Drowned Read online

  His eyes are focused on Tiam. I bite my tongue for him. Tiam doesn’t belong in any single group, preferring to hover among the fishermen, the scavengers, the builders. In a world where sameness is much preferred, he’s always been one to do things his own way. He’s always acted like a lunatic in formation, but maybe today is the day he finally gets punished for it. I watch him stroll blithely toward the king, my heart skipping beat after beat at the thought.

  Don’t look at him. Don’t look at the king, I try to transmit to Tiam telepathically. But he’s so bold. Commoners are not allowed to view royalty. To do so is cause for immediate demotion of one’s standing in the formation. I’m already pressing my chin to my chest in reverence. I furtively watch as he raises his eyes to the king’s shoulders...his chin—no, don’t do it!—and finally his eyes. By then there are bloody teeth marks in my tongue. I draw in a breath and wait for something terrible to happen.

  But it never does. The king’s voice is soft. “So, it’s nearly high Hard Season. Your sixteenth, eh, Tiam?” he asks, quite jovially, adjusting his cape. His cape is blazing as pink as the sunset, easily the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, so it hurts to know I can’t gaze upon it directly.

  Tiam tilts his chin up. He responds as if he were talking to any adult. Polite, not groveling. “Yes, sir.”

  The king nods. “Good, good.”

  The king is a good man. He is taller than all of us, and regal. His beard is trimmed, red as the sunrise, and shiny and luxurious as his silk robes. Wallows have ruled the world for as long as any of us can remember. We don’t study history anymore, but from what I understand, the first Wallows were just regular people, like us. When the floods came, they opened their land and their castle to those who had been displaced. The one part of history that always rings in our ears is how the Wallows graciously allowed others to inhabit their property. The Wallows are most kind and benevolent, for it was their selfless act that allowed us to live.

  King Wallow has ruled since before I was born, and I think we are lucky to have him. The people of Tides listen to him. In a world such as ours, it would be so easy for chaos to reign, for people to disobey the rules for their own survival. But the king has made sure order prevails. He has dealt with all the troublemakers. He has kept us safe.

  I’m standing there, still awed by his presence at the formation this soon after high tide, but in a second I begin wishing I’d run far away. Because in that second the king turns to me.

  My eyes drop immediately to the ground, along with my stomach. “And you...” He seems to be fishing for my name. But even though there are only 496 people in this world, it seems to elude him, as it does most everyone.

  “Corvina Kettlefish,” I manage.

  “Ah.” He pauses, as if he’s never heard the name before. I am sure he has, but there’s no reason he should remember it from thousands of tides ago, when I’d been his daughter’s playmate. Though I do not meet his eyes, I know that in the silence, he’s taking in my straggly hair, dark and menacing as the ocean, my odd, ruddy skin, mottled with freckles and blisters. I hear him sniff loudly, and cringe. “What is that horrid smell?”

  “I, um...” I sputter dumbly. People are constantly sniffing around me, wrinkling their noses and waving their hands in front of their faces. I don’t want to explain. It’s mortifying enough talking about my duties when Tiam and the entire island aren’t audience to it.

  Princess Star blinks and fans her delicate pink hand in front of her pretty nose. She’s not of this world. Everything about the princess is pretty or special. The rumor is that many tides ago, a few seasons before I was born, she appeared suddenly in the tower as a gift from the gods, a sign that our world would be safe forever. She is light, goodness, hope.

  “No mind,” he says, with a dismissive wave. “How many Hard Seasons have you seen?”

  I stare at the ground and whisper, “Fifteen. Next will be my sixteenth Soft Season, Your Majesty.” Soft Season’s nearly two hundred high tides from now. Most people look to Soft Season’s coming with anticipation, as it’s the time when the ocean is not as menacing. I, however, cringe when it approaches. Every time it comes, it means I am closer to being cast to the outer edges of the formation.

