the diver
A very short story; this is the first fiction work I've completed in a year and change. Feels nice.
It was midsummer when I did my first solo dive, too early in the season for the ocean to have warmed up from the winter. My training had only lasted for a year--most girls train for three--but I was ready. "That one was born for the ocean," the elders would say, when they thought I wasn't listening. And I still remember that day, the feel of the cold ocean water on my skin as I dove to the seabed of the sound and pushed through a patch of seagrass, to where a bounty of oysters and mussels awaited, ready to fill my basket. A curious squid drifted by, watching me collect my treasures, before jetting off into the depths of the sound, startled by the passing of a distant whale.
Here, I never felt like a trespasser.
I was thirteen years old then. I was fifteen when I received a diver's tattoos--an old tradition, like the dragonhunters' marks, designed to deepen our connection with the ocean and the tides. Only a few of us still believed that this was anything more than an old ritual, a rite of passage for the divers, to mark us as belonging to the sea. If perhaps we were more fortunate on our dives, better able to elude the dangers, better at locating pearl oysters . . . it was easy enough to call that diver's intuition. Easy enough to pretend that the the sea did not watch over her own.
As a diver I was respected in the village, but I never felt at home there. I never understood the strange politics--what logic, for instance went into appointing the leaders of expeditions, when there was always a more capable candidate?--and preferred, when there was a gathering, to sit quietly and observe. Or, more often, to daydream of that dark cold water, of eelgrass and oysters, salmon and sharks. People seldom tried to break that reverie. They knew as well as I did that I did not belong here.
We started receiving visitors from the continent, in their tall sailing ships, looking to trade. They valued our pearls, so the elders started asking us to seek them out more and more, risking inexperienced divers on difficult dives. Our stores of shellfish dwindled, and the far traders offered us flavorless bread in exchange. As we lost divers, the elders insisted on taking on more and more unprepared girls as apprentices, and on ending those apprenticeships before they were ready. This seemed unsustainable to me, but then, I was used to not understanding. They told me to dive, so I dove.
This process lasted for years. In that time I noticed that the sea seemed more hostile, more unwelcoming, to anyone who were not marked as her chosen; visitors on the sea reported being attacked by sealife, and storms would arise and threaten their ships. My presence seemed to calm some of the agitated creatures, but I could only stay under the water for so long.
I should have linked the two, but the decline from living off the sea's bounty to depending on these far traders to live, the diminishing number of our divers, these happened so slowly it was easy to miss them, and in these dark times I turned to the sea. I knew only that she was angry. My fellow divers dismissed this--"It's been a hard year," they said at first, and then a hard couple of years, and then several years. It was true; it just wasn't the truth.
It was early autumn, ten years since the first ship landed in the sound, when a storm broke, more terrible than any I had seen in my years on the sea, and far more sudden. I sat in the entryway for the house I shared with my fellow divers and watched the rain drive and the wind blow, and listened to the waves crashing. There was a fury in this storm. The dawn came bright and cold, the village strewn with fallen branches, the air scented with fresh rain and fallen leaves, and, driven by a compulsion I was sure came from the sea herself, I sat on some sun-bleached driftwood on the beach and watched the shore.
The tide brought in a man, clinging to some flotsam that must have come from one of the far traders' sailing ships. I recognized him from his previous voyages as a captain; I gave a shout, and several others ran out to him, to warm him with soup and give him dry clothes to wear. When he had eaten and recovered himself somewhat, he said, "I need a diver. One of your best. There was precious cargo on my ship that must be recovered."
All eyes turned to me. "She's yours, of course," said an elder.
He barely glanced at me. "And a boat. We must leave at once."
"Of course," said the elder, and clapped me on the shoulder. I managed not to flinch. "This one's always ready for a dive. She'd be diving in the dead of winter if we let her."
The captain offered something resembling a smile. "I'm honored."
He was terse, which seemed odd--he had always seemed before to be rather fond of the sound of his own voice. But the storm, he explained, had caused his ship to wreck at the cliffs by the mouth of the sound, and as his crew tried to escape in his ship's boat, a creature he described as a sea monster attacked and dragged the boat underwater.
