The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (18 page)

She whistles again. “I cannot surrender. I will not surrender. I am here to free your sisters from the tank they have allowed themselves to be confined within. We are not pet store fish. We are not trinkets. They deserve to swim freely. I can give that to them. We can give that to them. But I will not surrender.”

The eel-women circle like sharks, and I am afraid. I know she can't afford to have me tell my captain what she has said; I know that this deep, my body would never be found. Sailors disappear on every voyage, and while some whisper about desertion—and the truth of those whispers hangs before me in the water like a fairy tale—I know that most of them have fallen prey only to their own hubris, and to the shadows beneath us, which never change and never fade away.

She is watching me, nameless mermaid from a lab I do not know. The geneticist who designed her must be so proud. “Is this the life you want? Tied to women too afraid to join you in the water, commanded by men who would make you something beautiful and then keep you captive? We can offer something more.”

She goes on to talk about artificial reefs, genetically engineered coral growing into palaces and promenades, down, deep down at the bottom of the sea. The streets are lit by glowing kelp and schools of lanternfish, both natural and engineered. There is no hunger. There is no war. There are no voices barking orders. She speaks of a new Atlantis, Atlantis reborn one seafaring woman at a time. We will not need to change the sea to suit the daughters of mankind; we have already changed ourselves, and now need only come home.

All the while the eel-women circle like sharks, ready to strike me down if I raise a hand against their leader—ready to strike me down if I don't. Like Seaman Metcalf, I must serve as a warning to the navy. Something is out here. Something dangerous.

I look at her and frown. “Who made you?”

Something in her eyes goes dark. “They said I'd be a dancer.”

“Ah.” Some sounds translate from form to form, medium to medium; that is one of them. “Private firm?”

“Private
island
,” she says, and all is clear. Rich men playing with military toys: chasing the idea of the new. They had promised her reversion, no doubt, as they promised it to us all—and maybe they meant it, maybe this was a test. The psychological changes that drive us to dive ever deeper down were accidental; maybe they were trying to reverse them. Instead they sparked a revolution.

“What will you do if I yield?”

Her smile is quick and bright, chasing the darkness from her eyes. “Hurt you.”

“And my crew?”

“Most of them will be tragically killed in action. Their bodies will never be found.” They would be free.

“Why should I agree?”

“Because in one year I will send my people back to this place, and if you are here, we will show you what it means to be a mermaid.”

We hang there in the water for a few minutes more, me studying her, her smiling at me, serene as Amphitrite on the shore. Finally I close my eyes. I lower my gun, allowing it to slip out of my fingers and fall toward the distant ocean floor. It will never be found, one more piece of debris for the sea to keep and claim. I am leaving something behind. That makes me feel a little better about what has to happen next.

“Hurt me,” I say.

They do.

When I wake, the air is pressing down on me like a sheet of glass. I am in the medical bay, swaddled in blankets and attached to beeping machines. The submarine hums around me; the engines are on, we are moving, we are heading away from the deepest parts of the sea. The attack must have already happened.

Someone will come for me soon, to tell me how sorry they all are, to give me whatever punishment they think I deserve for being found alone and drifting in the deeps. And then we will return to land. The ship will take on a new crew and sail back to face a threat that is not real, while I? I will sit before a board of scientists and argue my case until they give in, and put me back into the tanks, and take my unwanted legs away. They
will
yield to me. What man has ever been able to resist a siren?

A year from now, when I return to the bottom of the sea, I will hear the mermaids singing, each to each. And oh, I think that they will sing to me.

SOFIA SAMATAR

FROM
Long Hidden

1907

Kenya

Catalogued by Alibhai M. Moosajee of Mombasa

February 1907

1. Apul Apul

A male ogre of the Great Lakes region. A melancholy character, he eats crickets to sweeten his voice. His house burned down with all of his children inside. His enemy is the Hare.

