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

(12) Ande: Writing-Stones

Vibi comes to find me shortly after I wake up to find Taiki gone, along with seemingly every other Kel in this pocket. Given that none of them woke me, I'm guessing it was something less than a full-camp emergency, though Taiki's absence is particularly puzzling. I saw him go to bed last night. I usually wake before him these days. I roll out of my hammock because it's been a long time since I had any fun in a hammock, and because there's something thrilling about setting my tail to full sink mode and them pitting muscle memory against my knowledge that there's no possible way for me to die from falling here, despite the fabulously high view I have of the cave.

I giggle to myself like a small child as I sink feather-light down the height of the cave. I re-float myself before I hit the floor. I kind of want to do that again, but I should probably figure out where everyone went first. Especially Taiki. We're not supposed to leave here until we get the go-ahead from Vibi or Finika, and Taiki's not the type to break rules. Least of all in a fort stuffed to the gills with Karu, Sami, and every Kel classification between and around and inside out of those two.

And so I sigh and set about exploring the branch tunnel leading off of this one. There is only one, besides the exit tunnel, and it leads to a handful of additional caves, some used, some not. The used ones have writing on the walls, and piles of seaweed scrolls and thin slices of stone that also prove covered in writing. I can only kind of read it, through the script is similar to my people's. Probably Sami, then. Islanders apparently learned theirs from washed-up Karu scrolls, and Ruka's told me before that island and Sami writing are mostly—though not entirely—mutually intelligible.

Then again, it also doesn't help that a majority of the documents seem to be written in code, or at least a shorthand that's more or less indecipherable to me. Or maybe I just can't read it. The vast number of words I've learned since I started living among the Kels may well be the jargon I'm seeing here—I just don't know how any of it looks written down.

That gives me a bit of a laugh, half in amazement, half in ruefulness. I was perfectly fluent in my people's writing back on Telu. I loved every part of it: the flowing letters, the shapes of words, the poetry they could make in shapes and lengths and rhythms when people drummed to them. The stories they could tell, recorded on any material from palm-leaf to stone. I knew the word—even several words—for every sign in my vocabulary. Finding now that my signed vocabulary has far outstripped my written one leaves a strange hole in my chest.

I poke over the diagrams and lists and maps and ledgers strewn about the writing-room, careful not to disturb anything. I find plenty of interest, but I'm not here for that, so I eventually sigh again and force myself to leave. The other caves are also empty of Kels. I test every crack and crevice I might fit through—none accommodate me—then wander back to the main room just as Vibi arrives.

I still blink when I see her. I've seen reef colours before. I grew up on an island surrounded by a coral lagoon, and we fished for half our food. I've seen the hues and patterns and elaborate decorations of reef fish in fish form, and I've seen them on Kels, too, but Vibi takes Karu colouration to a whole other level. Her tail is thicker than mine, but mostly top to bottom: it's compressed at the sides, and more muscular in general, making her faster than me even though she looks less streamlined. The bulk of that tail is a rich purple colour so vivid, it makes my eyes water a little. The yellow of her final tail-fin is no duller.

The only thing that rivals it is the yellow scales and electric blue spots of the Kel who opened the door into Underfarrow for us yesterday, though I guess the other Karu-Kel who came in last night and slept by the door is probably a good contender. Those stripes meant poison.

Vibi smiles when she sees me. And then she scribbles something on a tablet she's holding and lifts it to show to me. I cross the room to join her.

You're up, she wrote. I was hoping to find you.