The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,35

yet, but she had questions, endless questions. And worries, and concerns. But they were hers.

“What was the thought?”

But Yetu wanted to hold on to it, keep it safe. Who was to say what would happen to it were she to speak it? Suka didn’t seem cruel, but Yetu didn’t feel sure they wouldn’t steal it. They might bring the thought to their people and it would no longer belong to her.

“I haven’t had many thoughts of my own. I’d like to keep this one to myself for a while,” she said.

Suka nodded companionably. “All right, then, strange fish.”

That phrase sparked something, something wonderful and familiar. She wanted to know more, but couldn’t.

Yetu turned her gaze out to the water. Sometimes she could see Oori’s boat, far out in the distance, the white sail visible, looking like a fin, like a giant creature of the deep itself. A harsh wind blew the sail as rain drizzled. Yetu didn’t like it. The patterings against her skin were simultaneously too light and too heavy, and it reminded her of an itch. Water was supposed to exist as a great, singular body.

The tidal pool seemed even smaller now than it had before, and Yetu swam in circles in the shallow, near-pressureless water. It was upsettingly light, warm. She couldn’t stretch. She had been here for about three weeks, she guessed. Now that she was mostly recovered, she needed to stretch, to flex.

The boulders separating her from the deeper water were a barrier. Yetu rubbed her front side against it, preparing to slide over. But it still hurt, cartilage twisted and bruised. Even mostly recovered, her body was still a mess of aching bends and joints.

“It hurts in here,” Yetu said, cognizant of the water in a way she hadn’t been when first swimming to the surface. Her body felt loose, on the verge of falling apart. She might’ve been built for flexibility, to survive in the deep as well as the shallows, but there was no doubt her body had become accustomed to darkness, to weight, and to density. It did not prefer this thin water. It wanted to be out there, where Oori was. Where the wajinru were. She missed them. She missed them more than she’d ever considered possible given that she’d spent the better part of the last two decades shrinking away from them, desperate for solitude. It had only been a few weeks, barely any time at all considering she’d gone a whole year without contact just recently, but this time felt different. It felt like she’d drawn a line and built a wall.

“Can I help you out of there somehow?” Suka asked, a small cloth wrapped around their head and shoulders to stave off the light rain.

“No,” said Yetu. She didn’t think she was yet strong enough to survive on the other side of the boulders. “I’ll heal in time,” she said. A few more days rest, that was all Yetu needed, then she could… She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure if she really needed more time, or if fear of the rememberings and by extension the wajinru still haunted her. If she got out of the tidal pool and went back into the ocean, where would she go, and what would she do? Yetu could feel in the water and the sky that the mud womb was broken. She felt it under the brewing weather, a senseless agony bounding outward and sparking the sea. She could no longer convince herself that the wajinru would shake themselves out of the trance, at least not before it was too late.

Yetu should go to them. Now, preferably, healed or not. But something held her here, something murky and louring she couldn’t define. Fear of the History played a part, but that wasn’t all.

She inhaled sharply through her nose and blew it out through her mouth, the resultant sound whistly and shrill. It was anger. More specifically, resentment. She’d always done what she’d needed to do in service of her people, no matter the cost to herself. To preserve her own life, she’d fled, but now they needed her again, and there she was, willing to sacrifice herself for their benefit.

She’d been denied so much. It was only since escaping, since meeting Oori, that she’d learned what life could be.

Yet emptiness still troubled her. What angered her was the inevitability of it. With the wajinru, she’d been singular and alone. Without them, she’d found Oori and independence, but was cast away