The Tenth Tongue

By Cassandra Hamm

The sea has its own language. The water breathes with its currents, exhales in swishes and clicks, spews forth moans and grunts. Sometimes the sounds coalesce into something recognizable, but just as quickly, it fades into unrelated background noise.

I listen anyway, wondering if this will be the tenth tongue I master in my lifetime. That is, if Thea and I manage not to end up in the belly of a tenebris—those foul beasts love the dark shafts we mine, almost as much as they hate the light we bring.

Scuba tank strapped to her back, Thea swims ahead of me. Her body glows green beneath her translucent suit, illuminating the utter blackness of the deep ocean. That poor young woman has already gone through so much. I’ll make sure she returns to her son, or I’ll die trying.

Thea pauses at a hole in the rocky cliff face and runs her finger across the outside, searching for a gouge to indicate we’ve already explored this tunnel. She must find nothing because she says in my comm, “Keep an eye out for that red sanosaxum!”

Exhaustion creasing her bioluminescent face, she looks to me for my response.

Light pulses from the skin under my eyes in dits and dahs—short-long-short, short, short-long-short-short, short-long, long-short-short-long. “Relax,” I spell out.

Thea’s eyes crinkle beneath her visor. “You try relaxing when you’re leading a deep-sea mission, Alina.”

I let my smile do the speaking for me since my tongue can’t.

The Lucifer Project—from luciferase and luciferin, key ingredients in bioluminescence—altered our bodies to become bioluminescent like some deep-sea creatures. Our light manifests in different ways, flowing from Thea’s entire body and the skin under my eyes. I’ve learned to use my bioluminescence for Morse code, my seventh tongue.

Perhaps it’s strange that I’ve always been so fascinated by languages when I can’t speak them. But there is something beautiful about the flow of words in the air, characters on a page, and their way of connecting humanity to each other.

Over my many years, I’ve seen people who don’t speak the dominant language of their area struggle to be heard. I can’t use my physical tongue, but I will always do what I can to connect to the misunderstood.

We enter the cave together, ignoring offshoots to swim through the main route, extraction lasers at the ready. I sense Thea’s tension in her jerky movements. Though the sanosaxum we harvested saved her son, I know she fears he’ll relapse while she’s here. We still don’t know the full extent of sanosaxum’s healing abilities—or how long it’ll last—but we have to keep harvesting it. For kids like Niko whose lives would’ve been cut short if not for the miracle mineral.

The dark walls, devoid of red sanosaxum, feel like a tomb, pressing in on us. Pale blue light flashes ahead.

“Careful,” Thea says, but I’m already squeezing past her, scuba fins pumping.

The floor is moving, undulating like its own tiny river. When my eyes adjust, I realize the ground is covered with translucent creatures—strange, gelatinous, with pale, ghost-like eyes.

Crinis—more accurately, tentaculum in Latin. Sure enough, tentacles uncoil from their bodies and reach toward me. I try to kick backward, but my fins are slow and unwieldy. The creatures’ suckers flash neon blue—a warning, likely—I’ve trespassed on their territory.

“Alina!” Thea shouts as I fumble for my extractor. “Get away!”

Something about the flashing seems familiar. Like… it’s a language. As their tentacles hover over my suit, I release the laser in favor of cataloging their messages and sending out a mimicry.

They pause. I study the flashes emitting between them, so fast I can barely keep up. Their method of communication seems to be much more advanced than mine. But if I stayed down here long enough, I could likely figure it out. That is, if I had unlimited air and no fear of tenebris.

Thea swims toward me. The crinis tense up once more, their tentacles aimed at the newcomer. I shake my head at Thea. My eyes flash, “Let me.”

“I’ll cover you.” Her voice trembles.

Though I don’t think they’ll attack, I send another imitation of their language—at least, what I hope is an imitation. If I accidentally offend them…

Again, a flurry of communication. I stay still, barely daring to breathe.

A glowing tentacle reaches toward me. Thea gasps into her comm. But when the appendage presses against my suit, it doesn’t feel like a threat. It feels like a pat on the shoulder.

The crinis who’s touching me pulses back. I’m not sure what it means, but its ice-blue circles shift to a softer, welcoming shade of blue-gray.

Perhaps if I move closer—

The crinis’ collective suckers suddenly blink out. My blood turns to ice.

I whip toward the unexplored tunnel, then to where we came from. A shadow, even darker than the deepest tunnel, fills the cave.

Thea’s laser splits the blackness. A tenebris howls, and blood clouds the water.

Not Thea! But what can I do? I’m just an old woman—

My eyes land on the cowering, lightless crinis. Before I can fully consider, I flash, “Please.” Will the imploring in my eyes translate what they don’t understand? I swim toward Thea, drawing my extractor––

Gelatinous bodies pour past me, tentacles writhing as the crinis flood toward the tenebris. The tenebris lurches back from the onslaught of blue light. Crinis latch onto the tenebris with their tentacles, and the shadow beast writhes and bucks beneath their fierce grip.

“Thank you,” I pulse.

Thea and I leave the warring beasts behind, kicking toward the open sea as quickly as our flippers will allow.

We may not have found any sanosaxum today, but I have found my tenth tongue.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cassandra Hamm is a psychology nerd, jigsaw puzzler, and hopeless romantic who spends most of her time lost in another world. She spends much of her time mothering her two kittens, Keefe Hawthorne and Chase Daniel, who are named after her favorite middle grade heroes. Her work appears in various anthologies, including many of Havok’s collections, Warriors Against the Storm, When Your Beauty is the Beast, and The Depths We’ll Go To.

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