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Nnedi Okorafor
She sliced through the water imagining herself a deadly beam of black light. The current parted against her sleek smooth skin. If any fish got in her way, she would spear it and keep right on going. She was on a mission. She was angry. She would succeed and then they would leave for good. They brought the stench of dryness, then they brought the noise and made the world bleed black ooze that left poison rainbows on the water’s surface. She’d often see these rainbows whenever she leapt over the water to touch the sun.
The ones who brought the rainbows were burrowing and building creatures from the land and no one could do anything about them. Except her. She’d done it before and they’d stopped for many moons. They’d gone away. She could do it again.
She increased her speed.
She was the largest swordfish in these waters. Her waters. Even when she migrated, this particular place remained hers. Everyone knew it. She had not been born here but in all her migrations, she was happiest here. She suspected this was the birthplace of one of those who created her.
She swam even faster.
She was blue grey and it was night. Though she could see, she didn’t need to. She knew where she was going from memory. She was aiming for the thing that looked like a giant dead snake. She remembered snakes; she’d seen plenty in her past life. In the sunlight, this dead snake was the colour of decaying seaweed with skin rough like coral.
Any moment now.
She was nearly there.
She was closing in fast.
She stabbed into it.
From the tip of her spear, down her spine, to the ends of all her fins, she experienced red-orange bursts of pain. The impact was so jarring that she couldn’t move. But there was victory; she felt the giant dead snake deflate. It was bleeding its black blood. Her perfect body went numb and she wondered if she had died. Then she wondered what new body she would find herself inhabiting. She remembered her last form, a yellow monkey; even while in that body, she’d loved to swim. The water had always called to her.
She awoke. Gently but quickly, she pulled her spear out. Black blood spewed in her face from the hole she’d made. She quickly turned away from the bitter-sweet tasting poison. Now they would leave soon. As she happily swam away in triumph, the loudest noise she’d ever heard vibrated through the water.
MOOM!
The noise rippled through the ocean with such intensity that she went tumbling with it, sure that it would tear her apart. All around her, it did just that to many of the smaller weaker fish and sea creatures.
The water calmed. Deeply shaken, she slowly swam to the surface. Head above the water, she moved through the bodies that glistened in the moonlight. Several smaller fish, jellyfish, even crabs, floated, belly up or dismembered. Many of the smaller creatures were probably simply obliterated. But she had survived.
She swam back to the depths. She’d only gone down a few feet when she smelled it. Clean, sweet, sweet, SWEET! Her senses were flooded with sweetness, the sweetest water she’d ever breathed. She swam forward, tasting the water more as it moved through her gills. In the darkness, she felt others around her. Other fish. Large, like herself, and small... so some small ones had survived.
Now, she saw everyone. There were even several sharp-toothed ones and mass killers. She could see this well now because something large and glowing was down ahead. A great shifting bar of glowing sand. This was what was giving off the water that was so clean it was sweet. She hoped the sweetness would drown out the foul blackness of the dead snake she’d pierced. She had a feeling it would. She had a very good feeling.
The sun was up now, sending its warm rays into the water. She could see everyone swimming, floating, wiggling right into it. There were sharks, sea cows, shrimps, octopus, tilapia, codfish, mackerel, flying fish, even seaweed. Creatures from the shallows, creatures from the shore, creatures from the deep, all here. A unique gathering.
What was happening here? She wanted to know but remained where she was. Waiting. Hesitating. Watching. It was not deep but it was wide. About two hundred feet below the surface. Right before her eyes, it shifted. From blue to green to clear to purple-pink to glowing gold. But it was the size, profile and shape of it that drew her. Once in her travels, she’d come across a giant world of food, beauty and activity. The coral reef had been blue, pink, yellow and green, inhabited by sea creatures of every shape and size. The water was sweet and there was not a dry creature in sight. She had lived in that place for many moons before finally returning to her favourite waters.
When she’d travelled again, she’d never been able to find the paradise she’d left. Now here in her home was something even wilder and more alive than her lost paradise. And like there, the water here was sweet. Clean and clear. She couldn’t see the end of it. However, there was one thing she was certain of: what she was seeing wasn’t from the sea’s greatest depths or the dry places. This was from far, far away.
More and more creatures swam down to it. As they drew closer, she saw the colours pulsate and embrace them. She noticed an octopus with one missing tentacle descending toward it. Suddenly, it grew brilliant pink-purple and straightened all its tentacles. Then right before her eyes, it grew its missing tentacle back and what looked like bony spokes erupted from its soft head. It spun and flipped and then shot off, down into one of the circular bone-like caves of the undulating coral-like thing below.
When a golden blob ascended to meet her, she still didn’t move, but she didn’t flee either. The sweetness she smelled and its gentle movements were soothing and non-threatening. When it communicated with her, asking question after question, she hesitated. Then she told it exactly what she wanted.
Everything was changing.
She’d always loved her smooth skin but now it became impenetrable, its colour now golden like the light the New People gave off. The colour that reminded her of another life where she could both enjoy the water and endure the sun and the air.
Her sword-like spear grew longer and so sharp at the tip that it sang. They made her eyes like the blackest stone and she could see deep into the ocean and high into the sky. And when she wanted to, she could make spikes of cartilage jut out along her spine as if she were some ancestral creature from the deepest ocean caves of old. The last thing she requested was to be three times her size and twice her weight.
They made it so.
Now she was no longer a great swordfish. She was a monster.
“Despite the FPSO Mystras’ loading hose leaking crude oil, the ocean water just outside of Lagos, Nigeria was now so clean that a cup of its salty sweet goodness would heal the worst human illnesses and cause a hundred more illnesses yet known to humankind. It was more alive than it had been in centuries and it was teeming with aliens and monsters.”
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Nnedi Okorafor is a novelist of Nigerian descent known for weaving African culture into creative evocative settings and memorable characters. ‘Moom!’ is a prelude to a forthcoming novel. Her novels include Who Fears Death (World Fantasy Award for Best Novel), Akata Witch (Andre Norton Award Nominee), Zahrah the Windseeker (Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (CBS Parallax Award). Her children’s book Long Juju Man is the winner of the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa. Her compilation of short stories, Kabu Kabu (Prime Books) and chapter book Iridessa and the Secret of the Never Mine (Disney Press) are due for release in 2013. Nnedi holds a PhD in Literature and is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. Visit Nnedi at www.nnedi.com.
