Why We Sing

Come close and listen: This week, author C.C. Finlay returns to the Transport to share a new legend.

~ Julian and Fran, June 22, 2025

For June, Sunday Morning Transport authors Sarah Monette (aka Katherine Addison), T. K. Rex, Maurice Broaddus, and C. C. Finlay bring you tales from near and (very, very) far. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

We are grateful to our paying subscribers, who allow us to keep rolling throughout the year. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up or giving a gift subscription.

---

Why We Sing

by C.C. Finlay

One morning on the island of Wherthy, the priestess Elliemmi rose in the muted gray hour before dawn to throw two of her daughters into the sea.

Swim closer, if you want to hear the story. The water’s calm today. It’s okay if you’ve heard it before. What’s that?

What’s Wherthy?

In those days, the people called their floating island Wherthy because it was where they lived. Wherthy drifted alone, a mountain in the ink-dark sea, like a shellback whale cut off from her pod. The island cliffs were lined with Guardians who contained the wisdom of their ancestors. If you can find the island, they say you can still see the great stone statues drowned in the waves below the cliffs.

Where were we? Oh, yes.

One morning on the island of Wherthy, the priestess Elliemmi rose in the muted gray hour before dawn to throw two of her daughters into the sea. One was the daughter of her body, and one was the daughter of her heart.

The daughters knew that they were going to die, but they believed their sacrifice would appease the anger of the Goddess and save their people.

That should have made Elliemmi’s duty easier, but it did not.

*****

Elliemmi sat in the dark and braided her long gray hair with cowrie shells while the two women slept. She had given them milk of the goddess to ease their way. They would wake up groggy and compliant.

Kiki was the daughter of Elliemmi’s heart. A young widow whose husband and son had strayed too far from the island and never returned. She had come to Elliemmi heartbroken, begging for a way to be useful. Seeking meaning through work.

But Mehere, the daughter of Elliemmi’s body, had murkier motives. Mehere and her mother had clashed so many times that they were both jagged edges and nothing else. It had been a surprise when Mehere returned from the household of Keef, the island’s king, and wanted to learn the role of the priestess. It was a puzzle when she volunteered to be a sacrifice.

Elliemmi finished her braids and went outside to make her preparations.

Prayers and penance. Ablutions and absolutions.

Resolve.

*****

The sacred garden that provided for Elliemmi’s people was the beating heart of the island. The branches of the fruit trees drooped down to the river’s surface. Clumps of herbs and cultivated vegetables were carefully tended in mixed plots. Every species of fish swam in the river. Birds nested in the branches, and small animals hid in the shadows.

Elliemmi had been given to the garden as a child. She memorized the holy songs, tended the sacred orchard, and performed all the required rites, first as an assistant, then as an apprentice, and then as priestess, one of many. Now as senior priestess. The last and only.

The floating island of Wherthy had drifted off course. Storms battered the island. Men set off in canoes in search of other lands and never returned. All alone, the island had begun to die.

Yes, just like a shellback whale without her pod. That’s very good.

The trees grew barren. Seeds failed to sprout. Birds flew away and never returned. The ocean around the island was empty of food. Once the dying started, it progressed rapidly.

The old ones stopped eating, to leave more for the young people. The young people went hungry anyway and had fewer children, to leave more for the rest. And still the children who remained were starving.

The only answers anyone could offer were sacrifice and prayer. Make do with less. Hope the island reached its destination. As Elliemmi prayed in the garden, a rooster strutted out of the brush, flapped its wings at her, and crowed. His lifted head revealed the bald spot on his chest, where he had plucked his own feathers out of fear and frustration, and Elliemmi felt a pang in her breast. She flicked her hand to shoo him away, but he came toward her instead, demanding food. Ever since it had become her duty to care for the birds, she’d been unable to eat or harm them, and they all knew it. When no seed was forthcoming, the rooster bit at her fingers, then dashed back into the browning undergrowth.

She closed her eyes and listened, hearing fewer birds than she used to. The young men of the village crept up here at night to steal the eggs, and Elliemmi did nothing to stop them. Their children were hungry too.

Elliemmi couldn’t make herself believe that two more dead, two fewer mouths to feed, would extend the lives of everyone else long enough to make a difference. The sea would still encroach, poisoning the land with salt, turning their sweet water brackish.

In the dark, she followed the faint scent of jasmine and honey to a spot where the last orchids fell like streams of water from the tree branches. Not much of a meal, though someone would eat them too eventually. They flowed through Elliemmi’s fingers, and she began collecting blossoms to string into garlands. A last gift for her daughters when they woke.