Swim Home to the Vanished by Brendan Shay Basham

Author:Brendan Shay Basham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Another fish on the table, and Damien sees a flicker of solace, a past difficult for him to attach any limbs to. “Look at this liver, how it elongates beneath a speckled scale, inflated like a puffer.” He rubs his fingers along a grouper’s skin, scratches at its iridescent scales, lifts a dorsal fin and fucks with the webbing. “You were built for depth,” he says, “a swimmer like me.”

Kai and Damien preferred to sleep in the woods near the creek after their parents disappeared. They would get up while it was still dark. The air was cold and smelled of fresh water. Kai was six years old, Damien nine or ten. He held Kai’s hand as they hopped along the rocks upstream.

“What do you think Mom is doing?” Kai asked.

“She’s writing a story about the fish here,” Damien said.

Kai knelt and put his hand in a small pool. “These fish?”

“Yes, not the fish downstream. Those fish are too big.”

“Too big for what?”

“Too big to fit on the page,” said Damien.

“Yeah, these fish are much smaller,” said Kai.

“They should fit on the page just fine.”

“What kind of fish are they?”

“Mom will decide that.”

“I think she should make the fish talk,” Kai said.

“If she could make the fish talk,” said Damien, “what do you think the fish would say?”

“They would talk about how they wished they had hair because it’s really cold in the creek, and if they had hair they could comb it and they would be more handsome. They would talk about how handsome all the other fish were.”

“That’s very polite.”

“I think so too.”

Damien and Kai trekked into the forest every day. Thoughts of home faded the farther they went, and the forest replaced what home meant. Kai still believed their mother was out there somewhere, and their father too, in the woods, waiting for them.

They followed the creek all the way to where it bubbled up from the ground, and they whistled and banged sticks and sang in case the bears were around.

“What do you think Dad is doing?” Kai asked.

“I think he’s carving us grizzly bears,” Damien said.

“Why is he making grizzly bears?”

“Probably because Mom’s writing about a place in the forest.”

“Are there other animals he’s making?”

“Of course. They’re in the place we’re going to right now.”

“Why aren’t they with us now?”

“Because they’re still discovering it for us.”

“Oh. So they’ll be there when we get there?”

“Exactly,” said Damien.

Damien and his brother dropped black ants into antlion pits, their homes like inverted cones. Kai would hold a leaf while Damien swept the ants into its fold, then Kai would shake them into dozens of tiny craters in sandy areas beneath the pines. The ants struggled to escape, but the sand and angle kept them from climbing too far. The antlions, sensing movement, would climb out and snatch a leg, pull the ant into the trap, and suck it dry. Their jaws were as wide as the length of their prey.

“They’re lacewing larvae,” said Kai. “Dad taught me. But I wish they weren’t larvae and that they stayed like they are now and grow to be giants.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.