How to Breathe Water

HOW TO BREATHE WATER

by D.A. Straith

(Content Warnings: Drowning; contemplation (but not depiction) of self-harm, dysphoria)

The first time his guides try to drown him in the tub on the beach, Zor taps out right before fainting. They release him, and he bursts from the brine, then hides his face against his knees as if this will disguise his failure.

Salkona squeezes his shoulder. Rinn rubs his back. Zor’s knees are scattered with scales, but not covered yet. If he learns to gillswitch, he’ll be able to work with the coralites—start learning their language of sign and taste and bubble—while the rest of him settles into this new shape. Maybe then he can kill this oceanic yearning.

Zor leans back until the water cuts across his throat. Again.

•••

The fourth time, a few days later, Zor opens his mouth underwater to taste the brine. At least he can get the ocean inside him this way.

Salkona and Rinn offered reassurance after his previous failures: You’ll get it eventually. Icthyomorphosis takes time. Just relax. But the gill slits between Zor’s ribs remain shut, even as he strains his pearl diver’s lungs, even as he bursts from the water—again—gasping.

Thanks to the thaumaturges who gave him boyhood, Zor’s first change gave him relief, even during recovery. This second change, this fish-becoming, is teeth-gnashing work.

But he will not give up on the ocean, nor on the near-mythical coralites. Not when he’s this close.

He must give up on all that ties him to the land. It’s the only way.

•••

The twenty-first time, Zor stares past the hands holding him down and wonders if this new life is really worth giving up all the land’s pleasures.

Salkona, a blur as red as an ocean perch, has been a translator for twenty years. Rinn, heavy and lithe as a conger, has been for ten. They don’t need to fast or meditate or study the way he’s been doing. Not anymore. Neither of them, he realizes, truly remembers yearning; they already have access to the coralites, who flank Zor’s every thought like temple statues.

So today, when Zor bursts from the water, he hates his guides’ platitudes. He’s already spent too long without himself. He needs to be held under for as long as it takes. Until the ocean rushes in and he can finally breathe.

•••

The thirty-eighth time, Zor screams bubbles and comes up retching. His guides scold him, as though his failure hurts them more than it hurts him.

They fight about it. The new spines along Zor’s backbone rise like weapons unsheathed. Later, Zor will blame the icthyomorphosis for his explosive outrage, for making him feel as raw and new as becoming a boy did. For now, instead of following his guides up the rocky beach, Zor crashes into the waves and swims out to the nearest oyster bed. Naked, his body slides imperfectly through the water. His lungs burn; his gills stay locked. His once yearned-for body hair now catches on the sea, an impediment.

The fight twists through his head, a tightening cyclone: what do Salkona and Rinn know? Fishness came easy to them. Easy as breathing, they said at the first drowning. So whose fault is it that Zor can’t change? The guides’, for not teaching better? Or Zor’s, because his body refuses ease?

He considers dashing himself against the oyster bed, that razor-edged reef. Would pain help? Would it knock the breath into him, get his body finished faster?

How else does he have to suffer to make this work?

•••

The last time, Zor stops his drowning before it starts. A storm purples the horizon: a good excuse to retreat up the rocky beach.

No more false hope. No more shame. No more pointless asceticism.

He retreats into the dry human safety of the house he shares with his guides. In the ensuing days, while Salkona and Rinn descend into the talking cave to exchange the daily news with the coralites, Zor cooks and eats and dives for shellfish like he always has: two precious minutes at a time. No pearl diver in his home village has iridescent scales or a brand-new vent to store their genitals in, but acting human is comfortable, even if it is defeat.

Every day after shucking his catch, Zor pours the pearls he finds into a jar. Slowly, it begins to fill.

•••

The pearls keep time.

Zor learns the system: how, in the mornings, the messengers arrive at the coast with the inland news. How Salkona and Rinn swim into the talking cave to translate it for the coralites, one at a time. As one talks, the other, still dripping, writes down all they can remember. Every fifteen minutes, they switch; the coralites deliver the ocean news in turn.

Zor offers to scribe for them. The new webs between his fingers—so perfect for pulling him through the water—impair his writing at first, but because there’s no sense in him going into the talking cave, the paper stays dry. A few weeks later, Zor’s guides introduce him to their abyssal interlocutors, even though he cannot hold a conversation. Their size overwhelms him: each the length of a human, the coralites inhabit a space between squid, cuttlefish, and octopus, with their cunning tentacles, their sucking arms, their shifting skins, and their quick, dichroic eyes. Trembling, Zor says greetings and thank you and makes the expected obeisances for the paltry two minutes he can hold air in his lungs. It’s clumsy, but what is a bite to a starving man?

Months pass. Zor settles. He learns. He dives. Every week, his body’s friction through the water lessens and his ease increases; it is almost as though he could play in this ocean, almost as if he could belong. He fishes for oysters, adds pearls to the jar. Zor will find contentment in these mere tastes of brine and language—the only things his unfinished body will afford him.

He will.

•••

The pearls reach the brim. 

Zor should resent his gill slits for sticking shut for so long, but the cascade of pearls over his webbed hands, and Salkona and Rinn’s smiles—this is a simple joy Zor hasn’t felt for a long time. Not since the scars on his chest started growing scales.

Some pearls he saves for barter. The rest he hauls to the talking cave as thanks to the coralites for putting up with him. They will surely expect it, these deepwater people, as great and inscrutable as gods.

But when, Salkona nearby, he presents his gift to their four coralite correspondents, they do not react with politesse. Instead they yank the jar open, giggle with their arms and tentacles, squeeze shut their scoop-pupiled eyes. Pearls spill everywhere as the smallest coralite squeezes half their head into the jar and wheels two tentacles around in the contents. They all take turns, and Zor tries not to smile at the sudden explosion of what looks like joy.

Once the coralites have finished playing, they grab Zor and chatter, their delight about the gift so effusive on his skin that Zor can’t help but laugh. First he laughs in bubbles, then in uncontrollable chortles, as they overwhelm him with their talk. One of them, apparently in a tasting mood, attaches themself to Zor’s side, where his gill slits are—still tender after months, still ticklish.

The coralites pluck tiny scattered pearls away from Zor’s lanternfish eyes. Zor settles his laughter and catches his breath, one webbed hand clutching his belly. Salkona nudges his elbow, points at his side; then Zor laughs again, louder now, as—at long last—he breathes water for the first time.