The Red Emperor

“You are a filthy pig, you know that?” Ellie said as she tossed a tea towel at my chest, “I can’t do this anymore, take me back to the shore.”

Each time I thought she was beginning to find her place here, to make this boat her home, something else would piss her off and we’d be back to square one.

“What is it this time?” I asked.

“When you eat something like Weetbix, you need to fill the bowl up with water and let it soak, or it dries and sticks to the edges!”

“Well, maybe if you let me wash the dishes, it wouldn’t bother you so much,” I said.

“Well, maybe if you washed them properly, I would!” she said, slamming the door behind her.

The ocean was cool, still, and peaceful. This used to be my happy place. “Note to self: don’t get married again,” I muttered.

It had been a few weeks since I’d caught any fish, I liked to think it was Ellie’s screeching scaring them away. That, or the zealous overfishing of our coastlines. I would have used anything as an excuse, anything but the possibility that I wasn’t such a good fisherman after all.

That’s when I saw the flash of warm scales glittering right next to our boat. “I know a Red Emperor when I see one” I said to myself.

She was never going to go for artificial bait, but I held my pole tightly, just in case. If this was a Red Emperor, she was not going to be pulled in without a fight.

I waited for her to bite. “What are you doing? It’s getting dark!” Ellie yelled at me from inside the cabin. “Pack it up Will!”

I ignored her, leaning over the edge to look at my dinner again. And she was gone.

Ellie and I both lay awake that night, tossing and turning. The ocean breeze wasn’t doing much for us lately, not for the heat, or for our marriage.

Bang.

Something hit the side our boat, causing me to sit up abruptly.

Bang.

“Ellie,” I whispered, “Ellie, you awake?”

“Shut up, it’s wind,” she said, rolling further away.

I walked out onto the deck to find the source of the noise. All I could see was a pitch-black horizon.

Bang.

I walked around the edge of the deck, with a flashlight aimed at the water. I thought I could see a flash of orange and red, the Red Emperor still hanging around.

Bang.

I turned to the back of the boat, and that’s when I saw a little hand sticking out of the water. A child’s hand. This far out at sea, in the middle of the night, it wasn’t possible. I was frozen in place.

Bang.

I sprung into action, leaning over the railing towards where I saw the hand. “Here, here! Hold on to me!” I screamed.

“Will, what the hell are you doing?” Ellie stumbled out of the cabin.

“Shut up and help me! There’s a kid in the water!”

“No there’s not,” said Ellie, always arguing.

“For once in your life, just help me!”

She still wasn’t convinced but grabbed the lifebuoy and tossed it over the edge anyway.

“There’s no way that –” this time we both saw it. A dainty, pale little arm reached out from the water, wrapping around the lifebuoy. It was Ellie’s turn to freeze, as I took the line and began pulling it in.

Soon enough a young girl’s face rose from the water. She was blonde, around 10 years old.

Ellie reached out to her as I kept tugging on the line. “Come here, come here baby, we’ve got you now.”

Finally, I pulled the buoy up far enough that we could see the rest of her. At first, I thought she was wearing swimmers; like those swim pants they make for little girls, the ones that give the illusion of a tail. Once she was on the boat, I realised that it was no illusion. A hallucination perhaps, but definitely not swimwear. She had a tail.

Ellie pulled the sobbing girl onto her lap, running her hand over her tangled, wet hair. “It’s okay honey, it’s going to be okay.”

“Get away from that thing,” I said.

“Get away from her? We just saved her from drowning!”

“It wasn’t drowning, it’s a fish. Fish don’t drown.”

“Does she really look like a fish to you?” Ellie asked. I looked at the girl’s soft blue eyes, her trembling lips. No, she didn’t look like a fish; she was a terrified child.

I tossed Ellie a blanket and she covered the girl, who nestled in closer. We lay there silently until sunrise.

“What are we going to do?” I asked Ellie, as the girl slept peacefully on her chest.

“Take her to the shore?” She suggested.

“I don’t know El, I don’t think she should be on land. Should we really take her away from her home?”

“So, we keep her here? Until she can swim home?” Ellie said.

It was really the only thing we could do. “Okay,” I nodded, trying to think through the logistics. Where will she sleep? What does she eat? “Okay.”

When the girl woke up, she was clearly terrified of us, using her arms to drag her body away from Ellie and into the corner of the deck. Her cry was almost like a human girl’s, just deeper, more guttural.

We tossed her a piece of bread and placed a glass of water as close as we could before she swiped at us with her tail. For days she just sat in that spot, fighting sleep.

