Lagoon (23 page)

CHAPTER 49

RESPECT YOUR ELDERS

Once they were back on the boat, everyone who'd been in the water threw up copious amounts of it. When there was none left in their stomachs, they dry heaved. Anthony was in the worst shape, breaking out in hives and plagued by a throbbing headache. Femi ran back and forth between Anthony and the side of the boat, dipping a cup in the water and then pouring it on Anthony's arms and legs to help soothe the itchiness.

“Sorry,” Ayodele said. Adaora didn't think she meant it at all, but she was too weak to tell her so.

“Is it the water?” Femi asked. “I mean, I'm fine, and so are the president, Bamidele, and Chucks. None of us were in there.”

“Yes, I think it is.”

Adaora felt her stomach lurch again. “What have you people done to it?”

“Nothing that didn't want to be done.”

Done by whom?
Adaora thought. She knew the answer. The sea creatures. They wanted the water to be “clean.” “Clean” for sea life . . . which meant toxic for modern, civilized, meat-eating, clean-water-drinking human beings.
Shit,
she thought.
I'm going to die
out here.

Adaora didn't know how much time passed. All she knew was that when she next opened her eyes, the sun was somewhere else in the sky and the boat had stopped. She sat up. She felt a little better but she'd broken out in the same rash that Anthony had and her
head pounded miserably. Anthony was lying on the boat's floor, Agu and Femi beside him.

“Is he all right?” she whispered.

“He's still breathing, but he won't open his eyes,” Femi said. He got up and walked past Adaora.

“Agu?”

“Yes, Adaora,” he said.

“Are you—”

Splash!

Adaora was looking at Agu's face. He was looking behind her, at the others at the far end of the boat. At the sound of the splash, his jaw dropped. She felt her heart sink. The president, Hawra, Ayodele, the guards. She didn't want to turn around and see what had happened to them. She'd had enough.

“Wait,” Agu said, getting up. He stumbled, grabbing hold of one of the seats. He started moving to the other side of the boat. “Wait!”

Adaora turned around. At first she didn't know what she was seeing. Water? But it was solid. Solid enough for the president to step on, as Adaora had stepped on it. She dragged herself up.

“Wait a minute!” she said. She nearly fell to the floor as the world swam around her. Her belly cramped and she dropped to one knee. Agu was on the floor a few feet away. “Do . . . What . . . Where are you going?” Adaora whispered.

She fought hard to focus. Ayodele was standing with the president on the water. Femi was still on the boat, snapping photos.

“I'll be all right!” the president shouted as he was lowered below the side of the boat. By what? And into the water? Adaora couldn't see. Hawra was clinging to one of the guards, weeping. Femi was doing something with his mobile phone. Agu was coughing. Anthony remained silent.

Adaora couldn't stand any longer. She sat down hard on the boat floor and gazed out at the ocean, whose water was clear as crystal. In the distance, she saw something huge leap up and then
splash back in, and a group of flying fish passed by yards from their boat. Below the glasslike water, she imagined there was a great, great metropolis of ocean life—giant, reaching, dark brown structures bloomed up from a flat surface beneath that she couldn't see the end of. And the structures had slowly shrunk and expanded even as she watched, sea creatures darting, wiggling, spiraling everywhere.

She closed her eyes and everything went away.

*   *   *   *

Water is life.

Aman Iman.

Water.

Adaora had spent fifteen years studying creatures of the water. Now, Adaora was in water.

Her hair was floating around her face. Yet . . . ? There was a rushing sensation in her neck that happened involuntarily. Her lungs didn't hurt. She felt the rushing of water again. She brought her hands to her chest. She could feel her heart beating. Several yards below her was a brown crusty coral-like surface covered with green swaying seaweed. She could see a group of red crabs the size of small children plucking the seaweed and delicately munching it.

