The fisherman and his daughter lived in a smallish woodenish thing that passed itself off as a building day and night in the teeth of the sea and its whims, mostly through outrageous temerity. And yet despite this unconscious bravado that fueled their very lives in their every waking movement, their days were spent in dull necessity. The fisherman fished. The daughter mended nets, cleaned the catch, cured and cooked food as needed, stopped the shack from falling over through carefully applied patchwork, kept a small garden alive in the teeth of the salt winds, and sometimes helped fish when there was a big run on. When she had spare time, she sat on a rock in the wind by the waves down the shore, with her toes in the water, and hummed to herself as she turned bits of driftwood into miniature ships. They were big, small, canoes, caravels; every kind of ship in the world but for the white-streaked gull-haunted wreck that her father piloted over angry waves. As she finished them, she pushed them gently into the water and watched them set sail, wondering where they would find their way.
One of them found its way back on a fine spring day, when the sky was too cloudless to be real. As the daughter sat on her rock, humming her song and whittling with the knife that had belonged to her mother, she heard a splash and a polite cough, a precursor to a question.
“Is this yours?”
The speaker was a shark, a rather young one with a hide still more gloss than scars. In his hand was a little boat that the daughter recognized, one she had set into the water just the other day.
She thanked the shark politely, of course. Where had he found it?
“A hundred miles and more and still sailing sound. You carve a fine craft,” said the shark.
“And a compliment on carving from a shark is a fine thing itself,” said the daughter, eyeing the glittering white needles inside his mouth. “Thank you.”
He saw her gaze, and smiled as sharks do. “Here, take a closer look, if you would like,” he said, and opened so wide that he nearly out-sparkled the sun and the sea themselves.
“They’re pretty,” she told him. “You know, if I could ask… do you have any to spare?”
“Dozens and dozens a year,” said the shark. “Here, take this one – it came out as I ate a white-fish on my way here.” He spat a stout little fang into her palm. It was smoother than a pearl, with a ragged edge sharper than her mother’s knife.
“I want to try carving this,” she said. “Can you bring more?”
“Dozens and dozens a year,” said the shark. “Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow,” said the daughter.
And they both had something to look forwards to.
The days went by placidly after that. The daughter labored and mended and cooked and cleaned and gardened, but she did so with a small smile tickling at her now and then, one that filled the fisherman with grave and deep-seated worries now and again.
“Have you been seeing a man, daughter of mine?” he asked her, brows beetling. “You look it. I’ve seen you smiling.”
“No,” said the daughter, who was speaking the truth. “No, I haven’t been seeing a man.”
“Huh,” said the fisherman. His eyes grew less hard, but she saw his fingers twitch yet. “I won’t have it. Not that. I won’t stand for a man who won’t look me in the eye and sneaks around behind my back. Trying to steal my daughter, that is. Take my helper and leave me old and lonely with a cold hearth and an empty belly – a man with no more wife, no more brother, and now no daughter. Won’t have it. Not one bit.”
He sat back in his chair with a sigh, content to have said his piece and then some, and picked at his teeth with a fish-bone. Then a strange look came over his face, and he wrenched the bone free and stared.
“Hang off. I didn’t go out today. Where’d this come from?”
“I caught it,” said the daughter, just a little too quickly.
“Tunny, was it? Awful close to shore for tunny.” The fisherman’s eyes and lips moved as he examined the bone. “And a big one. Too big for little arms. You hiding gifts from me?”
“It must’ve been sick,” said the daughter.
“Feeding me sick fish? Hoping I’ll die? Ungrateful. Ungrateful. Your mother must be rolling over. Ungrateful sprat, trying to leave me cold in my bed and have the place to yourself. Bah!”
With that he stomped off.
“Let’s get married,” said the daughter.
The shark was surprised. Not surprised at the offer – no, no, it had been months and months now, and dozens and dozens of beautifully carved little teeth, all hidden under a stone on the beach. A long time to talk and think, time enough to get used to each other. But the way the daughter said it sounded like a declaration of war.
