The Way to Eden

There was a tune always running through her head, but Blue could never remember the words. They were important somehow, a secret she was supposed to know, but every time she tried to focus on it, the burgeoning sensation on her tongue died away.

It always happened near the surface, though. When she went up to the pontoon platform she'd managed to create for the scavenged solar panels she'd found, the tune would slip into her mind like a curious and cautious guppy. She thought maybe it had something to do with the brightness of the Sunlight Zone. Since she lived most of her life in the eternal darkness of the Midnight Zone, light was a notable and much cherished thing.

She didn't regret living where she did. An untouched city was a scavenger's dream, and it was rare enough that she wouldn't question her luck. She'd never be allowed in the Cita-domes and she'd experienced far too many raids to join the pirates, but lone scavengers weren't meant to survive as long as she had. They were meant to return to one of the clans.

Sometimes she wished she'd lived before the Melting. It was difficult to imagine undrowned lands, cities that didn't need domes over them to survive. She had been born in the Eternal Ocean and would die there like everyone else, and she would do all this alone.

But sometimes she wished the last person she talked to hadn’t been the pirate who tried to kill her and steal her salvage. Sometimes she wished the Burners had thought about what their burning was doing to the world. She couldn't imagine how people had caused enough heat for the planet itself to melt, but she thought maybe they were like the pirates, taking and taking and taking until there was nothing left because they thought only their needs and wants were important.

Sometimes she wished she hadn't learned how to kill with broken breathers and poisoned oxygen tanks, with sharp knives pressed in at fragile throats and captured creatures of the deep left where unsuspecting hands could find them. Sometimes she wished her father had taught her how to be a person instead of just a survivor.

Blue would dream about the song and the person singing it. The words never stayed when she woke up, but she remembered water-rough hands, warm arms that cradled her close, and the woman's voice. She would hear her name whispered in the woman's voice, fear and awe muddled together so well they were indistinguishable from each other.

She ached for more memories of her mother than this, but her father said she was gone before Blue's first swim. He said she went back to Eden.

*

Do you know the way to Eden?

*

Blue could feel the energy in the water before her power started flickering. Both things meant the same thing: a storm was passing on the surface and it was churning the waters enough to affect her solar panels. Storms didn't stay for long, though, because they had nothing to break against. They built and broke in an endless cycle that never quite ended, always moving because they had nowhere to catch. By the time she reached the surface to check on her floating platform, it would be gone.

As she made her way to the surface, she wondered what it was like before the Melting. She'd heard about islands, places of undrowned land surrounded by water. They were the first to be lost in the Melting before people came to call it the Melting. Did the people ever fear the waters around them? Did they know that their homes would be eaten by the Eternal Ocean? She'd heard once that some of the oldest Cita-domes were built on the island nations, so they must have known they were causing the Melting.

Of course, after the Melting had gone on for a while, every nation became an island nation while the former island nations were drowned.

Could she call her platform an island? Should she? Land was for the surface, for the undrowned places that used to be before the Melting. It was for the Cita-domes, protected on the ocean floor from drowning in the first place. It was for mocking the floating mass of salvage the Scavenger clans fought over so viciously.

A pontoon platform with solar panels and a plastic crate of tools was not land and never would be.

*

Do you know the way to Eden

where the land is dry again?

*

Blue didn't know if the storms came before the Melting or after. The records she'd managed to scavenge talked about violent weather patterns during the period now known as the Melting, but she knew there were stories of storms that predated it as well. Sometimes, they gave the storms names, which was how people knew they were powerful.

Would anyone name the surface storms anymore? They came so often and so violently that no one could possibly name them all. Perhaps all storms would have one name, one which acknowledged the never-ending aspect of them.

The tune began playing in the back of her mind as soon as her aqua-fin crossed into the Twilight Zone. She hummed along with it. Humming didn't require nearly as much oxygen as singing, which was good because the oxygen tanks on the aqua-fin weren't big enough to take her long distances, and the journey from her underwater shelter to the platform and back was almost too much for it to handle.

