UNDER THE VEIL OF NETS, CLO COULD SEE ONLY CARY’S cheeks ballooning and deflating with each heavy breath. The stone beneath her was damp and cold, and she squirmed in discomfort. Cary pressed his hand against her netted form.
“Shh. Ti—… wa-wait,” he whispered. He stood, resting his hands on his knees, still breathing heavily, then rising tall. He looked around. “Oollah!” he called. His voice echoed oollah, oollah, oollah.
Silence.
“Er—… We-we’re alone.” He lifted some of the nets off Clo. “You don’t need to hi-hide.”
Clo, working to free herself, at first noticed nothing but the tangle of knots that had wrapped around her legs. But when she at last looked up, she gasped, scrabbling backward. A wooden giantess, clutching two wretched wooden babes—naked angry boys—bobbed up and down over Cary’s shoulder.
The boat! she realized after a moment’s disorientation. It was the boat, the ship she had seen from her window. The woman hanging over her was its artful figurehead. She reached a hand toward the giantess but succeeded only in touching the dangling toe of one of the sour-faced babes.
The carving adorned an otherwise austere long, slim vessel with a single mast and a row of holes along its side. It was docked and resting… Clo glanced around. Where were they? Here, there was just a narrow path of water—hardly wider than the boat. Above them, the rock walls rose dark and straight and sheer; beyond, following the path of the water, Clo could just see gray light opening up. A cavern, a crack in the island. Yes, that was all it was.
Cary, bundling the nets onto his back again, nodded at Clo. “See… y-you see? Yl—… Only the fishing boat. Nothing else. No other boats.”
As the boat bobbed there, gently, almost imperceptibly rising and falling, its sides showed the scuffs and scratches it had received tethered in its rocky port. Clo stared at these marks, listening to the pinched noise of wood rubbing against rock. No boat, no boat, it seemed to squeak, and Clo knew this was true: no other boat could navigate here… or even likely find this narrow inlet.
Walking to the front of the cavern, she peered out, finding nothing but the same wide, empty expanse that greeted her on the other side of the island. Nothing but gray sky and gray water on and on and on. She leaned as far around the opening as she could and saw only the sheer walls of the cliff and deep water below. Her heart sank. No other port. No other boat. Nowhere to go.
Clo turned, pretending to examine the toe of one of the wailing wooden infants to hide her disappointment. “Where does this boat go?”
“I t—… don’t know.”
“Don’t you sail on it? Don’t you help the fishermen?”
“Never. Only here. With nets. I help repair them. And with the h—… c-catch—I help unload it. But I am gn—… tr-training to be a net boy. When I’m a net boy, then I’ll go on the boat.”
“Net boy?”
Cary smiled—perhaps the widest smile Clo had ever seen on the damp-haired boy. “Yes!” His head gave a happy wobble. “Yes! Em—… come see!” Nets still bundled in his arms, he hurried around the boat, walking quickly along the lip of rock that edged the water. Clo followed.
The rocks on the other side of the boat were crowded with fishing paraphernalia: nets and baskets and oars and rods were stacked in neat piles by the vessel. Lowering his own armful, Cary searched through a stack of rods and removed one with a wide mesh basket on its end. He held it up triumphantly.
“This is mine.” He twirled it through the air. “I’m g—… le-learning to use it. The ne—… fishermen say I am nearly ready to join them.”
Cary swooshed the net above Clo’s head. She watched his maneuvers skeptically.
“Is there very much to learn?” she asked at last. “Isn’t it… really, I mean, as easy as”—she pointed to the water in front of the boat—“net in water, fish in net, net out of water?”
Cary halted his acrobatics, his smile fading. “No.” He looked hurt. “No. Fish are heavy and hard to lift. And boats are hard to ec—… ba-balance on. And water… it st—… di-distorts things. Nothing is where you think it is. The others, they’ve always fished. But I haven’t. They say I am the first they’ve ever taught. I must study if I want to n—… j-join them.”
“What do you mean always? They must have learned, too,” Clo said, but Cary, sorting through one of the piles, shook his head.
“Always,” he said again. Turning, he handed Clo a pole and net. “Here.” He knelt and lifted a large rock. Moving to the front of the boat, he raised the rock above the water. “N—… c-can you catch this?”
Clo nodded. “I think so.” Net raised, she took a spot beside Cary.
“Ready?”
At Clo’s nod, Cary dropped the rock, its splash echoing through the cave. Swooping with the basket after the stone spinning through the dark water, Clo felt an unexpected drag as the mesh went under. Even so, pulling hard, she thought she had moved the net under its path. When she lifted her pole, though, she had caught nothing.
Cary took the net from her and handed her another large stone in return. “N-now you.”
Clo tossed the rock. Cary stood a long moment, watching it pirouette through the darkness. Then, when it had fallen almost entirely out of sight, his net flashed, struck, returned with the dripping stone. He held it above the water, the pole curving under the weight, and expertly flicked the stone behind them. It clattered to the floor.
Clo nodded. “You are good.” In truth, she wasn’t sure how much skill he had demonstrated, but Cary blushed at her praise and looked pleased. She did not think she had ever seen his cheeks so bright and round: she liked seeing him this happy.
