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

(21) Sar: Collaboration

"Come," signs Yaz, and herds me towards the tail end of the caves.

I've already checked those rooms. "I need to read."

"You need a break. You've been going for at least four hand-lengths already."

That's half a morning. I didn't realize it had been so long. Still—"Just one more hand-length."

"I wasn't asking."

I bite my tongue to keep from snapping the way I know I tend to when my relief and resistance cross paths. Yaz uses my silence to elaborate, "Taiki may be officially in charge here, but Ruka tasked me with looking after you. It's both a safety and effectiveness risk if you wear yourself out. Come. The others found food."

I wasn't even aware that people were foraging. I don't know what they could have found; the city is empty of living creatures, both Kels and Nekta, though I did see rough patches in the inside that could have been mussels. I wasn't paying much attention.

I don't think I'm going to win here, and I don't want to fight with Yaz. I pull back from the wall and follow her through the caves without further protest. The others are gathered in the biggest one. Here, the combined lights of Ande, Taiki, and Yaz are enough to reach the ceiling, and the place feels both cozier and emptier for the illumination. Cozier because the warm colors of the shell mosaics reflect back from all around now, and the cement between them is a pale grey that looks nice in the light. Emptier because the light only highlights the writing all around. It's so close to the feel of being home in Rapal, except that I can't read it. And that alone is enough to break the comfort I feel in this room.

The others did find mussels. Ande and Casin went foraging. They brought back enough food for all of us, but Casin eats with her spear beside her and a gaze that's almost impossible to break from the the entrance to these caves. Even when people talk to her, she barely glances over.

"What did you find?" I ask her, because if I'm not allowed to keep reading, the least I can do is check in.

Casin lifts the mussel shell she's holding. "Cultivation patches."

Cultivation. There shouldn't be people here. "How old?"

"Upkept. I saw at least one seeding-area. We grabbed from a single patch and got out again. I didn't see anyone."

I spin around. "Taiki? Did you know about anyone staying in the city?"

He shakes his head. He's wearing the same grim look as Casin, and by the pile of scratched mussel shells beside him, he's been checking their age and species. "My people have never met anyone here," he signs, "and nobody else we know has, either. These are old, though." He pats the shells. "I grabbed the biggest one I could find, and whoever seeded them has been here for at least one seeding-round. Which means they've been hiding on purpose."

Taking shelter in the city. "Were there any other signs of habitation?"

He shakes his head.

Mussel cultivation works cyclically, with adults taken when they reach a certain size, then replaced. There's no way to gauge how long the cultivation has been going on past the length of a single cycle—at least to my knowledge. But I'm also not as familiar with truly deep-sea techniques.

"How long is the seeding-cycle?" I sign.

"The maturation time down here is slower... the oldest of these would be five years, I think? The ring growth patterns say about that, and some of them are marked." He passes me a shell. "But I also looked at the wall on a seeded patch, and compared to the area around, it's eroded. So there was another round before this. Probably more than one; some of the patches were rougher than others. I'd guess at least ten years. Maybe even fifteen."