rakk! (fishdance) aooowahmm (listen).”
“Go away!”
Murmursome departs now, and the heavy brown sadness trailing from his simple soul surprises me. The brown face of feeling seems more complex than an ayom’s usual sadness—perhaps it is only a lie from—
It makes me recall the many brown levels of Father’s soul. And in turn the brown levels make me remember the advice screamdeep often gave.
(Father would ask me: “Murmursome bothers you?”
(“His friendship,” I would answer, “is too persistent. If he would pale his rushing yellow more often, demand less of my own soul’s yellow, I would be able to enjoy his presence.”
(“Listen to me,” Father would say, with the only plea he ever used to me. “You must be patient. I am not alone in feeling that a secret of truest truth lies in murmursome’s kind. The wish is that I possessed the voice to give you that secret, but I do not, so you must manage faith in an unknown depth. Murmursome is an ayom, and the truth which so many souls have sensed hides in the pounding bond between ayom and men, and I pray to blood that you will chase the secret from itself before the day you find your death has found you....”
(“I do not understand,” I would say, objecting as every son objects to his father’s life. “How may a soul carry faith in a truth—truest or not—which it cannot know?”
(“You are being stubborn. I am asking that you treat murmursome with some kindness, because I fear that if you do not you will see yourself a sightless fool someday—the day you find the ayom’s truest secret opening to your older soul.”)
I reach out faintly, but the ayom is gone.
And now my body announces its hunger.
I could cover hunger’s voice with a plant-soul lie, and try to surprise any fish in the immediate area—but this would take time, and it is rarely successful.
I could swim to the distant bottom and pluck sponges from their rocks or soft crabs from their burrows—but this too would take time.
And the colors of the day urge: There is time only for swimming....
So I will continue swimming until my body bellows, refuses to move arms and tails. Otherwise the shades of nearing guilt would manage to taint any food I took time to find now.
Suddenly, in the next moment, the question becomes important.
An uiu soul, clashing purple, jumps to my inner eye.
This far from the bottom?
The uiu’s flow comes: “Ssssssssss....”
I hesitate, feel the uiu’s nearing, watch with soul’s eye as the animal feels my presence and stiffens.
“Sssk!” The flow changes to the rhythm of attack. “Ksss! Sssk!”
I do what is necessary, and the lies covers my truer soul quickly. The image of a wounded female ioe will work equally well against the smaller jaws of an uiu soul.
“Sssk?”
I hold the lie tightly around me, and it blurs the incoming uiu image as well as my own outflowing soul.
But with my face’s eyes I am able to see the uiu’s form of flesh as the animal nears.
The uiu arches its back and begins to move its forelimbs in circles to slow itself. Its small jaws continue to open and close, but its body has begun trembling in gray of fear.
“Sssk?”
The uiu’s eyes see me as an unthreatening yellowish gray body, but its soul is stronger, believing that an enraged bulk of teeth, talons and bleeding muscle lies before it
The uiu utters its submission: “Shhhhhh...,” and begins to turn away.
But it turns back. “Sssk!”
I’ve found in the ioe lie a current to unfortunate memory. I stumbled in the vision of Father’s day of death, and my lie weakened for lack of attention.
The uiu ignores its own confusion and rushes forward screaming.
Scream in soul and rush in eye shakes my place in memory—but screamdeep still embraces me, and the tease of death begins.
(Do I want to die in the same way Father died? Jaws that would equal those who took him...blood flowing from my body so similar to his....)
Abruptly the bigshinegray of expectation finds a voice:
“You may not die until you come to know me.”
Quickly I shake the motherly fingers of death from myself, and lift the lie once again to perfection.
The uiu is close now, rushing on.
To the lie I add an ioe scream, and with two motions of my tails I move sideways.
The uiu rushes past, and changing its goal, does not turn to snap at the yellowish gray flesh.
“Shhhh...shhhh....”
The uiu swims on, gains speed in the urgency of renewed fear, and in a moment is beyond the touch of eyes and soul.
I find myself screaming another ioe scream—without clear will—and then sigh, my body falling limp, my soul falling to pale babble.
Why an uiu so far from its usual coral lair on the bottom?
—Unless the bottom holds a thrashing oio, rooting with its giant plated body in the coral structures, seeking the soft bodies of hidden worms, scurrying crabs.
I listen carefully, but the bottom is distant and only a commotion of faint colors and murky rhythms can be heard. Such a commotion might have any number of causes.
If an oio were truly down there, disturbing those fish and plants who choose the coral faces as their territory, then there is a chance for easy food.
Some plant bodies, when torn from their rocks and coral places, float upward.
I kick twice with my tails, stop, swim backwards with two kicks, and wait nervously.
Plants would not float upward very quickly....
I begin to swim toward the bottom slowly, but before I have moved six tail lengths downward, a pale repetitive soul appears somewhere near me and grows clearer as it floats up toward me.
A stiff plant? A sponge? A piece of yau?
Only a sponge would be edible.
As the approaching soul clears, giving out a porous white fringe of soul, I realize my hunger will soon be attended to.
The sponge floats into eye’s sight, and begins to pass me. I reach out, grab it, and turn back around in time to find another porous soul nearing me.
Holding one sponge between my left arm and my side, and the other sponge in my twisted left hand—to free my right—I begin swimming and eating.
(As I swim I am deeply, obscurely aware of death-desire still calling to me....)
I pass the fourth, fifth and sixth of poundgrayly’s females, and not far from the island I’m met by the faint outer finger of the seventh and last soul.
Her body is still out of eye’s sight, but I can hear her sigh and relax in the lavender way only a female euyom can.
When the water grows shallow and the bottom comes into view, I stop. The euyom feels my hesitation and calls to me with a tinge of red impatience.
But I have questions to be answered on my own. I remain where I am, waving my tails slowly among the yau leaves and calming my soul in the calm bright waters.
Yes, poundgrayly would have known the answers. Why didn’t I anticipate the problems I will have in leaving the sea?
How will I breathe in dryness?
How will I move in dryness?