Above World

by Jenn Reese

  He gave a harsh laugh. “No one will follow a man who can’t even control his own daughter.”

  “So this is my fault somehow?” she said. “What if Anadar is the next Kampii to die? Or Daphine?”

  Her father’s brow darkened. “You are too young to understand what’s happening. You know nothing of the Above World and its horrors. Grow up, Aluna. You’re about to get your tail, and you’re still acting like a child.”

  She glowered, her blistered hands curling into fists. She couldn’t speak, not without screaming. Where was the proud, honorable man the rest of the Kampii saw when they looked at her father? All she saw was a coward. A coward who was perpetually disappointed in her.

  “Get out of my sight,” her father said, and she did.

  TRADITIONALLY, her mother would have fixed her hair before the ceremony. Aluna had to make do with her sister.

  “Stop moving,” Daphine chided. “This would be easier if you’d grown your hair out. I can’t get this shell woven on.”

  “Tides’ teeth, how many shells do I need?” They’d been at this for more than an hour. Her head felt like a basket of clams.

  “Shhhh,” Daphine said.

  “Who did this to you, before your ceremony?” Aluna asked, surprised that she didn’t already know the answer. Their mother had died a week after Aluna was born, a few tides before Daphine got her tail.

  “I did it myself,” Daphine said.

  Aluna could hear a mix of pride and hurt in her sister’s voice, and that hollow, aching echo of silence that remained the only acknowledgment of their loss. She heard the echo in her brothers’ voices sometimes — and in her father’s voice on those rare occasions when he wasn’t yelling at her. But Daphine, who had suffered the most, rarely let it show. When she did, it made her look vulnerable. It made her seem young.

  Aluna squirmed. “I bet it didn’t take this long when you did it yourself,” she said crossly. She’d rather her sister be angry than frail.

  Daphine snorted. “It took longer, and half the shells fell out right before I swallowed the Ocean Seed.”

  “Ha!” Aluna poked at a group of pearls clustered at her temple. “That must have irked the Elders. They like everything to go steady as tides. Remember when Ehu sneezed during his ceremony and Elder Peleke got so flustered he forgot a line of the ritual?”

  Daphine laughed. The sound lifted Aluna’s heart. If her sister’s quiet despair could make others weep without even realizing why, then her laugh could bring sunlight to the abyss. Her three brothers had almost as much power. Pilipo and Ehu were the city’s best hunters, and Anadar would be, too, one day. Other Kampii looked up to them. Someday, they’d all be as respected as her father.

  All of them except her.

  She’d been telling herself for years that getting her tail would change everything. Once she looked like a real Kampii, she would suddenly become an invaluable member of the community and earn her siblings’ respect. Maybe even her father’s respect, too. But now, on the day of the ceremony, she faltered. Maybe a tail wouldn’t change enough. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything at all.

  “There,” Daphine said, and swam back a bit to admire her handiwork. “Pretty as a porpoise.”

  “Hey!”

  Daphine laughed again, and Aluna forgave her the insult.

  Aluna treaded water with six other girls and eight boys in a tiny cove near the ritual dome. The ceremonial robes fit loosely around her arms and legs, irritating her. She preferred her tight, sleeveless hunting leathers, designed for protection and speed. Dresses made her feel stupid, like she was trying to look as pretty as Daphine, when everyone knew she never would be.

  Despite the company, Aluna had never felt more alone. The other girls whispered to one another and kept looking at their legs. Soon they’d swallow the Ocean Seed and the ancestors would bestow their blessings. Their legs would change into tails. At thirteen, they’d finally be true Kampii.

  The transformation took several tides and was extremely painful. A rite of passage, the Elders called it, as if that somehow explained why it had to hurt. But everyone — every adult Kampii in the City of Shifting Tides — agreed that the pain was worth it.

  Elder Inoa came to fetch them. A fit Kampii in her late fifties, Inoa wore a bright-white robe cinched at the waist with a green cord and decorated with pearls and sparkle shells. Eight thin bracelets slid up and down her right arm, one for each of her children. Her flowing skirt was embroidered with the ancient Kampii seahorse and billowed around her tail in the morning current.

