Rumi's Riddle

by Eliot Schrefer

  Gogi joins them as Sky steps back, cawing triumphantly. “What is it?”

  Rumi hops forward, wipes a hand over the surface Sky just cleared with his beak. “Oh wow, it’s as clear as the lens. And on the other side . . . Gogi, could you give us a little firelight?”

  “Of course,” Gogi says, creating a ball of flame that hovers above his palm. “Hey, Banu,” he calls down, “pause for a minute here, okay?”

  Banu’s exhausted voice wafts up. “Not . . . a problem.”

  The three friends lean into the surface. Inside the rounded shape are lumpy things, hard to make out, and a circular device right in front. Attached are two bony appendages, leading to . . .

  “A skeleton!” Rumi exclaims.

  “Ew, gross,” Gogi says.

  “No, it’s fascinating,” Rumi says. “Look, the same bones you see in frog hands and feet, only longer, and the skull is similar, though a different overall shape, of course. But this creature is no longer alive.”

  “Enough talk,” Gogi says worriedly. “Let’s not delay anymore, okay?”

  “It’s all we have left of them, but it’s more than we’ve ever seen of them before, in the flesh,” Sky continues. “Not that there’s any actual flesh to speak of, but you catch my meaning.”

  “It’s all we have left of who?” Gogi asks, scratching his head.

  “The two-legs.”

  “WOW,” GOGI SAYS, bowing close to the clear stone panel. “We’re seeing history right in front of us. Poor two-legs, eaten by these rounded creatures that moved single file like ants.”

  Sky nods sadly. “I guess the rounded creatures digested everything but the skeletons.”

  Rumi’s face crinkles. “Why would the two-legs be in this regular position, instead of the bones all jumbled up? We’ve all dissected owl pellets to see what’s inside, right? The bones are all a mess.”

  “I’d like to note for the official record that I have never dissected an owl pellet,” Gogi says. “Nor do I particularly want to.”

  “I almost think that these two-legs decided to go inside the rounded beasts,” Rumi says. “Like they thought they wouldn’t get digested, or something.”

  “Sure, okay, weird but okay. Above my brain power to figure out,” Gogi says.

  “Mine too,” Sky caws.

  Rumi peers deeper into the rounded beast, soaking in all the details he can. Lengths of something that looks like woven vine fasten the two-legs into their position. Like they were trapped there.

  “We should get moving,” Sky says. “Before the volcano rumbles again.”

  “I’m getting hungry, too,” Gogi says, holding his belly, “and I don’t plan on trying out any new seafood. Blech.”

  As if on cue, another rumble comes from the tunnel ahead. Rumi prepares to mount a rescue, but this time Banu is ready. The membrane trembles, but the bubble of air holds fast. Sky and Gogi clamber to the tunnel floor, Gogi holding up his hand so Rumi can use it to hop down more easily.

  His mind running over and over the puzzle of the extinct two-leg civilization, Rumi loses track of time as they pass forward. The line of rounded beasts is seemingly endless.

  For a while, Gogi keeps up a firelight to warm them, but eventually the monkey’s fur is matted with sweat, dripping even from the tip of his tail. Rumi taps him on the shoulder. “I think the temperature is rising,” Rumi says. “You can probably drop the fire.”

  Gogi startles, then pats his own body. The fire disappears. “You’re right. I guess I’m a little distracted.”

  “Are you saying that heading right into the heart of a volcano, with all the weight of our rainforest over our heads, is worrying you?” Sky asks dryly.

  “Yes,” Gogi says. “Was that not clear?”

  “No, no, it was, I was joking,” Sky sputters. He caws a sigh. “Maybe I should just go back to being quiet.”

  “It was a good joke, buddy, my bad, keep ’em coming,” Gogi says, patting Sky awkwardly on the head.

  They continue along, the only sounds the plop of surprised fish passing into the bubble and the rhythmic rush and flow of the waves around them. Rumi falls into a reverie, his thoughts back on his many developing theories about the meaning of the tunnel, the rounded beasts, and the two-leg skeletons inside them.

  The reverie is broken by a booming voice ahead. “Who disturbs my slumber?”

