The sky darkened with shadow again, and she found herself at the edge of the woods, standing in front of a different house. This one wasn’t set in a clearing between the trees, though. It sat in the meadow’s waving grass with the trees behind it. Other plants decorated the doorstep, and more colored plants brightened the windows.
Sasha patted her on the shoulder. “I knew you could do it.”
Frieda stepped inside, but the whole scene appeared surreal and hazy to her. This couldn’t really be her own house. Inside, though, something changed in her mind. A deep sensation of rightness and comfort welled up inside her. She would have sat down in the chair at the table if Sasha hadn’t been standing there, but this was, really and truly, her own house. She could live here and never feel out of place.
Sasha moved toward the door. “You’ll be all right now. You can go out to the meadow again whenever you want to, and if you want to talk to me, all you have to do is think about me and I’ll come.”
Frieda whirled around. “Wait a minute. Not so fast.”
“What is it now?” Sasha asked.
“I still have some questions for you,” Frieda replied.
“Well, fire away,” Sasha told her.
Frieda shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t like the idea of bringing someone to me against their will. What if they don’t want to come when I call them?”
Sasha turned toward her with a sigh. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re not bringing anyone against their will. It only looks like they come to you because the water forms a seamless connection between your mind and your body and your spirit and theirs. The other person never leaves their own meadow. To them, it looks like you came to them.”
Frieda blinked. “It does? So you’re in your own meadow right now?”
Sasha laughed “Of course I am. Think about it. Do you know anything about bees on Earth?”
“Bees?” Frieda repeated. “You mean like honey bees?”
“Exactly,” Sasha replied. “In their hives, they communicate through the smell of their pheromones. Their chemical signature tells all the other bees in the hive exactly what they ate that day, where they’re going, what they’re doing, even how old they are and how healthy they are. The smell, the temperature, the chemical composition of the wax, even the vibration of their wings against the hive box communicates to every bee in the hive exactly what the rest of the hive is doing. It creates one homogeneous chemical solution.”
“Are you telling me the Aqinas are the same?” Frieda asked.
“They are the same,” Sasha replied, “except it’s the water that creates the homogeneous solution. The chemical action of your body, even the electrical signals in your nervous system, are transmitted through the water to every other Aqinas. That’s how they communicate with each other, through the water. We aren’t standing here in a house talking to each other. That wouldn’t be possible in the middle of the ocean. The water creates the illusion we’re doing that because our minds can relate to that frame of reference most easily.”
Frieda really did sink into her chair then. “It’s awfully complicated.”
“Don’t make it any more complicated for yourself than you have to,” Sasha replied. “We’re standing here talking to each other, and that’s as real as anything. I’m not an illusion. I’m a real person, and I’m showing you around your new home. That’s real.”
“What else is real?” Frieda asked. “How can you tell where real ends and fantasy begins?”
“It’s all real,” Sasha replied. “Even the parts you’re calling fantasy are real. You can have the same relationships with people that you had on land. You can make a home for yourself here the same way you did on land. All the parts of life that make it worth living are here. It’s only the window dressing that’s different, and it isn’t even different, either. It’s the same as your life on land. It’s just different than it would be if the water didn’t make it the same.”
Frieda closed her eyes again, and her voice croaked out in a hoarse whisper. “Stop.”
Sasha took her hand once more. “Let’s go back to the meadow. Everything makes a lot more sense there.”
Frieda got to her feet. “What do you eat?”
Sasha shot her a glance over her shoulder. “What?”
“What do you eat?” Frieda repeated. “Do you hunt shellfish or something?”
Sasha’s face brightened. “The algae that moves oxygen into our blood also moves microscopic nutrients into our bodies so we don’t have to eat. But you can eat some of this stuff if you want to, if it makes you feel better.”
She waved her hand toward the table. A wooden tray Frieda hadn’t noticed before sat on the table, and a dozen different objects covered it. Some looked like moss. Others looked something like crabs. Still others looked like bright purple apples. “What is this stuff?”
“It’s food,” Sasha replied. “It’s Aqinas food, but you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to. You’re not really hungry, are you?”
Frieda thought about it. “No, I’m not, now that you mention it.”
“You won’t get hungry, or thirsty, or tired, except maybe mentally tired,” Sasha told her. “The algae and the water take care of all our bodily needs so we can live in this world indefinitely. The only thing they can’t provide is the company of other people. We have to do that for ourselves, but this world works remarkably well for that.”
Sasha led her back to the meadow. Frieda turned a complete circle and took in the whole view in the light of her new understanding. “Now what?”
Sasha took a step backwards. “I’ll go now. You know everything you need to know, and if you need me for anything, you know how to find me.” She turned and started walking back toward the wall. “I’ll see you later.”
Chapter 2
Frieda stood in the center of the meadow—her meadow—for a long time. It looked different now that Sasha had explained to her what everything really was. What she originally thought was the sky looked exactly like the surface of water seen from underneath, with the sun refracting through the waves in a myriad of shimmering patterns. The dark shapes outlined against the brightness looked like strange sea creatures drifting across the upper layer of water. The trees really did resemble giant seaweed waving in the current.
