[Askoga]: 89.Short Stories.Stranded

Stranded on a rather large island, I stare out into the ocean, wishing once again for a ship in sight. I sigh, dipping my hand into the fine white sand and raising it, letting the small grains slip through my fingers. Shaking my head, I rise and head back to my traps and nets in the deep water to the east. Hopefully, I'll have trapped something edible, because while my aim with a sling may be improving, and my new arrows sometimes do fly straight, I still can't count on that for supper. Not many birds, and only a few wild rabbits on this island.

At the deep water, though, I stop and stare, seeing something man-like twisting and writhing in one of my nets. He sees me, and though I can't understand his words, his look of pleading is plain enough.

“Hold on!” Even to me, my voice sounds hoarse and rough, I had almost forgotten how to form words at all. I scramble down the narrow trail I'd made in the cliffside, even as I'm stripping down, so that my clothes don't hinder me in the water. I dive in and swim quickly to his side, “Hey, I'm gonna go down there and try to free you, okay?” He stops struggling in the nets, apparently understanding. I draw a big breath and dive under the water, running my hands along the net. his biggest problem is that his hands are trapped also, so I work to free those first. It takes a long time, and I have to come up for air twice before his hands are freed. Immediately after they're free, he dives down before I can get to his feet, and frees himself almost immediately.

Surprised, I simply watch as he resurfaces. Then I realize there's a big hole in my net. “Hey! That took a long time to put together!” I'm actually pretty angry, and I start gathering up the net, detaching it from the rocks. He tries to help, but I snatch it out of his hands. “No way! You cut it!”

He backs away in the water, looking at me curiously. Oddly, he doesn't really seem to be making much effort to stay afloat, and I suddenly realize that he has fins, and that his fingers are webbed. Though he does have two feet, I can plainly see through the clear water that they're more flipper-like, and he has fins on them, too, and webbing between the toes. Also, he has gills, currently fluttering slightly in the air.

I get the net all gathered up and start to swim away with it, but he comes up behind me—faster than I can even move—and grabs my arm. Again, he speaks in words I don't understand, but he gestures to my net. I shake my head and shove away from him, and he releases me, watching me go.

I'm still angry when I reach the top of the small cliff above the deep water, and I don't look back to see if the strange fish-man is still there. I know he is, watching me with his handsome violet eyes. I lay my net out on the rock, not bothering to dress myself until I'm dry. Then I squat, examining the hole in it. I shake my head in frustration and set to work finding some more of the sturdy, rope-like vines I'd twined together to form my net. I end up spending most of my day repairing my net, and only remember about my traps later, once the sun is beginning to set. My eyes narrow as I realize that any fish I had caught were likely to be small ones, and perhaps even those would be gone. I don't recall seeing anything in any of my traps or my other net when I had freed the fish-man.

Sighing, I rise, having finished repairing the net anyway. I make my way down the trail and check my traps. Of course, there's nothing, so I climb back out and finally manage to hunt down and kill a rabbit and a quail. Cooking these over my fire, I think back, remembering the fish-man. He really had seemed concerned about my net, but then why had he cut it? And I think that maybe I'd seen him again when I was checking my traps the second time. Disgusted, I shake my head and, having finished eating while I was thinking, I put the remains of my supper in a pot of fresh water from the spring and place it above the fire, to cook while I sleep. Then I curl up under a tarp I'd salvaged from the wreck, falling asleep.

In the morning I have soup, made from my leftovers from the night before, then I go back to the deep waters, gather up my net, and put it back where it belongs. I check the traps, but find only one small crab, which I release, because it is not big enough to eat. Sighing, I climb back up and sit on a rock ledge just at the bottom of my trail down the cliff. In the distance, I can see dolphins playing, and I smile. After a while, I go back up the cliff to find me some lunch. I gather up the dried seaweed I had prepared a few days ago for using in soups, grab my sling, and go out hunting. Hours later, I finally have another two rabbits, and a luckily-found coconut. Whistling cheerfully, I go about preparing them. Maybe I'll even have enough food to last me through supper, too!

Thus pass three more days, fairly uneventful. The fourth day, I find a good-sized fish in one of my nets, and a lobster in one of my traps, and I happily feed the lobster, saving it for the next day, but gut and clean the fish, preparing it to eat. I hear splashing in the deep water below me, and, looking down, I see the fish-man back again, looking curiously up at me. I narrow my eyes, no longer so cheerful, and turn back to my work, ignoring him. When I look again later, he is gone.