Of course, aqua-fins weren't meant to be long distance vehicles. They were meant to be durable and stand up to the weight of the water pressing down on everything or one of the creatures of the depths deciding that it would make a good meal. She'd never had any problems, but her father had told stories about scavengers operating too low in the Abyss and finding out firsthand why the Trenches are a zone to be feared.

There were other ocean vehicles for longer distances or deeper dives, but the aqua-fin suited her purposes nicely.

She broke through the surface and secured the little underwater craft so it wouldn't drift too far or take on water. They were built to last, but only if they were taken care of. Once she was sure it wouldn’t disappear as she worked, she pulled herself up onto the platform.

Blue closed her eyes as she let her body learn the motion of the waves again, relaxing in the open air and the luxurious taste of freshness that came with it. The artificial gills everyone used to convert water to oxygen never produced anything that smelled half as good as surface air.

The tune whispered in her head and she hummed along, content to know she still had something of her mother.

And then she heard a hollow and much too human cough where no other humans should be.

*

Do you know the way to Eden

where the land is dry again?

Above the Endless Ocean

and the perils deep within.

*

Blue was instantly alert, knife in her hand, her feet under her again and adjusting to the sway of the waves like she was born there. Which she was. She was a survivor, and she had only lived this long on her own because she didn't let people use her weaknesses.

There was a man on her platform. He coughed again, rolling onto his side, and choking on the bile and seawater that came up. Then a hysterical giggle bubbled out of him. Before she had time to think or ask what he found so funny, he started singing.

"Do you know the way to Eden where the land is dry again?"

It was the tune. It was her tune, the one she'd been humming, the one she could never remember the words to.

"Above the Endless Ocean and the perils deep within." He turned to look at her as he sang, apparently not at all disturbed by the knife she was holding threateningly in his direction. "Do you know the way to Eden? Should I share it now with you? Would you still leave the waters to come for me, my Ocean Blue?"

"Who are you?" Blue demanded. "How do you know that song? That's my mother's song!"

The man coughed again, his red face twisting painfully. "It's Eden's song, and I came from Eden. Didn't expect any fish-folk to know it."

He pushed himself up into a sitting position and she moved closer to the center of the platform so it would be harder for him to throw her off.

Glancing around at first the solar panels then her, something assessing appeared in his eyes. "But you're not like regular fish-folk, are you?"

She frowned at him. "If I'm supposed to be fish-folk, what does that make you?"

"A son of Eden." He cast a long look at the Eternal Ocean around them. "A bit lost, I grant you, but at least I live on dry land."

"There is no dry land," she recited immediately. "Only the undrowned Cita-domes."

"'Cita-domes'?" He rubbed a hand down his face. "What the fuck are you people doing down there, anyway? What the hell are you learning?" He looked back at her. "Jesus, you're a fucking kid. Where are your parents?"

"My father's dead and my mother..." Blue frowned. "He said she went back to Eden."

The man huffed. "Well then, apparently you're only half fish-folk."

*

Do you know the way to Eden?

Should I share it now with you?

*

The man's name, as Blue discovered, was Emerick, but he was far more amused that her name was Blue. As in Ocean Blue, like in the song.

"If you're supposed to be on dry land, why are you on my platform anyway?" She had lowered the knife, but it was still in her hand. Just because he knew her mother's song didn't mean he was worthy of her trust. Trust got people killed in the ocean, especially when dealing with other people.

Trust was what had killed her father.

"I was on the surface when a storm came up faster than I could get back to safety. They closed the gates, and anyone caught outside has to survive until it blows over or die." Emerick frowned. "I didn't even hear the warning sirens. The storm was just there, and there was no time to get back."

"You'd survive a lot better if you had water gear." She wasn't impressed with his salt encrusted clothes, which didn't offer much protection at all. Her own clothes weren't the best, but at least they were reinforced enough to protect against jellyfish stingers, poisonous barbs, and various other hazards of the water that had become so commonplace in everyone's lives.

Well, apparently not everyone, but everyone who didn't have some form of undrowned land to escape to for long.

