Knight on the Reefs: A Tale of Junayd's heroism

[Suji]

The dock was quieter than the beach, as the sounds of the underbrush became more distant. The waves lapped up at the wooden stilts, and even though the water was dark with the night, it was still clearer than most natural water bodies Suji had ever seen. The land dropped off quickly, and she could catch glimpses of the hard, sharp coral far at the bottom, if the water shifted just right.

Junayd's boat wasn't the biggest craft on the water, but it was definitely big enough to comfortably seat the three of them. As Suji approached, Junayd hopped onto the boat with surprising ease, and dexterously turned back to them. He held a hand out for Suji, and releasing that she couldn't really deny it without being a jerk, Suji took it. Besides, it would have been much worse if she made a show out of not needing help and then somehow slipped. As Junayd helped her step onto the swaying watercraft, she glanced down at its side. It was dark, but still light enough that she made out the name.

If someone hadn't been helping, her she would have tumbled into the water. At it was, she nearly lost her balance, the temporary shock and minute horror not mixing well with the lifting and falling of the boat over the waves. Junayd, to his credit, grabbed her other forearm and steadied her. "Thanks Junayd," she said with a smile that she hoped didn't let on that she'd seen the boat's updated name.

After they were all on board, Suji tried to find somewhere out of the way to sit while Junayd worked to get them out into open water. She wished it wasn't so cloudy, but at least it didn't seem like it was going to storm. Every once in a while the clouds would move enough that the moonlight came through, and it was suddenly a lot brighter. When it seemed like they were out far enough, Suji held up the bright cups she'd been holding on to. "Shall we?"

[Alain]

Alain was a little wary of standing up in the little boat but they weren't so far out into the peaceful harbor that bugs could not find them here, especially with the light, so he carefully stood up and began hanging the mosquito netting. He didn't bother trying to cover the entire deck. He just set up a bit of a tent using the thing. It reminded him of making pillow castles and sheet tents when he was a kid and he smiled at the memories. They were far enough back to be completely untouched by the current situation.

"We shall," he said as he sat back down next to Suji and Junayd when he'd finished. He snagged the green cup from the choices before she could take it. He ignored her sharp glance in his direction and poured a glass of beer. He handed her the cup back to her when it was full with a an amused smile before filling the other two cups and handing one to Junayd. Under the current light conditions it was hard to tell which was the pink one, at least that is what he told himself as he sipped brew number four.

"So, co-workers, anyone want to gossip about our students?" he asked as he leaned back and put his feet up on the side of the boat.

[Suji]

Suji opened her mouth and only just stopped herself from crying out at the injustice of her green cup being stolen. Such a small thing, random playfulness, and it'd caught her off guard. Who gave a damn what cup they were using? They would all hold the same stuff. But for a second it had been fun to pretend it mattered, and that seemed like a small victory, somewhere. Probably trivial, but she noticed it.

Alain actually handed her back her cup, and she smiled. Gossiping about kids was indeed a favorite pastime for all of them, and she suspected that it was the same for every teacher. At least, before the war. Hell, Controllers had to do it for whatever types of classes they had too... but Suji didn't really want to think about Yeerk culture. "Sure, but first, I need to complain about the job itself. As a previously spoiled American in the United States school system, I'd like to say, do you know how hard it is to teach international history? I'm learning some of this stuff for the first time!"

Which was an exaggeration: Suji had taken every advanced history course her high school had offered, and a couple of those had been internationally focused. But teaching history to a group of kids of every different background really was a trying experience; there were a lot of wars and hard feelings in history, after all. And wars made winners and losers out of groups of people.

[Alain]

"Tell me about it," Alain said as he sipped his beer. "They made me the 'science teacher'," Alain used air quotes. "I don't know much about biology or earth science or any of all this other stuff in our scavenged text books. I'm strictly physics and chemistry."

"Yeah, ridiculous," Junayd said before gulping his beer down. That seemed to be the extent of his contribution and he kept bobbing his head up and down in an exaggerated attempt to agree with them, all the while, looking back and forth between them with a large smile on his face. Alain winced when Junayd gulped the beer down. The man was either a liquor drinker or just had no sense of appreciation.

