Tickling the Siroko’s Chin by E. L. Chen

* * * *

Isemi’s hair drifted onto the sand in ragged handfuls.

Spring wind rolled against the hut’s creaking walls, blustering, battering, demanding entrance. Isemi did not answer as her hands were busy shearing her scalp with the blunt blade of last season’s knife. Perhaps if Kimabe had been there, she would have answered the summons, laughing raucously, throwing the door aside and welcoming the wind to her bared breast like a lover. But this season only Isemi tended the diving-hut and cut her own hair with clumsy cold-numbed and chapped fingers. She did not even have the baby’s weight on her back to comfort her, nor the little fists tugging at her cropped hair to distract her from the spring morning’s chill.

When the last tuft of hair had scattered onto the ground, Isemi slipped off her robe. She plucked a basket off of a rusted hook and stepped out of the diving-hut, squinting at the sudden brightness that flooded her eyes, shivering from the wind that buffeted her naked body. As she stumbled down the sandy slope—she was still discomfited by the soft, shifting terrain—she almost expected Kimabe’s steadying hand on her shoulder, or to hear the baby’s gurgle over the sound of carousing gulls and terns. But only the spring wind had come back this season to witness her return to the sea.

The water was as grey and colourless as a dead prawn, reflecting a sky choked with clouds. Foamy white waves rivalled the wind in their determination, curling, swaying, crashing, spitting up seaweed and broken shells on the smooth, wet sand before sliding back into the ocean. Isemi stood for a few heartbeats, knife in one hand, basket in the other. Goosebumps crawled over her arms, breasts, legs. Salt spray stung her eyes and lips. She gazed at the sunless horizon rather than the ocean itself, unable to bring herself to step over the water’s threshold. The lambent edge of the surf dared to lick her bare toes like a wet flame.

She tucked the knife into the basket and set down her burden, anchoring it into the damp sand to prevent the greedy, swelling waves from dragging it under. Just one dive, she thought. Just one quick dive, without the basket, to ease in muscles weak from a long winter spent indoors.

An albatross dipped briefly below the horizon and then soared upward, above smoke-grey clouds, out of sight. The ocean licked the shore clean with angry laps. Isemi picked up the basket, turned around and returned to the hut.

* * * *

What would she tell her father? Yesterday the blade had not been sharp enough to shear her hair; the day before that it had been too cold and the waves too furious. Last week the diving-hut had needed repairs, and its rotting timbers painted with a fresh coat of persimmon juice. Today she had no excuse other than her own reluctance. Cowardice, a voice snorted in the back of her head. It sounded suspiciously like Kimabe.

Perhaps she could tell him that she’d glimpsed a shark—or even the siroko. But she didn’t want her excuses to spread unnecessary panic in the village. She imagined her stepmother’s rough chuckling. “People here are suspicious of anything out of the ordinary,” Kimabe had once said. “They think your father a fool for wedding a stranger. A coarse, unattractive stranger.”

She’d grinned, the smile splitting her plump, tanned face. “They think us crazy for diving. They think the siroko roams our little cove, because a drunken fool drowned years ago while hunting for the creature’s magical pearl. They fear the water. Where I come from, water is as sacred as the land that yields rice, and the sky that gives you breath ... the water is our land, our sky—see?”

She had led Isemi to the churning face of the retreating surf, on which a cloudless sky was reflected, and through which Isemi could see abalone nestled between jagged rocks. “See? Everything one needs, the whole world, in water.”

Isemi hoped that Kimabe, wherever she was, had everything she needed. She at least had the baby for company, if nothing else.

Isemi slid open the door to her father’s house and saw two pairs of dainty lacquered sandals lined up on the straw mats. They had visitors. She heard a familiar, querulous voice, and sighed. Unwelcome visitors: Atsubo the herbwoman, and her daughter Hesiyake.

Isemi smoothed down her crumpled, sand-speckled robe and slid open the screen door to the sickroom.

Her father seemed thinner and paler than when she’d left him this morning; however, Atsubo’s formidable presence would sap the joy out of anyone, young or old, ill or able-bodied. His rheumy eyes lit up when he saw her. She knelt by his pallet and felt his cold but affectionate hand on her bowed head.

“Atsubo-dan thinks I should marry her, so she can take care of me properly,” he said. Laughter forced itself from his lungs in desperate, wheezing gasps. “What do you think, eh? Would you like Hesiyake for a sister?”

I want my own sister back, she thought, remembering the baby’s tiny fists tangled in her damp hair.

“One who laughs such on his sickbed is an impossible, stubborn fool, Momu-don,” Atsubo said. “One who believes she can change you would be tickling the siroko’s chin.”

Isemi’s father wheezed again. “Well, what are you waiting for? Don’t you enjoy a good challenge?”