  There is a pause. Then, finally, a laugh, which disintegrates into a disgusting, phlegmy cough. As Burbur had said. Coughs are always reason for concern here. The medics have no way to treat them. They don’t have a way to treat most illnesses and afflictions. Seaweed compresses or saltwater gargles are the usual prescription. But most people who start a cough never get better.

  “Goodness’ sake,” he mutters, staring at my arm, and I scramble to hide my deformity. But it’s too late. “More Scribbler Bait.”

  I’m used to being called Bait. People know me as that, instead of Corvina or Coe. That I’m used to it is the only thing that stops me from running away without being dismissed. Star interrupts. “But, Father. This is the one, I thought.”

  My mind whirls. The one? Can she be talking about me? It’s hard to believe that someone so ethereal and special ever thinks about me.

  King Wallow coughs loudly again. Then he clears his throat, and his eyes settle back on me. They are full of disgust. “She is... I don’t think... Just look at her.”

  Star says, “Then, who?”

  King Wallow walks away, with Star at his heels, almost floating like the angel she is. “Let us decide on that later. But if you ask me, she’s nothing but useless.” They leave me with Tiam, my face burning.

  Two

  Prayers to Broken Stone

  Once it’s no longer underwater, I walk slowly back to the moldy sleeping compartment, taking deep breaths to calm myself. The compartment is the only place on the island, save for the craphouse, where I can spare my skin from the sun. It’s a vast rotting building of concrete and metal, coated in barnacles and rust. Many people hate the mold and confinement of this place, and choose to rest outdoors. But I prefer the cool darkness, the steady dripping sounds, the familiar smell of decaying metal.

  Xilia is kneeling at the side of the formation, where she has propped up her idols. One is a skinny plastic female doll with white-blond hair. The other is a fat naked baby doll with chubby cheeks and dimples, and a soiled cloth body. There is also a red furry creature, bald in spots, with bulging white eyes. She has an honored place for each of them. “Come, pray with me, Coe,” she beckons.

  I kneel beside her for a moment, just to be polite. Xilia is the only one who prays, or at least the only one who prays openly. I think everyone else has their own gods they pray to, in the darkness, in whispers, so that nobody can hear them.

  I pray, too, silently. I pray that when death comes, I can accept it with dignity. That’s the only thing left to pray for these days. All other prayers have gone unanswered for so long, they seem like asking for the moon.

  “Oh, gods, thank you for sparing us this tide, for you are indeed great. Protect us from the savage sea. If the next is to be our last tide, please deliver us safely into your kingdom.”

  “Amen,” we say in unison.

  Xilia inspects me. “I think it will be the next tide,” she says. “I will be gone on the next one, for certain.”

  Xilia says this every tide. Yes, she’s crazy, but I think she does it to prepare herself. I, too, think about that tide every day. The tide that will sweep me away. I try to remember to be strong when the end comes. “It could be,” I say. After all, every tide could be.

  Xilia told me once what it is like at the outer edges of the formation. I’ve never been there, never had to see what it is like as the water climbs up to meet you. First, very slowly, the craphouse goes under, and then our sleeping compartment, and then the lower floor of the castle, until all you see is its cheerful seashell-pink roof under the churning, blackish waters. Then, as far as you can see, the only thing visible i
s the tower and the top of the formation. Usually there is a good five of my feet between the highest tide and the edge of the formation, but during high Hard Season, it’s less than one. During Hard Season, waves often smash against those on the outer edge, pushing them toward the center of the formation, and so people in the middle will push back, making those on the edge fall in. Certainly, they may swim, try to climb back up again, but nobody will help them, and if they’re too weak to climb up themselves (which most of us are), then the scribblers will get them. For those on the outer edge, every second of high tide is a battle, every wave may be the end. It is a maddening game. Which is why I indulge Xilia. I know I will be in her place one day.

