Bring your sister and I will tell you the story of how the waters returned to Apicuya. No, bring all the children. This is important.

Don’t splash. If you cannot hear the thrum of the skymill, you are being too loud. Sit in the shallow pool, otherwise your ears will be submerged. I know it is warm. Grab ice. Today I am going to tell you the story of how the waters returned to Apicuya. As I do, I want you to think about yesterday. About what would have happened if we’d said no.

What’s that, Caluta? You didn’t know the waters left?

Well, this is also important.

Let me tell you how the waters left.

In the long-long-ago, Apicuya was a small town built on an island in a lake. Picture it in the eye of your mind: maunim trees with leaves thick like branches, tall by the water’s edge; curved sails of the ubaje pregnant with wind on water; canals carved with heavy labor, the sound swooping through wooden lupanas in the town center, but distant from apartment plazas where children slept in hammocks, and elders wove flexible roots of the yuem.

The lake provided Apicuya protection from invaders. But what Apicuya should have feared were its own leaders. Jibu, fifth ruler of Apicuya, had a strangling desire. He wanted Apicuya to become the greatest city in the world, flowing with wealth, brought from across the continents, and on top of this fountain, himself. He wanted their industry to boom and their population to fatten, but the island was small, and already crowded.

Jibu sent laborers into the mountains. They dug channels to divert the rivers, and Jibu’s armies supervised. Soon the waters rushed away, causing floods for others, whom Jibu saw as an acceptable sacrifice. Without homes, they’d move to Apicuya.

With the rivers dried up, the lake lowered. In its place, trees with trunks like elephant feet were planted, and houses, many thousands of houses, were built upon the new land. These heavy buildings sank into the clay floor of the lake and got stuck. All these buildings were filled with people, and all these people needed water. Machines pumped the lake’s deepest caverns, which the winter rains filled—but Apicuya was thirsty. Jibu’s ways washed off on them, and the machines pumped waters from the caverns faster than they could be refilled. Drop by drop, the lake and the caverns emptied. The ubaje no longer sailed. Many maunim trees died. The canals moved rain in winter, but in summer, they sat empty. Countless people died of thirst, but never Jibu’s descendants, whose armies guarded their private waters. Over the centuries, the thirsty Many would turn their formidable collective strength, again and again, against these armies; in this way, for a price, they would quench their thirst.

Jibu’s descendants would always remain in power. New armies would be trained. History would repeat.

When you are preparing to lay blame for the departing of the waters – whose consequences, as yesterday’s events show us, cascade through generations – consider choice; who held the power to say yes; to say no; and who didn’t.

That is how the waters left.