He patted Isemi’s shoulder and they shared a brief, secretive smile. Isemi stood up to greet their guests. Atsubo sniffed. Her daughter said nothing, only looked down at the hands clasped together under the wide, long sleeves of her layered robes. Hesiyake was pale and willow-slender, and her hair was swept up into an elaborate chignon. A tiny swatch of red silk peeked out of the loops of lacquered hair, indicating that she was of marriageable age.

Isemi was suddenly conscious that there was nothing between her clammy skin and the coarse, faded blue robe tied with a fisherman’s straw rope. Her rope sash had seemed shorter this season, as her body was thick from muscle turning to fat. She didn’t even have enough hair to sweep into the tiny bun that elderly grandmothers wore. Her toes were grey from sand and she felt the tightness of an imminent sunburn on her nose.

She and Hesiyake had played together when young, scampering through rice paddies with the other village children, chubby, tanned and half-naked. She knew what her old playmate must’ve been thinking, despite her downcast eyes—Isemi had never grown up.

Atsubo handed Isemi a small wooden box. “One has brought more herbs. Hesiyake?”

“One must drink an infusion twice daily,” her daughter said in a voice so quiet that Isemi had to strain to hear her. “The herbs contain crane’s bill and creeping sailor, which will ease one’s pain and soothe one’s sleep.”

“Hesiyake trains to be a herbwoman as well,” said Atsubo. She sounded more smug than proud.

“Thank you,” said Isemi’s father. “Now go. Leave a sick man in peace.” He dismissed them with a feeble flutter of his bony hand.

Isemi accompanied Atsubo and Hesiyake to the front door, where she could be sure that her father would not hear. “What do you think?” she asked. “Is he better or worse? Should I fetch the physician?”

Atsubo frowned, and Isemi realized that she’d been speaking in the blunt, informal fishermen’s dialect that she and Kimabe used to banter in when no one was listening.

“Child,” Atsubo said, as if Isemi was one of the ragtag village children instead of a young woman as old as her daughter, “Momu-don is dying. To send for the physician would be futile. One might as well tickle the siroko’s chin, for all the good it would do. One does not think he wants to recover. Only the siroko’s pearl could save him now.” Atsubo frowned as if Isemi’s father were dying merely to insult her.

“It is Kimabe’s fault,” she added. “He dies of heartbreak. If not for her silliness, he would be strong enough to take his fishing-boat out with the other men.”

“Kimabe’s diving wasn’t silly,” said Isemi, hotly. “Diving brings in more than we need. Father doesn’t need to work.”

Atsubo’s lips pursed; there were no buckets of shellfish by the door, waiting for the fish-seller’s inspection. Isemi flushed under her tanned skin.

“The lord collects his tax next month,” Atsubo said.

Isemi said nothing else.

Hesiyake, her head still bowed, said, “One thanks you for your hospitality, Isemiyama-dan.”

Isemi slid open the door in a single rough motion and the two shuffled away in their lacquered sandals. She slumped against the door frame, weary, defeated.

The lord’s tax. How could she have forgotten? If Kimabe were here, she would know what to do ... but if Kimabe were here, Isemi wouldn’t be in this dilemma. Father would be well, and she and Kimabe would be warming themselves over the fire in the diving-hut, their buckets overflowing with sea urchins, shellfish and abalone. One month’s bounty would support them comfortably for a year, and she and Kimabe and the baby would spend the rest of the summer frolicking by the shore, crowning each other with yellow garlands of cat’s tongue, or combing the seabed for pearl-bearing oysters.
Her father’s anguished coughing startled her out of her reverie. She hurriedly slid the front door shut and flew to his room. He smiled to reassure her, but the coughs racked his emaciated chest. Isemi found a cold but half-full teacup on the floor. She brought it to his lips with shaking hands. He swallowed. The coughs subsided.

He put his hand over hers and they remained motionless, wordless. His shallow, strained breathing seemed so loud, so painfully resonant. Isemi didn’t know what to say or what to do. Kimabe would’ve known how to say the right thing to ease their worries. Even Atsubo’s familiar haughtiness would have been a comfort.

“Would you really marry Atsubo-dan?” she blurted out.

Her father tried to laugh and coughed instead. “I’ve already been lucky enough to have been wed to your mother, and then Kimabe. Don’t want to push my luck, eh?” He coughed again. Isemi handed him a scrap of cloth. He brought it to his mouth; it came away stained with blood.

Isemi bit her lip. If only he were well! Then they could sail in his fishing-boat, which held happier memories than the diving-hut Kimabe had built at the siroko’s cove. It would be like old times. Isemi would mend the nets and sails, cook the meals, help with the gutting and scaling, as her mother had when Isemi was little. At night they would unroll their pallets on the deck and her father would tell stories of how the siroko, tired of luring men to their deaths in the water, would take the form of a beautiful maiden to beguile and betray men on land.

