Lights on the Sky, Blood in the Air

Halee crested the water as her jaws closed around her prize. For a split second she seemed to hover there, before thrashing her tail and smacking down into the beautiful cool again.

Is it food? the children began.

Do we have to leave again?

I’m hungry.

So are we all, Halee told them. She had been hunting the fur creature for a long time- her body felt drained, verging on lethargic. She’d caught another earlier, but was forced to abandon it when a much larger shark approached her. He’d shaken his head at her and she’d taken the hint; she couldn’t afford to tangle with him, especially not in her current condition.

She gripped the fur creature’s body tight and began to thrash her head from side to side, delighting in the chunks she felt ripped free. By the time she took her third bite, she relaxed, letting herself savor her food and the accomplishment. The children were all excitement.

This is so gooood

This one’s my favorite

You say that about all of them.

But this one really is!

You’re hogging it all!

How can I be, dummy? We’ve all got our own cord.

You’re sucking it up faster or something

That’s nonsense

Yeah well how come you’re the fattest one here? DUMMY?

When she’d first been able to communicate with the kids, she was three months on. Only a month or so after that, Halee had felt the urge in her to get on her way. Benee was going to go too, but he was going somewhere else, to a place that some older sharks kept calling the pulse. It was supposed to be the best spot to eat in the world, though he was doing it mostly to prove to himself he could. He and Halee were both on the longest journeys of their ten-year-old lives. Neither one of them wanted to be stuck back at the reefs for long, especially if the other wasn’t going to be around.

She and Benee had been very close since the nursery years. She’d seen him more than her own siblings, who, after their initial years together in the womb, had scattered directions almost immediately. Having such close quarters could do that to you. Halee had crossed paths with a couple of them since. The distinctive scent of shared gestation never really did completely wash out.

Halee told her children, as she went, how to swim beside but apart from another in meeting, how and when to back down if you were outmatched. She taught them how to read the lights that glimmered on the cap of the water, where air ended and sky began. And she taught them, the first time she caught food for all of them, how to shake it until there was blood all in the air.

Her own mother had done this for her, and the memories had emerged as instinct when she’d finally swam free. She remembered the womb only faintly: the inside of her mind had seen and felt, to some extent, what her mother had seen and felt, except much duller, the way a single blind fin might read the water around it.

She’d thought it would be a relief to finally free herself of the burden she carried. But as the time drew closer and Halee got closer to her destination, she began to wonder where the time went. Maybe she would be lonely then, without their voices inside of her; it would be a long trip back.

You’ll have time to miss me, Benee had laughed, but she already missed him. It was their longest time apart.

—

She could still remember the shock and elation of seeing him for the first time as adults. They’d both gone to the same place, known only as the Caves, to matchmake. She’d smelled him miles away, sensed the electric pulse of his heart.

You followed me, she joked to him. She’d left the nursery before him, assuming she might never see him again, but he’d proven her wrong.

I’m like bad tuna, he’d responded, bumping his nose off of hers.

She nipped his fin playfully.

Never had one I didn’t like.

While others had come together and apart multiple times, she and Benee, young and not as large or desirable, had stayed locked together. His claspers entered and left her and they bit at one another to keep anchored, clouds of their own blood filling the air as she felt a unique pleasure that was almost indistinguishable from pain. They rolled over as one, and Halee went from looking at the endless depths below her to the sparkling lights above. Again, again, and again.

It isn’t good to get so attached to one companion, an elder had chided her once.

What does that mean? she’d asked. Why is it bad?

The ocean is vast, was all she’d replied. There’s lots of danger out there.

Halee flicked her caudal fin. Not for us, she said.

Even for us.

—

Are we there yet? one of the children asked, as Halee took direction from the largest light in the sky, dimming now, and shifted her course just slightly. The water here was colder and deeper, the surface shifting with the cold, flat light of waves she didn’t recognize.

No, Halee answered. She was distracted. There was an electric pulse, louder and slower than any heartbeat, coming to her from above. The dual chambers of her own heart started beating faster. The elder’s words came drifting back to her like errant bits of chum.

How much longer? a pup asked.

Shh, there’s something going on.

What’s going on?

A danger?

A black whale??

Did I say that? How would I know, dummy?

Momma what’s happening?

Halee remained silent. The pulse was getting closer. She’d heard of the black whales, heard they made a music of their own, heard to stay away from them- but this was different. A thrumming noise fell over her, churning the sky up into a storm. And then suddenly, it stopped. Above her hovered a shadow that was longer than she was five times over. Everywhere its large body lay, the light was completely blocked out.

