🏆 Contest #13 Winner!

Mystery Fantasy Indigenous

The island reeked of fish; scattered guts and oozing blank eyes littered the black beaches, and the mountains smelled of bubbling, potting fish intestines. The sky was continually dark with the smoke from the fires beneath the cauldrons, and the water had a thin film of scales and oil, all in the bays and quaysides round the island. In the deepsea around the island, the fish that were still alive avoided the inlets and told tales among their young that a bloodthirsty monster lived on the isle, with a mouthful of snatching teeth poised to take them from their beds and gnash and rip and kill.

Ione stepped from her home made of stone and breathed in deeply. Her lungs filled with that beautiful, terrible smell of cooking, rotting fish, and she smiled. Her small leather boots clicked against the stone steps that led to the ocean, and Ione waved hello to Cymbeline the cat Queen as she walked past.

Queen Cymbeline was sitting on a sunny rock, licking her black paw and periodically nibbling on a small minnow, stolen from the fish pots.

Ione wrapped her cloak around her shoulders as she walked down to the water. Obsidian-colored and shuddering back and away from the shore, the water curled and bubbled and foamed and shivered, cried and wept and showed the future and hid the past and was always there, always, for the present.

Ione loved the sea and could not bear it when she was not a step away from it, could not smell the good stench of the sea, could not feel the iron and the salt in her blood and marrow.

Ione walked along the shore and then turned to go up another set of stairs, leading away into the folds of the rocky jade mountains.

The island was a small island with many mountains, each a different patchwork color of heartwood green. The water lapping against the black volcanic sand was deep, soulful blue, and the skies above were perpetually streaked with grey and black. Ione’s steps wound all up and down the mountains and hillocks, toward the cliffs in the center of the island that divided the island like a dagger of slicing ocean, down to the black beach, toward the heart of the smallest mountain, where her stone home lay nestled.

She lived on the island alone; she and her cats lived on the island alone.

Ione was a young crow-haired girl who had lived as long as she could remember and then some; had seen the waves recede and then flood a thousand times; had seen millennia of cats ripen and birth and grow and die. Ione lived in her stone house and reaped the harvest of fish that the ocean gave her. Ione was somewhat of a mystic and somewhat of a human—she could not tell which was right, which seemed right to her in her bones.

Ione ate only fish, and kept only black cats.

She could not remember, but she thought she was at least a thousand years old.

***

Ione picked up Queen Cymbeline as she passed, from the stone basking in the sun. The Queen prowled up her shoulders and dug her claws deep into Ione’s shoulder. Ione scowled and stroked the Queen hardly, digging her fingernails into the flesh of the cat.

Queen Cymbeline was the cat that had come floating in on a raft of fish scales, mewing for its mother and for its milk. Ione rescued her and the Queen had immediately taken up residence among the hundreds of black cats on the island as the one who ruled. Her authority was not taken for granted.

Ione was not sure how she felt about Queen Cymbeline. The Queen was an odd creature who loved and hated Ione by turns. She would purr and rumble and rub round Ione’s ankles one day and turn right around and bite and scratch her the next.

Ione could not understand her. Ione herself was a strange creature, who loved and was submissive to the island one day, and fought and spit and hated it the next.

She had come weeping to the island, and the island had taken her in and cared for her and kept her alive these years, and now Ione was its Queen.

Queen Cymbeline was a strange cat, a fighting, fierce cat, a cat that could not be tamed.

Ione was a strange soul, a fighting, fierce soul, a soul that could not be tamed.

She made her way toward her fishing spot; the Point of Pascal, as she called it. She carried a plain canvas bag on her back.

She had no holidays, obviously, but the mountains did. It was later in the year and just about the time for the white pumpkins to appear on the slick chartreuse hill-sides, just time for the seasonal orange fish to appear in Ione’s nets, time for the black cats to reproduce, time for new small mewling black cats with red eyes to appear among the horde.

Samhain. The time of Samhain. That was what the cats called it, among themselves.

It was a cliff, and she lowered her nets into the thrashing fighting mass of trapped fish—fish trapped in the little inlet because of the fickleness of the tide and the currents. Ione called it the sea’s gift, and she never hesitated to thank the sea gods she believed gave her the fish harvest.

The cliff was the center of the island, and far below in its misty depths was the sea, trapped in rock, slicing through the heart of the island.

She cast her nets down into the deep and tied them securely to the stakes on the cliff. The Queen wormed down her shoulders and yowled in her face. Ione swatted at her, and the Queen bit her.

Bleeding, Ione yelled. “Stupid cat! Stay away!”

