RETURNING, CARY DID NOT TAKE CLO ALL THE WAY UP the dark stairs on his back; only when they approached the top did he have her climb into a basket and drape a net over her. This time, the anvil-faced man had merely grunted “Erom sriaper?” over Cary’s load, and Cary only had needed to nod his assent. Wobbling, weaving, he carried Clo through the village and deposited her just outside.
During the entire walk, first trudging behind Cary on the stairs, then being knocked about in the basket, Clo had been silent, but now, standing on the cliff path, she felt like a pot beginning to boil: question after bubbling question rising and steaming. She wondered aloud at the whereabouts of the fish—Where do they catch the fish?—and at the vast quantity of fish—Why do they catch so many fish?—for so few island inhabitants. She wondered if the fishermen traded with other islands or with a mainland—Is there a port? Do they sell their catch? She wondered why Cary, the boy who had been fished out of the sea, had been trained to be a net boy and whether he might soon go on the boat, and whether she, Clo, wall-jumper, cheese-eater, father-seeker, might be allowed on the boat as well. She wondered whether, if she was allowed on the boat, she might find her way off this island and back to her father—Can we leave on the boat? Can we leave the island? Can we LEAVE?
Cary, with damp hair and damper cheeks, listened patiently, catching his breath, as Clo burbled away. When at last she finished, he shook his head, seeing at once that, for Clo, there was really only one question that mattered.
“Clo, I’m sorry. I don’t know… I don’t know er—… wh-where the boat goes or where the fish are or if they ll—… sell fish somewhere else.… They don’t tell me these things. They don’t say much to me at all—that’s not how they are. But I know they will re—… n-never, never allow you on the boat. You are not a fisherman.”
Clo felt suddenly as though the sun that never shone through the island’s perpetually gray skies must somehow be inside her, so inflamed was she at the notion that she could not go on the boat, though she had, in truth, no desire to ever, ever spend her days as a fisherman and only wanted the opportunity to go on the boat and find her way off the island and to her father again.
“I can’t go on the boat because I’m not a fisherman?”
Cary shrank under her gaze. “No. You t—… c-can’t. They say you’re not.”
“They say I’m not? Who says I’m not?”
“The other fishermen.”
“I can learn as well as you. I’m as strong as you. I can train just like you to go on the boat.”
“No—”
“I’ve jumped over walls and walked over mountains and found my way through forests and swamps, but I can’t go on the boat because I’m not a fisherman?”
“No, you—” Cary began, but Clo, her face hardening, had turned away from him and begun striding back toward the village.
“Clo!” Cary hurried after her, pulling the basket behind him. “Clo! I think you can. I kn—… th-think you’re stronger and smarter than I am. You’re better than a f-fisherman. But they say… Clo! Clo!”
Clo had reached the doorway to the old woman’s house. At the far end of the street, Cary was still calling after her.
“Clo! The fish—all the fish—they’re all for you! Everything, everything on the d—… i-island is for you! Is done for you! For you and the—”
Clo pulled the door shut on his echoing words. She couldn’t go on the boat? She couldn’t leave the island? The fish—the mounds and baskets and buckets of fish—were for her?
Inside, the apple-faced woman was, as usual, standing near the coals, stirring her always-simmering pot of soup. Of course. Of course the woman was stirring her fish. Fish, always, always fish.
Hearing Clo enter, the woman smiled, ladled a bowl, and held it out to her.
“No.” Clo shook her head.
“Sey.” Still smiling.
“No.”
“Sey.” The bowl again, but without a smile.
“No!” Clo nudged the woman’s hand away.
“Sey!” The bowl in front of Clo’s lips.
“No! I don’t want it!” Clo knocked the bowl away, a violent push. It flew from the woman’s hand, falling, clattering, the liquid rising in a silver arc across the room, the cat springing into action and crouching, growling, over the spill, licking up the puddles and sucking up the fishy pieces in quick greed.
“I don’t want any fish. No fish!” Clo stared defiantly at the old woman, who had bent to retrieve the bowl.
But when the woman rose, the lines on her apple face twisted with anger, Clo knew she had gone too far.
“Uoy!” the woman bellowed. “Tis!” Taking Clo by the shoulders, she pushed her into a chair. “Tis, lufetargnu dlihc!”
Clo sat, expecting the bowl of fish stew to appear again in front of her, to perhaps be fed spoon by dreaded spoon as an unhappy baby is fed by its parent. But the woman tossed the bowl aside.
