I can see why Yaz never told me her island name before now.
Ande's departure shifts the whole dynamic in the little cave. When Sar takes off after her, Ruka rises almost immediately. One nod to Casin, and they slip away into the darkness after the pair. I'm left with Yaz and Finika, and El still watching the water outside. He meets Yaz's eye. Neither says anything, but El nods and also leaves. I hug myself. I want to be part of this group, but it's times like this when I understand why I'm just an outsider. These Kels know each other so well, they can have whole conversations without saying a word.
With El gone, we're alone in the alcove. I clench my fingers, finding comfort in their pressure on my arms as I pick between my questions. I settle on the one Ande left hanging before I diverted the topic of conversation.
"Why do you care about the war?" I sign. It's meant for both Yaz and Finika, but Finika doesn't respond—she should have at least seen my lights—and Yaz waves me sideways instead of answering. Finika startles, and there's another wordless exchange. They might as well be speaking a different language.
"Sorry," says Yaz to me then, as they both rearrange themselves. "Blind side. We can just talk over the storm."
It takes me until they've found new spots to realize what that means. Finika sees my confusion and taps her left eye. The one over that facial scar. Blind side. An injury like that could easily take someone's sight if it got infected, though I think that's pretty rare. Most people get access to the healing song long before things get that bad. Finika knows that song, so it must have happened before she learned it.
When they're both settled, I cautiously repeat my question. Yaz flicks a hand at Finika to go first.
She does. "We joined Underfarrow because it was a haven at the time. They were accepting Karu refugees from farther islands in the Gods' Teeth. I'm still here because I think what they're doing is important—it's not just Kels from Rapal that are being smuggled out and sheltered here. That's been the task of this group, but Underfarrow itself does the same with many Karu-Kels." She pauses. "I'm against the war."
I just nod. It's complicated, but I think I'm comfortable saying I am too, now. Getting the islanders to safety isn't worth the number of other innocent lives it would cost, especially among the Karu in the surface waters.
"I don't give a shark's ass-fin what people do with this stupid war," says Yaz. "I'll go wherever I need to to keep anyone from laying a finger on the people I care about."
"Who?" I ask.
She points to Finika. "Fin and family."
"Your tribe family?"
"Birth family. You know how my people work?"
I can't tell if that's a question or a statement. I sort of know how, even if I don't understand it personally. Red signal squid are much stricter about what constitutes "family" than most mid-water Shalda. You have to actually be blood-related to someone to qualify. Or else be a long-term partner. Family groups are tight-knit: core clusters of them stay together, hold a territory, and hunt together. And anyone who joins a different group continues to hold fast to the one they came from, unless some fundamental rift makes a family cut ties.
That, though, only reinforces my confusion. "You would protect them, too? But you said..."
I break off. I don't actually know how to make sense of what Yaz has told me about her family. She's been cryptic, only speaking about them in snatches, and giving very little detail. I know they don't approve of her being close with Finika. I know they kicked her out over it, but I also know she visits them regularly, and I'm almost certain they're the source of all her stories and advice about talking to people over differences in identity.
"Everything I've said about them is true," says Yaz. "Even with everything that's happened, they're still my family. And they're warming to Fin."
The question has been burning on my tongue since I first met Yaz, and I'm not sure it's appropriate, but I can't not ask. "Are you partners?"
Yaz laughs. They both do.
"Yes and no," says Yaz. "Friends who commit? Sar tells me there's a word for it in some other Karu language, but as far as I'm concerned, it's unpronounceable."
"You've hardly tried," says Finika.
"I did try! You grew up with west-island languages floating around. Those sounds don't even exist in any spoken Shalda I heard as a child."
"You say that as though you didn't live beneath the exact same island."
"Kuna?" I say, startled.
"Yes," says Yaz, "my people's territory is Shalda-depth around Kuna. That's how we met."
"That is absolutely none of the story," says Finika.
"You tell him what you want to have known, then. I didn't want to do it without you."
"That's fair. Thank you."
It sounds like an argument on the outside, but their banter feels completely safe. I've never met a pair like that where its members came from different Kel peoples, let alone Kel categories.
"Do we have time?" says Finika. "I can tell the short version."
"There is no short version," says Yaz.
"There is unless you go into detail about your family."
"That's what he wants to know."
"Ah. Okay. Well, do we have time?"
They both look to me. We have time unless I'm needed anywhere, but they've said we'll be out here at least until the storm subsides, and I don't expect that to happen before morning. "I have time."
