He was six. Digging for clams with his mother. Calloused feet leaving prints across the cold, black sand. The comforting reek of the low tide pressed against him like a blanket. His mother’s hand was warm, rough, and she pulled him away from the sand, pointing towards a mass in the waves.
‘A whale,’ she said. ‘Just a calf. It’s beached.’
It didn’t look like a whale. His aunt had used a little piece of chalk and some slate, drawing various animals that he had never seen before. Whales were graceful things, with long lines and calm eyes.
This was just a lump in the sand.
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ his mother sighed as they drew close to it, and laid a hand on its grey hide. ‘Your mother will be worried about you.’
He looked up at his mother’s brown face, drawn with sadness, and mirrored her. Brows pulled together, and hand laid across thick, dark skin.
Help me, the little voice in his head cried. It hurts.
He blinked, looking up at his mother again. ‘I want to get da and auntie. We can push it back into the bay, can’t we?’
‘We’ll certainly try. Run and get them, then.’
He was fourteen, and had been thrown clear from his da’s skiff. A mess of senses and panic blurred everything together; foam and dark clouds and darker water swirling into terrible shapes, the line he had been too foolish to knot properly whipping away from his waist, and the prickling terror of cold and salt suddenly closing over his head.
His pride over being the strongest swimmer amongst his friends wouldn’t do much to help him in stormy waters. The cold and salt stung him, and the sea felt as if it wrapped about his chest, sucking him away from the surface and down, down into the unknown where he would surely die.
Something hard rammed into his back, and he knew that that was it. They weren’t far out, and this part of the bay was rocky. Above and below didn’t exist anymore -- only surface and silt -- and he’d been dragged the wrong way.
I’ll help you too, the voice in the head said, and suddenly there was pressure on his chest, and greenish light (faint but blessed) appearing on his right, and somehow he was flying towards it, sand scraping against his hide while hands little hands pushed against him, shoving him towards the light until finally he could breathe once more.
A hand tangled in his hair, roughly yanking his face out of the churning water while he coughed his lungs out. He knew without seeing that it was his da, screaming curses at El and sobbing promises to Eda as he dragged him into the skiff.
A large spot of warmth radiated from below, pleased with itself, before sinking away into the black.
He was fifty-four. The waters were calm, and gulls floated in the sky above him. It would be a good haul today, and he took a moment to stretch his arms above his head, reaching for the white foam of clouds above.
The other one reached with him, climbing steadily towards the surface.
‘The gulls are fine today,’ he said when a spray of mist broke the surface. ‘Not begging for scraps, for a change.’
The sky is too full to ask for scraps, today. A long pause. There’s another one in the net.
He let his arms drop, sighing. ‘There would be. Always end up getting them on days like this, don’t we? How badly?’
Get a knife, the voice said bluntly.
Another deep sigh, before pulling off his shirt and hopping out of his trews. Belt-knife between his teeth, he took his time crawling over the gunwale of his skiff, ignoring the push of foam-laden memories crawling up his back. Cold hide pressed against his bare feet, steadying him, and he pulled his head down into the other one’s world.
A shark, smaller than he was, drifted nose-down beneath his boat, fins and teeth trapped tightly in his net. Loosening the ropes and letting it swim free wouldn’t be an option; he bobbed up for a fresh lungful of air before pushing off the hull of his skiff, pulling himself along the net and reaching for the fluke of the shark.
It was too exhausted to respond much to him. Its spark was much brighter than those of the fish around them, yet it did not respond to his reaching with more than what felt rather like a mental sigh. He didn’t waste time, ripping at rope fibres and bobbing up for air until all but its tail was free.
One last dull snap of cord, and the creature sank down with the current, drifting away from the skiff. The gentlest of shoves from the other one, and it realised it was free, drawing up whatever last bit of strength it had saved and shot away into the depths.
Back to the surface, and his hands found the rope ladder while he blinked stinging water from his eyes. The other one floated up beneath him, pressing close to the skiff while he sunned his grey back.
They never say thank you. Very rude.
He laughed, pushing his hair out of his face. ‘Isn’t it? Well, rather rudeness than death, I’d say.’
He pushed away from the skiff and the other one reached a welcoming flipper to him, granting him a foothold so he could scale his hide. He scrambled and squeaked his way out of the water, feeling heavy and light all at once, and flopped down onto his back atop his friend’s snout.
The creeping memories of the deep water slid away while he watched the gulls overhead. There had never been anything to fear, so long as his friend was with him. The skiff would drift, but would not be lost; the tattered remants of the net below did not mean hunger, not when his friend was so adept a hunter himself.
They drifted, feeling the sparks in the blue above, and the sparks in the blue below.
