The Watchers

My baby brother Konu looked up from the hole he was digging in the sand. “Laysi owie?”

I had to smile at his sincere little face. “No, just frustrated.”

“Fuhtated.” He frowned, then went back to his digging.

I resisted the urge to play the passage a twelfth time, since I’d been playing it perfectly for weeks. Now, on the morning of the biggest and most significant performance of my life, it flitted away from me like the golden gull in Uma’s folktales.

“The problem isn’t in your fingers, Alesea. It’s in your mind.” That was my mother’s favorite advice for elusive fingerings, cooking disasters, and even messy rooms. Stop practicing, and meditate.

Fine. I set my lele in its case and closed my eyes, shifting into my meditation posture. Breathe. One, two—

“Laysi! Big boats!” Konu was back to his typical style of speech, made entirely of exclamations. “Laysi, Laysi!”

“Shh, Konu, I need to focus.”

“Mmm mmm mmm,” Konu hummed, apparently unable to contain his excitement.

I opened one eye to peek at whatever Konu was seeing. He was right.  I leaped to my feet and gaped toward the horizon, over the glittering, morning-blue sea.

There were big boats—huge boats, like nothing I’d seen before. Something—excitement or fear or both—choked up my throat. “C’mon, Konu.” I fastened my lele case, swung it over my shoulder, scooped up my baby brother onto my hip, and ran for the forest.

The ships grew impossibly large, dwarfing our little fishing boats tied to a nearby dock. Men swarmed the decks, throwing out anchors in the middle of the harbor, while others swung from the rigging to lower sails that billowed with more cloth than I’d ever seen in my life. I caught glimpses of brightly-colored tunics and long black braids against the white. The word Paav decorated sails and hulls in fancy script. What could it mean?

The scene unfolded with an eerie silence, even though the ships had come so close that I should have heard the sailors’ shouts as they climbed the masts and threw ropes to secure the sails. I stopped breathing when a man leaned over the deck of the closest ship—gazing, it seemed, straight at our hiding place. His eyes were huge, his head strangely narrow, but it wasn’t until he turned away and revealed the dark stain from hairline to shoulder that I remembered. I’d seen a head like that once before on a shipwrecked foreigner.

That foreigner had been a Watcher from distant Mata, and the stain was an intricate tattoo that emphasized his missing ears.

These sailors weren’t being silent for stealth but because they had no voices, just eagle-sharp eyes and a reputation for secrecy.

I squeezed Konu tight and ran for the village.

***

“Itu!” I plopped Konu down on the soft earth next to our garden and listened to the blood pound in my ears. “Itu, where’s Mama?”

My older brother frowned at me as if I’d dropped from the sky and spoken the wrong language. He closed the book he’d been drawing in and swung his gangly brown legs over the side of his hammock. “Alesea, where’ve you been? Mama’s already gone to Kokka to rehearse.”

Of course. Half the adults from our island of Akila were already at the Great Hall of Kokka, preparing for tonight’s Solstice celebration, where I would make my professional debut. A hint of those nerves returned to my stomach.

“I made you this for luck.” Itu pulled a loose paper out of his sketchbook and handed it to me.

“Oh, Itu!” It was beautiful, maybe one of his best drawings: a sketch of me, sitting in our family’s garden playing my lele, and Konu dancing in the flowers. “It’s amazing.”

“Itu, come see big boats!” Konu chirped, clinging to my leg.

“Boats, huh?” Itu grinned. “I think it’s nice to have a break from boats on a holiday. All the fish we need for Solstice are already in the Great Hall kitchens.”

I pulled my attention away from the gift, remembering why we’d come in such a rush. “No, Itu. There are big boats, huge ones—full of Matan Watchers.”

“What? Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Taller than I’ve ever seen. They anchored at the edge of the harbor. The Watchers could already be coming ashore.”

Itu’s eyes excitedly glowed as he giggled like a boy Konu’s age. His reaction brought the fear back into my belly, where it flopped around like a half-dead fish.

