by Cassie Day
The fisherman crashes into the drop-off. He sinks beneath. Then shoves his way to the surface in a stream of bubbles. Through the muting waves, I hear him curse.
I tense. Will he try to follow? I'll barely be able to out-swim him with my half-changed body.
He paddles to shore. Losing him should be a victory. But I’ll soon return to shore for the storyteller’s aid and the plant. And when I do, will the fisherman be waiting?
ON THE WAY TO DESMA’S cave, I calm myself by trailing my webbed hands along the seafloor. Glass glimmers from the sand, cast-offs from wrecks and fishing boats. Tumbled by the relentless waves, it’s rendered smooth.
One blink and a piece of amethyst purple darkens, winking in a shimmer of dusk light against glass.
Another blink and it’s normal again.
Maybe I should have Desma check my eyes. But no, she’s too busy with my mother. The other healers are tending other mothers-to-be during this harsh winter. It’ll have to wait.
I grab a shard of cobalt glass, rubbing the smooth sides between my fingers, dropping it when the kelp forest surrounds me on all sides.
I swim through the cave entrance. Desma twists around from her shelf of bottles.
“Nothing?” Desma says.
My mother lies prone, breathing deeply in sleep. I watch her slow breaths stretch skin across visible ribs instead of staring into Desma’s blank face.
I shake my head, unable to look at her. “Nothing. I’ll go again in the morning.”
“Your sickness will only grow worse if you take no breaks.”
“Isn’t this...” I gesture at the dusk enveloping her cave. “Enough of a break?”
She sighs. “Perhaps. It’s different for each of us.”
“Agathe?” my mother slurs.
I’m at her side in the span of a single breath. I clutch her hand in mine. “Yes, Mother.”
She smiles. Her eyelids droop. “Your sister moves. Give me your hand; I’ll let you feel.”
I go rigid. The emptiness in my stomach shifts to painful tightness.
Inhaling sharply, I stroke her face. In moments, she’s lost to sleep again.
She’s attached. I thought the name she picked would be the worst but this—
This is worse. The baby moves. She has more than hope. She has certainty.
Her hand falls from mine, resting against her protruding stomach. I turn away.
Desma faces the shelf, allowing us a semblance of privacy.
Sighing, I move toward the cave opening. Grimace when my movement causes a fresh spike of soreness.
“She doesn’t have much longer,” Desma says.
I glance over my shoulder. “Until labor?”
Desma nods. “Yes.” Shakes her head in the next moment. “No. She can’t survive much longer without food for herself and the child.”
A chill sweeps through me, leaving me a shivering mess. I press a hand against the cave wall, uncaring of the sting where it scratches my palm. “I’ll hurry.”
“Be sure you do.”
I nod.
Tomorrow I’ll get the plant. My mother will eat again. And when her pregnancy ends in another miscarriage, I’ll comfort her as I’ve always done. But for now, my mother will stay here under Desma’s care.
I leave Desma’s cave and the kelp forest behind, sticking close to outcroppings of rock. I’m careful to watch for predators gliding through the dark water. When there’s none, I sigh in relief.
Our cave is cold and barren without my mother. Somehow, I fall asleep easily, worn from the long day above. But it’s a sleep full of tossing, turning, pivoting. Moving to keep warm. Moving to escape the fisherman reaching for me in my dreams.
I awake with a gasp, heart thudding painfully in my chest. Dawn light creeps through our cave entrance.
I sigh, rolling over to avoid the light.
No. My mother needs this plant to feel better. She needs to keep food down.
Snarling, I jolt upright.
The trip is short with the rest of my family asleep. Hunting won’t begin for another hour and neither the twins nor my eldest cousin appear to lecture me on skipping our hunts.
Light slants bright across the beach. Smells of flourishing sweet grass and turned dirt fill the steady breeze. Spring approaches and with it, my eighteenth year.
Peeking above the water, I search for the fisherman. The boats in the far distance taunt me. My shoulders hunch.