  The companions go still. “Please tell me that was one of you guys,” Gogi whispers.

  “Come forward,” the voice says. “I would like to see that yellow light closer. And it has been a very long time since I have eaten.”

  “That sounds like a good argument . . . for not getting any closer,” Banu says.

  Auriel has other ideas, though. The glowing snake slithers toward the booming voice, leaving the air bubble behind.

  “Auriel!” Rumi hisses. But the snake is already gone.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Sky says.

  “Is the voice we heard . . . one of the two-legs?” Banu asks.

  “Given their mass, I don’t think any of the two-legs could make a sound like that,” Rumi says. “Besides, I think they really are all extinct. I’d be surprised if we found one now.”

  There’s a low rhythmic rumbling sound that comes with undulations of the membrane. It takes Rumi a few moments to recognize it as laughter. “I am no two-leg. Come closer, and you will see what I am.”

  “Again, going to officially suggest we don’t do what the scary booming voice says,” Gogi whispers.

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” Sky says. “The only way forward is into the mountain.”

  They look down along the stream of stilled curved beasts, deep into the tunnel, farther from air and light. Farther from safety.

  Auriel has already started down the passage, is a good dozen snake-lengths ahead. “If we want Auriel with us when we face whoever’s voice that is, we’d better get moving,” Rumi says.

  “Gulp,” Gogi says.

  Banu starts forward, Rumi on his head, Gogi on one flank, Sky on the other. Another roar from the mountain, another surge against the air bubble, Banu fighting back again. Together, the companions continue.

  The rounded beasts stop, and the ground beneath them becomes rougher, casting upward in chaotic formations. Gogi scouts ahead, finding the best route for slower-moving Banu to navigate the obstacles. The tunnel’s ceiling rises so it’s no longer within the air bubble; Rumi has no idea whether it’s vaulting high above, or right over their heads.

  As the shadowwalkers pass forward, Rumi notices that the path into the mountain has become almost featureless—there’s little growing on the floor of the tunnel. Like they’re too far from the open ocean for anything to survive.

  Except for one thing, at least.

  Ahead is Auriel’s yellow glow.

  Beyond it are two giant green orbs.

  Eyes.

  THE GREEN ORBS blink once, twice. A mouth opens, and the reflected light from Auriel plays over long pointed teeth. “You have come to your end,” the mouth says.

  “What are you?” Gogi calls out, fear making his voice break.

  “I am the largest, I am the withdrawn, I am the core of Caldera.”

  Gogi looks at his friends, as if to see if any of them has understood, but they just blink back, confused. Gogi clears his throat. “Does a withdrawn eat monkeys?”

  Auriel coils himself up, facing the jaw and the green eyes. Almost like he’s hoping to protect the group from the giant stranger.

  Heart racing, Rumi takes a hop forward. He can see more of the creature now. It’s a fish, and easily the biggest one Rumi has ever seen. “I have lived many eons down here, to grow to this size,” it says. “I was once known as a grouper, but I no longer see any of my kind. If any came to visit me now, I would eat them.”

  It makes a raspy, groaning laugh, sending clouds of debris up from the tunnel floor. Sky looks at Rumi, feathers pricked: What is this fish’s deal?

  Rumi hops forward agai
n, so he’s on top of Auriel’s coils. “We need to get past you, because this tunnel heads to the volcano under Caldera, and we need to plug the volcano,” he says. “That will save our rainforest. It will save you.”

  The fish blinks heavily. “You lie. Plugging the volcano would mean collapsing the tunnel. Collapsing the tunnel would mean killing me.”

  “It would not have to,” Sky caws. “You could leave first.”

  “Oh, I could leave, could I?” the grouper says. “Is it that simple?”

  “Yes, actually,” Sky says.

  “I chose to leave the world of other fish long ago,” the grouper says. “This is my seclusion. I will not leave this tunnel.”

  Banu crawls forward. “We have to pass. Time is running out.”

  “What will prevent me from eating you?” the grouper asks.

  “Nothing,” Banu says. “We will still try, though.”

