Frieda sighed. “Something has got to shift before I’ll be comfortable enough to stay here. I can’t pretend I don’t have family back on land who think I’m dead. I can’t live in peace down here while other people are suffering without trying something to change it. You can’t expect me to wipe all that part of my life out of existence just for the privilege of mating with you.”
“I don’t expect you to,” he replied. “But we could confront all those problems much better as a family. You don’t have to go off alone by yourself.”
“Yes, I do,” she argued. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. This is my life and my future we’re talking about. I have to go to my own house—alone—before I can come to yours.”
He thought it over. “Are you saying you might still decide to leave? Would you still walk away from everything we just shared, our whole vision, for some thin promise of a life on land? How could you do that?”
“That’s all it was—a vision,” she told him. “We shared a vision of what our lives could be like if I stayed and mated with you. That doesn’t mean that future is written in stone for us.”
“I never said it did, but....” he began.
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “If we’re going to have any future together at all—and I’m not making any promises that we will—I have to spend this time by myself right now. I have to understand this in my own mind, with no help from you, and I have to come to the certainty of my decision on my own. You can’t make that decision for me.”
“I thought we understood each other,” he told her. “I thought we cared for each other enough to join our lives together into one.”
“We can care for each other without merging into one person,” she replied. “You’ve been under the water your entire life. You’ve never been separated from your own people by more than a film of fluid. I’ve been here a couple of days. I can’t just cross that divide in a heartbeat, just because we shared a vision.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You’re wrong. I do have to do it,” she replied. “I have to do it more than anything. I’m sorry you don’t understand, but I have to do it even if it means we can’t be together.”
He turned and started walking away, back toward the wall. “I understand you have to do it to satisfy your own idea of being here, and that’s all that matters. Do what you have to do.”
A shadow of doubt crept into her heart as she watched him dwindle into the distance. Had she made a colossal mistake by letting him walk away? Why had she turned her back on everything he could offer her? Would going with him to his family home really be so bad?
Then she shook herself and turned back toward the forest. No, she couldn’t go weak in the knees now, just because he kissed her. That vision they shared of a common future, with children and family all around them, was nice enough, but it couldn’t take the place of cold hard reality. She had her own life and her own journey, and no man, no matter how considerate, could derail her from that. Deek walking away the way he did and leaving her to follow her inclinations on her own proved he really was the man she thought he was. He could handle letting her go her own way for now on the promise that she would come back to him when she was ready.
Before she got to her own house, though, Sasha came toward her out of the woods. “What was that all about? Did I just see you two holding hands?”
Frieda’s cheeks burned. “I may have just shot myself in the foot.”
“What did you do?” Sasha asked.
“I told him I wanted to go home alone to my own house instead of his family home in the village.” Frieda glanced over Sasha’s shoulder at the house tucked between the trees. “Now I understand why you live here with Fritz instead of the village.”
“The only reason,” Sasha replied, “is because I don’t want every other Aqinas seeing us come and go, listening to us in the middle of the night, and watching me change my clothes every morning. I guess I’m not as Aqinas as they think I am, because they think nothing of sharing their personal space with dozens of other people. They don’t even notice it.”
Frieda blinked. “I never thought of that. How do all those people live together in the same house?”
Sasha chuckled. “I spent one night there with Fritz. Never again. You couldn’t even whisper without the whole clan knowing what you were talking about. And the beds are right next to each other. The Aqinas have no concept of marital privacy. Even the children think nothing of it.”
Frieda stared at her. Then she burst into nervous laughter. “I guess there’s more to living underwater with other people than I realized.”
Sasha nodded. “A lot more. I’m still just learning everything now.”
Frieda shook her head in wonder.
“So what’s going on with you and Deek?” Sasha asked. “Did he get mad when you said you wanted to continue to live alone?”
“Not at all,” Frieda replied. “That’s the most maddening part. He said he understood I had to work it out for myself.”
“That’s just like him,” Sasha remarked. “He respects people who can stand up for themselves.”
“I’m not sure I want to work it out for myself,” Frieda replied. “At least, I’m not sure I want to continue to live alone—not here. I’m still not certain I even want to stay here. I can’t forget my sisters, and I can’t quite make the adjustment to living underwater.”
“I still haven’t made the adjustment,” Sasha told her, “and I’ve been here a lot longer than you. I might never make it. Overcoming a lifetime of conditioning to expect a certain amount of mental space between me and other people might be too much to ask.”
“What about when you have children?” Frieda asked. “Will you move to the village for them, or will you stay here?”
“I really don’t know,” Sasha replied. “Fritz is like Deek. He’s willing to go along with whatever I need to feel comfortable. He would never insist I move to the village, and even if we stayed here, our children wouldn’t lack company. There are so many other children and relatives running all over the place, they can find what they need anywhere.”
Frieda looked around. “I still can’t get over the fact that they’re here and I can’t see them.”
