The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,6

themselves in that state, so they built a giant mud sphere in defense, its walls thick and impenetrable. They called it the womb, and it protected the ocean as much as it protected them. Wajinru were deeply attuned to electrical forces, and when their energy was unbridled, they could stir up the sea into rageful storms. It had happened before.

Typically, Yetu was the last to enter the womb. There’d be a processional, and then she’d swim in, finally resting at the center of the sphere.

They were still building. When all of them worked together, it took three days, with no sleep or rest. The meal Yetu had awakened to them eating would be their last. They had to fast before the Remembrance so as not to vomit when the ceremony was taking place and to ensure their minds and bodies were weakened by starvation. That made them more receptive to bending. A historian needed her people’s minds malleable to impart the History.

For her part, Yetu feasted, her only companions Amaba and Nnenyo, who alternated shifts every few hours. Nnenyo was off now to gather more food for Yetu and to check on the progress of the mud womb.

Amaba waited silently nearby as Yetu ate. She was still trying to build her resources. Get her fat up. If she slipped away into her mind during the Remembrance, her people would suffer, experiencing the rememberings without her guidance or insight.

Worse, the Remembrance might subsume her. Reliving that much of the History at once—it might kill her in the state she was in. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it already had, that it had been poisoning her for the two decades she’d been the historian.

“Stop fidgeting over there, Amaba. I can feel you,” said Yetu. “Why are you so anxious?”

“There hasn’t been a day without anxiousness since you took on the History,” Amaba said.

“It is different now. More. Tell me, what troubles you? Is it me? Come closer so we might speak proper,” Yetu said, surprised by her own request. Closer meant she’d feel the ripples of Amaba speaking more forcefully, but it had been so long since they’d properly talked. She wanted to know what was on Amaba’s mind and tell her what was on her own. She wanted to be like other amaba-child pairs, with a relationship unstrained by the duty the rememberings brought. It was never to be, but they could share a moment, at least.

“You have enough troubles of your own. You have the troubles of our whole people. I won’t bother you with it. Now quiet. Focus on food and rest. The womb will be ready before you know it, and when it’s done, you need to be here. Here, Yetu. You hear me? Here.”

Yetu focused on the comb still clutched in her fin. She would ask that it be sewn up inside her in death. It was one of the few tangible things she’d touched of the past, a reminder that the History was not an imagining, not just stored electrical pulses. They were people who’d lived. Who’d breathed and wept and loved and lost.

“You are enamored with that thing,” said Amaba, gesturing to the comb, her curiosity plain. Yetu hadn’t let go of it since Nnenyo gifted it to her two days ago.

“It is special.”

“Your remembering told you what it was, then?” Amaba asked.

Yetu stared out at the working wajinru ahead of her. They were a half mile away, and Yetu could just make out the rumblings of their actions pulsating through the water.

“Yetu? Are you here?” Amaba asked.

“I’m here.”

The condemnatory shake of Amaba’s head pressed familiarly across Yetu’s scales, the burn dulled by its predictability.

“I don’t like it when you suddenly stop answering. It scares me,” said her amaba.

“You mean annoys you,” Yetu said. “Not everything is about the rememberings, Amaba. I’m not a child. Sometimes it takes me a moment to gather my thoughts. Or sometimes I just have no desire to honor your questions with a response.”

Yetu felt taken by the same indignation that had often overwhelmed her as a child, inflamed by the slightest of slights. Yetu appreciated Amaba’s caring nature, but sometimes her gentle chiding turned into chafing, and Yetu was reminded of all that was wrong between them. Yetu would never be the easy child, nor Amaba the mother to give space. What hopes Yetu had for a connection beyond caretaker and caretaken were squashed. Would she always be just the historian, over time supplanted by the voices of