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

(17) Taiki: To the Stone Forest

Our meeting with Ande and the other Underfarrow Kels doesn't last long. Ruka and Neem part ways with weak smiles, and Keshko has one last huddle with Ruka before saying goodbye and taking off to return to Underfarrow alone. Neem leads the way back to Roshaska. I'm not sure how he's navigating the featureless ocean plain, but for once, I don't have the energy to ask. The realization that I'm about to leave to talk to Makeba is setting in, and it's bringing a not-small amount of anxiety with it.

Luli is waiting for me where she promised to be, at the edge of Roshaska. I see her dimmed lights before she sees mine; she's pacing back and forth along the edge of the city, pausing occasionally like I do when I'm scanning the water for danger. I have to stop for a moment when I spot her. Roshaska already feels huge when my people are crossing it on the current-roads, but I'm halfway over the ruin already, and Luli's lights are still so far ahead, they're barely a sparkle in the water. It's one thing to know this place as a ruin alone, but I have a different perspective now. If just a fraction of this city can hold all of Follow the Moon and the tribes and villages now staying with them, how many Kels could the whole thing shelter?

Sar said the former population was somewhere around three thousand.

Just how many is three thousand Kels?

I float there in the water for a while, trying to imagine the decimated dens of Roshaska back into wholeness, then swimming with Kels. Eel Kels, at first, then others. Maybe others I helped bring here. Restoring all of Roshaska with the number of people staying here right now is impossible—it would fall apart as fast as they could rebuild anything—but how much work could even a thousand Kels do? I let the image linger for a moment longer, then dispel it with a shake of my head. It's nice to see mosaics and deep-sea coral decorating the inhabited parts of Roshaska, but I still agree with my people. This place saw so many deaths when it was decimated, and countless more since. People from my own tribe have died here. The most respectful thing we can do for this grave site is to leave it as it stands.

Something sparkles just inside the reach of my lights when I look down. A den beneath me also had mosaics, once upon a time. Their shells are scattered now, less than half still clinging to the crumbling, blackened mortar. The currents have not spared these like they have the ones inside. I'm reminded of the city's core, its walls a different but equal kind of gorgeous as a coral reef in shallow water. I wonder if the people living here have known Roshaska long enough to recognize and replicate the patterns of its decorated walls. Also if it still counts as disrespectful to make a grave site beautiful again.

I can't contemplate that for long before the thoughts of Makeba return again. With a sigh, I swim out to meet Luli, who's still pacing. She must be as nervous as me. She greets me with a tight smile and then signs, "I'll follow your lead," with a gesture towards the canyon Roshaska sits at the bottom of.

"You don't know your way around?"

"I've never been here before. We don't come near if we can help it."

"Why?" I sign as I take the lead and make for the canyon wall, just for good measure. I don't know if Gutu is still anywhere nearby.

"Our gomas generally take it as a bad idea to hang out somewhere that's clearly been massacred before. I'm inclined to agree."

"Do you know what happened to it?"

"Only a little. The Karu have stories."

I'm guessing she means the Karu tribe her people have melded with, though they might have spoken to any number of others, as far as I know. The stories could have come from anywhere.

That keeps us talking all the way up the canyon and most of the way to the island chain. I hate bedding down on the exposed silt, so I sound the water until I find an outcrop up ahead, large enough to shelter us. I told goma Bibi it's a three-day journey to the Sandsingers, but that's counting the time it takes to get through the stone forest itself. The island whose roots we meet by the following evening is the island of the yellow fish. It makes me wonder now whether the Sandsingers have ever paid a visit to Roshaska, or just intercepted mid-water Shalda tribes to leave island villages with them as they swam by. This kind of proximity would certainly make it easy for them to send any of those villages down to Roshaska instead.