Barnabas sinclair: a fish out of water

Once upon a more dignified time, I wore velvet waistcoats, wrote with a raven-feather quill, and was addressed as “Master Sinclair.” I dined with queens, lectured on alchemy, and owned more hair than modesty.

Now I have fins.

Not elegant fins, mind you. I am a goldfish—orange as a poorly baked tart and round as a teacup. My world is six inches wide: a glass bowl, a pink plastic castle, a gumdrop-blue pebble, and a filter that hums lullabies of captivity.

My keeper is a teenage sorceress who smells of strawberry lip gloss and chaos. Her name is Staceee Dark—three e’s, because civilization clearly offended her.

When I suggested “Stacey” would prevent cultural decline, she tapped the glass and said, “We’ll agree to disagree.”

We never have.

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The Curse

Hubris did me in.

The short version: I found an artifact called the Pearl of Sorrow, meant to heal the seas. I sang to it atop a cliff at midnight. The wave that answered folded me into its cathedral, and I awoke as a fish.

Centuries drifted past—rocks softened, gulls got lazy, cities grew steel spines. Then one night a circle of light opened in my tide pool. A girl’s freckled face leaned over the edge.

“Spirit of ancient wisdom,” she whispered, “I summon thee to be my guide.”

“Finally,” I thought.

“Salmon of the Deep,” she finished.

Language is a treacherous boat.

I tumbled into a plastic container labeled Family Size Whipped Topping.

“Whoa,” said the girl. “You’re… beautiful.”

“I am a renowned alchemist,” I began.

“AS IF YOU CAN TALK!” she squealed.

Her cat-ear headband glittered. “Name’s Staceee—three e’s. Don’t forget. I’m your new witch.”

“I require no witch.”

“Too late,” she said, and smiled like a lighthouse.

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New Lodgings

Her bedroom is a galaxy of wrongness—band posters, doodled daggers, a corkboard list reading:

1. Homework (ugh)

2. Text Kim back (lol)

3. Bind my familiar (yay?)

4. Stop doomscrolling (never)

She placed me in a globe with pink gravel. “It’s not cruel,” she said. “It’s aesthetic.”

“Aesthetic cruelty is still cruelty.”

She sprinkled crimson flakes. “You’ll get used to me, Barny.”

“Barnabas.”

“Barny,” she repeated, gleeful.

I asked only that she spell her name correctly. She promised to add another e out of spite. Thus our relationship began.

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A Teen and Her Fish

Staceee is a hurricane with a heart. She grumbles about algebra yet crafts protection charms for stray cats. She’s reckless, kind, and as subtle as fireworks.

Her ancestry is pure mischief—her grandmother once argued with a thunderstorm until it apologized. Staceee hasn’t found her signature gift, though her experiments frequently smoke.

“So, teach me,” she said one night. “You’re my familiar.”

“Familiars advise. They do not babysit.”

“Perfect! Advise me, watch me, warn me before I blow up the microwave.”

I sighed. “Magic is a language. You cannot ask a river to dance if you call it a driveway.”

She grinned. “You’re gonna be so annoying.”

“Rectifying error is love.”

And so, we began.

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Lessons and Errands

Morning: school. She carried me in a tote bag, claiming I was an “emotional-support humidifier.”

Afternoon: Serena’s Sorcery Supply & Smoke Shop, run by a queen with knuckle-rap manners.

Evening: lessons.

We scryed in her window, walked the river to sense thresholds, debated whether cats wear pajamas in their souls. She listened sometimes, yawned others, but always tried.

“I want to fix things,” she whispered once.

The Pearl inside me thrummed. I tucked the feeling away.

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Homework and Hubris

It unraveled over an essay titled “Describe a historical binding and its ethical implications.”

“I need something dramatic,” she muttered. “Maybe a binding spell for research?”

“No.”

“I’ll bind a sock.”

“Consider the sock’s consent.”

She pretended to agree. That night I awoke to the smell of chalk and rain. She’d drawn a circle on the floor, a bowl of river water at its center.

“Staceee,” I warned. “Cease at once.”

“I will if one thing goes wrong,” she said.

It did. The bowl cracked. Water spilled, and a shadow with three heads rose from it, smelling of low tide and iron.

“Okay,” she whispered, “not ideal.”

“Listen,” I said. “Open the window. Speak to the river. Tell it the truth.”

“I messed up?”

“Say it like a prayer.”

She threw open the window; the river waited. “I messed up,” she called. “This small sorceress with poor fashion sense and unreliable spelling messed up. Please accept the return. Please accept me.”

The river answered with wind. The shadow wavered. “Now,” I said. She tilted the cracked bowl. Water poured out, the shadow following until it vanished.

We breathed.

“I’ll fix it,” she said, gathering the shards.

“You already did.”

She whispered a mending charm. Light stitched the bowl—not seamless, but strong. Then she set it beside me.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Learning is apology shaped like a ladder.”

She smiled, wrote in her notebook:

Barny saved my butt. River = person, not vending machine. Don’t tell Serena I cracked a bowl.

“You’ll get an A,” I told her.

“Because you’re smart?”

“Because you told the truth.”

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Partnership

We grew gentler. She taped my quotes to her wall:

Power without manners becomes catastrophe.

Rectifying error is love.

When she patrolled the neighborhood for mean spirits, I did not scold. We had other misadventures: broom lessons that ended with me in her hair, a shoplifter frightened by his own reflection, a boy who called her “too much” so she wore every Hello Kitty clip at once. I applauded by making bubbles.

“Fish out of water,” she teased.

“So are you,” I said.

She laughed. “Did you just call me a metaphor?”

“Occasionally, you rise to it.”

At the bridge, fog hugged the river. “Do you think the Pearl did this to you because you were arrogant?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Or because it wanted someone to take care of it?”

“Perhaps it wanted me to learn the difference between holding and keeping.”

She touched the water. “You’re not kept,” she said. “You’re held.”

I pretended to exercise.

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The Essay

She painted reeds around the mended bowl and read her paper aloud. It was a story about a girl and a river—how binding without consent is theft, and apology is a spell most never learn. For the first time in centuries, I believed the world might be fine.

“Barny,” she said quietly, “thanks for being here.”

“You summoned me by mispronouncing salmon,” I said.

She laughed and went to sleep. The filter hummed like tides on a small shore.

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Morning

She slung my travel bowl over her shoulder. “We’re taking the long way. I want to thank the river.”

At the bridge she leaned on the rail. “Morning,” she said. “Thanks for last week.”

A breeze flicked her hair. “You look like a witch,” I said.

“Rude.”

“Accurate.”

“I’m going to be something,” she whispered. “I don’t know what yet. But something.”

“You already are.”

She tapped the glass—our secret knock—and we went to school.

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Epilogue

I am Barnabas Sinclair, scholar of the deep and tutor to a hurricane with three vowels at the end of her name.

If I am sometimes a fish out of water, it is because I have leapt for joy. If I am sometimes only a scholar in a bowl, it is because bowls, like books, can be worlds.

And yes, I can already hear the question swimming around in your head: how does a so-called goldfish survive in the salty sea?

That, my friend, is a story for another day.

the adventures of Barnabas… pardon me, Barny, will continue in Staceee Dark and the Curse of the Black Death.