“She’ll die if she doesn’t drink water soon,” Ellie said.

“Maybe not, she’s obviously a different species. Maybe she doesn’t need to drink water,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” her eyebrows furrowed together. I think this was the first time I’d seen my wife genuinely worried about someone other than herself. It was nice to know that she had a full spectrum of emotions.

Ellie tried to speak with her a few times, placing her hand against her chest and saying, “I’m Ellie.” The girl would stop crying whenever she spoke, always listening and never trying to reply.

We started reading books to her, chatting about life back on the mainland. This became our new normal, and eventually I felt comfortable enough to fish again, no longer needing to supervise Ellie’s every interaction with the girl.

Finally, I caught something. Just a little Damselfish, nothing special. I took it to show Ellie, and the girl spotted it immediately. She sat up straight, smiling and clapping clumsily.

“Aw look! She wants the fish!” Ellie said excitedly, as she snatched it from my hands, “is this what you need baby?” the girl squealed like an overexcited toddler.

Ellie tossed her the fish, and she swallowed it whole.

“Yummy!” said Ellie, rubbing her hand on her belly. The girl copied her, “mmy, mmy,” she said.

“Go,” Ellie pushed my chest, “go catch some more.”

Over the next few days, I caught more fish than ever. They always bit; it was like they wanted to be caught.

Ellie and Mimi, the name Ellie had chosen for the girl, got much closer. They snuggled on the deck, ate together, laughed at things I couldn’t understand. I liked seeing Ellie mother her, and I loved catching fish for them both. For the first time, I felt like a real husband. A provider.

Ellie started carrying Mimi into our bed at night and spooning with her. This didn’t leave much space for me, but I didn’t mind. I had the life I always wanted; what did I need to sleep for?

Days became weeks, and weeks months. In a flash, we’d already been with Mimi for a year. Ellie and I cleared paths for her around the boat, so she could drag herself wherever she needed to go. We stayed away from the shore, as far out as possible, keeping Mimi hidden in our bedroom when we had to dock for food or fuel. She stuck mostly to her seafood diet, occasionally nibbling at cereal and sipping on milk. “That’s your daddy’s favourite food you know,” Ellie told her, kissing the top of my head.

Eventually Mimi needed more fish than I could catch. We had to supplement it by buying seafood from town, meaning we were docking more often. Five fish a day became 10, 10 became 20, it was more than we store on our little boat. We tried to stick to feeding Mimi three meals a day and introduced more human foods. “She needs carbs, that’s what she needs. Fish is all protein,” Ellie suggested.

“Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t convinced.

Mimi went back to her old spot on the corner of the deck, refusing to move around the boat. She cried all day and night, like when we first found her, this time with a hand on her stomach. She was starving.

One night, when I was sure that Ellie was asleep, I went to sit with Mimi. “What can I do for you? What do you want?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

“Hungry,” she said. The desperation in her eyes made my chest ache, what would a good father do? “Hungry daddy” Mimi said.

I picked her up, she pressed her face against my neck. I held her like this for a few moments, before walking to the edge of the deck.

“What are you doing?” Ellie screamed, running towards me.

“She needs to go, she needs to go home,” I said, turning my body so Ellie couldn’t reach Mimi.

“This is her home! I’m her home,” Ellie tried to rip Mimi out of my arms.

“Stop, you’re going to hurt her!” I said, as Ellie started pulling on Mimi’s tail, “we need to do the right thing here El.” 

“No, she’s mine,” Ellie started stroking Mimi’s face, who leant back to try and escape the touch, “she is my daughter. I will never let her go.”

Mimi turned her face, grasping one of Ellie’s fingers between her teeth. They were much sharper than ours, her jaw much stronger. We’d seen her bite through countless oyster shells. 

“Let go!” Ellie said, trying to pull her finger out. Mimi only tightened her grip, beginning to break the skin. Blood dripped from her lips.

“Just calm down, she’ll let go, you’re scaring her!” I said.

Ellie just kept pulling.

Finally, Mimi bit down, biting Ellie’s finger clean off.

Ellie dropped to her knees, screaming as she held the stub where her finger used to be. Blood filled the cracks in the wooden deck.

I put Mimi on the ground, kneeling in the blood to help Ellie put pressure on her wound. With my T Shirt wrapped around her hand, the bleeding started to slow. Ellie’s face was paper white.

“Will, look,” she sobbed. We both watched as Mimi grabbed the railing and hauled herself off the boat.

I watched her sink. She reached for me, and I just watched her sink further into darkness.

“Did she swim?” Ellie asked me, “did she swim away?”

“Yeah baby, she swam away.”