The Cove

My heart pounds. I don't remember ever being this frightened in my life. Do I stop to question my motives? Do I worry about putting my siblings at risk? No. I work on emotion only and it feels right to me to tidy up this sad mess.

The lobster boat is old but well kept, painted shiny light blue, with its name on the back in fancy two-leg writing. I can't read it, but Henree told me the boat's name: Moneypenney. My brother Noori, very tough from hauling things, pulls himself up and over the side. He holds a knife in his strong teeth.

Dawn is breaking and soon the boat's owner will appear and board his craft and then we will give him what he deserves. I keep my eyes on the purple house across the road.

******

I don't look like they expect. I know this because the dying two-legs told me. He said his kind believed that mine resemble silken haired two-leg females from the waist up, soft breasted with pink circles on them, but no. We do feed our young but not from pink circles. And our hairs are short and dark. At first, he found my large black eyes alarming. I didn’t mean to frighten him.

He was damaged and ill and lasted twenty days in the cove where I protected him. We communicated by sounds (words he called them) and shrills (we call them) and of course, mind to mind. My name is Nalachi. His name was Henree.

He had worked for his man, he said, fishing for lobsters. The man is mated to Henree's sister, and his name is Charrls. That is how Henree pronounced it. This Charrls hoped to murder Henree over riches Henree and his sister were to receive from their dead mother. I remember stories about pirate two-legs from my ancestors and those pirates murdered many over golden coins and more. It was interesting to know that this was still going on. You would think the two-legs would have learned better by now.

The two-legs take many fish from the sea to feed themselves all over the world without care to the creature's baby making or personal lives. They tell me there are two-legs on the other side of the world who cut the fins off our shark brothers and toss them back into Mother Sea to smother and die. We eat creatures too, but we do not abuse; we respect.

"I see in my mind," I told Henree, "thousands and thousands of the two-legs stuffing themselves and throwing the remains on the ground, then walking away like spoiled kings and queens. Is that how it is?"

"Well," he said, "in some cases, yes. In others, they are more respectful or possibly starving. They don't eat just fish," he said, "they eat other animals."

"The four-legs and the fliers?" I said and Henree agreed.

His sister's husband did not know that his victim still lived. He did not know that Henree told me where his sister lives, right near the shore, a way up from the cove, but not too far for me to look. I swim very fast. I knew the exact spot he meant, where the two-leg houses gather near the docks.

"It is a short walk from her house to where he moors his boat," Henree said. "And her house is easy to spot since it is purple. The only purple house I ever saw. She loves that color."

Henree told me he was afraid to go home after I had stopped the bleeding from his head. We use a certain seaweed, a special kind, for this. I applied it to his leg too and told him to expose the leg to the salt and sunlight to kill any evil in the wounds. We were careful to avoid the eyes of others - his kind who might hurt me and my kind who might hurt him. This was a concealed cove, too rocky and dangerous for boats and not a place to interest my people. It is not a good spot for food.

I had no interest in hurting him as some of my kind might. I am a curious person and have always wanted to be close to a two-leg in order to learn more about them. It pays to make friends when and where you can since you never know when you might need aid.

Henree and I both thought he would survive but he did not. It was clear to me later that when his sister's husband hit him with something on his boat and threw Henree over, the wound was not just torn skin. Inside was hurt. Heads, among my people also, are delicate things.eHenreH

But for all those days and nights, except when I went in search of food, he and I were together. And I tell you, though we were very different beings, we appreciated each other.

According to Henree, two-legs pair off for long times while we rarely do, though not always from lack of desire; it is just our way. There is danger of us dying out; we do not so easily reproduce as the two-legs. Indeed, they do that far too much. We have less males than females and the males are needed to impregnate as many females as possible, so any pairing of love is more likely with two females. Also, the males do not live as long since they wear themselves out with the mating.

So, this was new for me, this extended time with a male person, and I enjoyed it.

"I wish," he said once, so faintly I almost could not hear, "that I could be with you a long time."

"Why?" I asked him.

"You are easy to be with. You're not after my money."

I laughed. "What would I do with money?"

"That's the thing," he whispered. "You have no use for it."

He often spoke ill of his own kind, mostly about their greed and killing. He did not speak ill of his sister, but I asked him about her to make sure she was not bad as her mate.

"Do you trust your sister?"

It was the only time he became angry. He reared up and I had to calm him down, rearrange the piles of seaweed I had made into a softer nest and pet him until he lost the red in his face.

"Linda is a good person and she has so much to deal with. She would have nothing to do with the crap her piece-of-shit husband did! She loves me! But she's married to a monster and she doesn't know it! She must be a glutton for punishment. For that matter, her entire life is one long punishment!"

