Lagoon

by Nnedi Okorafor

  She fought hard to focus. Ayodele was standing with the president on the water. Femi was still on the boat, snapping photos.

  “I’ll be all right!” the president shouted as he was lowered below the side of the boat. By what? And into the water? Adaora couldn’t see. Hawra was clinging to one of the guards, weeping. Femi was doing something with his mobile phone. Agu was coughing. Anthony remained silent.

  Adaora couldn’t stand any longer. She sat down hard on the boat floor and gazed out at the ocean, whose water was clear as crystal. In the distance, she saw something huge leap up and then splash back in, and a group of flying fish passed by yards from their boat. Below the glasslike water, she imagined there was a great, great metropolis of ocean life—giant, reaching, dark brown structures bloomed up from a flat surface beneath that she couldn’t see the end of. And the structures had slowly shrunk and expanded even as she watched, sea creatures darting, wiggling, spiraling everywhere.

  She closed her eyes and everything went away.

  * * * *

  Water is life.

  Aman Iman.

  Water.

  Adaora had spent fifteen years studying creatures of the water. Now, Adaora was in water.

  Her hair was floating around her face. Yet . . . ? There was a rushing sensation in her neck that happened involuntarily. Her lungs didn’t hurt. She felt the rushing of water again. She brought her hands to her chest. She could feel her heart beating. Several yards below her was a brown crusty coral-like surface covered with green swaying seaweed. She could see a group of red crabs the size of small children plucking the seaweed and delicately munching it.

  She shut her eyes, trying to focus. She touched her neck. Instead of smooth skin, her fingers slipped into large grooves, the edges of flesh loose and thick. She twitched, realizing what they were, then she shuddered and screamed. But no sound came out. Because she didn’t have lungs any more . . . she had gills. She tried to swim up. But which way was up? She opened her eyes and watched bubbles float past her. Upward. She followed the bubbles with her eyes. Upward. A glowing pink dot. The sun. The surface was more than a hundred feet above her.

  Adaora realized several things at once. She was breathing water. She was not alone. She could see what was happening. She could hear it, too.

  She focused on what was happening in front of her. The president. He was suspended in what looked like a giant bubble of air. He hung before five humanoid figures that reminded her of something out of Star Wars. She frowned. Hadn’t she read somewhere that the president loved the Star Wars movies? Adaora did too, though she preferred the earlier films. But she’d watched the later films enough to recognize the aliens she was seeing. All of the creatures she saw now were whitish-blue-skinned, with huge black eyes and long long arms, legs, and necks. They even moved with the same fluid motions as they had in the movies.

  The president was talking to them. She moved toward the bubble of air and then stopped. What would happen if she tried to enter it? She touched the gills on her neck. They felt like several numb hairy flaps of skin. The flaps pumped up and down, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized she could do it voluntarily, too.

  Okay, she thought. But then she looked down and her mind reeled. Her legs were no longer legs. This part of her body had become the body of a giant metallic-blue fish. The upper and lower lobes of it are equal in shape and pointy, she thought, twisting for a better look at herself. A lunate caudal fin, like that of a sailfish, marlin, or swordfish. I was made for speed. Something tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and came face to face with Ayodele. Adaora swam back, surprised. The motion pushed water through her gills, and her mind sharpened.

  “Relax,” Ayodele said.

  Adaora heard Ayodele’s voice in her head.

  She opened her mouth and tried to speak. Again, no sound.

  “Think your words,” Ayodele said. “Move your mouth if it helps, but think your words.”

  Adaora moved her mouth as she thought, “What is happening? What have you done to me? Is this permanent? Where is everyone else? Agu and Anthony? Where are they? Are they okay?”

  She heard Ayodele laugh. “Calm down,” Ayodele said. She reconfigured her body. Ayodele was now a dolphin. No, she was too long to be a dolphin. And dolphins did not have such large eyes. Ayodele swam in a circle around Adaora.

