The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,46

hunt, too deep in the trance. Three weeks without food had shrunken their bodies.

Yetu swam closer. It wouldn’t work to shout. Shouting had never woken Yetu from being lost in the History. Instead she channeled her energy into connecting with them, the same way she would’ve done traditionally at the end of a Remembrance before taking the History back. She touched each one of them, figuring out who each wajinru was outside of the oneness the Remembrance brought.

That mattered. Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together. For so long, the wajinru hadn’t felt like living creatures to Yetu. Just a mass that fed off her rememberings for their own benefit. But like Yetu, they were their own people too. They’d not asked for the emptiness any more than Yetu had asked for the History.

Amaba had said it herself before the Remembrance: they were cavities. Oori had felt that way too, robbed of her people’s past.

It shouldn’t be that way, and it wouldn’t have to. Yetu would search every last remembering of the History until she found a way to free her people from this cursed relationship of wajinru to historian, but first she needed to take the rememberings back on.

The water was ripe with electrical energy, and it took her no time at all catch their flow. Their minds plowed hers, knocking her over physically so that she rushed backward in the water.

Desperate, they clawed at her for mental purchase, and Yetu let them. It was like a thousand sets of teeth were biting into her at once, but she relaxed into it. She had to do this: for her amaba and the rest of the wajinru, for Suka and their family, and for Oori, whose homeland was likely already destroyed.

Yetu let her people flow into her, then focused on their thoughts. The rememberings were happening all at once. Millions of memories. Without time.

Yetu recognized each one. A part of her had held on to this, or it had held on to her. She plucked rememberings one by one. With time and distance, their impact had become less visceral, less gutting. She wept as her people wept, but she was able to maintain her focus.

“Yetu!” someone called.

Overwhelmed by the effort necessary to relieve the wajinru of the History, she didn’t recognize the voice at first.

“My Yetu.”

It was Amaba. She’d found her child through the haze of rememberings. “Stop. Stop.”

The voice grew louder. Amaba was coming closer. Yetu couldn’t imagine how she was navigating the waters with all that was happening.

“I will save you,” Yetu said.

“You will not,” shouted Amaba. “Stop!”

Yetu kept plucking rememberings, reabsorbing them into herself. She needed to concentrate, or the accumulation of agonies would undo her.

Then Amaba was on her, holding her tight. “Stop this! Stop!”

Yetu jerked away. She was desperate to prevent the future without the wajinru, without Oori, without any history at all. Even if she was not successful in saving the world, she could save the memories of it. Pain filled her, but so did knowledge, beauty. She felt mighty Basha’s fury turn to softness when in the embrace of his lover. She felt Zoti’s longing for companionship and how it had given her the ambition to make the wajinru into a people, a chorus. All of these things had made Yetu.

It wasn’t all pretty, but it was hers. If it was a choice between the History and emptiness, maybe Yetu wanted the History. She’d always complained that the rememberings erased her, that Yetu didn’t exist because the ancestors took up too much space inside her. That was all still true, but what did it matter whether she existed if she was alone, if all that was around her was abyss?

“Please! There must be another way,” said Amaba. She spoke in the rudimentary language of electric charges. “You don’t have to live with this pain alone. Join us.”

Yetu ignored her amaba, absorbing more memories. She had thrown away her ancestors.

“You didn’t throw them away. You lived. You did what you needed to do to make sure you lived. Our survival honors ancestors more than any tradition,” said Amaba. Her fins were pressed against Yetu’s cheeks. Her face looked hollow, but her dark eyes were vibrant.

Yetu felt the minds of every living wajinru. Their struggles were so familiar to her. “Join us,” said Amaba, begging. “I would sooner die than let you suffer this alone. You begged me to understand, and I never did. I never could.