Underjungle, p.8
Underjungle, page 8
Better that its gonads were removed, even if it was dead. You can’t be too sure, especially with the weird anatomy.
31
Waves slurp at the coasts. Once, I slurped your skin. Before they break, the waves froth and coalesce, before tumbling and disappearing. I was the same.
After the attack, I wanted to dissolve into the rest of the ocean. You were gone, dispersed, and I was ready to sink. How do you fill something like loss when the world you live in is cavernous, too? We survive in emptiness. What if that vastness then suddenly becomes too big? Only the ocean floor could keep me from sinking farther. That’s where I’d join the frigid abyssal ooze, and slip beneath it like a blanket, and count my heartbeats until they stopped.
Gola saved me.
He followed me as I descended. Then he warned: “Too deep.”
It’s true. The light was gone—the ocean water was only squid ink there. But what was there for me to see? After the first hundred sweeps of your tail toward the ocean’s bottom, you don’t even have to continue swimming. The gravity takes you. You give yourself to it.
You give in. You give up. I sank.
Gola chased me through the water column, and he bit into my back.
“Feel that, loser?”
He had to know I wouldn’t have patience for his games.
He bit again.
“Leave me alone!”
“Tell me why I should do that, loser?”
“I lost them all.”
“You think that makes you—what is it, special?”
“I can’t …”
“I can’t do this? I can’t do that?” He grinned to show his teeth. “You lost them all. So what?”
“You ask me that? How dare you! I hurt. I’m sad.”
He bit me harder. “Maybe you’ll hurt a little more now. Sadly.”
“I’m not going to fight you, Gola.”
“That’s good,” he sneered. “Because I’m not particularly interested in your fighting back.” Then he bit down again, with the annoying ferocity of a school of bigeye barracudas. I felt his swarming teeth.
“Stop it, Gola!”
“Why?”
Another bite. This time drawing blood.
“I said to stop it!”
“Why do you care? I’m hungry. Let me swim around in front of you, so I can get at your cheeks.”
“Aeeow, Gola … that hurts!”
“You mean those bits I’m taking? I thought you couldn’t feel any more loss—and it’s not even like I’m going for your eyes. You know, if you’d ascend a little, to where the water’s warmer, you’d heal that much faster, and then I could start eating those parts again.”
“Stop it!”
“Don’t be selfish, loser! I thought I raised you better!”
“Leave me be!”
“Yes, I know I raised you better. But if that’s how you’re going to be, then I’m going to start going for the bigger pieces. You can die just like she did, loser. Isn’t that what you want?”
What did I want? For the pain to be finished. Surely that. But not just for the pain to disappear, but for the loss that caused it never to have happened. And to have now what you and I—we—always imagined. Wasn’t that the ocean’s plan for us, and ours? From that same moment when we met. Or even before. From when I sensed and smelled and tasted you. Which was impossible. I wanted the impossible. I wanted the inconceivable. All those fathoms down, I wanted what was unattainable now.
“I’m going to keep biting. Let me show you.”
And I wanted to be whole.
“I just want the bit in front of me. Hold still. You’ll hardly notice afterward you’re missing that fin.”
And the impractical. I dodged him.
“Now you’re working up my appetite!” Gola jeered. “You think I’ll be satisfied with a fin? Your loins look better. Now those look tasty.”
I shoved him hard with my tail. He came back at me with his teeth, gnashing. I swam around him. He stalked.
I looked at him, nonplussed. “I can outswim you, Gola.”
“You’d have to want to, though. That’s why I’m going to eat you here.”
He came after me and chased me toward the surface, where the colors embraced us—blues and greens and oranges and reds—against the warm, oily sweetness of the minerals and salts.
“It’s better here, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer.
“And here there are other things I can eat.”
He swam away. I almost chased him.
32
You always swim faster with live animals in your mouth. They can be your offspring or your prey. You feel them ricocheting against your palate. Against your cheeks. Even your own fry want to escape. But you know better than to let any of them go. Their presence is a reminder of your role as a parent. Their movement gives you strength. Their flitting gives you speed. Perhaps they give you indigestion—when you have a mouthful of fry, you might end up swallowing a few by chance. Is that bad parenting? Sure. But it doesn’t matter. There still are enough of them left, and they are safe.
When it’s prey inside your mouth, it is another story. The living twisting pieces are the thrill, trickling with blood and excitement and hope. You devour their muscles. You gulp their organs. You crunch their bones, and swallow everything down.
They can be your prey or your kin, but once your mouth is empty, you want to fill it again. This must happen quickly.
33
Avoid the surface. Red tide sweeps in like rage. We know it’s thickest at the surface where all fault lies, before it radiates down into our realm. It is wickedness, plague. To stay away has always been our advice. It’s where the two-armed dinoflagellates commit their swelling and surging type of violence.
It is bad enough for the tide to seep through your skin and become a part of your body. And then to go through life knowing that’s inside of you. No one talks about the pain, but the embarrassment.
The sun also finally needs to learn to keep its distance.
