An eye gazes up at us, massive and bluer than anything I’ve ever seen, green at its edges, peering out from ground far below, at least two hundred feet down. It’s as if the flesh of Faloiv has parted to reveal this unblinking iris that stares at the sky, and it’s not until fish splash from its surface that I fully realize it’s not an actual eye but water.
“Whoa,” Rondo mutters. “It’s like it just . . . appeared.”
“It did,” Kimbullettican says. “In a way. This is a result of the work of multukwu. They spent many years tunneling through the bedrock in the groundwater beneath. This is one mouth to their tunnels.”
“Multukwu,” Alma says. “What class of animal is that?”
“Class?” Kimbullettican says, a number of their forehead spots arching.
“I mean, what kind of animal is a multukwu? What . . . is it?”
“Multukwu are water-dwelling life-forms. They briefly come ashore from time to time, but the groundwater is where they prefer to be.”
“What do they look like?” Alma presses.
“You will see very shortly,” Kimbullettican says, and turns to me. “It is good that Rasimbukar sent suits for your friends. This will be useful. Are you ready?”
I hesitate. “Ready? For what exactly?”
“For the water.”
“We’re—we’re going in?”
“Of course. I told you I knew a way to the archives that is more efficient. This is it.”
“The . . .” I pause. “The water?”
Kimbullettican blinks. “The tunnels, Octavia.”
I look down at the water, which seems farther by the second, and then back at them.
“The tunnels . . . under the water?”
“Yes.”
“Um . . . Kimbullettican. So, I’m not really sure how to say this. But, you know. We’re human. I’m not positive what your biological capabilities are when it comes to oxygen and stuff but . . .”
Kimbullettican’s forehead spots lower in confusion, and then rise quickly after, almost vibrating. “You are concerned about breathing underwater,” they say, their spots still vibrating, amused.
“I mean, yeah.”
“Do not be concerned. You will breathe. With the help of your suit. Now come.”
They turn away then, to the edge of the cliff. They don’t pause or look back to ensure we will follow. They step out into space as if the ground goes on invisibly before them, so confidently that I almost expect them to float. But they don’t, of course. They plunge down, and even though they had stepped out purposefully, I can’t contain the gasp that seizes my throat.
“Stars!” Alma curses. “Are they serious?”
I crane my neck over the side, down at the perfect blue water, the clear green at the edges like a crystal mined from a forest’s heart. I don’t hear the splash when Kimbullettican hits the water, but the last of a few rings spread out from where they must have entered.
“Can they breathe underwater?” Rondo says.
“Apparently.”
“And we’re—we’re going too?” Alma says.
“Apparently.”
We’re quiet for a moment. Alma clutches the straps of her pack, her fingers fiddling up and down their length.
“I mean, we slid down the Vagantur,” she says, persuading herself. “And it’s just water. Animals can swim. We can swim too. It’s just a matter of buoyancy, right?”
“Kimbullettican said the suit would help?” I offer.
“And they said it’s safe, right?” Rondo says, and he might have been talking to himself too, but he looks at me for confirmation. I don’t see any remnants of our conversation. He has buried it in himself, and I feel a mix of guilt and gratitude.
“They wouldn’t tell us to go in if it wasn’t,” I said. “I don’t think.”
“Stars,” Alma mutters. “Are we really about to do this?”
“We are if we want to get to the archives,” I say.
“Do we really need to go to the archives?” Alma says.
I give her a flat look.
“Okay, okay,” she says. “But I am not jumping first.”
I take another look down at the water. My blood has caught up to the realization of what I’m about to do, and it begins to thump in my ears.
“On three,” I say.
“One,” Rondo says. I can feel him reach for my hand and then change his mind.
“Two,” I say. Alma moves between us, grabs both our hands, linking us. She squeezes me so hard I wince.
“Three.”
I think I hear him say it but don’t wait for the word to fully form before I leap out into the nothing. I have no idea if I’m falling or floating. I’m weightless. The thrum of the wind in my ears could be my heartbeat. In that moment of blurring nothingness, I could be bodiless. Just a breath surrounded by many breaths.
Until I hit the water.
It’s so cold I scream. I feel the sound rising from somewhere deep beneath my ribs, as if a hook has caught hold of its root and reeled it out into the sunlight. But the sun is gone as I sink beneath the water, deep blue crushing in on my ears and nose. I realize I’d been holding my breath the whole way down, shock freezing my lungs, but the jolt of the frigid water wakes them, and they’re burning for air. I claw for the surface, the haze of sun somewhere above like a star signaling my path. When my head breaks through, the remnants of the scream cracks out of my mouth, muffled by water and the ragged intake of breath that my body demands.
