home was in the south, far from the northern Gadulan precinct, and we were heading further south still. We were both swimming fast, lengthening our bodies like we’d been taught to do to speed our stroke. Half human, half fish.
Carragheen started to hum, a signal that he planned to cover some distance, and I did it too, quietly, the note speeding me further, a distant cousin of song-traveling.
The city below made me catch my breath as I passed over. Exquisite proportion, beauty, balance. I couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to be swimming with him, instead of shadowing him. If things were different.
I shook the thought off. I couldn’t understand the pull of this man.
The homes of Aegirans are low and voluptuous, and although they are made of materials so advanced the land-dwellers would kill to get their hands on them, the roofs are strewn with flotsam collected during sea travels. They’re history lines. Even on this covert mission, the voyeur in me drank in the stories. I caught sight of one roof and learned the family traced its lineage right back to The Awakening. I also saw they were food production experts, responsible for some of the innovations that helped a community so large to feed its people sustainably.
Gleeda bugs and other illuminating creatures offered light throughout the city. Aegirans have the technology to light up their nation like a birthday cake, but they prefer natural light, and the effect was like passing over a fairy kingdom. Among homes decorated with driftwood, stones, corals and seagrasses, there were some strewn with gold, diamonds and other precious jewels. All have equal value, prized only for their appeal to the owner.
In those roofs I saw the paradox of Aegira – innovation and idealism.
And I thought again: God help these innocents if the land-dwellers ever find them.
As I watched the city slip along below me, I registered a warm tingle that was unfamiliar. I tried to dissect it, work out where it was coming from. This was wicked scary stuff I was doing, this tailing. Warm fuzzies sure as hell weren’t the appropriate response right now. But there it was, some kind of safe glow, reaching out from my chest, right down to my toes.
Home. The word echoed into my brain. I rejected it. No, not anymore.
But there was no denying the pleasure I was getting from watching this place from above. As a child, I’d spent whole days just swimming over, watching it, getting to know it, when we’d come here for extended periods of time. I knew this city. Part of me belonged here.
Suddenly, something arrested me on my journey. I almost stopped, almost lost Carragheen’s trail. I strained into the city below with my eyes, watching the twinkling lights and trying to discern what had set off my radar. All looked as before – dark, twinkling, perfect. But it was as though there was something missing – a black spot I couldn’t see.
Something was not right.
Something was not as it had been when I left here, thirteen years before.
I thought about all those break-ins I’d investigated in my first days as a cop, back in NYC. All the people who’d said “I knew, even before I saw the things missing. I knew someone had been in my home.” I’d never got that, till right now. Because that was how I was feeling.
There was something amiss in my home. Something there that shouldn’t be.
What was it? What was down there?
I filed the thought away. For now, I had to do this. I had to follow Carragheen.
My brain was so fired with trying to disentangle the signal from my radar that I barely noticed when the city lights gave way to the dark of the ocean floor.
But then, suddenly, we were flying, skimming like torpedos through the syrupy ink of the deepest place on earth. It was darker than midnight but my half-Aegiran eyes adjusted quickly.
And it was quiet.
I was focused on tailing Carragheen without being detected, but I still clocked the quiet. I could hear the soft noise my body made gliding through the water, like an echo in a cave. Like the sound of your heart in your sleep.
Where were all the creatures whose tiny noises made up the music of the deep sea bed?
Goose pimples broke out on my arms, and my heart knocked painfully in my chest.
Carragheen halted abruptly, and stood up, treading water in one place. He placed a hand to his temple, near