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

(7) Taiki: The Gods' Teeth

I was not prepared to be back here again.

As the first seamount looms towards us in the darkened water, my irrational compulsion is to swim towards the top of it. Towards the Karu side. But Sar dives. We drop to what's technically the Shalda-sana, only I'm not so sure of that distinction anymore. Knowing Sar has made me realize I don't actually know where the boundary of Shalda and Sami territory is. I always assumed it was the temperature inversion, but my people don't consider ourselves safe until some ways below that. That break from warm to cold water still lies within the Sami-sana.

But even those thoughts are a distraction, as we bottom out between the seamounts and begin to weave between them with nothing but Sar's directional sense as a guide. I don't know these rocks, but their shape and size and arrangement is hauntingly familiar. It's the same all over the archipelago, or at least the parts I know. We're safe down here, by a certain definition. Most coral-Karu can't dive. Many can't even cross the open water between the seamounts here, living out their lives on the one they grew up on, or a couple in close proximity.

Even when the Sami or Saru dare to enter here, or farther-swimming Karu cross between the atolls, they don't dive. Diving means giving up territory on the surface. In some places, it means cowardice; in others, it's a death wish. Many Karu don't actually know what lives deeper down, and they're afraid as a result. It's a cruel irony that many island-chain Karu are the same, but they still kill the islanders. In many ways, those islanders are more like them than like us.

Is this relative safety how I ended up here in the first place, as a child? Would I have even noticed that no surface Kels dive here? Would I have known they fought here at all?

Those memories are gone now. In their place is a slowly swelling tide of other ones, almost as deeply buried, shaking off whatever thick layer of sea-bottom mud I tried to use to bury them. I still came down here as a child, even when I lived on Lix'i. Sometimes it was on a dare, or out of curiosity. Sometimes it was when I needed to feel safe. Sometimes it was just to remind myself how deeper water felt, when the surface became too overwhelming.

But those surface memories... those are the ones that roll over me like reef-waves now. The darkness around me swims with sunshine and sparkling waves and warm water, thick with salt and algae and all the flavors of a coral reef. So many fish. So many shades and patterns, and some colors even I could see. The cacophony of reef life, where even the Nekta communicate by sound. Where there's so much motion, it's easier to shout over the gushing waves than to try and sign anything. The water just tosses you around.

Me and the other children would ride those waves. On windy days, we'd line up just inside the outer wall of Lixi's windward reef, hold onto the coral-stone, and shriek as waves billowed overhead. If anyone lost their grip, they'd be sucked and tumbled into the lagoon, then forced to struggle back, dizzy and disoriented, to do it all over again.

We never went hungry; food was everywhere. Even the shoals tended by the adult Karu-Kels required little maintenance, and the seaweed beds were likewise self-maintaining. Us kids were sometimes sent to pick off pests: urchins and snails, most of which were edible. "Go pick snacks," the adults would say, and we'd know the seaweed needed tending. Sometimes we'd sneak bites of the seaweed itself, too, and giggle when we got away with it. Thinking back now, it's more likely the adults just pretended not to notice, but we felt so clever at the time.

Then there was the reef itself, an endless fascination no matter how many times you looked at it. We could spend whole days among the corals, watching tiny eels and giant fish, shrimp and crabs, urchins, sea-turds, sea-stars, and anemones. Worms of every imaginable shape and size burrowed through the sand, leaving tunnels that small fish sometimes excavated to make their own burrows. Cuttlefish and octopi pretended to be rocks until we stumbled over them. I remember one particularly clever octopus that seemed to recognize the game and play along, tapping us with its tentacles and then never swimming far. Like it wanted us to find it. Sometimes we brought it food. Once, it did the same for us.