I did not know what that meant but did not want to rile him up even more by asking. "Don't fret," I said. "You will be well again, and you will return and achieve justice!"

But of course, he could not do that when he did not get well.

His outer wounds healed; the bloody ones on his legs and arm and the one on his head closed but there was swelling. I had to make sure the sharks did not get to him which meant that when he slept, I could not. For the most part, they obey me, though if I had fallen asleep while he did, they would forget who is master. Often things in the sea forget who is master and have to be reminded. We have our ways in those things, which I will not explain to you. Why give away our skills?

Often, under the moon, we talked about ourselves. I had many questions about the two-legs as he did about me. "Do you live in cities?" he wanted to know. "Do you have a ruler? How long do you live? How long have you been on this earth? Where did you come from? Do you live all over the world and do you look alike all over the world?"

I answered his questions, two or three per night; it was something for him to look forward to.

"We don’t look alike all over the world," I told him. "Although we look more like each other than we resemble you."

"All of you are so pale?"

"Yes, we are pale colored. Some are white, some light brown and some grey."

Another night: "Do you live in big groups and if so, don't your people miss you now?"

I did not want to reveal to a two-leg too much about how we live. Even if he would not desire to hurt us, he might tell others who would. "We have groups of relations," I said evasively.

"Clans, you mean," Henree said.

"If that is a good word for it, maybe," I replied.

"Don't they wonder where you are?" He persisted.

I didn't want to frighten him. "One of my sisters knows where I am and she promised not to tell the others, though if danger comes, she will."

"You mean she is watching?" said Henree, a bit alarmed.

"Yes."

Another night: "I don't know where we came from," I told him. "We have been forever. Brother Dolphin tells us that we both came from the stars. I don't know where you two-legs came from. But there are too many of you for this world."

"I know that," Henree said.

"Why is that?" I asked. "Why don't two-legs, as other beings do, regulate their baby making to fit what is available in nature?"

Henree considered. "It is because of religion," he said. "Religions tell then to multiply and that if they don't, they will be punished."

"What is this religion and who will punish them?"

Henree perked up some and looked happier than he had in days, though sometimes he appeared strange. I thought his eyes seemed different, but because I was not used to being up close to two-legs, I was not sure. At first, they had been a clear dark blue but now they seemed cloudy. This gave me a bad feeling.

"A long time ago," Henree said, "A very temperamental god told some people that they had to go forth and multiply. In those days, there were not a lot of people…I mean two-legs…on the earth, so having them multiply did no harm. But now physical life is much easier, more of our needs are met and there is no reason to follow that order anymore. But they believe the temperamental god is living in the sky looking down on them watching and that he will send them to hell if they don't obey his old orders."

"What is hell?" I asked.

"A horrible place that supposedly bad people go to after they die."

I thought about this. My people sometimes spoke with the dead and no one had mentioned any such place.

"Back to this god that was, as you say, temperamental. Did they see him or just hear him?"

Henree considered this. "I don't think they were allowed to look at him. So maybe just heard him."

"Some of us believe in gods," I said. "But not all of us. And our gods are not cruel to the people. At least not in our clan. I cannot speak for all clans. But no one tells us to go forth and multiply though we know we have to if we are to continue. Our bodies and the bodies of our brother animals do not make more children than there is room for. It is evil that yours do."

Henree had no answer.

"I am not sure this particular god of the two-legs is real," I said.

He nodded as if in agreement, but his eyes were looking even worse now as if they were glazing over.

"Henree!" I screeched but he only groaned.

I grabbed him and shook him. His head fell to the side. My finger felt his neck for the sound of his heart and there was nothing. My sister on watch farther out sensed my distress and moved closer. I dragged Henree higher onto the sand and was careful to cushion his head and I pushed on his chest where I assumed his heart was, at least where ours is. I pushed and pushed and pushed but to no avail.

My sister moved in close now. "He is dying?" she asked.

"It is over," I said.

She looked him over. It was not her first time of seeing a dead two-legs up close. She had seen two of them before in a boat accident, keeping one in order to study his body. "Yes, he is dead," she confirmed.

Her name is Llapi and she is older than I. She is like a mother to me. Our own died many suns ago; I was her last child and Llapi was her first.

"What should we do with him?" My throat felt so thick I could hardly speak.

"Do you want his body to be found or not?" she said.

I thought about this. If it was found, would his sister's evil husband get into trouble? Or would they assume Henree had just drowned in some natural way? Surely, if his murderer saw the body, he would either find a way to get rid of it or just lie to the authorities? Would seeing it make his sister's life better than it was? Were the two-leg authorities asking Charrls questions right now? He must have fabricated a story about Henree disappearing.