"Woah, slow down there Junayd," Alain said as he poured more beer into his cup. "We only have a limited supply and we don't want to have to end the night too soon." The minute he said it he wondered if it would have been wiser to let Junayd get drunk. But then he remembered Junayd was the only sailor in the boat.

[Suji]

The faster Junayd drank, the slower Suji drank, as if consciously reminded that she was in fact drinking alcohol. Even now she was feeling slightly buzzed; she hadn't eaten much all day, and the life of an Animorph didn't exactly allow one to build up things like alcohol tolerances.

"We learned about physics by taking a field trip to an amusement park with roller coasters," Suji said, more than a little sadly. "I wonder if those things are even still standing. Probably all rusted over." She pictured the spindly bodies of loop-de-loops decaying from lack of care: the towering bones of great, forgotten sea-serpents.

When Suji looked up from her drink, she noticed Junayd giving her a puppy-eyed stare. Then realized she must have said the last part aloud. Quickly, Suji stared back into her drink, and took a long drink. When she felt like she couldn't possibly continue to hide behind her cup without downing her entire drink, she let her hands move back to her lap.

"About students, though. Y'know, even the American ones, when they hear 'civil war' a lot of them don't even think of the North versus the South, Yankees and Confederates. They think I'm talking about this war, and I have to explain that it was over a century ago."

Even then, they always drew comparisons that ended up coming back to: there were slaves, then, too? The youngest ones seemed to find it hard to believe that humans would ever do to each other what the Yeerks were doing to them now.

[Alain]

"Hmm," was all Alain said as he stared out across the sea. He wondered what history would say about them, about him. He almost hoped they'd have a whole paragraph on him as they talked about how Dallas was the largest loss of life in the war because that would mean it hadn't happened again. He could almost read what they'd write about him. Alain Byrne was the host of Diya 387, the controller who was the brain behind the bomb.

It had all seemed so clean in the lab. It had been a rush to figure out how the atoms would rip apart. The yeerks had access to science humans only dreamed of and only the barest understanding of any of it. All of their technology was stolen and all of their scientists were still trying to catch up to their own toys. It had all been exciting and he'd felt the joy of discovery right along with Diya whenever they found something new.

He was a voluntary controller. That would be what they said about him. That would be the only thing they said about him because, after that, Alain Byrne disappeared off of history's radar. He went and hid in a little tropical paradise.

"Would you call this a civil war?" Alain asked quietly, looking down into his cup. It could be when there were people like him in the world.

[Suji]

"This? No," Suji answered with relative ease. "This is just war. Someone else wanted what we had. We weren't a nation or even a species divided so much as flat out conquered." She didn't really spend much time considering voluntary hosts: they were part of the mix, sure, but traitors had been a part of every war. Most hosts, as far as Suji was aware, were involuntary anyway. And even if the choice was slavery or death, which she guess it was for quite a lot of people, that wasn't really a choice in this case. An Animorph dying rather than being captured was noble, a regular human dying was easily replaced.

"If the YPM manages to do anything other than whine toothlessly from the sidelines, then maybe it'll be a civil war. But even that won't be our war. Just fought with our bodies," Suji smiled unhappily. Then she realized that she may have overtipped her hand -- did normal people complain about the YPM? Did they even know who they were? Were they familiar enough to drop the acronym like it rolled naturally off the tongue?

Suji quickly finished the remainder of her drink, and tipped her cup towards Alain to refill. Hopefully, it'd be a distraction. "What's Y-P-M?" Junayd asked, and Suji silently cursed herself.

"Oh," she responded, eyes flicking away. "The Yeerk Peace Movement."

"They have a peace movement?"

She half-winced, half-smiled. "Yeah. They don't do much though, obviously." Other than get captured and need to be rescued, she added mentally to herself. Which was true, if not completely fair -- the YPM were even more caged in than the Animorphs: they needed to keep up cover so they could still make trips to the pools every three days.

"But what do they want?" Junayd was really struggling with this, and Suji supposed that wasn't unthinkable. After all, it was a hard notion to grasp for the first time, especially if you weren't a Yeerk or an Animorph already.

