Waterwight Breathe

by Laurel McHargue

  We communicate as one being, and I feel the word aninnik rise to my lips. We whisper the word in unison several times—“aninnik, aninnik, aninnik”—and we continue, our combined voice becoming louder with each successive utterance until we believe beyond doubt our final greeting will raise the dead: “ANINNIK, KUMUGWE!”

  We break apart, dazed. We’re suspended, hovering in the air over Kumugwe’s body. Our last exclamation rolls away over the silent sea. No one breathes.

  Slowly, as if pulling against an unyielding chain, Kumugwe raises his right hand from the water and the orichalcum inlays on his spear glow golden, softly at first, then brilliantly. His eyelids fly open and he sees us, his brow furrows and confusion flashes across his face, his torso rises from the water as his great tail dips below him and I see the circles of sea life expand out and away from him.

  “Father!” Harmony falls from just above him into his arms. He catches her, keeping his eyes on me as I remain hovering beyond reach in the air above him.

  “You . . . you . . .” his voice returns to him in raspy gasps, “you brought me back. How? Why? I was nearing the gates of the underworld when I felt a tickle in my veins. Then I heard your voice,” he looks at Harmony, “your voices. I do not understand.”

  “It was Celeste, father, she did it for me.”

  “But why? Why, after all we did to her?”

  “Because her father is returned to her—I felt him when I was one with her—and she is now a daughter again too.”

  Kumugwe draws his gaze across the surface of his sea and notices his creatures awaiting acknowledgment. Then he sees Nick, bobbing alone in the water in front of him.

  “And who is this slim minion? Are you not the very one who came to my realm in a tube not long ago? Where is the smaller child?”

  “He’s a good boy, father. Nick came alone this time with Celeste to help find you.” She breaks into pitiful sobbing while recounting the state in which we found him and how she thought he was gone forever.

  He listens patiently.

  “I will address my creatures. Their loyalty is unwavering.”

  Harmony clings to him. I reunite with Nick in the water, and I pull him under with me just as Kumugwe submerges to speak.

  “Creatures large and small,” Kumugwe announces to the ample gathering, “I have returned.”

  Nick and I marvel at the kaleidoscope of colors surrounding us. The gentle undulations of the creatures as they listen to their god mesmerize us, and the weight of their presence indicates the solemnity of the occasion.

  “These topsiders are to be protected,” he gestures toward us, “for they have done me a great service. We must remain vigilant, however, against topsiders with wicked intentions, for they exist as well.”

  A shadow darkens his expression. Is he remembering Zoya and the scientists? Does he feel responsible for not discovering their presence and their heinous actions sooner?

  “You will alert me to those in our realm who wish ill upon us. I thank you for this gathering. That is all. We return to our tasks.”

  As quickly as they had assembled, the sea life disperses in splashes and swirls and the water is calm once more. The four of us remain underwater looking at one another in awkward silence until Kumugwe asks, “Who did this to me? Who is responsible for my near death?” His questions carry a threat, and I shiver.

  I will not betray Old Man Massive, and Nick honestly doesn’t know how the intimidating god was trapped on the island.

  “Father?” Harmony speaks timidly. “In your anger, you slammed your spear into the sea bottom, do you remember? And do you remember the great surge in every direction, and how you followed me northward?”

  Kumugwe remembers. I can tell by his expression. He looks contrite.

  “You shook down the mountain, father, and trapped yourself inside.”

  I couldn’t have made up a better explanation for who was to blame. When Kumugwe looks at me with squinted eyes, I can tell he’s looking for validation of Harmony’s story. I keep my face expressionless, and he finally turns away.

  “To you, then, Celeste,” his words are filled with hesitation, “I owe . . . what no god has ever owed a mortal.”

  “You owe me nothing, really. Nothing but my freedom and your promise never to harm the good people topside.”

  “But that is not enough. I must give you something. I owe you my life.” He looks down toward the sea floor, apparently lost in thought, and when he raises his head back to look at me, he’s made a decision.

