It was a nice day for Sukie, right from the moment she woke up and saw the sun just blushing over a warm sky, to the very second she gripped her net with both hands and felt the good, heaving weight of a swarm of little fat wrigglers, that wonderful burn against your shoulders that came from heaving in enough food to keep you going for weeks and knowing that there was still more to be had.
They were little domeheads, the stubby-armed bodies resembling mushrooms with angry wills of their own, but out of water the fury and spite drained away and left them as sad little sacks, limp and forlorn. But they still packed a nasty bite on their skin, in their slime, and Sukie felt glad for her woven-grass gloves as she emptied the net into the bin at the belly of the boat.
One net. Two nets. Three nets. Oh, this was fine, this would keep everyone happy as they waited for the lot to dry out and stop stinging. The bin was crammed near-brimful, and greed was so enveloping at this point that it was impossible for it not to be good. The sea was smooth and friendly, the trip to shore was not so long, there was no danger and there was no rush.
Why not one more? Just one more?
So Sukie set her net, let it drift, let it idle, waited for those dozens of little squishy bodies to pack into it, soft and silent as ghosts. Not even a full net, really. Just a bit would do. A little bit. She’d yank it up in a moment. And it was just Sukie’s good fortune that she tensed up to lift when she did, because an instant later something slammed into her little net with what felt like a punch in the gut.
“Woof!” said Sukie – all instinct and vowels – and she almost let go. But this was a good net, a net made of the old plastic, a net that time and tide and however many years had left unbroken. Its form had been painstakingly crafted by Sukie’s grandpa from hundreds of little loops he’d found buried near the bottom of a Dump by chance, all arranged in little packs of two-by-three, which he’d stitched together with homemade twine, hope, and the best knots he could possibly imagine. It had been lovingly maintained by all three generations ever since; each winter, the knots retied, the weak links removed, the net shrunk by necessity.
It had been bigger, once, but it was still loved. And Sukie would rather lose her limb than her grandpa’s net.
“Wup!” she shouted – accent on UP, for up! – and hauled as hard as she could, a little thing in the back of her mind wondering what on earth had she caught on, what on earth had she done? The water here was deep, so deep you’d drown trying to find bottom; surely she couldn’t have caught on anything?
And as Sukie’s net breached the surface, she saw that she’d caught on nothing. Rather, she’d caught a monster. She didn’t even have time to scream before it and the net landed on her chest (a shockingly light monster, its snaring had been all out of proportion to its weight) and she was eye to eye with it.
Eyes. Good lord and leavings, those eyes! Those terrible, wide eyes!
“GERROFF!” she shrieked, and shoved, and down went the monster and the net, straight safe into the bin with her catch, which she slammed the rust-lid on so hard that she half thought the boat’s bottom might fall out. Then she heard the thump and thud, and sat on it for good measure.
What in all Earth’s big blue seas had she just seen, what was slapping and kicking and knocking on her cargo lid right at this second? Something she’d never imagined, that’s for sure. No bluey. No roundtop. No domehead. It was small and thick and it had more energy than a toddle, although the shrinking echoes from under her rear seemed to show that being trapped in a bin full of domehead stings was taking its toll.
What was she supposed to do with this? What if it was dangerous? Well, not THAT dangerous – it hadn’t even left tentacles on her shirt, and her gloves were clean of slime from where they’d brushed its body.
She sniffed them. Strange smell though. Nothing quite like it. Maybe Emma would know. She knew things, when she was awake. Maybe she could share them if she promised her an extra bag or two of food. Yeah. That was a good plan. Show the weird thing to Emma, ask her about it. That way what we do with it is her problem, unless she wants to admit she doesn’t know anything, and how likely is THAT?
Sukie cocked her head and listened. Dead silent.
Yeah, domehead stings, that was it. No sound now.
