cracks of the gills of nearby fish remind me of Father’s scars, shiny marks on a muscular back, and I close my eyes again.
(See it: You do not have slits on your neck for breathing. Instead the waters pass through your nose—or sometimes through your mouth—into your chest, and then back out again, warmer than when they entered.)
I open my eyes once more. But the image of scars persists, so I hide in the light of a wider truth.
(But you are not so alone in differences. The bodies of fish are not wholly unlike yours. Your legs end in darker tails that ripple like yau leaves when you want to move—not unlike the smaller tails of the smaller bodies darting around you. Their tails take them where they wish to go—just as yours do, though your destinations are different than theirs. See it: You swim the familiarity of your territory, or venture farther when you choose to attend one of the congregations of your kind of “fish” every two hundred days....)
But on this day I have no desire to move, to travel anywhere. My right hand clenches and unclenches, and my twisted left hand trembles, both of them following the nervous motion that is deeper than my body.
All the raging travel I need is within my soul, and I try to deny it.
(See it: On the outer edge of your soul runs the babble of fish swimming near you, some within eyes’ touch, but most beyond it. And among their yellow babble flow the pale murmurs of those tiny souls that inhabit every point in the sea, though the eye never manages to touch them. “Those millions of tiny souls,” your father told you often, “make possible the talk and touch between our souls, and all larger souls. Without will, they capture our colors and thoughts; without will, they pass on the talk of our souls, through their own endless hordes until our feeling thoughts reach other souls of our kind, or the friendly soul of another kind, or the dark raging soul of a toothed jaw.)
But the churning traveling in me rushes deeper than these thoughtful lights.
At other times I would be able to touch the mumblings of dumb murmursome—a simple friend—or the wisdom of poundgrayly, the old euyom befriended by screamdeep in his own youth. But today no such touches can be made, and I do not even pause to question murmursome’s rare absence, or the unusual length of poundgrayly’s visit to his females and their islands.
Because Mother is with me, as is Father. Though screaming dying, she is still alive in screamdeep’s memory of her day of death, and I pried this memory from Father long ago.
I become Father watching and sharing Mother’s dying....
“A soul may give his experience to another soul,” Father once said. “The soul who receives is able to remember the gift of event as if it were his own, from the beginning and in the now. But the dark truth is: such gifts can be dangerous. The truth is: a child who receives too many gifts from others’ memories may lose his own personal soul, may forget who he is and fall into splitting darkness. And if too many of the gifts are moments of death...
I become Mother dying.
And Father’s soul, in Father’s memory, will not let go of me.
I struggle to leave, and in the end, when the memory is spent, I win.
But I lose in other ways.
Once again I return from waterjoyup’s death, screamdeep’s agony, and my own raw birth with the bleeding sore of a truest truth: I am a terrible child named fishsinger, killer of mothers.
I always wanted—as any soul would—the memory of my own birth. But when I finally received it, it became death itself; and still I want it—as any soul would.
I started young to pry, coax, plead for Father to give it to me, soul to soul, in the vivid now of given events.
Father refused, denied, protected me from it with the pretended pink of a lie: “Waterjoyup...? She died when you were young. That is all. The simplest of truest truths.”
But dark colors of mood, strange rivers of feeling flowed often from screamdeep’s soul when the momentary thought of waterjoyup came to either of us. So I continued to pry, to peer, to question, or to probe at more dishonest levels.
Sixty days before screamdeep’s death, I found him asleep in the yau, and pierced his memory for the truer truth—
—that fishsinger’s life had brought waterjoyup’s death.
It did not matter that Father no longer saw it that way. He had once, and once would always be now.
Curiosity brought me pains that cannot be dimmed by time. And still my blue curiosity learned nothing from the experience.
The next time—after Father’s death—brings equal pains, in a probe of poundgrayly’s soul.
The face of wrinkled scales, the tiny eyes, the ancient depths, witnessed screamdeep’s death. Without will, the man offered his death’s moment, and such an offering can never be refused, with or without will.
To my own eyes and eye of soul the day of Father’s death occurred too simply—incomplete:
I was sick, not from white moss on skin, but from the smallest invisible souls who had chosen my stomach as their territory. Screamdeep left me with a man and woman in the nearest territory and went with poundgrayly to find a scarce food called “eye shells” whose meat was believed good for sicknesses of the stomach and chest.
I waited, and was surprised when the pains of stomach began to leave on their own, as the thousands of tiny souls within began dying and dimming in the victory of my body.
Poundgrayly came back.
The return of one soul—when two had left—should have been enough to bring understanding, but I could not touch the truth so easily.
Eyes always have less range than souls. It was one lone soul, indistinguishable in the distance, who called softly to me from gray waters:
“I am called poundgrayly, who is alone and sorry.”
Poundgrayly approached and offered only: “Your screamdeep father has died. One accident, without will, his or mine, at the talons of ioe.”
My muscles hardened, and I probed for more.
Poundgrayly refused. Small eyes blinking. Heavy soul pounding brown, like a shelter of leaves, reprimanding: “I cannot give it. Your screamdeep father would not have me give it.”
“So you do have it!” I shouted, green rivers browning. “He did give you his death!”
“He did not choose to—I did not choose to receive it. Gift without will. But now poundgrayly will not give it to you. Why do you desire his moment so?”
“He was my father! Two souls share from birth to death. He would want it so! I have the right...”
“You do not.”
I prodded, probed and bothered the old soul. Poundgrayly defended with: “I find you stupid. You desired your mother’s death moment, and you got it, and agony with it, and crags of guilt you do not deserve. But perhaps you deserve something for your stupid unlearning way.”
I gave no answer. I began