  “You will take this.” It’s not an offer, it’s a command. Kumugwe extends his spear toward me in upright open palms. “You returned this treasure to me once, and I am honor-bound to gift it to you. You are the rightful owner now. Use it responsibly, as I have not.”

  I don’t move a muscle.

  Nick nudges me. “Take it, Celeste,” he whispers bubbles in my ear. They tickle, and I laugh, breaking the tension I feel in every fiber of my body.

  Kumugwe’s expression remains somber. He’s waiting for me to take the spear from his hands, hands that mere moments ago were incapable of holding anything.

  “Take it, Celeste,” Harmony tells me. “And what you wish for it to be, it will be when it’s yours.”

  The spear draws me to it as if it knows I’m to take it.

  “Do I need to decide right away what I wish it to be?” I ask. The responsibility of owning such an object is too great for me at this moment.

  “It will wait,” Kumugwe assures me. “It will know when you are ready.”

  Yes, but will I know? I take the spear from Kumugwe’s hands and am surprised once more by how light it feels. For a moment I fear a flashback of sorrow, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, I feel exhilarated and, as if expressing my inner joy, the orichalcum pattern on the spear, my spear, glows a golden-green.

  My mystical moment doesn’t last long. Odin’s ravens dive-bomb the water just above our heads.

  “Ah! My troublesome brother.” Kumugwe chuckles when he recognizes the birds. “Still confined in my castle! He will not be happy with me. He should have stayed home.” Without another word, he and Harmony swim southward.

  When I consider what became of Kumugwe while he was trapped outside his realm, I shudder when I imagine what we’ll find inside the prison of his collapsed underwater castle.

  “Let’s go,” I say, grabbing Nick’s hand with my free hand. I point my spear forward and we follow in Kumugwe’s swift wake effortlessly.

  Will Odin be alive when we get there?

  ~ 21 ~

  BEFORE WE REACH the castle, Harmony breaks from Kumugwe’s side in a bizarre, staggering motion and screams.

  “No! Not now! They can’t do this to me! Don’t let them do this to me!” She continues to lurch unnaturally, and Kumugwe looks at her as if witnessing a new life form—with awe, fascination, and a touch of horror.

  “What has possessed you, child of my heart?” Kumugwe wraps his arms around her to contain her movements and looks to me as if I know the answer. “Fix her, girl! Fix my child!”

  “But I don’t know what’s wrong! Harmony, talk to me. Who are they, and what are they doing to you?”

  “My birth parents planted a chip in me somewhere like the chips they’re putting in their creature army! Lilith has a control, I saw it when we were in the cave putting the skeletons into the squishy bodies, and when she moved a button on it, my arms and legs moved in ways I didn’t want them to move! Look! I can’t stop!” Her limbs struggle against Kumugwe’s unbreakable embrace. “They must be testing the monsters!”

  Harmony stops lurching for a moment and we all wait to see if she’ll start again. We let her words sink in.

  “This chip, my child, what does it look like, and where is it within you?” Kumugwe releases her and turns her slowly, looking for where such a chip might be.

  “I snatched one from inside one of the blobs before leaving the underwater cavern laboratory and I put it in a pocket, but I lost it. It w
as made of metal, a tiny thing, no bigger than Celeste’s smallest fingernail. It must have washed away in the giant wave we swam in before you were trapped, father. I don’t know where it is, but I want it out of me!”

  Harmony looks at me. They all look at me.

  “You brought me back to life, mysterious girl. Surely you can find this small chip.” Kumugwe raises his eyebrows, juts out his lower lip, and looks at me with a boyish expression of hopefulness.

  “And you helped save me too, Celeste,” Nick says. “If you do that falling apart thing and look into Harmony’s eyes, maybe you’ll be able to see where the chip is and, I don’t know, get it out or break it or something.”

  A smack of spectacularly intricate jellyfish swirls around us, their tendrils trailing behind gracefully, their bodies emitting flashes of brilliant light in colors rivaling the nacreous clouds in Odin’s realm, and they give me an idea.