The monster was quiet now, resting in an antique bucket that still possessed fully half of its formerly impressive height, breathing seawater. It hardly moved at all; if it weren’t for the pulsing of its odd gill-like sides she’d have thought it dead. You certainly couldn’t tell from its eyes, those horrible human-like eyes. They wouldn’t blink, stare as she might. Did it even have eyelids?
Best not to think on it.
It was still a nice day, monster in a bucket or no. The sky was clear, empty for once of the long, dreary storms of summer, the waves were calm and tame underneath it and blue as a baby’s eyes. Sukie paused in her paddling every now and then to give her back a rest and to look at the water. Sunlight smiled back at her from below, reflected in glittering sparkles off thousands of tiny plastic shards as a marine blizzard slid by underneath her keel. They seemed to chase her home; the current was her friend, bearing her and all those miniature specks miles in minutes.
She wondered why people had filled the water with them, once upon a time. They must’ve been awfully important, for them to make so many.
“Suuuuukieeeeeee!” a call came from the shore. Tiny figures were dancing on the dock, squawking and waving their arms in the air. A rock was thrown. “Row faster, slowboat! Row row row!”
Sukie paused in her rowing to make a rude gesture and had it copied back at her tenfold. She smiled; it was always nice to teach the younger generation something. “G’wan, help or scrammit!” she called merrily to her audience of cousins. “Helpers get domeheads, scrammers get smacks! Pick it now and get a head start!”
Nobody wanted to be the first to run, everybody wanted to be the first to dip their bag. The mob of hecklers became the crew of dockworkers; the concrete slabs of the dock were aflow with helpers grasping for ropes, fighting over knots, pushing and shoving to prevent the old rust of the boat from grinding itself into red dust against its moorings.
Finally, against all odds and rules of nature, Sukie was ashore with her cargo, which was busily being hauled uphill to the shelters in family-sized bags. The children were careless – barely half a glove between them as they manhandled patchwork sacks of domeheads twice their size – but they were sure they were invincible, and were about due for another rude disabusal of that soon. How soon they’d forgotten what happened to Timm. Well, his arm hadn’t come off after all. Perhaps that was all they needed.
Sukie was travelling light by contrast and by choice; just a single sack of domeheads was hers, clasped one-handed on her shoulder. But at her side came the bucket with its monstrous cargo, and between the two of them she was half-put to a foul mood by the time her footsteps took her all the way up to the edge of the shelter, way up high, under the farthest nook of stone where old, old Emma kept out of the way with her daughter’s daughter.
“’Hoy Sukie-sue,” said the descendant in question, and Sukie swallowed her annoyance. Mary deserved none of it, and she wouldn’t get answers by being grumpish.
“’Hoy Mary-lou. Gramma here?” Mary-lou was Emma’s only family, but she was everyone’s Gramma.
Mary cocked her head. “She’s here, mostly. Had a good nap. What is it?”
“Found a monster. It’s in the pail. G’won, let’s have her take a peek.”
Mary peeked, then shrieked.
“See?”
“The EYES!”
“I know. I’m half put off the sea now, thinking of things like that out there, leering up at me whenever I dip my toes. C’mon, get Gramma. We’ve gotta assuage these fears or you’ll have nobody doing the fishing.”
“Gramma’s got,” said a voice at Sukie’s side, and now it was her turn to jump. “So, what is it?” Emma’s eyes were bad but her footsteps were nigh-inaudible; Sukie’s own theory was that she was too light to make a noise. She’d gone past skin and bone to mostly bone, and the hair had left years ago.
“In the pail. C’mon, look at it in the light.”
Noon was here. The sun puddled at the top of the sky and dozed as the old, old woman looked into the pail at something that looked back. The noon blaze had improved its looks – still that flat blank face where a face had no business being, but now the light glared off its sides, as shining and bright as the plastic snow that had guided Sukie’s trek home.
How was it doing that? How could something alive sparkle like that?
Emma pursed her lips around what was left of her gums and made a funny noise, a cuh-cuh-huh-huh-huh sound like a baby blubbering.
“She okay?” Sukie asked Mary. Mary shrugged.
