Cold Water

“What is it my minnow?” His grandmatron asks, her voice is deep and soothing. Knauss glances up at her from the rock he had been toying with. It was a good rock. Pointed but only slightly, good for cracking shells.

“It is nothing. It is getting cold,” Knauss hums in response. It would soon be too warm for the pod to stay this far north and they would retreat to the summer hunting grounds. This year though there would be new members joining their clan and after the death of Delhia at peak cold season, the responsibility of leading the scouting parties would fall to him.

His grandmatron smiles, her round face of a mer well fed brings him joy. Not even the chilliest seasons were enough to slim her down. He was built with more muscle, equally as large, but not nearly as warm.

“We will go soon then,” she says, reaching for his chin and gently guiding him to meet her gaze.

It’s cold and pale and he can’t help but smile, leaning forward to touch her forehead with his own before handing her the rock. Surely a new bull or calf would find use with it. Something to help their patrons when the hunt brings them food to tear into.

“I will get the others,” he offers before swimming off to find his matron. Their songs weave together with the call to gather, resonating through the seabed as clear as whalesong.

*

The day he’s captured is like any other.

This far beneath the waves is dark and cold - no sunlight could ever pierce so deep, but he is never lost. Not with the familiar currents and the songs and the craggy landscape to guide him. The constant singing both soothes and leads him home. Even when home is an ever changing location, moving with the tides and his pod.

This is why Knauss is suddenly bereft when he can no longer hear his pod when a shattering wave of something terrible and loud hits him as hard as any physical blow.

It, whatever it is, screams at him and it’s louder and larger than anything he’s ever heard. A sonar frequency that rattles so deep it’s in his bones. Like the sound of a sperm whale speaking to him from close by but infinitely worse.

It echoes through the canyons and bounces in his skull so terribly that he finds himself swimming just to escape from the ear-splitting vibrations.

Desperately, frantically, he swims.

Blindly he finds himself swimming up, away from the rocky seafloor with the urgent hope that the noise won’t follow him to the surface. He knows when he does it that it’s a terrible idea.

When he can finally see straight the sight of a wall of fish rushing in his direction has his eyes widening. It’s more than bright enough here to see the way their scales flash in the pale light and he scrambles to turn, swimming away from the school. They don’t pay him mind, urgent in their mad dash.

He’s not nearly fast enough to keep pace and he’s quickly engulfed by the school. Crushed against hundreds of squirming bodies he snarls, cinching his eyes shut against the onslaught to protect them from pointed tails. He can’t move but he feels himself being dragged along.

What?

Struggling harder, he pushes his way back, shoving to get freed before his arm catches fast against something. He opens his eyes, brow furrowed as he tries pulling his arm back. It’s wrapped in something thin and white? With dawning horror, he jerks harder, tugging at his forearm that catches fast. The thin ropes dig into his flesh and he hisses it when he feels it cut deep.

Snarling silently he yanks himself, confusion giving way to panic when he realizes that he’s being dragged up.

And up and up and with another frantic pull the net breaks the surface into the frigid air. He gasps and it hurts, the cold is biting his gills and the fish around him are thrashing in earnest. Their gills flap as uselessly as his own and he doesn’t understand.

It’s not until he catches sight of it when realization suddenly clicks into place.

He’s being captured.

He’s being taken on board a boat. By humans. Humans are capturing him and taking him to their boat.

The words make sense, but he can’t make them stick in his head. Instead he stares, uncomprehending, before there’s a lurch and he’s falling onto the hard deck. All around him fish writhe, suffocating as the air dries their shiny scales dull.
Somewhere above him he hears a gasp and whips towards the noise.

It’s not the first human he’s ever seen and this is infinitely different than the human male he’d seen once in his youth. When he had explored too far, and swam too high - nothing but youthful curiosity pulling him towards the large shape floating lofty on the surface of his home.

