Fish Out of Water

Written in the fall of 2016, this is still one of my favorites. Just about everything I wrote that autumn and the following spring was a joy to work on.

I thought this might make a good book someday. There’s a partially-developed world that I would love to dig into further: part 18th-century pirate story, part magical post-apocalypse, and lots of potential.

In this strange environment, I was able to explore transitional spaces between land and sea, human and Other, by placing a land-based pseudo-biologist medicine man on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

My favorite character, though? The hauntingly beautiful and sea-worthy captain, hands down.

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“Storm’s coming.”

Dana glanced up from the book in his hands, a collection of brown-yellow pages littered with delicately inked diagrams and handwritten notes. “How can you tell?” he asked.

The captain looked at him over her shoulder, pale blue eyes and sharp chin craning around the midnight mass of her hair. Her face was lined with shadows.

“I can feel it,” she said.

Dana paused, fingers half-tucked under the next page. He peered up at the sky, grey and thick on the horizon. The ship’s planks creaked with anticipation under his feet, although the water was calm.

Back on land, rain was different. There were trees and grasses and flowers there, and when the storm was coming, they became thick, energizing shades of green. They reached out with all limbs, wide open and ready to drink. Dana would join them sometimes, spreading his fingers and turning his face toward the sky, inhaling the musk of dark, fertile soil. On land, rain was intimate. Here, it reeked of salt and made his bones ache with cold.

The captain cast her eyes back to the sea.

“Will we be all right?” Dana asked.

“That’s up to you, Doctor.”

Dana swallowed, and considered his notes again. On land, maybe he could be called a doctor. He had studied the ways of the earth, and how it interacted with its inhabitants. He knew enough to grind herbal remedies, enough to treat, stitch, and bandage wounds. Here, Dana was out of his element. He had limited resources. His feet begged for solid ground. This was different from his studies of leaves and roots and mammals. In his book were drawings of squid and sharks, whales and mussels. It listed more than fifty inedible creatures, and provided a recipe for soothing jellyfish stings, but he had never seen a jellyfish up close.

“Land child,” the captain chided. “I can smell the worry on you. Don’t let it spread.”

Dana took a deep breath and regretted it. “Yes, Captain.”

He turned to the next page in his book. There, the lines of ink finally presented him with something familiar. From skull to pelvis, it appeared to be a human skeleton, but as Dana’s eyes slid down the page, the familiarity quickly vanished.

Where there should have been femurs, he found fronds of cartilage protruding in narrow fans from the hip sockets. The spine extended as long as its missing legs should have been and longer. It curled sideways onto the facing page, where it ended in the broad, sweeping cartilage of tail fins. A creature half human, half fish. Part land, part sea.

A timid wave of awe washed over Dana. He traced again over the human part of the drawing with the tips of his fingers.

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When the storm caught them, it was ravenous. The sky was low with monstrous dark clouds. The wind sent waves thrashing against the hull and spraying onto the rain-pummeled deck. Officers bellowed orders. Sailors heaved at ropes with the strength of whole bodies, shifting the sails and fighting the weather. Dana, with a satchel of medical supplies slung across his chest, watched for signs of strain or trouble among them.

Over the drone of the rain beating down on their heads, people began to yell to one another. Their duties were soon forgotten as they pointed to starboard. Dana followed their gestures, unable to make out their words through the rush of water in his ears.

Another crash from the waves and the lack of stability from the distracted crew sent him sprawling against the bulwarks. He clung to the rail, heart stammering, and peered across the ocean. There was another ship. Although hazy in the storm, Dana could make out a large beam, dipping at a sharp angle toward the water. The ship appeared to have no intention of struggling against the storm. He wondered if it was damaged, stranded.

The captain strode into the crowd, demanding to know what was stalling her crew. Black streaks of hair clung to her pale face like an oil spill, dripping down her neck. She seemed not to notice she was soaked. She stood tall, moving across the drenched deck like a shark glides through the ocean. The crew parted around her.

“What are they doing?” Dana shouted to her, jerking his head toward the spectacle.

The captain joined him at the side of the ship. She took one good look at the vessel and spat on the deck. “Hunting,” she barked.

Dana squinted at her through the din and downpour. “Hunting what?”

The captain turned and met his gaze. Her silvery eyes flashed as lightning ripped through the sky. Thunder crashed. Her lip curled in a sneer. Her teeth were sharp and white.

“Mermaids,” she snarled.

Lightning flashed again, throwing the other ship into silhouette. The beam raised a net into the air, and against the light, he saw it: a lean shape writhing against the ropes. The upper body of a human, and the tail of a fish, long and thick and thrashing.

The captain spun back to her crew, who scattered at her command. There was a flurry of movement. Muscles worked, sails snapped taut, and the ship groaned as it made a sharp and hard-won turn. They advanced on the hunters.

