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

(34) A Smile Like Sunshine

This does not bode well. I follow wordlessly as the Sandsinger leader takes me back through the entrance chasm and across the gap to the larger stone hill. We circle its flanks until Makeba pulls up at a half-cave bitten from the rock. I linger outside. The pillars that make up this formation break off to form the alcove floor and ceiling, and there's nothing to tell me the ceiling ones won't mortar-and-pestle me if they come down like the many broken pillars that litter the top of the fortress.

Makaba points to the cave wall opposite her. I come in and press myself against it. The next moment, I'm pinned to the stone with the iron bar of Makeba's forearm across my throat.

Her signs' eddies brush my face. "I've got questions for you. Are you going to cooperate?"

It takes me several petrifying heartbeats to gulp enough water to confirm that I'm neither dead nor being strangled, though I'm not going anywhere. My hand fumbles for my dagger. An icy chill engulfs me when I find an empty sheath.

"I had Keshko take it off you," signs Makeba, her stony expression unmoved. "Looks like I made a good call."

The shark teenager. I should have known they were dangerous.

Makeba changes the topic. "I see you've teamed up with the drifter."

She's left my hands free to sign, like she's not at all concerned that I could hurt her with them. "Taiki?"

Her eyebrows hike up. "Told you his name, did he?"

"Is that so special?"

"You don't strike me as the type who deserves to know it."

I bristle at the slight, even in my precarious position. "There's something wrong with him anyway. You can take it up with him, then, if you think he's made a poor judgement call."

"That's not what we do here. Especially not with him. Have you been threatening him?"

"So what if I have?"

"Then you had better start talking before I throw you into Karu territory with a rock tied to your tail."

Rashi help me, she's dead serious. My heartbeat multiplies from a single drum to an entire drumming circle, hammering against my lungs. "You can't kill me." I lift my chin with all the haughtiness I can muster when she's a hand's length taller than I am and threatening my death. "I'm the Singer."

"There is no Singer."

The hits me like a punch in the stomach, but I can talk fast when I'm scared. "And a sun-dancer."

"Then I've got news for you." Her face is cold. "So was I."

That slaps all my comebacks out of the water. I stare at her blankly. "What?"

"Have you ever heard of Fotaloa?"

That's an island. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's the next one in the chain after Tanalogochi: a splash of land less lush than Telu, but several times larger. My village has relatives there, unvisited since the last time someone made it across in a boat.

"You're Fotaloa's sun-dancer?" I sign.

"Was. There are no people left on that island."

Being told as much by a fellow islander manages to carve an even bigger hole in my chest where I thought the prophecy was already done carving. "But... a sun-dancer." I'm searching for distraction—for her, or for me. "Does that mean you're Rashi-blessed?"

"I am."

"But you sing."

She shrugs. "Listen to the water. You can learn."