Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(29) Ande: The Dagger

My dagger.

I don't know why I didn't think of it the moment Sar said this looked like every wrecked Karu village they've ever investigated, or the moment I saw those tracks through the ruin. Tracks like someone rolled a boulder through the walls and dens, leaving shattered stone behind. I've seen this before. In that ruined Karu village. I still vividly remember asking myself what in the ocean had enough power to shatter coral so big and thick, it must have been around for hundreds of generations.

I found my dagger there, embedded in that reef. I didn't think much about it then or since, but in all my time among the Kels, I've never seen another like it. And when Makeba saw it for the first time, she said the same. I assumed it was some creative weapon-maker's doing, but now I'm not so sure.

I turn the dagger over in my hands. Its sides are bone-white and so smooth, someone would have to have scrubbed them for days just to get that polish. The knobbed pommel of its handle is rough to the touch, heavy, and a soft shade of grey. And the whole thing is harder than any bone I've ever seen. Even when Makeba or I have sunk it into stone or coral-rock, it's never gotten a scratch on its sides, or a chip off its lethally pointed tip.

Sar is still combing over the same destruction trails I've been watching. They look up when I approach, and their gaze flicks immediately to the weapon in my hand.

"I said I'd found a ruined Karu village," I sign. "I didn't know it was weird back then, but I found this there."

They've seen it before, but the way their whole body tenses tells me this time is different. Water shifts behind me as Taiki arrives. Of course he wouldn't stay away if I'm showing my weapon to Sar. He trusts them too little for that.

"You found that in the ruined village, didn't you?" he signs, either guessing what I'm onto, or else proving he's been eavesdropping. When I nod, he adds, "I assumed it was a sea-goddess tail's spine."

"It's not," signs Sar. I duck around Taiki and offer them the weapon. They take it like it will bite them at any moment.

Taiki stiffens in my peripheral vision. "How do you know?"

"Because they never leave the Shalda-sana."

"Then what else would it be?"

Sar twirls the weapon around into a mimicry of a sea-goddess tail's back-spine. I spot the other problem with Taiki's assumption immediately. We've ridden sea-goddess tails, holding onto those spines, but this one is far thinner. It could be from a juvenile, but then it's too long. Sar spins the dagger again, this time into the position I usually hold it in. Seeing it point-down in someone else's hand triggers a very different kind of shape recognition. I fall back involuntarily. Sar lowers the dagger again, inspecting it. I wait for them to name what they clearly just showed us. They don't.

"A tooth," I sign.

Taiki gives me a look like I just slapped him. "From what?"

"Isn't that exactly what we're trying to answer?" Sar looks up. "Something big enough to do this to a Karu village or an eel-Kel ruin. Something big enough to eat Kels or drag jellyfish down from the shallow water. Tell me that doesn't match what we're looking for."

"No sea-goddess tail has teeth that big. And no demigod has teeth that shape at all."

Sar says nothing for so long, I wonder if they saw that last part. From the way their fingers curl around the dagger, though, I suspect they might share the same thoughts as me. There's something else in my people's stories that causes destruction in the ocean. We feared her so much, we wouldn't even set foot in the water. The Kels' stories paint her as benevolent, but the more of those stories I've learned, the more I've confirmed that we weren't far off on a lot of things.