“Are you all right?” Kimbullettican says. They’re next to me in the water, looking exactly as they do on land except for the fact that their skin has taken on a blue shade. Not camouflage exactly; just a tinge of indigo as if their skin had swallowed a bit of the water and is enjoying holding it there.
“I’m . . . fine,” I gasp. My legs and arms thrash somewhat, clawing and kicking at the cold water, every motion spurred by stale instinct.
My only experience with water has been the narrow shower cell in my family’s ’wam, brief interactions in which I rinse, getting as clean as I can, before using a disinfecting solution afterward, applied directly to the skin. Never submerged. Never . . . floating. The weightlessness I had felt while falling is nothing compared to this phenomenon. Is this how oscree feel? Unfettered by the ground, the laws of physics somehow defied? I know the science behind swimming. There are many animals that swim. But to feel it for the first time . . . My arms and legs measure their thrashing as I slowly realize that it’s not as difficult to stay afloat as my fear would have me believe.
“You will find that it does not require much effort to stay afloat,” Kimbullettican says. They bob effortlessly alongside me, the only motion an occasional stroke of their hand-paws through the water. I shoot a glance into the water beneath us but can’t see their feet—the water is too deeply blue. “This water is dense with minerals. It makes us buoyant. Your suit contributes as well.”
Nearby, Alma is still thrashing. She doesn’t realize that she is floating, and as a consequence is sprawled almost facedown across the surface, her chin angled backward to stay out of the water, arms and legs spread wide like an insect.
“Alma,” I call. “Relax! You can float.”
Rondo, on the other hand, has taken to the water as naturally as Kimbullettican. He floats several feet away from me, turning himself in a slow circle. Like Kimbullettican, he strokes the water every now and then, the look on his face supremely pleased, as if he has discovered a secret in the dense blue water.
“This is . . . unbelievable,” he says.
“You get used to the cold,” I say. The heat of the day has not faded despite the fact that the sun moved lower in the sky, and after the frigid shock, the water is soothing.
“Speak for yourself,” Alma cries. She has managed to move closer to us, but I don’t think on purpose. Her thrashing propels her.
“Alma, relax!” I repeat.
“This isn’t normal,” she sputters, spitting out water.
“How could it be abnormal?” Kimbullettican says.
“We don’t have fins,” Alma says. She has slowed her thrashing, allowing the water’s minerals and her suit to let her float. “We don’t belong in water.”
Kimbullettican says nothing to this, but in the Artery I detect a flash of resentment, red and green. Without the suit, we don’t belong on Faloiv, I think, and I don’t mean for it to reach Kimbullettican, but it does, and their eyes shoot in my direction over the top of the water with an expression I can’t read.
“I will call the multukwu now,” they say.
At this Alma stops moving entirely except for the occasional kick of her obscured feet. She has remembered that the water is not empty. We had seen the glimmer of fish splashing from the cliff; we are not alone, as one never is on this planet, and the realization sinks into each of us.
I retain my attention in the Artery to observe the way Kimbullettican reaches out to the creatures who made this water formation. As usual I am awed by the fluency of the Faloii’s language: they speak to the unseen multukwu in their own tongue, a unique succession of shapes and silent intonations that my brain can’t decipher. It’s like music, but complicated and played by many instruments at once. At first I think the multukwu have decided to remain silent, but then I sense them appearing at the edge of my consciousness, the radius my mind can reach much smaller than Kimbullettican’s.
They’re coming from below. I should have guessed this, knowing they are water-dwelling organisms. But the water beneath us is like the galaxy beyond the sky—opaque and unknowable.
“Do you feel them?” Alma says, her voice shivering too.
“Yes. But I don’t see them.”
We bob there in the water, helpless, and I try to avoid kicking my feet too much. The idea of feeling something where a moment before had been nothing is a sensation I don’t want to imagine. I try to mirror Kimbullettican, their lack of concern and the way they seem to enjoy the sun and the water. But my eyes can’t help but sweep the still surface, searching for ripples, trying to see a sign of the multukwu before they see us.
“They’ve got to be pretty big to have created something this large,” Rondo says softly.
“They will not harm you,” Kimbullettican says, swimming farther away, interested in a floating bit of aquatic plant. But this doesn’t feel as reassuring as if Rasimbukar had said it for some reason. Kimbullettican is our age, kind of. What if they’re wrong?
“How far away are they?” Alma says. She has floated nearer to me still, and now bobs directly in front of me, her eyes large and serious. “Can you tell? Did they . . .”
She stops, unblinking. I stare back at her, waiting for her to continue, until I realize her eyes aren’t exactly on me. She’s gazing over my shoulder, rapt.
