Part 3-5

On a windswept afternoon, Margot headed out on a typical day of rumbling clouds in the distance, and wind so blustery a hat wouldn’t ever stay put. But unlike any other day, the bone-white beach, usually strung with seaweed wasn’t there. The serene landscape told a violent story of fishing nets, wood chips, and rope lashed between rocks. Margot edged down near the water and peered out past the lighthouse called Burning Eye, wondering where the shipwreck crashed. But her attention hooked elsewhere because at her heels a great splash of water soaked her shoes cold.

Flailing in the tide, Marog spotted the source of her chilly feet: a fish hued like an oil slick tangled in a fishing net. Two bubbly eyes stared up at her. The closest expression matched that of a puppy stuck out in the rain, and in seconds she took the net into her hands and ripped it apart. The fish withdrew into the water, easing back and watched Margot.

“Go on before you get stuck again,” she said and tossed the net far away from the water’s edge. Her eyes glanced up and down the shore, bare thread of any seaweed. “Now if only the seaweed would come back on shore…”

“Not yet,” the fish bubbled out.

Margot gasped, and her head whipped back towards the fish.

The fish swam up a little, and its voice was like that of a child with a mouthful of pudding. “Maybe tomorrow, after the storm.”

Margot lashed her head up and down the shore, her eyes wide as saucers to try and see if someone by chance was casting their voice down. No one was there. She moved aside a toppled crate to see if a child hid. Nothing. She pinched her hand, and when that didn’t wake her from a dream she touched over her cheeks. “I’m imaging you... maybe I’ve lost my mind. Fish can’t talk.”

“I’ve eaten the bread scraps from the children feeding us up the way. And I’ve listened in the water and made myself nimble until I got snatched in that net.”

Margot swallowed and stared back at the talking fish. “I think a ship crashed.”

“They did, clumsy sailors, what a bunch of-,” and then the fish said a word that got Margot even redder in the cheeks than before, “-now, do you want your wish?”

“My wish?” Margot said and lowered her voice.

“I’ll find you eventually because I don’t want to owe a human anything,” the fish said and flicked its tail. “I’ll just visit you up through a sink. You live in the little house up the path. The one with all the driftwood in the yard.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” she said, thinking of her nervous father, who jumped if even a mouse scurried across the floor let alone a fish with a foul mouth in the sink pipes. “I like to keep our kitchen without visitors.”

“The toilet then?”

“No!” she said and edged closer to the fish. She crossed her arms, keenly aware of how thin they’d gotten. “What is this wish?”

“What you want more than anything.”

Margot furrowed her brow, and her stomach grumbled over. “Is it a big pile of food nearby? That’s what I’m wishing for right now.”

“Something better, if you do the right thing. Treasure for all the food you’d ever want,” the fish said, and turned to face away from the alcove. “Past the Burning Eye, you’ll find your heart’s desire on the Isle of Sirens.”

Margot peered across ocean turning over waves of foam-white and slate gray, like rows of sharks teeth. In the middle of it, lay a place where no one ever stepped foot. Not just because of what it where it was, but a fog that lingered around always hiding it from onlookers as if it knew how curious people were about its elusive shore. “People don’t go to the Isle of Sirens. It’s cursed. Haunted.”

“What you want will be gone by tonight,” the fish said, and its mouth edged up into a queasy grin. “Your choice, now that I’ve given it to you. Don’t owe you a thing now.”

Unlike the calm bays of the south, The Loney Sea spat out the drowned people who dared to tame it. Seaweed, that’s what she’d come to make soup with from the seashore. No danger lies in that. But on staring at her empty basket and failing to ignore her empty stomach, doubt filled her mind. What if a fragment of truth was spoken from the fish? That beyond Burning Eye on the Isle of Sirens her woes may be eased? The bigger question was: could she live however many more years never knowing if what the fish said was true?

She peered up to see a boat tied at the dock. Within an hour, she’d be out far enough to reach the Isle of Sirens and back before nightfall to know the truth no worse off. If anyone in Amberjack braved the Lonely Sea and lived to boast over a pint, it would be a local from Porttown raised along the seashore. “I bet no one needs that boat for a couple of hours.”

But she confided alone. Only a trail of bubbles remained where the fish once swam. Twilight neared, and Margot hadn’t a minute to spare. She hitched up her hem into her waistline, rolled up her pant cuffs, and made her way into the boat. Narrow and a couple decades old, she prodded it and found not a crack in the hull. What she did find was the Kesslewood stamp, and it blazed out any doubts with its lucky presence. She grabbed the oar, pushed off from the dock, and began a journey no one ever dared to take before.

A scrawnier person may get halfway to the Isle of Sirens and tucker out. But Margot’s arms were forged from wood chopping, clothes washing, and floor scrubbing since childhood. Each time the oar plunged into the water, it was like her own fin. But her arms shook near the Isle of Sirens not from tiredness, but the gossip that clung to its shores. The fog parted in a whorl of wind, and Margot saw what only a handful of others dared to admit.