Our Animal Hearts

by Dania Tomlinson

  I told him what my father said the day he and Jacob left.

  “I know she had her first seizure when she was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant with me?”

  Henry just smiled sadly and went back to writing in the ledger. I pulled the jar with the fish out of my coat pocket and set it on the table to get his attention again. Henry picked the jar up and brought it close to his face. The fish’s blue silken fins flowed over its small body.

  “Where did you find this?” he asked.

  “I’ve had it for a year or so now.” I leaned in close. “Can I tell you something? You have to keep it a secret.” As I told Henry the story of the woman who crawled out of the lake, his eyes stayed on the fish. I didn’t tell him about what I heard the woman say about the fish being a gift for me, a girl. It seemed unlikely, and I felt silly and presumptuous.

  “I saw her,” he said.

  “You did? We went back to the place where she was and she had vanished. My father—”

  “I carried her body into the lake. I told your mother this long ago.”

  I was speechless.

  “The woman was naked on the shore. I didn’t want anyone to find her like that. I recognized her. She belonged in the lake. Not buried in the ground.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “She was from my village,” he said. “I thought she had died years ago. It was said she had drowned. When I first saw her there I thought she was a ghost.” He set the jar down. I kept quiet with the vague hope he would go on.

  “Perhaps the fish is her spirit,” he said finally.

  “Llewelyna thinks the fish is ancient and if one were to eat the fish she would absorb its wisdom.”

  “Yes, she’s told me that story.”

  “Story?”

  “I think it’s in the Mabinogion.” Henry bent forward to peer at the fish through the jar. “And this is not a natural animal. It doesn’t eat, does it?”

  “No. But the lake monster eats and it isn’t a natural animal.”

  “Naitaka doesn’t need to eat.”

  “What about the birds and squirrels people give it for safe passage?” I said.

  “Does God eat his sacrifices?”

  “Is Naitaka a god?”

  “Many believe Naitaka was once a man who murdered an elder in cold blood.”

  “I know that story.”

  He ignored me. “And so the gods cursed him by turning him into a lake serpent.”

  “So it’s a beast, then, not a demon.”

  “Others believe Naitaka is the spirit of the lake, as old as time.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Aren’t we all a little of both? Beast and spirit?”

  “Is Naitaka good or evil?”

  “Are you good or evil?”

  “I’m good.”

  “According to who?”

  “Me, I guess.”

  Henry grinned. “We’re all the heroes of our own stories.”

  “What about the people who don’t see the lake monster?”

  “Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. But you know that already.”

  I thought of the deer Henry had taught me to see, the Lake People in the trees, the holy spirit, Azami’s kami. “That man we saw in the forest that time, he’s Coyote, isn’t he?”

  “Coyote?”

  “The man with the caramels.”

  “Who? Oh, Frank!” Henry laughed so hard he had to cough to catch his breath. “I’ll have to tell him you said that. He’ll like that.”

  I walked back home along the shore of the lake. Some Japanese women were washing laundry at their usual spot in the small bay. The water there was very clean and the pebbles were the perfect size for grinding out dirt. I looked for Azami amongst the group. Soap bubbles foamed the shore. The women smiled as I passed. Azami turned her back to me as she hung a pair of trousers on a drying rack made of branches.

  Further down, three of the McCarthy boys stood at the end of the wharf with crates of apples stacked behind them. They were waiting for the lakeboat to arrive. When they heard me walking along the shore, they began to push and shove. Jesse wrestled both of his younger brothers into the lake. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him turn back to see if I was watching.

