toward the outskirts of the city. We don’t like the silence, the emptiness. Except now, when it is with him.
“You don’t worry about anything,” says Ephras, “save that you secretly worry about everything.” He shakes his head then twists his body into a sequence of elaborate spirals. We watch him intently, thrilled by the wild beauty of it. There are others not far from us; otherwise we would swim more closely to him so that our bodies were touching, grazing against each other as we pulsed forward in the water.
Generally, historians are not to take lovers. It is seen as a distraction from the sacred task of protecting the History. We have no interest in laws or customs. The wajinru are in no position to tell us what to do. They’d do well not to ask anything of us and be grateful for what we occasionally choose to give them.
When we arrive at Ephras’s den, we embrace him, our bodies curling together. No one else can pull tenderness from us like this, make us weak with longing. It is a weakness we cherish.
Before him, it was only anger that could bring us to a tremble. Ephras showed us there are other ways to live on the brink.
We mate until we are spent.
“So,” Ephras says.
“Don’t.”
“You need to tell them who’s behind this,” says Ephras.
“They won’t listen,” we argue.
“Make them listen. The council has explicitly come to you for help. I would say they’re ready to hear what you have to say.”
It’s an illusion of open dialogue. They want an easy answer. A quick trick to fix the problem of the recent attacks upon us. They want me to tell them it’s some barely known underwater creature, and if we just do this, we can beat it.
But these explosions, these strange hot-fire beasts who take us by surprise, they reek of the two-legs. Two-legs don’t live in the deep and therefore can’t be fought in the deep, not with the weapons they obviously have.
“Children are dead,” Ephras says, leaving our embrace.
We nod. “And more will die. Perhaps even most of us. But they will not do what’s necessary to prevent that.”
“Then convince them to do it. Or convince others and we can do it without the council. People believe in you.”
“They fear me,” we say.
“Wajinru will do what you say, regardless of the council’s recommendation,” Ephras says.
We circle Ephras’s den. Can’t stay still. Claustrophobic, we swim out into the sea, where the water is much colder.
Ephras comes after us, but he’s forgotten his cretuk lantern and stumbles into us clumsily. We grab hold to steady him, our fins on his shoulders. We feel every nook and cranny of him as the sensation of his body moving in the water sends waves against our skin. We rest our head on his shoulder.
“Basha. Please. I don’t want to die, and I could not bear it if you died. Or my amaba, or any of my pod. My siblings. I have never seen or felt anything like that—what did you call it?—bomb, in my entire life. We are not ready. We must prepare. We must do something. I’ve never been this scared of anything.”
He weeps as we hold each other with our front fins. We will ourselves not to be bent by his words, but truthfully, we would die for him. And we will always do anything he asks of us.
* * *
Omju and the council do not listen, but other wajinru do.
We go to the sacred waters and wait. When we are here, people come. We need not even call them. The sense memory of the Remembrances is strong enough in them that the slightest tweak in the water alerts them of our presence even miles and miles away.
When Omju arrives, he calls this gathering unauthorized. “Unauthorized by whom?” we ask.
“Me!” says Omju.
“And who are you?” we ask.
We shoo him away as he tries to answer. The sacred waters fill with wajinru despite his claims. People are worried about the recent deaths and know instinctively that a new world is coming. They believe we will have answers where the council doesn’t.
“Wajinru,” we begin, addressing the masses gathered around. Perhaps twenty-five thousand. Perhaps more. “Seventy-five years ago, under the time of the previous historian, beings from above came down into our waters caged in metal fish to scout what lay beneath here. They came multiple times, but claimed only one life. An older wajinru woman who was caught up in the metal fish’s spinning back