  “Harmony, I’ve seen you change your body several times. Can you make yourself transparent? I know it sounds crazy, but maybe we could see inside you if you could. Kind of like those jellyfish?”

  She looks at the jellyfish and reaches her hand out to touch one as it passes. It wriggles around her arm and when she giggles, I feel the tickle. It flashes and leaves her, joining the swarm of others on their way to who-knows-where.

  “I don’t think I can, Celeste. I can be part fish—like now, when I need a tail to swim faster—but I’m mostly human. And jellyfish aren’t really fish, you know. But I’ll try.” Harmony closes her eyes and we all watch, anticipating that at any moment, Harmony will become see-through. But she doesn’t.

  She opens her eyes and looks down at her body. “I tried, really I did. Will you look through my eyes and find the chip, Celeste? Because I can’t stand it, knowing they can make me do something I don’t want to do.”

  “Do this for us,” Kumugwe says, “and I will gift you with more treasures than you can imagine.”

  I really just want to get to his castle, find Odin alive, and go back to the village. But I can tell we’re not going anywhere until I at least try to find the chip.

  “I can’t promise I’ll find it, but I’ll try.” I swim to Harmony and face her, holding her hands. “Keep your eyes open, Harmony, and let’s see what I can do.”

  When I look into her eyes I feel the tingle start at the back of my head and I let it move through my body until I feel myself start to disperse. I’m in her eyes, through her eyes, and into her head. I don’t have to go too far before I find it, and I’m worried. The chip is completely encased in and fused fast to the cells of her brainstem. There’s no way I could remove or disable it—even if I knew much about it—without potentially damaging her brain in ways I can’t imagine. I can’t do it. I won’t.

  I back out of her, I tell her without words to blink, and when she does, I snap back into myself. How will I explain what I’ve seen?

  “Did you find it? Is it gone?” Harmony reaches for her head, but before she can touch it, she twitches again and her tail transforms to legs that try to march her through the water. “Oh! Celeste! Why didn’t you take it out? Please make it stop!”

  If it weren’t so tragic, what she’s doing would appear comical. It’s really not funny at all, and I feel horrible for having failed her.

  I need a good reason for why I didn’t take it out, a reason that won’t scare her any more than she already is. In time I’ll learn how to remove it without causing damage—or Ryder might know how to do it already. Or we just wait until we stop the scientists. Then it won’t be an issue.

  “I found it, yes, but I had a really good idea while I was in there. Let’s think about this. Maybe it’s actually a good thing you have this chip in you.”

  Nick frowns. “But it can’t be good if they’re doing what you say they’re doing—making an army to control more survivors.”

  “Right, but since Harmony has the chip, we’ll be able to track their progress! See? And Harmony will be able to tell us—we’ll be able to see—what they’re making her do, so we’ll know how, and when, to defend ourselves.”

  I feel pretty smug about my cover-up, but Harmony doesn’t look too happy, even though she’s stopped lurching. Kumugwe isn’t convinced either. Nick gets it, though, and backs me up.

  “Okay, I see your point, but what if they make her do something bad to us?” He moves a little farther away from her in the water, and she looks offended.

  “But I promise never to hurt you or Celeste again. I’d never mean to, anyway.”

  Nick doesn’t appear to be convinced, and I have my own reasons for not trusting her childlike motivations.

  “And really, my birth parents probably don’t even remember they put a chip in me. I only discovered it in the cavern, and Lilith—the woman I’ll never call mother—didn’t see me move when she played with the controls and made the blobs jiggle. They left me in the water when they tore away from Zoya without even knowing how long I could hold my breath. They probably think I’m dead.” She swims to Kumugwe for comfort. He cradles her like a baby.

  She has no love for her birth parents. I just need to convince her to protect the rest of us from them. “Harmony, can you see how you might be able to help us against those mean people?” I hope she can see how.

