Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  As I lay there, resting my head on those great breasts of hers, I prayed, “Lord, save me now, for I have lost both my humanity and my soul.”

  It could have finished there; in a way it should have—I would have been left with my illusions and my dreams. The satiated misanthrope, the spent sailor collapsed upon his mermaid like some Pre-Raphaelite painting, except I was a man with penis and testicles and she was a fish with a vagina. But for all of that I knew we had made love, had enjoyed a communion between species. I had to believe that; I was staking my soul on it.

  I slid off her exhausted. The air was thinning out—I’d used a fair amount of it with the exertion. I reached across and kissed her, the azure of those eyes piercing me like faith. She smiled beneath my lips, then moved her mouth up.

  At first I thought she was going to lick my eyelids—you know, how some women like that. But then her mouth fastened down over my eyeball like a suction cap, sending a brilliant white flash across my closed retina. I waited a split second, wondering if I was being paranoid, but she didn’t let go. The image of the sightless Tattle suddenly shot through my mind. Terrified, I tried to push her off but she had me pinned, her great tail weighted across my thighs. I struggled wildly and my arm touched the side of my helmet. Clawing at it blindly, I swung it hard and hit the side of her head.

  Reeling, she let go. A streak of blood appeared at her temple and her face turned several shades paler. She looked at me, as if to say that she couldn’t help what was an animal impulse. Then, without a sound, she slid off the rock and disappeared into the black water.

  Rocking myself I nursed my swelling eye, my lungs heaving as the air thinned. I was growing sleepy with the lack of oxygen. I pulled my cylinder over and let the remaining gas out into the cave. It wasn’t an unpleasant place to die. The beautiful phosphorescent light danced on the rock face like a pantomime in silhouette. I lay back and stared at it. I thought I saw all my life pictured there: Meredith, Hanif, the day we’d all gone boating together and caught a crab; my first communion; my parents; the small cottage on the west coast of Cork where my grandfather lived; all of it, the good and the irredeemable. Then suddenly, between the shadows, I see a phrase carved into the rock.

  I found my brother here and we were happy. JT

  Tattle. Poor Tattle. With one last supreme effort I pulled a large empty seashell toward me and began to whisper into it all that had happened….

  Acknowledgments

  Iwould like to thank the following individuals for their contribution to the crafting of this book: Belinda Balding, Sue Berger, Gavin Brennen, Rabbi Burger, Michael Donohue, Scott Hocknull (of the Queensland Museum), William Eiseman, Lesabelle Furhaven, Jane Gleeson-White, Katja Handt, Darren Holt, David Knibbs, Adam Learner, Adam Long, Simon Mark-Isaacs, Francis Oeser, Leo Raftos, Moshe Rosenzveig, Paul Schütze, Victoria Thaine, and Des Walters of the Descend Underwater Training Center.

  Also on the editing front, Linda Funnell and Nicola O’Shea for their usual brilliance; my Australian agent, Rachel Skinner; and my mother, Eva Learner, for her ongoing unconditional support.