Chapter 21: I Refuse to be Embarrassed By Fish

A glow flared somewhere, dark mingling with light, but I did not notice, did not care. It exploded outwards like a ring of power, ruffling my hair, but all I cared about were the feet trampling the fingers that tried despairingly to hold on, the expensive shoes shuffling forward, without noticing that one of their own was not with them any longer.

Randomly, I recalled something I had read somewhere. If one does not cheer for his brothers except for when they fall, one does not deserve to call the other his friend.

I watched the feet clamouring for space, berating each other for no reason. As I realised that they would only push me down to pull themselves higher, that this was not survival of the fittest, the hope in my eyes dulled. I looked down, staring into the rolling darkness below. To the souls that had been deemed not strong enough, cast aside.

Over the petty complaints, none of the people the voices belonged to heard the cry that issued from my chapped lips when I gripped the ledge harder. When the rock ground into dust. When, still hearing the echoes of bickering, I fell screaming into the endless chasm.

Screaming in protest and pain, I kept falling into that place where no joy, no love and light existed. No matter how long I fell, I could still see a scrap of light at the top of the hole, and even as I flung my hands out and up, almost ripping them away from my body with force of my plunge, I could not reach it. I wanted it. I wanted it more than anything else in the world, to get back to that beautiful place of joy and light and love. Where even if none was left over for me, I could show them we could be better. If only we strove to not bring others down but help each other rise. Rise. A foreign notion. And yet I had known it as well as my own heart.

Rise, over and over again.

Even when I removed my hands from my face and sifted morosely through the sand, in that place of depression and despondence, I was still crying, that river now a stream of water that followed me in my everlasting fall into the darkness. A trail back to the light, one that I could never follow. In that place where nobody watched, where the ones who did, who saw, too far gone to help, I roared my anguish to the world. I appeared stronger in that void, even though the wind was ripping my skin from my bones. I clawed at the walls, never mind the grit layering beneath my fingernails. My voice was distorted by misery, but it was loud and strong. I roared my defiance, even as my voice failed me, as I kept falling, falling, falling…

Snapping back to reality, I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Soon I found I was able to talk, so I begged again, just so any could hear how utterly wretched I was.

"Please." I sniffled. "Help me."

The sound shocked me. I of course did not expect my voice to be strong and clear, but I did not expect it to be so truly the opposite of my defiant roar in that mental place of blackness. It was cracked, weak. Unlike the commanding voice I'd used in Kaleveh. It sounded so unimportant. And I knew that however true my despair, I was only one of many who were also drowning in their misery. I was one voice among thousands.

One voice among thousands it may have been. But it was still pathetic.

Still small.

And more than anything, it was still broken.

I got up, but soon found that my legs shook too profoundly for them to support me. My hands hung limply at my sides. What a pitiful sight I must've been.

Through the haze of tears, I glimpsed a knot of rainbow clouds floating in the water.

Clouds weren't rainbow.

And there was no way they would be here—so far beneath the sky.

I rubbed away the remnants of tears. Slowly, my vision cleared.

They weren't clouds. They were fish.

I was not so alone after all, it appeared. I had an audience. Sure enough, there was a circle of fish surrounding me, tiny little bubbles of air rising up from their mouths. Salmon and tuna and mackerel. And then there were an assortment of reef fish, a dancing orange clownfish, an elegant butterflyfish.

And then there were fish I'd never seen before. There was one that was almost circular, so round and flat it looked like a saucer, with billowing pink fins like petals. Another that was almost the colour of the sea, only the faint glimmering of its silvery scales distinguishing it from the water.

I plonked down again, half surprised that they didn't all scatter at the cloud of sand that misted off the seabed. But after all, all of them had come to watch me, which was a miracle unto itself. Had I really been so disturbing? Or did Aquanaya have a message for me? The fish still stayed, tails flicking back and forth like pendulums. Apart from their tails, they floated so still in the water that they looked like puppets hanging by invisible strings.

I stared at the fish. The fish stared back unflinchingly. Bristling, one finally twitched. It was long and streamlined, with shimmering rainbow scales and undulating fins like the long sleeves on the dresses of the southern people, rippling gently in the current. It swam forward just a few centimetres, then without warning, it turned tail and shot like a bullet into the distance. Some of the other fish watched it, looked back at me, then followed it through the underwater jungle.

Follow us, they seemed to say. Some of the others were slower, as if lagging behind so I could keep up.

When the last one was gone, I followed. How could I explain this? The fish were leading me. Perhaps it was foolish, because I might never find the boat again, but I felt a need to follow them.

A need, that compelled me to follow the direction of a mismatched shoal of fish.

I did not need to swim. Gravity did not hinder my steps, so I ran. There was no water pressure. How Narreta would laugh if I told her than I chased rainbow fish hundreds of leagues under the sea.

I breathed easily, perhaps even more easily than on land—the air, wherever it came from, seemed more fluid. I thought of how nobody but my unimportant, overlooked cousin had come to see me off on this voyage, how once, reporters and officials would've clamoured to get a last word from their Chieftess. How Grandpa's words, patronising and condescending, had changed all that they thought of me within ten minutes. My tears flowed again, a river blending in with the sea, that would go unnoticed again. The water stung my eyes, but I thought only of the fish picking their way through the undersea terrain.

And through rock arches and coral labyrinths and silent shell graveyards, the fish led me on.