PoraBora

Chapter Fifty

It was warm, as thick as pudding, and it held all Akoni's weight. His movements were sluggish. I died immediately, he thought, and I'm drifting to the hagfish. He smiled because it all suddenly seemed so pointless. Makaia, Noikoa, Taipala—they were fools to think the world was a permanent fixture. That what they did mattered, that it would last, that the islands wouldn't break up again, in two months, in two years, in two generations. They all bothered and worried and, in the end, here we are, food for the hagfish, like all things in the sea.

Akoni wasn't sure if his eyes were open or closed. He tried to open them, but nothing changed. It was all just as dark. He wondered if that meant they had boiled out when he'd still been alive. He had seen what happened to people who fell into the oil. Here, and at the rig. He'd had to send letters.

Tua would send one for him, assuming Makaia didn't toss him over as well. And when would his wife find out? In six months, when Makaia returned to the rig, made the announcement, and one of his hundred men thought to ask, "Do you think she's heard?"

Maybe Makaia would do it. Or Noikoa. Ikaika would enjoy it. He'd probably go to Loune personally, and find her on her glass ship, with Akoni's son, laid on the deck and refusing to swim because the water was cold, and deep, and nobody could see what was down there.

Your daddy, Ikaika would tell him. He's down there, with the hagfish, and the six-gilled sharks.

Well. He was young. He wouldn't quite understand, and Akoni's wife would try to explain it again, year after year until he was old enough that the concept made sense. Perhaps it would be after he witnessed death for himself. Perhaps it wouldn't take so long; Makaia would make his way to Lenoue eventually.

Akoni made a fist. It did matter. Everything they did. It was temporary, and pointless in the minds of the bottom feeders, but his son deserved to sail his own boat, to discover his own islands, to see his own gods.

But Akoni was drifting to the bottom. There was nothing he could do anymore. He supposed he had the distance to the sea floor to think, to reflect, to hate Makaia for sparing Akoni's family no thought. Probably that was why the water was so deep. So that people could look at their lives and think, I let Noikoa put me on that rig for three years, to separate me from my wife and child, from my sea and shore.

At least he'd done right by his men. He had no regrets, there. He'd have liked to say goodbye, sure, and thanks, for being the best salting crew on the sea, boat or no, and sorry, because every single time someone had died it had been his fault, for not making the rig safer, for angering Keasau, for being unable to save them once they'd fallen in....

His regret, then, was that his turn had come after theirs. Somebody else could have saved their lives. Maybe Ikaika would have been put on the rig. Maybe Tua would have been promoted. The boy would have done a better job. Maybe he would get the job now.

No, thought Akoni. Tua deserved to swim in clean seas, to breathe clean air, to see coral reefs and sea turtles.

Akoni could still hear them, up above: their cannons. Keasau.

Now there was a mistake. A god, and Akoni had treated him like a motor well. A prisoner. Never had he tried to communicate with it, really communicate, not command, not plead, but understand. He wondered if gods had families. If somewhere in the ocean a baby Keasau swam, leaking oil. Or maybe it didn't leak. When Keasau had breached again, had it not been covered in a shell of barnacles?

The first men who found Keasau, who broke that shell, who discovered his oil, surely didn't realize what it was they'd found. They would have imprisoned it, of course, because they couldn't let the oil into the water. How long? How many years in its life had Keasau been confined to a rig, and how many weeks did it get to visit its seas?

Akoni knew that answer, and there was no better time to admit it than when he was dead.

You're not dead. The idea didn't help. It only made Akoni contemplate what it really meant, to be eaten by hagfish, to never see his family or crew again.

Something else was in the water. Ah, he thought. Something else was going to get the first bite. Like a great white at a whale's carcass. Maybe it was the jellyfish, below the oil.

Akoni opened his eyes again. It was still dark. It was probably better not to see, but he couldn't help but wish he could. Nobody alive had ever seen the sea floor. Not where it was this deep. What kind of creatures had never washed up onto the islands? What kind of fish? Akoni wondered if there were any deep-sea dolphins. Why not. They didn't have to see, thanks to their echolocation.

Well, he wouldn't get to see. Maybe he'd be eaten by one. Would he know? He figured he could at least tell the difference between hagfish and shark. One would take a leg off. The other would come in tons of tiny mouths, chewing and sucking into his flesh.

He really hoped he wouldn't have to feel it.

The something didn't eat Akoni. And he realized he knew who the something was. He opened his eyes, and he could see this time, maybe because he'd only just now actually opened them, or maybe because the oil had been cleared so that he could see.

Keasau stared at him through his enormous eye.

Akoni stared into it. He had never been struck before by what a creature Keasau was. It was an eye, just like his, and when he looked into it, he could feel the god's intelligence.

Akoni shuddered. A god. And he had treated it....

"I'm sorry," said Akoni. He felt oil push into his mouth, but it didn't go into his throat. Nor did any water. He tried to reason it. I'm facing down, Akoni thought, And the air has nowhere to go, so the water can't displace it. Like a bucket, held upside down. That didn't quite seem to make sense. I'm dead, then. I'm not actually opening my mouth to say anything, and I don't have to breathe.

The god's body dispersed into the oil, pulsating waves boiling into the sea. As far as Akoni could see, Keasau was everything around him, everything in the water. The oil rose in bubbles to the surface, incapable of mixing with what was around it.

Akoni put a hand on his shoulder, where his tattoo wrapped up from his arm before going down to his chest. Keasau's own visage was there, placed where Akoni had been touched.

Blessed. "It was never the oil," said Akoni.

The god made no response.

Akoni tread oil, righting himself in the water. "This is your blessing," he said. "I'm still alive."

The oil was still boiling the water, still at a temperature that could melt his flesh into his bones. And he was still inside of it. And still alive.

There was more, Akoni realized. Siosi and the rigmen who had breathed in the fumes, day after day, had been made sick, or bedridden, or dead, and Akoni had never once....

He clenched his fists again. Why? Why didn't you bless the rest of my crew?

But he knew why. His crew had been exploiting Keasau. The better question would have been, Why me?

But the god did not answer his questions. Perhaps it could not hear him, or perhaps he did not speak the word of man. He had never heeded Akoni, despite what men like Makaia had come to believe. But Akoni had never listened either. Every time Keasau was in pain. Every time Keasau wanted it to stop.

"I'm sorry," he said again, because there was nothing else to be said.

Keasau sang out a note, and Akoni spun himself in the oil, to see the net. He turned back, to tell the god to flee, but the god had already swam down, the force of its great tail pushing Akoni up to the surface, where he hit the edge of the net and toppled over.