MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: Chapter One

I should be paddling in. Instead, I linger in the lagoon’s sun-warmed seawater, clutching my spear to my chest as I twirl through a school of snapper, not bothering to aim as they reshape around me...

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MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA is a dystopian sci-fi about a girl on the flooded world’s only surviving island, sent out past the atoll into the forbidden ocean to find the sea gods to save her starving village. What she finds instead is an underwater research station full of other humans — and they have their own plans for survival.

Chapter One

Though the Gods warned, the Sinners did not listen, so They sent a Great Flood,

cleansing the world of those who had poisoned Their air and sea.

— Ocean Law

I should be paddling in. Instead, I linger in the lagoon’s sun-warmed seawater, clutching my spear to my chest as I twirl through a school of snapper, not bothering to aim as they reshape around me in a cloud of silvery red. Their black eyes follow me, wary, but I need no more kills. I filled my hunting basket by high sun.

When the conch calls me back to the village, it calls me to the Offering. First will be the newborn boy the villagers all pray for, to be drowned for the gods. Then the girls who’ve turned sixteen harvests, to be given to the primes to breed as matrons. That includes me. After tonight, this water will no longer be mine.

My lungs contract, attempting an inhale, but I clamp my lips and count the seafloor’s corals until the discomfort passes—the same way I’ve learned to swallow every feeling the gods don’t allow.

My old hunting partner, Relfy, used happy thoughts as her breath-holding trick, but thinking of happy thoughts makes me think of her, and thinking of her leads only to unhappy thoughts, of the silence that was carved into her. So counting corals it is.

I swoop once more through the school of fish, then I kick upward until I burst out of the water. Grabbing the side of my canoe, I release my held breath and suck in an inhale. Though I’m prepared for the poisoned air, its harshness still cramps my lungs.

I break into coughs. My salt-stung eyes beg for a rest, but up here, I might hear the conch’s call. I’m not ready yet. I never will be. I prepare another breath-hold, pursing my lips and bringing air into my belly, then chest—

A canoe cuts through the gray haze, its paddler wearing the red-dyed barkcloth of matronhood.

I deflate like a pufferfish. A matron? But they aren’t allowed in the lagoon.

The paddler takes form. A long braid of squid-ink black, a strong body of soft curves, and those wide, expressive eyes always seeking mine. Relfy.

My chest tightens like I’m still holding my breath. We aren’t allowed to be alone together. Not since last Offering. Not since we—no, she. . . I fix my gaze on her tattooed forehead, avoiding her full lips and the injury they hide inside. I hang from my boat, as limp as my dead fish, and make no effort to close the distance. Perhaps she seeks a different girl.

But Relfy glides closer, her face scrunched in a closed-lip smile that reaches nowhere near as high as it once did. I watched that smile fade over the past twelve moons as Relfy sat alone on the docks, ignored by her fellow matrons. Avoided by me. That was easy enough to accomplish. We girls spend our suns on the water; matrons cannot leave the village.

Yet, she’s found me.

Relfy whistles, and though her tongueless mouth can no longer speak, the memory of her sing-song voice dances in my head like wind rustling the palms. Easla. Calling for me.

The dull pain I’ve buried deep lurches awake, a spear to my heart. I want to swim to her, be near her. I’m sorry. I should shout it. Instead, I shake my head, and my tangled braid snakes through the water. “You shouldn’t be here.” It comes out sharper than I intended.

Relfy rummages at her feet. From a sling wrapped around her chest, a scruff of black hair peeks out. The baby girl I’ve only seen from a distance, no older than three moons.

I don’t even know her name—which creature Relfy chose for her. Something quick, like Relfy’s squirrelfish? Or colorful, like the sea slug I was named for? I want to ask.

But that’s how I know I can’t. Wanting is how all of this started.

Relfy sits upright. She’s holding out. . . a scallop shell.

My hand slips from the canoe, and I sputter out a mouthful of saltwater as I glance around. Within our pocket of haze, the lagoon is empty. We’re finally alone. I swim to Relfy and place my hand on hers, the scallop shell cupped between us. Hiding it? Accepting it?