A shuffle of sand, barely heard over the wind and waves. I duck beneath, letting the Akri’s cool embrace protect me.
Is it the fisherman? Bion? My stomach clenches. Curiosity wins out. I peek again. My shoulders relax at the sight of Bion waving from shore. In the crook of one arm, he carries a swath of fabric—another dress. The other arm holds a pair of sandals.
“I knew you’d come back,” he says after I struggle onto the sand.
The change is a mild burn. I place a non-webbed hand to where my gills once were. There’s only raised grooves. My muscles ache from even the smallest step but I force my legs forward regardless.
“Bion,” I say.
“Agathe!” He grins.
His gaze dips lower and he flushes pink. He thrusts out the cloth, staring at his feet. “Here.”
Snorting, I pull the fabric from his arms and over my head. It settles coarser than the one from yesterday but the scent of flowers still lingers.
Once I fold the top over, he pins the dress in place, his grin returned. “Mother won’t mind that we lost the other one. She says this one fits her just as dreadfully. Now she can demand my father buy her new ones.”
He pauses, frowning. He traces the edge of a fastened pin. “Though he’s in a terrible mood. He came home soaked last night! Can you believe it? He’s always so careful to not track seawater into our home.”
Cold envelops my body despite the woolen dress and Bion’s warmth. “Soaked?”
It can’t be.
Bion sighs, stirring the hair hanging low on his forehead. “And he wouldn’t tell us why. Just grumbled to himself about songs half the night.”
His father is the fisherman.
“Anyway!” Bion says.
I startle, stumbling forward.
He steadies me with a hand on each arm. “Are you all right?”
Staring into his kind face, I swallow. Then nod. I won’t let his father ruin my chance. Bion is an ally. A friend.
“Is your father fishing today?”
Bion beams. “You’re getting better at talking!”
At my pointed look, he continues. “Of course.” His eyes narrow, sparkling with curiosity. “Why?”
Shaking my head, I try for a smile. Then gesture to the trail. “Go.”
He pouts but leads the way, chattering about his mother’s rival and a friend’s pet goose. I don’t bother stopping him to ask what a goose is. When he mimics the honking the long-necked town birds make, I get my answer.
Again he leads through the winding Kyma roads. This time he doesn’t drag me by my hand, instead trusting me to follow with no more than a single glance over his shoulder. Clothing flutters on a line, geese scatter underfoot, and the bustle of a working town stirs my senses.
Mud and fire. Warm stone. Fish cooking over a fire, filling the air with a savory pull. My mouth waters. I swallow spit and keep moving when the woman cooking notices my stare.
My stomach clenches around nothing. How long has it been since my last meal?
We enter the square with its table piled with uncooked fish. I follow Bion instead of falling onto the fish in desperate hunger.
Bion, face strained with impatience, tugs on my hand.
I follow his insistent tugs until we stand before the storyteller.
“Ah, you’ve returned,” he says, smiling.
With a nod, I look at his hands. Nothing. “Fennel?”
His smile grows. “You’re in luck! A friend of a friend of a friend had a bit extra. Only cost me a story.” He winks, hands patting at his
tunic.
Bion’s stare turns to me, to the storyteller, then back to me. He tugs at our joined hands, bouncing in place. I return both of their grins. My mother will only need to eat this fennel, then she’ll be able to keep her food down. Aunt will procure a hearty meal if it means my mother’s health, I’m sure.
Elation floods my body. I’m tempted to bounce like Bion often does but I’m no child. Yet I can’t stop my feet from tapping against the stone. I can’t stop myself from swinging our joined hands.
The storyteller continues to pat at the folds of his clothing. He hums, mouth turning down into a frown. “Now where did I put it?”
I lean forward, breath held tight in my chest.
His hand stills in a fold over his heart. “There!”
He pulls a long stalk of green from the fold, face triumphant. With a flourishing twist of his wrist, he holds it forward and bows low.
I return his bow, hands shaking when I grasp the plant. “Thank you.”