“It’s my father,” she explained. “He’s all out of sorts. He knows there’s something going on, and it’s making him angrier and surlier by the day.”
“We could run away,” said the shark. But he knew it was foolish even as he said it. The fisherman was old and lazy and cantankerous, but he was a man of the sea through and through, more water than earth in his feet. If they ran, he’d find them.
“You’ll meet him,” said the daughter. “You’ll meet him. As long as he thinks someone’s plotting to steal me away he’ll be jealous and angry, but if he has to deal with a proper suitor he’ll have to give in.”
“This seems like it might not work,” said the shark.
“I’ll make it work,” said the daughter.
And so she did, with her needles and her thread and her scissors and her wits, she made it work and made that shark a man.
She sewed man-gloves to hide his flippers, and a pair of man-pants to hide his tail. A man-shirt covered the tall grey triangle on his back.
“It is a fine outfit,” said the shark, looking at himself in the water as he stood on the beach – a bit unsteady on his new legs. “But look! I can see my eyes.” And there they were indeed, two big black shark-eyes.
“I thought of that,” said the daughter triumphantly. “Here, take this hat. I wove it from the beach-grass, to keep the sun off.”
It was a bit big, and a bit more silly-looking, but it was an authentic beachcomber’s hat and it shaded the shark’s face as smoothly as could possibly be. And to draw her father’s own eyes away from it, she placed her latest carving-project around his neck on a string; a fine big tooth with a simple sketch of a sail.
“Now, remember not to smile,” said the daughter. “And try not to grit your teeth either – he’ll be angry. Just be calm, be calm, be calm.”
The shark listened to her carefully, as he always did. And he was sure that he could manage this, because if there’s one thing that sharks are often good at, it’s calmness.
“What’s this ugly lot, daughter of mine?” said the fisherman. He peered at the shark threateningly, and his fingers danced near the great gutting-blade that he kept at his belt. “I knew you had a man! I knew you did! Lying to me, eh?”
“I only met him just the other day, when you were out in your boat,” said the daughter with the most technically accurate of truths. “Father, we haven’t known each other long, but we love each other, and would like to be married. Will you permit this?”
The fisherman stared long and hard and dark at this, face blooming over with ugly red, but he was an older man, and had spent enough time in his life angry to learn how to think through it. If he said no flat-out his daughter might try and leave, and even if he brought her back she would never do as he said again. He liked his meals and he liked having all his chores done for him each day, so this was out of the question altogether.
“Fine!” he said. “Fine! Marry any old man you want, if that’s what you want! Fine! But it’s not what I want, because what I want is what’s best for you, small sprat. If he’s so fine, let him prove himself as such. He’ll prove he’s a man to make you happy or I’ll gut him, see if I won’t. The sun’s too high already; I’m off to fish. You two tend to the garden, clean my last catch, and get a meal going – and be careful! I won’t lose my good blade to the likes of his careless misuse.”
And with that he left the house, slamming its small creaking door so hard that it grew a fresh crack right beneath the handle.
“I’ll see to the garden and prepare the meal,” said the daughter. “Run to the pile outside and clean the fish.”
The shark hurried outside, and the sight of the pile of dead things was of a scale to impress even him, who had been fed on the fat of whales at the side of his grandmother. The gutting knife felt awkward and clumsy in his hands, and he grumbled fiercely to himself as he tore at the bellies, whispering words in the language of sharks that were not fit to be heard by anyone at all.
But they were heard by one other, in some manner.
The fisherman was out at sea by now, heaving on his torn-up old nets with a fierceness that belayed his age, but his sight was far afield from his body as it searched the lines and planks of his boat by instinct and touch. The old man had learned things out there over his years, and made blackened agreements and terribly cruel bargains with the gulls that draped over his vessel like reeking sails. His eyes were clutched in yellowed beaks now, circling high in the air over his home on whitened wings and fixed fiercely on the strange young man far below who was threatening to steal away his daughter from his home.