“Octavia,” she says. “Turn around very slowly.”
Every muscle in my body wants to start thrashing. But shore is a hundred yards away, and anything born to the water on Faloiv could outswim me in two. I don’t even know how to swim—I’ve only just learned to float. I fight every natural impulse in my body and slowly, slowly maneuver my hands through the water to rotate.
I hadn’t even felt the water stir. Nothing to announce the arrival of this new addition to our party. Two large brown eyes stare back at me from a substantial head the size of the gwabi’s. They might have been mistaken for having skin and not fur from a distance, but I could reach out and touch the multukwu if I wanted to, and its nearness reveals the fine covering of green-black velvet coating its body. Around its eyes and mouth the hair is a little longer, as if the creature has eyelashes and a mustache. It blinks its round, wet eyes.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . ,” I whisper.
“Adorable,” Alma says.
She’s right. It is quite possibly the cutest animal I have ever seen in our years of study in the Greenhouse. The globular eyes shine, reflecting my face back to me, and I’ve never felt the urge to pet a specimen until this moment. A paw-like flipper breaks the surface of the still blue water as the multukwu feeds itself a clump of leafy green algae, and it goes on staring at me with innocent curiosity.
“Aww,” Alma says.
“I mean, wow,” Rondo says. “That’s . . . so cute.”
Now I do feel the water around me stir, but only barely. More must be coming up from the depths, I tell myself, but I’m disarmed by how harmless this one seems, and now look around eagerly for more.
“Something is on your back, O,” Rondo says, moving closer. “I think it’s algae?”
“Get it off,” I say, distracted still by the multukwu.
I feel Rondo’s hand on my suit, a quick brushing of his fingers, but then he splashes, suddenly frantic to get closer.
“Octavia, something is on your back!”
“What is it?” I say quickly.
“It’s a tentacle,” Alma cries. “Kimbullettican, do something!”
Kimbullettican has swum farther away in the last several minutes, eating algae like the multukwu. Now they turn their eyes on us from several yards away, their forehead spots clustered with confusion.
“Stars, it’s wrapped all the way around you,” Alma says, her voice rising into a near scream.
I feel it now. It had been like a whisper at first—a gentle undercurrent of the water, a thicket of algae flowing past. But now there is pressure, not just against my back but around my ribs as well. I’m encircled. Some instinct in me tells me not to panic—that whatever has me in its grasp may tighten if I struggle. But my heartbeat races against the pressure, and my hands rush to my body before I can stop them.
We are in water, so everything already feels wet—but whatever this is somehow feels wetter. The slickness of whatever holds me is pure muscle, like the vines of the violet-bloomed plant in the jungle, but stripped of the fuzz and soil. This is slimy but strong, so strong I can feel that although it has me in its grasp, it could squeeze me much more tightly if it chose to. The fact that I can’t see through the dense blue water only makes my blood rush faster through my veins.
The water before me ripples, a hushed sound like a single finger dipping in. I slowly raise my eyes and take in the sight of the multukwu rising farther out of the water, its muscular shoulders all brawny power, the same green-black coating of fur shining wetly outside the water. I have a flash of a fantasy that it will do something about the tentacle that is wrapped around my body: bite it, eat it, save me. But I slowly realize the tentacles are growing from the multukwu’s body.
I hear Rondo yell and I know without looking that he has been wrapped up as well. Alma is thrashing again, but it’s no good. The other multukwu appeared like ghosts from the blue deep, as silent as the first one, rising from nowhere. We are outnumbered and certainly no match for their strength. My heartbeat seems to have faded away. Maybe this means I’m dead already, but my fear is gone. I am calm in the face of these two adorable eyes, and I shouldn’t be, but what’s the point in fighting what is unfightable? We came into the water. This is what we earned.
Why do you not speak? Kimbullettican is there in the Artery but is swimming leisurely back from where they had been enjoying some of the surface algae. They will be gentler if you ask.
Ask. My mind is suddenly like the water, their words lightly breaking the surface like a fallen leaf. And just like that I am communicating with the multukwu.
Gently, I think, and the tentacle loosens, the large brown eyes blinking and the powerful jaws continuing to munch their algae unconcernedly.
They are here to take us through, Kimbullettican says. Why are you afraid?
Because . . . because . . . I didn’t know.
The multukwu are herbivores. You would know this if you were listening.
In the Artery I can sense the subtle tones of Kimbullettican’s disapproval.
I don’t know why I do that, I tell them. It’s like I forget I can hear them and they can hear me.
You are too busy being afraid, they say, and turn to the multukwu.
