The blue deep and the fish with stars

Down the whitewashed road he ran, full of joy. For the first time ever, his grandfather had given him permission to take the boat alone. He was going to check the net, his own now, even if only for a little while.

The sea was calm, like thick bottle glass. The light went right through it, into infinity below.

He reached the open sea quickly and with no problems, but then something heavy hit below the boat. He didn’t expect it. He stumbled and fell into the water. He sank fast and deep. The light from above broke into rays and pierced the depth beneath him. He was surprised how good it felt. He wasn’t drowning. He wasn’t even scared. He was descending through silky water, down into the dark.

And there he saw it.

A huge whale shark, as big as a submarine, was gliding slowly, heavy and ancient like the ocean. The spots on its skin looked like stars.

The fish spoke in his mind:

“Are you okay? I’m sorry. I was hearing voices again and didn’t see your boat.”

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

“I think I am eternity,” the fish said. “I have been swimming since the beginning. I never stop.”

”You swim forever?”

“I swim forever,” the fish said, gliding past him.

“Don’t you get tired?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never dared to ask myself that."

“Why?”

”Because then I might want to stop."

The boy watched the shark make another loop around him.

“So what if you stopped?” the boy asked.

“Maybe the world would stop too, then,” the fish said.

It made one more loop and started descending.

“The voices are talking again,” it said. “Do you want to see them?”

They were now sinking deeper into the trench. The spears of distant towers appeared below. Coral buildings rose from blue roads. People floated along them like shadows.

“Why are they all blue?” the boy asked.

“What color did you expect sea people to be?”

The people saw the fish and knelt. They stretched their hands upward. There was a child who held a small fish tied with a string, leading it like a dog. He knelt too.

“What are they doing?”

“They are asking me for things,” the fish said.

“So you help them?” the boy asked.

“I cannot help them. I can only listen.”

The boy looked at the kneeling people.

“Then why do they keep asking?”

“That, I haven’t understood.”

The fish floated silently for a moment and then said:

“They will remember you now, you know? You’ll enter their history.”

“Why?”

“You are a bad omen,” the fish said.

“Me? But they don’t know me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the fish said. “You are dry. You breathe dust. They say your kind once dried up the sea.”

The boy looked at the child with the fish on the string. The child’s head was bare, his eyes were large, light blue, staring.

“I want to go back now,” the boy said.

“I can send you back, but only back in time. You’ll end up on that road you ran along. Or you can stay here with me. Forever.”

“Forever is a long time,” the boy said.

“I know,” the fish said.

“I want to go back.”

**

The next moment, the boy was lying soaking wet on the cobblestones. It seemed he had slipped and hit his head. A woman from the grocery store stood over him with an empty bucket, water still dripping from its rim.

They carried him home. His mother said he was to stay in bed and wouldn’t go to the sea for quite a while.

When they were alone, his grandfather sat beside him and stroked his hair.

“So,” the grandfather said, “you saw it too, didn’t you? The fish, as big as a submarine, with stars on its skin.”