  “Swim with me,” she said. “I will explain.” When Adaora didn’t move, she laughed again. “Your Agu is fine. Anthony is fine. They are all fine. Your president is meeting with the Elders, as you see. You cannot join them. Now come.”

  Adaora hesitated. Beyond the president and the Elders, she could see a very large swordfish monster hovering in the background. Was it the same angry swordfish that had nearly killed them all? She shuddered.

  “Come,” Ayodele said again.

  Adaora followed only because Ayodele was swimming in the opposite direction from the swordfish. Ayodele moved fast, and Adaora was surprised to find she could keep up easily. As she swam, she realized that all around her were bone-white edifices that were at least thirty feet high. As Adaora and Ayodele passed, some collapsed, and others grew. Sea creatures from fish to crabs to sea cucumbers clung, swam through, crawled, and wiggled past. Adaora could not tell which were the aliens and which were the earthlings.

  “Everything you see here is the ship,” Ayodele said as they swam through a yawning cave. Some kind of fish with a sucker mouth clung to the lip of the cave above them. “The longer we stay here, the more we shift and become like the people of the water.”

  “What about on land?” Adaora thought. This time, she didn’t move her mouth.

  “Yes, there, too.”

  “Why am I not sick anymore?”

  “Why is your body part fish?”

  Adaora paused. “Because this is . . . what . . . I wanted?”

  “Is it what you wanted?”

  Adaora had always loved the water. And she didn’t want to die of whatever pollutants were in the water. Yes, it was.

  “Is this place your ship?” Adaora asked.

  “Yes,” Ayodele answered. “One of them.”

  “How far does it extend?”

  “Many many miles, I suspect,” Ayodele said. “That may change.”

  “If I swim beyond, will my body change back?”

  “I don’t know. I think you will change back when you reach land. Isn’t that how you imagine maidens?”

  “Mermaids.”

  Ayodele laughed, shifting into a mermaid herself. Her face looked nearly identical to that of Adaora’s friend Ayodele Olayiwola, the one Adaora had named her for. Adaora found herself smiling.

  “Will you take me to see Agu?”

  “That’s where we are going.”

  * * * *

  Agu and Anthony were trapped in a bubble. They’d woken up inside it, at what they thought might be the bottom of the sea. They stood on hard white stone and above swam monsters and sea creatures. Most ignored them, but a few came for a curious look before moving on.

  Anthony paced back and forth, muttering in Twi. He was no longer sick, and he was viciously hungry. He rubbed his hands over his rough wet hair. Images of being underwater as all those monstrous creatures came at him kept crowding his mind. When he pushed these away, he would look around and see more such creatures swimming about, watching him, perhaps even plotting revenge. Which was crazy. If he didn’t get out of here soon, Anthony realized, he’d go mad. “What are we even doing here?” he muttered.

  “No clue,” Agu said, sitting down in the center of the white stone. He rested his head on the palms of his hands. “Don’t even know how we got here.” He looked at his hands. He had punched that kid so hard when he was twelve that the boy had lost consciousness. Less than two days ago, the power had boiled up again and he’d nearly killed Benson. And, last night, when he’d r
un through Lagos trying to get back to Adaora, he was sure he had killed some people.

  “You are useless,” Agu said to his hands. “I am useless.”

  Now he and Anthony were imprisoned at the bottom of the sea, to starve to death or eventually be eaten by the first sea monster aggressive enough to bite into the bubble. He noticed two figures swimming toward them. They were not as large as some of the other creatures lingering around the bubble, but they were moving fast. He got up and moved a few feet back, as far from them as he could.

  * * * *

  Agu and Anthony were trapped in a bubble. Its shimmery surface made it difficult to see inside, but she was sure it was them. It was a dome the size of a small room. She waved her hands as she swam toward them and they both waved back.

  “How did they get in there?” Adaora asked.

  “The same way you got to where you were.”

  This answered nothing and Adaora sucked her teeth, frustrated with Ayodele’s vagueness. Sucking her teeth yielded no sound, and this annoyed Adaora more. When they got to the bubble, she hovered before Agu and Anthony, unsure of how to communicate with them. She waved her hands and moved her lips, and she tried to say, Are you okay?

