Fishtale
The father’s tale:
There’s a rythm to our life. Like the waves. Born, grow, marry, die. This year, me daughter Emily is fifteen. She’s a strong girl, good head, fast hands. When she sets her mind to it, she can do anything. But she don’t, cause she still acts like she be a child. And now she’s not. I’ve talked to her mom, we agree. The reed-weaver’s eldest son is a good lad. Works hard, saves his money, does his prayers. We’ve talked to his dad, he agrees. They’ll be a good pair, and she’ll learn to be a grownup. Like she is.
In early spring every year we bring an offering to Asakent’s temple to celebrate winter’s end and the ocean calming down enough to sail out on. On their seventh Spring Celebration I brought each of me two children along for the first time.
Our weekly feasts and offerings are in the village temple, but that one time of the year, we go to the big hall in Kent Lazpar. The kids are awestruck – like I was when me dad brought me the first time.
At home, there is just an altar and a priest in blue-green robes. He does everything for the village, including the offerings to the other gods, even. But in Kent Lazpar there is a temple to every one of the gods we worship – for Selenselt, for Saylese, for Ewerg and Asakir, for Adnilen and for the fates and all the others.
Asakent has one of the biggest ones – down by the harbour of course. There’s an enormous statue in the middle of a salt water basin, magicked to look like he’s swimming and all the scales are glittering and sparkling like a fish in the light. The statue looks like it’s alive; if a stone merman could swim, that is surely how it would look - except stone is grey, and the statue glows in all the colours of the ocean. Grey, green, blue, shimmering, white and dark. It glows like the sun on the water and sings like the moons reflected. When the sun goes down and the moons rise for the night prayer, it’s easy to see why the White Lady fell in love with Him.
There are minor shrines in that great temple too. One is for Thalr, and we thank Him for fresh water in the streams that quench our thirst. The other is for Tawnels, but it is empty. Noone worships Her – she is the violent ocean and the deep currents and all the monsters in the black seas. We ask Her father to keep her quiet, and the monsters at bay.
Our way is His way. Like the neverending waves flowing and receding, like the ebb and flow of the tides, so is our life. From we are born into a rocking cradle, and until He-who-weeps carries us in his boat to the Divine lands at the end of our days. We give Asakent the first bite of our meal, the first catch of the season.
For the smaller celebrations we go to the village altar and the village priest takes care of it. Such as the autumn feast this year when Emily was going to be betrothed.
The brother’s tale:
Emily a wife? Well, I guess I knew it would happen one day – life’s like the waves and all, like dad liked to say – but she never seemed the marrying type. She never ran after the boys that I saw. More often she was challenging them to dive as deep as her, or run as fast as her, or swim as far as her out in the bay.
I’m sure she could have been a wife if she had to. She could have earned their keep on diving for mussels, she was always good at that, or trapping the layran fish with the pretty scales that we can sell to the fine people in Kent Lazpar.
But I don’t think she’d have been much good at the weaving or sewing or cooking or having kids, that mums do. She’d probably just run off on her own thing and let master Reedweaver tend to the house.
And she did run off – at the betrothal feast. It was a nasty rain we had that day. Real autumn weather that pushed everyone into the shrine hall, packed tight like herring in a barrel. We were seated at the front, because mum and dad told us to. We didn’t know - though if Emily had had any sense, she should have known or guessed – about the announcement. So when it came and the reed-weavers stood up proud and straight beside the altar, and mum and dad stood up, dad had to pull up Emily beside them. She was just gaping like a fish out of water. It was easy to miss in the torch light, but I saw how the colour just drained from her face. She was pale and shocked – and then she bolted, pressing herself through the crowd and out the door.
I was going to congratulate her, but it stuck in my throat and disappeared in the uproar. Young master Reedweaver had been all glowing with pride, and I saw that disappear too. He looked real hurt.
Dad looked stunned. Mum had her lips in that real thin line that says someone will be going to bed without supper. Some folks shouted. Some old women just laughed. Some old men laughed too, and patted Reedboy on the back, like it was some joke he wasn’t getting.
I didn’t get it either.
I ran after Emily. She was supposed to be happy and start a new life, a new wave, just like dad says.
I thought she’d gone for the cliffs and the caves in the rain, but they were empty. Just the sand, the crabs and the bits of bones left by seagulls and predators, and the rain pounding down on the beach outside.
That was when I noticed her boat out on the waves. They were dark grey, heaving big and splattered with rain drops. I heard Emily faintly over the roar. She was shrieking and crying and howling like the storm itself. Mum shouted from the temple doorway. She must have seen Emily, too. Something about ‘stupid child’ and ‘act like a woman’. But the dark grey waves were in her eyes too. I think she was afraid. Really afraid.
