Mali ran out from the crowd with a big goofy grin that told me he could read my face very clearly. Which means he knew exactly what happened.

I waited for him to reach me. A few feet from me, the floor swayed dangerously, sending him into me with force. We both fell to the floor, slid some distance before coming to rest. But even that did not wipe the goofy grin. The look on my face must be very funny.

“Your…face…” he managed to stammer out. He was now laughing. I stared at him with my best bemused expression, which only made him laugh more.

“So…sorry” he stammered out. “I saw the whirlpool pull you under. When you didn’t surface for some time, I couldn’t help being a good friend. You won’t blame me for that, will you? Because we got our deepest divers underwater, and they’re not going to be happy you are unconscious.”

I sighed, though I was elated inside of me.

“The pain of having friends.” I muttered under my breath, just enough for him to hear.

He smiled in mock sympathy.

The floor lurched again. Once again, everyone found themselves sliding on the already wet floor. This was the first time in all my fourteen years of life that I had seen the floor of our banija wet. And I guess it was the same for everyone else, even the oldest of the Maken, because there were no single handhold, not even inside the houses.

The danger of continuing like that was obviously clear to my father and other people, because the conches played out the assembly tune. Everyone immediately started towards their boat houses.

Luckily, the wet floor didn’t pose much problems. For some reason, our ancestors had picked out the turtles with the roughest shells to provide our flooring.

Our assembly place was at the very back of the banija. It looked like a pool of water, with cut, colourful turtle shells as the floor surrounding the pool.

I didn’t go. My mother had appeared out of the crowd right then and insisted I don’t. I knew better than to argue when I saw the look on her face. I’ve tried that once before. And to show how much I succeeded, I’ve never tried it again.

Not that I could have, even if I wanted. In the brief interval it took to listen to Mali explain what happened and the conches call us to assembly, my joints had become almost as stiff as a ganena’s dorsal fin. I had to be carried into our house.

But my father told me after the meeting that they had discussed the issue of handholds. No one knew where we could get a suitable material. But everyone of age was going into the waters to see if we can find something.

Of course, Mother immediately objected. But I knew exactly what we could use, at least, temporarily.

On the strange castle’s battlements, I had noticed several smears all over my body. And Mother had scrubbed them off before I was able to move my joints again. If my conjecture was right, the smear becomes stiff on drying, dries extremely quickly, and can be found around the castle.

For sometime, I oscillated between keeping my castle (as I had come to think of it) a secret, or finding out if Mother could change her mind after she had made it up. Curiosity won.

Besides, our banija was moving almost as fast as it could. I reckoned the castle was already some distance behind us. I was sure we would swim a while before we reach it. And it would only get further.

I can’t keep visiting it till I find it’s secrets, and no one else certainly can. Maybe, when we had settled some other place, it may be possible. But hopefully, with some bit of luck, and will be the only one who remembers it. Even if there are others, who would take a journey just to see some castle at the bottom of the ocean? Apart from me of course.

Turned out Mother’s mind wasn’t made of unbreakable corals afterall.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

…. …. …. ….

I didn’t take me much to realise I was ill prepared for the expedition. First off, I hadn’t found the castle by myself, so I don’t even know where it was. And I can’t exactly call up a whirlpool to take me there again.

So I just did my best at estimating the distance our banija would have moved, then dived in when I thought we have swam out far enough.

I may have made a mistake deliberately though. It wasn’t exactly easy swimming against the kind of storm we had. I craved the calm of the deep, and I knew my teammates did also, so there was no possibility of a revolt.

It was the first time I was leading a group of people, apart from at plays of course. So, for the first time in a long while, I made a conscious effort to be more sensitive to my temporary subjects. My lips curled uncontrollably when I thought of the people swimming behind me that way.

Temporary subjects.

After swimming for a while more and not seeing the glow again, I started to get a little anxious. But I was sure the castle was not supposed to be as far out as we had swum.