  As Banu crawls past Auriel, the boa constrictor stretches out, so he’s always at the front of the line as they near the giant fish. It opens its mouth, again displaying long, sharp teeth. “You might think your actions are brave. I think they are foolish.”

  Banu takes another step forward. The grouper lunges toward him, and as it does, Auriel, with instant reflexes, opens his mouth and strikes. His teeth had been removed by bullying snakes when he was young, and he didn’t gain them back in resurrected form, but of course the grouper doesn’t know that. The fish hesitates, and it’s just long enough for Rumi to send out a blast of air that nudges the grouper farther back in the tunnel, enough that its jaws don’t contact Banu.

  “You have magic,” the fish says, its booming voice sending gusting waves against the bubble’s membrane. “There’s a chance you could actually succeed in your task.”

  “Of course we’ll succeed!” Gogi says.

  “Your success is meaningless to me,” the grouper says. “Nothing has meaning except my solitary life, and I will not let you take that away.” It lunges at Banu again, mouth wide as its mass surges through the water.

  Gogi’s the first to react this time, readying the same flame arrows that he used to scout out the terrain when they were approaching the tunnel. He creates one in each palm and shoots them out, sizzling as they hit the far side of the bubble. Just as the grouper’s face emerges into the air, they pass through the membrane, hitting the fish on the jaw. The arrows fizzle too soon to do much damage, but once again the grouper goes on the retreat.

  “Why are you doing this?” it asks. “Why do you insist on resisting me?”

  “We need to pass!” Rumi says. “Please, it’s very important.”

  “You mean to destroy my home,” the grouper says. “Is that not important to you?”

  Gogi wrings his hands. “We’re in a bit of a moral bind, aren’t we?”

  “No, we’re not,” Sky says hotly. “One grouper’s life against the welfare of all Caldera? There’s no choice there.”

  “I can see both your points,” Rumi says. “I certainly don’t want to be a murderer, but the good of our entire land seems much more important than one fish’s life. There’s also an additional concern to weigh, of course: we run the risk of being eaten by the grouper before we can get past it.”

  “Yes, you do run that risk,” the grouper booms. “And I have very good hearing, just so you know. I can actually feel the vibrations of your voices along the pores of my lateral line. I sense sounds just like I do the currents of my prey’s movements.”

  Rumi takes a deep breath. This is not an intellectual task, but a test of emotional logic. He hopes he’s up to it.

  He hops forward. One jump. Two, then three. He’s nearly within striking range of the grouper’s jaws. There, now he actually is. He takes another hop. He’s past Auriel’s coils. The giant fish wouldn’t even need to bite him—it could just inhale Rumi through a nostril. It rises above him like a mountain.

  “I had no idea about your lateral line,” Rumi says. “I’m afraid my fish knowledge is very slim, and I hope that someday, once this is all over, we might be able to sit down—or swim down?—together, and you can tell me all about what it’s like to be a fish. I was once a tadpole, but that’s a quite different experience, I imagine.”

  “Rumi . . .” Sky says warningly.

  “Right, right,” Rumi says, clapping his froggy fingers together. “I’m learning all about my comfort zones. Let me cut to the chase. It’s quite clear to all of us here that you could eat us in one gulp, if you chose to. Maybe you will choose to. But I hope you will hear me out first. We’ve told you that we need to get past you and through the tunnel to plug the volcano that’s going to blow up and destroy the rainforest. I thought that would matter to you, but it seems it doesn’t. So let me try a different tack. Ahem.”

  Rumi takes a long breath, and looks back at his friends, who are watching him with an awkward sort of worry on their faces. Rumi returns to face the enormous grouper. “My friends think I’m crazy right now. Anyway, I think you should know that I had a rough start, as a tadpole, and as a young frog, and I made some mistakes that I deeply regret. I also . . . well, I guess I’m a little unusual in the amount that I think about things, and it makes it hard for me, um . . . for me to relate to the other animals sometimes. It took a while for me to become friends with this crew behind me.”

  The grouper’s eyes wander over the bedraggled companions, then go almost cross-eyed as it returns its attention to Rumi. “Go on,” it says.

