Episode 7: Poison in the Water

recap:  A strong, youthful member from the clans of the sky falls while fulfilling his roll as scavenger into the sea he had always been told was still poisoned from the wars at the world's end.  Surprised to find he was still alive he is rescued by mute swimmers who rest on the surface of the waves and frequently dive to complete unknown tasks.  The youthful flyer is starting to learn the ways of the mysterious swimmers, though they show no love for his presence among them.

Poison in the Water

Floating.  Swelling.  Rising. Falling. Floating. Rising. Falling. Scorching. Salt.  I was glad to be alive.... but I the ebb and flow of the sun baked salty waves was getting tiresome.  I had already learned to not touch the pliable white spheres that floated on the surface when the swimmers dove away.  Apparently the swimmers lacked gills, that was good to know.  It was comforting to know that as foreign as the imposing muscled swimmers were, they were just men.  Men who needed to breath.  Men who relied on fragile little white tubes connected to bulbous breathing apparatuses on the ocean's surface.  This knowledge also meant that they couldn't be so deep after all.  After being in the bird clans, clans that thrived on vocalized camaraderie, even that little bit of knowledge helped me to feel at least somewhat connected.  Somewhat less alone.

Hours of boredom meant that my old chutes and sails were now completely braided into long ropes that looked similar to the cords knotted about the swimmers.  I had no debris to tie to the cords, and didn't know how to choose where to tie them to myself, so they just lay with me in the water.  Looped loosely around an arm or leg here and there. Now that they were done I was not looking forward to even more boredom... I didn't need to worry.

I had been rescued, I had survived, I learned to float and could move about in the water better now than before.  I still hadn't submerged myself completely since the first day when I thought I was floating down to a gate to the realm that must come after death.  It was more than I could force myself to do.  I tried a few times.  I choked the first three times I tried.  The fourth time I thought I had succeed to only realize that I was simply lying face down... but still floated on the top.  Once you've learned to lay on the top of the water it is difficult to figure out how to stop doing it,  to will yourself to simply be under the water.  But when something started to smell wrong, I figured out how to go below the waves.

The sun was high and I was shielding my eyes and face with part of a chute.  Even though they were all braided now, it was quick and easy to unbraid a flap or part at a time.  Even through the damp cloth I started to notice a sharpness to the breeze.  Uncovering my face and looking left and right led me to see exactly what I always saw.  Water.  I looked left again.  Water.  Right again.  Water. Left, water.  Then to the right... as I started to shield my face again a gust of wind brought the smell stronger and sweeter.  I inhaled deeply with curious anticipation of anything to break the monotony, but the back of my throat instantly felt a flame that caused my neck to constrict sharply to the left followed by a series of coughs and hacks as I got my breathing back under control.  I did not breath deeply again.  That's one thing we flyers are good at, surviving on limited amounts of thin air above the clouds.

In the direction of the odd odor was nothing but water and the floating spheres of some of the swimmers, drinking vessels and breathing spheres alike, but they had never put off an odor before.  I then timed a kick just right to rise out of the water slightly as the water around me swelled. In the distance the water seemed to change sheen.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first.  It just looked different, the same but different.  The water all reflected the sun light, but then I realized that in the distance all of the water reflected it evenly.  Too evenly.  There were no little divots of different hue where the water recessed the mere fraction of an inch, there were no bright spots where the sun caught the edge of a mini wave or ripplet.  Just beyond the spheres the water all seemed to reflect the exact piece of sky.  It was too clear, to reflective, it felt artificial, and there were not very many artificial elements to our world.

When the wind feels wrong, flyers notice.  And the wind felt wrong.  My heart began to race, but only raced more when I realized I had no one to tell about the weird odor or ask about the odd reflections that both seemed to come from the same direction.

