The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,32

they don’t. So why should I stop for you?”

Frothy water spewed from Amaba’s mouth as she made gurgled, choked noises. This was why Yetu was to remain silent about the things she knew. These rememberings, these secrets of their History, were for Yetu and Yetu only.

It was at this age that Yetu first considered abandoning the History all together. All wajinru could live in peace, unburdened by the past. No more historian.

But when she brought her ideas to her amaba and other wajinru, they scolded her for her blasphemy. A people needed a history. To be without one was death. This was a feeling they knew all too well when the Remembrance drew near. It was an ache for knowing, and Yetu had had it once too.

* * *

Those years were far behind her, but still, she could not shake the memories. Sulky and scared, she had spent most of her youth feeling abandoned by the wajinru, even when they most tried to show their love.

Amaba held a gathering in Yetu’s honor once, certain that that was all her daughter needed to perk up, to become the old Yetu again. Slightly sensitive, yes, but loving and warm.

“We don’t have much time. People will be arriving soon,” said Amaba. Yetu had been instructed to hunt meat for the get-together. Amaba fluttered off to make her own preparations, fully expectant that her daughter would do as she was told. Yetu, though, was far past an age where she blindly followed her amaba’s commands. That would’ve been true even without the History inside of her. Absent the rememberings that aged and embittered her, she would’ve yearned to know herself as just Yetu. Who was she outside of her relationship to her kin?

Still, Yetu swam off to hunt, using this new freedom Amaba had granted to do something she’d been meaning to do since her failed suicide attempt. The prey she was after was not for meat. It was for a sacrifice.

It was only a short time before the gathering would begin. Yetu needed to locate a worthy animal, kill it, and do the ceremony, all before anyone was the wiser.

Amaba didn’t like “that nonsense” as she called it. Her only god was Yetu herself. Her only religion, the History. She showed her devotion by ensuring its preservation in her child.

But through the rememberings, Yetu had seen the many ways throughout time that the wajinru had communed with the world beyond knowledge. One way was to offer blood to the ocean, and in that blood, there was truth—if one knew how to look.

Yetu swam quietly, smoothly, with no extraneous strokes of her tail. She tended to be a distinctive swimmer, sometimes twisting and turning her body into a swirl pattern as she pulsed forward. The result was a wake identifiable by other wajinru who knew her. Today, she didn’t want to be found.

The best prey lived a little shallower than where she and her amaba were currently staking out the waters, but there were more wajinru higher up too. There was more potential for her to be discovered, especially because wajinru would be nearby to get to Amaba’s gathering.

Yetu kept her nerve endings poised as she carried out the hunt. She wanted something big. Something old. The easy answer was a shark, but they were more difficult to find this deep, and she didn’t want to have to go too close to the surface.

That left squid. Clever and therefore difficult prey. She didn’t have time for that.

Then she caught a wisp of it on her skin. Something gargantuan moving, perhaps a mile away from her, several hundred meters closer to the surface than she.

She swam toward it, disguising her identity by fluttering her webbed fins and blowing bubbles in interesting shapes and patterns so her prey might think she was only a school of deepwater fish.

As she got closer, the creature’s contours became clearer. She could just begin to make out what it was. Something strange. Something she didn’t see often.

Yes, yes, she could see it now, feel it on her skin. A frilled shark. Perfection. She swam decisively toward it, realizing speed now was more important than anything else. In the dark, it wouldn’t be able to see her well. She rarely saw the frilled shark this deep. It’d be less used to the complete blackness.

She’d come on it like a sudden current from underneath. Open her jaw and crush its throat. Swimming faster and faster, she was almost there. She bared her