Never Trust a Talking Fish

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Evander Akintolo was the first in a long line. He didn’t start out being a dragon. But when you accept magical gifts from talking fish, well, you can just guess how things might end up.

On a bright, steaming hot day in early July, Evander Akintolo—Vandie, for short—took his fishing rig down to the pond out by Mr. William’s farm and set up under a nice shady oak tree. If he caught some fish for dinner, well, his Mama would like that just fine. And if he didn’t, he’d still spend the afternoon outdoors so Mama didn’t get after him to clean his bedroom or weed the vegetable garden or help her with canning green beans in the hot kitchen. Besides which, he could go for a swim in the pond if it got really hot, which it would.

In July, in Alabama, it always got way too hot.

Vandie unwrapped some leftover shrimp from last night’s dinner to bait his hook, cast his line as far out into the still water as he could throw, and settled back against the trunk of the oak tree to play Legends of Runeterra on his phone.

After a couple of hours, Vandie was getting ready to pack up and head home for dinner, after taking a nice cool swim first, of course, when his line finally started wiggling. Then the floater got to bobbing madly up and down, and then it went under altogether. Vandie grabbed his rod and started reeling, playing that catfish so’s it got tired enough to give up the fight and he could land it without breaking his line. He played that catfish for hours, it seemed, but it didn’t never seem to tire out. It just kept on tugging and darting, until Vandie’s hands were cramping up from the tension on his rig.

But finally, he got that catfish close enough in to shore that he could see its face through the muddy water. It had the longest whiskers he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of catfish in his short life. There was nothing Vandie liked better than his Mama’s Southern fried catfish.

He was just about to give that catfish a gigantic tug and fling it out of the water and onto the bank when it tuck its head out of the water and spoke to him. (I told you there would be a talking fish, didn’t I though? Well, here it is.)

So, that catfish opened up its mouth and said to Vandie (around the hook stuck through its lower jaw), “Ple-e-ease let me go! I’ve lived in this here pond for near onto twenty years, and I don’t care to end my life in your Mama’s frying pan!”

Vandie, for all his experience of eating catfish, had no experience at all with talking to one. His mouth dropped open about as wide as that fish’s own mouth, but it was amazement that caused his gaping, not a fishing hook through the lip. When he finally got a’hold of himself, he said about the stupidest thing a boy could say when confronted with a talking fish.

Yes, he sure did.

He said, “You’re a talking fish!”

The catfish sort of snorted out some of that muddy pond water. “What gave me away?” he said snidely.

Vandie closed his mouth and tilted his head to one side, looking at that smartass fish with his Mama’s well I never look. “You,” he spoke more clearly, having regained some of his natural assurance, “are a talking fish with att-i-tude.”

“So I’ve been told,” the catfish said. “Anyway, ple-e-ease will you let me go? So’s I can swim around in this here muddy pond and make lots of little baby catfish and live happily ever after?”

Now, Evander Akintolo had been raised up on a steady diet of Southern tall tales and literal fish stories, about unlikely things that happened to small boys. He knew very well that if a talking anything asks for a favor—or a boon, as the old folks like to say—you were supposed to ask for a reward. And far be it from Vandie to miss out on what could be his one and only chance to get something decent out of this situation.

“What’ll you give me if I let you go?” he asked.

“What? Does it look like I got pockets to carry a wallet in?” the catfish asked sarcastically. “I might could find a phone somebody dropped in the pond awhile back, but it won’t work. Water, ya know what I mean?”

Vandie thought back on all the stories he’d heard. “What about luck everlasting? You must be a magic fish,” he said. “If you can talk, then you must be able to do other magic stuff. You could make me to always be lucky.”

The catfish knew now that this was no dumb kid he was dealing with. He gave a huge, burbling sigh. What could he do now? Only one choice—

“Okay, look kid,” the catfish said, “I got something you’ll like. It’s magic. I don’t know all the specifics, ‘cause I found it lying on the bottom one day when I was sucking up algae. Swallowed it, I did. But when I shat it back out, I put it away for safekeeping. And I’m willing to give it to you if you let me go.”

Vandie wasn't thrilled at the thought of carrying away something the catfish shat out of his butt, even if it was magic. But beggars can't be choosers.

“How do I know it’s any good?" he asked. "What kind of magic is it?”

The catfish tossed its head, sending water spraying everywhere. That was how a catfish shrugs, if you get my drift. “Well, I can talk, can’t I? Never could before, so-o-o…”

Vandie had to admit that was the truth.

“All right then, hand over the magic and I’ll let you go.”