"Perfect. In that case... Yaz and I both grew up around Kuna, like I said. Our people didn't have much to do with each other—"
Yaz snorts.
"We didn't," says Finika.
"Your people didn't have much to do with mine because you were depth-restricted. Mine didn't mess with you, but we weren't exactly on your side."
"You never hurt us."
"We never had a reason to."
"Exactly."
"That doesn't mean we were friendly."
"But you never hurt us."
"There's a difference between being friendly and not causing harm." Yaz looks pained. "You're giving us too much credit, Fin."
"You deserve at least some."
"You do remember why I took you off the island, right?"
Silence falls between them. It stretches agonizingly long, until Yaz says, "Fine. Keep going."
Finika does. "Anyway. Kuna was empty above the water; some stories say it had islanders once, but those might just be stories. So there was no competition for food. Not with islanders, anyway. Not until the ones on other islands started taking more from the ocean, and another Karu faction came to take over."
"But the islanders started doing that generations ago, didn't they?" I say.
"This was generations ago."
"But you said you grew up there."
"We still lived there. Just under their thumbs. Under threat of harm unless we gave them food we hunted. So we did."
"You didn't leave?"
Another sad smile. "We can't cross open ocean."
Oh.
"And that persisted," continues Finika. "For two generations, until the fish shifted their migration patterns, and the food ran out. I overheard a plan to kill my people, and tried to talk the planning Kels out of it. I'd managed it before. But it didn't work this time. I'm only alive because Yaz found me."
"But you said—" I turn to Yaz. "You didn't share your people's views, then?"
"I did," says Yaz. "But it's not hard to switch views when you find another Kel your age being tortured."
My hands stop fidgeting.
Another silent exchange apparently designates Yaz to take over the story, because she continues, "She eventually got herself free, and fell down into the deeper water. I'd been hanging around, so I found her. To cut a long story short... so did my people, so we left the island."
"You carried me off the island," says Finika with a wry smile.
"You were fully conscious by then. It had been a few days."
"Speaking of too much credit."
"Fine. I carried you off the island. And you refused to stay at the next one because they were hostile towards me. The one after that was Sekanti." She notices my confusion. "Your friend's home island."
Telu. Of course it has a different name among the Karu.
"I'd decided by then that I was angry enough at my people to stay with Fin," says Yaz. "And I never left. I think the first time I went back and visited was three years later."
She would have been fourteen by then. "And it didn't go well?"
Yaz laughs. "It did at first. Anything goes well when you pretend to still fit in with a group of people. But I couldn't keep it up. I wanted them to know me, and living with the Karu was important to me. I eventually told them where I'd been staying, and that I'd learned Eni-Karu in the meantime. They kicked me out."
That must have hurt, if she still cared as much about her family as she's saying. "Then when did you go back again?"
"I didn't. They came to find me a year later. They'd been waiting for me to limp home again, and started to feel bad when I didn't. Also were concerned that I'd fallen in with Karu-Kels. I told them they could either apologize or leave me alone until they were ready to."
"And?"
"Oh, they apologized. Then gave me a half-day lecture on why they still didn't agree with what I was doing, so therefore I should come home. If I recall correctly, I said I would go home, and then promptly swam back to the island. They didn't talk to me again for a while."
"Not a very long while," says Finika.
"Yeah, they were back within a moon. Same lecture, marginally better tone. I think they were getting desperate. So I introduced them to Fin, they took it badly, and we left again."
Finika's giving her an empathetic look. Yaz isn't looking at either of us, and her hands keep twitching, fiddling with a rock, tracing patterns on the cave wall, drumming on her tail. It's not her normal, confident reaction, and I wonder if there are things she isn't telling me. I'd be hurt if my people treated me that way.
"They came back every moon for a while," she says. "I eventually went back to live with them for a year, and that cleared up a lot of things. I ended up leaving again, but that's when they started doing their own work to change their opinions on the Karu. Some Karu. They'll probably never change on Karu as a general category, but I don't really expect them to."
I have so many questions, but the more I try to pin them down, the more they escape me. Only one emerges with any kind of clarity. "How do they feel about... you?"
Yaz sighs.
"Is this about your people?" asks Finika, to me.
I nod.
"Well, you've got one thing on your side," says Yaz. "You're not... actually, scrap that. How close are you and your... friends?"
