If Wishes Were Fishes

by Meredith Katz

  chapter nine

  For a moment, Keith felt as if he were drowning. He was spun around, pummeled by strong waters, sucked in by a deep undertow that threatened to pull him away completely.

  But he was attached to a line, hooked onto it with his fingers wrapped tightly. He held on, trusting it to see him through this.

  And as suddenly as it had begun, he was free, slammed into the ground and clinging onto it out of terror of getting dragged into that undertow.

  For a moment, he couldn't move, too disoriented and dizzied from the whirl of water—but then the need to breathe overtook him and he coughed, spitting out sand, rolling and retching until water came out with it.

  "Gross," he mumbled. Slowly, he took stock of himself, finding that he was lying on a beach, coated in sand and entangled in netting.

  So Keith was a captured fish too, huh. That just figured.

  Still, unlike most fish, he had arms and legs and opposable thumbs. It took a few minutes of struggling and squirming to unwrap himself of the netting, but soon enough he was sitting upright, free and in one piece.

  Keith and drew several breaths of the ocean air, rich but thick with a brine scent, as he took stock. He was definitely a little bruised, and shaken, but—he slowly stretched out his limbs, his fingers and toes—was otherwise uninjured. His sweater and jeans were waterlogged and coated in sand, but considering he'd appeared in the goddamn ocean, he'd probably come out of things as well as could be expected.

  Still, he didn't need to wear more sopping wet clothes than necessary, and socks were the absolute worst thing to wear wet. He bent forward, reaching for his feet, and as he did so, he saw a small piece of twine tied neatly around his little finger. Surprised, he ran a finger over it, and as his fingertip touched it, he felt a pulse of love and familiarity. The scent of wet leaves overcame the brine in a cold breeze, and Keith's shiver wasn't entirely the icy chill.

  Hiraeth and Lucas were together, wrapped so tightly that he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began, and tied firmly to him. His lifeline.

  Keith closed his eyes, hugging himself, just enjoying feeling them there, just for a moment. Unshed tears pricked the back of his eyes and he swallowed a couple of times to try to move the lump in his throat down.

  Okay, he thought. So he wasn't alone.

  Still, he should get moving. Not letting himself look at the twine for fear he'd actually start crying with relief to see it, he pulled off his socks, squeezed water out of them, and, after a long moment of trying to figure out what to do with them, glumly stuck them in his pocket.

  Having wet socks in his wet jeans' pocket wasn't the most fun experience he'd had recently, but he didn't want to leave any part of himself in someone else's mindscape if he could help it

  "Well," Keith mumbled to himself, imagining that maybe Lucas and Hiraeth would hear it wherever they were. "Time to explore?"

  He rose again, brushing as much sand as possible off his hands without disturbing the twine further, and looked around.

  The ocean seemed to stretch forever, an infinite blue expanse under a cloudless blue sky, reflecting light painfully back into his eyes. He blinked stars away and turned slowly. The beach he was on seemed equally endless, a pale stretch of sand broken occasionally by glimpses of rock and shell. It was surrounded by sheer, white cliffs, except for one small crack that narrowed down nearby.

  Hopefully there wouldn't be something on the beach he'd need to track down. He remembered his focused question, his determination to find the source of that guilt, and, after flexing his fingers a few times nervously, he began to walk towards that dark crack in this otherwise soullessly ideal beach world.

  Soon enough, Keith reached the white cliffs, and saw there that the black crack widened into a cave maybe ten feet wide. Although deeply shadowed, the brilliant light from outside illuminated it just enough to see that a structure sat within: some sort of wooden hut or cabin. It filled the cave wall to wall, seeming to be squeezed unnaturally by them as if it wasn't meant to fit in this space. Keith couldn't tell if it had grown and was pushing out against them, or if the walls had closed in around it.

  Keith wondered if knowing which it was would make a difference. Still, there was nowhere else to go, and it had to be promising that he'd found the only sign of occupation in this otherwise empty world.

  The wooden steps were sanded down, smooth-edged but not lacquered. The cabin, too, had clearly been made with the intention that it would survive the trials of time, wood slates carefully slotted into each other, the roof made of more of the same. An iron stovepipe emerged from the roof.