He levers himself upright, grimacing with a hand against his lower back. “You’re welcome, my dear. Now, how about a story?”
My mouth purses. I should get the fennel to my mother. But one story can’t take so long, can it? Surely she can wait for an hour more. Bion tugs my hand, urging my decision.
“I suppose,” I begin.
But I never finish.
A burst of honking geese and shrieking women behind us. Heart wrenching in my chest, I will myself to turn around. My body refuses to move.
It’s the fisherman, my fear chants. He’s come to get you.
My heart pounds, the beat echoing all the way up into my throat. My head throbs in the same rhythm. With a painful twist of my stiff neck, I glance over my shoulder.
A naked woman stands in the center of the square. She clutches a dress against her chest. It hides little. Her hair shines auburn in the bright sunlight.
Bion chokes on his own tongue. “Another one?”
One of the twins, Iris.
Why would she come above? Two years younger than me, she’s not ready for children of her own. Unless my mother—
I walk, then run, until I stand before her. “What’s happened?”
Her mind-speak is pure panic. The words tangle together.
I grip her shoulders, shaking her.
Broken thoughts form into tangible sentences. “Your mother’s gone into labor,” she says in a trembling voice. “There’s blood, so much blood.”
Dragging her through the town moments later, my breath comes quick. Hitches with each new burst of speed. Iris stumbles along behind me, our hands clasped tight together. She squeezes. My finger bones grind together.
“Agathe!” Bion shouts. A scuffle of feet on stone. His angry grunt. The storyteller must have restrained him yet again. Good.
My mother—she could be suffering, in pain, dying. My steps are clumsy but swift. We hit the coastline and dive beneath the waves.
Iris’ words return. Blood, so much blood.
Chapter 5
DESMA’S CAVE IS A DARK, warm space.
Yet my mother insists on being dragged out to open water where sharks occasionally roam. Where even a too-clever octopus could pose a danger to my prone mother and the daughter she’s laboring to birth even now while we maneuver her out through the narrow cave opening.
“I won’t dirty the cave,” she says to me, panting as the child inside her shifts.
We drag her past the outer reaches of the kelp forest until we hit open water. I don’t have to stop staring at her to know. The shift from comfortably warm to a creeping chill is proof enough.
She screams in mind-speak. Then out loud when she forgets herself. The child shifts lower. Then lower still. Desma moves closer with each shift to help with the birth.
The plant sits uselessly in my clenched fist.
I’m too late.
I should’ve insisted the storyteller hurry. Would it have made a difference? Would one meal have eased this wretched labor?
I hold back with Aunt, a chill shivering through me from more than the cold.
There’s too much blood. In the waves, coiling through the strands of Desma’s hair, and on my mother’s scales.
The twins flinch away when it draws near. They curl into each other, hands to their mouths, but don’t leave.
The screams continue. Aunt waits with her hands clenched tight. She doesn’t flinch, not once, and I struggle to do the same.
Time passes. Minutes or hours or days—I can’t guess.
Another child tears its way out of my mother’s body.
In the past, all were lifeless and never carried long enough. There’s a glimmer of hope with this one. I muster nothing beyond a feeble whimper. The twins mirror it.
Air bubbles stream from my lips. My neck gills work fiercely to replace the air lost. The tickle of them against my skin distracts me for a moment.
The sun dips below the horizon. The Akri deepens colder, darker. Above, the blood creates a blight surging through the waves. A shark might follow its trail.
With a last heaving push, the child rips free. It’s a girl. All of them are, as they always have been.
It’s too still.
Desma severs its cord. She clears oozing liquid from unmoving gills. Pats just hard enough to snap it awake.
Nothing. No movement.
I swim closer. My pupils dilate. The settling darkness means nothing to my glowing eyes.
Blood lingers.
Blood lingers because it hasn’t stopped streaming from my mother. It winds around in rivulets and still I move closer to my panting, groaning mother. Aunt reaches for me, her hand warm against my arm, but doesn’t hold me back.
“She hasn’t stopped,” I say, wanting to scream aloud.
