The Dark Issue 4, page 4
part #4 of The Dark Series
“Niko! Alekos!” Sotiris shouts as soon as he spots them. “Come sit! Drink!”
Maria follows the men quietly and takes a seat at the corner of the table, trying to remain as unseen as possible. They know she’s there—there was no one to leave her with, anyway; no grandparents, no aunts or uncles on this island, only widows and fate-stricken cripples, trying to get by—but they try to forget. And for the few moments between emptying a glass and filling it up again, they succeed. They even come to ignore the canes of the crippled divers that rest against so many of the chairs, the half-worn coats, the trembling hands that barely manage to raise their glasses.
But then the music changes and a silence falls on the crowd. It’s the Mechanic’s Song, the island’s truest tune. Faces turn downwards for a while, eyes look inwards. A few sigh. A woman whose husband died while diving dries her eyes and empties her glass. But when the singer begins his song, five men spring up from their seats and start to dance, Nikos and Alekos among them.
I will either be a Mechanic, the song says, in its irregular, speech-like pattern, or they will bury me in the sand. I will be a Mechanic, and one day they will bury me in the wet sand.
The five men dance in an open circle. Alekos is last, leaving his numb arm free, his other wrapped around Nikos’s shoulders. The lead dancer is an old man, bent almost all the way to the ground, supporting himself on a wooden stick. His legs shake. At the end of the first turn, he nearly collapses. The second dancer catches and steadies him. They go on, slowly, struggling against an invisible current, as if they are still walking on the bottom of the sea in their iron shoes. And then the music picks up speed, and the old man suddenly straightens his back, throws his stick away and starts jumping around, showing off, his chest bursting with joy. I am a Mechanic, and let them bury me in the wet sand one day, the singer sings. The dance concludes, the old man falls to the ground, exhausted, broken. The rest of the men carry him back to his seat. His wife wipes his forehead. Maria watches as each of the men kiss the old diver between the eyes, thanking him for his gift, and then return to their drinks a little lighter.
Early the next morning, while her father is still asleep, his breathing heavy with the wine of last night, Maria slips away quietly. The sea is calling her. She knows her father will be furious, but she takes the dirt road down to the shore anyway. When she arrives at the beach, the tiniest slice of sun has appeared behind the mountain to the east.
Maria sits on the wet, cold sand and waits. She watches the waves, too high and too dark for this time of day, and listens for the solemn cry of the water. And before long, she spots the woman’s form perched on the rocks to her right. The rocks are not that far from the shore; the current may be strong, but with a little luck she could reach her. She takes her clothes off and walks straight into the water.
The woman sees the waves crash against the little body, threatening to consume her. No, land baby, she thinks. What are you doing? Go back to your papa. But the girl swims fast and strong. The woman can’t help but admire her determined strokes—she’s good at this. She’s so close now; a few more strokes and she could touch her, put her arms around her, feel her little heart beat against her chest, be with her. She pushes the thought away.
“Go back to your papa!” the woman shouts, and dives, and swims away.
Alekos stays on the boat more and more when they go out sponge diving and lets Nikos do the underwater work. Yet, he misses it: the pride of being able to provide for his daughter doing the only work his people deem worthwhile. The thrill of being this other creature, and at the same time the solace, the return to a fluid world, the black-and-whiteness of the lifeline: it works, you live; it is severed, you die. He has given up on his arm, tries to convince himself he can make do with just his other one. It doesn’t always work.
One day, his arm feels so heavy he decides there is no point in even going out to the sea. He sits outside his house, trimming sponges: steadying them between his knees, clippers in his right hand. Clip, clip, squish. Clip, clip, squish. Time passes, and that’s the most he can ask for.
At noon, when the sun is at its hottest, Maria comes home, her hair wet, her skin white with sea salt. She’s been to the sea again. Alekos feels the blood rush to his head as soon as he sees her. He stands up.
“What were you thinking?” he screams. “How many times have I told you, I don’t want you going down to the sea alone.”
The girl is stunned by his sudden anger. She can’t move. “But mama is lonely,” she whispers. “I can’t leave her alone.”
Alekos’s knees buckle and he grasps the back of his chair to steady himself. He holds it in. This grief, this helplessness. “I miss her too,” he says finally.
“Mama?” the girl asks.
No, the sea, he wants to say, but doesn’t. “Tomorrow,” he says instead. “We’ll go together, tomorrow.”