I’m a good swimmer. Emily wasn’t all that far from the shore yet, and she was rowing against the waves. I should have remembered that I’d be swimming against the waves, but I’m only twelve and can’t remember everything.
So I dived in and started towards her.
Emily’s tale:
It took a little while before I heard him. The crashing of the waves against the cliffs were drowning out most everything else, and the rest was muted and dimmed by the steady stream of rain on water.
Had I known my stupid little brother would try swimming after me, I would never have gone out. I promise that. I’m not stupid or mean. I’m just not a wife. Why does ‘being responsible’ and ‘growing up’ always include making someone elses dinner and bed and clothes and babies?
I thought he would return to shore when the wave caps got all white. I thought for sure he would return when the first lightning bolt lit up the bay, painting the cliffs stark in white and black, and the foam shone pure white on all the crests and all the waves all the way out to the deep ocean outside the bay.
I admit I was screaming with fury at my parents. I was screaming against the box they were putting me in – the good little wife – like the storm was pushing us into our little bay.
Then I saw my brother go under and didn’t come up again. He didn’t scream. People who’re drowning don’t. He was quiet like the deep, like the still song beneath the waves.
I turned the boat and rowed as fast as I could back to where I saw him last. That was the easy bit – the waves and current were pushing me towards the shore. The hard part was staring into the inky black water for too many moments looking for my brother.
He was gone.
I pulled off my boots and cloak and jumped in after him.
The lightning flashes whitened the land above the water, and lit the deep with sparks of grey gold. I was under once, twice, thrice. Holding my breath for as long as I could, until panic drove me up to the surface again.
On my third dive I was touching seaweed. Long strands waving and murmuring in the currents. I was too scared to think, too scared to shake or feel cold, too scared to do anything but search for him. The seaweed turned light grey when another bolt tore across the sky. I was a good diver – the best in the village maybe – but I saw my brother tangled in the seaweed, and I saw his eyes unfocused, and I was almost out of breath myself.
Around us in the flashes of light came answering flashes. Shiny scales on shiny fish sparkled in the darkness. I saw deep water fish with their strange lanterns or white eyes. I saw long, black bodies move just out of reach, moving the water with their fins, brushing against the seaweeds. In flashes I saw sharp teeth and enormous creatures. Whales and monsters, and the cold bit through me. Not the cold of water or the cold of losing my brother.
But something else. Something older, something deeper.
I saw her face. Almost humanlike, but gilled and scaled. Fins embraced her neck, shells and mussels covered her arms. Her hair was green like the grass beneath the surface.
As she swam up to me I saw her tail. Shifting, muting, changing like the sea. Sometimes finned like a fish, sometimes clawed like the seal, sometimes writhing like the tentacles of a gigantic squid.
She looked at me. Waiting.
I was almost fainting, but I tried to whisper in my mind, please help!
What can you give me, human?
I will give you me. Save him. I would die for him.
Would you live for him? Go back to the man they have chosen for you? Be the dutiful wife?
…I would. Anything to have him alive.
She stared into my eyes. I saw the darkness in hers. Darkness that enveloped me. I think I saw He-who-weeps on His boat, but that might have been dreams and lack of air.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on the beach. Beside me was my brother. He was breathing – raggedly but alive and soaking wet.
I lifted my head to see my family and village running towards us.
And then I noticed the tiny deep-water mussel clutched in my hand. And I noticed the ringing woman’s voice like crashing waves in my head – MINE!
Tawnels’ Tail:
My very own human. My very own worshiper. I am the deep ocean. I am the whale, the octopus, the shark. I am the giant eel and monsters of the unknown. Far too long have I had only the company of my children, while my Father receives the offerings.
Now I have my very own worshiper.
I let her swim deeper than any other, I gift her with endurance and sight beneath the waves.
Then I let her set up my altar in the cliff caverns, in the darkness, where she can sacrifice to ME. The first catch of the season from her, from her family, from her village. The first bite of the meal from her, from her family, from her village.
My Father, Asakent, did not save the human boy. I did. And now they come to me.
The father’s tale:
There are many ways of growing up. I received me son home safe, and me daughter has found her place in the world. A priest from Saylese’s temple confirmed her vision as a true calling – an honest-to-gods Wildrite. The Asakent priests frowned, but they decreed she could take a robe in blue and black for the deep sea. My wife made it for her, for me daughter, the new and first priestess to Tawnels.
The reed-weavers will find another wife for their son. Sometimes the current turns and the wave breaks, but there is always another.