Deep Water and Other Stories by Kathryn Trattner

Author:Kathryn Trattner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magical realism, fantasy short story, selkie fairytale, ghost short story, time travel short story
Publisher: Kathryn Trattner
Published: 2021-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Isaac

He carried a vintage makeup case, powder blue with a pale satin lining. The mirror inside cracked, throwing back the world, showing his face broken and pieced together in a way that made him more beautiful. He stood a few inches taller than me, a few years older. At seven with black hair and darker eyes, my mother claimed I'd be a girl all the boys noticed when the time came. But only Isaac saw me.

While I slept he took the contents of the case and placed them on my front step: spotted eggshells, tight green pine cones, a glossy black beetle with curled up legs, an opalescent piece of shed snakeskin.

My parents, if they noticed, didn't say anything. I missed their exchanged smiles above my head; smiles like words, thinking they saw something I could not.

And when he knocked on the door and my mother called my name, I ran down the stairs in cutoff shorts and scabbed knees.

“Isaac's here,” she said, stepping back until I saw him framed by the screen door.

“I have something to show you.”

I turned to my mother, “Can I go?” An echo of a children's game, Mother May I?

“Be back for dinner.”

Out of sight of my duplex he takes my hand. “Come with me.”

My heart beats in my palm, the heat of his skin on mine making me sweat and wonder what might happen if he intertwined his fingers with mine. But he holds my hand like my mother does, like my father; he takes my hand to pull me along.

We go down alleys, looking at the backs of houses until we reach a hill with a ragged path. The earth is dry, dusty and thirsty. It absorbs my sweat, the moisture disappearing as soon as it appears on my skin.

I don't ask him where we're going. We don't speak. I see what he wanted to show me.

A gray rag of fur, skeletal, red ants crawling all over it. A rabbit, dead of drought, the earth sucking it dry. The summer had been filled with these delicate decaying bodies, bleaching under a too close sun.

I squat, watching the ants move over the fur in lines, geometric patterns of nature. Isaac crouches beside me, the blue makeup case between us. Reaching out, no hesitation or shaking fingers, he places his hands on the dead thing.

Ants swirl up his arms, biting, red spots swelling. He doesn't speak, doesn't look at me. I taste panic, reach out to brush them from his skin, but he shakes his head. Beneath his hands the carcass plumps, swells, a back leg twitches. The dead eye blinks. An exhale sends a tiny puff of dust rushing away from the rabbit.

Beneath Isaac's hands it rolls, coming to its feet, shaking ants away. Ears twitch, one way and another, liquid eyes rolling toward us. I can see the too quick beat of its heart, breath that comes and goes so fast with fear.

It bolts. For a moment Isaac's hands remain cupped around a rabbit-shaped hole.

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