She sucked her wrist and watched the drops of blood fall into the oblivion below her.

Ione sat in the shade of the mountain and petted the Queen until the sun was high and she was hot and the nets were pulling. She stood and untied one of the ropes.

The cats over the island heard the scratch and the click that accompanied this action, and came swarming.

Tens, hundreds, thousands. Black cats, black cats, black cats. Richard III and Hamlet and Troilus and Macbeth and Romeo. All with names and all with hearts and all with a hunger for fish.

She counted them as they came. One, two, three… nine, ten… Ione loved her cats. She let ten—only ten—sleep in her house with her. Queen Cymbeline, Pandarus, Calchas, Banquo, Margaret Plantagenet, Iago, Desdemona, Mistress Quickly, Tybalt, and Iachimo. They were the ones she loved and the only black cats she saw daily. The only ones she really called by name.

Ione pulled until the veins stood out in her head. The rope rose slowly and reluctantly, and it was about an hour before the struggling nets came over the hump of the cliff.

No longer moving, the fish lay in the limp net. Catfish and anglerfish and tuna and swordfish and lionfish and salmon and carp and breams and pikes and mahi-mahi and zander and mackerel and bass and Tang and perch and bluegill and Wishfish and cod. Every kind of fish in the world came to this island and came into Ione’s nets.

Ione dug deep and pulled out the freshest ones and flung them into the seething mass of black cats behind her. The Queen leaped high and caught a mackerel, big and fat and brightly orange, in her mouth. Ione laughed and let the bag strapped to her back swing to the ground.

She bent and pulled, bent and pulled, her back muscles ringing and singing, moving under her skin as they had always moved and pulled and gotten stronger, each day Ione has been alive.

Ione took the tuna and the Wishfish (native to the waters round the island) and tossed them into her bag. These were the ones she ate. Tuna on Sundays, Wishfish for Mondays through Saturdays. All the other fish were for the cats.

Ione brought the canvas bag full of fish back down the steps and into her house. She steamed and dried the tuna, and let the Wishfish bake in the oven, still cindery and hot from last night’s fire.

“Queeny, come,” she called to Cymbeline. She hoisted the Queen to her shoulders again, and the cat snuggled her neck as Ione walked back up to the cliff.

Ione set the Queen to the ground and then took the nets in hand and dragged them down the steps to the plateau where she did the cooking. There, Ione spent the rest of the day skinning and gutting and tossing the limp silver bodies into the bubbling cauldrons. She would feed all of the cats at high noon, flinging ladlefuls of the fish goop into wide pink mouths until her wrist ached and there were no more hungry cats.

After her chores were done Ione would walk tiredly to her stone house to count her black cats and feed them the swordfish she had left over. Queen Cymbeline sat on her lap and purred and received the choicest mouthfuls, until the sun disappeared behind the checkerboard verdant mountains and Ione fell asleep with the Queen on her lap.

Posted Oct 27, 2019
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160 likes 68 comments

Zilla Babbitt
01:22 Nov 13, 2019

Thank you everyone!

Reply

Debra Caples
17:18 Nov 12, 2019

In the first paragraph it says the fish avoided the inlets. The live ones, anyway. She either has a hell of a throw with the net or she's catching dead fish.

Reply

Zilla Babbitt
01:23 Nov 13, 2019

Haha! Oops, I meant to say that the tide drew the fish into the inlet and trapped them there. Emphasizing that would make more sense. Thank you for your comment.

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Sue M
03:50 Nov 08, 2019

Congratulations Zilla!! And, I have a feeling Queen Cymbeline knew you had written a winning story. I was impressed with the way you ensured 10 black cats would cross Ione’s path over the course of a day.
Sue

