If Wishes Were Fishes

by Meredith Katz

  He wanted her to get the chance to see Lucas.

  He wanted Lucas to get the chance to share his feelings.

  He wanted this miscommunication to stop, he wanted them to understand each other, he wanted her to see—

  It built in him until he thought he was going to scream and then he just…

  Pushed it out of himself.

  It was risky and possibly stupid and he didn't know if it would do anything and he wasn't sure if he'd do more harm than good if it did do anything—but he didn't have room for second thoughts, not when the opportunity was right in front of him, not when it probably wouldn't ever be again.

  And suddenly, the room seemed to grow dark. The lights stayed as bright as they'd always been, but all the auras, the strange shadows, everything giving the room the depth that he was used to maneuvering in—they all vanished.

  Hiraeth, staring at him wide-eyed, was a normal, human young man. He was a little less pale than Keith was used to, with a regularly antlerless head, and mouthed what at him in growing delighted awe.

  Lucas was gone, too, but not seeing him wasn't enough to make Keith panic, because he could still feel the tether. He couldn't hear Lucas, couldn't see Lucas, could barely feel the patch of cold air that he knew was Lucas.

  But that was fine. He wasn't the one with his second sight right now.

  "What the fuck?!" Shaunee yelped, staring at Hiraeth, just above his head. And then, reacting to something—had Lucas said something?—she whirled around. "Lu… Luke…?"

  "I can't see anything much right now," Keith announced to the air, wobbly. "And maybe this is a bad idea but I couldn't—I couldn't do nothing. I just couldn't."

  He knew Lucas must be answering, but couldn't hear him. His heart ached and his vision felt all wrong. He thought he might throw up. "You two, you two talk. I don't know how long I can keep it on you instead of me. I'm… going to sit."

  This time, he didn't wait for an answer. Not being able to hear it was too weird now. He stumbled around the shelving to reach the back room, escaping them, and found the door open with Avi and the Snakeskin Girl looking out.

  He expected them to chide him, but they didn't; he supposed that letting another human in on the truth might not actually matter to Others. Given how everyone had disbelieved him… she'd be in the same boat, if she told anyone. So would anyone who knew, so long as it was just one person at a time.

  Since they didn't act to stop him, he just kept going, and they parted, letting him through. He could only take a few more steps before he sank down, completely disoriented at seeing the world with no Otherworldly overlay at all. Avi looked like a normal, kind of preppy guy, the kind of guy that Keith had always avoided back in high school. The Snakeskin Girl's skin had no scales and her mouth was a normal width.

  They glanced at each other, then reentered the room too, closing the door softly behind them to give Lucas some privacy. They didn't try to speak, and neither did Keith, just putting his head on his knees and counting his breaths as he focused on not letting his senses return to him. It felt like disassociating, but he was familiar enough with that to allow it to keep happening instead of trying to make it stop.

  It could have been seconds or minutes later that the door opened and then closed again; it was Hiraeth. He must have closed up the shop to give the siblings the privacy they needed. He came over slowly, sinking down next to Keith and pulling him into his arms.

  Keith almost lost his hold on the projection then, feeling frustrated, terrified tears well up, but he willed them away, forcing himself to calm. He went back to counting breaths, letting the heavy, earthy scent of Hiraeth's body anchor him.

  Hiraeth seemed to understand what he was doing, rocking him in time with his breaths. Slowly, Keith slid a hand up Hiraeth's back, up his neck, into his hair, and found the shape of the antlers he couldn't see; they were always there, after all, hidden from human eyes but not touch.

  It consoled him a little; this was all still real, all still there, even when he couldn't see it any more.

  Time passed. A knock came on the back room's door. It jolted Keith, interrupting his focus. He drew a sharp, strangled breath as his vision warped, nearly blinding him again, his second sight rushing back with a vengeance.

  "Hey," Shaunee said weakly, tears in her voice. She opened the door and peeked in. They must have been a surprising sight—Hiraeth wrapped around Keith, two strangers hanging out in the back of the room with them—but she took it all in without blinking.