This human stares at him much the same; wide eyes, terrible and glassy. His stomach pitches and to fight off nausea he bares his fangs. The creature squawks something in a foreign tongue and there’s stomping from clunky human fins slapping the ground as another one comes to stare as well. Knauss thrashes in the net and blood oozes from his hand, making it hot and sticky in the frigid arctic air.

It slides down his forearm and drips from the spinals there, but he doesn’t feel any pain.

The next few days of his life are paradoxically the longest and the shortest he has ever lived. Bright lights, and air, and Mother, the humans. Always looking. Always staring with their wide, terrible eyes.

It makes his skin feel vile. Like it’s being picked over by the little crabs that dwell by sea vents and pluck at the plankton that thrive there. The swell of nausea crests in his chest the longer they look. They speak with confusing tongues, and take his claws from him. Afterwards, he’s shucked into a small, dark thing, filled nearly to the brim with water where the strange sounds continue. He’s constantly in movement, the low thrum of engines is his only company.

When he’s exposed to air the second time, it’s no longer crisp arctic wind, but rather now it’s dry and hot.

The humans around him chatter about an “auction” and getting him “ready” and time moves in an infinite, ever constant pull forwards until he’s finally wheeled out and the sheet of his tank is ripped away to reveal -

His heart skips a beat as he blinks away the blinding light showcasing his cage to a room full to the brim with glassy-eyed humans all staring up at him.

It’s only then that he realizes, with cold horror creeping in his veins. It twists to clog his gills like the stagnant water in his tank. This will be the rest of his life.

At the podium, the auctioneer starts the bid at 1 million.

*

The first thing Knauss realizes when he comes to consciousness is that he’s moving. There’s a low, steady thrum of the metal creation that he’s in - a car - he realizes belatedly. The human words come to him even more sluggishly than they normally do.

It takes him another beat to realize that he’s no longer on the ground either. It’s a strange, weightless feeling sitting in some sort of sling. It’s blue and padded and the sides are high enough that he can hardly see over them despite his height. Nervously, he gives a quiet trill and in an instant Bain is there, peeking through a hole in the side.

“Knauss? Holy shit you’re up?”

Knauss tries to open his mouth, but it feels like he’s stuffed with sandwich bread. Cottony and dry. He swallows, throat clicking, before trying again.

“Wh- “ he cuts off, blearily looking around and Bain scrambles to stand, bending over for the height of the van. Where he’s moved Knauss can see other humans sitting on the ground staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. Suddenly there’s a weight leaning over the edge of his sling, angling him just enough for Bain to lean in and put his hands on his cheeks and -

They’re kissing?

Confused but pleased, Knauss tries to kiss back. His mouth doesn’t really obey though and he ends up staring at Bain’s mouth when he pulls away.

“Fuck dude, don’t move,” he instructs Knauss before turning back to the rest of the cabin, “someone get him another dose, he shouldn’t be awake this early.”

There’s some scurrying out of sight, but Knauss can’t be bothered to look.

Instead he settles back, obeying the order because what else can he do? He feels like he should be more anxious, the way the car bumps and rumbles and the strange noises happening around him, but for some reason he can’t find it in him to be too concerned right now. It’s like everything is behind a wall of glass - like the muffled sounds of the television back in his tank before he’d let himself go on the deck.

Distantly he can feel a twinge in his stomach and he can’t help but try to wiggle and adjust himself before Bain speaks up, “Woah, man don’t move. What are you doing?”

“Feels weird,” Knauss murmurs, trying to gesture to his stomach, but when he looks at his arm it doesn’t actually move. That’s not promising. He can’t help but wonder why it’s not more concerning.

On his stomach are wet towels and it’s cool and feels good against his skin. When he looks back up to Bain the cab pitches and everything looks like it’s moving even though he’s pretty sure it isn’t. It looks like being underwater, the constant movement of looking up into the air from just under the surface.

“‘S okay. Go back to sleep?” Bain replies. Knauss isn’t sure if he wants to go back to sleep.

“Okay,” he agrees regardless and there’s a slight pinch on his arm when another human comes to his side and injects there. There’s not time to consider what it could have been before things start going dark again and he’s lulled to sleep by the rumbling sound of a car engine.

