1
I swore to myself I’d never do this again.
Rain rips down on a diagonal, battering the bay and our floating three-slip dock. It’s midnight, and I sit here jerking on my wetsuit. One leg, another, a shimmy into the waist, plunge my arms down the sleeves, zip up the back, fingers into gloves. The neoprene molds over muscle and bone, comforting me, telling me this is right, this is safe, secure.
But nothing about this activity is safe. And Thara, my sister, would actually kill me if she knew I was here, doing the very thing I made her promise never, ever to do herself.
Small drops tonight, but the rain pours down fast and hard, and the resulting sound is like an ever-present hiss. Warm air, though. No surprise for August in Southern Arizona.
I collect my remaining items, stuffing a dry bag with my mask, weight belt, headlamp, and watch, and I place a giant monofin beside it. Then I wait for him.
Spume mounds in fluffy piles next to me, the smell wafting over the dock, all salt and decomposing fish bits. I suck up that pleasant air, conducting breathing exercises to ready my body for the higher carbon dioxide levels. Behind me, the wind shrieks up a massive bluff that cuts a hook around the bay. Atop that bluff is our inn, the dilapidated, five-story structure that is my life and burden. I was raised an innkeeper’s daughter. Now I keep the inn myself.
I can’t say I keep it very well.
Which is why this—the suit, the water, the plan. Beyond reckless to try it—with no recency, no acclimation. It’s been almost three years since I journeyed below. But I turned eighteen last month, and now I’m on the Navy’s recruiting lists. If I don’t pay their monthly conscription tax, they snatch me up, and then I’m serving three years in the Pacific while my fourteen-year-old sister is torn from our parentless home.
Won’t let that happen.
So, I’m breaking all my promises and compromising my honor and whatever other shreds of dignity I still have left. Tonight, I’m going to freedive into one of the recently drowned homes in Coconino Bay. I’ll return with something worth selling. Otherwise, no point returning at all.
A honk pierces the wet air, and I turn to see a pale-yellow spotlight. Taim’s utility boat pulls up along the dock.
He looks every bit the newly admitted Coast Guard cadet with his shoulders rolled back, one hand on the wheel, his indigo poncho rippling against his tall, unbent body. For some, the rain beats you into submission; for others, it makes you rise up stronger.
I unlatch my eyes and hurl the dry bag and fin into his eight-foot boat. Then, three steps back, a short run-up, and I leap off the dock, landing right beside him as the boat rocks beneath us.
“Jin,” he says, a smile creasing his lips.
I nod back. “Taim.”
Off to a great start. We can say each other’s names. This won’t be excruciating at all.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
Short answer: No. I absolutely do not want to talk about it. Taim was accepted into the American Archipelago Coast Guard. He’s moving two hundred miles northwest. He’ll be stationed in the Gulf of Nevada for eight months (who knows where after). And he did not tell me about any of this until two weeks ago. So yeah, there’s shit to talk about.
I shrug. “Nothing to say.”
Taim swivels his head and his penetrating eyes search mine. He is so beautiful with his rounded cheeks and long lashes and glistening dark-brown skin. “There’s more I’d like to say.” He pauses. “But we can do that after the dive.”
So beautiful . . . and so very annoying.
“Let’s just go,” I
say. “And cut your lights. Don’t want Thara spotting us if she’s up.”
He shakes his head. The sheer amount of disapproval this man gives off. Should have broken up with him months ago.
“You should be using one of the atmo suits,” he says. “Safer that way.”
Thara and I own two atmospheric diving suits, hard-shell exoskeletons that let divers sink up to five thousand feet and withstand the pressure. They were Dad’s pride and joy (after his kids, of course). We used them for wrecking, mostly in Phoenix-Below. I did my first dive as a little girl, just five years old.
Taim knows damn well why I’m not using an atmo suit, though. He should shut his pretty, rusting face, and never bring that up again. Because here’s the thing: Taim was down there when Dad died. I don’t blame him, but he was there and now those two things can never be separated.
“This is just a freedive,” I say. “I do it once, pay off the tax, and I’m done.”
“And next month’s payment?”
Clouds above—shut up.
“Are you gonna drive this rust heap, or do I need to swim there?”
Finally, he pushes the throttle down. Rain lashes my face as we cruise out across Coconino Bay. I gaze behind me, and I can see the inn’s orange neon-tube sign flickering on our roof: The Admiral Bhargav Hotel VACANCY.
Bhargav was my father’s name. Admiral was not his rank. Highest rank he made in the American Archipelago Navy was petty officer second class. He thought Admiral would serve as a better brand for an inn. He was right about that.
Taim aims the boat north, toward the bay’s apex, where the homes just went under in the last few years. Shallowest there. He keeps the spotlight off, so the only glows are from our distant sign, a few sleepless homes that dot the cliffside, and a faint rope light that outlines the boat’s gunwale.