Only last Offering, our hands were reversed. I held a black-spotted cowrie shell, and Relfy’s hand rested atop mine. As we huddled together in our shared canoe, still dripping saltwater from harvesting urchins, I lowered my voice in a mockery of a prime’s, repeating the same words the man who chose her that night would use. The relationship she was meant to be in, the one the gods allowed. “I, Easla Born-to Cowrie, take you, Relfy Born-to Scallop.”

I offered the cowrie shell lightly, smiling like it was a joke. Even then, the Ocean Law called louder than a conch in my mind. Man is the Atoll. Woman is the Lagoon. Two Atolls can bring no life. Two Lagoons will not survive. We weren’t breaking the gods’ rules. Not truly. But still, my hand retreated.

Relfy scooped up the shell, her eye contact strong. “I am Relfy, Given-to Cowrie.” Then she pressed her face to mine and we laughed against each other’s lips. Laughed because there was nothing else to say. Laughed because with our eyes closed, harvested urchins poking into our feet, we could pretend this was real. As we lingered there, afraid to pull apart, to end what we had, our laughter faded and our kisses tasted of salt.

Relfy’s hand shifts beneath mine, and it’s no longer last Offering. I’m no longer hopeful. Her voice lingers in my ears, confident and caring, but it’s a voice I’ll never hear again. Because of me. Because of us. Something that cannot be.

Blinking back the sting in my eyes, I pick up her scallop shell. A hole has been carved through it. I peek at Relfy’s neck, where a thin string still hangs. Only I know what’s tucked beneath her barkcloth. My cowrie shell, hidden but there. She wants me to do the same.

Relfy leans forward and traces my tattooed forehead: the wave-like curves of my born-to cowrie shell, the straight bar of womanhood inked after I first bled, and below, the bare skin where no given-to shell has yet been carved. Her fingertip presses into that empty space, and we both know what will fill it tonight—a prime’s shell. Never hers.

I should tell her what she wants to hear. A few words to show her we’re still us, that we can make this work.

But we can’t. Not if we want to survive. Relfy has already lost her tongue. In trying to stop that, my mother lost her life. How much more are we willing to lose? I dig a fingernail into my thumb, where crescent-shaped scars cluster. The sharp sting brings me back to reality. Alive with pain is better than dead with none.

I drop her scallop shell into the lagoon.

Relfy chokes out a sound, but I don’t look up. The water is so perfectly clear, I can see her shell drift toward the sand, spinning and soaring like I was only breaths ago. Burying itself away from watching eyes, watchful gods. I take a deep inhale, my lungs pinching from more than the air’s grit. “No more, Relfy,” I whisper, like I don’t want even her to hear.

Relfy’s eyes are as dim as those of the snapper I killed. But this way, she’s alive. We’re both alive. I glance at my basket of fish, at the empty second bench it sits below. We do what we must to survive. I nod at her necklace. “You should remove that.” Then I roll into my boat, refusing to look again at the matron who risked a forbidden canoe ride to visit. The friend who risks more by wearing my shell, the friend who saved me with her sacrifice. Someone much more than a friend.

Relfy whistles. The way it rises sounds hopeful—an unanswered question—but it fades behind me as I paddle. Toward the village that smothers me, the matrons who watch me, this lie I live. And away from the lagoon I love and those trembling lips I desperately want to kiss again. I know who holds the power over my life, and it’s not me. Not yet.

Soon, I’m winding my canoe through a tunnel in the mangroves, ducking to avoid low-hanging limbs. The laughter of other girls itches my ears before I’ve even reached the tunnel’s end. My arms ache from paddling fast enough to put distance between Relfy and me, but I dig another stroke and pull into view of the village.

The docks bustle with action. Younger girls haul up nets and shake out minnows. Older girls huddle in pairs in canoes, rinsing bloody scales from their arms. Some of them will be given to the primes alongside me tonight. If they’re saddened by this, they don’t show it. Not to me.

I glide through their half-circle. They nod in greeting, but their eyes catch on my empty second bench and, as always, those smiles fade.

After Relfy returned to the docks as a matron last Offering, that night’s celebration marred by what was done to her, no girl has asked to take her place as my hunting partner. They fear they might catch Relfy’s sin, her punishment, her ruin.

Good. Let them keep their distance. I was coward enough to stay silent while Relfy took the blame, and for twelve moons since, I’ve said nothing, done nothing. Like I’ll continue to do. Alone is what I deserve.