Now then, there was a deal of trust involved in this here transaction, ‘cause Vandie had to take the hook out of that there catfish’s mouth so it could swim down to the bottom of the pond and get the magic thingy. When he popped back up next to the bank, he spat something out on the ground at Vandie’s feet.

“There,” the catfish said. “Like I told you, I don’t rightly know what all it does, but there’s magic in it. Have a nice day!” And the catfish disappeared.

Vandie picked the magic thingy up and rolled it around in the palm of his hand. When he’d brushed the mud off’n it, he could see that it was a huge pearl, big as a marble. Looked like one of his Mama’s pearls on her go-to-church necklace, but without any hole for the string to go through. He rubbed that pearl and squeezed that pearl and whispered “Abracadabra!” to it, but nothing happened. So he stuck it down deep in his pocket, packed up his fishing rig, and went on home for dinner.

If nothing else, he had a story to tell ‘bout a talkin’ fish. That should be good for something.

***

Now, with his Mama getting after Vandie to help clean up the kitchen (after she made all the mess canning green beans, no less!), and eating dinner, and checking his homework for school the next day, Vandie clean forgot about that pearl sitting in his pocket. Like usual, when he got ready for bed that night, Vandie just shucked out of his jeans and T-shirt, left them lying on the floor (his Mama would yell at him the next day ‘bout that), put on his pajamas and climbed into bed. But sometime in the night, he woke from a dream about talking with that catfish about Einstein’s theory of relativity and sat up in bed with a start. He reached over the side of his bed and pulled his jeans over to him, feeling in the pocket for that pearl.

But the jeans were almost too heavy to lift. He felt for the pearl in his pocket. It was buried inside a big ball of mud. Pond mud.

That hadn’t been there when he went to bed…

But he found the pearl in the middle of that mud ball and rinsed it off in the bathroom sink, careful not to make a noise and wake his Mama up. He then put it a box under his bed, the one where he kept his Star Wars Funko Pops collection. They were his most precious things, especially his Grogus. And then he went back to sleep.

When he got up for school the next morning, his Mama was on him about putting on clean clothes and why was his sneakers all muddy and where’s your backpack. He barely had time to scarf down a couple of toaster waffles before the bus would come, but he ran back in his room to grab that pearl from ‘neath his bed. And when he pulled out that Funko Pops box from under the bed, what did he see?

The box—which had held his seven favorite Pops, plus a printed-out page of ones he wanted to get for his birthday and Christmas and the like—was full to the top with Funko Pops! Emperor Palpatine, and Ahsoka, and Boba Fett, and Electrocuted Vader, and Kylo Ren, all the ones he’d been wanting but couldn’t afford to buy for himself.

Every single one on that page he’d printed out on the library computer, in fact.

Vandie sat back on his heels in shock, his mouth hanging open. He just sat there until his Mama screeched, “Vandie! The bus is comin’!” and he had to shove that box back under the bed and run for the front door. And he held that magic pearl in his fist until he got on the bus and sat down in the back seat, right by the emergency door. He pulled his insulated lunch bag out of his backpack and put the pearl in there with his turkey sandwich and his RingDings and his orange, and zipped his backpack all the way shut.

When it got to be lunchtime, he sat down to eat with his best friends, Darius and DeShaun, and pulled out his lunch bag to show them the pearl. He started in to telling them about the talking catfish, and when he went to pull out the pearl, well, small as it was compared to his sandwich and orange and RingDings, it had fallen way down in the very bottom. Vandie started pulling out the food his Mama had packed so’s he could find the pearl. And he’s pulling out food, and pulling out food, and kept on pulling out food.

By the time his fingers found that pearl in the wayback corner of his lunch bag, Vandie’d pulled out sixteen turkey sandwiches and eleven oranges and thirty-four double packs of RingDings.

Darius and DeShaun just sat there watching this operation with wide eyes and hanging-open mouths. And then other kids started coming and watching. By the time the vice-principal saw what was happening and pulled Vandie up by the arm and marched him off to the office to call Mrs. Akintolo and tell her she shouldn’t send her son to school with a week’s worth of lunches in his lunch bag, Vandie had figured out he better keep quiet about the magic pearl. When the vice-principal was on the phone with his Mama, Vandie hid that pearl between the pages of his math book—where his unfinished homework page was tucked in (which made the cover bulge out and cracked the spine)—well, Vandie was feeling pretty glad he’d got that pearl instead of having fried catfish for dinner.

And when he got back to his classroom and his teacher told the kids, “Pass your math homework forward,” and Vandie saw that the page was all filled in with his handwriting, all the math problems he hadn't gotten finished with done for him, well, let’s just saw he smiled as wide as the cat that ate the canary.

Do catfish eat canaries, you wonder? Well, so do I.

But that’s neither here nor there.

