The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,20

to let go of those terrible memories. We reached into their minds and searched, taking away the hurtful moments when we found them.

That is what we think about now, the peace we imparted, the togetherness we brought. We have absorbed many lifetimes of pain, but it is no matter compared to the good.

“Tell me a story,” Aj says, fifty years old now. Hard to believe we witnessed his birth from the two-legged surface dweller, cast into the sea. “A happy one. Something that will comfort me in these next coming days, when I am to lose you, Amaba.”

We nod. “I will tell you more than just a story. I will tell you every story. Happy and sad. But you must promise to tell no one else. I do not wish to burden them with these things I have to say. We cannot falter on our mission. Some things… weigh. I fear if they know the truth of everything, they will not be able to carry on, or they’ll swim to the surface to learn things for themselves I do not want them to learn. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Amaba,” Aj says.

“When I pass, you must tell them my wish for them,” we say. “That they live lives of togetherness, in the present. That the many of them who started out their lives in loneliness and solitude, they must put it away, and remember where we are now. Together. Safe. Do you promise?”

“I promise,” says Aj. “Now come on. Begin. Before it’s too late.”

“Do not forget any of this,” we say, though our voice is weakening.

Aj touches his fins to ours, lays his cheek to our cheek. We communicate how pups communicate. In electricity, in charges. No need to speak. Aj sees all. Our memories transfer to him as we lived them.

We close our eyes in Aj’s arms, listening to the water, to the noise of the city, to our kindred all around us.

There are so many of us now, we could hardly be called strange fish anymore. We have made a place in this sea. All the fluttering, building, loving, hunting, embracing, mating, we hear it all, our presence unmistakable. A whole chorus of the deep. Wajinru. We are not zoti aleyu. We are more vast and more beauteous than that name implies. We are a song, and we are together.

* * *

We remember.

5

YETU HURTLED THROUGH THE WATER, away from the shadow of her people. Her tail fin jutted left and right to propel her to startlingly fast speeds. Her heart beat so fast, she couldn’t tell one pulse from another. The steady thrum resounded like the hum of a whale.

She’d spent large swaths of time over the last year immobile, floating, lost in rememberings, and her body wasn’t used to this level of performance. Muscle, fat, and cartilage had withered away, leaving behind a faint impression of what a wajinru should look like.

Yetu’s will thrived where her body faltered. The only thought on her mind was go, go, go. Forward, never backward. Flee. The place she’d gone from was a world of pain, and there was no distance she could swim where that past wouldn’t haunt her. Right now the wajinru were lost in the Remembrance, but they wouldn’t always be, would they? Surely one among them would realize it was time to transfer the rememberings back, and that realization would spread. Without Yetu to signal when this was supposed to happen, it might take longer than usual, but not too long.

In such sparsely populated waters, Yetu stood out, her body creating unique patterns of waves that a wajinru tracker would be able to spot. The wajinru would come for her to return the rememberings once they recovered—and they would recover. Most assuredly they would. If Yetu could survive the rememberings intact, weak as she was, they could too.

She didn’t let herself consider the possibility that they would be as lost in the face of it as she’d always been. To think such a thought for even half a moment would be to admit accursing them to immeasurable suffering. What if, like her, they all waned to shadows? Yetu shook her head. That wasn’t going to happen. They would awaken and search for her so they could return the rememberings to their proper place. If she wanted to survive, she couldn’t let that happen. They’d have to learn to adapt to them.

Yetu needed to go where they couldn’t sense her, where they wouldn’t search. She turned her