“I’ve de—… p-practiced a long time. A very long time. I like to see how many I can catch at once—how heavy I can make the net. Or how deep I can let the stone fall before I catch it. I like to come here”—he tossed another rock in the water—“when I’ve f-finished my net repairs. When the fishermen aren’t here… it’s te—… qu-quiet.”
The whole island is quiet, Clo thought, but she felt she understood. “My garden is quiet,” she said. “When I’ve had a garden. At least, it seems that way. There’s weeds and rocks and the soil is hard, but other voices, the townspeople, they don’t seem so loud there.”
“Garden…,” Cary mused. “I don’t… I don’t kn—… th-think I remember gardens.”
Clo watched Cary snap another rescued rock over his shoulder. “Did you ever fish”—she hesitated, not sure how to say the next word—“ before?”
Cary’s moons drooped so that Clo regretted asking. Still, he tried to answer.
“I remember, I seem to remember a little, before… I think I used to fish before… with my re—… fa-father. I think I remember… an ocean… and maybe sk—… h-hooks. I think I remember… lines and hooks and pulling up fish one at a time.” Cary swooped to catch another rock from the deep. “The net is harder, I think.”
“My father can catch fish with his bare hands,” Clo offered.
“He can?”
“Yes. Sometimes, when we’re traveling, if we pass a stream, he’ll lie on his belly on the bank and hold his hands in the water until he feels a fish tickle his fingers. And then he’ll grab it, like this”—Clo made a grabbing motion—“and bring it up, and we’ll scale it and gut it and roast it on a spit over the fire.”
“You traveled with your father?”
“All over.” Clo nodded. “From village to village to village. We never stay long. My father… he cleans things. And sometimes”—Clo hesitated—“sometimes he steals things.” Cheeks burning, she glanced at Cary, but if he was surprised or appalled, he did not show it. “Just food, usually. And sometimes… paintings. I think… I think he used to be an artist,” she added after a moment. “But… something happened.” She shook her head. “He’s not an artist any longer.”
“Traveling.” Cary sighed and spun his net. “You must ev—… ha-have met so many people.”
“Well…” Clo paused, realizing her answer would sound strange. “Not people, no. My father… he feels it is safer to keep a bit… apart. To not tempt fate. And he… he does not look well, so people… they keep apart from us, too…” Clo trailed off, surprised at her own last words. This was true. Had she known this? Had she ever admitted this to herself?
Cary’s eyes widened. “Still, traveling, you must have seen so many things. You must have so many memories. I wish I had memories like these.”
“Yes, memories.” Clo heard her own voice beginning to tremble. “Traveling.” Closing her eyes, she could see her father tramping beside her through dew-soaked fields and pine-dry forests. She could sense his swaying step beside her own. She could see him sitting next to her, warming their dinner over a fire as the sun sank behind the trees. She could hear his voice—Once, Clo, there was a spider who longed to have wings like a moth—telling stories as the stars came out one by one in the darkening sky and the nightjar churred and trilled in the shadows.
Her chest felt hot. The boat squeaked again against the rocks, No boat, no boat.
“You must miss him,” Cary said, watching her.
“Mm.” Looking away, Clo rubbed her palm over her eyes, then gestured to the net to change the subject. “Why don’t you”—she cleared her throat—“why don’t you practice with fish?”
“Dead fish?”
“Live fish.”
“Da—… in-instead of rocks?”
Clo nodded. “Here, even. There must be fish in the water here, by the boat. Or at the shore by the tidesman. They don’t just fall or hang like dead weight; they swim, they flop about.”
“N-no fish.” Cary returned his pole to its pile.
“They don’t allow you to practice with fish?”
Clo laughed, a small surprised ha!, but Cary didn’t laugh with her.
She gaped at him. “No fish? That’s all there is here! That’s the only thing there is here! There’s fish enough for all the world here! Everywhere I look—baskets and barrows and cauldrons of fish!”
“No.” Cary shook his head. “To—… n-not here. Think. In all the time ev—… y-you’ve sat on the shore, have you ever seen a fi-fish?”
“But…,” Clo trailed off, considering. It was true. In all the hours she had spent staring at the water, never had she seen a fish.
She thought of how her father caught fish barehanded, how on their journeys, they would hear the fish in the water slapping their fins or see them leaping briefly out of their silver pools. How even she, Clo, infrequent and reluctant bather, sitting in the edge of a shallow pool, would find her toes nibbled by little minnows or her legs tickled by the brush of larger fins.
Fish were not usually so hard to see. She lay down on her stomach, staring into the watery pass. There should be some movement. Some flash. Some life.
The water was clear. She could see, far, far below, the rocks that shaped the bottom.
The water was dark and empty.
Beside her, the boat, with its wooden figurehead and mewling wooden babes, rose and fell, a gentle squeaking.
No boat, no boat, said the boat against the rocks that hemmed it in.
No fish, no fish, whispered the rocks that rubbed against the boat.
“Where are all the fish?” She turned to Cary. “They fill baskets and barrows and cauldrons full of fish—where are the fish?”
Cary’s mouth opened and closed, an empty gulping that plainly said, I don’t know, I don’t know. “T—… N-not here,” he said at last.