Now let me tell you how they came back.

~~~

In the long-ago, many years after the long-long ago, there lived a girl. Her name was Naxa.

Naxa lived and worked in her father’s store beneath the rumbling bridge, where behind their often-scrubbed and always dusty windows, they sold trinkets, silver forks and ubaje figurines and knotted rings, to name a few. (Remember to sell? It means to exchange for money. Remember money? Okay, very good). While Naxa was happy to spend quiet days helping her father make a living, inside she brimmed with dreams of exploration. In particular, she was fascinated with the caverns beneath the city. It wasn’t rare, on days she wasn’t working, to find her crawling through the tunnels below the pavement with her curly hair tied back and her eyes wide, searching the world for newness. When, one night, Naxa stayed up late feeding popsicles to her cat Bim and playing eja cards with her friend Temasho, she paid for it with sleepy eyes the next morning. With a yawn, she hefted the vacuum and began on the second curtain. Over the whir of the machine she didn’t hear the bell, and was startled by a tap on her shoulder.

The customer standing before her wore a petunia-patterned dress that reminded Naxa of her grandma. Her face was lined with deep wrinkles like a bed of clay. Naxa thought, this woman must have done much living before this, good living and bad living and all the living between.

The woman’s name was Yatia. Naxa remembered her. She had come in yesterday.

“Something is wrong with this,” Yatia said, and held out a robust, pear-shaped mug with maunim trees etched around the base. Naxa remembered it, too. Her father had fished it out of the waters the last time the city had flooded with two weeks of rain.

“It fills with water,” Yatia said, “that I don’t want—I bought it for wine.”

Naxa squinted. The cup was indeed full of water. She took it to a bucket at the back of the shop, then tipped it, and let the waters pour.

They poured and they poured and they poured.

They did not stop pouring until Naxa turned the cup right side up again. Naxa whispered her wonder, not wanting her father to overhear the words she chose, then took the cup back to Yatia, who waited with reserved impatience. “You want to return this?” Naxa asked.

“Yes,” Yatia said, “this, I cannot fill with wine.”

Naxa examined the cup. It had been empty as the summer sky the last time she’d seen it. “Well,” she said, “do you want a different cup?”

Yatia agreed. She picked a squared-off brass tankard. As soon as Yatia was gone, Naxa closed the shop and took the mug into their plaza. As usual, it was bustling with family; cousins racing marbles through the gutters, aunts and uncles doing the washing, grandparents soaking flavor from yuem roots. In a hammock, Naxa found Luyan—her father—asleep. In addition to running the shop, her father worked nights pouring concrete (a material they used in the long ago to build houses, second only to water in its demand). Instead of waking him, Naxa went back to the bathroom in their apartment, waving off calls from cousins to play, and put the plug in the bath. Gripping the cup tightly, she tipped it and watched as the tub began to fill.

Soon it was swimming with fish. One by one they’d shot from the cup. There was a gray one she named Feoban and a green one she named Obolo and a yellow one she named Sava. Naxa laughed and skipped and said hello with wiggled fingers. She submerged the cup to the bottom and watched it scoot along like a hermit crab until it was pressed against the side of the tub, still gushing.

The water was crisp, cool, and clear. Naxa gave it a sniff and then a taste. She’d heard about how the waters from the Frozen Mountains tasted like the blueness of a clear day, and this was how she’d imagined them. She stuck her face in the tub, blew bubbles, took three big glugs then burped.

In the bathtub, three fish glittered and darted and dove.

She removed the cup, and the sound of a waterfall filled the room.

How she could scream!

Naxa lived in Apicuya, the thirstiest city in the world. Apicuya was running out of water. And here she was, with a cup that poured and poured and pou–

Yes, Ixaan. It was a happy scream. You do them all the time. And why should you know any other kind, child, living here? Sounds beyond the walls?

I see.

Okay, quiet, we must return to the story. If we stop now, you’ll never know how the waters returned. Can you hear the skymill? Good.

The first thing Naxa did with the cup was take it to Temasho’s house. Of all her friends, it was Temasho and his family who had the worst water troubles because they lived beyond the reach of the city’s pipes. When the lake had finally disappeared from the surface of the land, Apicuya found itself face to face with the towns of the lake’s perimeter, like a door opened to find someone standing on the other side. They became a part of Apicuya.

But Apicuya did not extend them its water.

Temasho lived in this one-place-once-two. The old border could be seen; it was where blue adobe became yellow, square plazas became round, and multi-storey lupanas became single-floored ones. The old border could be tasted, too—when spicy yuem root became sweet. On the rooftop of Temasho’s blue and yellow one-and-a-half-storey house was an empty cistern. With a boost from Temasho and his siblings, Naxa climbed on top and filled the cistern with water from the cup that poured. The next morning, Naxa made her way to the Hungry Tunnel, in one hand a roll of industrial tape from Luyan’s toolkit, in the other the cup.

There were many pipes beneath Apicuya, and the Hungry Tunnel was a passageway that Naxa’s father had shown her whose smooth concrete surface he was proud to have helped pour. It plunged into the ground like a sinkhole made on purpose, and on rainy days its wide mouth seemed to swallow the entirety of the liquid sky, sending it straight down into the caverns.

Temasho and Naxa stood at the edge.

“No one will be thirsty again,” Naxa said.

“Maybe tap water won’t smell like belly-button anymore,” said Temasho.

“They’ll refill the swimming pools!”

“Mama might let me get a water gun!”

Naxa took the tough industrial tape and used it to stick the mug to the tunnel’s wall. They watched their little waterfall.

They splashed about. They laughed and screamed – happily – and stomped in puddles and sang praises to the gods they didn’t believe in but liked hearing stories about. They talked about what the newspapers would write once the lake resurfaced. Temasho caught minnows in his teeth.

Then, when the cavern went quiet, and minnows no longer fell, Naxa stopped her singing and Temasho stopped his dancing and they looked at each other. They looked down at the trickle running past their feet. They looked up at the cup, and each of their hearts sank. For it no longer poured.