"We didn't need water gear. There's nothing for us in the water."

"Everything is in the water,” she argued. “Everything."

Emerick huffed. "You said your mom went to Eden. Why don't I take you there and you can see why we don't need water gear?"

"I thought you were lost. If there was land anywhere near here, I would know." It wasn't like she hadn't explored her area fully. She needed to know what dangers existed, needed to protect the platform and all of the resources it marked beneath it.

Creating and anchoring the platform had been the biggest undertaking of her life, and it had taken her nearly three years to set up her base, get the power set up from the solar panels and make sure that the region she had decided to claim wasn't attractive enough to pirates or scavenger clans for them to spend much time there.

"Clearly you don't remember the lullaby very well if you don't know how to find it." Emerick crossed his arms, staring her down. She offered a glare of her own in return. "My Eden lies where sky and sea forget where each is duly bound. The highest peak that once was named now hides a garden underground."

She frowned. "Underground?"

"Of course, it's underground. Did you think we would build a city on the surface for the storms to destroy it every other day? No, our ancestors were smarter than that, and while some cities were creating glass bubbles around themselves to keep out the water, they built a new city into a mountain and collected as much of human history into it as they could."

Against her better judgement, Blue was interested. Knowledge was hard to come by for scavengers, usually sequestered away in one of the Cita-domes where no outsiders could access it. She had questions she wanted answered that didn't have anything to do with the equipment she had been taught to use, repair, and maintain practically since birth. What little she did know was stolen or traded, and all of it through a particularly long and convoluted chain of people before it got to her.

"Where is it, then?" she demanded. "This 'highest peak'."

"Well, before the polar icecaps melted away, it was called Mount Everest. It was somewhere on the continent of Asia, but without the rest of the continent, I suppose that's not very helpful."

Blue just stared at him.

"I don't know how you fish-folk tell where you are."

"If you don't stop calling me 'fish-folk', I might stab you." She didn't bother to tell him the possibility had never been taken off the table. He'd probably get uncooperative. "As an independent scavenger, I have a GPS. I have to know how to get back home, after all. You wouldn't happen to know general coordinates, would you?"

He looked blank for a moment. "Oh. Sorry. Um, I think it's 27 59 North, 86 55 East." He sighed. "It would be helpful if they'd managed to put that in the lullaby."

"If Eden really exists, maybe you can tell them that." Blue was already moving to her aqua-fin. While she didn't recognize the coordinates exactly, they were closer than she'd been expecting. She wasn't sure how Emerick would have survived in a storm being dragged across choppy waters for more than 3000 kilometers, but it suddenly became slightly plausible that he might have come from somewhere in that area. Whether or not it was a trap remained to be seen. One scavenger on her own she might be, but she had done well for herself, and any idiot could tell from the platform that she had access to coveted resources.

If this was a trap, she probably wasn't going to survive it.

"It does exist.” His gaze was steady and pleading. Helpless, almost, which had hidden ill intentions before more than once in her experience. “I promise."

So why did she still want to listen? Why did she want to trust him when she knew her trust could get her killed?

Blue sighed, casting her gaze to the skies as if they held the answers. She wouldn’t find them there because she already knew why she was doing this. Her father's voice echoed in her head, telling her that her mother had gone back to Eden. The lullaby her mother sang, now sharper in her memory, now accompanied with words, taunted her. And underneath it all was the little girl Blue had been when she lost the last person in her life she could trust, the one who just wanted to not be lonely anymore.

She wanted to be safe again.

"Fine," she whispered, still not ready to let her guard down around anyone, least of all Emerick. "I guess we're going to Eden."

*

Do you know the way to Eden

Where the land is dry again?

Above the Endless Ocean

And the perils deep within.

Do you know the way to Eden?

Should I share it now with you?

Would you still leave the waters

To come for me, my Ocean Blue?

My Eden lies where sky and sea

Forget where each is duly bound.

The highest peak that once was named

Now hides a garden underground.

And if you find me, Ocean Blue,

I hope you will be satisfied

For all the things that you hold dear

Are waiting on the Other Side.