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

(8) Ande: Blood in the Water

My insides spend the trip up the rock braiding themselves into cornrows, if not something tighter, more tangled, and altogether less organized. At the reef, a subtle exchange of hand-language from Keshko to Neem tells me there are Sami here. Not many, but not few either, sleeping among the corals. We give them a wide berth. The Sandsinger leaders read the currents to stay downstream of their enemies, and Keshko and Min risk themselves again and again, sneaking out alone into the lagoon or around the reef to find where the most Sami lie. I hold my breath each time, until at least Keshko returns unscathed.

We've hardly gone five arm-spans past the reef when we spot the first fires on the beach. Floating in the water then, watching those flickering red lights, a strange calm settles over me.

Some of these people will die tonight. Those that survive will never see their island again. In the span of a single night, three hundred and forty-five years of history will be lost. Homes and fish traps, dances, rituals, clothing, tools, spells. Burial grounds. Sacred spaces. Secret knowledge of every nook and corner of the spot of land they call home in the midst of a vast ocean both more and less empty than they can probably imagine.

They don't know we're here to take them away. That I am here, a fellow islander, closing the circle of time and place as I come back to sing another island down into the water I once tried so hard to leave. I find myself hoping their hand-language has not diverged too far from my own. That I might still be able to talk to them, guide them, explain that it's not a spell they can counter, and even less a dream. That one culture came at the loss of another, and that they will live out the rest of their lives standing between worlds, fleeing a war beneath the ocean, hoping their children will have a better life than they will.

It calms me. To know that I have kin above the waves here, and that for all the loss they will experience tonight, the water will be the first place they and I can meet like we never could on the islands.

And by the end of tonight, if I survive, I will know whether or not I am the Singer.

Another flick of a hand-sign breaks my reverie. My fear hits again like I've run face-first into Telu's cliffs, and my hand weakens around my dagger handle. I could die tonight. The Sandsingers around me wear the grim faces of people who know what's coming, but I don't share what they know. All I have are the snatches of memory that the Song brought back to me. I don't know what I'm doing here. But I have to succeed. I have to find whatever power draws mythical creatures to me even as it drives sharks and other dangers away. Somehow, I have to figure this out on my own.

A brush of warmth against my back comes the moment before Taiki appears beside me, clutching a heavy piece of dead coral. It's the only weapon he has. While I don't doubt he could do damage with it, I'd bet anything it won't be enough to face what we're up against. We need to stay close.

The Sandsingers stay together as Makeba leads the way across the lagoon. The open water feels terribly exposed. Taiki has stories of reef sharks and the Kels who share their tails swarming Karu reefs after the sun goes down. Turbulent currents and the thick smell of fish here hand the advantage to night-sighted hunters. I can tell the fish are all around us, but I haven't seen so much as a scale-glint. They're hiding.

The water over my head tugs at my hair before I realize how far we've swum. I drop closer to the sand of the coral-valley we're creeping along, but the waves' motions reach as deep here as they do on the open water. Sand stings my eyes. Someone touches my other arm. It's Ruka. I motion Taiki to a quiet halt, and all three of us lie flat. It's time. Now every moment that passes is excruciating. The waves and the sand don't hold their breaths, but I do. And then finally, finally, the first powerful vibration of the Song hits my tail.