  A ways past the wharf, I walked through some bushes to a rocky beach. It was a secluded spot, forested thickly from behind and surrounded on one side by raspberry bushes and on the other by a curtain of willow branches. The sun’s reflection on the lake made it look as though it were glowing from its depths. I took off my picking trousers and placed them on the shore beside the blue fish in its jar. I was still dressed in the long shift I had tucked into my trousers. I found a large rock and clenched it against my chest. It tore at the silk of the shift. The midday stillness had turned the lake to stone and when I took my first step into the water I was almost surprised to see my foot sink beneath the firm surface. I wanted to walk along the bottom of the lake like Yuri and Viktor. I wanted to cleanse myself of disease, bad luck, and guilt. The mossy rocks made it difficult to balance. I let the weight of the rock in my arms anchor each step. The water felt thick and smelled of iron. I was in halfway up my calves. Despite everything Henry had said, I thought if I could only enter the lake, if I could face what terrified me, I would no longer be afraid—a kind of conquest, like Azami had tried to teach me. I didn’t want to be like my mother, seeing things that were not there, allowing some invisible realm to take over.

  A heron flew above me and its shadow washed over my face. I watched it soar over the lake and shrink into oblivion. Then the familiar taste of lemon filled my mouth, the lake was full of dark holes. I looked down. My feet were in murky water. Something slithered down the insides of my legs, like in my mother’s story of the girl and the monster. I dropped the rock. It landed hard on my feet and rolled off. I turned back towards the shore and slipped on the mossy rocks. I knew I had to crawl out but I was too exhausted to fight. I collapsed on the shore and let the waves come over me.

  I was walking through a hallway, following the jaguar. There were many doors along the way. Each door was closed to me except one, open just enough for a slice of light to escape.

  When I returned to the shore, I was trembling in ankle-deep water. The jaguar had followed me out again. I was growing used to her, this old kami. Although I had no reason to, I had decided she was the spirit of Azami’s grandmother, and this nearly comforted me. She licked at my thigh. There was blood all the way down it. I rubbed the blood with a finger and held it up to the sun before washing it away with handfuls of water. In the distance, I saw the crest of the lake monster. I closed my eyes and told myself it was only a wave. It was only the way the sunlight hit the surface of the lake. I would not invent out of shadows.

  I limped through the strip of forest and up the driveway to the house. I passed the Wasiks’ cabin, where Mary sat outside mending Taras’s jacket. “Iris?” she called. I didn’t answer. Mary came rushing at me. “Iris, what’s happened?” She stood in front of me. “You’re bleeding.” She dropped down to inspect my swollen foot. Hot blood trickled down my thighs. She lifted my shift above my knees and hurried me up to the house.

  I sat on my bed with a wad of rags stuffed into my drawers. I was fifteen years old, and this wasn’t the first time I had menstruated, although Mary may have mistaken my astonishment as ignorance. I let her take care of me as though I were a child. I was exhausted and in shock. My hands were shaking. My own experience was muddied by Llewelyna’s story about the girl in the pond that birthed the monster.

  Mary returned with a basin of warm water. “First you fall from the tree and now this? You need to be more careful, love.” Mary clucked as she cleaned the cuts on my feet and knees. When she was done she sat on the bed beside me.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked. I looked up at her. I had never noticed how smooth her skin was. She was younger than Llewelyna. “I know it’s been hard, with your mother i
ll and your father and brother away.”

  I straightened. I had forgotten Llewelyna in the tub.

  “She’s fine. Don’t worry. Yuri heard her hollering and came in to find her stark naked in the sitting room.”

  I bent my head in shame. “I’m sorry.”

  “Was it your idea to give her an ice bath?”

  “She wanted a swim.”

  Mary pushed my hair from my face. “Hush.” She laid me back into bed. “It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.” She placed her palm on my forehead before backing out of my room.

  It was dark when I walked through the orchard that night, the peaches aglow like crescent moons. I had forgotten the blue fish on the shore. I crossed the road to the lake and searched the beach. The jar was easy to find. The fish emitted a dim blue light. I sat on the beach with the fish in my hands and watched the Rosamond pass by, all lit up and heavy with goods. The water around the boat was stringy with light. Waves lapped against the shore. Once the boat was gone, darkness settled back into the water.