  Once inside the compartment, the smell of mold comforts me, as does everything about being in this dark, closed space, where nobody can see me. The wrinkles I have from squinting flatten out, and my eyes adjust neatly to the darkness. I have my own duties to complete, but the words Scribbler Bait, along with what Princess Star said to me, keep ringing in my ears. The one? What could she possibly mean by that?

  The princess is all things I am not. I sometimes catch my reflection in a tide pool. My skin is freckled and has brown scabs from the sun, as it blisters easily. Unlike all the others, my skin turns a hot red during the evening. It’s not a pretty pale pink like the princess’s; it’s wildfire. I also have mottled scribbler scars everywhere, on my cheeks, my shoulders—and deep ones on my torso, as if someone tried to reach in and steal my ribs. My hair is a mangled nest of dull black, blacker than the ocean, coated thickly with salt and sand. I stopped trying to comb my fingers through it so long ago I can barely remember when it wasn’t like this. I’m smaller than most everyone, only a head or two taller than Fern. Then there are my eyes. They’re wide-set, slanted strangely and coated in strange thick black lashes. Plus they’re pink. Pink! I’m always blinking like crazy in the sun because the sun hurts my eyes so much that I can’t keep them open. Everyone else on the island is blond or reddish-haired, tanned, tall and strong, with light blue or brown eyes, and blond, barely noticeable lashes. But the worst thing is my stump. The place where my right hand once was is red and raw and shines grotesquely in the sun. I wear the same tunic fashioned together with old pieces of cloth and plastic and even kelp, and I know I smell like a rotting fish, at best. When my mother named me Corvina, she must have known who I would be. Named after a smelly, slimy, disgusting fish.

  Tiam used to be a very popular name here. It was once considered to be a lucky name, for it pays respect to the goddess Tiamat, who rules the sea and controls its chaos. But people don’t believe in luck anymore, since all of ours has been bad, so I’m probably the only one who knows its meaning. I doubt even Tiam knows. But Tiam is the closest thing to a god I’ve ever seen, and so I often wonder if our names control who we become.

  Star, too, is heavenly and pure, like her namesake. I am not allowed to look directly at her, but sometimes I sneak glances when her back is turned to me. It’s impossible not to. Her hair is clean and bright and shines like the early sunlight when it breaks over the horizon. She wears robes of colors more brilliant than I’d ever known possible, and her sinewy limbs are always adorned with pearls and other jewels. Her skin is even and soft as the clouds.

  This is the one, I thought, she’d said. She said it as if I were a fish she was selecting for dinner, as if we hadn’t been playmates as children. I’ve been told that long ago, when I was young, the princess, Tiam and I would play together in the castle. We had the honor of entertaining the princess because we were the only children on the entire island. Maybe Star, like I, does not remember those times. I do not remember my early childhood; I’ve pieced it together from what Ana and others have told me.

  I stretch my mat on the wet sand and lie down. The compartment was just underwater, so I hope the endless dripping of water from the roof and down the walls will lull me to sleep. Instead I keep thinking of what Star said, and how the king laughed at me.

  I roll over and draw in a breath. Tiam’s outline is there, in the doorway.

  He never comes to the compartment to sleep. He’s always out, building something, scavenging, making himself useful. When he does rest, he does so outside. He is so unlike me, preferring the wide, open outdoors to closed, dark spaces. If given the chance, I’d live my whole life in a closed, dark space.

  The small hopeful part of my brain tickles with the thought that maybe he came looking for me. But the last time he did that was probably when I was a child and he was looking for someone to build sand castles with. Then I notice he has two buckets of rainwater in his hands. He’s replenishing our drinking jugs.

  I watch his strong back, glistening with sweat, as he pours the two buckets into the big red container at the corner of the compartment. It’s dark inside the compartment, and he is too busy to notice me. I try to think of a time when he wasn’t busy, when we were kids and used to race down the beach at low tide. He always won.