She shut her eyes, trying to focus. She touched her neck. Instead of smooth skin, her fingers slipped into large grooves, the edges of flesh loose and thick. She twitched, realizing what they were, then she shuddered and screamed. But no sound came out. Because she didn't have lungs any more . . . she had gills. She tried to swim up. But which way was up? She opened her eyes and watched bubbles float past her. Upward. She followed the bubbles with her eyes. Upward. A glowing pink dot. The sun. The surface was more than a hundred feet above her.

Adaora realized several things at once. She was breathing water. She was not alone. She could see what was happening. She could hear it, too.

She focused on what was happening in front of her. The president. He was suspended in what looked like a giant bubble of air. He hung before five humanoid figures that reminded her of something out of
Star Wars
. She frowned. Hadn't she read somewhere that the president loved the
Star Wars
movies? Adaora did too, though she preferred the earlier films. But she'd watched the later films enough to recognize the aliens she was seeing. All of the creatures she saw now were whitish-blue-skinned, with huge black eyes and long long arms, legs, and necks. They even moved with the same fluid motions as they had in the movies.

The president was talking to them. She moved toward the bubble of air and then stopped. What would happen if she tried to enter it? She touched the gills on her neck. They felt like several numb hairy flaps of skin. The flaps pumped up and down, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized she could do it voluntarily, too.

Okay,
she thought. But then she looked down and her mind reeled. Her legs were no longer legs. This part of her body had become the body of a giant metallic-blue fish.
The upper and lower
lobes of it are equal in shape and pointy,
she thought, twisting for a better look at herself.
A lunate caudal fin, like that of a sailfish, marlin, or swordfish. I was made for speed.
Something tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and came face to face with Ayodele. Adaora swam back, surprised. The motion pushed water through her gills, and her mind sharpened.

“Relax,”
Ayodele said.

Adaora heard Ayodele's voice in her head.

She opened her mouth and tried to speak. Again, no sound.

“Think your words,”
Ayodele said.
“Move your mouth if it helps, but think your words.
”

Adaora moved her mouth as she thought,
“What is happening? What have you done to me? Is this permanent? Where is everyone else? Agu and Anthony? Where are they? Are they okay?”

She heard Ayodele laugh.
“Calm down,”
Ayodele said. She reconfigured her body. Ayodele was now a dolphin. No, she was too long to be a dolphin. And dolphins did not have such large eyes. Ayodele swam in a circle around Adaora.

“Swim with me,”
she said.
“I will explain.”
When Adaora didn't move, she laughed again.
“Your Agu is fine. Anthony is fine. They are all fine. Your president is meeting with the Elders, as you see. You cannot join them. Now come.”

Adaora hesitated. Beyond the president and the Elders, she could see a very large swordfish monster hovering in the background. Was it the same angry swordfish that had nearly killed them all? She shuddered.

“Come,”
Ayodele said again.

Adaora followed only because Ayodele was swimming in the opposite direction from the swordfish. Ayodele moved fast, and Adaora was surprised to find she could keep up easily. As she swam, she realized that all around her were bone-white edifices that were at least thirty feet high. As Adaora and Ayodele passed, some collapsed, and others grew. Sea creatures from fish to crabs to sea cucumbers clung, swam through, crawled, and wiggled past. Adaora could not tell which were the aliens and which were the earthlings.

“Everything you see here is the ship,”
Ayodele said as they swam through a yawning cave. Some kind of fish with a sucker mouth clung to the lip of the cave above them.
“The longer we stay here, the more we shift and become like the people of the water.”

“What about on land?
”
Adaora thought. This time, she didn't move her mouth.

“Yes, there, too.”

“Why am I not sick anymore?”

“Why is your body part fish?”

Adaora paused.
“Because this is . . . what . . . I wanted?”

“Is it what you wanted?”

Adaora had always loved the water. And she didn't want to die of whatever pollutants were in the water. Yes, it was.

“Is this place your ship?”
Adaora asked.