  “All that’s to say that I can understand why you would become a hermit and hide yourself away in this tunnel. The world can be a harsh place, and it can seem easier just to withdraw, because of all the emotional confusion. I don’t know what you’ve been through, and I can’t pretend to understand it, not being . . . um, a sea creature myself. But I’ll tell you this: if you’d like, after this is all done, I’d like to come back with the help of my friend Banu here, and I’d like to get to know you better. I want to hear your story. I want to tell you our story. We’ve all been living alongside one another for eons, but the land and air creatures don’t know the first thing about the ones who live in the sea. That seems like a shame.”

  The grouper opens its jaws even wider, Auriel’s glow reflecting on the back of its massive throat. Then it closes them. “It does seem like a shame, when you put it that way.”

  The force of the grouper’s booming voice is enough to bowl Rumi out of the air bubble. He swims back in and plops to his hands and feet, nodding vigorously while Gogi rubs him warm. “I promise you this, on my amphibian honor, that I will come find you again when I can.”

  The grouper wriggles its spiny dorsal fin. “I would like that. You may pass.”

  Rumi looks at his friends, raising his little frog arms in a cheer.

  The shadowwalkers don’t look excited. They look . . . suspicious. Gogi raises an eyebrow, a flame arrow already in place above his palm. Sky cocks his head, his beak open in a silent caw. Banu—well, actually Banu looks ready for a nap.

  “Come on, we have to trust the grouper,” Rumi says, taking another hop forward.

  The grouper holds there, motionless, watching the frog as he approaches. Gogi, Banu, and Sky slowly make their way behind. Auriel passes alongside, pausing every length or so to taste the air, as if to smell the grouper’s intentions.

  As he gets ever closer to the giant fish, Rumi’s heart starts to race, and he can feel toxins tingling on his back. “Watch out, guys, I’m envenomating,” he warns. But he keeps moving forward, all the same.

  As they get even nearer, Gogi balks, but then, watching Rumi hop forward, the monkey seems to find the courage to continue. They’re all within range of the jaws now. The fish opens and closes its mouth, watching them silently.

  The grouper is only slightly smaller than the width of the tunnel. Once they get near enough, of course, Banu’s air bubble will contain the fish, too. “You might not be able to breathe through your gills for a moment,” Rumi warns. “Once we’re past, though, the wat
er will return.”

  “This will be a new experience,” the grouper says, and then its eyes widen in surprise as the air bubble hits it. The fish splashes to the floor, flips its fins helplessly, and in the process rolls onto its side, nearly on top of the companions.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Gogi says, scrambling up the side of the tunnel. But the grouper manages to stop itself before it crushes them all. The shadowwalkers pass along its green-black scales, no one daring to make any loud noises or otherwise startle the giant fish.

  Finally they come to the tail, and they can hear a rushing sound behind them as the grouper’s gills take in water. “Phew,” the grouper burbles.

  “Thank you!” Rumi calls back. “You might want to wait out in the open ocean for a while, in case we manage to plug the volcano. And I meant what I said—I’ll come find you after this is all done.”

  “If we’re alive,” Sky adds.

  “Right,” Rumi says, gulping. “If we’re alive.”

  “At least your lives aren’t at risk from me anymore,” the grouper says.

  “Thanks,” Rumi calls back.

  “Doesn’t feel like we should have to thank someone for not inhaling us,” Gogi says under his breath.

  “Shh,” Sky says, with something like a giggle in his voice. It’s the macaw version of a giggle, a sort of sprightly hoot.

  Rumi takes a long last look at the grouper. Its massive tail barely moves as it hovers in the stagnant tunnel water; it doesn’t seem to be trying to escape after all. Will they wind up entombing it, if they collapse the mountain? Rumi’s journey started out with innocents dying. Will that happen all over again?

  Rumi gets lost in his concerns as he rides forward on Gogi’s head. Is suffering necessary, for any creatures at all to live? It’s quite a question. This will take a lot of puzzling through.

  The transition has been so gradual that Rumi almost misses that the tunnel isn’t really a tunnel anymore. It’s become a set of underwater caves. Banu leads them through a craggy cavern, the ground chill from the seawater and sharp from the pointy little armored creatures that live on it.