~~~

Naxa went back to her life.

She kept her three fish – Feoban, Obolo, and Sava – because each of them was precious, and each of them reminded her—

Cayet, don’t splash. I’ll tell you why it stopped if you stay quiet.

Actually—no, I’ll tell you how. There are others who would benefit from putting the why into words. Ask them.

The story: each of Naxa’s fish was precious to her because they reminded Naxa of the day she’d helped. To help one person, Naxa realized, was to really help two, because you had to count yourself.

Helping broke math.

When Naxa wasn’t watching her fish or helping her father Luyan in the shop, she was on her rooftop looking down at Apicuya, listening to its thousand-thousand sounds: the melodies of birds, the hooting of vendors, the announcements of trains, the barks of dogs, and the criss-crossing cries of sirens. In the heat of the day, Naxa searched the Districts for the tastiest jupaa, then begged tourists for a plate. She joined crowds, learned chants, and when she found a sign printed with big words she couldn’t read, above which was a photo of a man drawn to have red curly horns, she waved it around like everyone else. From outside fenced-off, flower-bursting plazas in rich neighborhoods Naxa ran laughing with fruit, stolen through fence-slats, chased by stern-faced security guards. Often, Naxa thought of Yatia and the cup. She spent whole afternoons examining the hefty thing. It contained not a drop of its former wonder.

Seven days after the cup had gone ordinary – as Naxa polished plates at the front counter of the shop – the bell announced a customer. It was Yatia. In her hand, she carried the brass tankard and it was full of water.

“There is something wrong with this cup,” Yatia said.

Naxa dropped the plate she was polishing. She rushed over, took the tankard, and peered inside. Over a fruit bowl, she tipped it, and clear water flowed.

“How did you do it?” she whispered.

“I did nothing,” Yatia said, voice bubbling with anger, “it is your cup. You sold it to me.” 

Naxa put down the brass tankard and grabbed an old clay chalice from the shelf. She tapped the cup first against Yatia’s forehead, then her lips. Then her heart, then her left hand. Then her right hand, then her belly.

Nothing happened.

“What are you doing?” said Yatia, her voice getting higher. Naxa ignored the question.

“Was it a ritual?” Naxa asked, “some type of spell?” She turned the chalice upside down and shook it. Nothing happened.

“All these cups come from you,” said Yatia, “I am not the problem. I do nothing different, just a splash of wine, fruit inside. With reama. All the same, every day.” Naxa was shocked by the idea of ruining perfectly fine fruit by soaking it in wine. Did you eat it afterwards, she wondered, when it had gone all soggy? At this, Naxa had an idea. She took Yatia’s hand, and plunged it inside the chalice, as if she were fishing for fruit.

Water rushed to the brim.

“A miracle!”

Naxa thrust the chalice high in the air, not caring that water splashed down on her head.

“My shoes!” Yatia exclaimed.

Over the fruit bowl, Naxa tipped both the chalice and the tankard. She found, now that the chalice contained endlessness within it, the tankard had no more water than could fit its humble volume.