“Yes,”
Ayodele answered.
“One of them.”

“How far does it extend?”

“Many many miles, I suspect
,”
Ayodele said.
“That may change.”

“If I swim beyond, will my body change back?”

“I don't know. I think you will change back when you reach land. Isn't that how you imagine maidens?”

“Mermaids.”

Ayodele laughed, shifting into a mermaid herself. Her face looked nearly identical to that of Adaora's friend Ayodele Olayiwola, the one Adaora had named her for. Adaora found herself smiling.

“Will you take me to see Agu?”

“That's where we are going.”

*   *   *   *

Agu and Anthony were trapped in a bubble. They'd woken up inside it, at what they thought might be the bottom of the sea. They stood on hard white stone and above swam monsters and sea creatures. Most ignored them, but a few came for a curious look before moving on.

Anthony paced back and forth, muttering in Twi. He was no longer sick, and he was viciously hungry. He rubbed his hands over his rough wet hair. Images of being underwater as all those monstrous creatures came at him kept crowding his mind. When he pushed these away, he would look around and see
more
such creatures swimming about, watching him, perhaps even plotting revenge. Which was crazy. If he didn't get out of here soon, Anthony realized, he'd go mad. “What are we even doing here?” he muttered.

“No clue,” Agu said, sitting down in the center of the white stone. He rested his head on the palms of his hands. “Don't even know how we
got
here.” He looked at his hands. He had punched that kid so hard when he was twelve that the boy had lost
consciousness. Less than two days ago, the power had boiled up again and he'd nearly killed Benson. And, last night, when he'd run through Lagos trying to get back to Adaora, he was sure he
had
killed some people.

“You are useless,” Agu said to his hands. “I am useless.”

Now he and Anthony were imprisoned at the bottom of the sea, to starve to death or eventually be eaten by the first sea monster aggressive enough to bite into the bubble. He noticed two figures swimming toward them. They were not as large as some of the other creatures lingering around the bubble, but they were moving fast. He got up and moved a few feet back, as far from them as he could.

*   *   *   *

Agu and Anthony were trapped in a bubble. Its shimmery surface made it difficult to see inside, but she was sure it was them. It was a dome the size of a small room. She waved her hands as she swam toward them and they both waved back.

“How did they get in there?
”
Adaora asked.

“The same way you got to where you were.”

This answered nothing and Adaora sucked her teeth, frustrated with Ayodele's vagueness. Sucking her teeth yielded no sound, and this annoyed Adaora more. When they got to the bubble, she hovered before Agu and Anthony, unsure of how to communicate with them. She waved her hands and moved her lips, and she tried to say,
Are you okay?

“What?” she heard Agu shout, the sound of his voice muted by the water.

Anthony was frowning deeply and pointing at her fin. Agu looked at it and then his face went slack.

Adaora thought for a moment, then she turned to Ayodele. She wanted to ask,
Will I drown? Will I die if I go in there?
But she didn't. There was only one way to find out, and she wanted to find out for herself.
If I can't breathe . . . I will just crawl back in the water.

She put her hand through the bubble's surface into the dry air. Then she pushed herself in up to her waist. Anthony and Agu quickly pulled her in the rest of the way.

As they laid her on the dry ocean floor, Adaora felt fully disoriented. Up became sideways and sideways became up. The dry air bit at her skin and the inside of her gills. Worst of all, she couldn't breathe! Her body arched as she fought for air.
Put me back in the water!
she wanted to scream. But her new body was not capable of speech. She bucked, hoping Agu would drop her and she could crawl back through the bubble.

Agu struggled but managed to hold her tightly. “Can she—”

“Throw her back in the water!” Anthony screamed.

Adaora twisted again, turned her head to the side, and vomited water. It felt like she was heaving from the very tip of her tail. Then she threw her head back and inhaled loudly and long, air rushing into her lungs like the wind itself. Lungs. She had them. Now.