I felt the current swirling behind me and looked. Someone was swimming hard towards me. The lantern on his head bobbed with his hard motions. He wasn’t swimming very gracefully. Probably because he wasn’t using his right hand as much as he was using the left.

When he reached me. I saw what he was holding in his hand. Our handholds, in a slushy pile as of yet. I made some motions with my hands, asking where he got it. We’ve been scouring the sea floor after all.

He jabbed his thumb three times to his behind, in the direction of our banija.

Very far back. I interpreted.

Time to return to surface.

…. …. …. ….

As we worked, shaping the slushy pile into into oval rings, I couldn’t help thinking.

I mean, I’ve never been that deep down before right under our banija, but I was pretty sure the slushy clay, or whatever it was, wasn’t under our banija. If it was, I wouldn’t have been the first to discover it. I mean, no one dives much around our banija, because sea creatures always avoid it, but in all the years we’ve been here, it didn’t make sense that no one had gone down there for some reason or other.

As fast as my hands were shaping the slushy (we had discovered the stuff dries extremely quickly. It’s either you’re quick, or your palms are stuck in a shapeless ball of who-knows-what), my mind was moving even faster.

First, a mysterious storm that looks anything but natural. Then, a castle that belongs anywhere but the ocean floor, and looks to have disappeared. Said castle shines light when you’re on it, and sucks light when you’re not. Has an open no door, but has a hole you can’t pass through. And also seems to repel every living sea creature. Then a pile of who-knows-what that dries unnaturally fast too.

At least, now I know why we always have to move far away from the banija to get our food. I had always thought that our human activities made the waters around us inhabitable, or sea creatures simply hated being hunted very, very much. Much, much more than they should, in fact. But apart from that, everything else is still pretty much a mystery.

…. …. …. ….

I don’t know how long it took us to finish the slush we brought up. The sky didn’t give any indication of time. But my joints were stiff by the time we were done. And not from the slush now. Funny. One would have thought that moving one’s joints all day would make them extra-move-ey. Apparently not.

When my father announced that the handholds weren’t enough and we had to go get more, I wasn’t the only one that groaned.

Seeing the obviously displeased look on our faces, Father decided it might be best we leave it till next time.

With everything happening, my usual lessons seemed so our of place that I was shocked when my tutor reminded me that we weren’t done with our lesson before Mother interrupted yesterday.

Had it really been only yesterday? It seemed so far away, as if from another time not mine.

It seemed somehow, living my normal life, when the whole tribe was obviously in big danger. Our banija was swaying like an ordinary boat, the first time I’ve ever seen it do so. And it isn’t as if we have never had bad weather before.

But I was still interested in why we eat Samino as if it wasn’t a sacred animal. Won’t the waters get angry? Maybe that’s why this storm is upon us.

“Maybe” My tutor agreed. “But why now? Why not then? We’ve been eating Samino for generations now”

“The tales tell us Elinja forced the sea to give up Samino. So he could have his revenge. And the sea did. So maybe, Samino is no more sacred to the sea.”

I frowned in confusion. Can something stop being sacred?

As our fathers and our fathers before them, and the ones before them had told us, there is nothing non living. There are only things more alive that other things, with humans the most alive of all. Followed by the Mother Earth. And then the waters.

And the same way human have their likes and dislikes, so do other things. The land loved us above all else, for we help it to be fruitful. And there’s nothing that doesn’t like being fruitful. If you killed a man, the Earth would stop being fruitful for you, for you are against it being fruitful.

If things could stop being sacred, then stronger nations would kill weaker ones as they please, for the earth won’t care anymore.

“We don’t know about that. But Elinja was wise and strong. The tales tells us that….”

The door burst open and my father barged in.

“Sari, Tani”

“I shot up from the ground where I was squatting.

“What happened to Mother?” I questioned my father.

Then I heard it. The watchers conches. They have seen people. People that are not our people.