I wondered what sort of creature it could have been, and how he had escaped. But I remembered the hatred I felt on the winds of that storm, and did not doubt his story. The sea had conjured the storm to be rid of him, and his precious cargo, and had made certain that I would be there in order to finish the job.
The captain selected a pilot from the village--from the way he spoke to her, I think he had employed her services before--to row us out to the site of the wreck, and as the autumn sun climbed in the sky and warmed us, he seemed to recover his lost love of talking, and kept trying to ask me questions, until the pilot said, with an irritated tone, "She doesn't want to talk. Leave her alone."
"I'm just trying to get to know the woman who will be saving our little venture," he said. "Surely there's no harm in that?"
"She doesn't want to talk."
This did not stop him from talking, but he no longer seemed to expect a response, at least. He described the cargo, the trunk it was in, and how he expected it would be by the sunken boat; he promised, more than once, "This will make your people very rich, my girl." I continued ignoring him, sitting in the prow, trailing my hand in the water. The sea was on edge.
We arrived a few hours later at the cliffs that formed the mouth of the sound, and the captain said, "Here. It's around here."
The pilot gave me a questioning glance, and I gave her an affirmative nod. "It's here," she said. "Give us a few moments."
"Fine, fine, do your little rituals."
The pilot and I shared a piece of flatbread, seasoned with seagrass, and she began to boil some water on a small stove set into the boat near the pilot's seat, ready to prepare a warming tea to serve when I returned to the surface. And then I shed my cloak and shoes, and with a deep breath, dove into the sound.
It was still early autumn, so the water was still at its warmest, but even at its warmest the ocean is cold enough to kill. It still sent a thrill down my body every time. I could sense the foreign objects down at the seabed before my eyes adjusted enough to see them: the looming shape of the wrecked ship, the sunken boat not too far away, wedged into some rocks. A deep dive, but manageable. And encircling them, the vast shape of a giant squid. Guarding the fallen wreck, perhaps? I could sense its alien eyes watching my descent.
I lose track of time, under the waves--I listen only to the sea, to the signals of my body. So when I reached the wreck I knew only that I would have little time before I needed to surface--and there it was, a small wooden chest, just as the captain described. And, as I reached for it, the squid appeared in front of me. It was not yet in threat posture--it seemed curious, at the moment--so I reached out my hand, and it reached out an arm. And with my other hand I touched the tattoo on my chest, and I focused my will on my intention: to destroy the object that this fresh wreckage hid.
As if in response, it reached for the chest and crushed it with a tentacle, exposing within a small opalescent orb that nevertheless turned my stomach to look at. I took it in my hand, turned to the rocks that the boat had wedged itself between, and with as much strength as I could bashed it against them, once, twice, three times until several cracks formed. Then I wedged my dive knife into the crack and pushed and pried until the orb shattered into several segments. These I collected in my basket, and began to kick towards the surface.
Too late. I had spent too long trying to break the stone. My vision began to fade, and the ocean went black.
I woke on the boat once again, sprawled on my back. The pilot was frowning at me with concern, and the captain looked stricken--had I returned with my basket? How had I returned to the surface? I sat up, and took inventory--red welts lined my torso, round like a squid's suckers. A few of the welts were bleeding lightly.
The pilot smiled when she saw me stir, and pushed a mug of tea into my hands. "Congratulations on a successful dive," she said, quietly.
"You call this a success?" The captain scowled, and stood to loom over me. "She did something down there. I could feel it break. What did you do?"
"Sit down, Captain," said the pilot. "I'm sure it was nothing."
His hand went to his sword. "I will have--"
The pilot swung her oar at him, and with a shout he toppled overboard. As he spluttered and tried to recover, two giant tentacles emerged from the sea, wrapped themselves around him, and dragged him underwater.
We sat together in silence, the pilot and I, sharing the tea she had prepared. There was no further sign of the late captain, and the sea seemed to have calmed. The threat, at least for the moment, had passed.
"He won't be the last," said the pilot. "But you did good. That was you, right?" I gave her a smile, and she laughed. "We'll find a way to stop the next ones. You want to help?" Another smile earned me another laugh.
After sharing another piece of flatbread with me, she turned the boat around and began rowing back towards home. There would be work to do, but there always was. For now, though, it was a perfect autumn day, and whatever we needed, I knew the sea would be more than happy to provide.