Tundra

The currents trickled, the currents ran, and the currents joined. Aais joined with them, floating and dazed, not knowing why his god had forsaken him. Hassis had saved him, but then he had left the water for the land, and Aais did not understand how. Now that the deity was gone, chosen to become a man instead of a fish, strange things were happening. Evil spirits had possessed his brothers and sisters, and forced them to turn on him. In the struggle, some had died.

Aais wailed as he drifted, humming a lament for his fallen friends become foes. The water became haunting with his tune, liquid and melancholy. Finally, he was carried back to the place he had come from. Egg mothers and hunters, scouts and frolickers came out of the open ocean where they lived, slept, drifting en masse, and ate the food that came their way. This water was only one part of the vast karakos territory, which spanned from the north where the clear, pure melts of glaciers fed the fjords to the far east and south, where jagged rocks guarded the cliffs from the bays Aais and his kind had never seen.

The shiny blue, green and purple scales of the shoal came swimming out of the depths towards him. ‘Aais,’ they cried, catching sight of the wounds that now no longer cried, their tears spent in the scuffle. ‘Oh, what has happened to you! Where have you been?’

Aais wove himself into their midst, performing the loops and knots that tied them together in kinship and in grief. ‘A terrible thing has happened,’ he said. ‘Spirits have possessed my hatchmates. Menaus is dead. So is Ivass.’

The others shook their heads, stern and sad. ‘Come, come,’ they said, and drew him in to the densest part of the tangled mass of bodies, where the elders were already fathoms deep in discussion. Others, younglings and spawnlings, but not hatchlings, who were too young to be involved in Speakings or to swim with the gigantic elders in the centre of the pack, gathered in a throng. Everybody shouted excitedly.

'Sharks with two heads, rays of the darkest sort–'

'All the coral in the coldest stream has gone red–'

'Took off with Menaus, and no-one's seen them for–'

'Brothers and sisters!’ Cried the largest elder, shushing the cacophony of the rest. This elder was close to being sacred. Her voice was a deep thunder, her head was misshapen and lumpy, and she was five times the size of the other elders. Soon, she would cease being a large elder and start being a small god. ‘It is clear that some catastrophe is upon us,’ she hummed, mutated gills thrumming violently, ‘the likes of which we have never faced before!'

'Yes,’ said a youngling, paddling in agitation, ‘and elders like you have no answers for us!'

'Oh?’ rumbled the largest elder. ‘And what's the spawnling answer?'

A spear was thrust into the current. ‘Hunt down Menaus, Cassix and Mereon and all the rest of them and demand some answers!' A cheer went up. ‘The elders are big enough! The elders can stop them!’

'Child,’ said the largest, ignoring the others’ protests and swimming in lazy circles that encompassed all the rest of the shoal. ‘Menaus and his followers are long gone. They were pursued to the edge of the dark water. If the trench-dwellers don't get them, the gods will for daring to enter sacred waters when they have so obviously turned against the shoal.'

'How can you say what the gods will do?’ another elder asked. ‘I saw That-Which-Encircles, not two days ago, chasing rainbow fish in the warm western shoal. That's part of the problem, elder. We cannot put our trust in gods when they act so strangely!'

'That's not what Aais says,’ said one of the sisters who had dragged him there. ‘A god saved Aais's life, and marked him for a purpose.'

'Yes, and Aais thinks we should go into the dark water after the lost ones, doesn't he?’ spat one of the elders. ‘Don't you, Aais?'

Aais struggled against the current, maintaining a distance from the elders. 'Don't make me part of this,’ he squealed. ‘I don't understand what happened to me. I am not someone who knows better than the elders!'

'Yes, you are,’ the other young ones insisted. ‘You've seen and touched a god. That makes you just as knowledgeable as any elder.'

He shook his head, fins flapping loosely. 'I don't know anything!’

'Yes, you do!'

Aais bowed his head in silence. Then, 'I think we need to find our gods,’ he said at last, fins pricked. ‘Our gods are at the root of all of this.'

'See, I told you. Aais thinks we should go into the dark water to consult with our gods…' the elder’s tone was suspicious, even accusatory.

'No!’ Aais exclaimed. 'The god took me up onto the land. That's where our gods are going, so that's where we need to go.'

'We can't go on the land!’ came the chorus. ‘We'll die! We don't know what's up there.'

There was no convincing them. 'Nonetheless,’ said Aais, his fins now fluttering insolently, ‘that is where god wants me to go. I can't speak for the rest of you. As I said, I'm no elder, I can't make a decision about what you should all do. I only know what I have to do.'

And with that, he swam out of the council, which quickly dissolved and reformed behind him, many amber eyes staring. Aais knew that he needed to go ashore, but suddenly, he also felt very ill.