Sasha never explained about the wall, and Frieda couldn’t stop her mind from gravitating toward the people near it. They would be like Fritz and Sasha and her—human, at least in appearance and speech and behavior.
After all, what more was there, when it came to interacting with people? She had more in common with these Aqinas than she had with the Lycaon, with their pointed ears and sharp teeth, and the Avitras, with their bright feathers and birdlike eyes. Sasha was right about that part. When it came to relating to people, to making connections with them and enjoying their company, she could find everything she needed here as easily as anywhere else.
Still, she couldn’t get her mind to accept the reality that this place was under the sea, that she was underwater right now, that some black algae was allowing her to breathe. The warm sun on the brittle summer grass, the perfume of the wildflowers, and the shadows of the trees moving across the ground—it all seemed so like Earth. She was home here. She was home after almost a year on this strange planet.
Maybe that’s why she never made a home for herself with the Lycaon or the Avitras. They were too alien. The Earthlike familiarity of the planet couldn’t hide the alien nature of the people. She couldn’t overcome her own prejudice against them.
She wouldn’t have that problem here. Fritz didn’t look alien at all. He was tall and handsome and charming. No wonder Sasha chose him as her mate. Frieda’s eyes gravitated toward the wall again, but even before she had time to wonder if there were any other Aqinas men like Fritz over there, someone split off from the group and came toward her.
Frieda’s heartbeat quickened. What would he be like? Would he be tall and handsome and charming like Fritz? Wh
y did she think that when she hadn’t even wanted to bring a man toward her? She only wondered.
He brushed his hand over the grass the same way she did when she first met Sasha. The motion put her at ease. She wasn’t the only one who felt that comfortable familiarity with this place. He stopped in front of her, and Frieda stared at him. He couldn’t be older than Fritz, but his eyes radiated a calm born of maturity and experience. Fritz struck her as young and untried. This man had seen it all, even though he couldn’t have been much older than Frieda herself. He stood still and regarded her with his mellow brown eyes while she scanned him up and down.
Her curiosity got the better of her. “Do all Aqinas wear their hair in those ropes down the back of your heads?”
He didn’t smile. “Yes. The algae embeds in our hair and keeps it tied like this so it can access every part of our skin. This way, it has maximum surface area to transmit oxygen into our blood.”
“Why does it do that?” she asked. “How did you adapt to get the algae to colonize your skin?”
“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” he replied. “The algae are small plants. They consume the carbon dioxide we produce, and they get rid of their waste oxygen by diffusing it into our blood stream. This way, we don’t have to breathe at all.”
Frieda blushed. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself to you first. I’m Frieda. I apologize for being rude.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he replied. “You just got here. It’s natural you have questions about us.”
She paused. “So what’s your name?”
He didn’t close his eyes and bow the way Fritz did. He stared straight into her eyes, and yet his gaze didn’t disconcert her the way she expected it to. She stared back into his eyes with frank acceptance.
“My name is Deek,” he replied.
“Deek!” she repeated. “That’s an interesting name. Do all the Aqinas have one-syllable names?”
He studied her. “I really don’t know. I don’t know all the Aqinas.”
His manner fascinated her. He couldn’t have been more different from Fritz if he’d been a different species. “How many Aqinas do you know?”
“I know my family and my friends,” he replied. “And I know all Fritz’s family, and a few other families connected with them.”
Frieda frowned. “Fritz’s family is the leaders of the Aqinas. You must be talking about families with some political connection. Are they the ones that run this faction?”
He put his head on one side and nodded. “I understand. You came from the factions, so naturally you think we behave the same way, but we don’t have a faction. We don’t have families with political connection. No one runs the Aqinas.”
“Then who makes decisions concerning what you’ll do and how you’ll run your lives?” she asked. “Who’s in charge of that?”
“No one makes decisions concerning what you’ll do and how you’ll run your life except you,” he replied. “Some of the families make decisions as groups, but no one tells anybody else what to do or how to do it. We don’t function that way.”
Frieda thought that over. “Tell me more about the connection the water makes between your minds. Sasha said you know everything everybody else is thinking and feeling at all times because the water makes them one homogeneous chemical solution.”
“That’s one way of describing it,” he replied. “For example, right now I can see shadows of the life you had when you were on land. I can see the factions where you lived and the men who led them. I can understand why you think the Aqinas might be the same way. I would have no frame of reference for that if the water didn’t make it clear to me.”
Frieda blinked. “Are you saying you’re reading my mind right now?”
“You can do the same thing if you want to,” he replied. “You can see images of my life among the Aqinas, and you can understand better how we live.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” she asked. “Right now, all I see is you standing in front of me.”
