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

(3) Anywhere But Down

I reach the hill's other side out of breath, another thing I didn't know was possible underwater. I fell into a shoreline rock pool once, I think when I was nine. I was trying to find the dens of the Lashrita that goma Tashagi said haunted the island's shores and inland salt pools at night. I never found any mud demons, but I did find that water makes a poor substitute for air when it comes to breathing.

I got lucky that time. I found my way out of the pool and washed the salt from my hair in the river before anyone caught me down by the sea. I didn't venture close to the shore for years after that, in fear that the jealous Luasa would drag me in, or that Andalua would remember my trespass and smite me.

It occurs to me that I do have quite a fair list of First Rule trespasses to my name. I remember guiltily the first time I was dared to pick and taste the seaweed that grew in golden-brown cascades over the shoreline rocks. Everyone else was too scared to try, so I did it: snuck down, plucked a sprig and stuck it in my mouth without so much as an offering in return. At least I had the sense to check it for golden crabs first. That was the Second Rule: you did not eat anything that the shapeshifting Andalua could turn into. If it was her, she would not die, but your entire village would.

What we could eat had a price, still, and had to be traded for a blessing and an offering of something from the land. A ketcholo flower, usually, or a blade of grass twisted like the cross-fingered sign that meant current and wind and gods. I was born with my fourth and pinky fingers locked in that sign. My mother says she knew from the moment she saw me that I would be the next sun-dancer. The village gomas came to stand over my bed and clap when I slept, so that they had confirmed before my first birthday that just like Rashi himself, I lived in a soundless world. One in six in the village did. We—and many others—spoke to one another in my village's language of hands, which everyone knew, and many preferred for its beauty. I can see why. It's graceful and looping like the first steps of the first rain-dance I ever performed. The gomas said the monsoon came half a moon early that year.

I would dance for Rashi here, but it's harder to move in water than in air, and I don't know how Andalua will take it. My tail fidgets on its own like my feet remember doing. Do Luasa dance? Villagers back on Telu saw them from time to time: silver or brightly coloured flashes in the water. When that happened, we ran: up the shore, away from the river, far from anywhere their sharp nails and sharper teeth could reach us. I look down at my hands. My nails are not sharp, but my teeth certainly are. Sharp enough to rip a clam's meat from its shell. But I have no desire to eat humans.

If I hold my arms at just the right angle, I can make the reflective patches catch the water's colour. I tip them until it looks like I have holes through my hands. A dance with these would be beautiful. I can't tell if I feel like dancing right now, or if I just really want to be back on Telu where will never again be so short on good food and tolerable company.

I'm stalling again.

I turn my frustration on the world and kick a fat wave of silt towards the drop ahead of me. Unlike on the other side of this hill, it slows, churning clumsily over itself. Before it reaches the edge, the current turns it back the way it came. If Naina were here, I would send her off on this mission for me. She might even volunteer herself. My mood is already souring at the thought of swimming upriver all the way back to my island without someone to travel with. To top it all off, I'm hungry again. Swimming takes more energy than it deserves.

I scrounge in the mud again, then finally decide to start this journey. Not because I've run out of excuses—I could keep that up for days—but because the thought of having easy access to food again is rapidly working its way to the top of my priority list. I swim back to the drop-off, make a few choice signs into the deeper water, and push off.