My stomach twists twice over, and I swallow back a deeply queasy feeling. Revealing that I know a Karu language and was accepted into the village where I learned it is one thing, but it's not the only one I have to grapple with. I've been traveling with a Sami-Kel for the last two moons. And for all the ways it would simplify my life, I can't bring myself to disparage Sar in front of my people. It's tempting. But even thinking of it dredges up enough guilt that I might actually be sick if I entertain the possibility. Ande will never forgive me if I do. Our people live together now. She'll find out anything I say.
This is going to be impossible. I bury my face in my hands as the hopelessness of trying to bring any of this to my people crashes over me like the storm waves raging overhead.
"Hey," says Yaz. She scoots over to me and rests both hands on my shoulders. "Your people care about you, don't they?"
I nod. That's not in question, at least.
"And they've adopted an island village?"
I nod again.
"So they'll already be facing different views than they've likely faced before. If I recall correctly, the islanders don't think very highly of Andalua. If your people can overcome their differences on that, they deserve a bit of credit. And that might make it easier for you to talk to them."
An intense anxiety grips me as those words open up a whole new realm of possibility. Ande's village is terrified of Andalua. Maybe mine will convince them otherwise; Ande herself began to pray to our goddess before we discovered the islanders had been right to fear her all along. But if that's the case, I'll need to shatter all that faith. And if Ande's people aren't convinced, I have no idea how mine will take that difference of opinion. I didn't take it well. Ande and I didn't hang around to see how our people integrated, beyond the first half-day of contact. Anything—including any kind of breakdown—could have happened since then.
"I need to tell them about Andalua, too," I say. "And about the Singer."
I don't hear the breath Yaz draws, but I feel her let it out again. Long and slowly.
"And get them to the stone forest, so they'll be safe," I finish, but even saying it out loud piles such a weight onto the mountain already sitting on my shoulders that I nearly slump out of Yaz's grip. On a scale of disruption, I might as well be returning to my people with a Karu-Kel partner.
"I hear you," says Finika gently. Yaz drops her hands and moves back. Finika continues, "It's going to be hard, whatever you do. You've been through a lot, and you've learned a lot, and your people haven't been with you on that journey. That's a huge chasm to cross."
That's a good way of putting it. The seafloor canyon that houses the Seers lurks in the back of my mind, me on one side, my people on the other.
"You do have two big advantages," says Finika. "One is that your people trust you. Yaz told me what you said you've done for them, and it's not small. You've lived with them for years, and you've gathered stories. Also brought back news from the wider ocean. That was your role, and it puts you in a good place for bringing news like this. The other advantage is that you've spoken to the Seers."
I have spoken to them. Or listened to them, at least; Ande and Sar did most of the talking. But we've visited a place my people sign about in hushed tones, and the Seers told us about the Singer directly. Also about the war. We confirmed the latter with eel-Kel writings in Roshaska. Those messages will be easier to deliver to my people because of it. Which means I'm more scared to tell my people about Andalua, my Karu identity, and Sar.
I shouldn't tell them about Sar. That's not safe yet. Not when half the ocean will come after Sar the moment they find out they survived. Arcas could torture any of my people if she thought they had news about her target, which means the safest thing for them is not to know at all. That makes things easier. I also won't back down on Andalua. I can't. Not when she poses such a threat to my people. Which means the only spiny topic left is me.
"Like I've said before," says Yaz, "you're free to talk to your people about things without exposing yourself, if that's easier or safer for you. It's uncomfortable, and you may need to lie about some things, but you're bringing back a lot, and this may not be the time to have the Karu conversation. That's for you to decide."
"I know."
"Are you going alone?"
I nod. Ande's already said she isn't going with me, and I don't know how she's going to feel about me after today. I understand why Yaz might have fought against the islanders. I don't like it, but there's no winner in that situation, and Yaz isn't someone I'm going to cut ties with so easily. I like her as a person, and she's the only other half-Karu I know. Explaining that to Ande will be another matter. To be honest, I don't even know if I can.
"You should get going, then," says Yaz. "They'll be on their way towards Roshaska right now, won't they?"
I swallow hard. They should be, if they're still following their regular migration patterns. They have no idea still that anyone lives in the city. Not unless they've found out since the last time they were there. I should at least try to make up with Ande before I leave. But the need to find my people and the sheer anxiety of even starting that conversation when I can't explain yet how I feel conspires against me. I know Ande may not forgive me for this, either. But I hope she'll understand.
"Good luck," says Yaz, as I get up.
"Can you tell the others where I've gone?"
"Of course. Come back here when you're done, okay?"
My throat's too tight to say anything more, so I sign an affirmation, then my thanks, then slip away into the storm-dark water.