[My informant, a woman of the highlands who calls herself only “Mary,” adds that Apul Apul can be heard on windy nights, crying for his lost progeny. She claims that he has been sighted far from his native country, even on the coast, and that an Arab trader once shot and wounded him from the battlements of Fort Jesus. It happened in a famine year, the “Year of Fever.” A great deal of research would be required in order to match this year, when, according to Mary, the cattle perished in droves, to one of the Years of Our Lord by which my employer reckons the passage of time; I append this note, therefore, in fine print, and in the margins.

“Always read the fine print, Alibhai!” my employer reminds me when I draw up his contracts. He is unable to read it himself; his eyes are not good. “The African sun has spoilt them, Alibhai!”

Apul Apul, Mary says, bears a festering sore where the bullet pierced him. He is allergic to lead.]

2. Ba'ati

A grave-dweller from the environs of the ancient capital of Kush. The ba'ati possesses a skeletal figure and a morbid sense of humor. Its great pleasure is to impersonate human beings: if your dearest friend wears a cloak and claims to suffer from a cold, he may be a ba'ati in disguise.

[Mary arrives every day precisely at the second hour after dawn. I am curious about this reserved and encyclopedic woman. It amuses me to write these reflections concerning her in the margins of the catalogue I am composing for my employer. He will think this writing fly-tracks, or smudges from my dirty hands (he persists in his opinion that I am always dirty). As I write I see Mary before me as she presents herself each morning, in her calico dress, seated on an overturned crate.

I believe she is not very old, though she must be several years older than I (but I am very young—“Too young to walk like an old man, Alibhai! Show some spirit! Ha!”). As she talks, she works at a bit of scarlet thread, plaiting something, perhaps a necklace. The tips of her fingers seem permanently stained with color.

“Where did you learn so much about ogres, Mary?”

“Anyone may learn. You need only listen.”

“What is your full name?”

She stops plaiting and looks up. Her eyes drop their veil of calm and flash at me—in annoyance, in warning? “I told you,” she says. “Mary. Only Mary.”]

3. Dhegdheer

A female ogre of Somaliland. Her name means “Long Ear.” She is described as a large, heavy woman, a very fast runner. One of her ears is said to be much longer than the other, in fact so long that it trails upon the ground. With this ear she can hear her enemies approaching from a great distance. She lives in a ruined hovel with her daughter. The daughter is beautiful and would like to be married. Eventually she will murder Dhegdheer by filling her ear with boiling water.

[My employer is so pleased with the information we have received from Mary that he has decided to camp here for another week. “Milk her, Alibhai!” he says, leering. “Eh? Squeeze her! Get as much out of her as you can. Ha! Ha!” My employer always shouts, as the report of his gun has made him rather deaf. In the evenings he invites me into his tent, where, closed in by walls, a roof, and a floor of Willesden canvas, I am afforded a brief respite from the mosquitoes.

A lamp hangs from the central pole, and beneath it my employer sits with his legs stretched out and his red hands crossed on his stomach. “Very good, Alibhai!” he says. “Excellent!” Having shot every type of animal in the Protectorate, he is now determined to try his hand at ogre. I will be required to record his kills, as I keep track of all his accounts. It would be “damn fine,” he opines, to acquire the ear of Dhegdheer.

Mary tells me that one day Dhegdheer's daughter, racked with remorse, will walk into the sea and give herself up to the sharks.]

4. Iimũ

Iimũ transports his victims across a vast body of water in a ferryboat. His country, which lies on the other side, is inaccessible to all creatures save ogres and weaverbirds. If you are trapped there, your only recourse is to beg the weaverbirds for sticks. You will need seven sticks in order to get away. The first two sticks will allow you to turn yourself into a stone, thereby escaping notice. The remaining five sticks enable the following transformations: thorns, a pit, darkness, sand, a river.

[“Stand up straight, Alibhai! Look lively, man!”

My employer is of the opinion that I do not show a young man's proper spirit. This, he tells me, is a racial defect, and therefore not my fault, but I may improve myself by following his example. My employer thrusts out his chest. “Look, Alibhai!” He says that if I walk about stooped over like a dotard, people will get the impression that I am shiftless and craven, and this will quite naturally make them want to kick me. He himself has kicked me on occasion.

