“Iraxi, naiem, I am sorry, I fell asleep,” the small voice says, made smaller yet by embarrassment. And perhaps fear. The light shifts, dims as he moves from my cot.
That address. I recognize it, yet it prods at a memory that barely feels like mine own. “What did you call me, Borim?”
I can hear the moist sound of his mouth opening, closing, tongue lolling as it awaits instruction.
“Borim,” I say, the caution in my voice marred by the comforting warmth of the bath. “What is it you addressed me by? I do not recognize it.”
“‘Naiem,’ Iraxi,” he says, voice even smaller. “I meant no harm nor insult.”
“What does it mean?” My words collide into one another. I am drunk on affection and I feel foolish. Yet I cannot move. My desire to wanes as the bath continues to warm. My eyelids droop, but I find the strength to keep them mostly open.
“It means ‘mother to all,’ Iraxi.”
But it isn’t Borim who answers. It is the being he is holding. He is alongside the tub and I hadn’t even heard him move away from the cot. The wood has softened over the years, yes, but our feet, the calluses we all bear are like the shoes we cobbled on land, and Borim is so close, so close to me with those eyes, the eyes with no iris to tame them—
I stiffen in the tub, my whole body tightening where it had just moments ago been floating, being loved and massaged by the unseen cilia of succulent flesh. Now I am held prisoner.
“Isn’t it strange?” the voice continues. I whimper as the baby, my baby, turns within Borim’s arms without any assistance from him. I am awash in the radiance from those eyes. I shudder as her mouth moves, not to gurgle but to continue: “Such a small word with such great meaning.”
Her voice does not make sense. It is not one but many. High and low, young and old converging, then separating, but never deviating from one another. The words match, the cadence and taste vary. The same panic returns with fear as a companion. I cannot comprehend what is happening, I refuse.
“Calm. Please,” she asks. “The more you resist, the harder it works.” The eyes, or rather the light from the eyes shifts towards the jelly of the bath. “The harder it works, the less . . . comfortable it shall be for you.”
The way she speaks. As if each word is carefully planned, deliberately feasted upon before easing from her tiny, puckered lips like elegant vomit. I recoil and the liquid tightens. Breathing is difficult. The cilia turn sharp, a thousand pinpricks aching to sink lower, restrained, I can feel, by a force holding it barely at bay.
I try for calm. Try to calm the thunderous beat of my heart, try to inhale through my nose, exhale through my mouth. None of it works.
Dreaming. I must be dreaming.
“This is no dream, naiem. It is real.” She pauses. Breathes heavily through the spittle collected in her tiny throat. “I am finally real.”
Borim shuffles closer, impossibly stiff, his arms outstretching, the child leading. I shake my head, moans of protest gumming against my tongue. It is then I realize the cilia has been moving, moving me up, up, straight up, until I am sitting with my breasts exposed, nipples puckered.
“I must nurse, naiem,” she says greedily. “We must bond.”
Her naked body slides down my chest with the slime of the succulents’ innards. I twist with revulsion, wanting to fling her away from me, but my hands are held against my thighs within the bath. Gently, Borim lets go and I watch as the cilia reach for and hold my child against me. She finds my nipple with ease, latches, laps at it with a rough tongue until she sighs with contentment. The pressure within my breast eases and the relief is hypnotic in its swiftness, my head swimming in a rush of delight. I fall, sink, squelch into the goo. My sigh mimics my daughter’s.
My eyes close.
And I dream.
PART VI: TANNINS
HE IS GONE. But Amit is still here.
Amit is closer now, burnt copper skin flushed with panic as his mouth opens wide, veins protruding within his flesh, black eyes squinting, leaking.
He is screaming.
The roar of the fire mutes him, yet when I turn, the house remains gone as if it were never there, the brilliant sunset still in its full glory.
I turn back to Amit. He is still yelling, but he does not advance. His taut body, all sinewy muscle and sun-kissed flesh, is restrained by hands whose impressions I can see, yet the hands themselves . . .
Bruises bloom where Amit is being held. His legs kick forward, body twisting as he fights to be free. Suddenly, his head jerks back, his neck straining as an arm—I think it is an arm—presses hard against his throat, his hair standing on end in bunches, as if someone is pulling him by it.