I drift to a stop, grabbing my rope and throwing two half-hitches around the nearest piling. Then I haul up my fish.

From behind their nets, the younger girls gasp. In their boats, the older ones go quiet. My snappers far outweigh theirs.

As the whispers start again, low and sharp, I glance back at the mangroves. I don’t know how Relfy plans to slip back unseen with a stolen canoe, but when she does, I need to be elsewhere. I hop onto the dock.

In front of me, two girls hunch over their mortars, grinding more blue coral than any prayer calls for.

One glances up, and when her eyes catch mine, they drop just as fast. “The matrons keep asking for more,” she says into her mortar, a bead of sweat rolling off her nose.

So the pregnant matron’s birthing has already begun, which means this coral’s bound straight for the Cowrie hut, and its crowd of matrons. The perfect witnesses to see I’m nowhere near Relfy when she returns.

I crouch beside the girl. “I’ll finish this. Can you descale those?”

She goes still—wary, the way they all are around me. Then she works her fingers loose from the pestle, flexing them one by one. I’ve spent enough suns at a mortar to know that ache. However she’s been taught to feel about me, it’s no match for the chance to stop grinding. She passes me the pestle, careful not to let her fingers brush mine, and turns to my fish.

I take the stone mortar and rise, grinding the coral fragments as I leave the girls behind and wind through the maze of docks that forms our home in the lagoon. The blue coral releases a heavy stench as I crush it, a misleading contrast to the bliss and courage the powder brings once it melts on the tongue. I turn a corner into the Gathering Place.

Ahead, the Cowrie Hut rises on stilts from the sea, its thatched roof strung with the black-spotted shells that give its name.

Matrons huddle in the doorway, same as when I left at sunrise. Then, they whispered their predictions, talking over one another in their fight to be heard.

“She’s craved fish soup,” a Whelk matron said as she shooed my little sister and me out of the hut. “Definitely a boy.”

“And her belly hangs low,” a Sand Dollar matron said, barreling in with swaths of barkcloth, forcing me to press my sister against the wall so we wouldn’t be knocked over. “A boy, I know it, praise the gods.”

They raised their voices louder, nodding so hard their shells clacked, as they all claimed the same outcome. A boy. The only boy that would be birthed for this Offering, since all the others had come out dead. The boy we would offer to the gods before we girls of sixteen harvests offered ourselves to the primes.

Now, those same matrons from this morning wait with closed mouths and tapping feet. The pregnant Cowrie matron must be close.

As I approach, I avert my gaze to the powdered coral in my hands, displaying my piety as clearly as I can. Girls are not allowed to watch a birthing—not until we’ve experienced one ourselves.

The Sand Dollar matron snatches the mortar. “Thank the seas. He’s nearly here.” She passes it back, and it moves from matron to matron, disappearing into the hut.

The blue coral is forbidden outside of prayers, where its euphoric bliss gives us a glimpse of the gods’ promised afterlife. Only birthing matrons are allowed more.

Inside, she cries out, and the matrons wail in response. The unified sound is a crashing wave, frightening and powerful—women telling a woman, we hear you, we feel your pain.

The cries crescendo, but I keep my mouth shut, as I should, forcing a faint smile to my lips. The unease in my stomach intensifies. This will be me. This is what the gods want.

The matrons drop into silence.

My foot takes a step, and it’s in the wrong direction. Away. I dig my fingernail into my thumb. No, let them see me here, not with Relfy. Helping. Good. “May I bring—”

“Where’s the coconut water?” A Scallop matron pushes out and glares at the Sand Dollar matron. “The Holy Crone has asked twice.”

I drop my gaze so it can’t look like I’m peering inside. The Holy Crone’s in there. The woman who used to be my Grandma Almti, before her new position made her something more. I imagine she’s squatted by the birthing matron’s side, delivering orders she knows will be obeyed, her face set in that permanent frustrated focus that warps the black cross inked down and across her forehead, blocking out her old marks. As Holy Crone, she’s no longer born-to or given-to. She executes the gods’ will. She never worries of survival. She decides it.

The Sand Dollar matron scowls and cranes her neck, holding a flat hand sideways to the sun. “I asked the girl two fingers ago.” Her hand folds into a pointed finger and swings toward the coconut grove. “And she’s still there!”

