The bobbing lights all around us go very still. My fingers slip right off Casamir’s skin. I can’t get purchase.
“Arankadash!” I say, but she is already beside me.
We each grab one of Casamir’s arms.
The lights begin to move again. They speed toward us, a dozen, maybe more.
We get Casamir halfway up. I push far over to hook my other arm under her leg. The vessel rocks and the paddling arms flail.
I hear a great moaning sound that makes the craft tremble, and I realize the moaning is coming from the boat. I lose my grip on Casamir and slip over the side.
I plunge into the sea. It’s warm as soup. I muck about in it, grasping for the edge of the craft. My leg hits something beneath me. Lights dance past my elbow. I press back my terror and think only of what I know: the boat and Arankadash’s open palm.
A massive appendage surfaces next to me. I call it an appendage because it doesn’t have anything resembling a face.
Casamir shrieks and her head goes under.
I dive for her, but the sea is so heavy, it’s difficult to dive. I surface and yell at Arankadash for a weapon. She tosses me her spear. I catch it and stab at the creature nearest me. The sea roils. Eight large white tentacles rise from the water and grasp at the craft.
I stab again and again until pale streamers of blue fluid fill the sea around me.
One of the creatures surfaces. I see a globular belly, a multitude of eyes. I stab at the belly. There’s a squelching sound. Air and offal splatter back in my face. The animal sinks, the sac deflating as its tentacles writhe around it.
I dive again, kicking with all my strength, willing my bad leg to propel me harder and faster. I push the butt end of the spear ahead of me to extend my reach. It bumps into something. I claw forward. Snatch at a bit of cloth. Pull.
I come up gasping, dragging Casamir with me. I kick to the edge of the craft and heft Casamir toward Arankadash and Das Muni, though I see that Das Muni does not put out her hands until I meet her eyes.
I throw the spear in after Casamir and clamber up, kicking against the boat as it continues on its journey, oblivious to our concerns.
I heave in a long breath. All around us, white tentacles and frilly appendages have surfaced. They move in time with the lights of the bodies of the creatures they belong to, circling and circling as the craft powers on.
I crawl to Casamir. She isn’t breathing. I turn her over and whack her on the back a few times until she vomits.
When I look up, I see Das Muni staring down at us from the front of the craft, eyes narrowed.
I leap for her, and she turns in on herself, cowering. I take her by the shoulders and shake her. “What were you thinking?” I say. “What kind of animal are you?”
“She’s a mutant,” Arankadash says. “Any fool can see—”
“You shut up,” I say. “Das Muni? What’s going on in your head? We’re all in this together.”
Her eyes fill, but she says nothing.
I let her go, exhausted. The watery stuff in the sea is terribly sticky and tastes like rotten flesh and soiled cotton. I pick up Arankadash’s spear and heave it at the nearest tentacle.
“Don’t aggravate them anymore,” Arankadash says. “Sit down.”
“After all that?” I say. “They nearly killed us!”
“They are curious creatures,” she says. “Let them be.”
“Is everyone mad here?” I say. “Every one of you?”
Casamir spits gummy water from her mouth and croaks, “I’m not mad.”
“That’s what a mad person would say!”
“Look,” Das Muni says, pointing.
There, far ahead of us, the stalactite forest ends, and beyond that, I see the curve of what appears to be a shoreline. There’s a gleaming dagger of light there, too, but I can’t figure out what it is from this far.
I sag back down into the craft. “I hope there’s real water over there,” I say.
Casamir stares over the side of the boat, watching the creatures surfacing farther out. “They’re surfacing and filling their bellies with air,” she says, spitting. “They have to come up for air sooner or later.”
“I’d prefer later,” I say.
When we reach the shore, I hurl myself out of the boat. Arankadash leaps out after me, and we haul the boat up onto the shore.
Das Muni is shaking as I pull her out. I’m soaked in brackish bile. Casamir collapses on the beach and takes fistfuls of the sand into her fingers. She’s gabbling in her language, something that sounds like a prayer.
I stare out at the cone of light that pierces the darkness. It paints a great burnt-yellow circle onto the sands.
Arankadash comes up beside me.
“What happened to your child?” I ask, staring up at the hole in the sky.
“I was given a child,” Arankadash says. “The child-bearer came some time ago, and there were a dozen new children in the settlement to raise. It is a gift from the light. But . . . not all children come out right. This is where we take them when they are wrong. We give them back to the sky. We . . . we never know what happens to them after that.”
“Did you ever want to?” I ask.
She doesn’t reply.
I take a moment to consider how much to tell her, and then I say, “I think I threw away a child. I don’t have a clear memory of it, but it was a child, no bigger than my fist, and I threw it into the darkness. I know what it is to want a resolution.”
Casamir whistles softly. “That’s a long way up, Zan.”
“It was a long way here,” I say, shaking away my memory. Arankadash is still not looking at me. What did I expect? “I’m not turning around. How do we get up there?” There’s no wall to climb, no rope, only a blistered hole in the sky, just as Arankadash described it.
Casamir walks over to it, and I follow. We both stand in the streaming light coming in from above. I squint, trying to see the source of the light, but it’s so dazzling, I can’t see what’s making it.
“Ideas?” I say.
Casamir chews her lip. She counts off six paces, then six more, bringing her to the edge of the circle of light. “Huh,” she mumbles, and then she starts doing what I assume are sums in her language.
I cross my arms and examine the edges of the hole. Like the blistered folds of the hole in the Mokshi, it looks like something has burst down toward us as opposed to bursting up and out. That implies plenty of stuff falls in but not much goes out. Only the babies.
“Are you sure they ascend?” I ask Arankadash. “The babies? You’re sure they’re not . . . eaten?”
“I have heard . . . ,” Arankadash says. “I have heard that they go up in the light.”
I stare up again, long enough to be a little blinded when I look away. Whatever power the light has, it doesn’t work on me or Casamir.
Casamir brings her torch over. I feel the heat of it as she raises it high. “I have an idea,” she says. “But it may be a bit . . . labor-intensive.”