The next evening, though, when I check my traps for the last time that night, he is there again. He opens his mouth and, very carefully pronouncing the word, says, “Hello.”

“Hey,” I say, annoyed by his presence.

But he seems to take this as an invitation to continue, and, holding up a small crab in his hand, asks, “Food?”

I glance at it, then shake my head, resigning myself to talking to him, “Nah. It's too small.”

The fish-man blinks, then nods in understanding. “Small,” he pauses, then says, “Large better?”

I actually find myself smiling. Maybe he's not so bad after all. He seems to realize how ridiculous he sounds, and there is merriment in his foreign eyes. “Yeah, large is a lot better. But not too large. Sharks and dolphins are much too big.”

The fish-man nods and dives down under the water, disappearing. Miffed, I go back about my work checking the nets, but then he pops up beside me again, “Food,” he says decisively. I look down, and see that he's herding a large cod before him.

I laugh, “Yeah, food.”

A child-like pleasure lights his eyes, at my response, and I find myself smiling again. He reaches down and grabs the cod with both hands, then lifts the flopping fish out of the water and offers it to me. Startled, I shake my head, “I can't swim with that in both hands. Can you bring it to that ledge?” I gesture to the ledge I'd sat on before.

The fish-man nods and puts the fish back in the water, herding it beside me as we make our way to the ledge. I hop up on the rock and hold my hands out, “Okay, now you can give it to me.”

He puts the cod in my hands, and I smile, “Hey. Thank you for giving me this.” He nods, but says nothing, then disappears under the water again. I watch him go, sometimes seeing one of his fins sticking up out of the water. Then I climb up the cliffside and gut and clean the fish, thinking about the strange, but apparently helpful fish-man. He's so elegant in the water, and I find myself wishing that he had stayed around, though I don't know how well he'd do out of the ocean, or even if he'd want to eat with me.

Just as I've finished cleaning the fish, though, I hear an odd scrambling sound. I look down and see the fish-man trying to climb up my path. His webbed digits make it hard for him, though, so I go down and help him up over the harder parts. He's carrying seaweed and some other things I don't recognize in one of his hands. Now that he's out of the water, I can see that his scales—which cover most of his body, like humans have hair—are a pretty pink color, close to the color of skin, which is why I hadn't noticed before.

He holds up the items he'd brought and says, “Food.” He smiles so cheerfully, with that childlike innocence, that I find myself smiling, too. Before I can do anything, he scoops up the fish, then looks around. Spying my fire, he heads toward it. “Cook-food?” he asks, making it like one word.

I glance at it, and say, “Yeah. It's called fire.”

“Fire,” he says, trying out the word. Then he seems to shrug, and sits down next to the fire. Suddenly, I realize that he's not used to either walking or sitting, and he moves around in the dirt next to my fire uncomfortably. I smile and grab my spare clothes, bundling them up into a cushion.

“Here, sit on this,” I set down the bundle next to him.

Smiling, he gets up, then sits on it. “Better,” he says, looking grateful. Then he sets to work with the food, stuffing the fish with the other items he'd brought, then holding them high over the fire, so as not to burn himself. Catching his idea, I grab the metal grill I'd salvaged from the wreck, and prop it on two sticks, then show him how to place the fish on the grill so that it won't burn. He seems pleased by this.

“Land-people not bad. Not stupid, too.”

I laugh, “Some of the things we do may look dumb to you fish-people, but things don't do the same things in the air as they do in the water, so we come up with ways that work for us. I bet a grill doesn't work in the water any better than a fire would, unless it's something very heavy.”

He smiles and nods, seeming to understand me almost perfectly. I guess that he's listened to humans talk fairly often, just never used the language before.

When the fish is done, we partake of it, though the fish-man seems to think that it's a little overdone, while I think it could have cooked a little longer. I guess other cultures take some getting used to, and compromise. The fish is quite delicious, though, and I find myself licking my fingers, full. even though there's a good bit of the fish left. “Wow! That was delicious.”

“Very good,” he agrees, smiling. Then he sits up, “I am Fannor.”

“Oh! Pardon me for forgetting to introduce myself, too. I'm Cat.” I smile at him, suddenly feeling a little funny.

He smiles back, then gets up, “Must go now. Come back again?”

I nod, “Of course!”

The next morning, I find myself humming happily, and for once, I don't spend any time on the beach wishing for a boat.