“They’re there, all right,” Sasha murmured.
“Can you see them?” Frieda asked.
“Only sometimes,” Sasha replied. “When I do, I understand why I don’t see them all the time. I don’t think I could handle the sheer energy of having them around. Only people who’ve had children of their own can really handle that.”
Frieda slumped down on a rock in front of Sasha’s house and let her eyes roam over the landscape. “Why does nothing ever happen here?”
Sasha studied her. “What do you mean?”
“No one ever does anything,” Frieda explained. “No one works. No one creates anything. Everyone just sits around interacting with each other. Don’t you get bored? Doesn’t anyone here value meaningful work?”
Sasha’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“A life where the algae and the water bring you everything you want and need and desire is like living death,” Frieda went on. “What’s the point of it all? What’s the point of living like this?”
Sasha blinked at her. Then she squared her shoulders and turned around. “Follow me. I want to show you something.”
Sasha stepped through her door into her darkened house. Frieda hesitated, then she followed. Light flooded the room from above, and Sasha passed through it to the far corner of the room. She moved through another opening in the corner and disappeared.
Frieda poked her head through the opening and found herself in another room, also lighted from above by an unseen source. The room contained no furniture other than a wooden spinning wheel with a wooden chair in front of it and an enormous wooden weaving loom with a wooden bench in front of the beaters. A basket of grey wool, with two hand carding combs sat on the
floor next to the spinning wheel. A bright blue expanse of cloth rolled away from the front beam of the loom around the rear drum. Bright streaks of gold and red flashed through the rich blue.
Frieda stared at the room in mute wonder. Sasha stood in the center of the room and turned in a complete circle. Then she faced Frieda. “You see?”
Frieda came to her side and stared at everything in the room. She could hardly summon her voice to speak. “What is this place?”
“Can’t you see?” Sasha asked. “This is my work room.”
“Is this why you haven’t moved to the village?” Frieda asked.
“I told you why I haven’t moved to the village,” Sasha told her. “Every house in the village has at least one room like this. I could have this there as easily as I’ve got it here.”
Frieda couldn’t stop drinking in the room with her eyes. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Why do you do this? Do you weave the cloth for your clothes?”
Sasha snorted. “I couldn’t weave cloth fine enough to wear. No, the water gives us all our clothes.”
“Then why do you do it?” Frieda asked.
“You said yourself life wouldn’t be worth living without meaningful work,” Sasha replied. “Do you think the water would give us everything else we need without giving us that?”
“Did you know how to do all this before you came here?” Frieda asked.
Sasha burst out laughing. “I never did anything with my hands before I left Earth. I trained as a computer technician in El Paso before I got abducted by the Romarie. Well, I’ll never touch a computer again as long as I live. I only started learning to spin about six months ago.”
“How did you learn?” Frieda asked.
“Jen taught me a few things,” Sasha replied. “I spent a lot of time fumbling around doing trial and error. Fritz’s mother is a weaver, and I was at their home, watching her, when I got the bug. I asked her to teach me, and she did.”
“Do all the women spin and weave the way you do?” Frieda asked.
“Not all,” Sasha replied, “but everybody does something. Some paint pictures, some sketch, some do dramatic storytelling to entertain people. Some sing and dance. I can’t think of one person I’ve met who doesn’t do something.”
Frieda shook her head. “I had no idea. I haven’t seen any of them doing anything more than sitting around talking.”
“You haven’t seen children, either,” Sasha pointed out. “You’ll see what you want to see when you’re ready to see it. You won’t see it before you’re ready. You can be certain of that.”
“So am I ready to see it now?” Frieda asked. “If I’m ready to see this room, why can’t I see the others doing things?”
Sasha inclined her head toward the door. “Follow me.”
She walked back out of the house with Frieda on her heels. She walked back through the meadow, past the village and around the hill to a grassy glade, drenched in sunlight.
Another hill rose behind the first, and along the base of the hill, gangs of men toiled digging a ditch from the village to a gully behind the second hill. Some worked with bare chests, and they sang as they worked. Their picks rang against stone, and their spades thudded into the solid ground. Boys ran back and forth between the ditch and the village with buckets and trundling wheelbarrows. The whole glade rang with music and rising voices.
Frieda caught her breath at the sight. “What’s going on here?”
“They’re building a bunch of new houses,” Sasha told her. “They’re expanding the village.”
“I thought your population was dwindling,” Frieda countered. “Why are they building more houses?”
“These are going to be something like community gathering halls,” Sasha told her. “The people will gather there to share their music and their dance and to have stories and performances.”
“Didn’t they have all that before?” Frieda asked.
“They had it on a much more casual basis,” Sasha explained. “They used to have it in family homes, and sometimes in the meadow when a lot of people wanted to attend. Now they’ll have special places where people can gather to share their skills and their arts.”