  Then again, she'd just seen something much weirder.

  "A-are you okay?" Keith stammered. He put a hand over his eyes, rubbing at them with the heel. "O-ow. I. I hope you're okay. I hope I haven't fucked things up for you. I was really really scared I'd fuck things up for you…!"

  "I really, uh. I don't think you did?" Shaunee leaned in the door frame, hugging herself, trembling visibly. Her eyes were huge. "I have a lot to think about, obviously, Jesus Christ! But I'm… I'm so grateful. I'm seriously grateful, Keith."

  "I didn't… no, I mean, you got a lot of reason to not be grateful. I just wanted… I just had to," he said weakly. "I hope… you had a good talk."

  She swallowed audibly, wiping at the tears on her face with her forearm. "We did, yeah," she managed after a moment. "I have to—I need to go just. Process this? But um. I'd like us to keep in touch. If that's okay? Both… for Luke's sake? And because—uh, because I've just learned something kind of wild and I—I'm going to have a lot of questions for you later, I think?"

  "I don't know if I can answer them, but I'll try," Keith rasped. "H—sweetheart, can you… deal with… that? I need a moment."

  "Of course, love." Hiraeth kissed his forehead, then unwound from around him, striding over to Shaunee with a smile. "I happen to have his phone number and I really would like to give you that doll."

  She let him lead her out. "You know?" Keith heard, as the back room door closed, "I think I'll take you up on that after all."

  Keith just barely had the time to catch his breath before Avi strode over to him. "How the hell did you do that?" he demanded, his voice shaking with some barely-repressed emotion.

  Why was Avi upset with him now?

  "I just…" Keith scrunched his face up, frustrated. "I don't know. I haven't done it before. But I knew I could project my abilities out of my body because I can enter other people's mindscapes, or feel their feelings. And I know my seeing things is an ability too, since I can adjust how much I see all the time, even if I've never been able to turn it off before. And I just… really wanted to help them. So I combined it, and… and threw my sight at her."

  "Huh," Avi said. He seemed to wait for Keith to say more, but when he didn't, his feet—the only part of him in Keith's field of vision—stepped away as he turned to go back to the Snakeskin Girl.

  The two of them talked quietly at the other end of the back room, and Keith took a few more moments to just breathe deeply.

  The next breath in was cold, and Keith looked up as Lucas stepped in front of him again. Tears of relief welled up and Keith struggled to hold them in as he let himself both feel and simultaneously dismiss the fear that maybe he'd entirely lost the ability to see Lucas.

  "Thanks," Lucas said weakly, shaken. He sank down, throwing his arms around Keith, hugging him as hard as his insubstantial self could, his arms going partly through Keith's body, chilling him to the bone.

  Keith burst into tears and did his best to hug back. They stayed that way until Hiraeth came back—and then stayed that way a little longer, with the addition of a deer boy wrapped around them both as well.

  Keith didn't want it to stop, didn't want to leave the comfort of their joint embrace. But Avi was coming over again. He waited until they awkwardly separated, and this time, when he met Keith's wet, blurry gaze, Avi's face didn't look challenging.

  It looked defeated.

  "Please," Avi said, imploring, "help Fish."

  cha
pter eight

  They didn't start until the next day. They couldn't; Keith was exhausted from using new abilities, and while he'd mindwalked under worse circumstances, that had been in do-or-die sort of situations. With something delicate but not time-sensitive, he just couldn't trust himself, not when he was this tired.

  At least it also gave him a good opportunity to skip class.

  He did what he could to take care of himself that morning and pampered himself as best he could considering he lived in a dorm. He slept in a little until the noise through his wall got too loud to ignore, ate a big breakfast with lots of protein (courtesy of very bad scrambled eggs and very greasy sausages in the cafeteria), and accidentally read only the first two paragraphs of the book he'd taken from home over and over in his anxiety.

  "We should, uh, probably just go," Lucas said eventually, when Keith still hadn't turned the page.

  He had to agree. He didn't want to be too early—didn't want to make it uncomfortable for Hiraeth if he was still stressed out and taking advantage of the quiet time to relax, but this was just torture.

