Muna is getting worse. Scales form around his scars, creep up his veins and cluster under his elbows. He won’t be able to stay on the shore with us much longer. In a matter of days, he’ll seek the sea.
“Let me go.” He gasps his words, his voice rough and unfamiliar. Not the voice I love. Not the voice I know.
I look across the bed at Lila. I see my own gray fear echoed in their face. They dab at Muna’s skin, water running in the wrinkles around his eyes like tiny rivers searching for the ocean.
“We’re not giving up, bach. Coil?” Lila looks at me, knuckles clenched white around the wet cloth. I see them searching, casting a net over my face, praying to draw in hope.
What can I say? The sea wants Muna back. As much as I want to tell Lila otherwise, I know that nothing we do will stop it from taking him. It’s the price we pay for time together, time outside the cold grasp of the deep.
Our lives always had a limit.
Muna sinks into the blankets, his eyes sliding closed. “I’m old. You’re younger. You both have time—for each other, for another bach…”
Lila tsks, sharp and full of despair. “I am only six years younger than you, bach. Coil only three. Don’t make out that we could easily and gladly replace you. We won’t relinquish you to the hungry waves.”
Muna’s forehead cinches, skin folding into remembered lines. “And what will you do, against the power of the sea?”
When I inhale, I taste brittle salt. “Ask it to stop.”
Lila stiffens. The look they give me is fractured. “Coil, no.”
Muna’s face remains the same—collapsed on itself, lines upon lines upon lines accentuating his age, prophesying ours. His voice comes from far, far away. “It won’t listen. This is how we go, fach. Please, for me—accept it.”
Lila circles the bed, grabbing my arm. Their fingers are cold, damp. Into my ear, they whisper so Muna cannot hear. “It was just a dream, Coil. Promise me you won’t try something.”
I meet their gaze, anger chasing desperation chasing grief. I try to control it, tell myself what I’ve always known. Lila and I could have years together yet—but the ocean will take us eventually. First Muna, then me, leaving Lila alone to await their fate.
Will we reunite in dark waters choked with seaweed? None know. But one. The sea knows. The sea controls it all.
I hold the cave in my mind. From the darkness, eyes look back.
“Take care of him, fach.” I kiss Lila’s forehead, which is lined less than Muna’s. “I’ll be back.”
###
We come from the ocean. At low tide, midwives wade into the shallows, petticoats knotted around their thighs. Wielding spades, they dig clamshells from the sand. The largest are the healthiest. They have the best chance of surviving the air.
I was cracked as a child from a shell on the beach. Before the tide rose, my fins were cut away. I was borne to the shore.
Seventy-five years, we are allotted a life beyond the grip of the sea. We breathe air, eat plants grown in soil, build our homes of driftwood. But when that age is reached, the ocean reclaims what the midwives took—whether we wish to return or not.
I walk down the beach, the waves caught between tides. I have seen some walk willingly into the surf, gills stark on their necks. Others were dragged gasping to the water by bachs and fachs, desperate to let their loves breathe again, even though it meant losing them forever.
The midwives say those who return are reborn in clamshells. I think they die, sink to the sandy deeps.
The midwives say there is nothing we can do to slow the changing. We cannot stay indefinitely on our adopted shore. I used to believe them. I’ve seen so many painful returns, bodies vanishing into the waves.
But when Muna started to turn, I dreamed of a cave.
The water washes over my feet, chilling my tendons to stiffness. I can see the cave on the coast, half-filled with the receding tide. The midwives never venture into it. They say nothing of this place or what it means.
Waves curl around my calves, and rocks chew my heels. I wade to the mouth of the cave; my petticoat knotted around my thighs. Darkness faces me, featureless beyond the first few feet of barnacled rock. I blink.
Eyes. They were white in my dream, pointed at the corners. I told Lila about them, and they dismissed it as desperate hope, imagined possibility. When their grief plateaus, Lila will have us stand beside Muna’s bed and watch him fade until, at last, we have no choice but to drag him to the sea.
I refuse.
The cave waits, hissing with the rush of ebbing waves. I am careful to keep my balance as I enter, one hand on rock rough with coastal life.
Does the thing inside the cave speak our language? Does it speak at all? I try to see beyond the entrance, but the ailing sun does little to help me glimpse what lies at the back or how deep the cavern runs.
I walk into shadow, feeling the tide grow shallower around my legs. I walk until I am out of the water again, my feet sinking into coarse sand. With the waves behind me, I hear my breathing, above all else, rasping against the cave’s unseen walls.
you’re premature.
My lungs seize. The voice comes from the walls or the ceiling—I can’t tell. But I know it. It is the voice that whispers in my dreams. It is the voice that fills my head while I watch scales cover Muna’s sweet flesh. “I—I am not here to swim. I am too young.”
maybe. Air settles heavy around me, thick with moisture and the tang of brine. though i may age you, make you ready now.
My throat is tight, my tongue bloated. “No! No, I…” My wishes, my demands feel reckless now. What am I against the sea?
Something touches my calf, leaves slickness behind. then it is another. one whose time has come.
“Yes. My bach. Muna, his name is.”
his name is scallop. Suckers kiss my cheek, wander down my arms. scallop is what he was, before he was stolen from me. but i will have him back. he will reclaim his true name.
“He needs more time,” I gasp, trying to hold my body still. I want to flee. I’m afraid to flee.
At once, the suckers retreat, leaving me cold and covered in oil in the dark. what will you give me in return?
###
“Coil!”
Lila meets me in the kitchen, their eyes red. “You’re soaked!” They start to tug my clothes off, but I stop them, my heart straining behind my ribs.