And then there’s the wind, which bothers everyone but the gargantuan whales and the flying fish. What good are those gusts, except when they are cold enough to leave the ocean sealed—and the water beneath the frozen mantle clear? When our young are hurt, we teach them not to peck at the protective coverings that form across their wounds, or their friends’—even if they are delicious.
Barriers are the best defense, and sometimes they are the only ones. But all shells can be penetrated. The crab is not invincible.
Brola came barreling in with his thugs, slashing like swordfish, lunging and thrashing, creating confusion and tumult wherever they could, breaking up schools, finning up gravel, and smashing nests, along with some collateral impaling. The first taste of blood belonged to the mackerel. They’d brought them with them—their hearts still pulsing in their bodies, wedged inside the Banjxa mouths. It was meant to rile us, but one sniff gave them away. It was so stupid that it was funny. Until there was blood of our own, and then it wasn’t funny.
I’d already lived through this once.
This time there weren’t any sharks.
There were only Banjxa and Ecdda, our own attacking, our own being attacked. And our own witnessing it too, and remembering. How can you hope to forget, when the memories are in the water? I heard Gola’s voice in the back of my head, but I didn’t need him to urge me on. We fought back, all of us, but we were surprised and unprepared. Some of the Banjxa carried bills or bones in their mouths, and they used those on the nests without looking first inside.
A baby screaming in the water is loud and sharp and then silent.
34
Loser. All of us now.
35
A parent’s voice repeats itself. It disappears and then returns as a peal, arguing the same things over and over. The variations are all the same. It is the clicking and crackling of snapping shrimp. Nothing is new, because nothing can be new, because anything new washes the old away. Besides, answers still haven’t arrived, and so there are only questions. And sometimes there aren’t words, which makes answering impossible. There is just ebb and flow of sadness and anger. Both of those you can smell.
Digging is loss unless you fill it. Breaking is loss until you rebuild.
I have many brothers and sisters. We have drifted away. I have many cousins. I don’t know their names.
We Gjala have fewer children than we did before. It is an uncountable number. Mating won’t change that. It can’t. The loss is unbearable, and yet we will survive it with wrath and guilt. We will sniff the water for our young’s remains and feed on their flesh with each agonizing bite until the last particle of them is gone and we carry them inside us, as bone, muscle, and resolution.
In the land creature’s world, do they ever think of starting over? Do we?
36
Then came the dirges. The wails and drones and yowls. The beating of the fins and the breasts. Songs of agony and sorrow. And finally the talk of reprisal.
The Banjxa would be ready and expect an attack. Our fastest swimmers would enter their waters. Their troops would meet them, carrying the same swordfish bills and bones in their teeth. Again, there would be a show of horrors, of what they could pound and beat and break—except they wouldn’t disturb their own nests. But as fast as the Banjxa can swim, they’d be slowed by what they carried. And this time, they wouldn’t have the element of surprise. So our swimmers would taunt them, snap and tear at their fins, and send them careening into crags and trenches with relentless sweeps of our tails, until the Banjxa would have no choice but to release the bones to recover their sleekness in the water. And then more of our Gjala would swoop in from all sides and pick them up. And we’d do the same to the Banjxa nests as they did to ours, with those bones and bills, and we’d see how they liked that.
Did I say once we were creatures of love?
Another plan: We’d hurtle in with all our numbers, in a show of blinding force. And rage. And the Banjxa would naturally cower in their nests from our astonishing, paralyzing display. Or we’d barrel in, they’d choose foolishness and bravado and swim out to meet us, and a battle would ensue. Paeans would be written about the confrontation. About the vengeance and the blood, the hearts sucked out of the Banjxa bodies and displayed before their failing eyes. Brola especially would be our quarry. We would hunt him, excise his heart from his chest, and explode it between our teeth, with the kind of crushing bites the sharks understand. We’d chew the muscle and spit the mashed pieces from our mouths, so they sank to the floor and drifted in the current. Maybe the goatfish would want them. The remaining Banjxa could eat the goatfish, if they chased them before they all swam away.
The sharks would come. The erupting hearts would be irresistible. They’d hear the percussive calls, even once those muscles had been turned to pulp. Then they’d turn on the Ecdda, who would have also entered the Banjxa waters, after they’d finally grasped the mightiness of our force—and the wisdom of turning on the Banjxa, too. Not that the Ecdda are known for their wisdom, which is why they wouldn’t have anticipated the duplicitousness of the sharks. But are you ever supposed to regard a shark with trust? Entire flanks and ribs and fins pulled away from bodies until the ocean was soup. Not a single Ecdda left alive. Free-floating tails in the currents.
There would be some sharks dead, too.
Or maybe it wouldn’t work out like that exactly. We Gjala are not butchers. The battle would go differently. Many of us dead, in addition to the Banjxa and the Ecdda. Or instead of the Banjxa and the Ecdda and the sharks, which would be worse. Our fry who hadn’t been killed would be parentless now. Gjila says not to fight for honor. But should you fight if you aren’t sure you’ll win? Is it weakness to worry about the survivors?
Then came the dirges.