“Itu! Don’t you think—”

“Let’s go tell Uma, so that we can welcome them. Come on!”

“Wait, I....” But Itu had already run off toward the village square, so I followed him, Konu at my heels.

“Tag!” Konu called. At least he was enjoying himself.

We didn’t have to run far. Itu had already found Uma, our village’s head elder, sitting on her favorite bench in the flower garden, positioned nearly at the end of the village square.

I bowed my head in the proper gesture of respect for a wise woman, trying to catch my breath.

“Watchers, Uma!” Itu said. “On tall ships, in our harbor!” Now he talked like Konu—all exclamations.

“I found them!” Konu grabbed Uma’s generous leg in a hug.

“I see.” Laughter played in the crinkles around the old woman’s eyes. “Now tell me everything you saw, Alesea.”

Uma’s laugh lines smoothed to wide-eyed astonishment as I described the boats and the people on them. When I finished, she looked nearly as excited as Itu. “Perhaps they’ve come to trade, or they are explorers.”

“Three ships with... what... hundreds of people? What do we even have to trade?”

“Must be your seagrass mats, sis,” Itu teased

I glared at him. Why couldn’t they sense the danger I was feeling clear down to my bones? “What if they want to live here, or... or steal from us, Uma?”

Uma gazed into the distance as if she could see through the trees all the way to the harbor. “We will give them a proper friendly greeting, of course.” She smiled. “And on the Solstice, too, a fortuitous date.”

“But Uma—”

“It’s not like you to be so suspicious, Alesea. Why would you feel that way?”

“Because—”

“We have no reason to assume bad intentions. Remember,” she said, quoting the Book of the A’lodi, “Not even the foreigner from a most distant land is truly a stranger, for the spark of A’lodi resides in every human soul.”

There was nothing more to say to the elder. My gut twisted into a painful knot.

“Alesea.” Uma’s voice was as hard as dried clay. “It is the only way.”

***

An hour later, I trailed behind a small procession to the fishing harbor, because no one had actually said I could come along, but no one had said I couldn’t, either. At first, I held Konu’s hand, then carried him when he started to drag.

The elders sang as we walked, as if we were heading toward the shallow water rafts that would carry us to the Solstice feast that afternoon. Konu sang into my ear with gibberish words. Despite my nerves, I couldn’t keep silent, and my voice rose on the high harmony:

Mother wind and Father sea

Fairest Lords of fairer land,

Greet the Sun with song and feast

That she may keep the Light at hand.

Itu gave me an approving glance over his shoulder.

“Ah, Maia,” sighed Papi, the oldest of the wise elders. He must have seen at least eighty years, yet had a spry gait and bright eyes. “Your gift blesses us all.”

I smiled, unsure if I should correct him, but Itu did it for me. “It’s Alesea, Papi. Maia’s daughter, remember?”

Papi waited for me to catch up to his side and touched my arm with a hand as wrinkled as a capeo leaf. “Why yes, it is, with a voice as pure and sweet as your mama’s and those same wise brown eyes. When did you grow so tall, girl?”

I ignored Itu’s snort—we both knew I was smaller than some of the eleven-year-olds still in First School—and bowed my head to the elder. “Thank you, Papi.”

Uma’s resonant voice called us to a halt. “They’re here.”

We stood where the wide path from the village opened onto the sandy beach, and, as usual, I could hardly see, stuck behind a wall of tall adults.

“Itu,” I whispered.

He didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the giant ships.

I pushed in front of him, poking him in the stomach as I passed. “Big, huh?”

Itu whistled softly through his teeth in reply.

Narrow-headed men climbed onto our docks from the rafts and small boats they’d used to cross our harbor. Their tunics were bright as Uma’s flower garden, in colors more vivid than the Village Islands’ most expensive dyes. They wore flowing white pants and braids in their long, dark hair. And they were utterly silent.

Uma turned to face us. “I will speak for all of us, for now. Keep your mouths closed.”