“Eight oktas tonight,” Taim says. It’s a nonsense comment about the weather. Means that there’s full cloud cover, which there always is. The only variant is nine oktas, which means there’s so much mist and fog that the sky’s obstructed from view. Nine oktas and you’re inside the cloud. (Considering that you’re breathing, I suppose the cloud is also inside you.)
Still, I glance up at the black, starless heaven. You can’t see the clouds right now, but they’re there. They’re always there. Five hundred years since the Stitching, since the clouds first fused a foggy shell around Earth, and now the rain falls every day of every week of every year.
“You ever think about it?” I say. “Seeing the sun.”
Just speaking those words, I’m transported into a memory. Six months ago, Taim and I, lying with our backs flat on the inn’s slanted roof. The rain only stops for a few hours total each year, so Taim and I climbed out, lying shoulder-to-shoulder, sandpaper shingles beneath us. Must have been thirty minutes we lay there, staring up at the empty clouds, wide-eyed and foolish. At the end we promised ourselves that, one day, we’d make it up above those clouds—together.
It was a careless, impossible dream. Only about two hundred peaks (mostly in the Himalayas and Karakoram) even pierce the canopy. I s
hould have known Taim didn’t take it seriously. He leaned in close, nibbled my ear, and breathed hot air against my neck, saying, “Imagine the warmth.”
I shiver, thinking of that memory—the thought of Taim’s lips on my skin, yes, but also from the gravity of it. There’s something magical about those moments when the rain stops. The whole world grinds to a halt. The impossible is achieved, and in the remaining silence, it feels like anything can happen.
I open my ears to the world now, and there’s no silence. Just the cacophony of the rain. Tings and pings and dunks and plunks as it crashes down, washes us out, muffling the world—so loud, sometimes you think the rain wants you to just lie down and give up.
I look back at Taim, and he’s staring out across the bay, the wind playing with the tightly curled tendrils of his topknot. Maybe he didn’t hear my question? Except I know he did, and at last, he turns back to me. “Seeing the sun—that’s your dream, Jin, not mine. You want it so badly? Do something about it.”
It stings—the command in his voice, the shame that gnaws at me for not having the courage to try. Maybe he realizes it came out hard, because he reaches a hand to my waist and rubs his thumb across the neoprene right where my sun tattoo is. It was a silly thing—a little black sun, triangle rays, inked into that dimple of flesh below my back-right waistline. I got it after we made our sun promise. “My badass tat,” I teased, showing him the next day. “You should get one too.” Of course, he never did, and that reminds me—this tender touch is something of boyfriends. Not ex-boyfriends.
I turn away from his hand, reach into my dry bag, pull the watch out, and check the geo-location. “This is good,” I say. “Cut the engine.”
The hemispheric cliffs of Coconino have a break at the northernmost point, and a road (now boat ramp) used to travel from there down into the valley. Fifteen years ago, when Dad retired and bought the inn, the bay was just forming. Rain’s come down hard since then, and sea levels have risen about four hundred and fifty feet. Last of the valley went under three years ago, and it’s a sharp reminder that the inn will be under one day too. Rain didn’t always come down this hard. They teach the timeline in school. Started out a few feet of rainfall per year, then ten, then twenty, now thirty feet a year is what we get to live under.
The utility boat comes to a stop, and I hook on my weight belt, watch, and headlamp. Then, without a word to Taim, I jump into the water, holding my fin in one hand.
“Wait,” he shouts, ripping off his poncho and shirt. “I’ll come with you.”
I pause for a moment, tracing the contours of his chest with my eyes. Last time I’ll see that. I smile, thinking how strong and smart he is, knowing you always dive in pairs. Not tonight, though. Only I can do
the time and depth required.
“Put your shirt back on,” I say. “I’m going at least a hundred feet, and I’ll need five or six minutes.”
“Five or six? Okay, get out of the water,” he says, dropping a wetsuit he just pulled from an aft deck dry box. “That’s way too dangerous. You told me fifty feet and three minutes max.”
I shove my feet into the monofin and call back to him. “Knew you wouldn’t take me if I told you the truth.” With that, I turn away, draw several slow breaths, and pour out a massive exhale to clear my lungs the way Dad taught me. Taim screams from the boat in the background, “Stop!” and I’m afraid he’s going to leap in and grab me, but he makes a mistake. I hear a rustle on the boat, know he’s digging for his fins, and that’s it—my lungs are empty, this is my moment. I inhale again, a giant breath, lungs at max capacity, then I drop the mask and propel myself forward into a duck dive.