All of this in slow motion. As if he were under water. As if he were drowning and begging to be saved.
But then his eyes land in mine and they widen in panic. He moves with renewed energy and I watch each follicle separate as a chunk of his black hair is torn from his scalp. His lips are a perfect O as one arm escapes capture, reaching, clawing at the air. It is then I remember—
Amit is trying to save me.
I step forward and the tableau before me falls away.
It is pitch-black night and I am on the beach at the bottom of our hill. No moon, no stars illuminate my path, but I am walking, I am walking with purpose and I need no light. I know the way. My left hand pulses with the ache of a too-tight grip on something small and hard and sharp. Sand fills the space between my leather sandal and my soft foot, hindering me, hurting me, so I pull them off and keep going. I feel the space around me narrow, feel walls closing in, though I have entered no space, turned no corners. The sand turns cool, damp, then finally wet as the waves lap at my feet, the salt stinging my wounds. The loose flesh of burst blisters floats helplessly along as I continue walking, hardly breathing. I am naked, the singed tatters of my dress long disposed of. I feel everything and nothing. The seawater is aggressively cold, yet the submerged parts of my body become used to it quickly. It does not stop my jaw from clattering so hard, my teeth ache.
Still, I walk.
I walk until tiny waves pop up and into my nostrils, slap into my eyes, until my toes are scraping at the sand, until they can touch it no more, until I am floating and breathing in flecks of blasted seawater.
Until I let go and stop and slip below the surface.
My scalp stings with the might of a cleaning salve to brutal wound, and I open my eyes and catch a glimpse of a silver fish slithering past me. I am holding my breath and I do not know why. Foolish instinct, I suppose.
Because I want to die. I came here to die.
The anamnesis renews my goal. I can override this instinct, I know. So, I close my eyes. I open my mouth.
And I breathe.
* * *
I startle awake to find my quarters lit up, myself still in the warm bath, and Borim gone. My limbs are loose, but the panic to rise up does not come. Instead, I ease back into the bath, willing my heartrate to slow as I roll my eyes shut. A soft sigh pops them back open. The baby has shifted to my other breast, and, having feasted so well, she is asleep, drunkenly, half-heartedly suckling from within her dreamstate. She twitches against me, drumstick legs kicking with very little impact, soft fingernails leaving a constellation of shallow crescents along my draining breast. At some point in my sleep, my right arm has come to cradle her closer. I stare at the offending limb, cursing it silently for betraying me, for aiding this bond when all I want is to be free. But then I see how much she is like me. The same midnight-black colour, the same wide-nostriled nose. Even our lips model after my mother’s, a thick cupid’s bow with a pronounced yet pinched philtrum and a mischievous curve on either side.
My mother said I was a dreamer. Even in the womb, I’d kick and twirl. Papa called me his little dancer for years until—
I scoff at the memory and sit up, my arm still around the baby, but the bath does not let me go. I am annoyed with this. Let me leave! I want to cry out, seek help, but a tiny prick
pierces my lower back and I drop hard into the jelly. The substance eases the fall, but I am no less injured, my ego sore. I feel an expulsion of air hit my neck and I look down only to see a tiny abyss held within the cradle of my arm.
Three, to be exact. Three slits in my baby’s side, curving along her ribs, each about three inches in length. They move in time with her breathing, fluttering on her inhale, yawning on the ex. Once, they stutter and my baby hiccups.
I am horrified, but I cannot look away. In fact, I hold her closer, as if attempting to protect her from what her body is naturally doing.
“They are gills.”
That voice again. Though the child remains asleep.
“You have them, too, naiem.”
“I have no such thing and do not call me that,” I spit through gritted teeth, glaring down at her closed eyes.
“With skin like mine as well, soon enough,” she continues. “Go on. Touch me.”
Helplessly, the fingers of my left hand run along her side, avoiding the flaps, skirting downwards. Smooth. Then I travel up and instantly I am reminded of the skin of a baby shark, like fine sandpaper, minutely grooved. I gasp, but my fingers continue until I am cradling my child’s head, gently pushing against the soft skull until she comes away from my breast and slowly opens her eyes.