  “Coe,” he whispers, startling me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Come scavenging with me,” he says. “I want to try the west side.”

  At first I think I must have misheard him, that he must have been asking someone else. Why would he want me to scavenge with him? But the longer I lie there, waiting for the person he was asking to get up and walk, the more I realize that his eyes, even in the darkness, are focused directly on mine.

  “Okay.” Heart beating madly, I stand up, roll up my mat with a shaking hand and put it into my bag. For him, my duties can wait a little longer. I heft my bag onto my shoulder and when we walk outside, the sun temporarily blinds me. The storm has passed, and the clouds have burned off. Tiam slings his bag and his scribbler-nose spear over his back and jogs quickly ahead. I hurry up behind him like his shadow, watching with envy how much the sunlight loves him, faithfully reflecting every tiny platinum hair on his tanned back and making his skin glimmer like gold.

  “Don’t listen to Wallow,” he says to me. “Don’t listen to any of them. They underestimate you.”

  “Right,” I mumble.

  “You’re better than any of them. If brains were muscles you’d be stronger than all of them.”

  I turn away from him to hide my blushing. Why is he telling me this? We used to confide in each other as children, yes. But for so many tides, as he’s been planning to enter adulthood and assume his new role, we’ve been like strangers. It was something I accepted; I found it inevitable that he’d pull away and eventually stop talking to me altogether. Because I’m strange-looking and don’t have any usefulness in this world. It’s true; I do know a lot more than the rest of them. But it’s all about useless things. My dad was also that way. He taught me everything he knew about the past, about the way things used to work. Before he left on his Explore so many tides ago, he gave me a thing called a “book,” one of his very prized possessions. Two of them, actually. One is a collection of stories called Fifty Famous Fairy Stories, and the other is a journal that was kept by some of our ancestors. The first entry was shortly before the floods began, and the last was thousands of tides ago. Now there is no more paper and nothing to write with; it must have been around the same time those things started becoming a luxury that we lost the language with which to write at all. On this book, the graying pages are so scribbled upon that not a single space remains on them. Some of the entries are in such tiny print, I have to squint to see the writing. I read from them whenever I have the rare chance of being alone, since if anyone knew I had them, they’d insist I add them to the kindling pile. I have just about every word memorized. But nobody here has use these days for fairy tales or facts about ages past. Nobody has use for me. Especially not someone like Tiam.

  “But brains are not muscles,” I say. My father might have been the only one with intelligence to rival mine, but he also had brawn. Thinking about my father again, I feel sick. I’d gotten good at existing without think
ing about him, at denying what must have happened to him. “That was the first time the king has talked to me. Ever,” I say.

  “Really?” He seems surprised. He scratches his chin.

  “I think they have something under the folds of their robes.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You do?”

  “Yeah. They’re being awfully sneaky.”

  After a moment he says, “Well, you’re the smart one.”

  I squint down the shoreline. We’re alone. The thought sends a chill down my spine, as it’s an unspoken rule in Tides never to go off alone with anyone. People who do have a way of disappearing. The king may keep order in this world, but in a world where space is at a premium, even the most useful of people aren’t safe. And we do not have the luxury of mourning anyone, much less the people stupid enough to put themselves in danger. “Why did you ask me to come with you?”

  “You’re right. Something’s going on,” he whispers. “I need to tell someone. If I don’t, I’ll burst. Can I trust you not to tell anyone?”

  He’s placing his trust in me. Me. I feel my face getting hot. Trust no one is the first rule of Tides. It is not easy, depending on people without placing trust in them, and yet that is what we all have learned to do. But when he looks at me, his face serious like that, I could agree to anything. “Yes,” I say, shivering.

  “King Wallow is dying.”

  “No!” I blurt, covering my mouth. I think back to the way he’d hacked and sputtered while talking to me, and the greenish tinge to his skin, and know that Tiam is right. “How do you know? What will we do?”

  “I was called to the palace late last night. But—”