  Aluna’s chest swelled. She looked at her companions and saw the same mix of pride, excitement, and terror reflected on their faces. They followed the Elder in an ordered line, as they had seen Kampii do in years before this.

  It looked as if the entire population of the City of Shifting Tides had come to watch the festivities. Kampii clustered around the entrance hatch to the ritual dome, cheering and shouting blessings of luck as Aluna and the others swam by. Spectators weren’t allowed inside the dome during the ceremony, but that didn’t stop Kampii from pressing their faces to the dome’s glassy surface and watching from the outside.

  Once Aluna entered the ritual dome, the mood changed completely. The dome’s sound shield dulled the cheers to a distant murmur, and its curved glass walls had been darkened to black. The spectators could see in, but Aluna and the other ceremony participants couldn’t see out. The Elders had granted them the illusion of privacy.

  Daphine and Hoku were out there somewhere, but her brothers were not. On ceremony days, the hunters had to catch three times as many fish for the feast. Pilipo, Ehu, and Anadar were scouring the ocean, swimming far and fast, looking for prey to honor the ocean spirits and their ancestors.

  Elder Inoa shut the entrance hatch, and the world fell silent. Aluna followed the others to a small cluster of resting sticks dotting the center of the dome, wishing her heart would slow to its normal pace. Or at least stop beating so loudly in her head. She wrapped her legs around her resting stick, careful not to bend her knees too tightly. If past ceremonies were any indication, the Elders would drone on and on. She didn’t want her legs falling asleep or going numb.

  “First to speak will be Elder Kapono,” Elder Inoa said, and took her place with the other Elders. Aluna’s father swam forward.

  In his ritual clothes, he looked even more intimidating than usual. His flowing white tunic emphasized his dark skin. Shells and bits of kelp had been woven into his long, graying braids. Had Daphine done his hair before or after hers? If he cared that his youngest daughter was among the initiates this year, he didn’t show it. His gaze passed over her as if she were a hermit crab, beneath his notice.

  Her father spoke about the city’s history. She’d heard the story a million times, but she had to admit, her father told it well.

  Long ago, they had all lived in the Above World with the other Humans until the first Elder, Ali’ikai who-was-born Sarah Jennings, led them away from the disease and the famine and the war and made them a home under the waves. Only Sarah Jennings maintained contact with the Humans, the other Kampii colonies, and other splinter people. She became the Coral Kampii’s first Voice. But conditions in the Above World worsened. Sarah Jennings fell ill during one of her missions, and after she died, the Kampii vowed to limit their contact with the Above World forever.

  As the Elders lectured about honor and duty, Aluna’s thoughts drifted back to the kelp forest, back to Makina. She could almost feel the girl’s dead hand clutching her wrist, could almost see Makina’s fog-filled eyes, as if she were swimming right in front of her. How long would that memory haunt her?

  When Elder Inoa began handing out the ceremonial bowls, Aluna almost dropped hers. Elder Peleke was talking about responsibility at that very moment. Her father scowled. Aluna tightened her grip on the bowl and tried to focus.

  Elder Peleke called their names. Aluna rose first and slowly swam forward. Elder Inoa used a pair of tongs to pluck an Ocean
Seed from the ritual container that only the Elders could open. The seed glowed red-hot as she dropped it into Aluna’s bowl, but it sizzled and cooled quickly in open water. The seed was small, no bigger than a pearl, and a dingy brownish gray.

  “The color of the stormy sea,” the Elder said. “A symbol of change.”

  CHANGE, thought Aluna. Not a word that got a lot of use in the City of Shifting Tides. The Elders would rather die than do anything that would alter the Kampii way of life. Or, at least they were willing to let other people die.

  Elder Inoa began to speak about tradition, and Aluna felt movement in her chest, a quiet tension building slowly, like a wave.

  “Events in the Above World come and go,” the Elder intoned. “The Humans and the other splinters fight their wars and destroy their resources. We of the sea, of the coral, of water . . . we remain strong and unwavering. We persevere. We thrive.”