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Dana stood near the side of the ship, watching as the crew jumped into action. There was a wound in the hunting vessel, where the sturdy bowsprit had torn across its hull. At the moment of contact, men and women descended on the hunters, swords drawn. They swept eagerly over the gangplanks, practiced and confident. Dana gazed anxiously at the ensuing combat.

“Doctor!” someone shouted. A dagger, sheathed, was thrust into his hand.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Dana yelled back, gesturing with the knife.

A tall man with sandy hair and a handsome nose grinned at him. Stefan. “I didn’t think you knew how to use a sword,” Stefan said. He nudged one of the flat wooden planks bridging the two ships, testing its stability.

Dana inhaled sharply. “I don’t,” he admitted.

Stefan laughed. “Flower man,” he crowed, “how soft and pretty you are.” He grasped Dana’s hand, closing Dana’s fingers tight around the dagger’s hilt. He pulled the sheath away and tucked it into Dana’s satchel. “Suppose you need to defend yourself,” he said then, seriously.

His hand ghosted away from Dana’s as he stepped up onto the bulwark. His worn boots had slender, pointed toes. Without a glance backward, Stefan leaped across the gangplank to join his shipmates.

Dana climbed across the gangplank after him, ducking low on the other ship’s deck in an ungraceful heap. He scrambled across slick planks on hands and knees, pressing close against the bulwarks to avoid the clashing of swords and the shuffling of feet, hardly breathing. Dana searched for the captive mermaid. If it was injured, he was very likely the only one who could help.

He was expecting to find some kind of maiden: a tender, innocent fish-woman in need of rescuing. What he saw instead was a wolf. It bared its teeth, sharp like arrowheads. It lashed out with meat-rending claws, arms reaching through the holes in the large net. Its eyes were wild, red-orange like a warning sun on the horizon. Although the creature before him was tangled in rope, Dana felt the urge to flee. This was no water nymph; this was a predator.

Neither was it female, Dana realized. A far cry from the soft, rounded fish-women of myth, the creature was flat-chested and square-shouldered. It had a torso built much like Dana’s own, laced with the sinewy muscles of swimmers and runners. Dark russet scales covered its tail and scattered like scraps of autumn leaves across the bare skin of its hips and stomach. The wide, tattered-edged tailfins were a jaundiced, translucent ochre. Long blond hair clung in slick, wet strands to the merman’s neck and chest.

Dana heard a shout from behind him, and snapped out of his shocked stupor. He lurched forward to grasp at the net, dagger in hand. As the merman thrashed, the net jerked and swayed. The beam holding it in the air groaned. Clawed fingers raked across Dana’s face, and he crumpled. He dabbed at his brow, took stock of his eyesight. There was blood in his eye, and it stung, but his eye wasn’t bleeding.

The hand raked at him again, and he grabbed hold of the creature’s wrist. “Stop!” he cried. “I’m here to help!” Dana caught the creature’s inhuman gaze. Pygocentrus nattereri, he thought. Piranha eyes.

He shoved past his own racing heartbeat and looked at the captive merman. Dana placed his other hand as gently, kindly as he could over its webbed fingers. “Be still.”

The merman sneered, baring its sharp teeth again, and ripped its hand out of Dana’s grasp—but then it obeyed, unmoving, shoulders tense. It watched Dana with suspicion, gaze sharp and unblinking.

Dana worked at the ropes with his dagger, blood and water dripping into his eyes. The ropes gave way, and the fish fell with a dull thump to the deck. It howled with the impact, lashing its tail. Its voice was jarring, piercing through bone and space and time. Too big a sound to come from one man.

The cry was echoed in a chorus of other wails and calls, minor-keyed and ominous. The sound came from all sides of the hunting ship, crawling up from the ocean. Whale-song, if whales were night-hunters who moved in packs.

“That’s my fish!” a gruff man snarled at Dana’s back. “Off my ship, and get your own!” He kicked Dana as he turned to look, still kneeling on the deck. A large boot clipped his jaw. Dana sprawled back to avoid as much impact as he could. Still, something must have broke—his jaw or a tooth, cheek or tongue. He tasted the hot tang of iron, and spat out a mouthful of blood.

Steel clashed.

Dana hacked, and swiped the back of his wrist across his lip. He glanced up in time to see his captain thrust her sword through the gut of the man who had kicked him.

There was a sudden break in the rain.

The captain leaned in close and snarled something against the side of the man’s face, low and menacing and full of teeth. The cold horror of recognition glazed over his eyes. Then, fisting the lapels of his heavy coat, she heaved him over the side of the ship, into the ocean.

Dana scrambled to the rails, alarmed at the thought of someone—anyone—drowning, hurt, dying. His feet slipped about awkwardly as he rushed to look down into the deep black water.

The man sprang to the surface, arms reaching, gasping for air, his beard a soggy mess. Pale clawed hands broke through the waves and grabbed hold of his hair, pulling him down again. The water began to churn and froth. Blood bloomed amid a growing mass of dark green and blue and black scales, and long, twisting tendrils of hair. A feeding frenzy.

