Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(4) Ande: Chura's Skull

Taiki's not in the best space right now, so I make him narrate the route to the Sandsingers' camp, then repeat it until I've committed it to memory. Most of it seems to rely on the giant, complex symbols carved into each pillar, each one different, and only one on each "tree." I ask Taiki about them, but he says they're in a language he doesn't know. A language he's not sure anyone knows. He says people think they're names, but doesn't whose—or if they're the pillars' names, who named them. Many of the symbols are faded or gone, but he seems to know all the ones remaining.

He's got more stories about this place, too. Endless stories. I ask him to tell me some just to keep him from spinning, but that purpose is probably the only reason I don't regret the prompt. There are stories of surface Kels who came here in past wars. Whole groups of them, diving into the forest to look for stealthier routes to and from the islands, or hoping that their pursuers would lose them and give up. If the pursuers were Sami, they did give up; apparently this place terrifies the lights out of Sami. But many of the Kels who ventured into the stone forest were never seen again. Taiki says that's the thing with cursed areas: they attack you worst if you're there for your own gain.

Then there are stories about the Sandsingers, who have lived here for almost as long as I've been alive. Even after all those years, apparently, they sometimes still end up in parts of the forest they've never been before. Sometimes it takes them days to find their way home. They search for those parts once they've returned to their camp, but some, they've never found again. They don't seem affected by the curse, so I ask about that, too. Taiki just shrugs.

"Andalua might be protecting them," he signs when I press. I fight a scowl so he'll continue. "She has the highest power over everything in the water, and that includes the demigods. And they are trying to get her people back and rebalance the ocean."

Whenever he's not actively talking—and sometimes even then—Taiki's gaze flits around more nervously than before. He moves closer to me the farther we get, until he trips over my tail and stumbles back, apologizing. I offer my hand instead. We reach the Sandsinger camp like that, side by side, our locked hands both keeping Taiki present and offering a tether to prevent him from running into me again. The water of the stone forest is cloudier than most places, probably from its tangled currents. Even as I pull up at the edge of the clearing, the formation ahead is a ghost in the turquoise gloom.

Chura's Skull is somehow even more intimidating the second time I'm seeing it, probably because I know the story behind it now. I scan the first formation for any semblance to the Moontail skull it supposedly resembles. It's not until we get closer that I realize why. I stutter to a halt in the water. The first formation isn't the skull. Not alone. There's a second one beside it, just like there always has been: the smaller collection of pillars in which the Sandsinger camp is housed.

Now the Skull snaps into view. For a moment, my nerve almost fails me. I knew demigods were big, but this... this. The broader formation is the upper jaw, sinking down into the deep as its already thick base grows still thicker. Almost out of sight, I can see the black hole of an eye socket, and the ragged lines of pillars that are as close to teeth as a formation like this is getting. The smaller tower, meanwhile, has the sharply tapered shape of any hunting fish's lower jaw. It's too short, but it's also broken and worn down at the top. Even stone can't withstand the beating of time and the ocean forever.

I can feel now what the Sami must feel when they see this place. Here are the remains of a demigoddess who could swallow my people's village back on Telu with a single bite and not even have to stretch her mouth. Chura's Nekta, the Moontails, are already big for fish. Taller than a man in my village, at times. But they're still smaller than the sharks that shared a form with the demigod who killed Chura. If this is a demigoddess Moontail, how big was Martiat?