And so it was that the fisherman saw the strange young man drop his gutting knife – a rusted, battered thing with an edge duller than a stone spoon that the fisherman avoided sharpening whenever possible – and sink his teeth deep into the bellies of mackerel, tearing and shredding with the keenness of oiled steel.
“Hah!” said the man to the gulls on his boat. “What’s that? I’ll see about that!” And he hauled up the last of his catch and headed home as fast as he could, calling his eyes back to him as he tied ropes and spat to himself.
“I am finished,” said the shark to the daughter.
She was surprised to hear it, but she almost shouted when she saw the bodies of the fish. “What did you mean by doing that?” she asked. “He’ll know for sure something’s going on; look at all these jagged cuts!”
“I thought of that,” said the shark. “Do not worry about it.”
The daughter grumbled as she finished the cooking, but she didn’t worry about it much. Only as much as was needed.
In came the fisherman, shoulders streaked with white guano, beard bristling and eyes red from strain. “Where’s my meal?” he called. “Where’s my food? Ah, there it is, there it is. Good, good. Sit down and eat!”
No sooner had the shark and the daughter perched atop the rickety wooden stools that served as chairs than the fisherman gave a shout that saw fit to raise the roof from its moorings. “Look at this! Look at this! My meat’s been chewed, my fish has been torn! What’s wrong with this, what did you do to it?”
“It is an old trick from faraway, where I come from,” said the shark. “I cut it jaggy to purify the meat, to make it good healthful. It trims the sick from the fish and leaves the good food.”
“I don’t like meddling in superstitious matters,” said the fisherman, who only an hour before had trusted his eyes to the beak of a pair of gulls sworn by wind and wave, “but I’ll allow it this time, though your presumption in assuming my catch is sickly irks me sore.” And he did allow it, and seemed to soften over the evening. He lit his pipe and told stories, old stories, from back when he’d been younger and his brother had yet been his friend and alive. Stories of riotous youth and screeching upright citizenry, of the pious mocked and the proud brought low. They tickled and tickled and tickled the shark’s funnybone, and at last – right after a tremendous anecdote of a crab in a priest’s smallclothes – he opened his mouth wide and laughed out loud, sending the firelight all ajudder from his jaws.
“Ah! What’s that there, what was that?” asked the fisherman, jolliness rolled up and vanished away with thundercrack swiftness. “What’s that with your teeth? Are you hiding some secret in there, strange man? Are you up to some trick to eat my daughter, is that it?”
The shark was too surprised and embarrassed to say a word, but the daughter was waiting. “Father, it’s considered a token of good fortune from faraway to sharpen your teeth like knives. It shows you’re rich and eat only the good meats and fine foods that merit no chewing. No man who means to remain poor would dare do so.”
“A spoiled princeling or an ambitious do-nothing then,” snarled the fisherman. “No, no – definitely not the former, not in those raggedy strips of cloth, nor with that beachcomber’s cast-after on his head. Bah!” he said, and he retired to his warm corner with his pipe, where he sent up fumes fit to choke the fireplace.
“I feel it’s time to check the crab-traps,” said the fisherman in the early (but not too early) dawn. “Mend my nets, you strange man – and be careful with them! They’re older than you are and much more valuable. And daughter of mine, you take care of that door. One of you damn-fools knocked it half-silly yesterday.”
And as soon as he was away and offshore, out of sight, the fisherman whistled and hummed and bobbed his head and did all those things that were demanded of him by the gulls in exchange for their obedience. They took an ear this time as well as an eye – soft as baby-fingers their hard beaks and dry tongues – and soared away over the currents, back home.
Back home the shark was attempting to mend nets. It was a difficult task at best granted the use of a full four fingers and a thumb, and the shark possessed neither. He tore and fidgeted and tweaked and grumbled and repeated some of the unspeakable, unhearable words which he had used the day before quite loudly; loud enough to travel all the way up to the white bird in the blue sky.
