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

(36) Taiki: The Seers

"It's asking what you are," signs Ande.

Sar swallows hard and nods. They remain braced against the rock, ready to flee, as the light dissipates from the spiral shape, tries the shell, and tries the Shalda snake-eel. By now, my curiosity has reared its head. The light takes on a blob-like shape that none of us recognize, then mimics sunbeams slanting down into open water. Sar touches it. They pull their hand close and hold their breath as the light spreads over their body, and only relax when it shatters.

The light flows back over the edge of the canyon and vanishes. We wait for several hundred heartbeats, then startle violently as a ribbon of sparkles slithers up from below. It brightens and expands across the space in front of us. For a moment, it's a shapeless cloud, then a complicated swirling, then a condensed, tubular shape. This refines itself into a squid. A Shalda squid type—one I like a lot. Its migrations are useful for navigation.

Touching the illusions seems to be the way to communicate with them, so I swim forward and touch the squid. Instead of dissipating, it spreads its tentacles in the kind of general greeting-or-intimidation motion my tribe's Risi do when you bring your face too close. It jets towards the edge of the canyon and pauses there. I follow. When I'm close, it jets again, and the cycle repeats. On the third jet, though, it heads downward. I stop and shake my head, though I'm not sure this thing can see. We can't follow it down the canyon.

The squid flares its tentacles a final time. When I still don't follow, it shatters, and the light-sparkle-current slithers away into the darkness again. It's been at least a thousand heartbeats when something moves at the canyon's edge. Ande's hand goes to her dagger, and Sar drops so smoothly to a fighting stance, I scarcely see them move. A Kel with skin as ghastly pale as silt rises into view. I know immediately that this is someone from the deepest part of the ocean. The Kel has no hair. It has no eyes, and I can't see a nose or more than a folded wrinkle for ears. Instead, it's draped from head to tail in thin, translucent white skin that ripples as it moves, like even its body is mostly water. Its tail is a broad, flattened ribbon thinner at the edges than down the middle, and all covered with the same loose skin. It looks fragile enough to tear with the slightest scratch.

The tingle of something mythical spreads over every part of me. I'm face to face with one of the Seers.

I don't know how to respond. The Seer moves as slowly as any creature down here. Its tail ripples like an eel's but provides far less propulsion. It rises to our level with a bit of an effort, then laboriously lifts its hands and opens its mouth. Nothing comes out.

The lack of sound doesn't seem to stop the "song." The light we saw before starts to gather in and around the Seer's hands. The Seer floats with its mouth open, tail waving slowly, until enough light has gathered to make any of the shapes we saw earlier. Then it flicks its hands. The light flows towards us—towards Ande—and begins to take a shape. Ande's eyes fly wide even before the details have refined themselves.

It's an island. Like many on the island chain, it centers around a conical mountain, and I recognize the round base with its round bay even though I've never seen it from above. Ande's face twitches like she's holding back from crying. She touches it. The image shatters. The light moves to Sar. It begins to take shape, and a haunted look flashes over their face immediately. They touch the image before I can tell what it is. The Seer shifts ever so slightly. If it had eyes, I imagine it would be looking at Sar, who tucks their hand against their chest and retreats again.

I'm distracted from those thoughts as the light comes to me. The Seer has already confirmed I'm Shalda, but the light seems conflicted. It swirls, almost taking shapes, then discarding them before they're clear enough for me to tell what they are. I've almost gotten nervous when the light does something new: it splits into three. Two of the pieces hover while the third begins to condense. It takes the shape of one of my tribe's Risi. I touch it, and its little tentacles tap my hand before it draws back. But it doesn't shatter.

The second of the three lights begins to condense. My assuredness begins to falter as it takes shape. It's a light-name. When the final details resolve themselves, pain punches me in the throat. It's the light-name of the first goma in my first tribe who took me under her fin and taught me how to interact with people. How to understand what their emotions and expressions and habits all meant. I owe her for so much of what I have now.

"You should touch it," Ande signs quietly.

My hand jumps. I'd nearly forgotten to acknowledge the image. It brightens momentarily, then draws back like the squid. Now the third and final patch of light begins to swirl. When it takes shape, my blood runs cold. It's not a light-name. It's nothing from the Shalda-sana at all.

The third and final light takes the shape of the island I spent more than a year around when I lived with the Karu. It's a perfect image, complete with the way the sunlight sparkled over the shallows through the distinctively curved waves in the lagoon. This was the island where I befriended a Karu child while I was out looking for something. Probably my dead tribe. I wasn't mentally present enough to think of danger when I asked if I could talk to the rest of her people. She didn't know my language. Instead, we improvised. She drew pictures. I signed equivalents, and we found that she knew a bit of hand-language of another kind, with a few overlaps with mine. There are always overlaps. Signs that are literal enough to be similar across all the hand-languages, no matter where they're from.

She eventually grabbed my hand and pulled me back to her village, where she introduced me to someone who knew more of my language. I asked him about whatever I was searching for, too. The village must have all taken pity on me, because they didn't kick me out. I later learned that I wasn't the first of my kind to be here. The island was located along a common migration route that experienced heavy storms, and the Karu-Kels often helped Shalda who got separated from their tribes and washed up there.

This is Lix'i, the island where I met the young man who realized I didn't have the body I wanted, and taught me the song that would give it to me. I stayed for long enough to learn it—more than a year—and then longer, leaving only to tell my tribe whatever other lie I used to cover for myself. Lix'i already felt like a second home. In some ways, more of one than the second tribe I'd found.

The Lix'i Karu felt the same. In Shalda tribes, everyone is a parent to all of the children, so who had which child hardly matters. The Karu took that in a different direction. They had identifiable parents, but a broader sense of who belonged in the village at all. I learned their language, and from that moment onward, I wasn't a stranger anymore. I was one of them.

The Seer is identifying me as part Karu. As not fully Shalda. And I can't even tell them they're wrong.