“Yes, yes? So what happened?”
Arwa hesitated, strangely reluctant to describe her time with Mama Cascade. The goddess was possessive, yes, but there was more to it than that. The past few days comprised the only experience of her entire life that she had not shared with someone else.
She was saved from answering when they reached the hollow. There were twenty Bitumb present. All but the children.
Arwa endured only a cursory questioning from the village elders—her first mother included—before delivering her pronouncement. “The Bitumb must leave the borderland,” she declared. “Mama Cascade cannot protect us here, but if we make a new camp upriver, past the Mhaiko, the invaders will not be able to reach us without braving the river Bombio.”
Their outrage was warranted. North of the waterfall, the jungle gave way to deep forest, where the trees grew so tall and so dense, they blocked most sunlight and nearly all plant life on the forest floor. In the deep forest, animals moved high in the canopy, and the Bitumb would have to change their hunting methods to survive.
The move would also take them uncomfortably close to the territories of the forest people. They were not all Howlers, and the Bitumb had successfully negotiated conjugal trades with forest people before, but it was a situation that required long discussion and many gifts.
Arwa heard all of their protests and stood firm. “This is our only option,” she said. “The river will be our protection and our guide, but only if we are willing to adapt.”
There was debate, because there was always debate, but Arwa had returned from the river with a different demeanor. She was assured, where before she had been aggressive. Solemn, where she had been rash. When she spoke, they heard a hint of goddess underneath.
The vote was swift, if not without reservation.
For three days they prepared to abandon their home. Arwa helped pack the canoes, resisting the lure of the river at her back. Her skin and eyes and mouth were terribly dry. Her body was unbearably heavy. How had she tolerated the land for so long?
Shanto worked at her side, cheerful as always when there was work to be done, oblivious to Arwa’s struggle.
“Tell me about her,” Shanto begged. “Does she speak as we speak? What has she taught you? You looked half fish coming down the river.”
Reluctantly, Arwa said, “She is teaching me the names of the currents.” A hundred different details buffeted her thoughts, any one of which would have thrilled Shanto to hear.
“Yes, yes? Tell me one.”
Arwa busied herself tying a bundle of arrows. She mumbled, “It is difficult to say in the air.”
“Ah.” Shanto’s hurt transformed her entire body, curving her back and lining her face. She had never been one to hide her thoughts. Neither had Arwa, before.
A warm rain fell the rest of the day. The Bitumb finished loading their canoes with all of the hammocks and weapons and pots and children that amounted to their most prized possessions, and they pushed off from the shore. It was a long ride against the current, but they rowed with the blessing of Mama Cascade and encountered no debris.
Arwa swam alongside the canoes. She darted in and out of that other world, making the children shriek in fear and joy at her rapid reappearances. Her first mother clucked in disapproval at the pompous display, but she smiled while she did so.
Shanto rowed one of the smaller canoes, packed tight with clay jars of fermenting milkfruits, her expression distant and unhappy. Arwa rode the current back until she slipped under the canoe, and then she shot up the side like a jumping fish and sprayed her with water.
“Ah!” Shanto cried, but she laughed at the sight of Arwa trailing river grasses in her hair. Arwa swam low, into the other world, and plucked up a small, glowing shell. When she surfaced again, she pressed the shell into Shanto’s hand and whispered, “This covers the body of a tiny hunting crab called moneko.”
Shanto beamed.
That night, Arwa climbed into Shanto’s hammock, and they curled up tight against one another, as they had when they were children. In a hushed voice, Arwa described Mama Cascade in all her beastly glory, and Shanto gleefully bombarded her with questions until they fell asleep.
Arwa could almost pretend she’d never left the land at all.
They reached the Mhaiko the next morning. The Bitumb spent the entire laborious day hauling their canoes from the water, carrying them uphill, and lowering them back down again. It was grueling work, but grimly satisfying. Every obstacle in their path would be visited upon the invaders twofold because they would be following without the cooperation of the river.
Once past Mama Cascade’s waterfall, the only reasonable way to carry supplies deeper into the forest was by canoe, between banks that grew increasingly steep. If invaders approached by the river, they would be trapped by the river walls. If they came overland, they would be heavily burdened and on foot.
On the fourth day, the Bitumb found the site of their new home.
A month passed before their natural defenses were put to the test. Arwa spent most of that time on land, helping to establish the new village and explore new hunting paths around it. The forest was dark and eerily quiet, and she longed painfully for the other world.