The Prophecy of Water | ✔️ 🎖 [2018 Wattys Shortlister]

CHAPTER 44-The Eaver

We can't cross this ocean if we don't lose sight of the shore. They just don't have the courage and will, afraid of the unknown waves. 

I pity them.

LoG, 149

"Can you understand me?" Squinty inquired, a little breathless.

"Yes, we understand." The Clam responded.

Squinty had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that she shouldn't be able to comprehend what The Clam was saying, but yet she did.

"You have passed the test of The Reka, Land Dweller. Breathing under the surface of The River Tebesum has proven to be an impossible task for human children such as yourself. This is why you have been granted a gift of The Translator Pearl. You are allowed to serve us now. I am certain you shall prove most useful."

"Are you The Leader of The Reka?" Squinty inquired brashly, still not commenting on the "serving" part. She wasn't going to serve anyone, thank you very much, if that could be avoided at all.

"We do not use such terms. Our function is to serve the water beings and to light their world. To protect them from that which hunts us during The Dark. We live in a symbiotic community and we complement each other. These are the people who have embraced their true form and became one with the Water, as it should be. We are Water and to Water we shall return. These artificial bodies you humans use have been forced upon you by the will of The Mind. The Reka bask in their own transparency, being who they are, being true to themselves." The Clam replied.

"If you are so equal and 'symbiotic'," Squinty erroneously used the word she had never heard before, "why do you keep servants, then? Aren't we all supposed to be equal?"

"Like I said," The Clam explained patiently, "you are an inferior life form. The one that yet hasn't realized its true content and hasn't come to terms with its substance. When an unwary traveller roams into The Realm of Reka, he is Absorbed and he becomes The River Water. Unliving, unthinking, freed from the ground burdens, simply turning into The Flow. You and your friends have fallen into our astute trap, the one that we so frequently prepare for the wanderers who dare approach too close to our underwater kingdom."

"But you ... Trade water! I know of it!" Squinty desperately tried to point out what she'd learned Instructor Ilena's classes in The Orphanage.

"Commercial treaties are one thing," The Clam's centric light dimmed a bit. "Yet these kinds of accidental capture situations are ... quite another."

"So, you haven't Absorbed me yet just because you can't reach me?"

"It is not quite so. We are surprised that a human child can walk among us and breathe equanimously using a hard outer shell, similar to that of the one we as The River Clam possess. A doubt has entered our core and we are now wondering if you are to be the one to deliver us from a great evil. The one who might save our Realm."

"And in return, you will drown and Absorb my companions?" Squinty motioned towards the four immobile air bubbles.

"Yes, we shall ..." The Clam stopped mid-sentence. "Hmm. I comprehend your motif, human child. You do not wish any harm to come to the four inferior life forms, is it not so?"

"It is exactly so." Squinty snorted.

"We propose a commercial treaty then."

"What kind of treaty?" Squinty was suspicious.

"You will help The Reka and banish the evil that haunts us. In return, the life forms you care about will be returned to the surface of the River Tebesum, unharmed."