Thrust: A Novel

He points to another. “The Tropos, a series of floating cities that turn and curl like seashells. Sea star habitats that radiate outward and turn. Marine nomad pods secured to shallow sea-floor areas in clusters like coral. Seascrapers diving down below the surface of the water and extending into the sky. Aquaponic hubs for floating food islands.” Every drawing a piece of the emerging Species Cohabitation Project.

“I see,” Indigo says, returning to her spot underneath the table. “Now can you tell me the story again?”

The desire of a child is everything.

He looks underneath the table. “You were pulled from the water by a magical water girl.” He sits. He starts to draw, waits for a response. “Then you grew a mermaid tail in place of legs.”

Indigo smiles beneath the weight of his drawing. “I don’t have a mermaid tail. I’m twelve. I know there’s no such thing as mermaids.” She reaches around to touch the back of her neck, where her name is written in blue ink forever.

“I know. I just wanted to see if you were listening.” He drops his head below the table to see her. “What’s that in your hand?”

She scooches around so that her back is to him.

“You were delivered by a beautiful aquanaut.”

“What’s an aquanaut?” She puts the object into her mouth, rolls her tongue over it, around it: Salt. Copper.

Mikael holds his breath, then pulls a blue pen from his pocket, starts sketching another transportation feature to the bridge. “An aquanaut is any person who remains under the water breathing at the ambient pressure long enough for the concentration of inert components of the breath, as dissolved in the body tissues, to reach equilibrium.”

“Saturation,” Indigo says.

“Yes. From the Latin word aqua and the Greek nautes. Water sailor. Like an astronaut, only in water. Much more phenomenal than a mermaid.”

“So Laisvė is… a water sailor?”

“Yes. Although that’s not exactly accurate. It’s just one translation. She thinks of herself as a carrier.”

Indigo begins to hum between sentences. Some tune of her own design. “Does she always bring people back and forth?”

“No!” Mikael laughs. “It’s kind of weird. Sometimes she brings old rusted things I can’t even understand. She’ll set something on the table, and I won’t even know what it is. One time, she brought up this old object with barnacles and coral and mussels all over it. It was found in the remains of a Roman shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in 1901. The object dated to around 200 to 90 BC. The Antikythera Mechanism, they called it. It was a machine the ancient Greeks used to predict the positions of the stars and the motion of the sun and moon. It’s the most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world; nothing as complex is known for the next thousand years. I used to wonder if she stole it from a museum.”

“She’s a thief?”

“No. Not really. She carries things. It’s like she doesn’t truly care about the difference between people and objects, animals and building materials — treasures, lost things. Like everything has the same value as everything else. Except children. She pulls children from waters all over time.”

“Is something wrong with her?” Indigo’s brows make small wave shapes.

“No,” Mikael says a little too slowly.

“Is Laisvė my mother?” Indigo peers up at Mikael from the underneath of things, something in her mouth making her words a little off.

“That’s a hard question,” Mikael says. “In some ways, you were born of water. We all are, really. But it is true that Laisvė went to find you across time, she brought you here, and she lifted you up out of the water, into my arms.” He crouches down to her level. “Now spit whatever is in your mouth out into my hand, please.” You are something like the broken chain. You are something like an umbilical cord. You are a connection between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, the past and the present and the future. You are beautiful in a way language has not yet named.

“But babies don’t come from just water. I’ve read all about it. Babies come from their mother’s bellies after a sperm and an egg love each other.”

“We all came from water, if you think about it. We all move through water to get to the world,” Mikael reminds her. “Now spit.” He holds his hand out in front of her face.

“Am I an orphan?” Indigo’s last word warbles as she spits the object — an old coin — into his hand.

“No,” he says, his heartbeat loud in his ears. “There are many meanings to the word mother. Or father. Or family. Other kinds of stories. Other ways of coming into the world. We can learn to tell different stories to ourselves about who we are.” He palms Indigo’s cheek as softly as a whisper.