Halee’s hearts started beating faster in anticipation. The pups could sense her excitement.

A new thing!

Where’s the new thing?

Are we going to see what it is?

Let’s go touch it!

Let’s look at it, please momma?

Halee didn’t need any urging. Her curiosity spurred her up to the now-silent shadow as fast as she could go. Her nose hit the bottom of it; it was hard and slick. It was not swimming; it was floating between air and sky, like she’d seen some small sky animals do.

A spaceship! one of the pups yelped.

This is so cool!

What is it, momma?

I don’t know, Halee answered. She felt like a pup herself. She was in the process of circling the mysterious object when something caught her attention at the corner of her eye, and she swam toward it. A glint- not on the water, but in it. A gossamer stand, and a fish, skewered at its end. Dead.

Food, momma!

Old food. Cold food.

Oh who cares!

This is why you’re the fattest one here

Halee stared at the limp fish. It stared back at her with one glazed eye. There was something very strange about this; it only made her more intrigued. She closed her mouth first on the strand: it felt like coarse seaweed in her mouth. When nothing happened, she moved down to the fish, gripping its cold body in her jaws- days old, her mouth reported- and pulling.

It happened all at once. There was, from somewhere, another pulling, stronger than Halee’s own, like a rival had come to take her food. Instinctually she pulled back, hard and pain shot through her mouth. Something foreign and cold lived in this fish, and it bit deep into her. She struggled, this time to get away, but the cutting thing only broke deeper into her jaw.

Ouch!

What was that?

Told you this food was weird!

The cord tightened, deceptively strong. And then she was being drawn, up towards the sky.

Thrashing about to free herself only seemed to make her more ensnared, but she couldn’t help doing so as she broke the air’s surface. Her body smacked against the side of the giant vessel- there was a brightness in her eyes that made it almost impossible to see.

Together inside of her the children chorused one thought: Is this… being born?

Halee couldn’t answer. She was on the spaceship now- her body hit the floor and she squirmed desperately. The sensation of her gills closing on nothing became very obvious. Her skin was dry; it hurt to the touch.

And she was being touched. Foreign paws grasped at her, and when she moved to get away, turning to bite the creature, an alien limb came down on her body, hard, holding her in place.

The sky creatures grasped her all over, and she felt a piercing pain in her dorsal fin. Her pectoral fin suddenly hurt too, burning all over, but Halee had no energy to fight anymore. She only lay there, trying fruitlessly to breathe, her already compromised vision dimming. The children were wailing now. Why wouldn’t they finish her off? The pain kept sawing into her fins; she’d never thought being eaten would be so slow. If only she could breathe, if she could swim, she could easily get away.

Then suddenly, she was lifted off the deck; a spiny paw grappled with the hook in her mouth, pulling it free- and she fell, smacking the surface of the air, before sinking down, down.

At first Halee was exhilarated; she weakly breathed in as much as she could take. But something was wrong. Clouds of blood plumed up around her, filling the air. Her vision still clouded, she attempted to swim away- and found she couldn’t move. They’d eaten her fins.

As if from a distance, she heard the voices of her children, a confused, excited mass.

We’re free!

The aliens are scary!

I don’t wanna go on a spaceship again!

Halee wasn’t sure if she made the decision or her body, wise to what was happening, made it for her. She began to release them.

Her premature, bewildered pups’ voices grew more distant as they swam for the first time, freed from her womb.

Yay! We’re here! We’re here!

Shut up, dummy. Something’s wrong.

Momma? Momma, are you okay?

What’s happening?

Halee couldn’t move, and now she was drowning in the air that had always been her sustenance. Slowly, though, so very slow. She had plenty of time to think, as the lights on the surface grew dimmer, as she tried to see her newborn pups through the smoke of her own blood in the air.

Go, she told them. You remember the direction. You carry it inside you. Go.

Her vision was almost completely dark now. She couldn’t hear their voices anymore, and hoped they got the message. It was unlikely most of them would make it. As she hit the ocean floor, her last thought was of Benee. He’d be waiting for her in a year’s time at the reefs, and she wouldn’t arrive. She wished she could tell him why. She wished that he was here now, that he could be the one to eat her remains.

The ocean is vast.

Until this journey, she’d never known how true it really was.

Until now, it had never made her feel so alone.

*

{ Thanks for reading! This story led me down a path of learning more about sharks that I thoroughly enjoyed. Some parts of it were dark, though. Halee’s story was inspired by the very real, cruel practice of finning. Click here to learn more and to help de-legalize shark fin trading in the US. xx Raist }