Reply

Roger Crane
21:17 Dec 17, 2020

Okay, Zilla, I gave you a critique that you may not have enjoyed earlier, on your story, "The Father," but I see a hint that you want constructive help in your comments, so I'm going to wade into this one (primarily because this one impressed me with your descriptive talents). I do think that you have potential, and I see that you are getting ready to publish a book. That's great, but I'm sure you want it to be the best it can be. (BTW, Strunk and White was a great book, that I read decades ago and kept, but some of it is not applicable now.) Now, about this story, others have mentioned a lack of plot, but it actually does have a beginning and a middle, and you only had 3,000 words. Short short stories are difficult. Remember this: whatever you start with must echo throughout the story and resoundingly at the end. This is vital for short stories. The prompt was that a black cat crosses the character's path 10 times, and you kind of cheated there (despite having won). I think that you could have had an ending too, something special about this cat going back and forth (for instance, to try and tell the character something important, maybe in this story mysterious--about to happen in the sea, like a typhoon. You know that cats have been known to be prescient). It would not have taken a lot of words. Now, the important detriment in your descriptive talents: you reach too far sometimes. For example, a cat really can't "rumble" up your shoulder (look up the word). Try not to overdo it. Like spice, use description sparingly and to effect. A little in the right place is better than a lot all over the place. I know that you have a coterie of admiring fans, but don't listen to them when they contradict what you know is right in writing. Logic. Instead of Strunk and White now, you might consult The Manual of Style. Also, try not to get so enthused by your own writing that you forget where you are going. My late editor used to tell me that I had to be savage with my own editing. Now matter how good it was and how much I loved a passage, if it didn't belong, cut it. The goal is that when you're done you should not be able to cut anything without harming the story. Everything not needed should go.

These are the most important things I could tell you now. If you want to know, who's this giving you advice? look me up on Amazon: Roger Crane, Dragon's Tooth trilogy. You can read about 20% of the story. then come back and leave me a comment. Good luck!

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Rima ElBoustani
22:17 Nov 28, 2019

I loved the description, you have a way with words, but I found the plot slightly lacking. I got slightly lost after the first paragraph....I know that the prompt said cats but I would have preferred it if the story had focused on the lives of people as they relate to fishing, maybe even the lives of the fish themselves? That said, you painted wonderful imagery and ensared all my sences, in that first paragraph particularly.

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Laurentz Baker
08:58 Nov 12, 2019

Very good story, especially the way you create setting. The immersion into Ione's world is second to none. And then keeps getting better with the interaction between Ione, Queen and the sea.

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Akshat .
03:56 Jul 30, 2020

Deserved win!!

Reply

Raven T
15:17 Nov 08, 2019

Fascinating. The world Ione seems to live in is strange in the most charming way. Particularly liked the expression "checkerboard verdant mountains". It paints a nice image for me.

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Yoomi Ari
17:04 Nov 07, 2019

Great story. You have amazing creative potential. Well done

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00:40 Nov 04, 2020

Nice work. :) I thought I'd give this a read for the heck of it.

Everything I could say concerning either critique, or highlights have already been said, so I'll leave it at one word; beautiful.

Keep on writing!

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Rayhan Hidayat
15:34 Oct 15, 2020

As somewhone who lives with 7 cats, this story speaks to me on a spiritual level. I imagine this place would be hell for some but heaven for others. Here's an extrememly belated congrats xD

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18:23 May 05, 2020

Queen Cymbeline would be proud!

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Maya Ritz
23:26 Nov 22, 2019

Wow! This is such a pretty story! I love how you paint her as a witch-like person in the beginning but flip her to a nice girl who lives by the sea and has a lot of cats in the end. It takes talent to do that!

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Barbara Eustace
13:27 Nov 10, 2019

What a lovely descriptive piece. Loved it.

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Rhondalise Mitza
01:33 Nov 09, 2019

Oh, hi! This is a wonderful story. I think I'd pay you in bubbles and cow jars to write a whole book of this, Zilla. Of course, you should have won this contest because because because and we know you will go very far. You have made us very proud as writers.

Reply

Tristan Carax
00:43 Nov 09, 2019

Queen Cymbeline lives a good life. Doesn't have to do a thing but sit back and eat.

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01:26 Aug 12, 2020

LOLL (laugh with tears)

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15:25 Jan 08, 2020

Great job Zilla!

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Advit Chugh
04:58 Jan 08, 2020

congrats Zilla the story is amazing and has a lot of good words.

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Sharron LaJean
00:19 Dec 01, 2019

i find myself wanting to know more about Ione . Very nice descriptions, I was able to picture fish and mountains.

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23:54 Aug 28, 2020

As you mentioned in your own note and your mother pointed out, there is no true plot in this story. Nothing actually happens and I found that difficult as I was waiting with bated breath for some form of climax. You have such talent for descriptive language and world building. I enjoyed the uniqueness of your language - her "crow-colored" hair, your lovely personification and hints of the supernatural such as the suggestion that the cats and the fish communicate amongst their own kinds. I don't know if you're familiar with anime, but if a Studio Ghibli were put into words, this is how I would expect it to read, and I do find that it meanders, but I enjoyed that about your writing and found that it worked with exploring the island with your protagonist. I think perhaps this is just the beginning of a much longer story you have yet to write and when you do, I would so love to read it. Beautiful writing, Zilla.

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