  Aluna snorted. She hadn’t meant to, but it just came out. The eleven Elders and the other supplicants all turned to stare.

  She bit her lip and lowered her gaze, trying to fight the anger growing inside her. How could they be “thriving” if innocent girls like Makina had to die? And if more and more Kampii would die just as she had? Hiding from the rest of the world while your failing tech slowly killed you was in no way the same as “thriving.”

  Elder Inoa began again. “We Kampii have always kept ourselves apart. We have not succumbed to the weakness that ravages the Above World. We have maintained our culture and grown our civilization even as the rest of the world suffers darkness and misery.”

  Aluna rolled her eyes and muttered to herself. The girl next to her shifted uncomfortably.

  “Silence!” Elder Peleke bellowed. Then, with more dignity, he turned to Elder Inoa and said, “Please continue, Elder.”

  Elder Inoa tucked a tendril of pale hair into her coral headpiece and continued, but not without a long, dark look in Aluna’s direction.

  “While the Above World destroys itself, our colony grows. . . .”

  In the distance, a whale sang. It was a sad, melancholy sound that cut through the water like a harpoon. All whales are pessimists, Hoku had told her once.

  He was probably out there now, wondering what she’d done to anger the Elders. She’d tell him later, along with some embellishment. Hoku loved a good story.

  But what if . . . what if Hoku were next? What if it had been his body she had found in the kelp forest? What if he died, afraid and alone, and the Elders had hidden him away like Makina, as if he had never even existed?

  Aluna stared down at the ugly seed in her bowl and clenched her teeth. Calm as Big Blue, she told herself. But she didn’t feel calm. She didn’t even truly want to be calm. The wave inside her chest grew like a tsunami, pulling thoughts and energy from every part of her and growing bigger and bigger.

  She unwrapped her legs from the resting stick and floated up.

  “On your stick, Aluna,” her father said, the first words he’d spoken directly to her since their fight the night before. His tail swished.

  “No,” Aluna said. The wave inside her crashed and rolled, thunderous loud. Elder Inoa was staring at her, mouth agape, breathing shell pulsing at her throat. “I can’t listen to this anymore,” Aluna said. “Our city isn’t growing. The Coral Kampii aren’t thriving.”

  “Daughter, enough!” her father yelled. Aluna cringed, but couldn’t stop the anger now that it had begun to flow. She turned on him.

  “Makina is just the latest victim of our ignorance, but there have been others. Too many others. My mother died, too,” she said, knowing it would hurt him. Wanting it to hurt. She couldn’t say it to him last night, in private, but she found her voice now in front of everybody. “You could have gone to the Above World for help when she got sick, but you let her die. Now our necklaces are breaking, and we’re still hiding in our shells.”

  Her father swam forward, his eyes dark, his mouth twisted. She’d never seen him so angry.

  “Aluna, daughter of Leilani,” he said, her mother’s name sounding like an insult, his shame at being her father evident in every syllable, “if you do not apologize to the Elders and return to your stick, you will be asked to leave this sacred place immediately.”

  But she wasn’t done. Not yet. She stared right into her father’s eyes. “If you won’t find HydroTek and ask for help, then I’ll go to the Above World and do it myself.”

  He stared back at her, his eyes dark with the promise of further punishment. It took all her strength not to cower before him. Silence filled the dome.

  Finally, he said, “This girl is deemed unworthy of citizenship in the City of Shifting Tides and will not pass into adulthood this day. What say the council?”

  “By the moon,” the Elders agreed in unison, clearly relieved.

  “Leave now, child,” her father said through gritted teeth, “and return to your foolish games.”

  The wave of anger inside Aluna roiled and churned. She lowered her gaze and fought it back. If she opened her mouth again, she had no idea what would come out. Her father would never forgive her for this. Never. Her entire family would suffer in their standing because of her.

  She swam toward the exit hatch slowly. Her body shook, her legs threatened to turn to jelly, but she kept them moving.

  When she got close to the exit, Elder Peleke called to her. “Leave the bowl, girl. You will return in no less than one year’s time to have your loyalty to the Kampii reassessed.”

