them passively, then stands and hovers. The minute her feet no longer rely on the boat for balance, the seekers row away, returning to the dogra to save others.
K-Ush, misjudging the weight the rain has added to her heft, drops heavily onto the roof of the focor. Almost blinded by the diagonal assault of raindrops, she feels the seekers gathered on the roof turn and stare. For K-Ush, their awe is more assaultive than the rains. She folds her lips into a tight grimace and lifts her head in a regal attempt to hover, but the wet anchors her feet to the ground. She wraps her arms around her body and strides past them. In a remote corner, she turns her back to the seekers, pretends she is in her shro, and curls up to sleep.
The water swallows everything. After devouring the dogra, the storm turns to the focor, flooding the roof where K-Ush is recovering from seven days of offering prophecy. Even after the seekers who waited with K-Ush on the focor’s roof have been rowed away, K-Ush does not stir. It is as if she cannot feel the floodwaters licking at her curled up legs. She has completely surrendered to post-prophecy sleep.
A small band of seekers intent on saving the wero dare to lift K-Ush’s inert body, even though Sheya is not around to give them permission to do so. They settle her in the bottom of the last water vessel headed for unknown parts. But the storm is faster than they imagined. With a huge crack, water slams against wood, rousing K-Ush from sleep just before the vessel overturns and she is flung into the floodwaters.
K-Ush gasps, throat burning with unwelcome gulps of water. She kicks her legs wildly trying to propel herself toward the bobbing boat. The current drags her under, but a wero is built to endure. Using her large hands and feet she pushes herself up to the surface. She is dragged under again and again, but each time, she resurfaces, spitting out water and gulping for breath whenever her mouth meets air. Then survival is handed to her—the floodwaters slam her into the clutches of a tree.
Minutes slip by, but she does not move. She holds onto the tree, trembling. Finally, she clutches an overhead branch and hoists herself out of the water. She finds a foothold, then rests, gripping the tree tightly. Below, skik pots, farming tools, body coverings, xopas, everything that makes a home rips past on rushing currents. The branches beneath her feet bounce and sway. Then the bodies come: the bodies of seekers—beings who once prayed for her guidance—drift past, nothing more than useless hulks of flesh, face down in cruel waters.
Time passes on that treetop like it passes when she trances. K-Ush isn’t sure if she’s been clinging to the tree for minutes or hours. She is certain only of her exhaustion. As she wrestles with her weariness, she sees something distinct in the distance: a bloated carcass crowned by four stiff legs. As it drifts toward her, K-Ush feels a tingling at the top of her spine. The tingling shoots straight down her back when the creature is an arm’s-length away. The creature’s dead eye stares at her, its mouth open and that fearsome green tongue hanging out. K-Ush involuntarily draws herself up, away from the waters as if they will contaminate her with the ki-ra-he’s bloodlust. Then she laughs a laugh tinged with bitterness and self-ridicule. The wero, great saviors of the people, trained to resist the ki-ra-he, but with no plan in the event of a cataclysmic storm.
She is ready to surrender to the churning greed of the rising floodwaters, ready to slip down to the bottom and take a rest that does not stink of ho-resh-li and death, when a boat approaches. K-Ush hesitates. She is not certain that safety is what she desires. She does not lust to resume her task of feeding on seekers and giving prophecy, but something about the cloaked figure at the far end of the boat draws her away from the tree’s embrace. The figure beckons, and K-Ush steps onto the boat.
After she sits, she notices the strength of the rowers, the smooth synchronized movement of their arms, and, finally, she notices the holes. Each rower has two or three holes cut into his flesh. K-Ush looks up at the cloaked figure. One hand emerges from the cloak and throws back the hood. The cloaked face is angular, the head is bald. A second hand emerges to extend a dry cloak to be passed, from rower to rower to rower, to K-Ush.
“Who are you?” K-Ush asks as she presses the dry cloth into her lap.
“I am the last wero,” the figure responds.
“I am the last wero,” K-Ush says angrily.
“You are the last wero of legend,” the figure says with an amused smile. “In our village, we have no need for the term wero.”
“You sent the boy.”
“Yes, and you devoured him.”
“Was he not a gift? Was he not offering ho-resh-li?”
“He was, but you did not have to take him.”
“I learned to take ho-resh-li from Wa-Sheya, the most revered wero of recent times.”
“Sheya is a parasite,” the figure growls. “Swallow her lies and you die a bitter and twisted being.”
“You know Wa-Sheya?”
“I asked her for you many times; she preferred to keep you ignorant of life.”
The revelation of Sheya’s secrets burns in K-Ush’s chest like hot bile. She would like to speak in Sheya’s name, say something, anything to silence this angry wero, but she finds she cannot speak of Sheya.
“Why do you come looking for me?” K-Ush asks.
“We know, K-Ush.” The wero leans forward as if she is peering into K-Ush’s soul.
“Know what?”
“How you feel about prophecy, how you feel about ho-resh-li.”
“And you have come to save me,” K-Ush says sarcastically.
The wero draws back, barely masking the flash of anger in her eyes.
“Would you like us to return you to your tree?”
K-Ush is silent. She fingers the dry robe and stares into the distance.
“You are wondering if what I’m offering is worth it. You are thinking death is a more delicious option to life with us.”
“Must I hate Wa-Sheya to come with you?”
“We will leave that to you.”
Staring past the wero’s shoulder, K-Ush nods. The wero returns to the sanctuary of her hood, but not before her lips twist up into a smirk that suggests she knows better than K-Ush how this legend will end.
rattling. rattling snaking around my ears. echoes of rattling erupting in my temples. i hear a pop like the little explosions of air that punctuate my ear canals when i’m nearing the ocean floor. reflex. by reflex, i try to turn toward the sound, but my head is tethered in position. the rattling dies out with a slithering hiss. sharp parallel bands of light cut across the room. my head jerks back when light hits my eyes. behind me, somebody lets loose a low, raspy laugh.
“A little jittery, ain’t you,” the laughter mumbles. doesn’t bother with volume, doesn’t separate his words; just lets them tumble out any which way, leaving me to pick meaning out of a jumbled mass of sound.
“So it was a bio-anger, then?” another voice asks. clipped and precise tones dart around my head. a man slides across my view. i see the darkness of his pants leg skim the floor. i can’t make out a chair. looks as if he is gliding on air. been Under so long, everything on the Surface strikes me as strange.
man stops in front of me—face so close to mine, i can see blueness of veins, redness of vessels just under his skin. fold my lips together; try to speak. try bringing up the “b” in “bio-anger,” but my jaw is so tired. my lips fall slack before I can get any sound to part them.
“Won’t speak, huh?” those clipped tones don’t reach my ear until after the man’s lips stop moving.
i set my jaw, try to squeeze out a “c.” CAN’T SPEAK, I yell in my mind. can’t even get a sound to whisper out of my mouth.
“Nothing wrong with her vocal cords.” so says the mumbler. “Had ’em checked. Only part of her in good shape.” chuckles, but stays out of view.
metal grate of an old machine lays dead in the corner. at first, the blank wall behind the clipped-tone man has nothing to tell me. then the banner blinks on. top fourth of wall glows red. bold white letters scroll across the