Yatia glared. “I don’t want to be a miracle. I want to drink wine.”

With that, she turned and left.

“Wait!” Naxa called. In her haste, the clay chalice slipped from her hands and tumbled. It didn’t break, but water sprayed like a sprinkler and shot snails across the shop. By the time she had the cup under control, Yatia was lost to the streets.

Naxa took the chalice to Luyan.

“It isn’t the cup,” Naxa said, “it’s her!” With calming gestures, her father asked her to slow down and tell the story from the beginning, so she did.

“The mug went ordinary because she touched the bottom of the brass one,” Naxa finished explaining, “but now the waters live in here.” With two hands, she showed Luyan how the chalice poured endlessly. “Only one cup at a time from whichever one she touched on the bottom.”

Luyan examined the chalice. Naxa forced herself to let her father think, folding her hands behind her back.

He sniffed the water. He tasted the water. He began to water their plants. Naxa couldn’t contain herself any longer.

“What if she magics a different cup?” Naxa said, louder than she’d intended, “and never accepts that she’s a miracle?” Luyan finished feeding the unecia, then turned to Naxa. “What if—” But Luyan cut her off with a gesture. Then he put his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye.

“Naxa,” he said, “there are things you can change and there are things you cannot.” Naxa pretended to understand what that meant. “And people,” he continued, “are one of those second things.” He handed her the chalice. “You have this, now. So use it.”

She wanted to argue. She wanted to yell about the emptying caverns and the irregularity of the taps and the rising bottled water prices and the dying street dogs, but she knew her father was right about one thing, at least. Right now she could help. So she kissed him, then went running.

Naxa refilled the cistern on top of Temasho’s house. The waters came with diving turtles and lakebottom eels. She refilled a public cistern in the District next door. The waters came with larkfish and a river shark. Naxa ran from District to District, accepting Temasho’s help when her arms got sore, refilling all the cisterns she could find as quickly as she was able.

No one in Apicuya trusted tap water. Only expensive bottled water shipped from distant lands was drunk. Naxa and Temasho knocked on every door and shared the news: free, clean drinking water for anyone who wanted it.

Back in the Hungry Tunnel, Naxa taped the chalice to the tunnel wall.

“Maybe it will be different,” said Temasho. Naxa had explained to him the rules that surrounded the cups and Yatia and the waters. “Maybe she won’t swap the magic. What does she need to touch the bottom of a cup for, anyway?” But Naxa was less hopeful, and the next morning, before she’d even reached the tunnel’s end, she knew her prediction was right. The silence spoke for itself.