  She looks up at Kumugwe’s fretful face before turning back to me. “But that would mean I’d have to come back with you when you return topside, right? I’d have to be a girl like you, and you’d have to protect me and make sure I don’t hurt any nice people.”

  She’s smarter than I give her credit for being. “You’re right. And you’d be doing a good and noble thing for the survivors who are good people and who are struggling to rebuild their world. And when the time comes, I’ll remove the chip.”

  When the time comes. Time never comes, it just goes.

  Harmony appears to consider what I said.

  “You owe the topsiders nothing, my little music-maker.” Kumugwe cradles her more tightly.

  “But I owe Celeste something. I nearly killed her, father.” She leaves the protection of his arms, transforms back into her tail, and swims over to me. She takes my hands in hers and says, “I’ll do as you ask.”

  “Let’s get to the castle fast, then,” I say, “and release Odin and stop those cruel people.”

  “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Pipsqueak,” Nick mumbles.

  I don’t answer.

  ~ 22 ~

  OUR JOURNEY to the castle is slowed by Harmony’s fits of movement, which frequently force her legs from her tail. The transformation looks painful, but she tells us it’s not. For the most part, her actions appear uncoordinated—until she does something that makes us all gasp.

  She thrusts her right arm over her head and forward as if throwing a ball, and at the peak of the throw, what appears to be a long, sharp metal object springs from her hand. For a moment, she’s wielding a sword, and in the next instant, the threatening weapon retracts and is gone.

  “Oh, no!” Harmony looks horrified. “How did they do that? How did that thing come out of me? And I heard something too!”

  We all back away from her, even Kumugwe, who appears more troubled than ever.

  “You heard something? What?” I chastise myself for not exploring more while I was dissolved in her. Why didn’t I see anything beyond the chip?

  “Voices. Lilith’s, and Thurston’s—he’s my birth father. They sound happy—well, she does—but I can’t understand what they’re saying. And other voices.” Harmony squeezes her eyes closed. “My sister’s, I think, but she sounds like a little girl. Isn’t she your age? And Blanche. She’s there too. Oh! And a boy is crying. He sounds so sad.” She opens her eyes. “It stopped. I don’t hear anything.”

  We all have our mouths wide open and I cough when a curious little clownfish explores the space between my jaws.

  “How are you hearing them,” I ask, but I know it’s because of the chip.

  “The sound is far away, but it’s f
ar away inside my head. How did they make a weapon come from my hand?”

  “Yeah,” Nick says, “never mind about the voices. If she can’t stop them from turning her body into a weapon—”

  “But she can, right, Harmony?” I want her to say, “Sure I can. Piece of cake,” but I have my doubts.

  “I . . . I don’t know. It just happened so fast I couldn’t stop it.” She clasps her hands behind her back and looks to Kumugwe, presumably for reassurance, but his mouth is still hanging open, filled with tiny fluorescent fish that have mistaken it for a safe space in the vast sea. For a moment, I’m mesmerized by the blue-green glow behind his teeth.

  When Kumugwe neither speaks nor moves toward her, I ask, “Did you feel anything, any kind of sign that something was going to happen? Because if there’s even a hint or a twitch or a suspicion, even if you can’t control what’s about to happen, you could warn us. You could turn away, or resist it.”

  If I’d been in front of her when her arm became a sword, I could have been sliced in half.

  “NOW!” she screams, and both arms become weapons.

  “Abomination!” Kumugwe spews out a school of neons, which tumble through the water in every direction before righting themselves and swimming off. “Not you, my child, but what they have done to you.” He makes a gesture of opening his arms to her, but hesitates, withdrawing the offer.

  I question my decision to leave the chip in her brain, but I had to. At least until we know more. And with this troubling new development, will we ever make it to Kumugwe’s castle?

  “I did it, Celeste, I warned you, right?” She looks horrified as the swords spring in and out of her hands several times before stopping.

  “Yes! You did. Thank you!” I have to be careful with my next proposal. “This must scare you, Harmony. Until we can find out what their plans are, you’re going to have to keep your distance from everyone. Do you see why?”