September 14, 2015 | Occasus | Issue 5 | Fiction
The Silver Fish
Clara
In the midnight hallway of the farmhouse, the moon slipped silver rays between the curtains of the big window and splayed them splish-splash across the floor. A brass knob turned slowly, slowly and a bedroom door opened just a crack to reveal one bright eye, searching the dark. It was Clara, in her pajamas and braided black hair, breathing steady and hearing nothing but the thump-thump of her heart. The stars were awake tonight and so was she, leaving behind her in the moon-streaked hallway only a whisper on the unsettled carpet and her shadow to follow dancing at her feet. Clara met the cool night air while sliding through the back door and stepping out onto the sunken chip-scratched porch. A field of black grass spread before her. The silence was huge and Clara felt as if time had frozen and reversed, rewound to the night a year ago when she had first escaped the house and heard her brother’s whisper on the cold breeze. The night the stars had spun like stirred glitter, and the moon had watched over everything, an unblinking white eye. The night after Michael had died. She could see him everywhere: sitting beside her on the porch, digging in the garden for worms, sneaking into the old wood barn, or waiting for her by the forest so they could walk to the creek together. Michael was waiting there now, and Clara shuddered at the sight of his tiny white body half immersed in shadows by the tree line; his puffed cheeks, the black circles that were his eyes. “Oh Michael,” Clara said. Whipped wind touched her face and with icy fingertips slid down her back. Clara ran. She ran off the porch and away from her house into the field. Farther, faster, running past the old well where the cows used to drink, and past the slanted, creaky wood barn that the wind rattled through and moaned like grinding teeth. Clara ran all the way to the edge of the forest. Michael was no longer there. She paused and whirled wide eyed to look back at the farmhouse, where she half expected her mother or father to be coming down the porch steps after her, to stop her. But the farmhouse was sleeping and so were her parents, cuddled dark and warm in their bed. A shiver rocked through Clara’s body. She turned and disappeared into the forest. The river rose from between the trees and shadow-stained leaves like a swift and clenching fist to tighten around Clara’s throat. Her toes curled over the edge of its steep embankment, where the path ran down and disappeared into the stream. She was cold—colder than the sky reflected in the creek, colder than the damp dirt between her toes. Colder even than the mist white image of Michael across the river, raising one bone finger to point her out, then fold himself back into the forest. The cold had reached her heart, she feared, and she stepped down into the tumbling current. Her eyes were black like his. Dug out hollows, dug out graves. Her voice became glass bubbles. Her fingers spread and caught the silver fish of the river. Michael River berries are the best kind of berries. They might be sour and squeaky on your tongue if you choose the bad ones that aren’t red yet, but if you pick the good soft ones there’ll be an explosion of flavour. An explosion, KABLAM!, like on TV. Clara told me about the berries when we were walking to the creek yesterday. She said they live by the river so the water makes them so juicy it’s like sweet sugar rain in your mouth. I never had the berries before, but I could taste them all right. That’s how good Clara is at telling things. Like you were already there and ate the berries too. Mum says that’s ‘cause Clara’s got a magination. Clara takes me to the creek every day. That’s where we climb trees and collect rocks and try to catch fish with our hands. They’re really slip-slidey and I can never get them, but Clara’s real good. I said once, can we eat it? and Clara said I could eat it if I caught it, but that was her slidey fish and she loved it, so plop! she put it back in the water. It swam deep and all silver away, down at the mud bottom where my feet can’t touch and I couldn’t see it anymore. I thought if Clara loved it so much, why’d she let it go? Sometimes I have dreams about those slidey fish like I’m in the water with them. They say hello and open their big googly eyes, flapping their arms slow, just staring at me. Sometimes they swim through my one ear and out the other like my head’s empty and that gives me the jeebies. Always at the end of my dream they swim away again to the dark mud bottom. I’m alone in the creek and I realize I have no arms or legs and the water can move me anywhere it wants. Mostly I just want to turn over and look at the sky and not the mud bottom. I want to scream, but I have no sound in me either. Just little glass bubbles come out of my mouth that look like eyes and I get real scared because they are my eyes. Those dreams make me hot cold in my bed and I don’t tell them to anybody, not even Clara. Definitely not Mum because she would say I have a magination too. But those dreams are so real, like the water is touching me, that I know they don’t come from my magination. I think they come from somewhere else like Clara’s star dreams where she sees me smiling down at her even though I’m far away in the sky. I think Clara’s really good at taking care of other people like me down at the creek but sometimes not herself. Her pet toady got killed today by accident when she kicked the metal bucket over ‘cause she was in a hurry. That toady got squished flat all over. I even saw his guts. I told her it’s ok Clara, I can catch you another one I’m good at that, not like the slidey fish, but she just ran to her room right past me. Mum said not to go up there but I did and I put my ear on the door real quiet and Clara was crying. Mum says she just has the biggest heart and can’t help falling in love with almost everything. Clara was right, the river berries are a KABLAM! in my mouth and I still want to eat more even though they hurt my tummy. We ate them all day down at the creek and we laughed at our faces all covered with river berry juice like sticky red blood. Today was the hottest at the creek, so thank goodness for the trees that hide the sun. The water was cold on my feet and I wanted to go deep but Clara said no ‘cause I might go where I can’t touch. I was mad but I said okay. We decided to catch some fish, but I couldn’t even touch one today. Clara caught six and when I asked her if I could hold one she said no I would probably want to eat it and bite its head off, Ha Ha. I laughed ‘cause I thought she would give it to me if I did that, but she just threw it in the creek again. She was mean because I knew the rules. I knew no eating the fish unless I caught it. Clara said she was hungry for river berries again and she said come with me and I said no. She was mad too, so she said fine, wait here, but don’t go into the water! I asked can I dangle my toes in from the edge? She said okay. But I didn’t dangle my toes in. It was really hot hot and I was mad at Clara so I went right up to my shoulders. She would see me all wet when she got back and yell, but I didn’t care, I was that mad. I even went up to my chin. The water got too cold and I wanted the hot hot sun again so I tried going back to the shallow but the water was up past my chin and my toes were stretching but it was hard to walk. Then the water was up to my nose, then my toes weren’t even touching and I tried yelling, Clara! But I couldn’t get above to breathe. I fought the water for a long time. Then, from the deep dark of the creek I saw the silver slidey fish, the one Clara wouldn’t let me hold. I caught it. It was easy. I just reached out and it swam to my hand. I ate it, gulp. After that I became a fish too and I could breathe again. I wonder when Clara will be back with the river berries; she said she’d only be a minute. |
ERICA MCKEEN is a second year student at Western. She is currently completing an Honors Specialization in Creative Writing and English Language Literature. She has been published in issue four of Occasus, and issue three of Nom de Plume.