The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,8

no warmth left in her even for Nnenyo. Everything tense, she just wanted this whole thing to be over. Fine. Let the Remembrance begin right here, right now, for all she cared, womb or no womb.

“Breathe,” said Amaba. “Breathe.”

“It hurts,” Yetu said, ashamed of the vulnerability. She wanted to flee and be in her discomfort alone, like she’d been this past year. In front of Amaba and Nnenyo, it wasn’t so bad, but the whole of the wajinru people would see her in this state. “I’d hoped to be stronger by this point,” she said. She wanted there to be more of her, to be steady on her feet, or else the Remembrance would steal what remained of her.

“They don’t care if you are strong. Only that you remember,” said Amaba. “Do you remember?”

A flurry of tiny bubbles left Yetu’s mouth as she sighed. “I do.”

“Good,” said Amaba. “That is all we ask.”

3

WAJINRU FLAPPED THEIR TAIL FINS against the water on Yetu’s command, a steady, pulsating thrum in meter with her beating heart. The pitch of it was deep, so deep. Yetu let the massive waves of their movement consume her. She submerged herself in their energy. All her nerves left her, now that the Remembrance was beginning. The History was her power, and it ignited her. She could do this. She would do this. She would be their savior.

“Remember,” Yetu ordered, voice filling the womb.

Yetu gave them a script, but they knew the words. It lived in their cartilage and their organs, as coded into them as the shape of the webbed appendages on their front fins or the bulbousness of their eyes. She only need remind them. That was all remembering was. Prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting was not the same as healing.

“Our mothers were pregnant two-legs thrown overboard while crossing the ocean on slave ships. We were born breathing water as we did in the womb. We built our home on the seafloor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers,” she said. In general, Yetu didn’t tell the Remembrance. She made her people experience it as it happened in the minds of various wajinru who lived it. At the start, however, she preferred to give them some guidance. It made the transition of memories much more efficient when they had context—context Yetu had never had. She’d discovered the History on her own, through out-of-order scraps and pieces. Slivers slicing through her.

Yetu twisted and tensed as pain overwhelmed her. That was something she should be over by now, after all this time, the physicality of it. But she felt her whole body go rigid and then snap. Her body was full of other bodies. Every wajinru who had ever lived possessed her in this moment. They gnashed, they clawed, desperate to speak. Yetu channeled their memories, sore and shaking as she brought them to the surface. The shock of it nearly knocked her unconscious. She had once imagined channeling as a sweet, beautiful flow of energy, the past running gently through her. It was more like slitting an opening in herself so they could get out.

Oh, was this pain real? It didn’t even belong to her. Was there anything about her that wasn’t a performance for others’ gratification?

As Yetu’s body moved with the pain, her subjects moved too. They didn’t quite copy her. That would imply they could see anything but the black of the deep of the sea. They felt her and knew what to do. For once, all were in unison.

To see if the wajinru were ready to move on to the next stage, Yetu tuned in to individuals. Her amaba, Nnenyo, children she’d met over the years, her worshippers. Even with the rush of movement of their in-sync bodies, she could feel unique flourishes in each person. They each had a signature.

She couldn’t determine which was worse: the pain of the ancestors or the pain of the living. Both fed off her. The Remembrance had officially begun, but she hadn’t gotten to the actual remembering part. This was the preparation. Stretching their bodies so they could be open to the truth.

She was weak—couldn’t handle the pain, and she wept to think about what was coming.

“Remember,” Yetu said again, her voice quiet, sharp, deep, insistent, forcing them to know what she knew. “Remember how deep we go.”

Their bodies became still but for the gentle flutter of fins to stay afloat, their scaled skin perked