37
Why did the Banjxa and Ecdda attack? No, that’s not a fair question. There are millions of Banjxa and millions of Ecdda, and only a few from each tribe were involved. Maybe hundreds or thousands, to be precise.
It’s easy to understand the Ecdda’s involvement. They are brutes, which makes them predictable. They’re incapable of passing up a fight. That’s not entirely bad, if you consider the fighting by itself. You could enter into a brawl and always be sure to end up on the winning side, because you’d switch allegiance at a moment’s notice. If not for honor, you’d fight for victory. Forgive the pun, if you think that sounds shallow. But that’s not even who the Ecdda are. The Ecdda fight for participation.
The hermit crabs know their carapaces aren’t enough. Their abdomens are particularly susceptible to attacks. That’s why they seek out abandoned shells, ones that are harder than their own. But when they find another hermit crab whose adopted home looks particularly durable or comfy, they’re willing to kill the owner and take it for themselves. Hermit crabs are social animals. They live in colonies of the hundreds. But that isn’t for mutual protection. They need dupes and victims. Maybe the most narcissistic crabs need others to watch.
We Gjala talk of love. It’s the choice of an embrace, when all other possibilities between two creatures exist. When two mouths meet, anything can happen. New species can emerge. Tribes can grow and spread through the ocean. We know those additional mouths are going to meet in time. We talk and kiss and eat and bite. Sometimes we even plan ahead. Each of us decides what he says and does, what she says and does. The ocean is ebb and flow. You get what you give. We talk of love.
38
Ooo, the ur-octopus the Banjxa believe in, was supposed to have given birth to us all. When its tentacles separated from its body, they became each of our tribes, while the eighth one vanished. For the Banjxa, Ooo became our world.
What do we believe in? That our world is glorious and peaceful?
I don’t know.
To see an octopus’s tentacles pulled from the rest of its body is a grisly sight. The way the skin and muscles stretch, the massive power each of the tentacles has, the suckers grasping vainly at teeth and water, the colors and contours changing into an uncountable progression of aggression, defense, and desperation. The eyes, especially those.
Then the moment the body comes apart. The reverberation of the oozy snaps. The tentacles curling into themselves protectively, like bristleworms, as if the body and they can still survive, while hemorrhaging into the currents. The eyes and beak are the only parts that don’t change color. But they all change color.
We say we are creatures of love.
Would the land creature say the same? Would it say the same about us?
39
We did this. Our Gjala. We are the Ecdda, and the sharks. As the Banjxa say, all of us come from the same place—whether it’s Ooo’s arms or the same forgotten cave. We are the Banjxa, too.
We bring destruction. Sometimes we tell it nicer. But each time there is an abyssal storm, or one swooping down on us from above, we know our world will be broken into pieces. That is the way. The corals are first. But they’re not the only ones to feel it. To feel the ocean’s wrath is to be a part of the ocean’s wrath. All of us are products of our upbringing. The ocean is tempestuous. That’s also who we are.
The octopus was severed as a message. As a warning. As disrespect. I can imagine it took a Gjala on each arm. Plus more to watch.
Wasn’t there anyone to stop it? To say, “Swim away.”
I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know how you’d decide to be a part of that. No one will admit to it.
To be the one who took a tentacle in his teeth …
To be one of the eight.
How beautiful that we can sense each other’s feelings, or we’d have to talk twice as much. You can taste emotion. You can hear a heart beating beneath the sand. But there are also truths and facts, and questions that are an embarrassment and answers that will float away. You only need to wait for a current.
We eat octopus. We don’t look them in the eye.
We gather in the canyon, what we call our temple, our prayer house. The encrusted tomb. Where the water is deep enough that nothing happens fast, and everyone’s dream is of burying themselves in the goo. Every one to two thousand years, our planet’s oceans mix through circulation. (Yes, one to two thousand is a number we know.) In two thousand years, we’ll all be the same, but for now the differences among us are unmanageable and shocking. And widening. Two thousand years is longer than I’m prepared to wait. We’re used to changes happening in a flash.
When one fish darts in a new direction, the others follow—or they don’t. The first to leave the group leads a school, or it becomes a loner. If a school defects, it becomes a shoal. There are schools within each shoal, of like-minded fish that swim in the same direction, but when there are too many schools, the shoal breaks apart.
That’s what happened to us. Our school became a shoal. It became our tribe. But we all started in that cave. We didn’t start out as seven.
Would some of our Gjala become a new tribe now? Of octopus killers? Would they call themselves that? Or would they become so fixated on savagery that they’d become Ecdda instead?
Imagine a way to force a creature to stay in one place. To make it stay for days or years. That would be impossible. In the ocean, there is only motion. Not even the corals manage to stay in one place, no matter how hard they try. Storms are inevitable, unpredictable, and certain.
We can be solitary or social. You can learn a new dialect. Maybe you’ll always have an accent or a peculiar way you express yourself. Sometimes that may be considered charming. Other times the creatures you choose to live among will laugh at you. Cruelty generally starts in the mouth. Not just along the teeth, but at the tongue.
