Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

“I am the last wero,” the figure responds.

“I am the last wero,” K-Ush says angrily.

“You are the last wero of legend,” the figure says with an amused smile. “In our village, we have no need for the term wero.”

“You sent the boy.”

“Yes, and you devoured him.”

“Was he not a gift? Was he not offering ho-resh-li?”

“He was, but you did not have to take him.”

“I learned to take ho-resh-li from Wa-Sheya, the most revered wero of recent times.”

“Sheya is a parasite,” the figure growls. “Swallow her lies and you die a bitter and twisted being.”

“You know Wa-Sheya?”

“I asked her for you many times; she preferred to keep you ignorant of life.”

The revelation of Sheya’s secrets burns in K-Ush’s chest like hot bile. She would like to speak in Sheya’s name, say something, anything to silence this angry wero, but she finds she cannot speak of Sheya.

“Why do you come looking for me?” K-Ush asks.

“We know, K-Ush.” The wero leans forward as if she is peering into K-Ush’s soul.

“Know what?”

“How you feel about prophecy, how you feel about ho-resh-li.”

“And you have come to save me,” K-Ush says sarcastically.

The wero draws back, barely masking the flash of anger in her eyes.

“Would you like us to return you to your tree?”

K-Ush is silent. She fingers the dry robe and stares into the distance.

“You are wondering if what I’m offering is worth it. You are thinking death is a more delicious option to life with us.”

“Must I hate Wa-Sheya to come with you?”

“We will leave that to you.”

Staring past the wero’s shoulder, K-Ush nods. The wero returns to the sanctuary of her hood, but not before her lips twist up into a smirk that suggests she knows better than K-Ush how this legend will end.

rattling. rattling snaking around my ears. echoes of rattling erupting in my temples. i hear a pop like the little explosions of air that punctuate my ear canals when i’m nearing the ocean floor. reflex. by reflex, i try to turn toward the sound, but my head is tethered in position. the rattling dies out with a slithering hiss. sharp parallel bands of light cut across the room. my head jerks back when light hits my eyes. behind me, somebody lets loose a low, raspy laugh.

“A little jittery, ain’t you,” the laughter mumbles. doesn’t bother with volume, doesn’t separate his words; just lets them tumble out any which way, leaving me to pick meaning out of a jumbled mass of sound.

“So it was a bio-anger, then?” another voice asks. clipped and precise tones dart around my head. a man slides across my view. i see the darkness of his pants leg skim the floor. i can’t make out a chair. looks as if he is gliding on air. been Under so long, everything on the Surface strikes me as strange.

man stops in front of me—face so close to mine, i can see blueness of veins, redness of vessels just under his skin. fold my lips together; try to speak. try bringing up the “b” in “bio-anger,” but my jaw is so tired. my lips fall slack before I can get any sound to part them.

“Won’t speak, huh?” those clipped tones don’t reach my ear until after the man’s lips stop moving.

i set my jaw, try to squeeze out a “c.” CAN’T SPEAK, I yell in my mind. can’t even get a sound to whisper out of my mouth.

“Nothing wrong with her vocal cords.” so says the mumbler. “Had ’em checked. Only part of her in good shape.” chuckles, but stays out of view.

metal grate of an old machine lays dead in the corner. at first, the blank wall behind the clipped-tone man has nothing to tell me. then the banner blinks on. top fourth of wall glows red. bold white letters scroll across the red: 0.74 millimeters of coastal loss since 10 a.m., 22.6 million square miles of land remaining.

“Knew it was broken,” mumbler says.

“Your banner broken?” clipped-tones asks.

“Yeah, this morning when I left, said we had 24.2 million square miles. Knew something had changed. What about dead zones?”

“Don’t know…don’t fuss over any of it. Nothing but a bother. Can’t fix Earth. Wish I could turn mine off.”

“Wish I had yours. Can’t sleep without the latest. Look, no Earth Strikes for 24 hours! Thought for sure the night shift would have gotten one.”

“Why do you think we’re working this one over. Word came from upstairs. Can’t let another 24 hours pass without a report. Have to deliver one tonight.”

silence falls. the feel of the mumbler eyeing me trips across the back of my neck. feel a nervous tingle in my eyebrow. my knee jerks up. surprised my feet aren’t tied.

“Won’t work, sweetheart,” clipped-tones says. twirling a small square mirror in his hands.

a burning ache starts biting at the bottoms of my feet. fingers twitching now. thin, sticky fabric stretched across my thighs catch on my peeling fingertips. clipped-tones notices.

“Had to dress you. Your clothes were in bloody shreds. What did this to you?”

i tune out. let the words fall around me undeciphered. wonder: can water slide over these thin, sticky tights. if i escape, could i wear this to get back Under?

when i don’t speak, clipped-tones slides the mirror between my face and his. i draw away from the face in the mirror.

“No sense hiding from it. Hurt’s been done.” so says the mumbler.

i steel myself and turn back to the mirror. the face i see is not my face. purple-black bruises flowering around the eyes—no big surprise. headache splitting my skull can’t be from a bug bite. slowly turn my head. ragged smear of tiny punctures—neatly gridded—crawls up my left cheek. a thin bloody shadow blankets the wounds. other side of my face, no better. a wide gash—dry, but glistening—cuts across my right cheek. puffed and pimply skin bloating around my mouth. salty water rises, clawing its way to my eyes. i will it back down—ain’t the place to shed a tear, even if it’s for my own flesh.

“So, coordinates. Where did it happen? People need to know.”

shake my head. from what i hear, a bio-anger is nothing like they make it seem on the Net. just because an Earth Strike breaks a few bones doesn’t mean Earth is angry. once you been Under, you stop thinking Earth even notices you. we can’t make Earth angry. we’re about as important as globs of spit.

“What’s this then?” clipped-tones asks. I hear the mumbler clicking away on his hand-unit just behind my head. taking notes? sending messages? preparing a profile to send to the NewsNet? the mirror shifts from my face to flash on my neck and shoulders. first real mirror I’ve seen in a long time. clipped-tones tilts it, showing me a deep groove splitting the flesh above my breasts. thick and hard in some spots, too dry to be new. don’t need a mirror to see it cut across my chest, arc over my shoulders, rip across my upper back.

wet my lips. try to push out “Und-” but my mouth is useless. lift my hand. try pointing down. ragged fingernails scratch at the sticky fabric on my legs.

“What’s she trying to say?” mumbler asks from behind me.

clipped-tone man shrugs.

bang my feet on the floor. UNDER, yelling in my head. thought everyone on the Surface knew about us. Under. I’m damn near a lifer down there. been wearing the tank so long, the edges of the headgear grew into my flesh, got a little more comfortable—you could say. never mattered to me. better fit means less accidents. less accidents means more runs. more runs means more money i can send up to this damn air-breathing place. don’t expect no enviro-cop to ever understand that. us who live Under were born with hard choices to make, that’s all. some people end eighteen years of hard labor tied to a chair with a busted up face, others get to slide by them waving a mirror around. just the way it goes on the Surface.