Cuh-huh-huh-huh-heh. “I’m laughing, that’s all,” said Emma, pausing for breath and starting over. Cuh-huh-huh. “Oh, I’m laughing! I never thought I’d see one! Oh, that’s a sight!”
“Name names, or I’ll say you’re making it up,” threatened Sukie.
Cuh-huh-huh, huh. Huh. And it was all under control, bar the leak of musty old dust-tears from ancient eyes. “Oh. Oh me. Sorry, but it’s been so long. I haven’t seen one of these since my own great-great-grandmother told me. She had a picture, you know, one of those real old ones – it fell overboard with her when she drowned, which was real appropriate and all because of-“
“I don’t hear names.”
Emma punched Sukie, but in a friendly way, and only in the stomach. “It’s a fish,” she said. “A real fish. A real live fish. Oh my. What kind I don’t know, but it’s a fish.”
Sukie felt her forehead wrinkle, and consciously chose to stop that before it got out of hand. “Fish? Fishing?”
“Yes, like fishing. It’s what people netted a long time ago, a long, long time ago. Instead of roundheads and roundtops, folks pulled up big bags of these little charmers. There were hundreds of thousands of them, you know. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Enough to feed more people that you can imagine.” She stared at the fish again and chuckled. “Look at that stare – isn’t that a treat?”
“I hate it. It’s like it’s watching me.”
“Oh come off, rats have faces too.”
“Yeah, but they’re land-food. Land-food has faces. Sea-food doesn’t. This is…weird.”
“Isn’t it JUST? Imagine all those folk long ago, eating these right up. Yum-yum-yum!”
“Gramma, don’t make me smack you, because I will do it.”
“Bullshit,” said Emma sweetly. “Utter bullshit. Besides, if you do that I won’t tell you how to cook this.”
“How to what?”
“What, were you going to dry it out just like the rest of your haul, my baby-sweet? Oh no, they have faces like land-food, you eat ‘em like land-food. We’re going to cook tonight.”
Sukie looked at the fish again. It wasn’t what she’d have called fat, but there was weight on those…bones. Sea-food that had bones. Good lord, if there was real meat in there instead of jelly, what a meal this thing was. It’d top the biggest rat she’d ever heard tale of that wasn’t one of Tomm’s stories. “Reckon I could find more?”
“Convinced already?”
“Argument’s sake, ‘s’all.”
Emma sighed. “Sukie, Sukie, Sukie-sue. How long have you fished here?”
“Since eight.”
“And how long did your mommy fish before that?”
“From seven to thirty.” Sukie could tell what was coming next.
“And in all those years, Sukie-sue, did you ever hear anyone tell of a fish until I just now did so?” asked Emma. “It’s finished. It’s all alone now, and there’s no going back.”
Sukie sighed. “How do you cut it?”
The old woman waved a hand. “Oh, it’s like a rat, or a person, or anything else that’s land-food. There’s bones in there and they’re all the same, from skull to tail. Just pull off the head and cut it in half along the back, you’ll work it out.”
“Right.”
Sukie looked in the bucket. The fish looked back. The sun had scooted behind the clouds of the late day, and in the dimness its sides were less brilliant, dull enough for her to see the batterings, the missing scales, the welts and the sores. There were cataracts across its pupils, milkiness clouding the keen black smoothness.
Maybe the eyes weren’t as human as she’d thought at first. Just panic, that’s all. A shock to see eyes on sea-food.
No, not human at all.
“Hey Emma,” she said, and she couldn’t quite tell why. “Sure there aren’t any more?”
“I said, sure there aren’t any more?”
The old woman wasn’t looking at her. Sukie put her hand on her shoulder, checking for that gentle buzz of breath that signalled a mid-conversation nap, but felt nothing but the regular wheeze of life.
“Oh Sukie-sue,” she said, and her voice was so tired now that Sukie could feel the dust on its edges as it rattled up her windpipe. “Oh my baby-sweet. Do you think I can’t recognize my own kind?”