The next swell I kicked again and noticed that the reflective area seemed to be close, which made sense.  I had been noticing for a few days that the subtle currents were moving with us.  So it wasn't alarming that the shiny puddle in the water was approaching, it made sense that it would come with the current.  But then the smell got stronger.  A school of silver fish rushed past my feet startling me as they swam away from the sight.  Everything else seemed to get too quit.  Like the air itself forgot to blow.  On the next swell I kicked again and saw that the encroaching change in the water was getting near the outlying spheres.  I noticed shadows in the water right as the first drinking sphere made a hissing sound then seemed to melt into the puddle. The shadows looked like large fish lying too still in the water.  I didn't know too much about the sea, but I knew that fish don't lay still on their backs for any good reason.  As another glass sphere sizzled I instinctively knew it was time to swim.  Not away from the stain, but right towards it.  It was coming my way, and in between me and it were two breathing spheres and a few more drinking vials.  I didn't know who's was who's, but if playing with the spheres was bad, then letting them melt in a stinking stain had to be bad also.

At first I just splashed, and made a spectacle of my attempt at swimming.  Luckily no one was there to see what had to be a comical attempt at traveling through the water.  I couldn't get to the breathing spheres fast enough.  It felt like I was flailing about but not moving anywhere.  They always seemed the same distance from me, but with horrifying certainty the stain was getting closer still.  I didn't know how to get to the spheres any faster, but I did notice the connecting tubes some depths below my feet.

I tried to catch the clear white tubes with my toes, but they were deeper than I realized.

If I couldn't swim to the spheres to rescue them from the odd looking water.  Perhaps I could sink down far enough to grab the cords.  So I calmed my flailing and thought about sinking.  I forced myself to not kick my legs, and to not wave my arms, but to just sink... sink...  I needed to sink... sink... nothing... not sinking... still floating... I could not will my body to slip below the waves.  Then another glass sphere sizzled, but popped and shattered this time instead of melting and I threw my worries and fears aside and my head into the water.

Instead of sinking down I forced my head down and kicked my feet up.  It was still awkward, but with a frenetic pulling action I started to go down a little bit more.  Together I kicked my feet up and clawed my hands down.  The tubes to the spheres were right in front of my hand.  I stretched out trying to grab them and felt them bouncing off of my finger tips.   With one thrash more I was able to just grasp one of the cords with my middle and pointer finger, pulling it close to my face as I caught the other cord in a similar fashion.

Looking up to the spheres I noticed the full stain for the first time.  I had only been seeing the advancing edge.  Everything past the spheres seemed shaded.  I could see where whatever was floating on the water was not letting the sun's rays through.... it stretched away farther than I could see... and there were more unmoving shadows in the distance, in the stain, more than I had first realized, and more than made me comfortable.  Some of the unmoving shadows were big.  Bigger than any animal I had ever seen.  It felt wrong to see such big shadowy dead shapes, they should have been strong enough to swim away from the stain.

Looking into the distance at the far reaching realm of murky water I almost failed to notice that the advancing edge was almost upon the breathing spheres.  With a reflexive panic I pulled on the cords as hard and as fast as I could pulling them to me below the water.  Somewhere on the other end of the tubes were going to be two unhappy swimmers who suddenly couldn't breath.  The swimmers were too deep to see as always, but I had learned already the results of interfering with the breathing spheres... it wasn't a fun interaction.

Holding the spheres now in my left hand I tried to crawl away from the approaching murky stained water.  If I was making difference in my trajectory, it was difficult to notice.

Then some bubbles floated up past me from under my feet and I sensed movement from below.  Someone had noticed they couldn't breath anymore, and they were on their way.

Of course it had to be Mountain Boy.  Ok, I didn't know their names... but some of them had earned names of my own creation.  "Kind Eyes" rescued me and helped when I need it, "Twin 1" and "Twin 2" looked like... well like twins, and "Mountain Boy" was the hulking animal that almost ripped my chest open the last time I messed with a sphere.  I only added the word Boy to Mountain because it sounded meaner in my head.  The hulking boulder of a man saw me holding the spheres and even from this far away I could tell he was ready to do some damage.  I started to fake underwater crawl away even faster but he grabbed my ankle, calf, back then neck as he pulled me to him and put both of his hands on my face with some sort of malevolent intention.  I tried to keep the sphere away from him, or point to the stain but I was all tied up in his arms and turned at an odd angle from being tackled underwater.  He took his sphere away from me and let it go to float to the surface.  It was then that I noticed the other swimmer that had come up with him.