“Eht gnidrac.” She yanked a large basket of fish next to Clo’s chair. “Ruoy krow.”
Clo stared at the glittering heap of silver fish, all still and staring at her with their black eyes. Glancing at the old woman, she knew refusal would invite greater fury.
“Should I scale them? Gut them?” This she knew how to do. Picking up a knife from the table and a fish from the basket, she ran the blade down the center of the fish, tail to head, opening it up to reveal its innards.
“On, on, on!” the woman cried, removing the knife from Clo’s hand. “Eht gnidrac.” She thrust two spike-riddled wooden paddles at Clo.
Clo looked from the fish to the paddles to the old woman in confusion. The flat wood paddles with tiny burrlike spikes, Clo knew, were meant for sheep’s wool, for cleaning and combing fiber, for carding it, untangling it, readying it for spinning. Though she had never had a mother to teach her how to work with wool—never known the cloudlike woman her father had sketched spinning for Clothilde, who could have taught her these things—she had seen countless villagers, settled in sunny doorways, wiping such paddles across each other, pulling pale tufts of fiber into finer and finer wisps.
She held the paddles up. “Carding combs?”
The woman clicked her tongue and took Clo’s hands in her own. “Ruoy krow.” Guiding the paddle in Clo’s hand into the basket, she scooped and raised a clump of fish. The silver bodies rested lightly on the spikes.
“Oh—” Clo, motherless Clo, who had learned from her father to skin and debone and gut all manner of small game he captured on their journeys, who had herself never flinched when readying any part of an animal for eating—not tongue nor brain nor bowel—who was not delicate or squeamish or under any illusions about the innards of creatures, still found the thought of raking the fish through the combs entirely too much.
“Oh,” she said again, and shut her eyes as the woman guided the paddles together. She felt the combs pull through the fish. A thick and squelchy tearing. The combs swiped again, again, the sound wet, squishy. Again.
“Ruoy krow,” the woman repeated, still manipulating Clo’s hands, the steady combing growing lighter, softer, drier. Then a pause, a swiping back. The woman took the paddles from Clo’s hands.
Eyes still closed, Clo felt the woman place something soft in her hands. “Llor,” she said, pinching Clo’s fingers around the soft thing.
Clo opened her eyes. In her hands was a puff of wool—or something wool-like—airy, silvery, fine. Except for the color, the same gleam of fish scales, there was nothing fishlike about it.
“Llor.” Guiding Clo’s hands, the woman showed her how to roll the fish-wool, and when it was curled into a cylinder, she placed it on the table. Lying there, an oval tube of wool, it looked again like fish, at least the shape of fish, eyeless, finless, gill-less.
The woman nodded approvingly at the cylinder. “Ereht.”
Though not damp, there was still an oiliness about the fish-wool. A stickiness. A smell. Not the lanolin smell of wool from sheep—the smell of earth and animal and light and green—nor even the humid smell of fish—the smell of pond and mud or salt and sea. This was a prickling smell, like darkness. Like sour milk. It felt cold and burning on her skin. Clo rubbed her palms back and forth across her tunic, trying to clean away the film.
The woman pointed at Clo, then at the basket. “Lla fo ti.” She pointed again more emphatically, and Clo understood her to mean she was to comb all these fish, the entire basket of fish, turn them all into airy cylinders of fish-wool.
“I don’t want any fish,” Clo said quietly, shaking her head. Is this what Cary had meant when he had said all the fish were for her? She stood, still trying to rub her hands clean. “I don’t want to do this.”
Putting her hands on Clo’s shoulders, the woman pushed Clo back into her seat. “Ruoy krow, rethguaddnarg.” She pointed at the paddles, and then, reaching into her apron pocket, removed a long iron key. Lifting it for Clo to see, she crossed to the front door, locked it with a heavy thunk, and dropped the key deep into her apron pocket.
Clo stared in horror.
“Ruoy krow, rethguaddnarg.” The words had become a refrain. The woman patted her pocket, pointed to the carding combs. “Krow.”
Clo picked up the paddles. The woman smiled. It was not a smile at Clo. It was not a smile for Clo. The woman smiled to herself, the smile of long hours of work being suddenly lifted away. She chewed emptily.
“Sey, sey, rethguaddnarg.” She watched Clo scoop up a clump of fish, a little smile of relief still floating in the folds of her cheeks. “Sey, sey.”