Reckoning

Gayathri Kamath

Akka left for the war. She didn’t come back, not right away.

For a while, we thought that our mother might go, since she was the marine biologist, but Akka was a pilot, an astronaut in training.

The monsters had come from the sea, and we had to take the fight to the deep dark waters, so alike and yet so different from the vast quiet and emptiness of space. Deep pressure versus near vacuum, 2 degrees Celsius versus 2 Kelvin, the occasional strange fish versus asteroids, 11 kilometers to the bottom versus 384,000 kilometers to the moon.

There was no longer a space program, and Akka was an astronaut without a job.

I remember her telling me she would come back different, that she would be able to go underwater, to fight the sea monsters that had driven us away from our island, from our shores. The monsters kept my mother from her work of studying life in the sea. (How can one be a marine biologist when it was too dangerous to be near the ocean?)

The war left my father looking exhausted and worried about how he would be able to care for us. Because Akka went to war, my father didn’t have to go. He and my mother could stay with us, and we could work the land to grow food, far away from the water’s edge. My father and Akka both found this darkly hilarious, since our family were farmers and fisherfolk for generations, and they had both tried their level best to not be either. The irony of my father marrying a marine biologist who fishes for knowledge had not been lost on them, either.

When Akka told me she was going, I was afraid. I sat in the circle of her arms, in her lap, my head leaning against her chest, hearing her heartbeat, the blood moving, back and forth, like when you float in the ocean, and you can hear the water moving across the sand. I loved to listen to her heartbeat, saying in the ‘thumpa-thump,’ “I love you.”

“But Akka, you hate the ocean.” Unlike her, I loved the ocean, the seashore. I missed our house, long gone and washed away in the first attack.

Akka always responded with a laugh. “Bachi, I don’t hate the ocean. I’m not fond of what’s in the ocean.” This was reassuring, as she used to say that before the sea monsters came.

Akka hated fish. Indeed, she didn’t just loathe them, she was actively afraid, phobic. Not the water, not the dark, the cold, the depths, but the actual fish. I didn’t understand, remembering how she’d feed me sashimi, nigiri, her hands holding the chopsticks, gently dipping the sashimi in soy sauce, placing the fatty goodness of the salmon in my mouth, or feeding me bits of ginger—so strong for my child’s taste buds.

She’d joke, “Fish is best served on beds of white rice, beloved,” while eating the sushi, our mouths happy, our minds quiet.

“But Akka, you hate the fish. They scare you,” I said again, still not sure why she was doing this.

“I’ll use the hate to fight the sea monsters,” she told me, and then she went away.

When she first came back, she was so different. She still held me and my sister, her arms still strong and lean, though she had to be careful now; her skin felt more like that of the salmon or trout we loved to eat.

“Can you feel this, Akka?” I’d ask, touching her new skin, dark, darker than my own skin, darker even than hers had been. I couldn’t see her tattoos anymore, her new skin obliterating those colorful mementos.

Akka, who loved Ganesh, who loved spacecraft and wolves and robots and stars and galaxies, who had sat for hours of pain to have them tattooed on her body, had let them take those away. For this new skin, she had sat for even more hours, in even more pain, to come back to us, skin darker, rougher, with luminous spots that showed up under dark light, scales like the salmon we loved, slits against the sides of her throat to help her filter oxygen out of water. I couldn’t see her eyes anymore, changed as they were, with extra eyelids, protecting her from the cold, from the pressure, from the sea monsters.

“I can, beloved,” she said, “I can feel you, and even if I couldn’t feel your hand, I feel you here—always” touching where her heart used to be.

I didn’t know, until so much later, how even her insides had been changed, moved, enhanced by the military surgeons with genetic surgery and biometal implants, so she could survive under the water, breathe, exist, live under the depths, under the pressure, in the dark, in the cold, and even down past where there were no fish at all, where the sea monsters came from.

But I remembered, from before she left, what it was like to be held in my aunt’s arms, hearing her heartbeat, over and over, saying in the ‘thumpa-thump,’ “I love you.”