The smile is that of a newborn, accidental, wormy.
But the giggle. The giggle is that from the belly of a grown man, a grown man with a secret, a knowledge that would affect us all.
“Rest, naiem,” she says in her multitude of voices. “You will need it.”
Another prick to my back and I am falling into a dreamless black.
* * *
It feels like moments later when there is a hand, an adult hand, on my shoulder, squeezing to wake me. My eyes ease open to see Hirat sitting on the edge of the tub. My arms are empty and so is the bath, aside from my naked body. I look down and marvel at the softened skin, at the even, starless midnight black, skin like before. The hill of my belly has reduced significantly, the skin sagging over my navel, curtaining my mons. I press at my left side, a soft stroke below my armpit, the memory of the ache enough to make me flinch, yet there is no cut. Only a protrusion, tiny, barely an inch, with an indentation, a dip of sorts, and yet there are sharp—
The horse.
“My baby,” I whisper, surprising myself. Somehow at some point my father’s whittling, my tiny baby horse, the horse whose wood has tasted my gums, then teeth, then softened palm has implanted itself under my skin and yet . . . I think of the child. I am still afraid to move, the memory of those pinpricks ghosting over my skin.
“She is above, enjoying the sunshine,” Hirat says, the smile marred by a trace of sorrow. “You can join her, if you like. She is with Ket.”
An ice-cold fist clenches around my heart and my body twitches awake. The spell of fear is broken and I clutch at the sides of the tub, forcing myself up to stand. The weight is significant, the movement excruciating.
“Easy, Iraxi, easy,” Hirat hisses, reaching for me. I immediately slap his hands away and lose my balance, colliding back into the tub with a wet clatter of slimy skin and bony angles. Pain bursts bright through my elbow and I grit my teeth, holding my wrist close to my chest. Hirat snorts, anger rolling off him in waves of heat. “This is your problem, Iraxi. You never listen. Your defiance causes you nothing but pain and discomfort. Much like your wretched kin. You had to deny him, didn’t you? You had to claim love stopped you from unifying our lands. How dare you?” He pauses as I gawp at him, the reprimand tickling at a foul memory. “It is this defiance that pushed your family to the edges of our old village. And it will be the cause of your outcast from this boat.”
My eyes snap up to meet his, and for a moment, his indignance fails him. “What did you just say?”
The vein at the center of his forehead pulses, protrudes as his face reddens. He rushes forward, gripping my cheeks with one hand, squeezing tighter until teeth tears flesh. His breath is warm, tart as it slithers over my face. For once, his composure comes into question as he clenches his jaw, eyes watering from restraint. I wheeze a laugh and he flings me away, my back crashing against the tub wall so hard, it threatens to tip over.
He stands abruptly, kicking away the short stool. “You heard me. Rinse yourself, since you refuse to let me. Your child needs your milk.” He turns away, stalks to the door. “And your name.” He tries to slam the door, but the impact is weakened by swollen, soft wood. I want to laugh, but I am feeble, drained lying in the tub, holding my wrist.
“And it will be the cause of your outcast from this boat.”
I feel something in me jolt, something deep in my chest. Small and new, yet familiar. I feel it grow as Hirat’s voice repeats the phrase. And behind it, behind his voice, is the slapping, the pounding of fists and palms against spun-glass windows and the roar of a hungry fire.
I feel it at the base of my belly. I feel it engulf my chest, spreading, spreading until my body is shaking with the fever of it.
My anger. My first child. My first choice. It has returned to me, honed my pain to an edge of purpose.
And for once, I feel protected.
* * *
I move with intent into the Green Room. The mists are on, gently watering the mostly dead plants and trees with desalinated water. The spray has grown weak over the last few months. The gears of the desalinators need cleaning, but chores are already spread much too thin over the dwindling population. And one must know what they’re doing when cleaning the machines. Otherwise, you’ll be crushed or drowned.
A smile teases my lips, a comforting knowledge that none of this will matter soon enough alighting my heart. I let the mists rinse me as I stand in a recess of loquat trees where the most water is sprayed. I slough off the remnants of succulent slime like an old skin. It all hits the soil beneath my soft feet, absorbing quickly into the thirsty dirt. I am in love with this tender, new flesh. My fingertips test and taste, in awe of the raw thews, jumping at the tickle of contact. It is then I notice something else new: three raised scars, like slashes, on either side of my ribcage, beginning an inch below my breasts. I run my fingers along the smooth, precise marks and shudder.
