Shoal

She lies at the bottom of the harbour, skin split open on the teeth of the breakwater. They

press lines of sea glass across the bones of her face. Pierced through by pale light, they reflect

spots of colour on their mottled flesh. They dart quickly above her, the vibrancy of their tails

stark against the bedrock.

A pattern is made by their careful hands; greens and whites and clay-browns criss-crossing

over her new skin.

It is with a ceremonial reverence that they dig out her throat, lining it with the same tough

kelp they used to bind her legs. New teeth are pushed into her jaw, stolen from the carcass of

a shark, jutting out at violent angles beneath her lips. They are grim, silent, and precise.

(It is a mystery, then, that they miss the red ribbon. It is folded in amongst the clay, weaving

between the white arches of her ribcage.)

By the time morning comes, they are smoothing the last of the dark sand across her chest, and

pressing a single pearl hard against her sternum. The mismatched tendons of sea creatures

and knotted plant-life move under her skin as muscles.

Her sculptors prop her gently against the coral, their own tails flicking behind them. Her head

is held still, and plaited net, strips of fabric, and seaweed are woven together over her

salvaged skull, streaming behind her in the currents. Two amber beads are placed into the

sockets of her eyes. They are clouded and worn, but glitter in the weak light.

A mouth is pressed against her own. Energy twitches along her fingers. Confused, she lashes

out. The shells of her nails strike a face, sending sand clouds into the turbulent water.

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A flash of memory grips her all at once, filling the hollow parts of her and humming along

the line of her jawbone: the rush of wind and the whip crack sounds of shouting. Then the

shock of cold water, a flash of dark sky. The sight of white cloth ballooning out around her -

pale, ethereal, and very, very heavy. White bubbles stirring around her thrashing limbs (and

the twist of red fabric catching on the grasping curl of her fingers). The burn of salt water at

the back of her throat as she struggled toward a surface that never quite came.

She thinks she might remember them watching. How still they’d been, amidst the black-blue

of the ocean. With flashing eyes and strange, mismatched silhouettes, they had done as they

always did, when humans strayed too far from the shore.

They watch, they wait, they build.

When another human body is thrown to the arching rocks, it is one of her kin that takes her

wrist and directs her hand. She presses a worn coin into the hollow of an eye socket, and

wreathes a head with a crown of urchin spines. A dozen different hands push her forward,

push her closer, until she is cradling the body in her arms. She kisses them, soft and quick,

and it is an act of creation.

Time plays tricks. Coral grows like smoke, and iron melts like wax. There is a peace to it, she

thinks. She is beyond the push and pull of an unruly, fleshly body. She is scoured clean and

numb by cold and salt. She is a singular, anonymous ache.

(The red ribbon remains.)

It is around the time that the boats of men turned from wood to iron that she realises how far

she has strayed from the shoal. The waters here are lighter - she can stare at the threads of

sunlight through the waves, and have warmth soak into her old bones. Something begins to

burn, deep within her chest.

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The call of the air, it turns out, is too strong to resist.

Her face breaks the tension of the water. She swims to where the rocks rise black and jagged,

draped in grey seabirds and white snow. The skeletal remains of ships stretch up out of the

waves, splitting the horizon into fractured shapes.

She meets land, floating beneath an outcrop of rock, sheltered from the howling wind. Staring

up, she cannot help but clasp a hand to her chest at the sight of the early morning light on the

worn rock. A starfish clings to it, finger-like and pale; it paints a picture of billowing skirts

and picnics on the sand.

(Of red hair ribbons snatched up by the wind.)

As she reaches out for the starfish her fingers meet a blade of sunlight. Drying suddenly, sand

falls away from the spindles of her driftwood bones. She flinches back, retreating to the

darker water.

Emotion rises within her, thick and cloying, bitter and furious. She stares down at the others,

and bares her teeth at her disinterested audience. Her mind howls as not one of them reacts,

hollow eyes fixed sightlessly on the expanse of water around her. The ribbon feels like a

noose around her neck. It feels like drowning.

She can bear it no longer.

A flick of her tail and she is inches from another set of eyes, close enough to reach out and

touch a patch of bone that pushes through sand. She clasps at the creature’s shoulders. She

looks for any trace of emotion. For smile lines to crack the shells at its temples, for the line

of a frown to split through the wooden bridge of its nose.

Nothing happens.

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She lets go. She tilts her head towards the sky. She thinks of sand between her toes.

The starfish is still there when she returns, clutching to the rock as high tide sweeps through

the bay. She lets the current carry her to where the water kisses land, white foam curling

thorough pebbles, staining everything it touches in darker hues. A storm of feathers pick up

around her as she approaches the shallows, birds running from her as she swims closer to the

shore. An approximation of a smile twists her lips at the heavy sound of beating wings,

different from the oppressive silence of the deep.

The space around the red ribbon seems to ache, like cold fingers held too close to a stove.

Blinking down at it, she runs a finger over the visible material, wondering what would

happen if she was to rip it out. Her attention is torn away by the sight of the cold winter sun

pulling itself over the horizon, the grey light filtering through the water

She watches, she waits. She pushes clawed fingers into damp sand.

The building panic in her chest is glorious and damning, a sweetness after so long an absence.

Scales fall from her tail, sand swept away by a gentle breeze, coiling in the air as her body

breaks apart. The knotted nets of her joints fray and disappear in the foam; the metal band

from a long-rotten barrel fails at long last, her ribcage falls open.

Only the red ribbon remains.