Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

Anthony laughed weakly.

“What are you three?” the President asked. He was holding Hawra tightly and she was resting her wet head on his shoulder. The wig she had worn was gone, revealing her short Afro.

“We’re Nigerians,” Agu said. “Just Nigerians.” He looked at Anthony and added, “And one Ghanaian.”

There was the sound of metal balls rolling in a glass bowl and there Ayodele stood beside Adaora. “That is what I was telling them,” Ayodele said, motioning toward the water.

“Why did you leave us like that?” Adaora snapped. “Why—”

“If I hadn’t handled the larger creatures, none of you would be here,” Ayodele said. “That’s where I went. You think what you dealt with were the biggest?” She shrugged. “You saved each other but I saved you all. The going should be smoother from now on.”

Agu stumbled to the motor and breathed a sigh of relief when it started. He got them moving again. His skin felt prickly and tight. He’d gulped down several mouthfuls of salt water and felt that if he didn’t belch soon he’d throw up. Anthony was probably full of the water, too. And Hawra and Adaora.

Beep beep! Femi lowered his camera, his eyes wide, his mouth agape. “Wow.” He reached into his pocket and brought out his BlackBerry. Within ten minutes the footage was on YouTube.

Once they were back on the boat, everyone who’d been in the water threw up copious amounts of it. When there was none left in their stomachs, they dry heaved. Anthony was in the worst shape, breaking out in hives and plagued by a throbbing headache. Femi ran back and forth between Anthony and the side of the boat, dipping a cup in the water and then pouring it on Anthony’s arms and legs to help soothe the itchiness.

“Sorry,” Ayodele said. Adaora didn’t think she meant it at all but she was too weak to tell her so.

“Is it the water?” Femi asked. “I mean, I’m fine, and so are the President, Bamidele and Chucks. None of us were in there.”

“Yes, I think it is.”

Adaora felt her stomach lurch again. “What have you people done to it?”

“Nothing that didn’t want to be done.”

Done by whom? Adaora thought. She knew the answer. The sea creatures. They wanted the water to be “clean”. “Clean” for sea life… which meant toxic for modern, civilized, meat-eating, clean-water-drinking human beings. Shit , she thought. I’m going to die out here.

Adaora didn’t know how much time passed. All she knew was that when she next opened her eyes, the sun was somewhere else in the sky and the boat had stopped. She sat up. She felt a little better but she’d broken out in the same rash that Anthony had and her head pounded miserably. Anthony was lying on the boat’s floor, Agu and Femi beside him.

“Is he all right?” she whispered.

“He’s still breathing, but he won’t open his eyes,” Femi said. He got up and walked past Adaora.

“Agu?”

“Yes, Adaora,” he said.

“Are you—”

Splash!

Adaora was looking at Agu’s face. He was looking behind her, at the others at the far end of the boat. At the sound of the splash, his jaw dropped. She felt her heart sink. The President, Hawra, Ayodele, the guards. She didn’t want to turn around and see what had happened to them. She’d had enough.

“Wait,” Agu said, getting up. He stumbled, grabbing hold of one of the seats. He started moving to the other side of the boat. “Wait!”

Adaora turned around. At first she didn’t know what she was seeing. Water? But it was solid. Solid enough for the President to step on, as Adaora had stepped on it. She dragged herself up.

“Wait a minute!” she said. She nearly fell to the floor as the world swam around her. Her belly cramped and she dropped to one knee. Agu was on the floor a few feet away. “Do… what… where are you going?” Adaora whispered.

She fought hard to focus. Ayodele was standing with the President on the water. Femi was still on the boat, snapping photos.

“I’ll be all right!” the President shouted as he was lowered below the side of the boat. By what? And into the water? Adaora couldn’t see. Hawra was clinging to one of the guards, weeping. Femi was doing something with his mobile phone. Agu was coughing. Anthony remained silent.

Adaora couldn’t stand any longer. She sat down hard on the boat floor and gazed out at the ocean whose water was clear as crystal. In the distance, she saw something huge leap up and then splash back in, and a group of flying fish passed by yards from their boat. Below the glass-like water, she imagined there was a great, great metropolis of ocean life below – giant, reaching, dark brown structures bloomed up from a flat surface beneath that she couldn’t see the end of. And the structures had slowly shrunk and expanded even as she watched, sea creatures darting, wiggling, spiraling everywhere.

She closed her eyes and everything went away.

Water is life.

Aman Iman.

Water.

Adaora was in water. Her hair was floating around her face. Yet… ? There was a rushing sensation in her neck that happened involuntarily. Her lungs didn’t hurt. She felt the rushing of water again. She brought her hands to her chest. She could feel her heart beating. Several yards below her was a brown crusty coral-like surface covered with green swaying seaweed. She could see a group of red crabs the size of small children plucking the seaweed and delicately munching it.

She shut her eyes, trying to focus. She touched her neck. Instead of smooth skin, her fingers slipped into large grooves, the edges of flesh loose and thick. She twitched, realizing what they were, then she shuddered and screamed. But no sound came out. Because she didn’t have lungs any more… she had gills. She tried to swim up. But which way was up? She opened her eyes and watched bubbles float past her. Upward. She followed the bubbles with her eyes. Upward. A glowing pink dot. The sun. The surface was more than a hundred feet above her.

Adaora realized several things at once. She was breathing water. She was not alone. She could see what was happening. She could hear it, too.

She focused on what was happening in front of her. The President. He was suspended in what looked like a giant bubble of air. He hung before five humanoid figures that reminded her of something out of Star Wars . She frowned. Hadn’t she read somewhere that the President loved the Star Wars movies? Adaora did, too, though she preferred the earlier films. But she’d watched the later films enough to recognize the aliens she was seeing. All of the creatures she saw now were whitish-blue-skinned, with huge black eyes and long long arms, legs and neck. They even moved with the same fluid motions as they had in the movies.

The President was talking to them. She moved toward the bubble of air and then stopped. What would happen if she tried to enter it? She touched the gills on her neck. They felt like several numb hairy flaps of skin. The flaps pumped up and down, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized she could do it voluntarily, too.

OK , she thought. But then she looked down and her mind reeled. Her legs were no longer legs. This part of her body had become the body of a giant metallic blue fish. The upper and lower lobes of it are equal in shape and pointy , she thought, twisting for a better look at herself. A lunate caudal fin, like that of a sailfish, marlin or swordfish . I was made for speed. Something tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and came face to face with Ayodele. Adaora swam back, surprised. The motion pushed water through her gills and her mind sharpened.