Underwater Whispers

Where we live, night is all-consuming. The darkness can be treacherous, which is why we are sure to sleep with tethers secured around our waists, attached to the poles that line the old streets, safe beneath the waves.

According to my Great Aunt Sophie, in the Dry Ages there were ways of lighting up the dark. Every house was equipped with these lights, every room and car. The only cars I’d ever seen were rusted and far from magnificent. It was hard to imagine them moving at all, let alone fast and bright like she described.

You can’t communicate at night, except through touch, and even that is hard to make out in the clumsy brush of fingers. In the Dry Ages, people could penetrate the darkness with nothing but their throat vibrations. In open air, I am told, you don’t have to rely on light and sight and hands to talk, like you do in open water. There is sound that carries in waves like the ocean for ears to pick up--at least, that’s what ears did before human bodies were altered to better survive in cities like ours.

The way we talk now used to be called American Sign Language. Now it is just called American, although really it should just be called Language. Borders were washed away a long time ago.

There were still certain ways of exploring the past, like the teenagers who often stole away from their sleep stations to swim up and breach. As far as I could tell, the most exceptional thing they did up there after that long trip to the surface was poke their heads up into dry air and just scream their throats sore, reveling in the vibrations like skinny, pubescent whales.

Needless to say, I did not see the value in this. I had only breached once, during the day, with rays of sun to guide me. I had to admit, the view of the entire city gleaming below was almost worth the oppressive, stifling experience of venturing above water.

But that was before the nightmares started.

It wasn't long until my little sister Kohl--who recently started going by Koko--had discovered the wonderful world of night-breaching. Apparently, her group had found that when the moon was out, in the pale light, they were able to talk back and forth as they hovered just below the surface. 

“It’s so amazing,” Koko told me one evening, her hands flying jubilantly through the motions. “It’s so conspiratorial. You should come with us this time! It’ll be another full moon.”

“Maybe . . . ”

“Don’t act like you’ve never wondered what it’s like to talk at night. You know the word whisper?”

“Sure,” I said. “Like Dad’s cousin.”

“Not that Whisper. The actual word.”

I frowned. “Well, not really. It’s abstract.”

“It is to you. But that’s what it’s like to be up there, talking back and forth! We were whispering, Macy! I described it to Auntie and she said yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t secretly slightly intrigued. A lot of our grandparents’ generation had named their children after things left over from the old world that had no place in their new lives. They seemed to have a particular affinity for Dry-Age nature words--hence my father’s name is Forest, and my mother’s name is Dove. And although we had never seen these ancient creatures or plants, we could imagine them from the descriptions our relatives passed down. We could visualize white-winged animals that swam through the sky, or great clusters of land-plants as tall as buildings. 

But Great Aunt Sophie took a different approach than most when naming her children. Instead of sights, she named them after sounds, something truly abstract. Whisper, Echo, Melody--words I could never quite wrap my mind around, but to my aunt they really meant something. 

Sometimes, knowing that we lacked an entire sense was deeply strange. Could the surface possibly help reveal the mystery behind those concepts? 

It wasn’t as if our parents had any issue with Koko’s midnight escapades. In fact, they practically encouraged it. They seemed to see themselves in her daring ways, because whenever she disappeared, there was always a certain bounce in their movements, and a knowing glimmer in their eyes. 

I’ve heard all the stories of how when Dove and Forest were young, they would swim all over the city together, exploring every shadowy underbelly and derelict crevice. Koko and I were even named after these giant abandoned buildings that were two of their favorite spots--department stores, as Great Aunt Sophie calls them. She also likes to joke that those buildings were where we were respectively conceived, which, needless to say, is absolutely disgusting. It makes me understand why my sister decided to stop going by Kohl. 

I had always felt like there was something missing from me, in comparison to the rest of my family. Or maybe that there was something more to me. Because it wasn't as if I never felt that curiosity, that tug, that impulse to take risks. 

I held Koko’s challenging gaze, and just for a moment, imagined giving in to the temptation.

But, like always, fears started pouring in. What if we got lost on the way up or down? What if we ran into unfriendly creatures, or hazardous debris? What if air was actually really bad for us, and the exposure would slowly eat away at our bodies?

What if it was just more nightmare fuel?

I turned back to Koko. “Actually, I’m too tired to come today. Sorry.”

“Of course you’re tired! You’ve literally never stayed up past dusk! Come on, big sister. Don’t be so boring.”

“The answer is no. But, whatever, go knock yourself out,” I said with a dismissive dip of my head.

I could never ask her not to go, just as I could never bring myself to tell her about the nightmares. I was the oldest after all, and I might have been boring, but I refused to be vulnerable.