My thoughts tangle. There was a time when we talked with our mouths like those above. Before the sea became our prison. Now our voices become echoes of themselves. We’re forced into mind-speak.
Desma turns away from the useless cleaning of the child. Cleaning won’t bring it back. Her mouth is a grim line set in a pointed face. “She won’t.”
Another whimper. More air lost. My gills work harder. “She must.”
Shaking her head, Desma holds the child outward. Its wrinkled body hangs heavy between us. I reach out, finally letting go of the fennel. My hands quake as I pass them along its body. Complete yet dead.
Another child, my mother said, to be named Eudora. An old Titan word meaning good gift after so many children lost.
“Agathe,” my mother rasps.
I leave my mother of memory, the one with a swollen stomach and a smile to rival the dawn. She broke her own rule of naming before a live birth because of misplaced hope.
My mother of now beckons with outstretched arms and ribs poking from beneath her skin. The famine has weakened all of us but her the most.
I go. I will never not.
Slipping into my mother’s arms is easy in a way contact with others is not. She stares at the dead child, tracing its upturned nose with a single finger. She gasps and another tide of blood is caught by the waves.
“She must stop,” I yell.
Desma flinches. “I’ve done all that can be done.”
“Calm yourselves,” my mother says. Her eyes are barely open. Enough to see a sliver of her pale blue eyes. The pupils aren’t dilated as they ought to be in the darkened waters. “All of you.”
Only now do I notice the twins sobbing and Aunt’s quiet reassurances.
“It’ll be all right,” Aunt says.
For them, this memory will fade with time. But for me? Nothing will be all right.
My mother’s cold hand strokes my cheek. I flinch away. The hurt in my own heart, on her face, has me grasping her frigid hand and placing it against my cheek. I shiver against the chill of her skin.
My mother doesn’t see. Just yesterday I would’ve been grateful to keep my emotions hidden. Now the lack of her awareness guts me worse than a fisherman’s tools ever could
.
“I am dying,” my mother starts.
Even within my head, her voice is pained. More groan than words.
I nuzzle closer, already starting a stream of you won’t and no.
“Listen!” she growls, pulling herself closer. Her body sags moments later when her strength wanes. “I’m dying. You must help the others. You must carry on.”
I snarl. My teeth grit together until they ache within my jaw. Grief claws at my throat. “Not without you.”
I’m afraid. Afraid of her hazy eyes and the blood swirling around us. Of the shark sure to arrive at any moment. I’m afraid of opening my mouth and grief pouring out into this horrible sea. I’m always afraid of the swell of my mother’s stomach. Always afraid of the early labors. But this fear creeps to the center of my bones and leaves me shivering with more than cold.
My mother’s gills move frantically. Her body seizes, tendons clenched tight. Then she sags. Her struggling gills stop trying at all. One last flutter. They lie still. Cold hands slip away from mine.
A warm hand grips my arm. Desma.
“A shark approaches.”
Stomach churning, I heave. Grief pours out as half-digested fish from days ago. I should be angry with myself for wasting what little food I’m given. I can’t manage anything beyond grief.
“We’ll bring her into the cave,” I say.
“You know there’s nowhere to bury her,” Desma says. Her hand on my arm tightens. “Come.”
Desma drags me away from my mother’s prone, dead body left for the sharks to consume. Even now, I glimpse shadows of a hulking body pivoting through the waves.
Aunt, her arms around each of the twins, beckons for us to follow toward the ruins.
I stare at the blood-coated infant instead of the approaching shark. Curse my sibling for the death it wrought. For leaving me without anyone to live for.
I bury Eudora among rocks sheltered by thick kelp where only tiny crabs linger. The sharks won’t get her. It’s what my mother would want.
I spend the night in the towering ruins. Hulking sharks glide toward the caves beyond. Toward Desma’s cave. I turn away from a crack in the ruin wall, hands pressed to my stomach, and close my eyes. Images of my mother’s body torn apart take over. I curl into a ball along the sand and heave.