“Will you dive?”
He tries to clench his left fist. It doesn’t obey.
“Yes,” he says.
“With the suit?”
“No. Not this time. Just with the stone this time.”
Maria drags the big white stone all the way to the shore. Alekos didn’t tell Nikos what he was planning to do, because he knew he would never let him go alone. Nikos would have tied him to the chair if he had to.
They arrive at the sea early in the morning, while the sun is still low in the east.
“Wait here for me, okay?” he says.
The little girl nods and sits on the sand, her tattered grey dress puffed around her, making her look like a sickly anemone.
It’s been months since the last time he dove with just the stone. But skin-diving is in his blood, he tells himself. It is in the island’s blood. He pushes the boat off and navigates to the usual spot. Then he strips down to his bathing suit, ties one end of a short rope around the stone and the other around his waist. He waves at the sun, packs his lungs with as much air as he can take in, and jumps head first into the water.
He descends fast, reaches the bottom in what feels like a minute. It must be deep, because the pressure crushes his eardrums. He doesn’t care, because the sponges are there, alive, magnificent, waiting for him to collect them. And yet, at that moment he realizes he’s left his hook on the boat, didn’t even bring a knife to cut the sponges loose.
He wants to laugh, but can’t. He hugs the stone to his chest with his good arm. He can hear his heart beating slowly, slowly, filling his ears. But there is something else, something more. This sound, the voice of the sea that holds him and soothes him, because he knows it is the most ancient voice there is.
The euphoria starts to set in. He knows this is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a diver—it happened to his father, his uncle, countless of his childhood friends. It is the rapture of the deep; the air in your lungs turns into a sweet poison that traps you like a siren. He bites hard on his lip to ward it off, but the drunkenness lulls him, his breath transforms into wine, into heaven, into pure joy. He lets the stone go and drifts with the current as far as the rope will let him. His vision blurs, and he’s almost gone, when a bright flash pulls him momentarily back to his senses. He thinks he sees a woman in front of him—a glorious blur of skin and scales. Her hair caresses his shoulders so peacefully, so tenderly, but then he sees her eyes and they are frantic. She tries to untie the knot from his waist, while he looks at her with a lack of understanding. She pulls him, her mighty tail flapping against the current.
He shakes his head.
But the joy, he wants to tell her, before his vision darkens completely. The joy. Don’t you see?
The girl is still sitting on the beach when she emerges from the water. It is the first time she can get close enough to see the child clearly. She’s beautiful.
The woman swims to the shore, where the waves fade into foam. Her long tail flaps against the wet sand. It’s the first time she’s not crying.
“Mama?” Maria calls.
The woman holds out her hand. “Come here, baby,” she says, her voice sweet and deep and terrifying.
“Did papa send you?”
The woman shivers slightly as a breeze of air from the mainland touches her skin, carrying with it the smell of the land people. “Come,” she says again.
Maria walks over and joins the woman in the water. They go in as far as the girl is able to walk, and when her feet cannot reach the bottom any more, the woman wraps her arms around her and lifts her, holding her close to her chest. The girl’s dress is wet, wrapping itself around her body like dead seaweed. She doesn’t seem to care.
“Are we going to find papa?” Maria asks. She ignores the keen, needle-like teeth when the woman smiles her warm, motherly smile. And she doesn’t care that these are not her mother’s eyes, nor her hair, nor her nose. And she ignores the scaly arms that hold her tight when they dive.
And the woman, she pretends she can’t see the girl gasp for air, and lets the sound of her heart drown in the ever-mourning voice of the sea. And she tries to believe with everything she has that maybe this one, this land baby, can breathe underwater. Maybe this one can.
Natalia Theodoridou is a media & theatre scholar based in the UK. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Clarkesworld, The Kenyon Review Online, Strange Horizons, Spark Anthology IV (Grand Prize winner of Spark Contest Three), and elsewhere. She was recently nominated for a Rhysling award. She is a first reader for Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi. Her personal website is www.natalia-theodoridou.com.
Cover Art: “Broken”
Susan Justice (aka McKivergan) is a self taught digital artist and mother of three beautiful children. She is a stay-at-home mom and tries to work while the kids are in school or in between naps, pretty much whenever they allow her to. She is married to her best friend Andrew. In her spare time (which isn’t much!) she enjoys playing several Blizzard games, WoW, Starcraft, and Diablo 3.
Jack Fisher, The Dark Issue 4