Atop the tallest palm, a small figure perches among the fronds.

The Scallop matron tsks—slow, drawn-out clicks of the tongue—and shakes her head, her well-oiled braid rolling on her large chest. “A pious girl would’ve had it back by now.” Her narrowing eyes slide to me. “Should we be concerned for Elly’s piety?”

Seas, it’s my sister they speak of. My throat thickens. I clear it, and it turns into a cough—the dry, scraping kind the poisoned air leaves in all of us. “I-I’ll see to it.”

Before they can respond, I run toward the grove, my feet slapping the sun-warped boards harder than they need to. Of course Elly’s being difficult. She has been since our mother’s banishment. I know this is how she grieves, but a small part of me prays she would take care of herself, so I don’t have to carry the burden for both of us.

Reaching the palm trees, I slow, burying the frustration. Numbing my own grief so I can attend to hers.

Elly’s foraging partner Dams leans against the tallest palm, swinging a loop of barkcloth around one finger. She straightens when she sees me. “She won’t come down. Hasn’t dropped me a single coconut either.”

I don’t blame Dams for the edge in her voice. Last Offering was their tenth harvest, which meant they earned their first canoe. But the lagoon is where we last saw our mother, so Elly refuses to leave the docks.

The Holy Crone allowed it. A safety concern, she called it. A girl who panics on the water is a danger to herself and others. So Dams is trapped here too.

Except once this boy is born, we’ll paddle out for the Offering to the gods, and everyone must attend, including Dams. And Elly. I wipe my hands on my dress, leaving streaks of fish scales. “Give me the climber.”

Dams hesitates, her gaze flicking up to where Elly must be, then back to me. She chews her lip—afraid, I realize.

“They’re not going to banish her for a coconut.” I keep my voice level, if just to comfort myself. Not for a coconut. Right?

Dams hands me the climber—a strip of barkcloth knotted into a loop. “Gods willing,” she murmurs, and I think she means it.

I tug the knot, expecting slack, but it doesn’t budge. “You tied this well.”

“Yes, I—” She scratches her neck and drops her voice. “Earlier, I could hear Elly. . .” She glances down the walkway toward the huts. “I haven’t told anyone. But you know I’m supposed to.”

Singing. She doesn’t need to say it out loud. Elly’s done it before. A sin.

How does a song hurt anyone, my mother’s voice whispers in my head, but I shove it down where it belongs. Thoughts like that are what got her banished. To hear a sin and say nothing is to share in its evil. If a matron catches Elly singing while we stand here, Dams and I are as guilty as she is. I suck in a breath and release it slowly.

Tonight I’ll be given to a prime. That I can’t stop. But tomorrow, I have a chance to make this better.

The old Holy Crone died after last harvest, and Grandma Almti rose to take her place—which means, for the first time in thirty harvests, the Holy Crone needs an apprentice.

Tomorrow, all of the matrons will race for that honor, out in the lagoon where the first Holy Crone proved herself. I’ve trained every sun, alone, swimming laps around the village until my arms gave out.

Win, and I’ll stand at the Holy Crone’s side. Maybe it won’t be enough to keep my sister safe, maybe nothing is. But piety is the only thing I have, so I’ll give more of it than anyone else: be perfect, be useful, be worth keeping. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

Tomorrow. If Elly doesn’t get us in trouble before then.

I slip the climber’s loops around my ankles. The matrons were already asking after that coconut. It won’t be long before one comes complaining. If she finds Elly up there refusing to work, if she hears Elly singing, the plan is done. And so are we.

I grip the tree and jump onto its rough bark, splaying my knees to the sides. I haven’t climbed since I received my canoe, but I haven’t forgotten the motions. Bend, hop, pull with one hand, grip with the other. I sync my breath to the movements, exhaling as I leap, inhaling as I steady and prepare to go again. I don’t look up or down, only at the trunk’s ridges and cracks.

I’m out of breath and huffing when I see toes curling around the trunk from the other side. Elly’s. I close the remaining distance with small hops, careful not to crush her hands beneath mine. At the top of the palm tree, I bring myself eye-to-eye with my little sister.

Her blonde hair whips around in the wind. She stares past me into the lagoon, tears streaking down her dirty cheeks. In her squatted position among the coconuts, Elly holds perfectly still, so unlike the moon jellyfish our mother named her for. The baby who never stopped bouncing and squirming. Now, Elly grips the palm tree with fingers as white as sand.