I thought her unusually rude until Papi covered his mouth with his hand, and I realized she’d meant it literally—keep our mouths closed. I remembered then that our open mouths disgusted last summer’s shipwrecked Matan, Sinon. He’d even eaten with his lips pulled over his teeth, never letting us see inside. The Island Watchers seemed just as confused by his behavior as we were—they opened their mouths just like anybody else.

Some of the other elders covered their mouths as Uma led us onto the soft sand to meet the first group of strangers walking up from the docks.

“Konu, play the quiet game, okay?” I whispered, hiding my mouth with his head. “For real, until we go back into the woods.”

He clasped a chubby hand over his mouth in response.

I tweaked his nose, but I didn’t cover my face. Why should I worry about offending these people, who’d come to our home uninvited? Shouldn’t they be worried about offending us? But the elders were obsessed with manners, as if offending a stranger was worse than insulting your own people.

Uma spread her arms wide in the universal gesture of greeting, then bowed deeply toward the five men approaching our group.

Their tattoos were repulsive—geometrical patterns that made them look like a bunch of two-legged snakes.

Maybe they should cover those with their hands before they meet me. I fought the childish urge to stick out my tongue, then nearly lost my balance, dizzy with a rush of angry emotions that seemed to bombard me from all directions.

That was strange. I steadied myself with long breaths, and Konu patted my shoulder, his lips squeezed shut tight.

A red-clad man in the center of the Watchers bowed his head ever so slightly, and the realization hit me with a shock that he was the same man from last summer, Sinon—now well-dressed and puffed up with pride. His fingers flew like twigs in a storm as he signed to Uma. Though I’d learned Watcher-speak in First School, like any Double, I could only pick out a few words in the flurry: friend, visit, talk, Mata.

Uma, though, betrayed no confusion. When Sinon signaled an end to his speech by resting both hands on his belly, she bowed again and responded. She signed slower, more straightforward, and communicated in ways I understood better, as fluid as the dance of fish around my ankles in the shallows. Welcome back. Home, A’lodi, feast, join us. Gratitude.

Gratitude. I was sure Sinon had been sneering through his closed mouth. He radiated pride and superiority. Even the other Watchers kept a few feet away from him as his hands flew back into action. I suddenly wished I hadn’t come with Konu.

As if he heard my thoughts, Konu struggled to get down, one hand still clasped over his mouth. I let him slide to the ground and reached for his other hand to avoid wrestling, but he slipped out of my grasp and took off toward the Watchers.

“Konu, no!” I burst out, lunging for him.

Sinon froze, all five Watchers stared at me, and I realized what I’d done. I’d opened my mouth—wide, right next to the Wise Elder of our village. My face burned as I dropped my head in a bow. Fortunately, I remembered the Watcher-speak for “forgive me.”

I raised my head, but no one looked at me anymore. Konu had gone right up to Sinon. He used his free hand to wave up at the tall man, who gave him a closed-mouth smile that looked more frightening than the sneer.

I gasped as a flash of light spread down Sinon’s body, from his thin lips to his stomach.

Desire.

The emotion hit me like a tsunami, and somehow, I knew it had come from the direction of Sinon. Had I read his ugly mind? I had to get my brother away from him.

You can’t have Konu! I wanted to scream it out, make these men leave my home, but Uma stared at me, eyes firm with a warning to stay silent.

Can’t she see the Watcher glowing?

Uma raised her eyebrows, and I kept my mouth clamped shut like an obedient child, but my mind raged on. Leave my brother alone!

Sinon lurched backward as if my thought had been a thrown weapon. His four companions all leaped to steady him, even though he’d regained his balance almost immediately. He picked up a shell near his foot, frowned at it as if it was the cause of his stumble, and hurled it toward the ocean. The glow was gone.

Konu skipped back to me.

I picked him up and squeezed him too hard, relief flooding my heart. I’d seen enough. I pushed past Itu to take my little brother back to the village.