  Keith needn't have worried. Hiraeth let them in with a bright smile, wrapping Keith in a hug, then leaned his face into Lucas and inhaling, as though he could taste Lucas on the air he occupied. "Hello, loves, hello! Come on in, get comfortable. Do you need anything?"

  His usual flighty energy seemed to be back, Keith thought with relief, whether because of Avi's decision to trust Keith, how they'd managed to help Lucas and Shaunee, or maybe a combination of the two.

  "Water," Keith said, trying to think practically. "I woke up super dehydrated last time, so maybe we can solve that in advance."

  "Make him eat something with sugar too," Lucas added.

  "We'll hydrate and sweeten you wonderfully," Hiraeth promised.

  Sure enough, by the time the others arrived, Keith had slowly nursed a tall glass of water to empty and finished a cookie.

  He tried not to tense up at the knock on the door, his stomach churning enough with nerves to make the cookie sit uneasily, but Hiraeth was off to answer it and all he could do was remind himself to stay calm.

  "You've got this," Lucas told him. "You're going to do some good here." A cold almost-squeeze to his shoulder. "You did for me."

  Keith managed a smile in response to that. "I hope so," he said. He wanted the best for Fish, who was definitely depressed by now, but he knew too, he wanted to make a good impression on them, even if it came late.

  That was normal, he told himself. Who didn't want their lover's family to like them?

  Even if they usually weren't opinionated immortals who thought you were playing with their father's heart.

  "Hey, Keith, Lucas," the Snakeskin Girl said cheerfully, shrugging her jacket off. "Everything still going well? Hey, Hiraeth!"

  "You know his name?" Keith asked, startled.

  "Of course I know his name. Have you been avoiding it the whole time?" She tilted her head a little too far to the side, surprised and visibly running back over their past interactions. "Oh, you have been. That's really nice of you."

  Keith shrugged uncomfortably. "I only just know enough about Others to worry about committing a faux pas," he admitted. "I never talked to any until about five months ago, when I met Hiraeth."

  "Wow," she said. "You're really new, huh? Well, you're doing a great job. Call me Pertu, if you like."

  Keith stared at her in surprise, somewhat moved. "Pertu. It's nice to meet you?"

  "Well, you too?" Pertu made a face like we've been talking all this time already, but she laughed lightly, leaning over and ruffling his hair.

  He flushed at the casual affection, ducking his head but not pulling away.

  Avi huffed as he entered, carrying the fish tank. "You're giving him your familiar name? Really?"

  "I think we're giving him more trust than that already," she said over her shoulder. "So why not?"

  "I guess," Avi said, though from what Keith could tell, he was less unconvinced and more sulky. He put the portable fishbowl down on the ground in front of the bed. "What do you need from us to make this work?"

  Keith licked his lips, already feeling his mouth go dry with nerves. "I'm not sure," he said. "I guess… tell me the high-level, basic information about him. If it's like before, it'll all be a symbolic landscape in there. It's really easy to overthink things, especially since I don't know him—I don't want to go in with too much detail and follow the wrong symbols. So just… enough to feel like I know him a little. That worked for me before."

  They nodded. Keith expected them to have to take a moment to think, but Avi began speaking right away. "He's kind. He's got infinite capacity for forgiveness, but sometimes it feels like he's making up for something."

  "He's playful and flighty," Pertu said, her sharp features thoughtful. "I mean it in that he likes to play. He doesn't like to lose, because he's competitive, but usually sets the terms of the games he plays so there is no loser as a result. Generous to a fault. He'd give you the coat off his back."

  "And it'd be a fancy coat. He's kind of a vain peacock," Avi added.

  "Like you can talk!" Pertu laughed.

  "Whatever," Avi said. "Should I keep going?"

  "No, I… think that's a good place to start," Keith said hesitantly. He was trying to act like an expert, but he'd really only done this the once. It was impossible to know how much detail was too little, or how much was too much.