“Stop thinking so much,” he told her. “Stop seeing with your eyes and try instead to see with a different part of your mind. If you try, you’ll find the information is already inside you. The water puts it there, but it doesn’t put it into your mind. It puts it through your skin and your mouth and your ears and your fingers. Try it and you’ll see.”
For a moment, she only stared at him. What did he mean by seeing with her skin and ears and fingers? That made no sense at all. Then the information came to her. Images of the Aqinas world, with its wavy watery lines, came to her as if from a forgotten dream.
A version of the meadow, but without its Earth like quality, flickered at the edge of her awareness. Instead of waving grass in the summer wind, sea plants studded the ocean floor. The wildflowers decorating the expanse were anemones and polyps turning their purple and yellow cups toward the sunlight filtering down from above. A mass of caves in a coral bank stood in the shadows of the seaweed, and people moved in and out of them.
So this was what the meadow looked like to the Aqinas. They didn’t need any image of Earth, or even the Angondran surface, to make it home to them. As Frieda watched, a woman stepped out of one of the caves and waved across the expanse to her—except she didn’t wave at Frieda. She waved at Deek. Frieda was Deek in that moment. The woman was his mother, and that cave was their family home. She saw the place through Deek’s eyes and knew it as the Aqinas knew it. Her own home looked like a house because she was human, but that cave was the most comfortable place for an Aqinas.
Frieda closed her eyes against the image, and when she opened them again, the meadow surrounded her once more, with its grass and daisies and yarrow and dandelions. She turned back to Deek and sighed. “I see.”
“You can do the same thing with any Aqinas you meet,” he told her. “You can understand just about anything about them you want to understand. The water tells you.”
“Then what’s the point of talking to them?” she asked. “If you know everything about them, you have no reason to have anything to do with them.”
“You’re talking to me right now,” he pointed out. “You just saw for yourself what my world looks like to me, and you know my family, and a lot of other information about me, but you’re still talking to me.”
“I guess I just want company,” Frieda remarked.
For the first time, he smiled. “There are some things the water can’t give us. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of things the water can’t give us.”
“But what do you talk about?” she asked. “I’m talking to you because I don’t know anything about you. Okay, I know something about you, but I’m a stranger here. What do people talk about who’ve known each other their whole lives?”
“What do you talk to your parents about?” he asked. “What do you talk to your sisters and your cousins and your dearest friends about?”
Frieda blushed again. So he knew that much about her, too. He knew she had sisters and cousins. He knew she didn’t have any brothers. He was still reading her mind. He could glean all this personal information and a lot more besides, but that didn’t bother her.
“I talk to them about what I’m doing,” she told him, “and where I’ve been, and what I’m thinking and feeling about my decisions and my plans. But you don’t have to do that. The water tells people everything they need to know about you.”
“Not everything,” he replied. “And even if it did tell us everything, it can’t take the place of talking to each other about it. We would still have to do that.”
Frieda nodded. “I can understand that. There’s nothing like talking to someone your trust about everything on your mind. I wouldn’t want to give that up for the world.”
“You don’t have to.” He turned toward the forest. “Would you like to take a walk?”
She stared at him. “Take a walk? But there’s nowhere to walk to. We won’t go anywhere.”
“It’s still nice to take a walk, isn’t it
?” he asked.
She took a step after him. “I guess so.”
She fell in at his side, but she didn’t watch where they were going. They could walk a million miles and never leave that meadow. They would never come to the edge of the forest, any more than she and Sasha could get to that wall over there.
That gave her an idea, and she turned back. “What’s that wall over there? Is it a city of some kind?”
“That’s the shore,” he replied.
“The shore!” she repeated.
“It’s the edge of the water,” he explained. “That’s where the ocean ends and the land begins.”
“But it’s a wall,” she countered.
“To you, it’s a wall,” he replied. “It’s the limit of our territory. Maybe that’s why it looks like a wall to you.”
“So why are all those people over there?” she asked. “Why aren’t they walking in the meadow, too?”
“They are,” he replied. “Each one of them is walking in their own meadow. To you, they’re walking far away because they’re far away in your mind. When your mind brings them closer, they will come closer.”
Frieda looked down at the ground. “That’s what Sasha said.”
“Don’t you believe her?” Deek asked. “You can trust Sasha. She wouldn’t deceive you.”
“I trust her,” Frieda murmured. “It’s just so different from the world I’m used to. It’s going to take me a while to get used to it.”
He gazed into her eyes with a distant expression on his face. Then he shook himself and started walking again. “I can only understand that in a marginal way. I’ve lived with the Aqinas my whole life, whereas you’ve lived on land where everyone is separated from everyone else by an unbridgeable gap. All I can say is it must be a very lonely world to live in.”
“It isn’t lonely when you’re used to it,” she told him. “You find other ways of connecting with people. It’s like you say. The water can’t do everything. Some things you have to do for yourself by coming face to face with people. I suppose it’s not so much different on land as it is here.”
Saved by a Bear (Legends of Black Salmon Falls Book 2) Page 85