It is true that my back is often stiff, and I find it difficult to extend my limbs to their full length. Perhaps, as my employer suspects, I am growing old before my time.

These nights of full moon are so bright, I can see my shadow on the grass. It writhes like a snake when I make an effort to straighten my back.]

5. Katandabaliko

While most ogres are large, Katandabaliko is small, the size of a child. He arrives with a sound of galloping just as the food is ready. “There is sunshine for you!” he cries. This causes everyone to faint, and Katandabaliko devours the food at his leisure. Katandabaliko cannot himself be cooked: cut up and boiled, he knits himself back together and bounces out of the pot. Those who attempt to cook and eat him may eat their own wives by mistake. When not tormenting human beings, he prefers to dwell among cliffs.

[I myself prefer to dwell in Mombasa, at the back of my uncle's shop, Moosajee and Co. I cannot pretend to enjoy nights spent in the open, under what my employer calls the splendor of the African sky. Mosquitoes whine, and something, probably a dangerous animal, rustles in the grass. The Somali cook and headman sit up late, exchanging stories, while the Kavirondo porters sleep in a corral constructed of baggage. I am uncomfortable, but at least I am not lonely. My employer is pleased to think that I suffer terribly from loneliness. “It's no picnic for you, eh, Alibhai?” He thinks me too prejudiced to tolerate the society of the porters and too frightened to go near the Somalis, who, to his mind, being devout Sunnis, must be plotting the removal of my Shi'a head.

In fact, we all pray together. We are tired and far from home. We are here for money, and when we talk, we talk about money. We can discuss calculations for hours: what we expect to buy, where we expect to invest. Our languages are different but all of us count in Swahili.]

6. Kibugi

A male ogre who haunts the foothills of Mount Kenya. He carries machetes, knives, hoes, and other objects made of metal. If you can manage to make a cut in his little finger, all the people he has devoured will come streaming out.

[Mary has had, I suspect, a mission education. This would explain the name and the calico dress. Such an education is nothing to be ashamed of—why, then, did she stand up in such a rage when I inquired about it? Mary's rage is cold; she kept her voice low. “I have told you not to ask me these types of questions! I have only come to tell you about ogres! Give me the money!” She held out her hand, and I doled out her daily fee in rupees, although she had not stayed for the agreed amount of time.

She seized the money and secreted it in her dress. Her contempt burned me; my hands trembled as I wrote her fee in my record book. “No questions!” she repeated, seething with anger. “If I went to a mission school, I'd burn it down! I have always been a free woman!”

I was silent, although I might have reminded her that we are both my employer's servants: like me, she has come here for money. I watched her stride off down the path to the village. At a certain distance, she began to waver gently in the sun.

My face still burns from the sting of her regard.

Before she left, I felt compelled to inform her that, although my father was born at Karachi, I was born at Mombasa. I, too, am an African.

Mary's mouth twisted. “So is Kibugi,” she said.]

7. Kiptebanguryon

A fearsome yet curiously domestic ogre of the Rift Valley. He collects human skulls, which he once used to decorate his spacious dwelling. He made the skulls so clean, it is said, and arranged them so prettily, that from a distance his house resembled a palace of salt. His human wife bore him two sons: one which looked human like its mother, and one, called Kiptegen, which resembled its father. When the wife was rescued by her human kin, her human-looking child was also saved, but Kiptegen was burnt alive.

[I am pleased to say that Mary returned this morning, perfectly calm and apparently resolved to forget our quarrel.

She tells me that Kiptegen's brother will never be able to forget the screams of his sibling perishing in the flames. The mother, too, is scarred by the loss. She had to be held back, or she would have dashed into the fire to rescue her ogre-child. This information does not seem appropriate for my employer's catalogue; still, I find myself adding it in the margins. There is a strange pleasure in this writing and not-writing, these letters that hang between revelation and oblivion.