The Fisherman

There are no fish anymore.

This is what he says. This is what they all say.

 There are no fish anymore.

Since I was a boy, he has told me, and since I was a boy, I have seen fish.

We are a fishing village, after all. If there were no fish, we would not exist, and yet here we are, and here they are.

And the men of the village, their backs grow crooked from the craning, from the casting of the net and the scooping. They are not agile as they once were, and they are not patient, but they don’t see this. They only see that they catch fewer fish, and so they come to the only conclusion they can.

There are no fish anymore.

But I see the fish. I see the Fat-bellied whitefins. I see the Zander bluetail. I see the flotsam.

This was a word I learned from Ms. Gavora. She is exotic, with sharper features than we have, and eyes that shine from the world she has seen. She is much older than me, but I wonder every month if I can ask her to take me with her. She could put me in the back of her wagon, and we could simply go. I don’t think I love her, but I love where she could take me, and that might be enough.

But Ms. Gavora and her stories are away this month, and I am looking at the flotsam. It is from another sunken ship. They battle off Argel coast. They battle with spells and fire and arrows and swords. Sometimes I think it is not a bluetail I will see, but a black hilt, and I will draw a blade from the bottoms that will be something else, something other than lunch.

But for now, I haul fish, and I see the broken boards of their ships, and the floating burned vestments of their mages. The deep crimson of their livery.

But today I see a different kind of fish. I see its emerald scales and its enormous tail off the break, in the deeper waters. This is not the bluetail or the whitefin, not even the gray, gray shark. I swear part of it looked almost…

“I saw something off the shelf,” I say that night. “An emerald tail.”

My father grunts.

“That’s the fish fleeing. There are no fish anymore. Mark my words. Soon we will all be dry. In belly and in land.”

I know he is wrong, but I humor him, because he is my father, and because it is easy.

“Do you think it’s the ships? Is the fighting scaring them away?”

“Those damned Vargin,” he growls. “Do you know what they’ve done? Just to the east. Just east of here. They stole the grains to feed their men. They are the reason trade has been so poor. Their endless war!”

I know this is wrong, because Ms. Gavora told me so. These are the rumors of the army, trying to sow discord, and to spread to people like my father. And so I bait him, because it is so easy.

“I’ve heard they are casting nets in the Argel river. During migration.”

“Of course they are! After we supported them! With our own blood! And now, there are no more fish. Soon there will be no more grain…’”

And I reel him in, and I smile to myself, and I think of the emerald tail.

The next days it is all I do. I don’t look for the fish that are clearly there, and I don’t worry about the catch for dinner. I look for the emerald tail. I scan the shelf, the break of the water into the dark depths.

I sit on our dock, and I stare at the mussels and the algae, the wavering, watery pods that shrivel when the tide recedes. I stare for so long that I feel myself drifting into the water, my consciousness becoming one with it.

I see the specks in the water, the bits of net that have been chewed by the guppies and now float and drift, the tiny fish in their schools, terrified and stupid and useless to us until they grow larger, and I see the face in the water.

At first, I think it must be a corpse. It must be. More flotsam. A waterlogged fool that has drifted to our shores, but I don’t startle and flee because my mind has drifted into the sea, and instead I look more closely, and when I do, it blinks at me.

Then I startle.

I jerk away, and she moves faster than any whitefin I’ve ever seen. She is a frenzied blur heading for the deeper waters, and I see the shine of her emerald tail.

“Ayah,” I say, and I slap the water. What a catch that would have been.

So I wait for my next chance. And that night, my father tells me about the fish, and he tells me about the Vargin and their stupid war, and I haul in my catches, and I bide my time, and I stay by the shelf, and I watch the waters.

When she reappears, I am alone, far from the dock, and in the shoals. Her pale skin and emerald tail are obvious against the white sand. Her shape is a beacon to any fisherman with two eyes, and mine are large indeed.

I look quickly around, but my brothers, they are far away, loading up the skiff.

“Ayah!” I hiss, and I shoo at her above the water, and her emerald eyes twist as she does. She is lithe and smooth and watery. Her body is an S, a coiling, springing, weaving shape, like a fabric in the waters.

She dances away and back, and she moves so fast.

