It was a good day for fishing. The sky was blue, the sea was blue, the boat was a sort of off-colour rusted grey, and the air wasn’t blue and didn’t taste so much of tin and boot as usual.
It wasn’t a great day for fish, but that was normal.
Bruce popped his beer and set out his line and dipped his net and to his great startlement found that there was a tug, then another, and he was so shocked he almost dropped the line instead of his beer. But he dug in his heels and gritted his teeth and pulled and heaved and hauled and strained and swayed until his sweat ruined his shirt and at last he heaved in a tunny of all things, taller than he was and gasping for water through its gills, a real relic of the past and too tasty to be true.
“Well THAT’S a big lunch,” said Bruce once he’d got his own breath back; he was scarcely less tuckered than the fish.
“Please no,” said the tunny. “Please don’t eat me.”
“A talking fish!” said Bruce. “Two surprises in one day, that’s enough for me.”
“Not just a talking fish: a magical fish. I am the very last of all tunas, and am imbued with the power that can only be invested in the last of one’s kind, the power to create a better future for another.”
“What if the better future for another is for me to have a very big lunch?” asked Bruce, cunningly.
“Think bigger, please!” implored the tunny, “If you set me free, friend fisherman, I shall grant you any wish you desire. And surely you can see the value in this, suffer as we both do from the pains and pollutions of the skies that have led to the warming of the waves and the deaths of all my kin? I can give you a wish, and with that wish you can solve both our problems at a single stroke!”
Bruce was deeply impressed by this, and the prospect of more lunches to come. But a tuna in the hand was worth two in the sea, surely, and he despaired at the thought of all this time spent fishing being wasted so he’d have to spend MORE time fishing later. Then a brilliant thought came to him.
“I wish…” said Bruce.
“Yes!” said the tunny.
“…for two wishes,” he finished.
“Oh no oh dear,” muttered the tunny.
“What’s the problem?” demanded Bruce. “I can use one wish for fixing the seas and skies again, and the other for myself. Surely that’s not greedy, since I’m going to be the person saving the seas and skies.”
“But I am but a simple magical tuna, and cannot grant more than one wish,” said the tunny, which would be crying if it could.
“Well, shucks,” said Bruce. “But are you SURE?”
“Wait!” said the tunny. “I know of another magical fish, the last of her kind, who may be powerful enough to grant you two wishes! Release me and I will find her for you!”
“And you’re SURE this isn’t all a ploy to not be my lunch?” asked Bruce.
“I swear upon my blue fins,” said the tunny.
Slowly, carefully, gently, begrudgingly, Bruce cut loose the line and removed the hook and released the fish into the sea, where it slipped away like mercury into groundwater. Then he drove back home and went to the pub for a lunch of cricket brisket, grumbling at the expense all the while.
“No fish, Bruce?” said the man on the stool next to him. “No luck on such a fine day, Bruce? Finally going to have to get a real job, Bruce?”
“Just you wait,” said Bruce, chuckling. “Just you wait.”
***
The next day dawned cloudy and hazy, with light white fog over the water, but Bruce was impatient and puttered through it without slowing, casting a pale froth behind his boat that was only slightly tinted from the dying metal of its hull. He cast over his line and cast out his net and pulled out his beer and dropped it.
“That was unnecessary,” said the great white shark, in her breathy voice. The net made a rather awkward hat on her big sleek head, and it didn’t quite cover her big black eyes, although the shiny hooks on it certainly accentuated her big sharp teeth.
“Hello,” said Bruce, coherently. The shark was only a little shorter in length than his boat, and he wondered at how well the tunny had played him for a fool. “Are you magical?”
“Very,” said the great white shark. “I am the last of my kind, and the last of all sharks besides, so my power is greater than that of the last of the tunas. Two wishes I can grant you, for my freedom from this net (for appearance’s sake). You will hold the power to mend the seas and clear the air and maybe even tend to the ravaged soil of the land with but a single generously-worded command, and still have one wish remaining as your reward beyond those wonderful fruits of renewal and salvation that you will partake in with all.”
