Once upon a time deep beneath the crystal sea, a girl with eyes like broken glass lay bound in kelp and sharp little fish bones, dragged through the silt by the currents of the ocean. And that little girl could go no lower, laying at the very bottom of the forever breaking waves, her salty knotted hair whirling above her like the tails of the hagfish with whom she slept and ate her meals - the rotten flesh of whatever fell dead to the bottom of the sea.
And then, one day, this curse seemed lifted as the force of something falling turned her loose.
From what had seemed eternity, the tide swept her away. She had not seen anything in the darkness for so long; time bowed out to nothingness, where every day was just the same in the blackest of the waters
where the sun never shone, and there was never warmth or rain. So her surprise was utterly delirious, her eyes maddened by the sight, of a glow off in the distance. It was as if the darkness were dissolving, burning up inside this light. Our little girl had not beheld anything so beautiful (she had never beheld anything at all) that she too felt consumed. And though she had not moved, never used her withered limbs, she swam with a surge of passion that burned right through her pain. And, indeed, it looked like heaven - to look upon it bliss! And she thought herself the happiest she had ever been, for she did not know when she last felt anything at all.
She was closing in upon it, reaching out for a simple touch, when she came face to face for the first time with something in the deep. And while she gawped it bit her and, herewith, came her blood.
She sped away with fear, with exhaustion and the shame.
When she thought herself alone, she allowed the current to sway her into a gentle sleep.
'Little girl,' came a voice and roused her much too soon. 'Little girl, this blood that drifts throughout the sea - is this yours, little girl? How awful that must be.'
The voice surrounded her.
'Little girl, come to me - I can soothe your pain. Come to me and I shall see that you never cry again.'
Everything seemed golden and she believed it all just then. She allowed it to wash over her and relaxed in its embrace. But in those fine spun threads she felt more deathly than before. All around her shone like flights of spirits taking hold. But she hurt and hurt right through. She could move no longer - the poison struck her numb.
Everything again - everything was gone, and though she rose from those dark depths she did and was not there - her body swelled up, tangled in the jellyfish, paralysed by its long and glittering tails.
Snagged on hard bone-like corals in the bright crisp clear blue - the warm waters hushed her calm and all her grief subsided. The little fish she saw darting to and fro between the rocks brought, at last, a smile to her face. And so she sat and watched a while with the sun's light shimmering down.
Though they would not heal, her wounds began to fade. And so the poison barbs, the lash marks on her skin, appeared in the shallows more like light frittered through the surface than scars of mortal fate.
Reticent to begin with, she kept mostly to her spot. Ostensibly novel, her freedom wore a mask - so accustomed to immobility she knew not what she had. Thus she clung to the rocks and kept her distance as best she could for she was growing distrustful of things around her now.
Despite this one day she relented when a familiar dolphin school approached. Won over, perhaps by their laughter, she let them scoop her up. And they carried her about between them like she was theirs to own - their funny four limbed foundling who never clicked or croaked. She thought herself very happy, safe in the fins of those who would not harm her with their sharp teeth of their bitter poison.
Alas, inevitability - the dolphin peace pact broke. What had this girl to offer them - who ate their fish, who dreamt afloat their silver backs and held them when they leapt, who did nothing - not even call or flip but weight and slow them down? Why should they continue to let this 'friendship' glide when she had no inclination to return their love in kind?
Angered, they left her heart broken - perhaps much more than they. She that had been all alone was all alone again. But instead of lonesome nothings her memories plagued her now. O, when there had been such nothing in the darkness her heart would never ache for anything except to maybe not be anything at all. But now she was truly sorry for everything she never knew, and she picked her wounds like mother-love, like stroking a baby's hair.
Distress cut away under the stern of a fishing boat, the raucous hum of its trajectory stopped her thoughts and the look of things aboard caught her eye. But she approached with caution, flattened on the flow. She observed it and others, though never shadowed as a rule. She watched as they came out to see and saw them back to port. She would swim beside if they drew near and would smile to see crew smile, but if she thought herself on the brink of being seen she shrank back and stole to safety.