  The door, incongruously, was made of metal.

  Keith eyed that a little dubiously—it reminded him of a video game dungeon door, or, if he were being more realistic, a fire door. It seemed heavy, foreboding, and certainly didn't fit with the rustic wooden atmosphere of the rest of it.

  Still—in a metaphorical landscape, the choice between sneaking in and knocking could bring completely different results, and he didn't want to read as an intruder here. He tried to swallow his anxiety, stepped up, and knocked.

  "Oh! Come in, come in."

  The voice was muffled yet immediate, a pleased masculine-sounding voice, somewhat older. Keith heard the heard the door unlatch a moment later and steeled himself, not sure what he'd see on the other side. He'd met people in mindscapes before, but they were largely metaphorical manifestations—parts of the person's personality, or their feelings about the people who were important to them. They didn't necessarily look like people, and weren't always safe to deal with.

  Given that they were dealing with a grudge that led into a curse, meeting someone might not be the safest thing. Still, nothing could be closer to the problem than whatever part of Fish represented the guy who did it or the part that was dealing with it, and besides, nothing was going to be gained by staying out on the porch all day. Keith took hold of the handle slowly and turned it, opening the door.

  The cabin looked fairly nice at first glance; it was one room only, warm, lit well by gas lamps and a fire in the fireplace. It was colorful, too, with a fancy rug laid out on the floor, and rainbow-hued pictures on the wall. Still, Keith didn't have time to look around more specifically, since there was someone in the middle of the room watching him: an old man with tangled kelp instead of hair and overlapping scales in the place of fingernails. He was wrapped in a shawl made of seaweed, and his skin, too, had a tough, dried-wrinkly-kelp look to it.

  He smiled at Keith with a sort of easy-going steadiness, gesturing him to come further inside. "Look at you. You're entirely soaked! Come, take a seat by the fire."

  "Uh, thanks." Keith had definitely never seen this guy before in his life, and wasn't sure if the familiar attitude was from Fish's recognition of him, or just how this guy would act with any stranger.

  He took another quick glance around the room, pretending to look for the fire but actually hoping to locate something more useful. What he saw was neither helpful nor reassuring.

  The first glance had made the room seem bright, warm, and inviting, but the second one made him doubt that impression. The paintings and lights had made it feel bigger than it was, but a closer look left him with a claustrophobic feeling: there were no windows.

  A cot, sized to be roomy for one or cozy for two, protruded into the room. A rocking chair sat by the fire with a blanket draped over it, and some sort of fish stew was cooking on top of the old-fashioned wood-burning stove. There was a table with various poles and lures set out on top and crab cages and nets stored underneath, which Keith eyed a little uneasily.

  The old man was clearly some kind of fisherman, and given the context…

  "Please," the old man said again. "Take a seat?"

  He didn't want to antagonize the man, especially while still trying to figure things out here. Keith moved over to the rocking chair and sat in it—though he kept a careful eye on the table full of fishing equip
ment, especially the gutting knife there.

  The man nodded with satisfaction. "Now you're comfortable, I should feed you as well. Here, let me fetch you some stew."

  "Oh, no, I just ate," Keith blurted immediately. He felt a deep revulsion at the idea of eating fish inside a fish's mindscape. Sure, fish ate other fish—that was just natural—but he wasn't about to be careless enough with metaphors to do the same. "Thank you, the fire's enough for me."

  "If you prefer," the Kelp Fisherman said, seeming a little discontent now. He took a seat on the edge of his bed, watching Keith thoughtfully. "What brings you here? What can this old man do to help you?"

  Trying to give off the impression he was comfortable—something he'd never been great at even at the best of times—Keith rocked the chair lightly. I’m looking for someone,” he hedged.

  Clink.

  Keith froze at the unexpected metallic sound under the chair’s runners. He rocked again faster, more deliberately, hoping the Kelp Fisherman hadn't noticed his reaction to it.