That is when something scrapes my back, then my shoulder. I turn to see the trees plump and grow, much like the kumquat trees clear across had when I’d urinated in their soil. Fruit engorges while I watch, some ripen and fall, rotting in the next instant only to be swallowed up by the soil, after which a small sprout appears.
Amazed, yet slightly horrified, I step back and away from the mists, away from the trees, and stumble towards the door. The cycle slows as I distance myself, settling into a brilliant, healthy, normal state. As if it had been bearing all this time. I wipe at my face and pull something into my line of vision: hair. Hesitant excitement sends shivers through my hands as I gently press against what had been gross malformations of healed skin and tumbleweed clumps of vibrissa to find the lovely, coarse halo of my youth. Tears prickle my eyes as my jagged nails snag and pull, yet these are not tears of pain but of a momentary joy. A piece of myself has returned, a part I’d thought would never be regained. The smile on my face grows wicked as I leave the Green Room, still naked, still angry.
The sun is hot when I appear above. My new skin drinks it in as I continue towards the crowd at the bow of the boat. In the center of it all is Ket, smiling brightly while she watches her cradled arms.
My child within them.
I advance, footsteps hard and heavy, naked hips twitching, hair wild and free and drying in the hot sun and the strong breeze. One of the elders notices me first, or perhaps hears me. She turns, milky eyes immediately widening in terror, but I am past her before she can utter a word or a whimper. My broad shoulders collide with others as I plow through the crowd, no additional effort from me, just the stoking furnace of rage that is my womb. Hirat sees me before Ket understands the hush of the parted crowd. She is too entranced by my child in her arms, and H
irat looks as though he’s swallowed the thick of his tongue. My glare narrows on the bundle. Ket has taken it upon herself to swaddle my child, as if she needs it.
She needs no swaddling. She needs the tang of the salt air against her skin. She needs the nourishment of her mother’s breast.
Both of mine begin to ache as Ket adjusts the child closer, my nipples leaking as Ket traces a finger along her cheek. I wonder briefly if she’s seen the gills, if she can feel the nuance of her flesh. The anger flares up further. How dare she take my child from me?
“Ket.” My voice is calm and even yet, by the shift of the spectators, a little frightening. I pay them no mind, my focus on my child.
She looks up and her eyes narrow, surprising me. My dearest Ket has found her fire.
But before she can claim the indignance she wears, the child begins to squirm, a gurgle of disapproval straining into a high-pitched whine. Stillness cools the air as her little lungs fill, not one of us breathing in hopes that the wail she prepares for does not come to fruition.
But then Ket moves.
It is, in fact, to hand the child to me, but the disturbance is too much. Those lungs, bigger than anyone can imagine, release a howl so deep, so profound, nearly everyone is brought to their knees. A sudden surge rocks the boat with enough vigor to throw off the rest, then immediately calms. All fall but for me. Ket is on her knees before me, child raised high above her head.
I step forward and I take her, hushing her cries with my leaking breast. The pain in my arm eases as I drag my pointer finger along her plump cheek.
“Never take her without my permission ever again,” I say lowly, still watching the serenity of my child’s face, yet I know my voice carries across the three dozen pairs of ears surrounding me.
No one rises as I walk back towards the hatch. I suspect they remain until I am well within the belly of the ship.
* * *
“Are you ready to accept me? Ready to accept this responsibility?”
The voices again. The disparity between them grows larger, the lower register nearly comical. I look down at the child as I descend the stairs. Round and round we go but she does not speak again. Nevertheless, her eyes are in mine, I can feel it, though there is no iris to focus on. I feel the heat of the Green Room and rush through, pulling at the overgrown branches and vines. It appears my fertility has spread. A low-hanging branch does not budge when I push it. It feels as though it is actively resisting when I throw my weight against it. I step back and eye it. It is not particularly thick nor is it close to the tree it belongs to. I step back again.
Flowers for the Sea Page 5