“I am finished,” said the shark.
“So quickly?” asked the daughter.
The shark held up his arms and she saw that his gloves had been torn away in shreds by the coarse ropes of the nets and his own excessive force, and she said some rather more speakable but equally unhearable words of her own at this.
“I am sorry,” said the shark. “Can you fix them?”
The daughter shook her head. “But I’ve got a better idea. Here, take this bedsheet in your teeth…”
“What nonsense is all this then, eh?” said the fisherman, as he barged in the door scarcely ten minutes later. “My nets are a snarl and a tangle, and here I find you sitting inside with….what happened?”
“Your nets had caught jellyfish, father,” said the daughter in a tone of perfect disgust. “You could’ve mentioned it.”
“No such – I didn’t see any, not one!”
The daughter pointed wordlessly at the shark, who held up his arms with a sad little smile. Each had been carefully wrapped in bandages over and over and over, packed tight and dressed with a little saltwater poultice.
“Useless….jellyfish, I won’t…not a chance,” managed the fisherman, but he managed it at little more than a mutter and left it at that, stewing off outside to sulk in his chair that overlooked the rocky bay, pipe smouldering evil thoughts. He puffed out there, long into the night, and he mused on suspicions and on strange curses that the gulls guessed at, and he thought to himself.
“A plan,” he said. “A pretty little plan, that’s what it must be. Well I’ve been planning longer and harder, bitter and deeper, they’ll see. They’ll see.” And he chuckled to the gulls and to himself as he sat out there and counted the minutes to the edge of dawn.
“Wake up.”
At first the shark thought that the words weren’t even the fisherman’s, they were so quiet. But there was no hiding the harshness in that tobacco-clotted throat, nor the rustling anger hidden beneath it when it was aimed at him.
“Up, you laggard. Dawn’s soon to come, and the fish come with it. Daughter of mine’s too tired to help with it, after you ran her ragged with the cooking and cleaning, so I’m stuck with you, strange man. Up with it.”
The shark looked to the daughter, but she looked tired indeed and he saw the truth hidden in the fisherman’s hardness. So instead he rose – quietly – and came down and down to the little cove where the white-streaked boat that was the fisherman’s life was left. Gulls adorned it. A fat specimen mounted atop the bowsprit squawked disreputably at him.
“Untie the rope there and let us be off, be off! Hurry up!” snapped the fisherman. And he half-turned his back as he said this, but only half, so he saw the shark uncoil away the line with his bandaged forearms quite easily. And he smiled when he saw this, but only in the smallest way, and he gripped the wheel a little tighter.
“A good current,” he proclaimed, idling as he went. “We’ll go south-south-east. That’s where the good stuff is. Always is.” He spat, and kept the corner of one eye on the shark as he spoke, darting like a snake in the underbrush. “No better a spot when the wind’s this way, I say that now and challenge any man to say better. It’s the truth.”
“Southwest is better, with the current this deep” said the shark, without thinking.
The fisherman made no sound of protest, which was unusual in itself, and had the shark been looking at him rather than the current, he would’ve seen that the smile on his face was not so small this time. “Aye, that it can be. We’ll take it a look, we’ll look.”
The water was bountiful, and the nets were bulging-full – if slightly less than untattered thanks to the delays and difficulties of the day before. As sunlight began to peer through the twilight haze, the fisherman straightened his back with a sigh and pronounced their work “done and more than done.”
The shark nodded.
“You’re not so slow on the fishing business, sore paws or no,” he said, humming to himself as he set the course of the wheel. “Takes a strong man to take a jellyfish rubbings all over his arms and not scream himself raw for hours, that too.” He grinned, and whistled a quick tune that could’ve been part of a mayday fair. “So, stupid outfits or no, it looks to me like I’m going to have to have a son-in-law, then. That’s fair. So shake here, son; give me your hand.”