I look over my shoulder to where she stares. The stretch of mangrove trees that grows over a dock. Our mother liked to take us there on our rest-suns. Canoes couldn’t approach it, and we could spot villagers before they walked in.

Mother would sit in the shade, leaning against a piling and weaving a basket, and she would sing. It was forbidden, what she did. We may only raise our voices in praise of the gods. That’s what the Ocean Law said, and this wasn’t prayer. But her voice was too beautiful to silence, so I would sit at her side and repair nets, practice knots on my climber, whatever I could to keep my hands busy, until I blinked and it was sunset, and my hands had forgotten their task.

On cooler suns, she’d even untie her braid. Shake out her hair and rub her sore scalp. Another small sin. Always in private.

The first occurrence, I dropped my climber and gasped. “The braid is the seaweed. By wearing the braid, we welcome the harvest.” I recited the words always told to me, the Ocean Law flowing from my tongue as smoothly as water spilled from the Gathering Place’s freshwater spring.

Mother fanned her sun-lightened hair over her shoulders, leaned over, and tapped my nose. “Why do we have the Ocean Law, my little Lug?”

Another sin. Calling me by a different variation of my sea slug. The gods did not give us names so we may change them. But I didn’t know how to disagree with my mother, other than reciting rules. I wasn’t much older than Elly then, or Oonj as Mother would call her there. Old enough to want to be older, but young enough to not know what that meant. “To. . . to protect us.”

Mother’s mouth crooked into something that wasn’t a smile. “To control us.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. But Elly rushed past, chasing a crab down the dock, and pounced, hands cupped. The crab skittered on as Elly shook her tiny fist. “Once I have my canoe, I’ll catch every crab.”

Then Mother laughed, a full-bodied chuckle that claimed space, demanded attention. A laugh I never heard from any other matron. I didn’t disagree again because I wanted to be as happy as her, so I listened to her songs, let her unbraid my hair too. Responded when she called me Lug instead of Easla. And Elly as Oonj. Only there. Only with her. Maybe it wasn’t the gods who were strict, but the villagers.

I was wrong. Those peaceful rest-suns misled us into believing our hidden behaviors would go unpunished. But all sinners pay for their sins. Relfy, my mother, and through their losses, me. None of us can escape the gods.

I look away from the overgrown dock. Beyond it, the lagoon glitters bright blue. Up here, the haze thins enough, I can see the red-gray waves of the unholy waters, held back by the stark white ring of sun-bleached corals encircling our lagoon. The atoll. The place the Holy Crone abandoned our mother. Abandoned her own daughter. The place we’ll be returning to soon.

I lean into Elly’s view, blocking the atoll. “You won’t have to look at it. I’ll turn the canoe to face the village—”

“I’m not going. I won’t.”

I reach for more Ocean Law to recite, words I’m not sure I believe, but I say them anyway. Because we all do. “The Ocean Law says everyone must attend.”

“I don’t care about the Ocean Law.”

The same defiance our mother had. I squeeze the tree tighter with one hand and release the other, rest it over Elly’s. Like mine, it’s scarred from climbing for coconuts. “Then care about me.” Her arms tremble. Her muscles are fatiguing. “We need to get you down.”

She’s staring at the atoll again, her eyes unfocused. Reliving last Offering. “What if you leave me too?”

“I’ll never leave you.”

Her green eyes cut to mine. “Promise?”

I twist a bright-green coconut until it snaps free. Give the matrons what they want. Avoid attention. “No one will banish us.” I whistle twice and wait for Dams’s responding whistle below. Then I drop the coconut. “The sea slug stays with her jellyfish.”

Elly’s lips purse into a tiny pucker. “How do you know the Holy Crone’s apprenticeship will keep us safe?”

The question lingers in the air, resisting even the breeze. I don’t know, I can only hope. But I can’t say that to Elly. I bring my hand back to hers and rub my thumb across it in a small circle, creating the shape of our shared cowrie. “Because the gods save the pious.”

Elly nods like she understands. “May we please the sea.” She blinks back her tears and reaches for a coconut.

Below, a matron screams.

Elly flinches, and then she falls.

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