Swish, Swish, Swish

The boat rocked underneath her feet, the foggy morning and salt spray clouded her vision as she looked out at the endless blue. The morning chill bit at her ankles as people moved on the ship behind her. Such a small crew, so little time.

What were they going to do when she told them? They had spent so much time scrapping the sea for life. So much time. . .

A tap on the hull alerted her to the presence of the very thing she had been looking for. A face appeared from the deep. Her whitened hair caught her in its snare and dragged her down to meet the other. Evra shivered as the creature reached up to the back of her neck, claws digging gently into the back of her neck. Pinpricks along the skin there.

"Captain Sterling!" The sea was empty where Evra was sitting, Jason could not see anything from where he was but these files needed done immediately before their return to the sky, and the captain had become more and more. . . distant, "Captain! Base is calling!"

Evra sat up from her kneel and as she stood her knees shook lightly. Once she stood tall she took the documents from his hands before walking off on unsteady feet. She would never be free of this burden, but the base had its rules. Who was she to choose? The nature that made them, or the machine that controlled them?

Evra placed one foot in front of the other, keeping her eyes trained on the slimy, seaweed-stricken wood beneath her until she reached the first mate's quarters. Do not look at the sea, she reminded herself. Do not feel it's breath at your wrists, she whispered in her mind as she tucked her hands beneath her sleeves. Do not look back. Do not inhale too deeply. Any reminder will send you crazy. Any sliver of the water's whisper will claim your mind and your body until it is all you can feel.

She reached Jason's cabin with her legs still shaking.

She knocked twice before entering--a captain's courtesy, though they both knew the hierarchy was a performance. The first mate's quarters were sparse: a wooden desk scarred by years of seafaring, a chair, a narrow cot pushed against the wall. Jason Grey sat with his back to her, studying a map weighted down with stones at each corner.

"You look unwell," Jason said, standing. "Should I call the medic?"

Evra forced herself to uncurl her fingers from beneath her sleeves. Her talons pressed into her palm, not the carefully filed human approximation she maintained. A thin line of something iridescent caught the light beneath her fingernail bed. She curled them again quickly.

"Just the cold," she said, her voice steady. "What did the base want?"

"The Lord demands proof of our catch," he said without preamble. "Three barrels, minimum, or he cuts our wages and reassigns the crew to the merchant routes. I wanted to seek your counsel before plotting a route."

Evra's claws dug in deeper. The merchant routes meant inland rivers, still water, shallow water where she could not disappear into the depths, where she could not lose herself in the dark embrace of the trenches. "The nets have been light this season."

"Then we must make them heavy." Jason finally turned to face her, and she saw the desperation in the lines of his face. That was why she'd chosen him, all those months ago when she'd first climbed aboard as Captain Sterling, as her first mate. He was strong. He was dedicated. He was perfect. "There are rumours, Evra. Fishermen speak of creatures in the deeper waters. Ancient things. If that's what's keeping the nets empty--"

"Rumours," she said firmly. "Nothing more."

Jason nodded. "Then we leave at dawn. Rest while you can, Captain."

It was a dismissal. She took it, turning on her heel before he noticed the way her breath had gone shallow. Her quarters were barely larger than a closet. Evra locked the door and leaned against it, breathing through the panic that rose in her throat like seawater. Creatures. Ancient things. The sailors knew they knew they were calling. The old ones from the trenches. The ones she'd been running from for so long that she'd almost convinced herself the running had made her human. Almost.

She peeled off her wet sleeves and examined her arms in the low candlelight. The skin was too pale, almost luminescent in the shadows. Beneath the surface, she could see the faint tracery of veins, gill slits, sealed shut by whatever magic had bargained her into this form. She ran her thumbnail along one, and her whole body shuddered with a feeling that was almost pleasure. The price of her disguise was constant vigilance. Every morning, she bound her hair tightly to hide the way it caught light like seafoam. Every evening, she soaked her hands in cold water to keep the webbing between her fingers from creeping past her knuckles. She filed her nails obsessively, kept her eyes downcast, one patched, so no one would notice how they reflected candlelight like a shark's.

But the ocean was calling her back.

Evra went to the porthole and pressed her palm against the glass. Outside, the sea churned with the approaching storm: she could feel it in her bones, still, even after all this time. The creatures below would be stirring. They would recognize her heartbeat, that particular rhythm that marked her as kin, as theirs. A princess in exile. A bargain made in the dark water.

A soft sound came from beneath the floorboards. Evra's breath caught as she pressed her ear to the wood. A voice, barely audible, keened through the water and the timber, a frequency that vibrated in the hollow spaces where lungs should breathe air but wanted, always wanted, to taste salt.

Come back, sister. Come home.

She slammed her fist against the wood, and the sound stopped. Her hands were shaking. In the darkness of her quarters, she could no longer see where the human ended and the monster began.