  Then there was a splash. I could see movement in the lake further down, coming towards me in a steady pattern. I hid the fish in the folds of my nightgown and stood, ready to run. As the shape got closer I could see it was a man, swimming. His strong arms broke the surface in silvery breaststrokes. I sat back down. I thought the swimmer would pass and I could watch unnoticed, but he stopped in front of me. He shook the water out of his hair and walked carefully on the moss-covered stones and out of the water. It was Yuri, his blond hair incandescent. When he finally saw me sitting on the shore he froze.

  “Iris?”

  I stood, embarrassed. “I just came to get some fresh air.” I was horrified at how much I sounded like Llewelyna. Yuri was bare-chested and dripping wet. He went a little way down the beach, dried off with a towel, and returned wearing his shirt.

  “I thought you swam in the mornings,” I said.

  “I didn’t have time this morning.”

  We sat down and stared off into the water.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.

  “Afraid? Of what?”

  “The dark water. The things in the dark water.”

  “You mean the monster your mother sees?”

  “I see it too.”

  “My mother says we see only what we want to.”

  “I don’t want to see it but I do.”

  “Maybe you can teach yourself to un-see,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  It was completely dark now. The moonlit sky reflected on the glassy surface of the lake, making it seem as though we were out in that abyss and not on the cold rocky shore. Somewhere a fish jumped and splashed back into the darkness.

  “You know in the ocean there are real beasts, sharks and octopus and eels with razor sharp teeth,” Yuri said. “These beasts could hurt you, but they usually don’t. My mother says she swam in the ocean every day as a girl. She was never harmed by anything other than a piece of broken glass in the sand.” He picked up a rock and skipped it along the void before us. “And this is just a lake. Nothing but big fish in there.” He passed me a flat, smooth rock and put his arm over mine to show me how to skip it. His skin was shockingly warm and soft. The rock skipped once or twice into oblivion. “Do you want to try?” he asked.

  “Try what?”

  “Swimming in the dark. It might help.”

  “I could never.”

  “There’s nothing in there to be afraid of, I promise.”

  I saw Llewelyna’s thin arms and her rib bones sticking out of her chest like the salamanders Jacob and I used to chase in the forest. I thought of her mystery and her devouring sickness. I remembered how I would sneak into her room as a child and spray on her perfume, slip on her shoes, run my sticky hands over her clothes. I would study her gestures until I could copy them perfectly. And now, our likeness terrified me.

  “I haven’t swum in years,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t have to go in far. Not at first.”

  I wiggled my toes in my boots. My feet were still swollen and bruised from when I dropped the rock on them. “I’m not ready,” I said.

  “Well, when you are, let me know. I’ll show you it’s safe.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Crickets stirred and gave the lake back its invisible dimensions.

  “I think I should be the one, not anyone else,” he said.

  I knew he meant Viktor. I could feel his gaze against my cheek. I turned to him. All I could see were the whites of his eyes, his crown of hair.

  “Sure,” I said. I reached for the fish and pulled it out of the folds of my nightdress. It didn’t seem to glow as brightly as it did before, but I could easily see its form in the water. “Do you remember this?”

  Yuri took hold of the jar and marvelled at the blue fish. “You’ve had it all this time?”

  “Llewelyna says it’s an ancient fish. Deathless. She says if you were to eat it you would absorb its wisdom.”

  “That’s madness,” Yuri said.

  “I know,” I said, and tucked the fish back away. “She told me to be careful who I showed it to.”

  Yuri smiled and looked back out towards the water. There was a rustle behind us.

  I stiffened. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Something in the bushes.”

  “Could be a million things.”

  “What are you two lovebirds up to?” The amber tip of Viktor’s cigarette floated like a comet through the night sky. He sauntered out of the darkness and into the moonlight. He sat down next to me. “Have you recovered from your fall, Your Highness?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. A carriage rumbled up in the hills somewhere.

