My sisters have chased me to the highest spot
So that I’m the first one to see the moving land.
Tall-crabs! Soon I will see my first tall-crab!
But my sisters do not let me move
Away from the rock.
I’ve messed up the hunting song too much.
My eldest sister says
It means that I am still too small.
My youngest sister was just as small as I am
When she caught her first tall-crab.
So I watch them from a distance,
See the way that the tall-crabs move in the storm.
They look so small from where I am.
They dart around like tiny fish
But with less freedom.
I wonder why.
Why must tall-crabs always be in contact
With some part of the moving land?
The first time I see a tall-crab,
I can only watch my sisters bring it down.
I do not accompany my sisters again.
Not the next time they hunt for tall-crabs.
Not the time after that.
I swim in the depths, alone,
Eating whatever else I can find,
Until my sisters come looking for me.
They swarm around me,
Family-school that we are,
And together we circle all the way up.
Back to the rocks where we call the tall-crabs.
Back to the light where I am too small to hunt.
We are a family.
We swim together.
Lonely.
My sisters and I are playing
When one of us is caught in the net.
She screams.
She screams and we scream
And she thrashes and we dart and eel around her,
Trying to find a way to free her.
The net is hardly visible,
Only scale-glimmer bright.
I scream.
I scream and she screams and we scream
And the cool of blood lies in the water
As I thrash and fight and tighter tighter the net.
I float.
I drift.
The net coils around me like an eel,
Slips underneath my scales so fine.
It hurts. Nets are strong, but teeth are stronger.
Nipping bites that fill the sea with pieces of us.
My sisters and I are free.
We are wounded and in pain.
Today, we shall not eat the tall-crabs.
Today, we hunt to soothe our roaring hearts.
Too weak to hunt,
I stay behind and rest.
The rock is slick beneath me,
The sun is warm above me.
I tilt my face towards it.
My sisters do not care for the sun.
It dries our skin too much.
But today I do not care about my sisters.
It tingles, this sun.
I slip back into the water
And look for a place where I can float.
I want the sun on my face,
To keep feeling that… That.
I do not want to dry out, either.
That is why I let only my face peek out of the water.
For a moment, I wonder what it must be like
To feel this all day long.
Such a strange thing.
I am glad my sisters are away hunting
Because I do not think they would understand.
No. I know they would not understand.
I find myself dozing in the water
And a song comes burbling from my throat.
It isn’t a strong song,
Nor one my sisters would know.
It is mine. Mine and the sun’s.
I wonder whether any of my sisters have a song that
Is theirs alone.
I wonder…
I can’t be the only one with a song.
Can I?
It takes a long time
For my sisters to return.
In that time, I have watched the dry sea change
And the sun sink below the waves
Where none of us have ever found it.
When they return they bring with them tall-crab
And tall-crab shell.
The shell trails from my sister like algae.
Coarse like our own bodies, it caught her.
It fits around her torso, has room for her arms.
We laugh at her and dance around her.
We take playful nips and make playful nudges.
Soon we are all laughing.
Soon we all sprawl on the rock,
Watching as the dry sea comes to glow.
Soon we sing to our long-lost sisters
Who are hailing us from above.
We are always singing,
My sisters and I.
It is a comfortable time,
All of us fitted together around the rock,
Skin against skin.
Could we stay like this forever?
For a long time, I do not heal.
For a long time, my sisters will not let me join them.
I am still only small.
(Not that small anymore.)
And I slow them down.
I want to catch my first tall-crab.
I’m tired of being considered small.
I’m going to change that.
Without the help of my sisters.
They left me behind
And who needs a school anyway?
I want to see tall-crabs.
On my own and without my sisters.
I want to see tall-crabs
And prove that I’m big enough to hunt.
If I can catch a tall-crab on my own,
Just me, me alone,
My sisters will have to let me join them.
I won’t be too small then.
I won’t be lonely then.
So, when my sisters have left me,
And I can no longer feel them in the water,
I leave them too.
I will search for the moving lands
And see the tall-crabs.
I will follow the moving lands
And catch a tall-crab.
We hunt as a school.
I will be the first to kill a tall-crab
All on my own.
It is a little frightening,
But I will find them.
I will find the tall-crabs
And bring one home.
Thank you for reading!
Books by Lynn
Novellas & Novelettes
Courage Is the Price
The Passage of Pearl
Collections
Feather by Feather and Other Stories
Tales of the Little Engine
Verse Novels
Rapunzel, Rapunzel
Sea Foam and Silence
Novels
A Promise Broken
Copyright 2017 by Lynn E. O’Connacht. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Lynn E. O’Connacht.
Model photo by Khomenko Maryna from shutterstock.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.
Please report errors to Lynn E. O’Connacht at [email protected] so that they can be corrected in future versions. She would also lo
ve to hear comments!
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