Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

have some way of similar release to all that which surged within her. With no means of allowing her grief to escape, Chidi looked up to where the surface existed, some twenty feet above her. With a swift kick of her hindflippers, she abandoned Atsidi Darksnout and his warriors. Chidi sped toward the blurry world above, as if she hoped to sprout wings upon reaching the surface and fly off to wherever the spirit of Allambee Omondi had fled also.

Reality remained in the above; the Salt stretching in every direction but upward, and Chidi could sprout no wings. Trying all the same, Chidi shot free of the Salt and into the open air, screaming with her seal voice at the waves crashing about her and the wind whistling over all.

Gravity forced her to enter the watery world beneath once more.

Trembling, Chidi tucked and rolled her seal body, somersaulting below to aim her nose for the surface again. Later, she would not be able to say why she felt the need to break above the waves, for it was not the air that existed there that she required. In her heart, she knew only that she was not truly a creature of the Salt, and that she tired of all that she had ever witnessed since learning of the watery hell that Henry Boucher had dragged her into.

Meaning to burst free of the Salt once more, Chidi hesitated when spotting a silvery glimmer speeding up to join her. Watawa slowed as he came to swim not five feet away from her, the look in his one good eye softened with understanding.

He’s gone . . . Chidi blurted. Allambee is gone.

From this world, perhaps, said Watawa before glancing around the surrounding water and raising his left hand in a sprawling, panned signal for Chidi to look there also. Or it may well be he lingers among us even now . . .

Chidi followed his motion, but, save for the Nomad warriors beneath them, she saw only endless dark and empty water. He’s not here, she said. He’s dead.

Only so long as you allow, said Watawa. The memory of your friend lives within you, child. As do all those we keep safe and alive within us after they have left this world to swim onto the next. Weep if you will for his passing, Chidi, for all who come to know grief carry out the measure to their own choosing. But, while you grieve, know there are others who knew and loved him also that will celebrate. Not of his passing, but for having known him in this life.

Chidi shook her seal head. I would give all of those celebrations to have him here again, or else to go back in time and force Allambee to stay on land where it was safe.

Watawa frowned. My brother often reminds me there is no safety in this world. He glanced to the depths, his gaze holding on the darkness below. The more time passes, the more I think Quill may have had the right of it all along. Watawa looked to Chidi again, his face set in hopeful reprieve. And yet despite my brother’s claim, I would rather hold to all that I have told you about your fallen friend – that for all those bravely gone before, we keep the dead both safe and alive within us. Their stories and their lives unending, so long as we choose to sing their tales and utter their names.

I don’t want stories, said Chidi. I just want my friends back. Allambee and Racer and . . . little Sasha. I would bring them all back and far more too.

Then, let you continue to remember their faces and their names that they might visit you again in your dreams, said Watawa. But I speak of the future now, and the present would hear such stories as you have to offer about the brave and selfless, Nomad warrior named Allambee Omondi.

Chidi followed his nod below, back to the depths where she knew Atsidi Darksnout awaited her. She trembled at the thought of swimming back down and facing him, forced to see Allambee still dead in his arms. I don’t want to remember him that way, she whispered to Watawa. I want to remember him as he was.

As any friend would, said Watawa. But to ignore what is, Chidi, to blind one’s self to all that is? That leads one to forgetfulness and willful blindness. Watawa raised his left hand to his face, touching the shell covering over his eye. Take it from one who knows, child. Aye, one who would take such moments back and face those harder truths now, if I were able. Harsh though they may be, terrible as they were, I would go back and face them all knowing such regret as I do now.

Chidi looked toward the surface again, wishing that Watawa would leave her be and allow her to swim back to the boat with Bryant and Marisa. To warn Bryant that they should head for the nearest shore and forget all that they had ever witnessed below, and especially of Marisa Bourgeois’s visions and prophetic words.

Watawa was nudging at Chidi again. Go and see him, child, he urged her swim below. Honor your friend and his sacrifice by looking upon his broken body. Aye, let you burn the image of him into your memory that you might never forget the great love he offered up today on your behalf.

He died for you, Chidi took the Nomad shaman’s meaning. The least you can do is pay him tribute now.

Chidi relented then, fortifying her mind with memories of Allambee alive and well in the above as best she could for all that she knew awaited her below. The other ghosts of her past followed her there also, the images of Racer lain in the cornfield, forever staring up at the starry night sky. She remembered Sasha too, how her tiny hands fit neatly inside of