That night, when Vandie’s Mama got home from working the afternoon shift at the diner, and was soaking her sore feet in a basin of hot water and Epsom salts while she sat in the living room chair, Vandie told Mama he’d take care of dinner.

“I got this, Mama,” he said. “You just rest awhile.”

“You’re a good boy, Vandie,” Mama said, leaning back and closing her eyes.

Vandie went into the kitchen and pulled an empty Cook Out burger bag from the storage cupboard and dropped the pearl inside. He held that bag in his hands and closed his eyes and saw in his head what he wanted to come out of that bag when he opened it.

And there it was!

Two Big Double burgers. Hush puppies. Chicken strips. Fries and onion rings, both! And two Cheerwine floats.

He put all of the food on a baking sheet like he was bringing a customer at the diner their meal on a fancy tray. And he tucked that pearl back in his pocket for safekeeping before he carried their dinner into the living room.

“Mama,” he said as he put that tray down on the coffee table in front of his Mama, and her eyes got big, “I got a story I need to tell you.”

***

Now, here I’m gonna skip over some parts, ‘cause this here story is getting kind of longish. Suffice it to say that from then on, Vandie and his Mama had everything their hearts desired. They didn’t need to go to Food Lion to buy groceries anymore. They never went to WalMart again to buy school clothes or new sneakers or anything else. When their old car broke down, Vandie put the pearl in the glove box and locked up the car that night, and when they got up the next morning there was a brand-new SUV sitting in the driveway. And when Mama started in to wondering if that pearl could get them a better place to live than their old shotgun-house, well…

You got it. They woke up the next morning in a mansion, sitting right there in the old neighborhood.

That’s where the trouble really started for Vandie.

You see, now, the neighbors and other people in Vandie’s town started wondering how come Mama didn’t have to go to work at the diner anymore. How come they never went shopping to the WalMart. And where did all their new stuff come from: new clothes, new car, new house?

Then one night, a mob of people started gathering on the front lawn of Mama and Vandie’s mansion. They were a’hollerin’ and a’yellin’ and accusing them of stealing all of this money. Like they must’a robbed a bank or something. And Mama said, “No! No! My boy got this magic pearl from a talking catfish.”

Well, the townsfolk, they didn’t like it much that one of their own had so much great stuff when they still had to work like crazy to get by. They stormed the house, like them farmers with pitchforks going after Count Dracula in that movie. But when they broke down Vandie’s bedroom door—where he and his Mama were hiding—Vandie swallowed that pearl so’s no one would steal it from him.

Now, what the talking catfish didn’t tell Vandie—‘cause he didn’t know so how could he tell?—was that the magic pearl had been dropped in the pond by a dragon flying overhead one night in a big storm. And when Vandie swallowed down that pearl, well—

Evander Akintolo started to grow, and his bones started to shift, and his soft skin changed into scales. And he grew a big, long tail.

When the townspeople saw this, they all fell back into the hallway, scrambling to get away from Evander Akintolo, Esquire. Dragon. Vandie’s Mama started crying to see what had happened to her boy, but Vandie just patted his Mama on the head with his six-inch claws, reassuring-like. Then he punched a hole through his bedroom wall and flew away into the night.

He didn’t go far though, just down to their mansion's three-car garage. And that’s where he stayed as he started his new life, being a dragon.

The first dragon in the Valley.

That’s how this story begins. But it’s not where it ends, not by a long shot. You’ll have to come back if you want to hear more. But that’s a story for another day, as I like to say.

***

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, and pledges are always cherished, like a dragon treasures a cavern filled with gold. And books.

Author’s Note: It’s always a fine line to walk between taking a reader to a time and a place by using vernacular and colloquialisms, in order to reveal both character and setting. Too much and a story becomes farcical; too little and the story could be set anywhere in the world, at any time in history. An author wants to paint a realistic portrait, but never be so down-homey and countrified that a story becomes ludicrous. I have tried to write this story in a way that portrays the natural, easy way that the Southern people I live amongst in North Carolina speak, without painting them as unintelligent. One can “speak Southern,” without “speaking Redneck,” which is what I’ve tried to portray.

Never Trust a Talking Fish is a retelling of a folk tale, found in slightly different forms in many cultures. In some versions the character is given a magical gift in return for doing a favor, the gift being a vessel that is always full. Sometimes the gift-giver is a fish whose life is spared or a visitor who shares the last food of a poor couple. In other versions, the gift is a magic pearl, as in my story, that bestows great riches, but causes grief in the end.

I have challenged myself to write twenty-seven dragon prologues/stories for the Vocal.media Fantasy Prologue Challenge, one for each day the challenge runs. Here's a link to another entry: