I reach the hill's other side out of breath, another thing I didn't know was possible underwater. I fell into a shoreline rock pool once, I think when I was nine. I was trying to find the dens of the Lashrita that goma Tashagi said haunted the island's shores and inland salt pools at night. I never found any mud demons, but I did find that water makes a poor substitute for air when it comes to breathing.

I got lucky that time. I found my way out of the pool and washed the salt from my hair in the river before anyone caught me down by the sea. I didn't venture close to the shore for years after that, in fear that the jealous Luasa would drag me in, or that Andalua would remember my trespass and smite me.

It occurs to me that I do have quite a fair list of First Rule trespasses to my name. I remember guiltily the first time I was dared to pick and taste the seaweed that grew in golden-brown cascades over the shoreline rocks. Everyone else was too scared to try, so I did it: snuck down, plucked a sprig and stuck it in my mouth without so much as an offering in return. At least I had the sense to check it for golden crabs first. That was the Second Rule: you did not eat anything that the shapeshifting Andalua could turn into. If it was her, she would not die, but your entire village would.

What we could eat had a price, still, and had to be traded for a blessing and an offering of something from the land. A ketcholo flower, usually, or a blade of grass twisted like the cross-fingered sign that meant current and wind and gods. I was born with my fourth and pinky fingers locked in that sign. My mother says she knew from the moment she saw me that I would be the next sun-dancer. The village gomas came to stand over my bed and clap when I slept, so that they had confirmed before my first birthday that just like Rashi himself, I lived in a soundless world. One in six in the village did. We—and many others—spoke to one another in my village's language of hands, which everyone knew, and many preferred for its beauty. I can see why. It's graceful and looping like the first steps of the first rain-dance I ever performed. The gomas said the monsoon came half a moon early that year.

I would dance for Rashi here, but it's harder to move in water than in air, and I don't know how Andalua will take it. My tail fidgets on its own like my feet remember doing. Do Luasa dance? Villagers back on Telu saw them from time to time: silver or brightly coloured flashes in the water. When that happened, we ran: up the shore, away from the river, far from anywhere their sharp nails and sharper teeth could reach us. I look down at my hands. My nails are not sharp, but my teeth certainly are. Sharp enough to rip a clam's meat from its shell. But I have no desire to eat humans.

If I hold my arms at just the right angle, I can make the reflective patches catch the water's colour. I tip them until it looks like I have holes through my hands. A dance with these would be beautiful. I can't tell if I feel like dancing right now, or if I just really want to be back on Telu where will never again be so short on good food and tolerable company.

I'm stalling again.

I turn my frustration on the world and kick a fat wave of silt towards the drop ahead of me. Unlike on the other side of this hill, it slows, churning clumsily over itself. Before it reaches the edge, the current turns it back the way it came. If Naina were here, I would send her off on this mission for me. She might even volunteer herself. My mood is already souring at the thought of swimming upriver all the way back to my island without someone to travel with. To top it all off, I'm hungry again. Swimming takes more energy than it deserves.

I scrounge in the mud again, then finally decide to start this journey. Not because I've run out of excuses—I could keep that up for days—but because the thought of having easy access to food again is rapidly working its way to the top of my priority list. I swim back to the drop-off, make a few choice signs into the deeper water, and push off.

The moment I leave the silt hill, I am hit by the urge to swim down. This time, I'm ready for it, and keep my eyes on the surface to keep myself from nosediving. Sunbeams slant past me in ephemeral, shifting pillars like they're trying to be trees. I lose sight of the hill much faster than I would like. The ocean is foggy, like river water after a person I've pushed into it has scrambled out to chase me down. When I focus, I can see tiny particles drifting by. It reminds me of soup, really. Which is kind of gross, given that I'm swimming in it.

The people I pushed into the river never caught me. I was always faster.

I haven't swum far when the feeling that I'm shrinking sets in. The ocean is big from above, but from here it's a different kind of gigantic, its flat, shiny surface just a skin over an abyss that yawns wider and wider and never has the manners to close its mouth. I could be turning into that little silver fish right now, and there'd be nothing to tell me it was happening. I scrutinize the floaties in the water. Most are pale or translucent, and too irregular to serve as a size comparison. I lift my hands for a darker backdrop. A tiny shrimp scoots past my face. It is followed by a slightly larger shrimp, which stirs up a flock of miniscule shrimp-like creatures with its finger-thin wake. This is, to put it gently, useless.