“It’s okay,” I say to Rondo and Alma. Alma’s thrashing has lessened, so I’m assuming the tentacles have loosened around her too. “They—they don’t mean any harm.”
“It’s still holding me,” Rondo says, his voice carrying over to me from nearby. “Why is it still holding me?”
“They’re going to take us through,” I say, echoing Kimbullettican. “Down there.”
“I will help you with your suits,” Kimbullettican says, and moves toward Alma in the water.
The tentacle around my waist shifts, turning me gently and carefully as if I am merely another strand of algae. The multukwu rotates me so that we are facing one another again and takes this moment to study me with his shiny eyes. They are expressive, I find, almost in the way that Kimbullettican’s forehead spots are: between the eyes and the flashes of pink in the Artery, I gather that he is amused by my initial fear.
You surprised me, I try to tell him. So quiet.
I don’t speak his language, so it’s useless, but I try to communicate an apology of sorts. They dismiss it with a wisp of green energy. All forgiven. I sense that he is pleased by the weather he found when he surfaced: the sun has warmed the algae and he continues snacking as Kimbullettican floats near Alma and the multukwu who she is partnered with, fiddling with the neck of Alma’s suit.
“Do not be frightened by what happens next,” Kimbullettican says. “It may feel strange.”
As if on cue, the upper neck of Alma’s suit begins to change: a slight shift at first as the qalm-grown material receives some kind of instruction from Kimbullettican, and then slowly creeps upward.
“Um . . . ,” Alma says.
“Relax,” I say.
Nothing moves on Alma except her eyes, which dart between Kimbullettican and me and occasionally down to the tentacle of the silent staring multukwu that holds her around the waist. The suit, oblivious to her concern, slowly expands, crawling up her throat, making its way over her chin, and then upward over her nose and eyes. Watching it raises the hairs on the back of my neck, as if I’m watching her being suffocated. But despite her eyes, widening farther still, she doesn’t betray any sign of being unable to breathe. Eventually the suit is covering her entire face like a vaguely green transparent mask.
“Can you breathe?” I call.
“Yes,” she says, her voice muffled but understandable. “Is this for the water?”
“Correct,” Kimbullettican says, moving toward Rondo. “The suit will filter the water as we dive. You will need to breathe shallowly, but you will have no trouble getting oxygen. Octavia, you can manage your own?”
I hear a shade of my father in their words, a subtle test, and although I don’t have any idea how to manage my own, I hear myself saying,“Yes.”
My suit is already on my body, so I figure I don’t need to do anything special as far as creating a physical connection. Instead, I try to tap into it, the way I have almost without meaning to in the past when it has cooled me, camouflaged me, hydrated me. When I focus, I can feel the thrum of its presence, but like the qalm back in Mbekenkanush, its language is far too complex for me to comprehend. I think back to when I first put it on in the room the qalm had grown for me—how I had preferred that my hands not be covered and the suit had seemed to understand this, leaving my fingers bare. Floating in the water, I try to communicate my need to the suit: the water around me and the breath in my lungs. It doesn’t feel ridiculous to be addressing my thoughts to a suit, because I can feel the material’s awareness of me. It’s like whispering to someone in the dark.
And then the suit begins to creep. It feels like the water lapping my chin at first, but then it rises, up my throat and over my jaw. It covers my ears, and I force myself not to hold my breath when it covers my nose and mouth. By the time it reaches my hairline, I’m breathing through the membrane the suit has created and looking at the world through the transparency of it.
You are ready? Kimbullettican says, finishing with Rondo and turning to me in the water. I nod in response.
“We will go down now,” they say out loud for the benefit of Rondo and Alma. Rondo’s face has relaxed again, enjoying the water, his chest rising and falling easily under the mask and in the grasp of the multukwu. “I will be with you the entire way.”
The multukwu, which has me wrapped in its tentacle, swallows the rest of the algae he had been grazing on and readjusts me in his grip. Another one of his tentacles snakes through the water, and a moment later I have been rotated so that my back is against the animal’s belly, both tentacles securing me there as if the multukwu’s body is a huge backpack. If anything, he carries me like a front pack. Once he has settled his tentacles, he shoots me a signal or comfort. Don’t worry, he seems to say. I’m good at this.
We sink so fast it’s as if we’d been pulled by an invisible chain. I reflexively take a gulp of air, but I don’t need it. My suit protects my lungs from the water. But my eyes are useless. The darkness of the water is impenetrable, and as we sink down, down, down, I feel Captain Williams’s pin jutting into my leg inside my suit. It’s like an echo, a reminder: this must have been what my ancestors might have felt as they disappeared into space for the first time.