“One wish,” said Bruce, rubbing his chin. “One wish.” He could get a new house. He could get a new boat so he could afford a new house. He could get lunch every day for the rest of his life with a new boat, so that was good too, but it’d be a lot of work. He could live forever so he could do a lot of work and still have fun, but still.
“What if,” Bruce asked cleverly, “I wished for TWO wishes with my wish?”
The great white shark’s eyes rolled back in its head, from midnight dark to blinding white. “Your needs are that great?”
“My life’s tough,” said Bruce.
“My powers cannot be stretched further,” admitted the great white shark. “But I may know of another, greater than I. She can manage your three wishes, but no more. I will go in search of her and bring her to you, so that you may save us all and be granted the reward that you claim as your due.”
“Thanks,” said Bruce, but before he could even cut the net the last of the great white sharks had sunk beneath the surface, snapping it as if it were made of nothing but strands of algae and muck. He went back to shore fuming at the indignity of it, and the pub had raised prices on the bean burgers again and were serving them with smaller chips besides.
“No fish, Bruce?” asked the man on the stool next to him, poking him insolently in the shin. “And with such dedication too, to head out in the fog and murk instead of toiling in the fields with the rest of your pals! You’re a hard worker for sure, Bruce! You’re well missed out there!”
“Just you wait,” said Bruce, grumbling. “Just you wait.”
***
The sky was thick and clotted with curdled grey brooding its way into dark thunderheads, and the waves were as surly and choppy as could be, but Bruce had a hunger in his soul that had nothing to do with lunch for once – at least, for one lunch – and he drove into the teeth of it with a wild grin and a beer already unshackled. Out to his usual spot he rode, bouncing from peak to peak to point and cackling, until at last he was there.
He couldn’t cast a line more than an inch in the wind’s teeth, but he didn’t need to. She was already there.
“Are you a fish?” he inquired of the whale.
The whale’s eye was as big as his head. “By honour, not by birth,” she sang softly to him through the hull of his boat and the waves of the sea and the air he breathed. “Although by descent we are both tetrapods, and hence sarcopterygians, and thereby fish.”
Bruce nodded in a very professional way. “Of course,” he said. “Now, my three wishes?”
“I am the last of the humpbacks,” said the whale, whose great flukes beat the surface softly, churning the storm flat around them, “and the last of the whales, and the last thing in all the seas that is bigger than the great white shark who sent me here. I have just enough power within me to grant you three wishes: to save the sea and skies and all that live within them and may live again, and two for yourself.”
Bruce thought of all this, and then he thought of himself, and then he thought of himself and all this.
“Suppose,” Bruce asked craftily, “I used my two wishes… to ask for two MORE wishes? Each?”
The whale exhaled, and the spout towered over them both, swept away in the dark of day. “What you ask is beyond me, fisherman. You ask what is beyond any of us to give. We have offered all we can, for our sake and yours, and it is all that will ever be.”
“What if,” theorized Bruce, “I waited for the last living thing in all the oceans? Wouldn’t that have enough power to do that?”
The whale inhaled, and she dove.
“Hello?” said Bruce.
He went back to shore and to bed early without dinner. His stomach was troubling him.
***
It was beautiful out again. The storm had scrubbed away the scum that had crept down from inland into the air and water, and was as close to true blue as could be. The waves had tuckered themselves out. Bruce’s boat had more dents than before, but fewer than it could have gotten.
So Bruce took the last beer in the fridge, and he went out, far enough that the shore was a little dot, and he put out his line.
He waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
And then he went back to shore.
The pub was out of fresh food for the week. Bruce had pickled onions (without garlic).
“No fish, Bruce?” asked the man on the stool next to him. “A pity. The harvest isn’t doing great; and it’d cheer us up some to see new foods on the table. You reckon you’ll start pulling your weight soon, Bruce?
“Just you wait,” said Bruce. His hand was tapping on the table; why was it doing that? When had it started doing that? “Just you wait.”