Oori would die too. Eventually, so would the wajinru; for if they had not found their way out of the trance of remembering by now, it didn’t seem likely to happen. They were so lost in it, they were taking their grief out on the whole world.
Then there would just be Yetu, all alone. There would be quiet. The waters would settle. The winds would slow. The rememberings would perish with the wajinru. The wajinru would have the same fate as Oori’s people. Much of the world would.
Storm waters filled the tidal pool, dark and murky, blotting out Yetu’s view of the teeming life inside. The future, too, was dark, if there was a future at all. The hurt that coursed through Yetu as she imagined a futureless world rivaled the pain of the rememberings. Could it really be that there was a version of the world where everything would be eradicated? Gone? She imagined how it felt when the History left her, the freedom of it, but if freedom only brought loneliness, emptiness, what was the point?
Nothingness was a fate worse than pain. How long would it take for Yetu to become ravenous for something to fill the hole the way other wajinru did? She doubted she could last even a year. She was already aching to see Oori, but also her amaba.
At least with pain there was life, a chance at change and redemption. The rememberings might still kill her, but the wajinru would go on, and so, too, would the rest of the world. The turbulent waves were a chaos of her own making, and it was time to face them.
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.