Naxa peeled the empty chalice off the wall. What was the point in keeping it? It was nothing but an ordinary cup. No, worse—it was a cup that reminded her of the time she’d failed. She went to the lip of the Hungry Tunnel and tossed it inside. She regretted her decision almost immediately, but what could she do? The past was one of those things you couldn’t change.

~~~

Naxa went back to her life, but her life did not go back to her.

Water shortages worsened. You could tell from the sounds of their fountains, the color of their lawns, and the shine of their cars that the waters of the rich flowed uninterrupted. Meanwhile, children whose clothes hadn’t been washed in weeks played street yatal with empty bottles, rags tied around their mouths to protect against the dust. Where once Naxa and Luyan could expect their taps to run five days a week, now they could only expect them to run twice—and only then for a few hours. Not so in the rich neighborhoods. There were rules when it came to waters.

When the waters did come through the taps, they came yellow and foul-smelling. If you didn’t boil them first, you got sick, and boiling them required expensive gas for the stove. Shortages never affected everyone the same.

Naxa traveled the streets and took note of what she saw. She’d always found it easy to find parts of life that made her brain smile with questions, from the night sky to the flowers that grew in the alley behind her dentist’s office, but lately she’d been finding the questions burdensome. Her eyes strained to see the wonder.

Luyan worked overtime pouring concrete. Bim the cat played with Feoban and Obolo and Sava in the bath, whose water dwindled. The plinking sound of rain upon the ubaje-statue fountains was pleasant, but also a reminder of what the District cared about most. “Don’t get your clothes dirty,” Luyan told her, “else we’ll be wearing our curtains.”

Yatia did not come back to the shop. Instead, Naxa went looking.

It was like searching for a pea in a pine forest. The only clues Naxa had were Yatia’s love of fruit and her love of wine. She drew a picture of Yatia to the best of her skill, then went asking merchants if they’d seen her. A fruit vendor said that, potentially, possibly, perhaps they’d seen her Tuesday earlier in the week, so on the Tuesday next Naxa staked out the street. She didn’t find Yatia, but she kept looking. She kept her eyes open.

What Naxa wanted most of all was to understand.

Eventually her work paid off.

She spotted Yatia in the market square, bag of vegetables in one hand, bag of fruit in the other. The wise voice in Naxa’s head told her to keep a safe distance.

She watched. She followed.

She did this for nine days, and this is what she learned.

Yatia lived in a well-kept apartment. It wasn’t a glittering glass spire, a high-walled fortress, or a rolling-garden estate like those in Laemam, but it was homely, with lush vines and clean adobe and wrought-iron railings. Its plaza was roomy and full of plants. From the roof of a building nearby, Naxa could see inside the glass door of the balcony and she watched Yatia spend her evenings sweeping, cooking, drinking tea, and watching television shows about nurses. From the regularity that Yatia did her laundry, Naxa knew that the worst of the water shortages did not affect her. Yatia did not have the privilege of unlimited water, not like those in Laemam, but neither did she want for it. When it came to the Apicuya’s water crisis, what she had was the privilege not to care.

Yatia had a strict routine. Every morning, she ate breakfast on her balcony, and with it she drank a small glass of white wine mixed with fruit. For each of the seven days of the week she used a specific cup of seven. When her breakfast was eaten and her wine was drunk, Yatia scooped out the fruit. Then she went to the market.

She left her dishes on the balcony’s table, and the magic cup filled itself with water as she left. Naxa suspected that Yatia knew nothing about the cats who came, one by one, to lap from it.

When Yatia returned she put away her groceries, washed her dishes, and left the magic cup behind the toaster (a device like a yuem cake crisper, only slow). The next day it would go ordinary, when – with a new cup – the cycle would restart.

That is what Naxa learned.

As was known to happen with Naxa, this learning put her in mind of a plan.

Some people, she thought, didn’t know about how helping broke math, and they needed a little help to see it.

~~~

While Yatia was at the market, Naxa climbed the vines and the wrought-iron railings. She apologized to the arriving cats, then took the magic cup and wedged it, tipped over, on the ground so that it looked as though it had fallen. She climbed down beside the little waterfall, spoke words of encouragement to Temasho and his siblings, then hid in her usual rooftop spot to watch.

Her friends wore their shabbiest clothes. They carried buckets, and under the waterfall they filled them. Right on cue, when Yatia stepped onto her balcony, Temasho and his siblings burst into sound; they sang, laughed, cried praises and cried thanks. Naxa leaned forwards in her hiding spot.

Did Yatia see? Did she feel it—how good it felt to help?

Naxa was too far away to properly read Yatia’s expression, but her actions read clearly. She picked up the cup and took her dishes to the sink.

From then on, she ate her breakfast indoors.

Naxa didn’t mope at her failure. She tried other tactics.

She printed signs about the water crisis and posted them on the windows of Yatia’s building. She talked loudly about shortages when Yatia walked past. She changed her appearance so as not to be recognized and begged for water beside the liquor store where Yatia bought her wine. None of it changed anything. Naxa decided to be more direct.

“Really,” Naxa said to Yatia one day in the market, “what’s a cistern but a really big cup?” Naxa wasn’t wearing any disguise and Yatia recognized her as the girl from the trinket shop.