My fin shoots out of the water as I get full vertical for the descent. I’m completely under a second later, flicking on my headlamp. Visibility’s good right now with the tide coming in, and I can see about twenty feet in any direction I’m facing. The water’s chilly, and it’ll only get colder the deeper I go, but the wetsuit will insulate me fine. The real issue is the pressure, and I move a hand to my nose, pinching and equalizing as I thrust the fin like a dolphin’s fluke. The monofin is a gigantic, glorious prism. Three feet wide and long, it powers me into negative buoyancy (about thirty feet) after several kicks. Still nothing’s in sight, and the pressure eases on my skull as I equalize, shoving the back of my tongue up against my throat, half pinching my nose, driving air out of each nostril over and over.
Pressure equalization is critical and one of the most dangerous parts of a freedive. A hundred feet down, I’ll be compressed under four atmospheres. If I don’t equalize perfectly, then it’s ruptured middle ear, blown capillary in my eye, facial spasm, blood in the lungs, or any number of other problems.
I should have done a warm-up dive to half my depth goal. Safer, but I knew I didn’t need it. There’s just something about this body that made me born for this. Dad used to poke fun: “You have rubber ribs and nothing inside your head. You are built to handle the pressure, my little sea creature.” I know he was proud of me. And down here, he’s all I can think of.
There are a million questions I’d ask Dad, but most resolve to one: Does he approve of the life I’m living? A life where my focus is on the inn, on Thara and getting her through school? It feels like the answer should be yes; I’m putting Thara first. But it’s come with sacrifices. I dropped out of school, I stopped diving. Which was what Dad loved. So, in the end, all I can think is that he wouldn’t be happy.
And that—is a deeply unsettling thing.
The shadow of a structure comes into view, and within seconds it materializes into a metal-shingled roof, encrusted in bird’s nest corals and pink anemone. A smack of moon jellies glow a faint purple on the far side, and I still my body as a large southern stingray skims right over the roof. They’re harmless if you leave them alone, but the whip-like tail has barbs that I don't
want anywhere near me.
It carries on, though, and I drop below the roof, glancing at my watch. I’m one hundred and twenty feet deep and a minute expired. That leaves me with three minutes inside, and a minute for the return. I could try for multiple dives, but it requires long rest intervals to rebuild my oxygen levels, and I don’t have the time. If Thara wakes up, and I’m not there, she’s going to be waiting for me at the dock.
I imagine her sitting there, feet in the water, orange trench on, long black hair soaked through. People say Thara and I don’t look alike, but it’s crap. We look exactly alike: brown eyes, bronze skin, eyebrows thick and curved. There are just two differences: one, she’s a head shorter than me, and two, she’s got a rich, black-velvet stream of hair, and I’m buzzed quarter inch to scalp. Of course, she’s the crazy—half the bay’s buzzed. Too hard to keep long hair when nothing ever dries.
Just the image of her waiting puts my stomach in my throat. I can’t face her like that. I have to get it done—and fast.
Three thrusts and I blast through a shattered window. The inside of the home’s small, two rooms, and mostly gutted. A moldering green couch in this room, a synthetic mattress melting into the floor in the next, some seagrass growing up through the floorboards, and a bouquet of white glass sponges growing like a chandelier from the bedroom ceiling. I open a door toward the back and there’s a bathroom, toilet covered in a dozen purple sea stars and a creature’s large translucent eggs in the sink (nesting ground—dangerous). On the bathroom’s left side, there’s a tub with a plastic curtain covered in orange algae. I yank that back and—oh god.
My eyes shut immediately, my chest contracts, my toes curl in the fin. I should go. I should break for the surface. My head spins, bile traveling up my throat. But I have to look, I have to.
Be strong, Jin. Look. If there’s nothing, you go.
I open my eyes, and the body is still there. I swallow several times, trying to hold myself together, push Dad out of my thoughts. It’s an old woman by the looks of it, swollen, bloated, skin half-eaten to bits, missing an eyelid. Did her family leave her here? Did she decide to stay? I don’t know, and I don’t have the breath to wonder about it. There’s only one thing I need to do. I scan her ears, neckline, hands, wrists. I even remove her tattered shoes, inspecting her toes. No jewelry. Damn.
Her naked eye is fixed on something, though, and I follow the eye’s gaze to the bathroom’s entrance. That’s when I see it: a saber, mounted directly above the doorway.
One look and I know it’s precious. A commissioned officer’s saber, with an aluminum hilt, a pressure-sealed black sheath, probably a stainless-steel blade beneath. Looks about three feet, and it’ll sell for several dozen ounces, maybe more if it’s an admiral’s blade with any decorative gold or silver. Dad never made it high enough as an officer to be granted a weapon like this. He admired them. Used to point them out whenever a senior officer was at the inn. “Lot of valor in those blades,” he would say,
his reverence lengthening his words.
