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

(7) Taiki: Satomi

It takes a while to actually find a part of the den-tower where we're unlikely to be intercepted. Which is really just a place where we can see people eavesdropping before they see us, letting me keep any conversation here private. That's one thing I had to get used to in my short time in the tunnels of Underfarrow and Roshaska. In the open deep, it's both hard and easy to find privacy—hard in that there's nowhere to actually hide, but easy in that you can disappear if you just turn off your lights. Here, getting away from people is a lot more complicated.

Satomi plants herself in front of me again with her arms crossed the moment we pull up inside the little side-den I find. Before she can fire off her newest questions, though, I have one for her.

"Before we left," I sign, with a covert look over my shoulder towards the door, "a singing fish came to find us. To find Ande in particular, I think. Did anything ever happen with that?"

"And you're sure she's not the Singer?" signs Satomi.

"We're sure."

"The fish left," signs Naina, and shrugs. "I wanted to get a better look at it, but it just kind of disappeared after you two left. I could feel it for a little while, but it never came back again."

That means it probably lingered until we actually left, then took off on its own. So it really was following Ande. Or more likely Ande's dagger, if my suspicion about singing shoals is true. It would make sense that a deity as powerful as Andalua would be drawn to a piece of herself that she left behind on an island she attacked. The very thought of that attacking makes she shudder all over again.

"So," signs Satomi, and I can't stop my shoulders from slumping a little. She's not going to let me out of this without a more complete explanation. "If Ande's off making alliances, why are you here?"

"I already said, I'm helping that from another side."

"That's not what I mean. Why are you helping? What made you get involved?"

I don't know what she's getting at. Well, I do, but I don't want to make assumptions in the small off-chance that she's not talking about what I think she means.

I'm not so lucky. "You know what I mean," signs Satomi. "You used to hate them as much as any of us."

And with that, I can't keep from wincing. She means the Karu. She must, unless she's somehow intuited that there are other Kel peoples involved in this alliance, too, and I haven't let slip anything about that. Unless something in my body language gave it away.

But her question makes sense either way, because I have pretended to hate the Karu as much as anyone else in my tribe has. I mimicked my people after I returned from Lix'i, too scared to tell anyone where I'd been, and too scared to differ on such a point of strong opinion when I'd just spent years away and wasn't sure how I'd reintegrate. I spent the first year of that reintegration terrified that I'd slip one day and speak in Eni-Karu, or otherwise reveal that I'd made friends with—and joined—another Kel people in the meantime.

I'm in that position all over again now. I didn't think it would happen like this. I thought I'd be forced to tell the whole tribe together, and have them put me on trial like there's an unspoken promise to if anyone ever hurts each other or the kids. Yet for all the respect I have for Satomi, she's not the one I want to tell first. Maybe that's cowardly of me. I'm certainly scared. But I can't bring myself to tell the truth, so I settle for the next-best thing and sign, "I met someone who... managed to convince me. That we're all up against something bigger, and we need to stick together."

And stop killing each other, goes unsaid. The person was Sar. It was many people, really: Sar and Yaz and Casin and Finika, not to mention ever passing interaction I've had with other Kels my people hate, who noticeably fail to try and kill me. I've gotten used to being around them, I guess. So much so that it's a little scary to be back here, hiding what's become normal for me, not entirely trusting myself not to slip. Even thinking that, I realize I'll have to be careful not to drop names. That's something I didn't even think about. It'd be so easy to drop names.