Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz

Author:Rae Mariz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781777682354
Publisher: Stelliform Press
Published: 2022-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

First Contact

“Beyond the deepest ocean. The center of the sea.” Iliokai hummed the coral’s response, contemplating it. “Do you know where that could be, jelly-sis?”

Don’t call me that. A streak of curt coloring shot through her mulling purples. She was trying to make sense of their meeting with the coral while unsuccessfully mending her mangled siphonophore suit. From inside Iliokai’s travel trash satchel, Ceph could hear the coral speaking below them in snippets of conversation as the whale rider’s powerful body propelled them over the reef. Did her coral city speak like that? She’d never truly listened.

I’ve never heard of anything like The Mother. She peeked out of the bag only to be treated to the view of the whale rider’s mottled skin, the same unchanged scenery she’d stared at for thousands of miles. Never seen anything like they described in all of the deep. Do you believe she exists?

“Believing in mothers is something of a pastime of mine,” Iliokai said self-deprecatingly. Ceph didn’t get the joke.

They crested a ridge and the ocean fell silent.

Below them, ghostly bleached skeleton reefs glowed in the murky water. It might have been considered pretty if not for the brown algae accumulating in clumps, confirming decay.

A devastated wasteland. The multi-genocide.

Iliokai’s jaw unlatched, but instead of a song, she let out a sorrowful howl. It rang through the terrible stillness, but failed to fill it with sound.

The scale of death felt hopeless. Fathomless.

Then Ceph felt something. Beyond Iliokai’s soul-emptying wailing was a vibration. Very faint. Wriggling to free herself from the trash satchel, Ceph found the damage to her protec­tive suit had made it easier for her to maneuver. She followed the sensation. There!

In the longest dead coral, where the algae had enveloped the bones completely, wrapping the gone in tattered shrouds, something was moving. Two fins on the ends of long appendages. A single reflective eye. And an inefficient stream of bubbles escaping to the surface. And that taste! The inorganic blood metal stink! A person from Above?

Ceph moved closer to get a better look.

What weird fishes!

The research diver was retrieving a camera that had documented the slow destruction of the coral reef. How could Ceph know this? She felt an uneasy prickle in her limbs, but moved closer. Curiosity, that dangerous lure.

Closer …

And then Ceph’s entire body seized up, paralyzed by a sudden pain. She imagined it was what her kind’s neurotoxin felt like to others, though she was immune to that chemical makeup.

The weird fish must have a similar defense, and she’d swum right into a biochemical cloud of it.

The hurt was devastating. All three of her hearts ached with a pressure they weren’t made to bear.

Andrew was a boy, ten years old, lifting his knees high to keep the fins from sinking into wet sand on the beach. He bit down on the plastic, wrapped his lips around the mouth­piece. Figured his face needed to look like a fish’s if he were to breathe underwater. He brought the cyclops down over his eyes, adjusted to keep the clear plastic from fogging.

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