Frieda couldn’t take her eyes off the work site. “This is amazing.”
“Not really,” Sasha replied. “Projects like this are going on all the time. Everybody has to contribute somehow, and they find ways to do it. If somebody comes up with a good idea that will enrich everyone else’s lives, the whole faction pitches in. No one is ever idle.”
Frieda blinked and lowered her eyes to the ground. “No one except me.”
Sasha took a step closer to her. “You’re different.”
“You’re right about that,” Frieda returned. “I don’t belong here.”
“You belong where you want to belong,” Sasha told her. “If you want to belong here, you will. If you have meaningful work to do somewhere else, you’ll go there. The only real question is, what is the meaningful work you have to do?”
Frieda turned away in shame. “I can’t watch this anymore.”
Sasha stayed at her side, back to the meadow to the edge of the forest. “Do you want to come back to my house? We can talk some more.”
Frieda shook her head. “I better go home.”
Sasha peered into her eyes. “You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to be. Don’t isolate yourself because you think you have to. It’s okay if you do nothing for a while, just until you get your bearings.”
Frieda’s shoulders slumped. “No, I better go. I need to be alone right now.”
Sasha stopped walking. “All right. You know where to find me if you need me.”
Frieda nodded and walked away toward her own house. She couldn’t bear all this togetherness a moment longer. At least when she lived on land she could talk to people and share their lives that way. She didn’t feel the loneliness of life on land until she got underwater, where loneliness didn’t exist.
Chapter 6
Frieda dragged her feet back to her house. The flowers in the window didn’t glow as brightly as she remembered. A shadow hung over the place. She didn’t really want to be alone, but she didn’t deserve the open hospitality of the Aqinas. She ought to keep her wretched loneliness away from them so she wouldn’t tarnish their happiness.
Even Sasha enjoyed the wholesome enrichment of her work. She didn’t have to live in the village to be part of an extended family. She didn’t suffer from her foreignness. She’d accepted her own need for privacy the Aqinas didn’t need, and the Aqinas accepted it, too. She’d found her place in the Aqinas world.
Frieda could never have that. She would always have one foot on land and one foot here in the water. No matter where she decided to go, she would always suffer for the other place. If she stayed, she would dream of visiting her sisters and her cousin. If she left, she would dream for the rest of her life about Deek and what might have been. She would never find a home as comfortable as this anywhere else.
She staggered into her house and threw herself into her chair in black despair. The memory of the men working on the trench tormented her. Every one of them, right down to young boys, enjoyed that work in every sinew of their bodies. The water didn’t have to keep them in good health when they had that work to challenge themselves.
And that work made them happy. It brought them together to contribute to their people and make their home beautiful. Why couldn’t she have that? What meaningful work could she do, here or anywhere else?
She cast her mind back over her life. What a wreck it lay behind her, leading right up to this moment. What had she done with the years? She’d spent six years at a mediocre university on the West Coast for a degree in Social Media. That degree wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on in Angondra. She should have learned to spin and weave like Sasha.
She’d lived her whole life in urban neighborhoods. She’d put so much time and energy into making sure she never
got dirt under her fingernails. She’d never even planted flowers in a garden. She wasn’t good for anything here. Deek would probably change his mind about her when he found out.
Then again, he must already know. The water would have shown him exactly what she was and what she’d done, and he still wanted to take her home. So Jen taught Sasha to spin, but she welcomed Frieda with open arms. Maybe the Aqinas wouldn’t care so much that she didn’t know how to tie her own shoes. If Sasha could learn in six months, Frieda could learn, too.
She shot out of her chair with a sudden burst of energy and paced around the house. She cast a critical eye over the flowers in her window. She couldn’t identify them, and she had no idea how to care for them, but maybe she could do something to brighten them up. If she was going to live here, she might as well take pride in it and turn her hand to making it as good as it could be.
She poked her finger into the soil around them. Then she kicked herself. Of course they wouldn’t be dry. They lived underwater. She touched the leaves. She had no idea which plants belonged in the window box and which might be weeds. She would have to ask.....well, she would probably have to ask Trin or Jen. Sasha hadn’t been here long enough to know the plants.
Why would the water create a window box with weeds in it, anyway? If this world was all some idealized fantasy to put her at ease, the place should be weed free. Unless, of course, the window box was there expressly to give her something to do, something to focus on besides her miserable life. That would make more sense.
She studied the window box again. After all, it was her window box, in her house. She could decide for herself which plants she wanted there and which to get rid of. Her spirits lifted still more. This meaningful work thing wasn’t so bad once you got into it.
She hunted around the house and found a broom constructed of some dried plant material. She shoved the question of how it dried under the ocean out of her mind and set to work sweeping out the house. For some reason, there really was quite a lot of dirt on the floor. Some fantasy this turned out to be. Who ever heard of a fantasy world where you had to do housework?
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