"Peace," Suji said with a shrug, her tone clearly jaded and cynical. "Which I think just really means, 'hosts that won't resist because we let them walk themselves around the block twice a day.'"

Bitter much?

Well, it'd been the mission to save YPM in Dallas that had ended up in the city's utter destruction. That, and it wasn't like Suji had ever met any YPM that was remotely useful. They took care of their own, and the only consistently good thing she saw about them was that they stayed out of the Animorphs way.

[Alain]

Alain listened and continued to stare into his cup. When Suji had first arrived here he'd felt like the universe had decided to punish him. If there was anyone who represented the disaster of Dallas it was this woman who's face had been plastered all over every net the yeerks possessed. It was watching what they did to her, what they'd done to the entire city, that had truly made Alain understand what he'd helped do and her face had haunted him.

At first Diya had tried to help. The yeerk had been disturbed by the images as well and it hadn't known how to feel and he'd looked to Alain for guidance. Alain had been his first human host and, by human reckoning, Diya had only been five years old when Dallas had been destroyed. He was a child and he had turned to Alain to help him understand as easily as he would turn to an older brother.

Maybe it was that innocent, cloying need that had finally driven Alain to turn against Diya. He didn't know. Months of thinking about it and he still didn't know. But after that he couldn't stand the yeerk any more. Couldn't stand any of them. Maybe it was because he'd felt responsible. He'd had a chance to turn Diya into something else. Young, indoctrinated yes, but still impressionable and the first person, the first human the yeerk had really known had shown him how to make bombs.

The YPM may deserve Suji's scorn as soldiers, but as people Alain wondered if they were better than him. Those humans had made the yeerks see what humans could be and hadn't just let themselves be ridden into monstrosities.

But if he could admire the human half of those pairings, he still couldn't forgive the yeerks. He couldn't forgive them for being parasites, for needing people so much. They couldn't be anything but what they were, Alain knew that better than anyone, and he knew that meant they couldn't be any better than what they were either. They needed to be put down like rapid dogs instead of wasting time trying to reason with them because even at their best the ones like Diya had built bombs.

"Hey, Junayd, maybe you could share some of your poetry with us," Alain said. "I think we may need a change of subject." He knew he did.

[Suji]

Suji retreated into herself a bit, realizing she'd stepped outside of the comfort zone. These people weren't Animorphs, they weren't her faction mates. They hadn't experienced the war in the same way she had. For that matter, she was still new. Suddenly hoping that the little rant wouldn't define her, Suji stared down at her feet, and went quiet.

"Okay. I mean, not one of mine, because um, well, this is one of my favorites." Junayd straightened himself, lowering the hand holding his cup. He cleared his throat, and Suji found herself mentally bracing. She wasn't prepared for the sure, melodic voice that flowed out of the Persian man next.

"Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.


A penny for the Old Guy.


One.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


Two.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


Three.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


Four.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


Five.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow


For Thine is the Kingdom.

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


Life is very long.

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow


For Thine is the Kingdom.

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

As he drew to the close, the night felt cooler. Suji felt goosebumps raise up her arms and down her legs, and she realized at some point she'd begun to stare out over the black water, the small waves rolling endlessly. His recitation of The Hollow Men did the poem all its haunting, disparate justice. She might not have believed such a beautiful, harmonic thing could come from Junayd if she hadn't witnessed it herself.

"That was TS Eliot, you know, of course." Junayd said after a long pause, in his usual irritating tone. It brought the end to eerie chill on an otherwise tropical night, at least.

[Alain]

When Junayd started reciting poetry Alain was still staring into his cup, watching the dark liquid slosh around and make waves, imitating the ocean on the other side of the hull. He could almost imagine that it was a bit of the ocean that he had in his cup. But Junayd's clear, strong voice, so surprising coming from a man that seemed so unsure of himself, soon drew Alain's attention. And he found himself watching the young Persian do one of the things that obviously made him happiest in this world.

His face took on a nobility that it normally lacked as he relaxed and spoke from a place of surety. His words seemed to echo in the emptiness that surrounded them and as his poem drew to a close Alain almost felt the need to applaud. But he felt it would have broken the spell and instead he just watched as Junayd sat back down, seemingly coming awake to himself again.