Now when she told me, “I love you,” I found it hard to believe the words, because I couldn’t see her eyes, and I couldn’t hear her heart. My little sister was terrified, and refused to come near our Akka, though she, too, loved our aunt dearly.

My father and Akka were talking, thinking I couldn’t hear.

“It’s okay,” she said.

My father said again, “They love you, you know that. The little one is afraid of what has changed.”

Akka responded, “She’s not the only one, brother.”

He hugged her, heedless of the scales, of the gills, of her hidden eyes, her lost tattoos, the webbed skin on her hands and feet.

I was looking at the picture of Akka the way she used to be. She stood, eyes crinkled against the sun, sideways smirk showing her joy, wearing her flight suit and leaning against her fighter plane. Her long hair in pigtails, one hand draped over the fuselage, another holding her helmet. She hadn’t looked that happy since the sea monsters came, and her fighter plane had been destroyed. She would have flown more of them against the sea monsters, but the military had other ideas. As soon as the first few attacks occurred, they started pulling the best pilots and fighters for this other mission. There was to be no space program until we knew we could survive on our home planet. The planes were useless—the sea monsters were invulnerable to everything short of a nuclear blast, which would also leave the cities and waters contaminated.

“Akka,” I said, “you were afraid of fish. Now you are one.”

She smiled, careful with her mouth, her closed smile hiding her sharp teeth, nictitating membranes covering her eyes. “I am still afraid of fish, beloved. But I want to stop the sea monsters more.”

My Akka’s pigtails, her bright eyes, her soft brown skin were all gone, even as her heartbeat was gone. The wicked grin was barely all that was left, and she was hiding that from me.

“I love you,” I said, even though my little sister refused to come and say goodbye, still terrified of what had come to visit us.

“Not Akka,” she cried. I wanted to smack her, but my mother and father and Akka all said it was okay, that she didn’t know, that she was too little.

In these times, old traditions came back, and my father, mother, and I said goodbye and touched her feet, now webbed, covered in fine scales. She stood, awkward, her gills working even without having any water surrounding them. Her webbed hand gently touched the top of my head, bringing me back upright.

Then Akka left; forever, I thought.

It took years for the war to end. We’d catch glimpses of Akka and the other pilots on videos, and my sister and I would cheer as we’d see the swift, darting movements of the ocean-going fighters and know our aunt was amongst them. Sometimes, there were body camera videos, and we could see Akka clearly in the water with her team. Sometimes, battle videos would leak out, and we’d scan them, frantic to see if our Akka was there. Our parents weren’t keen on us watching the battles themselves, but once we had access to the internet, it was hard for them to stop us.

We noticed that a note would always reach my father or mother just before we’d find those videos, letting them know she was alive and mostly safe. None of us wanted to see a video where we saw any of the fighters die, though we knew many of them did. We only wanted to watch the sea monsters be destroyed. It was no consolation for my mother, who had discovered that they were not actually aliens, but something mutated from the polar ice melt, letting an ancient virus mingle with the strange soup we’d left after industrializing the surface of the planet, creating deep sea monsters that wanted to come up on land.

There were times that my little sister and I would play games, where I’d be a sea monster, and my little sister would play one of the deep ocean fighters. I tried hard not to remind her she never said goodbye to our Akka, but I think she remembered. Her stories about how brave and amazing and perfect our Akka was, fighting the sea monsters to keep us safe, would be glorious. These games would end with me, flat on the ground, quivering in my death or defeat. Sometimes, we’d convince our father to play the sea monster, and all of us would end up on the floor, giggling and tickling him as he’d hold us tight, telling us how proud our Akka would be, to know we were thinking of her, grateful for her bravery.

There were news interviews with our Akka, or other deep ocean fighters. My little sister and I would watch together, curled up on the couch, held between our parents’ arms. Every interview, without fail, she’d look straight at the camera, even though we couldn’t see her eyes behind their glossy protective eyelids, and tell the world she missed her family, how her nieces meant the entire universe to her and she hoped to be home soon.

The war finally ended.

