Kids gawk at the enormity of the beast. Syreeta wasn’t much older, when the seafarer—still a hatchling itself—chose her to be its navigator. She remembers the moment it rose from the dark deep blue in front of her boat. The small shell of her vessel rocked on the waves lifted by the creature’s beak breaking the surface.
“Go on, child,” whispered her grandmother. “Show it the way.”
Syreeta slid into the water and swam, confident, broad strokes breaking the currents as she led the creature towards the shelter of her native island’s lagoon, where the young seafarer would lounge in the shallows until it reached its species’ first threshold of maturation.
The seedling of the future city sprouts on the back of the beast at the end of a long, hot summer when Syreeta notices the first silver threads glimmering in her black hair. It was a long wait.
Marveling at the shiny plates of the seafarer’s carapace and at the quivering of its tentacles in the turquoise waters of the lagoon, Syreeta dreams of the day the city growing on its back will be complete and ready to sail. She turns in the water and drifts along the creature’s side, stroking the sleek chitin covering its body. When Syreeta reaches the sharp triangle of a pectoral fin, she dives.
Down below, the water is the dusky green of sea-beaten bottle glass. Barnacles cling to the belly of the beast, wispy filaments trembling in sync with the steady rise and fall of seafarer’s breath. Syreeta opens her arms as if she can embrace the full enormity of the creature. She presses her face against its familiar, glossy hide and listens to the rhythms of the three hearts beating inside its massive body. Bubbles of air float up from her mouth, glistening in the water like specks of silver.
The city on the seafarer’s back grows at a steady pace. Towers—the color of pink quartz—cluster along its spine, new levels weaving themselves upwards every day. Tubes of connective tissue loop around the rising structures, fuse with their smooth walls. Soon, Syreeta’s people will enter these echoing halls, walk the passageways deep within the city’s internal chambers. Vaulted ceilings will ring with their laughter.
“You don’t have to do it.” Her husband’s voice breaks Syreeta’s reverie, snapping her back to reality. Clouds drift in the sky; grass shivers and tickles her neck; her husband’s fingers intertwine with hers. They came here to rest. Now, he is looking at her, and his eyes shine with tears.
“You don’t have to take it upon yourself, don’t need to be this grand benefactor, sacrificing everything for the good of others.” The pain in his voice takes Syreeta aback. Hasn’t he always known that she was the seafarer’s navigator?
Syreeta sits up, drawing her hand away from his. The feeling lingers like phantom pain. The slope of the land runs into the sea. A few feet below, green grass gives way to patches of dry tufts destroyed by salination. “Don’t you see?” she implores. “The land is drowning. We have nothing left but these islands, and even those are sinking. It’s a blessing that the bio-engineers of old gave us seafarers.”
Her husband closes his eyes. “The islands will last us a lifetime. I won’t participate in your charitable self-destruction.” His lips are a tight, white line. Syreeta yearns to reach for him, wipe away his pain, but she can’t.
When the beast is ready to leave the cradle of the lagoon for the open sea, Syreeta will take her rightful place as the navigator. Nestled in the hollow where the armored plates protecting the brain of the creature meet, she’ll take root, her body becoming one with the seafarer, their nerves and blood vessels intertwining. The second threshold of the seafarer’s maturity will thus be crossed.
Syreeta wakes from the hollow ache in her bones. The island trembles. Stilts, holding up the house above the waves, quiver and moan. She feels the seafarer’s call in the back of her throat, in the throbbing underneath her teeth. “It is time,” she says and turns. Her husband’s side of the bed is empty. “You terrible, terrible fool,” she whispers fighting back the tears. The call of the seafarer is persistent, she cannot allow herself to wallow.
They’re waiting for her outside. Anxious eyes, tight lips, meager belongings wrapped in bedsheet sacks. Her people. They line the path to the lagoon, stand on both sides holding lanterns. Yellow bulbs cast their shivering light across pale faces. Benefactor, navigator, patron saint of the sea, she hears them whisper.
The seafarer waits. Myofiber rungs have unfurled down from the creature’s side into the water. One giant orb of an eye fixes on Syreeta and blinks.
Her people enter the halls of the seafaring city in awe, humbled by its scale. Then one man plucks the string of his old mandolin. A woman joins, soft whistle of a flute. By the time they reach the navigator’s hollow, the song rises strong. Still, the loneliness in Syreeta’s heart lingers. The longing for one person, lost to her. She steps towards the hollow that’ll become her nest, her home, and her grave; and feels his fingers intertwine with hers, as warm and reliable as ever.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” she says.
He shakes his head and smiles. “I cannot journey this road with you, but—for as long as I can—I won’t leave your side.”
As the tendrils of seafarer’s interface reach for her and attach, wrapping around her spine, Syreeta smiles back at him.
The journey runs uninterrupted as ocean waves roll over the sea-swallowed world. When Syreeta’s breath ceases, her skeleton becomes the first bud of the seafarer’s burgeoning horn, a sharp spear of shining white bone breaking the endless, blue waves for all eternity. In the matrix of the beast’s molecular structure, Syreeta will live on forever; the third and final stage of their joint maturation now complete.