Humanity Prime. Bruce Mcallister

then the answers will come.

      Poundgrayly would say: “You have certain things around you. Yau, coral, sand, water, and in a moment one of my females. Your answers will come from them.”

      The answers do come, and seeing their simplicity I can only doubt them. Nevertheless:

      I swim quickly to the bottom, find the base of a long yau plant and chew through its main stem. Stripping the stem of its wrinkled leaves, I take care to remove them without leaving holes in the hollow stem.

      With the first stem looped around one arm, I move on to another, which I also bite in two near its base, but which will not be stripped of its leaves.

      I resume my swim toward shallower water and the euyom who await me, and the mass of yau leaves still attached to their stem drag behind me like a mangled fish-tail.

      “Do come,” the female calls, making her calling into a rhythm that matches the rhythm of my tails’ motion, helping me to pace my tired swimming.

      I near her and when my face’s eyes touch her, I find her own small eyes staring back at me, her head motionless, her limbs calm as she hangs in the shallow water before him.

      “I am happy and I am sorry for you,” she says, and her soul bears the softest lavender face I have ever touched; is her deepest name perhaps lavender? “Is there a way I may help you?” she asks.

      Now I begin trembling. The vision of myself thrashing in pain, screaming in dryness as I leave the sea, has begun again easily.

      “I have a body,” she says. “Bodies are often helpful when comforting grips of soul fail....”

      I know a hundred hues of thanks, and I try to give them:

      “I am—”

      But the familiar interruption comes.

      “Rakk?”

      I shout at the ayom in the distance, and the female euyom jerks a little in the small red of my anger’s tide.

      (I am annoyed by my own foolishness. I should have realized that even after a rebuke murmursome would follow me, keeping just outside the clear sight of my soul. I should know that the ayom soul suffers from the dark jaws of aloneness just as deeply as my own soul always has; but instead I choose feelings of superiority, and tell myself that murmursome’s persistence makes him no better, no more meaningful in my life than the repetitive souls of plants and minor animals.)

      “Rakk?”

      “Leave!” I shout.

      (And perhaps I should realize that my own trembling in the previous moment brought the ayom to me, anxious about my well being. Instead I find his affectionate manner annoying.)

      Murmursome fades away again, and I turn back to the euyom—

      But another distant soul intrudes.

      “Where-where?” it is babbling, “when and where-where?”

      I reach out, find the other soul faintly, and the red of anger lifts bubbling inside me again.

      A girl...a young woman?

      I throw the red scream out.

      “Go go away away! My territory here!”

      The distant soul falls to blue confusion, murmuring, “But I...I...I....”

      “This is my place of my moment!” I continue, only dimly hearing the euyom whisper, pink reprimanding, “There is time for understanding....”

      “I...I am here....” the soul of girl rambles vaguely.

      “Leave!”

      The soul does not leave, remains distant, unmoving.

      I turn to the euyom, make a quick suggestion to her, gather the unstripped yau stem up around me, and begin unraveling the naked stem until it lies at full length waving in the water.

      Taking the mass of leaves, I place them on my own shoulders and hold them there with my left hand.

      Crawling onto the euyom’s back, I grip her shell with my right hand, clench the end of the naked hollow stem between my teeth, and motion to the euyom with a pale jerk of my soul.

      Slowly the female begins moving toward the end of water, the start of dry sands, to leave the water as she has often done when her eggs cried out in need of a dry sandy place for hatching.

      “One moment,” I say abruptly, and the euyom stops, and the two of them bob under the bubbling waves in shallowest water, the bottom so close, the surface almost touching.

      I want, need, want a prayer to blood. So I sigh to my deepest name, and begin to pray, wanting, needing, praying.

      (For my kind a prayer is soul’s finger back through time. Each family, every line of blood, has its own prayer growing with each new generation, passed down from father to son to son’s son, all leading back to the pounding remembered beginning.

      (So I pray, turning my soul inward upon itself, and the finger begins pointing, chanting the red-orange of memory, rushing to cover the million days of my fathers, as my soul becomes them praying, praying, and the darkness is made light by the coursing of time’s blood.)

      I am fishsinger, praying....

      I am screamdeep, praying....

      I am purplewave, praying....

      I am hardred, praying, and simplehere, praying....

      I am bluehair and dancedark and greenflow, praying....

      I am songsung and pinkup and finrunner and sweetcall and oncegray and whitemine and everred and whispernow and saybluish and wavingdown and therepale and darklove and whilesoftly and orangeweb and threeveins and greenhump and redson and jawwhite and swingup and wholehole and youpiece and findyellow, praying....

      I am largebluehereandnowson and largebluenowandhere and mewhite and mered and clearme and huntingmeme and menow...? and me...? and livingme...?! and help...? me...! and memaybe “Tam”? and memaybe”Tam”! and memyself-of-sometime”Tam” and Iamfrom”Tam” and me”Tam” and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me...sah and pale...? and living...? and darklight and...? and...? and...?, praying....

      I am mefrom”Geor”and...and meherefrom”Geor” and...and “Geor” and...and “Sim”andsonof”Ruik” and me”Ruik” and me”Tiss”andsonof”Sim” and “Sim”and...and “Jums”-and...and “Bedee”and...and sonof”Hel” and “Hel”and....praying, praying....

      I am fishsinger, farthest from the first, and I pray to the blood of the bigshinegray which brought me, me, me, me, me, me here, now and then....

      ...To the bigshinegray, that has come—

      (I and my fathers have always prayed to the past for the future—and the future is light, and I’ve often seen that the future is the only real light we have. If that light should ever dim....)

      I complete my moment and find that the euyom under me still trembles.

      “You, so many souls,” she mumbles.

      The distant soul of girl is still present, and I envelop my anger in the white of another attention.

      To leave the bubbling waters....

      One end of the long hollow stem will be clenched between my teeth—the other end will remain in the water.

      The mass of wet yau leaves will be held on my back.

      And the euyom will carry me out into dryness...but with the stem and leaves I will bring some of the sea with me.

      The euyom resumes her swimming, slow and sure.

      (And when the length of hollow yau stem can no longer cover my distance from the water, how will I breathe then?)

      The water soon grows so shallow that