Someone, something came back, after the sea monsters were destroyed. We used atomics after all. Akka and others like her dove deep below where the sea monsters bred, planting small atomics in the nurseries, bigger ones in the adults, only sometimes escaping before the blasts destroyed the ocean floor. Akka swam like she flew: fast, precise, accurate in her bomb placement, in her escape routes.

The military escort told me: this was my aunt, she was a hero, and she was home to rest. It was hard to tell. She’d changed even more, her skin and body now designed for the deep ocean, where normally the pressure of the sea would have crushed anything else. It had taken days for her to come up from the depths, having to adjust to the lower pressure out of the water, a little like how astronauts had to adapt back to the pull of gravity.

Our mother went back to work on the ocean, trying to figure out what had changed, whether our seas would come back from the deep wounds left by the monsters, by us fighting them. Father continued growing food—continuing that tradition he and Akka had tried to escape. Akka came back to us, but she didn’t talk to me anymore. To be fair, she didn’t really talk to anyone anymore, except to Mother.

I think she was afraid for us, her body now designed for deep sea battle. Afraid because of what she’d done under the water. More than a decade had gone by, where she had fought, dove, and killed sea monsters. l was sixteen, an adult almost, but I remembered her so clearly, even without my pictures of her, her pigtails and pilot’s uniform, her wicked grin and gentle love.

I tried to talk to her, but I think she still saw me as the small, frightened six year old child she loved so much that she gave up her heart, her dreams, even her relationship with her family, to keep me and my little sister safe.

My little sister asked my Akka if she could take off her dark, glowing, scaly skin.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted.

But I remembered her, as did my little sister. The way she was.

Before the sea monsters. Before the suit that became her new body. Before she lost, killed, swam away from her dreams of outer space.

Years after the sea monsters were destroyed, there was talk about renewing the space program. The news came one day that they were looking for trainees again, for new young pilots to restart our climb into space. My little sister called to tell us she’d been accepted.

After that call, I found Akka in the cove by the beach, laying in a shallow pool, completely under water, letting the tide push her back and forth. Her gills moved, involuntarily.

She couldn’t even control it like I could control my breathing.

I sat in the shallow water with her. Her scales were soft, and I pulled her into my lap, holding her, like she used to hold me when I was much smaller. It was hard to sit there, with the sand and stone moving under me as the waves lapped up and down, the same movement of her body floating above me.

Akka had told me, a long time ago, how her father, my grandfather, would swim out past the breakers, and she and her brother would swim with him. How my grandfather would float, and they would play, swim, dive around him, coming to hang onto him like a raft when they were tired. My grandfather liked the sound of the ocean in his ears while he floated.

“Akka, please, let’s swim out past the breakers.”

We swam. She stayed under the water, while I stayed on top. We floated out there, with her facing down into the sea, because looking up at the sky hurt too much. I slid under her, floating, holding her onto my chest like she had done with me, when I was smaller, and she hadn’t yet gone to war.

“I always feel safe with you, Akka,” I said, gently running my hands along her scaled shoulders and arms, so hard, so strong.

“Sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m safe for you,” she replied.

I couldn’t say anything to that. I didn’t have anything to say for that. I didn’t believe she would hurt me, even with her body all scaled and hard, even with her organs moved, her hair gone, even with her eyes hidden. I kept running my hands gently along her skin, knowing the right direction to stroke, how to read which edges would be sharp, and which would lay soft for me to touch. I didn’t want to tell her that it would be okay, because it wouldn’t, it couldn’t. She couldn’t take off this skin and there was no going back to that picture from decades earlier.

Her head lay on my chest, my arms were holding her, and we were just floating. The ocean moved under us, the sound of the sand moving distantly below us, behind us by the shore and I could hear it. We lay there for a long time.

Finally, she said, “I can hear your heartbeat.”

“Thumpa-thump means I love you, Akka.” I laughed, still remembering, after years and distance and change and loss.

She smiled against my skin. “I love you too, beloved,”

We floated like that for a long time again, and I said, “Thank you, Akka.”

I felt her go very still against me. I hugged her tighter, her skin so much softer in salt water. She hugged me back.