Dana’s throat constricted, nauseated. Then he noticed the dark red stain trying to cling to the captain’s wet sleeve, and turned his back to the gruesome scene in the water. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “You’re hurt.”

The captain quirked her mouth as though she were about to argue, but simply held out her arm to him instead. Dana peeled away severed cloth to reveal a shallow cut on her forearm, and found something possibly more disconcerting: small iridescent things, scattered like freckles over otherwise unblemished skin. Scales.

Dana’s face shifted. The tension in his brow gave way to open curiosity. Moving gently, as though he might scare it off, Dana smoothed over one of the scales with the soft pad of his fingertip.

The captain pulled her arm away. “That’s enough, Doctor.”

With the hunting ship’s crew outmatched, and its captain lost to the belly of the sea, shouts of outrage and despair rose up among an outcry of success. A low whine cut through the din of human voices. The merman struggled on the deck, clawing its way toward Dana on its stomach.

Dana took pity on the creature. He stepped closer and reached down to it. A webbed hand stretched toward him like a reflection in a mirror. Dana thought about how much he’d like to go home, to step foot on shore. He wondered how long it would be before he drowned here, in this much water and salt and blood. Maybe the merman felt the same. Behind those dangerous eyes, was there the same fear, the same homesickness that Dana felt in his chest?

Dana grabbed its hand. He cleared his throat.

“Time to go home,” he said.

The creature grabbed for him like a child, and through some maneuvering he hauled it up into his arms. The merman was heavy, so heavy out of the water, but Dana imagined it must feel weightless in the ocean, must cut through the sea like a knife. Dana struggled, fingers digging into the curve of the merman’s ribs to keep it in his arms. The merman hissed through his teeth at the scrape of Dana’s fingernails.

“Almost there,” Dana said, half soothing himself. He perched the merman on the rail, holding it steady. He must be young, Dana thought vaguely. Young like me. Loosening his hold on the creature brought huge relief to both of them.

The merman looked back at Dana over his shoulder, studying him for a moment. It gripped Dana’s wrist tightly. “Kai,” it rasped, like it wasn’t accustomed to speaking like humans, speaking from its throat.

“Is that…?”

“Doctor!” Stefan shouted behind him. The merman’s gills flared, just below its jaw, and it turned to the ocean, diving out of Dana’s arms.

“Wait!” he yelled, but it was too late. The merman disappeared into the water. It was gone.

A firm hand clapped wetly onto Dana’s shoulder. “You survived, Mud-flower!”

Dana glanced up at Stefan, and back to the waves. “We did,” he breathed. That exhale of breath took any adrenaline he’d had with it. Dana’s knees felt weak.

“Mermaids,” Stefan said cheekily. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Dana nodded. “And terrifying.”

Stefan squeezed his shoulder, gave him a shake. “Come on, Doctor. Let’s take you home.”

Dana didn’t object when Stefan threw an arm around his shoulders, or steered him away from the spot. He said nothing when urged to hold on, and Stefan carried him over the gap between the ships. Just leaned into him: this lean, confident man on the sea.

“Kai,” Dana mumbled to himself.

“What’s that?” Stefan urged.

Dana pulled away from him, began to examine the man’s cuts and bruises. The way Dana allowed himself to be carried across the ship, Stefan allowed Dana to touch and prod all of his weakest places, going through the motions of a doctor while his mind waded through the aftermath.

“Kai,” he repeated. “I think that was his name.”

Stefan regarded him fondly. “He tell you that?”

Dana knelt down and carefully tore at Stefan’s shirt to get a better look at a gash on his side. It wasn’t as deep as it looked. Dana was thankful.

“You know,” Stefan said, “No one’s ever heard a mermaid speak before—except the captain, I expect. The sea’s blessing, Mud-flower. Good on you.”

On his way to the sickbay, before ducking below deck, Dana heard a sound. A minor chorus, rising up from the sea. The rain had died out after Kai returned to the water, and the moon shown through a break in the receding clouds. It wasn’t the wail of creatures in pain, nor the fear of loved ones, the battle cry of legions. This was a song. A song of thanks, of farewell. Maybe an apology—some hint of sadness that the war of species would no doubt continue despite them, despite the actions of one crew to save one fish.

Dana walked to the bulwarks, looking out across the ocean now that it had calmed. The voices of merfolk rose into the night. He saw them, the tops of their heads down to their shoulders, breaking through the surface of the water. He saw Kai among them, looking up at the humans who had saved him. Dana began to sing with them, a song with sharper notes and strings of human words. A folk song he had heard people on the docks singing when he boarded the ship for the first time. Other sailors above deck heard his response and one by two their voices joined him. Stefan’s voice rang at his side.

Beyond the chants of humans and the calls of merfolk, another sound crept through. One woman’s voice, neither human nor fish, swept through the air in a haunting melody. The captain, with the moon in her eyes, sang for a woman in the water.

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“Fish Out of Water” by Mariah Lamour © 2016
Featured image courtesy of Bas Glaap on Unsplash