The shark was almost too surprised to move, but relief took over where his mind left off, and he clasped arms with the fisherman gladly.
“Thing is,” the fisherman added, voice not changing a bit, “thing is, I can’t trust a man who can’t look me in the eye. I won’t stand for a man who won’t look me in the eye. So now, SO!”
And just like that, the battered beachcomber’s hat was whisked away in a puff of squawking, whirling feathers, and the shark and the fisherman were looking at each other, young to old, black to blue.
“Dogfish,” said the fisherman. “Damned bait-stealing dogfish. I should’ve known, and I do now.” His left hand clasped at the rusty gutting-blade on his belt. “I know how to deal with that. They’re hungry too. Too hungry.”
With that, the fight began. And it was no fair one either, and not in the way it seemed. The shark was younger, he was stronger, he had a mouthful of sharp teeth and all his future to struggle for. But the fisherman was angrier, he was craftier, he had a great razor-sharp blade that had slipped into a thousand soft bellies and spilled them empty, and he was fighting against time, fighting against the hope of anything changing. And around them the air seemed nearly alive with gulls, thick with screams and the smell of droppings, hardened with sharp beaks that pecked at unblinking eyes and tore away at layers of bandages.
They were on the floor now, the fisherman on top, the shark wrenching his back against the hull, hoping against the world to reach the side. If he could just get to the water… but the water was far away, beyond a pinning knee and a halo of suffocating white down. His bandages were tearing loose, and in a moment of desperate ingenuity he tangled the fisherman’s arm in them and pulled hard, smashing the man head-first into the wooden wheelhouse with a snarl and a shout. The path to the rail was free, the path to safety was there; surely he could race back home before the fisherman did; surely they could flee farther than the fisherman’s boat could follow; surely, surely, as sure as could be, as sure as the great iron flensing hook that slammed into his tail and nailed him to the outside of the hull, head in the water, arms flailing.
“Bastard,” said the fisherman. One blue eye wasn’t sparkling now, hidden behind a curtain of blood from his brow. “Bastard, bastard, bastard.” The gutting-blade glowered in his hand like a demon’s claw. “Here’s a good spot for it. They like it out here. They took my brother, they’ll take you too.”
The arm raised, the shark screamed, the arm fell, and as it came down the battered old knife’s blade skidded against the shark’s own tooth that he wore on his neck, skidded down its whole length ‘till edge met edge, then shattered hard and cold. The pieces flew into the water and sank away.
The fisherman’s curse turned into a scream as blood poured from his hand, the boat shuddered, and the old, old hull gave up resisting under their weight and the pull of the hook and split its sides, folding itself down into the blue with barely a whisper.
The shark was free – from the boat – but still imprisoned, wrapped around with clothy tatters as timbers and drowning gulls snared in sails fell past him into the dark. He wriggled and squirmed in his strait-jacket as he sank, and he felt the terrible pain in his tail of the flensing-hook grow harder and fiercer still. It was the old man, the fisherman; his hands a wound, his smile a fang, his eyes hate, weighing him, weighing them both down as he climbed up and up.
Arms reached for him. Fingers grasped him. Surprise filled him.
And as the shark sped away from that endlessly spiralling wreckage, as the hook fell away from his tail, he could not remove from his mind the close and clear resemblance of the face that had glared hatred into the fisherman’s.
The fisherman’s daughter was on the rock again when the shark came back, bright as a candle in the firelight from the windows of the house above the shore.
“Is he dead?” she asked. And the shark didn’t know what to say.
She sighed at that, and hugged herself a little. “Shall we go?”
“Do you need anything more?” asked the shark. He did not ask if she wished to stay.
“I have my mother’s knife,” she said. “And I have you. And that’s enough.”
They slipped away into the dark currents under the moon’s eye, and were gone. And behind them, stranded alone on the rock in the wind by the waves down the shore, lay a little wooden boat crafted in the shape she’d never carved.