  “You fell at least ten feet. And then you had that fit, like your mother in church last summer.”

  “Viktor, stop,” Yuri said.

  “Has that happened to you before?”

  “Viktor, leave her be.”

  “That’s the first time,” I lied.

  “Father says it’s the sign of the devil.”

  “He doesn’t, Iris. Don’t listen to him.”

  “Says we should bring back that priest. The exorcist.”

  “Piss off, Viktor.”

  It was difficult to read Viktor’s face in the darkness but I knew it wasn’t as cold as his voice sounded.

  “Calm down, hen. I’m not saying I believe the madman.”

  On our way back to the house, Viktor turned around and faced me right before we were about to emerge from the forest and onto the dirt road. Without realizing we had stopped, Yuri continued on without us. “I’ve been meaning to ask you.” His hands were warm on my bare arms. He was so close I could smell the tobacco in his breath. My stomach rose to my throat. “Azami and I want to meet again next week in that tree fort.” My hate for Azami bubbled like vinegar. “I’m supposed to buy a few things for my father from the Nickels’ store.” He took my hand, squeezed it. “Would you do me a favour?” His dark eyes shone. “Would you go to the store and purchase them for me?”

  “Where are you two?” Yuri called from across the road.

  Viktor pulled me into him. “Will you do it?” he whispered into my neck.

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  “You’re a doll.”

  “Iris?” Yuri yelled, his voice nearly tremulous. “Are you okay? I can’t see you. Where—”

  “We’re coming, little hen, we’re coming,” Viktor called to him.

  * * *

  I was meant to hide the items behind a peach tree in the exact middle of the third row of trees. In a paper bag, I carried a tin of nails, some antiseptic cream, a bottle of thick red syrup, and a roll of twelve ginger lozenges. I set the items in the long grass beneath the tree.

  “What are you doing?”

  I spun around. Yuri was up in the lower branches of the peach tree beside me. I hadn’t noticed the ladder. I stood with my back to the loot. “Nothing.”

  Yuri made
his way down. “What did you put in the grass?”

  “Mind your own business.”

  Yuri attempted to lean around me to see what I had hidden but I moved my body to block him.

  “If it’s nothing, let me see.” He reached into the paper bag and pulled out the bottle of syrup. He inspected it. “This is Father’s medicine. Did Viktor put you up to this?”

  “I offered. He was busy.”

  Yuri found the other items and gathered them in his arms. “I don’t understand why you’re helping him. He doesn’t even—”

  “It’s just a favour. I don’t mind.”

  “Viktor’s not your friend, Iris. He’s using you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Where is he right now? Why couldn’t he get these things himself?”

  “He’s busy.”

  “Busy with what?”

  I shrugged. Yuri turned towards his house.

  “Yuri, please. Just leave it. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me?”

  “Please.” Bit by bit I could see him relenting. “Put the things back.”

  Yuri placed the items back under the tree. “Don’t say I never warned you.”

  “Don’t tell anyone. You must promise.”

  “Fine. But not for his sake.” Yuri walked through the peach rows towards his house, kicking the long grass.

  15

  The next winter Llewelyna’s condition worsened. Soon she hardly ever got out of bed and rarely ate the scant meals Mary prepared. Some days she only spoke in Welsh. Other days her body twitched uncontrollably. It wasn’t like during a seizure. This twitching was isolated to only certain body parts: her hands would tremble as if from cold, or her head would jerk back and forth, no, no, no. Her arms and legs were covered with red splotches, and the rash spread daily. A patch of what appeared to be pimples sprouted on her hip and spread up her back. The bumps pussed horribly and became infected.

  After a particularly cold night, I thought I had lost Llewelyna. When I entered her room in the morning, her blankets were on the floor. Her skin was blue and her teeth chattered. She told me she was hot; her forehead was wet but her skin was ice cold. Mary and I boiled water in all the pots we could find and forced Llewelyna kicking and screaming into the bath.