Llapi waited patiently for my answer. Finally, I said, "Let us give him respect and take him out to sea where he can join the elements."

Which is what we did, and I felt sure this is what Henree would have preferred.

But when Llapi assumed I was back to home and a normal way of life, I assured her that I was not finished with the two-legs.

"No, no," she warned me. "You know the rules. We do not involve ourselves with them for any reason. They are killers, they kill everything, they--"

I interrupted her. "We kill too," I said.

"Only when necessary."

"Maybe they think they do that too."

Llapi bared her teeth, which she did when angry. "Don't compare the two ways, Nalachi," she growled. "You have no idea how they behave. You are young and still stupid."

"Maybe so," I said, "but I am asking Noori to help me. If you are not interested in achieving this justice then stay here and play with your orphan dolphin, I don't care."

Though I did care and was overjoyed when Llapi reluctantly said she would stick by me. She was the fiercest of us all and I needed her.

Henree said that Charrls called his lobster boat "Moneypenney" since it made him money but not much. Charrls thought that was amusing.

Moneypenney was moored on a dock close to where Charrls and Linda lived. It was easy to see this purple house among the other houses, most of them gray or brown.

I felt as if my whole body was electrified, like that special eel a visitor once told us about. We ourselves have never seen such a thing; it does not live in our near ocean. But now I feel as if that eel is my sister.

I am working myself up to kill and I plan to do it slowly, to take Charrls up and down, once Nooran cuts him a little, pushes him over and he is in our hands. The blood will attract the shark brothers, and I can tease him a bit before handing him over to them.

But then the purple house door opens, and a man pushes a woman out of it and she is riding in a thing with wheels. I know about wheels; I have seen two-leg moving vehicles from afar and they run on these turning wheels. This two-leg female is doing such and the man pushes her out though later I see she can cause the thing to move on its own. The man is tall and very thin, and I think he will not make good food for the shark brothers. He walks slightly bent over and he looks tired. His skin is almost as pale as my own. He pushes the woman to the dock and then helps her turn the chair to face Moneypenney. He bends down to kiss and caress her and walks to the boat. She stays to watch and then once he is on it, she turns her chair and heads back to her house. There are other two-legs about now and one of them stop to talk with her.

It hits me that if Noori, Llapi and I kill her mate, she will be left to herself and a two-leg who cannot walk must be vulnerable to many predators. She would not be the master of situations as one needs to be.

Why did Henree not tell me this about his sister? All he said once was that she had suffered a terrible loss, and he did not want to talk about it. I assumed he meant she had lost a child. But I did not expect this.

Her husband is on the boat now and since it isn't full light yet, he does not notice Noori who must be lying behind something on the floor.

"This can't happen," I say to my sister.

She looks at me as if I have lost my mind. "What are you saying?"

Not answering her, I give the long whistle which says to Noori that he must abort the mission.

"What are you doing?" Llapi hisses. "He is in danger now. That two-leg might have one of their killer things!"

She means a gun. Henree told me about them, what they are called, how they kill.

I make the whistle again and Charrrls comes to the side of the boat and looks over into the dark water. But we go quickly under.

I hear a splash from the other side and know that my brother is safely back in the water. I feel a great relief.

We are together in the deep now and I signal to travel a bit further away before I explain to them what caused the change. They stare at me, waiting.

"The two-legs is a monster," I tell them. "But his wife…she is damaged and probably helpless without his care. Henree loved her and he wouldn't want her to be alone and afraid. I saw him with her, this murderer, and he was kind to her. Maybe he hurt Henree because he needed all the riches to take care of her. Who can know?"

My brother, always a sly one, says, "And who is to know if Henree told the truth?"

Nooran is often like that. He stings like the jelly animal when you are least expecting it.

He may or may not be right. I will never know. All I hope is that Henree's spirit is at peace.

THE END

Bio:Margaret Karmazin’s credits include stories published in literary and SF magazines, including Rosebud, Chrysalis Reader, North Atlantic Review, Mobius, Confrontation, Pennsylvania Review, The Speculative Edge, Aphelion, AnotherRealm and The Rabbit Hole. Her stories in The MacGuffin, Eureka Literary Magazine, Licking River Review and Mobius were nominated for Pushcart awards. She has stories included in several anthologies, published a YA novel, REPLACING FIONA, a children’s book, FLICK-FLICK & DREAMER and a collection of short stories, RISK.

E-mail: Margaret Karmazin

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