The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,43

fin. She died in such agony that the historian felt it, swimming toward her to capture her memories in time.”

They gasp as we speak.

“It cut her up into pieces. In the rememberings, I have been her as she died. I know intimately what it feels like to be spun by blades to death. But as I tell you this, the most important thing to know is: This is not even a speck of what the two-legs are capable of.”

“Two-legs?” several call out.

“They are surface dwellers. They do not live in the sea, but on the land, and they walk on fins that split all the way up to their thighs, called legs,” we say, leaving out other details that they’re likely not ready for.

“Those who came before were scouters. Their purpose was to see what gifts of the deep they could steal from us. Below us, deep beneath the sand, there is a substance they crave. It is their life force. Their food. They feast on it like blood.”

The crowd of wajinru shudder at that imagery. “What is it? What is this thing?”

“I know not its name. Only that we are rich with it, and they would mine it from us like scavenger creatures picking off bones,” we say. “For whatever reason, they left us in peace for some time, but they are back now, with weapons. They have spent the intervening years honing their special tools. What they did then was beyond what any of us can understand. Think what they can do now.”

The sacred waters are not holy and silent after we speak. It sounds like the bustling city. Constant movement, constant conversation. “Then what do we do?” someone asks.

We have been waiting our whole lives for someone to ask such a question. “We fight.”

* * *

The council wields more power over wajinru than Ephras said. They convince them we are simply dramatic, so maddened by the rememberings that we make up lies.

“A metal fish with a spinning tail fin with land dwellers inside?” Omju says. “It is something only a foolhardy, stubborn man like Basha could make up. He wants a war because he was born for battle. Do not listen to him.”

Ephras holds us tight as Omju makes the announcement that the wajinru will not be fighting. They will set up perimeters to protect our waters, but nothing more, because anything else would be excessive, would be entertaining the fantasies of a madman hungry for blood.

We are hungry for blood, that is not untrue. We may well be mad, too. We swim and swim until a remembering takes us to Zoti, the moment she saw a living two-legs thrown overboard. We come out of the memory angrier than we were before. We cannot settle.

For days we swim and swim without cease, without rest. We only pause to eat, and we purposefully seek out big, challenging prey. We know that Ephras is worried for us, especially with little means to find us.

It’s the sound of death that finally draws us back home. There’s a thunderous roar that near deafens us. It stuns our scales and we cannot orient ourselves. We spin in a dizzy loop for ages, passing out then waking again. Screams call us from the distance. The deep smells like burnt things.

When we make it back to the city, we pay no mind to the carnage. We are only looking for Ephras. At least his body. Please let there still be a body. We need to hold it one last time.

After that we will find Omju, if he is not dead already, and devour him.

“Basha!”

Ephras is alive. He is well, sustaining no injuries but the one from his previous encounter. Hundreds of others are not so lucky. We fume. Not even Ephras can calm us, and soon we are shooting sparks of electricity through the water, stirring it up with our rage. We want to fight, but as hungry as we are for battle, we know it would be foolish to proceed alone.

We consider abandoning reason when more die, as our restraint is nearly overwhelmed by the desire to fight back. Another batch of a hundred die in a blink. Then thrice that much in an assault on a small village on the seafloor. We wait to be numbed by it, for the grief to become so much that we no longer feel it. That point never arrives. Our numbers reduce, and the rage grows.

We know we need to fight, but how? We have been