  "Oh, then you must be looking for me," the Kelp Fisherman said, smiling. His teeth seemed to be made of driftwood, growing from his gums as bone should. "I'm the only person here. I'm very grateful, young man. I get very lonely, and it's very hard out here. If you'd keep me company, I'd be so happy to have you."

  "I guess it must be you I'm looking for after all," Keith said, mouth gone dry. He tried to swallow around it, to keep the conversation going. "Has nobody else ever come here?"

  "Just one," the Kelp Fisherman said. "One boy came here before you. I pulled him from the sea with my nets, and saved his life."

  "Saved his life?"

  "Well," the Kelp Fisherman said. "In a situation like that, he might have died."

  Of drowning, Keith wondered, or of the suffocation that happened when a fish was pulled from the sea? He tried not to let any suspicions show on his face, tried to just look eager and friendly. He wished he was better at that. "And what happened to him?"

  The Kelp Fisherman's smile dropped. He looked sad to the point of outright grief, as if he were mourning that boy's death. After a moment, he wiped an eye. "He left. We took care of each other for so long. I fed him, and taught him many things I'd learned, and he kept me company and took care of me. He had the ability to grant wishes, you know?"

  Keith's fingers were numb, cold. He knew how significant this story had to be, in a place like this. "Wishes?"

  "Yes. If you wanted something, he’d use all his power to help. But one day, he told me he'd run out of wishes to give me." The old man was crying; he wiped at his cheeks again, dabbing them with a corner of his shawl. "He told me he needed to recharge it by granting wishes to other people now, and even to himself. So he left me."

  "Ah," Keith said weakly. "And what did you do?"

  "I couldn't stop him," the Kelp Fisherman said. "But eventually, I grew lonely. I looked for him…"

  "You found him?" Keith already knew the answer. After all, something had cursed Fish recently. Pertu and Avi had 'taken care of' the curser—killed, Hiraeth had implied, and they at least hadn't denied it.

  But here, in Fish's heart, he was still alive; at least, his curse was, and the memories of him that had welled up with it.

  Keith was sure it hadn't happened exactly how the Kelp Fisherman had described it. After all, this was metaphor, not memory. But the feelings involved, the implications of what the Kelp Fisherman had just said… Keith was certain those were real.

  The Kelp Fisherman smiled, the expression bitter. "Never mind him," he said. "Here you are, now, a good boy who has come to me from the ocean, accepting my hospitality. Do you have a way to pay for it?"

  Keith stared at him, uneasy. He curled his hand into a fist just to feel the twine, to remind himself that he had an out if things got too bad. "Yes," he said, without any actual idea of what that payment could be.

  He had to get the Kelp Fisherman out for at least a few moments so he could check out whatever had made the suspicious sound under the chair, and couldn't do that with him here. What would he want, Keith asked himself frantically, that would count as pay, but make him go outside? Was there anything that would be enough when human contact was what he clearly craved so much and he already had Keith here?

  An idea occurred and he seized on it, almost stumbling over his tongue with his hurry to present it. "I… I brought my phone with me, but I must have lost it. It must have fallen out in the water or on the beach. You can contact hundreds, thousands of people with it. It can answer all your questions—"

  "I know what a phone is," the old man said patiently.

  "—Right," Keith said, brought up short by that interruption. His heart was pounding so hard he almost couldn't hear himself over the rush of blood, but he pushed on. "Well. It's got all my connections in it. I'm pretty sure I know some people who can grant wishes, so maybe they can help us both."

  That last one seemed to sell it, a spark of hunger lighting in the old man's eyes. His smile seemed deeply malevolent as he looked down for a moment, considering the offer—then turned that smile on Keith, it turning beatific as he did. The change in expression was repulsive, and Keith repressed a shudder.

  The Kelp Fisherman rose. "You're a dear," he said affably. "I'm always so glad I can depend on the kindness of strangers. I'll just go have a looksee, shall I? You stay here and stay warm."

  "I will," Keith said. He'd left his phone charging at Hiraeth's; it hadn't been on him when he came, so it shouldn't have been visualized into this mindscape the way his clothes had. It was unlikely that it was really out there, at risk of discovery.