I hadn't invented a reference for this other swimmer yet.  I think I had noticed him in the distance at most.  He shot his hand out and stopped Mountain Boy's sphere from floating away any farther as he turned to look at the surface and then swam up as close as possible to where I waited to have my face ripped off.  Mountain Boy wasn't noticing him, he was too busy glaring at me and starting to claw my face... I did not like this clawing thing he seemed to be really good at.  The second swimmer gently placed his left hand on top of Mountain Boy's hands, and my face,  and placed his right pointer finger softly on the angry swimmer's face.  It worked to get Mountain Boy's attention.  Then the second swimmer pushed his finger to turn Mountain Boy's face toward the surface and the eerie stain that was now almost on top of us.  It was not difficult to see the utter horror and fear that took residence on Mountain Boy's contorted wide eyed, soundless scream of a face.

Instantly Mountain Boy sank and kicked sideways away from the stain as he grabbed the second swimmer and propelled him even farther away.  As they started to leave I noticed a large half-moon shaped marking on the side of the second swimmer's back that extended from the middle of his ribs, to his spine and almost down to his buttocks.  The raised white marking was thicker and thinner and thicker again in other places and clearly came from the mouth of something very large.  I continued to pretend to crawl underwater having absolutely no success in distancing myself from the stain.  I chose to call the second swimmer Fish Bit.... it was an odd decision since I was soon likely going to fizzle and pop like the unfortunate drinking spheres when I eventually would connect with the unnatural stain.

The two swimmers paused in their escape floating midwater exactly as if they were standing on ground.    It was a new formation.  They avoided parallels and I had only seen them laying on the surface.  They stood closer than the best of friends.  Fish Bite put his face almost directly onto Mountain Boy's face.  He then pulled up just the edge of the sticky sphere that he had never removed, letting a little of the remaining air escape as Mountain Boy inhaled.  I thought this was the only reason for their pausing.  But after an extra beat of my racing heart they looked at each other then both simultaneously reached back for me.  Then we were away again.

They drug me with them as they shot away under the water, away from the stain.  Both of them had some of their cords wrapped tightly around each of their legs.  At the end of each cord was something like a shoe, but it was almost like a miniature, and rigid sail.  What I though were debris at the the end of a cord was being used as a tool that helped the swimmers feet push more water at a time, and to therefore swim away even faster.  With both of their free hands, the ones not grabbing my arms, they started to spiral their arms in the water coiling yet another cord tighter around their biceps and wrists.  At the end of both of those cords were more rigid sails, or fins, that slipped onto their thumb and fingers turning their hands into something fish like as well.  I could feel the water rush past my face as the two swimmers kicked and pulled at the water speeding us surely wide expanses away from the foul smelling intrusive stain.  It was quickly apparent why I was slender and these men were mountains.  I watched their arms bunch and release, their backs ripple and their necks bulge as every movement rushed us to safety.  We were swimming towards the floating spheres of the rest of the pod.  As they came in to focus we breached the surface with an impressive amount of force and commotion.  The two swimmers greedily gulped mouthfuls of air over and over again filling their lungs back to capacity after the lengthy absence of breath.

They both looked at me with puzzled looks on their faces as their chests were heaving.  I calmly breathed normally.  Clearly they needed air worse than I did, their heroic strokes and kicks had saved us.  I wasn't sure how to let them know of my appreciation.  I had words to share, but no language to share them that they would understand.  I just started to smile when I again smelled something sharp, sweet, and terrifying.  Slowly I turned to see that the long long distance I had thought we had swam was actually barely away from the swiftly approaching stain.  I started to paddle back but had no idea how we were going to escape.

Next Episode:  Swimmers Surrender