  “What?” she heard Agu shout, the sound of his voice muted by the water.

  Anthony was frowning deeply and pointing at her fin. Agu looked at it and then his face went slack.

  Adaora thought for a moment, then she turned to Ayodele. She wanted to ask, Will I drown? Will I die if I go in there? But she didn’t. There was only one way to find out, and she wanted to find out for herself. If I can’t breathe . . . I will just crawl back in the water.

  She put her hand through the bubble’s surface into the dry air. Then she pushed herself in up to her waist. Anthony and Agu quickly pulled her in the rest of the way.

  As they laid her on the dry ocean floor, Adaora felt fully disoriented. Up became sideways and sideways became up. The dry air bit at her skin and the inside of her gills. Worst of all, she couldn’t breathe! Her body arched as she fought for air. Put me back in the water! she wanted to scream. But her new body was not capable of speech. She bucked, hoping Agu would drop her and she could crawl back through the bubble.

  Agu struggled but managed to hold her tightly. “Can she—”

  “Throw her back in the water!” Anthony screamed.

  Adaora twisted again, turned her head to the side, and vomited water. It felt like she was heaving from the very tip of her tail. Then she threw her head back and inhaled loudly and long, air rushing into her lungs like the wind itself. Lungs. She had them. Now.

  She shut her eyes and felt her neck. The gill flaps were still there. “Who am I?” she whispered. Her voice was her own, albeit rough. When she opened her eyes, she was looking into Agu’s. A tear was falling down his cheek. He was shaking from the strain of her weight.

  “Something new,” he said.

  “Something old,” Anthony said. He laughed. “Something borrowed, more than gold, something true, never sold, goddamn aliens too fuckin’ bold. Chale, see I spit am!” Then he grinned and shouted, “I dey Craaaaaaze!”

  Adaora was so surprised that she burst out laughing, which made her cough,

  “Oh my God, the man dey craze,” Agu muttered, but the corners of his mouth quivered as he fought his laughter.

  “You should have plenty of new material for a new album,” Adaora told Anthony.

  “Artist is artist,” he agreed.

  “Agu, you can put me down now. Before you pass out. I know I’m heavy.”

  Anthony put his arms beneath her and helped Agu lower her to the sea bed. Once seated, she crossed her arms over her bare chest. Her fin felt heavy and useless.

  Agu sat beside her and Anthony sat across from her. For a long time, they were silent, Adaora more than aware of her strange naked mermaid body and the cold dryness of the air. Anthony thinking and thinking about all he’d discussed with the Elders when they were first pulled into the ocean, only two nights ago. And Agu looking out into the water.

  “I thought it would kill me the first time it happened,” Anthony said. He’d spoken in Twi, so the others didn’t understand. He switched to English. “I call it the rhythm.” He recounted the story of the day he’d discovered his power. A story that he’d never told a soul.

  Agu laughed hard and clapped him on the shoulder. “Do you believe in God now?”

  Anthony chuckled. “Yeah.”

  The three of them burst out laughing and didn’t stop for the next minute. Adaora’s eyes watered and her fin slapped the damp stone. Agu rolled on the sea bed as he guffawed. And Anthony held his cramping belly. In the water outside the bubble, clouds of fish wiggled toward the surface, and a giant pink squid spiraled by. This sent them into more hysterics.

  Several minutes passed and they calmed.

  Then it was Agu’s turn. “I have no name for it. But the first time I used it was to save a boy we called Stick Boy.” He told them about punching the other boy unconscious and how as the boy lay there, he decided to become a soldier. Then he told them about nearly killing Benson. Then he told them everything that had happened in the streets of Lagos. As he spoke, he watched Adaora’s eyes grow wider and wider, especially when he spoke of possibly killing people in the streets during the riots.

  No one laughed when he finished.

