The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente [75]
September had no way to cook it. The sodden smoking jacket wanted to make fire for her, but that was beyond its power. The moon wished her a hearth, but had to content himself with watching the young girl, kneeling on her raft as the sea rushed by around her as she pulled raw fish from the bone in strips. September ate slowly, deliberately. Some instinct told her that she had to have the blood, too, for at sea water is so scarce. It took her until morning to eat the fish. She wept all the while, a terrible circuit, all the water she drank from the fish pouring out again.
Just before dawn, September spied the shark’s fin. Something deep in the ancestral memories of humans quakes in sight of a shark fin, even if that human grew up in Omaha and never saw a shark in all her days. It rose dark and sharp in the pearly gloaming just before the sun peeked up. The fin made a long, lazy circle around September’s raft. The wind was utterly calm. September’s dress hung slack on the Spoon-mast. Little ripples glinted in the water, and the current moved her along, but it had been slow going for several hours, and September had not slept. But now she was awake, and the stars were winking out one by one, and in the distance the unmistakable triangle of a shark’s head circled slowly, unconcerned.
This sort of thing happens in pirate stories, September remembered. As soon as someone goes overboard, voila! Sharks. But I am not a pirate. But then, pirates are often eaten by sharks. So perhaps I shall not have a pirate’s luck with them, if I do not have a cutlass or a feathered hat?
It circled closer, and September could see its shadow in the water. It did not seem huge, but certainly big enough. Perhaps it was a baby, and would leave her alone.
It circled closer. September scrunched up into the center of the raft, as far as she could get from water on all sides, which was not very far at all. Finally, it circled so close to the raft that it jostled the sceptres, and September cried out fearfully. She held the wrench ready to whack the shark as hard as she might, her knuckles white on the handle. If they all want to call it a sword, she thought, I’ll use it as one! She was quite wild with terror.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t eat me. I’m sorry I ate the fish.”
The shark swam lazily around the raft. It rolled up a little, showing its black belly--for the shark was all black, with a few wild golden stripes running down the side, and its eyes were golden, too, rolling up out of the water to stare mercilessly at September.
“Why are you sorry?” it said softly, its voice rasping and rough. “I eat fish. That’s what fish are for.”
“I daresay you think that’s what little girls are for, too.”
The shark blinked. “Some of them.”
“And who eats you?”
“Bigger fish.”
The shark kept swimming around the raft, rolling up towards the breaking surf to speak.
“Are you going to eat me?”
“You ought to stop talking about eating. It’s making me hungry.”
September shut her mouth with a little snap. “You’re making me dizzy, with all your swimming in circles,” she whispered.
“I can’t stop,” the shark rasped. “If I stop I shall sink and die. That’s the way I’m made. I have to keep going, always, and even when I get where I’m going I’ll have to keep on. That’s living.”
“Is it?”
“If you’re a shark.”
September rubbed at the blood on her knee. “Am I a shark?” she said faintly.
“You don’t look like one, but I’m not a scientist.”
“Am I dreaming? This feels like a dream.”
“I don’t think so. I could bite you, to see if it hurts.”
“No, thank you.” September looked out at the flat gray water, all severe and stark in the sunrise. “I have to keep going,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“I have to keep going, so that I can keep going after that, forever and ever.”
“Not forever.”
“Why haven’t you eaten me, shark? I ate the fish, I ought to be eaten.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“But you’re a shark.