For a moment, I wonder who it belonged to. The woman, her child, her spouse? Did she mount it here herself, so it’d be the last thing she saw as her home flooded?
I rip the blade free from the wall and pull the shower curtain around her again. Least I can do is give her this last bit of dignity. As I blast out of the bathroom, I glance at my watch. Four minutes thirty seconds down, and I can feel the tips of my fingers and toes growing numb. That’s my body redirecting oxygen to more vital organs. I need to surface—immediately. I know I can hold my breath for six minutes, but past that—well, Dad never let me push that far.
We used to train weekly. When I first started, I was awful, but Dad said the key was reducing your heart rate. It falls naturally when you dive, but you can drop it way down if you stay calm.
Just after my eighth birthday, I finally broke through. Dad and I were in the bay. He told me to focus on a Rigveda prayer. “The light in my spirit broadens,” he said. His voice had the deepest bass. I dropped below the surface, closed my eyes, and replayed the words, hearing Dad’s voice as it reverbed through my head. Dad put two water-wrinkled fingertips to the pulse in my throat, and when I opened my eyes, his whole face was glowing. He raised a hand with three fingers and then made a circle with his thumb touching the others. I knew what it meant: thirty. I’d dropped my heart rate down to thirty beats per minute.
Dad was amazed, but that’s not the important part of the memory. Not anymore. The reason I visit that memory is because I can still hear Dad’s round voice in it; I can feel his gentle touch; I can see the light sparkling in his dark-brown irises.
For other memories of Dad, I’ve lost those specifics.
That’s one of the horrible mistakes I made in the first year after he died. I tried not to think about him, and he faded.
Now, I stay up late at night, my chest so heavy, eyes shut, playing memories on loop. Sometimes I find a clear one, and I squeeze my eyes down on it, and remind myself.
You don’t have to ever let him go.
I fix that memory in my heart and steady my aching lungs as I punch out of the home with several thrusts of the monofin. The saber’s in my right hand as I ascend. Maybe it’s the current pushing things around, but about halfway up, I drive into a wide swath of kelp, not quite a forest, but the makings of one. It’s thick, and I’m shoving through it, until my fin catches on something. I thrash, but the
the fin’s not coming free, and that’s when I feel it—something snaking up my legs, twisting around them, winding.
I look down and see the head of a massive California moray, easily eight feet long with a mottled yellow-brown body as wide as my thigh. Its eyes are rimmed a bright blue, and my headlamp reflects off rows of spiked teeth as the eel unhinges its jaw. I’ve seen this kind before. Small, sunken homes make for a perfect cave-like habitat. They’re nocturnal hunters, the apex predators in the bay, and while they’re not venomous, a moray this size could shred its needle teeth halfway through my arm. That happens, and (given how far I am from a hospital) there’s every chance I lose the arm.
I jerk the monofin, but the moray’s gripping it tight. I could pry my feet loose, but I’m too deep, too low on air, and without the fin, I’ll never surface in time. The moray’s already curled two loops around my legs, the head sliding up my backside, veering off at my waist, craning toward my right elbow. I swivel, staring at that elbow, and my eyes travel to my hand—the hand holding the saber. My brain realizes then: the fin’s not coming free, only one option. My heart slams beneath the wetsuit as my left hand wraps around the sheath, thumb plunging down on the pressure release. I slide the sheath off as the moray’s head hinges into an impossible angle. Skin taut, pulse exploding, I slash down, nicking my thigh, but sweeping the blade clean across the moray.
I sever the neck, and those blue eyes blink out, the head tumbling in slow motion away into the darkness of the deep.
With my free hand, I reach down and seize the moray’s body, still coiled tight around my legs. It writhes (nervous system must still be running), and I pull it free. My feet flap several more times with the fin, and finally I burst through the kelp.
Blood leaks out of my right thigh, but I can’t pay that any mind. Violent contractions surge through my diaphragm, and my torso twitches from the lack of oxygen. I glance at my watch, which is now at six minutes, twenty seconds. Good god. I beat my legs in the fin, no time for a rest, I need to get into positive buoyancy. Good chance I black out, and if I do, I need to make sure I float up. Taim will notice me on the surface. Hopefully.
I unfasten my weight belt and kick my legs as hard as they’ll go. My heart’s about to burst from effort, adrenaline, and raw terror. Convulsions rip across my chest again. My thoughts fade. Can’t feel my hands, feet. Vision blurring, the mental disorientation of hypoxia clamps down. My father’s voice—Push, Jin. Push. My eyelids flutter. Where am I pushing to?
My legs finally give out—something wraps across my body, and my last coherent thought is a question: Do morays hunt in packs?
Chapter 2
Moments later, I emerge into my next life, ...
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