I drop my hands. They just float at my sides, so I hug them across my ribs instead. I can't keep my eyes on both the depths and the surface. I curl up to see if it works as a defense position, and startle like the silver fish as I catch sight of my tail. It's glowing. The shiny, lens-like circles on its underside have lit up with the same pale blue as the tiny fish's face. Because what I really need right now is to be an illuminated target for every predator in this ocean. I try to will the light out, then look around for mud to camouflage myself. There's about as much mud as there are jungle fowl. My hands start swearing of their own accord, and my un-calm-ness from yesterday resurfaces in force. I try to hide the light with my body, lose my balance, and flail wildly as my sense of "up" disintegrates. After a good ten beats of my panicking heart, I find myself upside-down in the water, looking up towards the surface.

Now there are holes through my tail.

This is it. I'm being burned through by a fish tail I can't even control.

And then, because I'm me and this is how my brain works, I reach out to poke one of the holes. My finger meets a solid lens. I right myself with the grace of a sea cucumber. My tail-lenses hold the blue of the surface. Against the deep, they are glowing, but against that surface, they simply match the sky. Any creature swimming by below would look up and see my tail shot through like a leaky basket, if they saw it at all. The lenses are so thick along its underside, it would nearly disappear.

I've never seen light used as camouflage. Though then again, I've never seen the underside of the ocean, either. I scrutinize the backs of my hands. So what are these patches for? Even if they camouflage my hands—unlikely, given that they're skipping the glow party right now—I still have two very not-transparent not-fins for upper appendages. My upper-body shadow isn't fooling anyone.

At least the countershading on my tail makes me feel a little safer. A nagging feeling tells me I wouldn't have to worry about any of this in the sunless depths, but my relationship with those depths has evolved into a stubbornness contest, and I'm a sore loser. I kick out into the current again. I hope I didn't drift too far while I played rollabout with my tail.

I hope nobody saw that.

Actually, I do hope someone saw that, because that would mean someone is here. After a brief worry about Andalua, I decide she can show herself if she cares, then amuse myself by dancing. It's a fun challenge to transpose my sun- and rain-dances into underwater form. I have to adapt some pretty heavily, but I fill the gaps with new spins and curves made possible by the water and my flexible tail. I keep an eye on the nothingness below me in case the sea goddess decides to eat me for being myself in her territory, but she doesn't appear.

I have no idea what I'll do when I'm finished this activity. I hope Telu is close and a solution to my problems is closer, because I've never been alone for this long before and I swear I'm starting to go crazy. I make a list of the people I would tolerate having here just to provide some human energy in this void. My standards are already low after this much isolation, and they only get lower. New names make the cut with each passing increment of the sun's passage.

I'm still going strong when the sun wriggles its way to the far edge of the sea. It paints the surface in fiery hues that no longer match my tail, and my lights go out. Dusk closes down on a crescent-moon night. I keep swimming. I can see nothing around me but the moon's residue on the waves above, but for some reason, I'm not scared. For what it's worth, the instinct driving me down has completely died. I'm beginning to suspect it and the light level are connected.

Also unlike me is how awake I still feel. Over the years, I've come to associate sundown with denying the tiredness that makes its entrance then with such predictability, I swear it does it to spite me. I'd much rather stay up around the village fire, chatting, dancing, and watching the village gomas tell stories. That isn't happening here, so I secretly hope Luasa are at least exempt from the universal need for sleep.

The backs of my hands have started to get itchy. I move to scratch them, and something clicks in my mind. I light the shining patches like I've been doing it all my life.

Rashi be blessed.

They're blue like my tail-lenses, but a richer blue, deepened around the edges. I turn them off again. It's not even a muscle twitch. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I've got the feeling it'll be effortless given ten heartbeats of practice. I try my tail, and those lights ignite, too. I turn them off, flash them, then try to light only half. It doesn't work, but I have a feeling it will eventually.

The water-motion or vibration sensors on my tail—they seem to detect both, which is just fine by me—alert me to a twitch in the ocean ahead. I light my hand-patches and find myself face to face with about a thousand small, silver fish.

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