She pouted at me, and started to say something else, but I covered my eyes, shutting her words out. By the time I looked up again, Koko was a blur in the watery distance.

Thick tendrils wrap around my legs, binding them in place. I am dragged upward, faster than I have ever gone, until I am higher than everything in our neighborhood, higher even than the top of the eighteen-story surface-scraper. My arms desperately grab for it, but there is nothing to grasp. Nothing to stop me from plunging feet-first into open air.

Now the nothingness surrounds me. It engulfs me, this darkness of all the senses. I continue to suffocate, stretching, reaching down, thinking If I could only lay a fingertip on safety, as my heartbeat wrenches out the rhythmic plea of water, water, water.

I burst awake, legs kicking, fingernails scrabbling against the rope of my tether. Water, water, water, was still flashing through my mind, and I took deep mouthfuls of it. Then, I focused on my nightmare coping ritual: Relax my limbs, float on my back, reacquaint myself to what's real. 

But something wasn’t working. I just couldn’t seem to shake the sensation of panic, and the more alert I became, the more this anxiety built. 

I double checked that my tether was still securely around my waist. It was. I reached out for the pole to anchor myself, feeling my way down the rope. Touching something cold like metal usually helped to ground me.

My hand clamped around warm flesh.

I recoiled, jerking away as fast as I could. In the same moment that my tether pulled taught, there was an explosion of brightness across my vision.

Dazedly I blinked at my dimly lit surroundings, registering that I was a few blocks away from my usual sleep station. I must have become untethered in the night and drifted a little. Then, as my eyes adjusted, I turned them toward what seemed to be the source of this light.

It was a human face, a mere six feet away, illuminated and watching me.

“STAY BACK!” I made the ultimate STOP gesture, arms held up in an X, shielding my ducked head.

I felt my tether slacken, and quickly propelled myself away.

Then, more slowly, I lowered my arms and peeked around them for another look at the strange sight before me.

A girl, or at least something shaped like one. The light from her glowing golden skin and bright white hair revealed the rest of her body, clothed in black. Her eyes were dark too, and wide in surprise to mirror mine.

She was beautiful.

“Who are you?” I asked. “What did you do to me?” 

She gazed at my hands with a blank expression.

“Do you understand American?” I ventured, taking care to sign slowly. “My name is Macy.”

Nothing. Then, she pointed to herself, and hesitantly formed the letters “A . . . N . . . G . . . I.”

I repeated her. “Angi?”

She nodded.

“Where did you come from?” I tried.

She shook her head in confusion, coils of white hair fluttering around her shoulders.

An idea occurred to me. “Y-o-u . . . k-n-o-w . . . t-h-e . . . a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t?” I asked, fingerspelling the words letter by letter instead of signing them.

Angi nodded again, then turned toward a nearby building. I watched as she peeled off her thin black gloves, revealing slender hands that were just as luminous as her face. She pressed a finger to the wall, then drew back to reveal a glowing dot where her fingerprint had been.  Satisfied, she began to trace a sentence.

Can you read English?

Now I nodded. My heart was beating fast. It was panic all over again, but somehow the good kind. I didn’t know there was a good kind.

The truth was, I used to hate learning written English as a child. Scratching out those infernal symbols in the silty sea floor, those arbitrary building blocks that made no sense whatsoever. As far as I was concerned, letters were good for names and nothing else. It wasn’t as if any of us would live to see a book, or even a piece of paper.  

But in that moment, I silently thanked the adults in my life for insisting that this obsolete knowledge be preserved.

Angi smiled. She turned back to the wall and wrote-

I found you floating out here. I am sorry if I frightened you.

You are probably wondering how I ended up here.

I have been travelling alone for quite a while. I was born on a Submarine.

That was one word I did not know. Was it similar to a Subway?

But I am done with that life. They will never find me here.

Do you live in this city?

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, y-e-s.”

I had many questions. Who was “they”? What was a Submarine? Why did she glow?

Slowly, she reached out and grabbed my tether. Pulled. My questions seemed to dissolve as I let myself be reeled in.

Angi put her hands on my shoulders and guided me toward the wall, and I saw that the first sentence she had written was already starting to fade. Then she wrapped my hand around her finger like it was a writing implement and poised it against the brick surface.

Traced out one final sentence.

Tell me about it.  

I briefly thought back to what Great Aunt Sophie had told me about whispers. That they were used to convey secrets. That they were reserved to reach only those close by.

So I traded underwater whispers with the radiant girl beside me, and the night wrapped around us and held us like it would never let us go.