  He hoped it wasn't, and that his lie remained a lie. A phone in this place would probably actually hold a way to contact anyone he had an emotional attachment to, and he didn't like the thought of that ending up in the Kelp Fisherman's hands. He licked his lips and forced a smile back that felt far too uncertain to pass as genuine. "Thanks," Keith added.

  The door shut behind the Kelp Fisherman, and Keith thought he heard it lock. Frozen, unable to move, he listened as the Kelp Fisherman's footsteps moved down the cabin steps outside, heavy, walking with purpose.

  He waited until he could no longer hear those footsteps and only then did he dare to even breathe again. His heart was racing, his hands were shaking, but he didn't have time to think about his own anxiety and let it grow. Head buzzing, Keith flung himself up, hurriedly pushing the chair back, hauling up the homey and colorful rug that was underneath it.

  Sure enough, there was a trap door under there. Given the positioning of the cabin, it must lead deep into the ground, some sort of dark cellar. Or dungeon, he reminded himself, thinking of the metal door, the way the cabin was walled off on all sides.

  "Christ," he muttered, crouching and grabbing the iron ring to try to haul the trapped door up with shaking arms, still exhausted and bruised from his time in the ocean. It was rusty and resisted his pull, but not getting it open wasn't an option. He strained until either his arms were going to come out of their sockets or the trap door would lift, and it lifted.

  He hadn't entirely thought that through, he realized in horror, because once he got it vertical the weight shifted the other way and crashed out of his hands, slamming into the floor of the hut hard enough the floor shook.

  It had made an awful noise, and Keith froze briefly, certain that the Kelp Fisherman must have heard it—

  —but if that were the case, he realized abruptly, it was even more important that he hurry, because he only had until the Kelp Fisherman got back. The trap door had opened into a pit of darkness, but he didn't have a light with him, so he was just going to have to go blind. Grabbing the rim, Keith began to lower himself, feet kicking into empty air in the darkness below, not finding any footing.

  Suddenly afraid of how far the drop might be, he tried to pull himself up; his cold fingers slipped, and he dropped with a strangled yelp—only to land after no more than five feet. It was still a r
ough landing, and he swore softly as he rubbed at his butt. Not enough padding there to make it feel anything but awful.

  "Who's there?" a voice called, a soft, warm tenor, confused and almost melodic. "Hemingway, is that you?"

  Of course the Kelp Fisherman was a fucking Hemingway. Old Man and the Sea and all that. "No, it's me. Keith," he called back.

  "Keith?" The voice sounded confused but affable, like a puppy who hadn't seen where the treat went but knew it was still there somewhere, if he just was a patient enough good boy to get it given to him. "The human boy who my boyfriend's being a jerk to?"

  Relief washed over him. If he remembered seeing that, this must be Fish's core self, his actual consciousness—the part that was locked away.

  And if it was locked, it could be unlocked to break the curse and let him fill his own vessel out properly again. "That's the one," Keith said, both stressed and rueful. "I don't know if we have much time and it's dark here. Can you help me find you?"

  "Um, I can keep talking, sure!" The voice was off to his right; Keith faced that way, moving forward. "I'm kind of tied up right now and it pretty much sucks? I'm not super happy that they killed Hemingway but I guess they thought there was no other choice. I'm doubly unhappy that it didn't fix the problem. But I mean, they're so worried. I wish I could just get better? Mostly for my own sake but, you know, also theirs—Oh, hello!"

  Keith's hand had found a fishhook dangling from the ceiling—and the figure hanging from it. He froze in horror, afraid of hurting Fish more with his touch, but he supposed it might be the curse itself, holding Fish trapped. He swallowed bile, forcing himself to feel around the area to try to figure out how to remove the hook. As his fingers slid under the edge, he let out a breath of relief, his knees actually going weak. The hook wasn't through Fish's skin, but was hooked around the rope dangling him from the ceiling. Under the rope, he was wrapped up in a strange, dry, scaly material, covered entirely, like a captive in a burlap sack. A full blanket of dried-out fish skin.

  The curse. That’s what this whole thing had to be.