  Adaora knew they were expecting her to explain the origins of her powers, just as they had. But her story was different. “Okay,” she said. She looked around. They were at the bottom of the ocean in a bubble created by aliens, surrounded by sea monsters. She shut her eyes, still aware of her fin. It was drying out, and her scaled skin was starting to sting. She opened her eyes and looked at both of them. “I don’t know what this is,” she said. “Mine wasn’t something that kicked in when I was a girl, as it did when you were boys.” She paused, fighting the voice that told her never to speak of such taboos. The knowledge that made her feel like she was evil. The stigma that burned brightest when she thought about her husband’s constant accusations of witchcraft. And the fact that after all her denials, maybe she was a witch. Well, she was certainly something.

  “I was born with webbed feet and hands,” she blurted. “And my legs were joined together by flesh.” Even after everything they’d been through, she half expected them to recoil in disgust.

  “That’s . . . that’s disgusting,” Anthony said. But he smiled as he said it.

  Agu was laughing.

  “My father . . . He said that if it were the old days, they would have thrown me in the bush,” Adaora continued. “He liked to remind me of that whenever my grades were too low in school. It always worked.” She sighed. “Anyway, they surgically separated my fingers, toes, and legs. Still, from the moment that my mother first took me to the ocean, I could swim. No one ever taught me. I was . . . like a fish.”

  Both Agu and Anthony burst out laughing. Adaora wanted to cry, but she laughed too. “I’ve always loved the sea. I am fascinated by it, the smell, the creatures, its size and depth. It is no surprise that I became a marine biologist. But that’s all there is. I don’t have any childhood stories about doing amazing things. All this”—she gestured to her tail—“is completely new. Two nights ago when I was fighting my husband, that’s the first time anything ever happened!” She frowned. “But . . . maybe it’s always been there. Beneath the surface.”

  Agu nodded. “I was about to say that.”

  “What are we?” Adaora asked after a moment.

  “We’re people,” Agu said. He looked at Anthony. “You can make a sonic boom.” To Adaora, he said, “You can create some sort of force field. I have superhuman strength. And we all walked into each other’s lives just as aliens invaded Lagos.”

  “Not a coincidence,” Anthony said. “Na the work of de universe.”

  “It’s the work of something,” Agu s
aid.

  Adaora shivered. “My father would have said it’s the work of the gods.”

  As Adaora finished speaking, she felt a terrible pressure, enough to make her ears hurt. She looked up and saw the bubble’s bowl shape distorting, as though something were pressing on it. The air pressure dropped. The temperature dropped. Adaora’s fin stung horribly as her sleek fish skin continued to dry and began to turn brown.

  They all saw it at once.

  Adaora screamed.

  Anthony whimpered.

  Agu began to cry.

  The spider standing above them was the size of a mansion. Rough hair covered its eight endlessly long legs and bulbous body. It—she, Adaora instinctively knew—was looking right at them, down at them. With all eight of her intense black eyes.

  “Even in the corners of palaces, spiders dwell,” she said. “Remember that, if you ever find yourself walking the halls of the great and powerful.” Then she was gone.

  “What the fuck was that?” Anthony asked.

  There was a wet splashing sound behind Adaora. It was Ayodele flipping water into the bubble as she hovered outside it. “They are ready for you. Come.”

  CHAPTER 50

  SECOND CONTACT

  Adaora, Agu, and Anthony met with the Elders.

  There were five of them.

  And that is all that Adaora, Agu, and Anthony will ever remember about those thirty minutes of their lives.

  CHAPTER 51

  THE MAGICAL NEGRESS

  Anthony and Agu had been given bubbles of air, like helmets around their heads, and they’d all swum back to where Adaora had seen the president speaking with the Star Wars–like creatures.

  Then her memory grew hazy, and she remembered nothing until her head was breaking the surface of the water beneath the late-afternoon sun. She felt as though she had encountered something enormous—something so far beyond anything she could have imagined—and that its presence threatened to force her out of existence. Whatever had happened with the . . . spider, with the Elders—it was all too huge to contemplate.