Yatia threw up her hands. Yatia shouted “no, thank you!” even though Naxa had not asked a question. Yatia hurried home, and Naxa followed.

Naxa pleaded. She spoke about all the ways Yatia could help: by climbing the stairs to a cistern and touching the bottom, or by giving Naxa a cup that would last. But it was like the woman had yuem paste in her ears and couldn’t hear. At the entrance to Yatia’s building, Naxa grabbed her arm, and Yatia screamed. Naxa quickly let go. After the woman hurried inside, she locked the door behind her.

After that, Yatia no longer shopped at her usual market. She drew the curtains over her windows. A few weeks later, they opened again to new faces; Yatia had moved. She was lost to the city once more.

Like a fallen boxer still being hit, the lands around Apicuya went into a drought. Grasshoppers the size of mice went zap on electrical wires and the smell clogged up the gaps between buildings. Concrete cracked, and maunim trees sprouted, then died, in the seams. When the mid-year parade came around, nobody wanted to spend any time outside because the bugs were so bad and the heat was so tiring and the police were all angry—angry because they had to wear heavy uniforms and stand in the sun and angry because, Luyan said, of some other reasons too—and no one trusted their tempers. Without water to refill the tank, two of Naxa’s colorful fish died. The gray one, Feoban, seemed sick. When Naxa asked Luyan how she could save him Luyan said there were some things you could change and there were some things you could not and that death was one of those second things.

Naxa dreamt of cups. She dreamt that she’d been tapped on the head and filled with water that made her eyes swim and her mouth pour like a fountain. She dreamt of an expansive dining hall and a lavish dinner, whose bowls bubbled until the food and chairs floated in an indoor ocean. She dreamt of customers who returned magic cups—that poured water, poured concrete, poured wine.

With the passing of the drought came rain.

Rivers spilled their banks. Waters screamed across fields of concrete they couldn’t permeate. Buildings fell in flash floods, electricity cut out in homes, in schools, in hospitals. Landslides buried Districts. When the shop flooded, Bim floated about on a silver bowl, which made Naxa laugh, but it ruined all of their curtains which they’d been planning to turn into clothes.

Maunim trees and fields of yuem drowned. The city’s spiral gutters – which ringed plazas and patterned the streets – couldn’t hold the waters. Once a joyous time to race paper boats in the maze of waterways, winter now was a time of mourning.

Luyan was out of work. To become strong, concrete needed dry weather.

Rain: the resource that the Districts wasted precious energy to pump from the lake (using darksmoke machines, not like our skymills) when they could have caught it straight where it fell. Naxa stood at the edge of the Hungry Tunnel and watched the waterfall, thinking about how backwards it was that one thing could hurt the city twice: once in its scarcity, once in its excess.

Naxa heard Yatia’s voice in her head. I’m not a miracle, she’d said.

Perhaps, Naxa thought, when you believed you had no power, you believed you had no blame.

Naxa thought about what she could do.

When the District privatized water, protests got more dangerous.

When Feoban died, Naxa fed him to Bim.