"That was TS Eliot, you know, of course," he said after a moment when neither Alain nor Suji broke the silence.

"I didn't know," Alain said after a moment. "Thank you Junayd." He nodded towards the other man and took a sip of his beer, savoring the flavor and already wondering how to improve it. "I suppose I'll go next," Alain said, sitting up. "I don't know many poems but I know a few songs."

Alain thought for a moment and then remembered a song his father used to sing all the time. He took a moment to make sure he had the words right before he started to sing.

"I was born by the river, in a little tent
And like this river I've been running ever since
It's been a long, long time coming but I know a change gon' come.

It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die
Because I don't know what's up there beyond the sky
It's been a long, long time coming but I know a change gon' come."

He wasn't quite confident enough to go one with the rest of the song so he just let it fade away.

[Suji]

Turns? They were taking turns? Suji had no idea. And now she was worrying more about whatever she would recite than listening to Alain's song. It was over almost as soon as it began, and she felt like she'd missed the whole point of sharing. Quickly, she tried to locate something in her brain, some fragment or another from school.

It came to her, so smoothly that she began without thinking. Her voice was weak at first, wobbly, but she found herself as she went on. It didn't nearly have the lilting cadence of Junayd's recitation. There was something more raw to it, more personal. Suji closed her eyes, gave herself over to the words. It was probably her favorite poem, and it obviously resonated inside of her.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned-"

Her voice cracked, and she wanted to blame the bit of alcohol on a mostly empty stomach and zero tolerance. She pushed forward.

""-the best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Suji didn't open her eyes for a while, more than a little afraid about seeing whatever expression would be on their faces. It felt horribly personal, much more so than she'd anticipated, and these people were practically strangers. She'd expected to spend the evening entertaining Junayd and exchanging knowing glances with Alain, not dragging complex emotions all the way up from her guts and to the forefront of her mind.

"So, what about another change of subject. I'm uh, well, that's the only one I know." Not true, but Suji wasn't really enjoying the sensation she was feeling right now. The fact that she was feeling much at all was an uncomfortable change from the recent past. She let one hand hang over the side of the boat, loosely cupping the warm water. It was a struggle to think of any kind of small talk; the only thing they all had in common was teaching, which they'd sort of already talked about, and the war. Everyone had that in common.

"I was told there's a couple local bands around here. Are they any good?"

Lame.

[Alain]

Alain watched Suji recite a poem with the a focus he hadn't given to Junayd. Luckily, Junayd didn't notice because he was also focused on their newest teacher. When her voice stopped it took a moment for Alain to look away and he only hoped she hadn't noticed. He ended up looking at Junayd to cover his staring and his eyes met the other teachers. For all of Junayd's faults, there were a few things that they agreed on and he and Junayd exchanged an interested look before turning their attention back to Suji. It was a small moment but the implied sense of brotherhood was sure to excite Junayd for weeks. Alain almost regretted it because he knew that he'd now have to endure many small chats about the new "hot teacher."

"Uh, there are?" Alain asked after hearing Suji's question. He knew of a couple of local musicians but he hadn't known any of them had formed bands. A few of the kids had though and he was a bit skeptical about how good any of those were so he hadn't seen a show. "I guess I haven't heard any of them. What about you?" he asked, turning to Junayd.

"Oh, yeah, I've heard a couple," Junayd began. Alain wasn't sure if Junayd had actually heard some of the bands or if he were just showing off but he didn't mind letting the other teacher carry the conversation for a while. "They're ok. You know it'll be a long time before humanity's ability to produce music returns," Junayd said with the arrogance of a "learned" person. Alain wondered what type of music he meant. "But our drive to create music can no more be repressed than our ability to create poetry." Alain smiled but didn't exactly agree. Everything could be repressed when you had a yeerk in your head. But Junayd was an artist, or at least an appreciator of art, and he seemed to believe in the power of muses more than he believed in aliens. "I'm sure masterpieces will once again be heard in the world."