Steadily, the shore enticed her. She came near in shoals of fish - each tinier than her nails by half, yet plumed out large like a fierce display or the vastness of a shark.
Bolder still, she swam in streams and laid in their bellies sighing - rolling on the soft brown rocks and tying up the reeds.
Just like that, flirting with some spring-time flowers, she found the surface had been breached. She took her first long gulp of air. Hands encased her narrow wrists. Great brown eyes stared into her from beyond the petals of the bank.
'How did you get down there?' He asked and proffered up his coat.
'I don't remember...'
Alarmed, she tried to dive into the water and reach the safety of the deep but she found, having been at the surface even for so short a time, that she was suffocating; her chest desperate for oxygen but rushing with the stream.
She burst back out some distance on and crawled up through the mud. She writhed upon the bank and kicked, digging her nails into the dirt.
What was this that had happened? What had passed her lips?
Frozen, she pulled herself through a brambled hedge. She bedded down and shivered, drawing coarse roots about herself. She could not sleep but lingered in the in-between.
Bleeding from the bramble barbs, she roamed out in the woods. Berries hanging on a nearby bush were plump and an eerie blood-like shade. Perhaps these would end her trials?
They tasted awful - worse than anything she had ever eaten before. They were horrid and gritty and burnt her tongue with their sourness.
She collapsed in the undergrowth with sickness. She vomited and cried aloud and then, at last, fell still.
Having heard her cries, the boy stooped down and touched her sallow face. His gaunt hands, though boney, felt pleasant on her skin.
'What now, River girl? Why are you so sick?'
'I ate those bright red berries and hoped that I might die.'
She climbed into his coat this time and she held close to him.
'River, why did you run?'
She stared blankly past his head.
His house was quaint and small. Bare boards lined the floor and shaped glass littered the room. They knelt on folded blankets and ate from wicker work bowls.
They talked for hours but when the boy went off to fetch something, the little girl ran away wearing nothing but his coat.
She felt terrified of his seeming kindness; she thought he might eat her flesh.
She came upon a clearing where a group of people sat, carving up bits of trees and supping on sweet smelling fruit.
Bemused by her arrival, they all leant and stared.
'Hello-'
'How now, who are you?'
She did not know what to say, so she just replied with 'River' because that's what the skinny boy in his cabin would call her.
They welcomed her warmly and all sat round, marvelling her washed-out complexion and stroking her risen scars. She drank their wine and smoked the fire from their pipes.
Dizzy, she tumbled down and gathered them to her chest.
And then those campfire boys kissed her and she felt sick again.
Morning rose with that same awfulness that heaved heavy in her breast. Stealthily, she crept away from what occurred the night before and returned to the brown eyed boy who shone like Elohim.
He was not happy and he thrust at her a pair of fins he had woven from sides of deep black leather.
'I made these when I saw you first, so I could swim like you. But now it seems you can't hold your breath like you did before and I feel bad for fishing you out and thus you can have these.' Elohim- he looked away and bit the inside of his cheek. Continuing to talk too fast he added 'Because I would not swim with you who hide when I would seek.'
She took his fins and ran away, this time to the shore. She strapped them on and waded in but felt totally absurd.
She stopped and mused, and her reflection stood in imitation of her grief.
'Such a fool I look - I am,' she came to rest upon a rock. 'I always run, but from what this time- and to what do I run back?'
Little fish, tinier than her nails by half, pooled around her feet. And she laughed at last to think of how that scrawny boy was crouched in flowers, waiting for her to emerge.
And he had been funny in wit and style and bore no barbs or tricks. After all, these stupid fins had been made by his two hands and yet he had never once intruded on her recovery.
'River girl, I thought you'd gone -' his reflection lay by hers.
'I could not,' was all she said and their two hands entwined.
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