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

(8) Dancing Lights

I'm off the rock before I can blink. I asked for fish, not whatever-this-is, bright in the darkness. I try to disturb the water as little as possible as I swim across the wall. In a worst-case scenario, I bolt back to the surface. But what if it can follow me? What if it's faster than I am? The lights in the distance flash again, closer already. I'm scrambling now, panting in fear. I find a fissure in the rock, too small for me to wedge myself into. Silt billows into my eyes as I try anyway. Am I leaving a trail? The water moves so slowly down here, my silt clouds will take forever to settle. I push off from the wall. I'll have to take shelter in the open water.

I'll be silhouetted from below.

Changing directions yet again, I dive until I'm level with the lights and some ways out in the deep, empty water. Here, I am both vulnerable and safe. There is nothing to hide behind, but I've got escape routes in every direction. I adjust to a motionless hover and try to calm my breathing, just in case the currents from that can travel.

The lights have split. A dozen twinkle faintly in the distance, blue against black. A smaller cluster approaches. I struggle to make out what they are. They move in unpredictable bursts, sometimes slow and steady, sometimes surging ahead. There seem to be several larger, fainter creatures in the cluster, with a number of smaller, brighter ones. Then they break up as they near the spot I left the wall, and I start to doubt that judgment.

Each larger blob seems paired with two bright lights, which dance some ways off in front of it. And the blobs themselves are not solid. They're stitched together from a thousand tiny pinpricks of light that somehow hold a shape in the darkness. Like someone tore down a piece of the night sky and stuffed it like a pillow. Each is somewhat shorter than my tail, plump in a streamlined kind of way, and tapered at the tail end. Are they Luasa tails and hand-lights? The stars on the blobs are darker than the ones on my tail, but they're the same shade of blue. The dancing flashes, meanwhile, might as well have been mine.

All the shapes slow as they near the spot where they last saw me. One set of dancing lights brightens, and I swallow hard. They are Luasa. And they look nothing like me.

The light falls blue across the face of a woman with pale skin, narrow eyes, and short black hair without a curl in it. The dancing lights are on the backs of her hands just like mine, which means the blob is indeed her tail. It doesn't seem to move as she does; I can't tell how she's propelling herself. She flicks her hands across her chest and shoulders in motions eerily similar to Telu's hand-language. Another set of lights replies. The woman approaches my perch. I left eel slime on the rocks. The woman's hands dance again. Then her and all the other Luasa's lights go out.

I hang in the water in the grip of hot tingles of fear, fingernails digging into my arms. I hardly dare to breathe. I'll be fine. They'll search the rock wall, find my trail but not me, and eventually give up and go back to their friends. I risk a glance to confirm that the other lights haven't moved. I find no other lights. They've all gone out. They're somewhere in the water in my broad vicinity, and now I have no clue where.

I blink as blue spots swim in my vision. A squid the length of my palm appears in front of my face and flares its tiny arms. Beyond two bright lights on its longest tentacle-tips, it appears to be made of stars, too. It jets around my head. Then lights blaze on again, and I'm face to face with a Luasa. I scream. He clamps a hand over my mouth. I shove it off, lurch back, and we both freeze, my dagger extended between us. I point it at his stomach and flash my hand-lights as brightly as I can to show it.

He's a squid Luasa. Fluttering on either side of that starry tail are triangular fins, almost see-through in the light, rippling like flags to keep him up in the water. He looks younger than I am. Round face, tousled hair... he has the same smiling eyes as the woman, but right now they're as shocked as the rest of his expression. He's unarmed, but that's not to say he's not poisonous. I twitch the dagger at him. He moves back.