[Suji]

'Uh, there are?' Suji blanched a little when he said it. She'd overhead it, and if Alain didn't know what she was talking about, it pretty much killed her chances of a smooth subject transition. Junayd apparently had, but Suji thought Junayd would probably claim to know everything there was to know about their slice of paradise here. Which she couldn't completely fault him for: he definitely knew more about it than she did.

At first, Suji felt the need to challenge Junayd. Humanity's been making music since they could bang two rocks together and turn our monkey yipping into monkey-ish wailing, she wanted to tell him. It seemed important, somehow, to defend music -- even if she'd never paid that much attention to it. But she knew what Junayd meant (or she thought she knew), and what was more important, she didn't want to argue with him.

'I'm sure masterpieces will once again be heard in the world.' Suji smiled, though it was a little bitter. I'm sure too, she thought, But who's will they be? She wondered how long it would be until the first Yeerk artist's painting landscapes with human hands, or singing annoying Pop songs with human voices. How long before human culture had infected the Yeerk race just as surely as they'd infected humanity?

"An optimistic stance to take," Suji said, without revealing her position on the matter. "The Yeerks can keep the old radio stations though. I don't think there was much masterpiece-playing going on there."

The clouds had abated for a few minutes, and Suji caught movement out of the corner of her eye. The took a second to make out the moving shapes, but their forms quickly became clear when she focused. "Hey, check it out." A couple sharks were patrolling the coral reef below them; probably nurse sharks. Briefly Suji wondered what it would be like to actually breathe water, but decided she wasn't all that intent on finding out.

[Alain]

Alain looked over the side of the boat. For a second he didn't see the sharks Suji was talking about but then one of them passed out of the shadow of the boat. The moon was new so there wasn't much light to see by but their little lamp did illuminate a small area of water around the ship. Alain watched the sharks glide smoothly through the water, silent and sure, and wondered what it would be like to have that sort of power. He trailed a finger in the ocean and was almost surprised that it felt cold instead of smooth and comfortable as he imagined it felt like to sharks.

"They're pretty," he said after a moment of watching them. "Does anyone know what type of sharks they are?" he asked, looking over at Suji and Junayd. When he saw the look of distaste tinged with fear on Junayd's face he had to struggle to keep from laughing. Junayd looked like he'd swallowed a golf ball and had edged away from the side of the ship. Alain wondered how much sailing he'd done if he was afraid of sharks. Then again, sharks didn't swim in all waters. It was possible Junayd hailed from a place that didn't have sharks.

[Suji]

"Probably nurse sharks." It was difficult to tell in the dark, but they were fairly large and the relative shallowness of the water didn't seem to bother them. The other alternative that immediately came to mind was tiger sharks, which also seemed like a good possibility in tropical/semi-tropical waters. There was a big difference between the two species as far as aggressiveness went. She wasn't really an expert, but she had made it a point to study some of the most dangerous animals after becoming an Animorph.

"Hard to say though, unless either of you are feeling exceptionally daring." Suji said dryly, smiling with one side of her mouth. Not that she was serious. While they probably were harmless, she wasn't encouraging them to find out the hard way. Maybe if they were Animorphs it might have been some risky fun to try to swim down and touch one to acquire it.

Junayd began speaking in a familiar lilt, and Suji realized he was reciting another poem.

"'Oh, look at all the porpoise!' someone shouted
While passengers ran to snap their cameras;
But what they leaned toward was a shoal of sharks
Before us, moving like a floating island:
A seething multitude of tails and fins
Fleeing the fury of a hurricane
Hundreds of miles away. They splashed and swarmed.
Slashing the sea to threads of hissing foam
Beneath us, tossing bellies to the sun.
Staring into the blood pits of our eyes
Ferocious for the flesh and stench of us.
Lucky for us high on our high-tech ark
Looking back on life's primeval broth
At such perpetual and perfect kin."

It wasn't quite as haunting as his last, but it was still unsettling. Being afraid of sharks struck her as unlikely -- there were many worse things to fear -- but not totally unreasonable. They were very dangerous creatures, nightmarishly powerful in an element where humans were typically very weak. "Well," Suji offered. "We've got nothing to worry about on the boat, at least."