[FULL KELS SERIES] When Ande wakes up on the bottom of the ocean with a fish's tail, she's not sure what she did wrong. Getting sacrificed by her island is a likely bet, but why---and why her---is a mystery.
Out of her depth in an unfamiliar world...
Ten generations, plus two more since the sunrise days ended. My people have always sacrificed First Rule breakers, and Andalua has always taken them. Somewhere in that timeframe, a great catastrophe rocked the ocean, wiping out the old order of Kels and making way for the new ones, stolen down from the land. I wrack my brain for a Telu story matching that, but I'm drawing a blank. We've weathered storms and eruptions, even fights between and within villages on the islands, but none of our stories hint at a greater event happening beneath the waves.
Are the things going wrong now all connected, or are they just coincidental? If they're connected, are the demigods just victims, or are they playing a role? The fact that one showed up—singing—in the new-Kel origin story feels like a clue, but to what, I don't know. I want to know what happened when the eel Kels died. I want to know more about all of this. I can't shake the feeling that it's all tied up with the reason I woke up with a fish's tail, with or without a sacrifice.
I want to stop any more of my people from ending up in the sea.
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The two tribes swim to the surface together that night. I only half pay attention to the Kels around me, taking care to make it look like I still can't understand their conversations. It seems to work, though I don't know why: I don't know anymore if the Kel goma who called Taiki my friend was speaking in my accent or her own, so my cover is probably already blown. But nobody tries to talk to me. Maybe Taiki has convinced them all that I still have a hard time following their quick signs. If he has, I owe him a thanks. I need time to think.
Taiki, meanwhile, has disappeared again. I don't know if we left him in the deep, or if he slipped away sometime during our ascent, but nobody seems to have noticed. If they have, they're not concerned. They don't strike me as the type to simply not care if a member of theirs goes missing, so I'm starting to get the sense that he does this a lot.
I'm still mulling over timelines as we approach the surface, which is why it takes me a while to realize we've slowed early. I drag my attention back to the present. We're still deep enough that the half-moon is a pale thumbprint too far overhead to even have an outline. In its light, the water is sparkling. I am now very much mentally present. I slowly lift one hand. Fine, mirror-like chips litter the water around us, drifting downwards as our collective wake settles. I try to catch one, but it dances through my fingers. It's not alive. I chase and finally catch it. In the safety of the tribes' center, I light one hand just enough to see what it is.
It's a fish scale. A tiny one, shiny enough to belong to my Risi. It's fresh.
I release the scale and look around in growing disquiet as I realize what this means. There are no silhouettes of fish against the surface, and there are far too many scales to have simply been shed. Something was just here, and it wiped out a full shoal.
A Kel taps my arm. Those at the bottom of our group are sinking, letting themselves drift down the water column without the telltale motion of a fin-beat. I adjust my buoyancy and follow. Squid and fish Risi hover in place, confused by the sudden change of direction. The songs that guide them have stopped, leaving the water utterly still. I silently beg them to follow us, but their instincts take over and draw them to the surface instead. Their countershading soon erases them against the moon's light.