*

The next time he wakes up he feels slightly less delirious. There’s still a terrible throbbing in his head and his body aches, but the pain is manageable and… muted, somehow.

He shifts a little to peek through the circular hole in the stretcher to try and catch sight of what else is in the cab with him. The way a little tension slips from his shoulders when he catches sight of Bain chatting quietly with the same mousy looking man and the girl from before. Her shoulders are squared and she speaks low but with conviction. He can’t be bothered to understand her words.

Instead he whistles a quiet trill that has Bain’s attention jerking in his direction, eyes wide. They stare at each other for a beat, close enough that Bain could reach out and touch him through the hole in the sling.

“...Sup, man,” he says after a moment and Knauss relaxes further, tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying slips away.

“Feels quiet,” he replies in lieu of an actual response. His mouth is still dry, but not as much as before.

“It’s the drugs. You’re on enough painkillers to kill a fucking horse. What is wrong with you?” Knauss takes a moment to ponder the thought. The task of relaying all his issues is daunting enough to silence him before Bain adds, hurriedly, “That ain’t what I. I mean, I wanna know if you’re in pain.”

Oh, that’s much easier. Knauss turns his attention inward, but he doesn’t feel anything other than the headache and the slow, rolling throb in his gut and shoulder. It hits him only then that he had been wounded. He was hurt… but where?

He tries moving his head to get a glimpse of his shoulder, but suddenly Bain is there, hand on his cheek.

“No,” Knauss croaks in response, Bain doesn’t seem convinced.

“Any pain at all. Come on man, I gotta know.”

“My head. And my shoulder, and - “ he can’t think of the word, the only thing that comes to mind is a ridiculous song from Sesame Street about rumblies in my tummy. He makes a weak hand gesture towards his midsection with his free hand. Bain nods, slowly.

“Stomach?”

Ah, that’s it. “Yes. Where am I?”

There’s another pause, this time from Bain as he bites his bottom lip, considering.

“So, you remember that story about the seagull, right? The one you told me?” What does that have to do with anything?

“Yes.”

“Uh, yeah. So this is like that meets Free Willy. Except we had to stop and get morphine and an IV bag and other doctor shit. On the bright side, you ‘n me match now,” Bain blurts, angling himself and lifting his shirt enough so Knauss can see the round, puckered scar Bain had shown him what seems like weeks ago now. Knauss eyes him, uncomprehending.

“Free Willy? The movie with the whale?” It was on late night TV one evening and Bain had thought it was funny enough to watch nearly the whole thing until Gilmore Girls reruns came on at 1. Knauss hadn’t been interested in a movie about a large marine animal hanging out in a small tank. He watched TV to listen to other stories, not his own, thanks.

“Yeah. It’s prison break except it was not easy to find assholes that’d help me bust out a mermaid - even in L.A. Which is weird because there’s literally everyone there,” Bain keeps talking, scooting closer and slipping a hand through the hole to touch Knauss’ face. He doesn’t flinch, but rather hums contentedly at the contact. It is strange though, seeing that Bain has never been particularly touchy before. In reality, it seemed like he was more uncomfortable with skin contact than anything.

Except right now, apparently.

“Where am I?”

“In a sling, for dolphins. In the back of a van. I think we’re somewhere near…?”

“Medford,” someone supplies helpfully, even though Knauss has no idea what that means.

“Yeah, whatever,” Bain replies and Knauss agrees, “how long till we get to Portland?”

“Uh, maybe 5 hours? Could be less if there isn’t traffic.” Knauss ignores the byplay and focuses instead on the feeling of a warm hand that’s moved from his cheek to thumb circles mindlessly against his shoulder. The one facing the group, not the one that was quietly throbbing.

He wanted to see what the wound looked like, but the idea of moving his head was too gargantuan a task to consider. Instead, he closes his eyes and relaxes into the gurney, Bain’s hand cool against his warm body.