When one of Temasho’s siblings passed away from a waterborne illness, flowers bloomed around her grave, and each of them bloomed gray.

~~~

Naxa needed a plan, and so she walked. She walked as many streets as she could, from Apicuya’s widest thoroughfares to its narrowest alleys, where you had to turn your shoulders just to fit. She walked the path of the waters: from the dam protected by military men behind high walls topped with wire; to the treatment plant that smelled of burnt chemicals and bad farts; from the tower in the sky that used gravity to feed a thousand tiny yellow pipes; to the cisterns, numbering in the hundreds, that sat empty like milk jugs for giants. Anywhere that the floods didn’t stop her, Naxa walked. This meant more time in the rich neighborhoods. The poor ones—where people didn’t have the capacity to adapt or have money for insurance—were more prone to disasters. Naxa walked until her feet cracked open like the concrete. She walked through markets, public squares, tourist areas, and shopping malls. Naxa walked, and she watched. And she sat. And she sat and she watched. Her favorite place to sit and watch was a patch of roof between the spirals of a gutter where cats gathered. They accepted Naxa in their company because she fed them tuna and reama and bananas, and because she told them wonderful stories. Naxa sat for hours and hours and watched the city with its colorful sounds—muted, these days, but colorful still. She watched the sky and the birds and the people. And the cats, who she also followed.

They showed her Apicuya’s secrets.

Naxa found a pantry in an abandoned plaza whose bottom and middle shelves had been washed away, whose top shelf she couldn’t reach, but whose upper-middle shelf was stacked with cans that she’d put to good use. She was led to new tunnels she didn’t know existed, waterways that bypassed busy streets, and she found new places to sit and gaze.

Some sights were difficult to witness.

Naxa glimpsed uncensored moments from those who put on brave faces in the day. From rooftops, through withered branches of dead maunim trees, she watched people in plazas mourn loss. Through open windows, she saw abandoned games of eja cards, never to be returned to. In the quiet of the night, Naxa heard the hollow sound of grieving parents.

In this way, when rumor spread that the lake was down to its last drops, Naxa knew the true state of Apicuya; she’d glimpsed it through closed doors and seen it in absences. She knew exactly the kind of suffering which would soon worsen.

Then, around this time, a miracle occurred: the cats led Naxa to something she’d thought she’d lost for good. It put her in mind of a new plan. Around this time Luyan was still pouring concrete, pouring it to build walls between the rich Districts and the poor Districts, whether to keep one group in or another group out Naxa didn’t know. Around this time Temasho had quit school and was selling ornaments with his siblings in the few places of the city left that tourists still visited. Naxa gathered them both. She told them her plan. And after much convincing, they agreed to help.

Cayet, bring your parents.

No—bring all the adults.

This is important.

~~~

Before I tell you Naxa’s plan, I’ll tell you what happened afterwards.

The waters returned.

With them, the ubaje sailed once more.

The maunim forests grew tall and vibrant.

The canals flowed uninterrupted, year-round.

The return of the waters was a source of joy for Apicuyans, lessening their – our – suffering and our death. These waters are the same ones you feel around you. The same waters which, yesterday, our council was two votes shy of denying to those thirsty Many who’d come begging, whose dehydration can be heard in the dryness of their screams.

Afterwards; what also happened. Naxa returned to her life. Only, it wasn’t the same one that she’d left.

Naxa continued to work in the trinket shop with her father. She bought three new fish. Their scales weren’t as bright as Obolo’s or Sava’s—or even Feoban’s. Not to Naxa. To Naxa, nothing was as bright as it had once been. Much as she wanted to, there were neighbourhoods Naxa would never again visit. She’d never again set foot inside the tunnels she’d once searched for newness. She’d lose touch with Temasho. Each reminded the other of events they’d rather forget.

The difference between right and wrong is not, unfortunately, as clear as our waters. You’re going to have questions. There are some things I cannot answer because there are some things I do not know. What is clear is the pattern of our history, where many have held the power of choice, and many have paid the price of its exertion. What I do know is that–afterwards–Naxa’s laugh was dimmer.

Can you hear the skymill thrum?

Good.

~~~

Luyan, Temasho, and Naxa followed the trail of the cats, which led to a balcony, which led to a cup. A cup from which the cats drank. This was the first half of Naxa’s plan.

This was the second half: the cup led to Yatia.

When they carried Yatia to the Hungry Tunnel–the Hungry Tunnel which fed the cavern; the cavern that was nothing more than a large cup–she did not go willingly. At the edge, they untied her hands. Luyan grabbed hold of her arms. Temasho and Naxa hefted her legs. Together, they counted.

This is how the waters returned to Apicuya: they threw her in.

___

Copyright 2026 Nicholas Schorn