  Still, he did feel like he understood a little more now. If Fish was a kind person—one who didn't want to see other people lose in the competitions he joined willingly, who would give you anything no matter the cost to himself, what kind of person would hold a grudge against him to the point of cursing him?

  And what was Fish trying to make up for? Keith felt like if he could track that down, if he could angle his intrusion into Fish with those questions in mind, he could probably find the heart of things.

  Keith slid off the bed, sitting next to the fishbowl, and leaned back against the mattress so he wouldn't fall over when his consciousness left. He put his hand on the edge of the bowl. "Fish, is it okay? Will you let me, um. See inside you…?"

  Fish darted over to the side where his fingers were, and bumped against it a couple of times. Keith stretched himself out, trying to feel more about Fish, and got a sense of resignation, of embarrassment, of welcome.

  It was as close to explicit consent as he was going to get. He drew a breath—

  "Keith?" Hiraeth sat down next to him, taking his hand. "Lucas. Can I try an experiment with the two of you?"

  Caught off guard, Keith blinked owlishly at him. "Uh, now? What kind of experiment?"

  "I was thinking about ways we might be able to help Keith," Hiraeth began. He gestured Lucas over, then tapped his own chest. "You've got your tether. Can I use it?"

  "Oh. I think I get it, maybe," Lucas walked over to Hiraeth, bending down to look at him closely. Keith glanced between the two of them uncertainly.

  Lucas winked at him, then leaned against and a little into Hiraeth—until he slid inside completely.

  Both Avi and Pertu couldn't seem to quite hold back shocked noises, nearly horrified. Hiraeth's eyes fluttered open and he gave them both a firm look, almost smug, that kept them from protesting further.

  "Uh," Keith said, taken aback, feeling his cheeks go red. Mostly they'd used possession play as a way they could all join in while having sex, not just… hang out. It wasn't anything they liked to do for long; it was strange for Hiraeth to feel another person inside his vessel, and for Lucas to be in a body that didn't feel or look like his own. But…

  "I'm glad he's on the same page as me here. We're going to ground you, if you'll let us," Hiraeth said. He squeezed his hand on Keith's, a firm, reassuring gesture. "Lucas has a connection to you, and I've got power that can use it. If we work together, we may be able to yank you out if it looks like something bad is happening to you."

  "You
're… going to anchor me?" The thought had never occurred. Last time, the closest he had was some kind of new age crystal for energy. Thinking that the people he loved were going to watch his back was way more reassuring.

  "I hope so," Hiraeth said. "I don't know how much use it'll be in reality, but in theory, if you want to wake up on your own without resolving things, you might just be able to call on your connection with Lucas and I'll feel it and can reel you in. I can't guarantee that we'll know if something's wrong on our own, but it's better than nothing. Right, love?"

  That last wasn't directed at Keith. Hiraeth’s mouth twisted into a smile more like Lucas's than his own. "Yeah, we got you." Still Hiraeth's voice, but no longer his phrasing. That part was completely Lucas.

  Keith couldn't keep himself from glancing at Avi and Pertu despite his best instincts. He knew he had to focus, but yet…

  Avi was bright red, staring at the ceiling, too embarrassed to actually sputter or yell. Pertu's expression was even odder: eyes wide, lips a small open o, as if amazed that someone would even think of this. Keith wasn't sure if they'd risen in her estimation or fallen.

  "Love?" This was directed at Keith now, Hiraeth's confidence faltering slightly. "Is this good? We can stop if—"

  "No," Keith said firmly. It was the safest and best thing he could imagine, and if it scandalized the others, maybe that was their problem. "It sounds great. Thanks for keeping an eye on me," he added, and earned himself a relieved smile that was halfway between Hiraeth's and Lucas's.

  That was enough of that, he reminded himself. He'd never been good at meditation—clearing his mind was basically impossible—but he did his best to at least focus on his goals and intentions, on what he'd learned about Fish, about the essence of that grudge that would form the basis of why this curse even existed.

  Keith wound the fingers of one hand through Hiraeth's—and through Lucas's by proxy—and drew that deep breath again.

  And then he dipped the fingers of his other hand in the fishbowl water, and fell.