I slap at the water and point towards the skiff. Her body rolls like I have seen the gray, gray sharks do when they are battling and killing, but she is playing. She looks towards the skiff and seems to ponder, and then she beckons to me, and she waves her emerald tail, and she glides away.

And I follow. I follow her from the shoal and past the dock, and it is hard to make my movements natural, because no fisherman would move this way, would do this thing, but I make my way without being seen, and I stop at the reefs, and I hunker on the rocks, and I watch her eyes.

She points toward the rocks farther on, and I see the flotsam, and my eyes are large indeed. This is not just fabric.

The mage’s body lies broken on the rocks. The ruin of his ship is around him, what is left of one of the full-rigged juggernauts.

I look back at her, and she motions into a pocket she does not have and points to the one I do. Then she points to the mage.

I think of drawing a hilt, not a fish, from the waters, and I look at her. Her emerald eyes. Her lips are pink and parted. Her hair is auburn.

“Ayah,” I say, and I climb the rocks.

They are sharp, and they are inviting only of death. They are the homes of the carrion eaters and the crabs. Creatures with too many legs and claws, but I’m fast, and I see my footing and I find it.

I jump beside the mage’s body, and I see his body rent by some great blow, and I think briefly of the Vargin and the rumors of their warriors. But I think more of the emerald eyes, and the pocket.

I reach in and find a wadded parchment, a scroll of arcane and archaic script. I look back to the waters, and she pumps her arms the way a child would in excitement, and I wonder if she learned it from watching us, or if we learned it, long ago, from watching her. Then she curls, she coils, and she disappears into the depths.

I look after her, and the dark that hides her, and then I start back across the rocks. I fall only once, and I slice my leg. A gash that will heal but will hurt. My father will scold me, a boy my age on the rocks. He will say I have to avoid the waters now because of the gray, gray sharks.

I see all of this as I walk back, in my mind, and I know it is what will happen, but I think of the scroll, of how I will dry it, and where I will hide it.

My father lectures me about the wound, and when the sun is gone, the others come to the house, and I listen to them lament the Vargin, and the fish. They are huddled around the table, and they seem small and sad to me.

I can’t make out the scroll, but I carry it with me, and when my brothers and the others are away, I look at it, trying to decipher it. To make it mine. I’m waiting for her of the emerald eyes as much as I’m waiting to understand the scroll, and I don’t even notice the bluetails or the whitefins anymore.

When a shape comes close, I lower the scroll, and I see the emerald of her tail and eyes. She is twirling her death twirl and looking up at me.

“I don’t know what to say,” I say, and she holds a hand to her ear to show she can’t hear me. She laughs bubbles.

She beckons me to the water and I shake my head. Her head twists and she twirls, and I don’t want to show her my wound and why I cannot.

She leaves. And when she is gone I think of the scroll. And that night, I listen to my father. And I think of the Vargin and things men die for. And I think of whitefin and the bluetail.

The next day I look for her, but she does not come. And the next day, it is the same.

I still have the scroll, and I look at it, and I wonder why she wanted me to have it, and where she is now. But of course, I know how to find her. I am a fisherman after all.

I go to the shoal, and I step past my ankles. I step to the water at my calves, and I step until it covers my bloody wound and it is in me, and my wrapping drifts in the water and reminds me of her movements, flitting and fleeting, and I step until I get to the break.

This is where I can see them, all of the whitefin and bluetail, but they are not here right now. There is nothing but carnage. There are no fish anymore.

The break is strewn with wreckage, and some is drifting to the surface, and I see that it drifts nearer our shores, the war. And just beyond me, I see on the shelf a crate. It is not farther than I have ever dived, not at all, and I am not thinking of my leg when I dive.

I swim past the drifting wood, and what may well be drifting bodies, but I do not look. I do not think of anything but the emerald eyes, and the scroll, and of something beyond.

When I reach the crate, its top is ajar, cracked and broken, and I already know what I will find. I don’t know how I do, but I do. I reach in, past the ruined top, and my hand finds purchase. And I draw forth a black hilt. I draw a blade.

Just as I knew I would find the blade in that moment, I also know that behind me will be the gray, gray shark. I can feel him as much as I feel the blade now in my hand.

And I think, there are no fish anymore. Not for me.

Not ever again.

And I turn, to face it.