  Aluna lowered herself to the ground. She stared at the Ocean Seed. How could something so small and ugly be so powerful? Her back was to the Elders. Before she placed the bowl on the sand, she snatched up the seed and hid it in her fist. The tiny nugget burned painfully hot against her palm. She said nothing and swam solemnly to the exit.

  As the hatch snicked shut behind her, Aluna heard Elder Peleke say, “Even our glorious city can produce, on occasion, a bad fish. . . .”

  She swam to her cave before Daphine or Hoku could catch up to her. Why had she taken the Ocean Seed? She had no plans to use it, at least not now. Where she was going, she needed legs.

  Aluna opened the small pouch she wore around her neck and pulled out the shiny silver ring that had once been her mother’s. She kissed the ring’s single purple stone as she did almost every night, then placed the stolen Ocean Seed within the ring’s circle and tucked both back into the pouch.

  She ripped off her ceremony clothes and dressed in a pair of worn leggings and the top Ehu had given to her the first time she’d killed a shark. Daphine had sewn the shark’s teeth around the neckline in a clever pattern. Whenever Aluna wore it, she felt fierce.

  She strapped on her knife and tossed a few pieces of cured fish into a small net secured to her waist sash. At the opening to her room, Aluna paused. She looked back at her swirly, glowing cave, at her comfy sticky-sponge bed, at her secret stockpile of spearheads and pretty shells, and wondered if she’d ever see any of it again.

  Or if she’d ever see Hoku. The Above World was no place for a youngling like him. If she told him where she was going, he’d insist on coming with her. Keeping herself safe was going to be enough of a challenge. Keeping them both safe would be close to impossible.

  The Elders were wrong. She wasn’t a bad fish. To her, duty meant something other than doing what you were told. To her, duty meant doing whatever you had to do for the good of the Kampii . . . regardless of the consequences. If the Elders had their way, they’d all ignore their problems until the whole colony dwindled away into nothing.

  Aluna left the nest and snuck out of the city, avoiding the major currents and crossways and sticking to the shadows like an eel. Once she was free of the coral reef, she swam upward, toward the sun, and toward the shore.

  HOKU WATCHED from outside the ritual dome, crammed between a Kampii woman who kept shoving him with her tail and a huge mussel farmer whose son was inside the dome with Aluna. The big Kampii kept asking what the Elders were saying, but no
one answered him. No one knew.

  Except Hoku. With his Extra Ears, he’d heard everything that had happened. Only he wished he hadn’t. He wished he’d never brought his stupid tech to the ceremony in the first place. He hated seeing his best friend humiliated, especially when he was powerless to help.

  Well, he could do something now. He could find Aluna and distract her. They could hunt tasty starbellies or find a wreck to scavenge. They could head back to the glowfield with a plan for disrupting the jellyfish and fending off Great White. He could get himself into trouble, if necessary, so that she could come and save him. That always cheered her up. Usually, it cheered him up, too.

  He pushed his way through the throngs of Kampii now gossiping about Aluna’s exit from the ceremony. He wanted to scream at them all, to tell them to be quiet, to leave her alone. He heard Kapono’s name mentioned, and Daphine’s, too. They’d be talking about Aluna and her whole family for moons.

  He swam to the broken dome first, and then to their secret meeting stone. No Aluna. He checked the abandoned hull outside the city, the perimeter of the kelp forest, and her secret stash of weapons near the training dome. Nothing.

  Finally, he went to the monument, the final resting place of Ali’ikai-born-Sarah Jennings. The monument was made from a smooth white stone unlike anything else in the city. Sarah Jennings’s face was carved into an oval on one side. Her hair was short and wild like Aluna’s, her eyes dark and severe. Aluna called them strong.

  Aluna snuck away to the monument often, usually after a fight with her father. She didn’t want anyone to know, so Hoku pretended he didn’t. Sometimes she left offerings propped up against the structure’s base — artifacts from their scavenging runs, glittering shells, shark teeth. The sort of things he brought home to show his mother.