“I’m fine. Muna?”
“Asleep. He feels warmer. What have you done? Where did you go?”
“Just…just to the beach. I needed to think.”
Lila studies me, fingers still tangled in my shirt. “The cave?”
I shake my head. “You were right. Just my dream. I didn’t…I looked inside, but there was nothing.”
###
I wait for Lila to go to sleep before I peel the wet clothes from my skin. Sitting on the cool kitchen floor, I run my fingers over the scars on my arms and legs. Pale scales glitter around their edges.
I cover them with bandages, then dress in a long-sleeved gown to sleep. Before I go to bed, I check on Muna.
His skin is indeed warmer. I think the scales may have retreated, not reaching as far up his arms as before. But I’m not sure.
When I lie down next to Lila and close my eyes, I see two white points in the dark.
what will you give me to let him stay?
###
Muna is improving every day. He eats more, and I see Lila’s joy and love at this. I try to focus on that, on them. I try to ignore the itching as my scales spread.
I keep myself covered, even at night. Lila doesn’t understand why I don’t wish to dive into pleasure with them, and my excuses about being tired are wearing thin. Now, at least, they can lie with Muna instead.
Now he is no longer bedridden, he watches me. I feel his gaze while I walk around the house, trying to hide the stiffness in my limbs. When I make tea and hand him the cup, his fingers brush mine. His brow creases.
“You are cold, fach.”
“I was washing roots earlier. The water was cold,” I offer with a shrug. Lila is in the next room, painting. I don’t want them to grow suspicious. “My hands are still a little chilled.”
Muna drinks his tea in silence. When I turn around, I feel his eyes on my back. They’re darker than the sea’s. I worry how much they see.
###
At night I lie in bed and feel suckers covering my skin. Oil drips down my throat to drown my lungs. White eyes stare up from the depths, I think—but sometimes I wonder if they’re looking down instead, down through miles and miles of waves to see me at the sea’s bottom, waterlogged and cold.
How long will Muna have?
does it matter? you already offered your shell.
I awake, drenched in sweat, gasping for something heavier than air.
###
Lila and Muna are still sleeping; the sun has yet to rise. The tide is out. Wearing only a thin shift, I leave our house and go back to the cave. It is as dark as I remember, dark as my dreams. I wade until my feet are dry, and I face the deep. The air is stifling, flavored with salt.
“How long do I have?” I ask the dark. I don’t itch anymore. I can hardly bend my joints. My lungs ache.
you only ever had a stolen life. Suckers caress my back, soaking me. My muscles seize, preventing me from flinching away as I used to. you should never have left the sea.
“It wasn’t our choice! Without the midwives, we’d have no lives at all.”
Cold runs down my legs. The suckers encase me, squeeze. do you know where you go, after this? do you know what you are?
The darkness tightens its grip. your midwives don’t find all shells. some escape to the deep. some hatch far from the drying sun.
“H-how long?” I’m not sure if I speak the words. I’m not sure if they make it beyond my mind. My ears roar with the sound of waves.
as long as it takes you to take a breath, and find it’s not the water you need.
At once, the suckers retreat. I stumble, disoriented. I have to turn many times to find the cave’s distant mouth and lurch towards it. Water splashes around my legs, stiffened almost beyond bending. I collapse in weak sunlight, gasping air sharp and cold.
“Coil.”
I jerk my head up. Muna is standing in the shallows, Lila beside him. I feel color filling my cheeks—embarrassment, shame, anger, pain…
“You said you didn’t go in,” Lila says, barely more than a whisper. They shake their head, tears in their eyes. “What have you done, fach?”
“I—nothing! I’ve just…”
Muna splashes to me, tears the shift from my chest. Lila gasps, a scream strangled by their hands over their mouth.
I am covered in scales. Whorls beginning at the scars on my arms and legs, rippling over my chest and groin, reaching the base of my neck. In another day, nothing would have kept them secret.
“Why, fach?” Muna holds my upper arms, his strong fingers digging into my altered flesh. “It is not your time!”
“For you. For Lila.” It’s obvious. Why else?
Muna hits me. Pain bursts through my face, and I fall back into the water, choking under the surface. He hauls me out again, and I choke worse. Salt stings my eyes. Through blurred vision, I see his beautiful face, tears streaming over his lined cheeks.
“You had time. You and Lila. Stupid, stupid. What did you gain us? Still, a loss. Still, two left behind—and for how long?”
I stare at him, at Lila sobbing, eerily silent. A cold wind blows out from the cave. Suckers snake around my ankle, tugging me gently down.
as long as i am owed. i take cockle three years early, allow scallop three years more.
I go limp in Muna’s grasp. He doesn’t hear the voice. He is still staring at me, angry and afraid. The suckers tighten their grip.
“I’m sorry, bach.” I can hardly breathe. My neck feels cold, exposed. My gills. They are growing at last.
Muna’s eyes widen. He releases me, staggering back towards the shore. Lila screams as he drags them along, away from me, away from the rising tide.
“COIL!”
that’s not my true name, I think.
Lila’s voice is the last thing I hear before the suckers tug me under the water. I expect to choke, but I don’t. The water isn’t as cold as I thought.
They pull me out against the tide, draw me deep into the ocean’s embrace. My last sight is wavering light, a rippled surface high above. I try to reach for it, but I have arms no more.
do you remember, sweet cockle? do you remember me?
of course. How could I forget my name? How could I forget this?
and who am i?
you are the ocean. you are the sea.
you are my only love, my first and last home.