Her father’s hand slackened and slid off of her own. His breathing, although shallow, was steady; he was asleep. Isemi brushed away a stray tear. She’d already lost two mothers and a sister. When—if her father died, she would have no one. She’d have to toil in the rice paddies to pay the lord’s tax and earn her place in the village. She wouldn’t even be able to find a husband to take care of her; no one wanted a stocky, wild-haired, sun-browned, rough-tongued wife who was known for romping in the sea without a stitch of clothing on.

Her happiness depended on her father’s survival, which, as Atsubo had said, was an impossibility. In her village, there was an expression used to describe the futile act of attempting the impossible. Isemi thus had no other option than to tickle the siroko’s chin. Literally.

“If the siroko’s pearl will heal you,” she whispered to her sleeping father, “I’ll find it.” Even if I have to dive.

* * * *

The ocean was a bolt of rippling indigo silk embroidered with white tongues of flame. Soot-brown petrels fluttered over the waves, hopping and skipping over the surface, but never alighting, as if they could not decide where to land. Isemi knew how they felt. Although this morning she would finally steel her mind and brave her old friend—her old enemy—the water.

The surf spat onto the smooth rim of the beach. Isemi chewed nervously at her lip and tasted salt. She clutched her knife and basket and squinted at the cluster of rocks in the distance, where the siroko was said to dwell.

It was the spot where Kimabe had taught her to deep-dive. The spot where Kimabe—and the baby—had disappeared, without a trace. Not a single splinter from the basket in which the baby had floated nor a single shred of the blue cloth in which she’d been wrapped had washed ashore. Village tongues had wagged at bringing the baby along while they dived, but Kimabe hadn’t cared. Farm women brought children into the paddies all the time, and even gave birth in the fields.

Isemi closed her eyes. She remembered breaking the surface, savouring the triumph of her first deep-water dive. The sun searing her saltwater-swollen eyes. Her vision clearing, and seeing no one with whom she could celebrate her victory over the ocean’s depths.

She remembered staggering out of the water, assuming that Kimabe had simply come back to shore to feed the baby—and seeing only two sets of footprints in the sand, one firm and steady, the other erratic, both heading toward the water’s lambent edge.

She remembered her shaking muscles, her chattering teeth. The desperate half-run, half-crawl up the sandy slope to the diving-hut. Nearly tripping over bindweed vines. Discovering the hut’s hollow emptiness, and collapsing before the smouldering fire. She remembered the water trickling from her hair down along her collarbone—first one drop, then another, then another and another, their fall as unstoppable as tears.

She remembered the look on her father’s face when she came home, alone.

It would be the same look on her face if he were to die.

Isemi tied the basket’s handle to her naked waist with a length of straw rope. She waded into the ocean, the basket thumping against her thigh, until the water was up to her shoulders. Her reflection stared up at her as if waiting to see what she would do next. Her hand gripped her knife until the knuckles grew white.

No time to dawdle, Kimabe’s voice scolded at the back of her head. The longer you wait, the more strength the cold will sap from your body.

Isemi kicked up her heels and swam toward the distant outcropping. The siroko’s spine, local fishermen called it. The jutting rock cluster was indeed as large as she imagined the siroko’s backbone to be. A full-grown man could easily slip between its abalone-lined crevices. She and Kimabe would’ve pried loose a fortune last season if not for the risky depth.

Isemi winced as her toes struck the slimy, seaweed-festooned rock face. She found a foothold and leaned forward, forcing all the air from her lungs before her head slid underwater. Kimabe had taught her this technique, claiming that empty lungs helped them sink easily to the ocean floor. “Bubbles streaming out of your nose only scares away the fish,” she’d said.

Saltwater stung Isemi’s eyes, but she kept them open. A deafening throb filled her ears. In the thundering silence Isemi felt her loneliness magnified to despair. No one waited for her on the beach, to race her, laughing, to the diving-hut’s warmth. Fear and misery paralyzed her muscles as keenly as water-chills. She propelled herself to the surface.

If you do not go through with this, she told herself, sputtering water from her mouth, soon there will be no one to wait for you at home, either.

Isemi exhaled, willing herself to be as heavy as an anchor. This time the saltwater did not sting her eyes as much. She sank, slowly, occasionally reaching out for the rock face when the undercurrents threatened to sweep her from her descent.

She remembered what Kimabe had said. Where I come from, the water is our land, our sky. Isemi could believe that she was in a different world, albeit one in which there was still a boundless sky and ground beneath one’s feet. This is what it feels like to fly, she told herself, thinking of the soot-brown petrels who rarely landed. That was what diving was like: gliding above ground, floating on currents, touching down occasionally, while fighting the pull of the jealous sky.

Her toes touched a pebbled, yielding surface, setting off miniature sandstorms that obscured her vision. Peering through the murk, she saw nothing of interest below, only more rocks. Then the sandstorms settled, revealing the nature of the surface on which she perched.

The siroko lay under her feet, twined in intricate coils on the ocean floor.

Isemi bolted off the siroko’s back and clung to the rock face, staring through the swirling sand. She discerned the serpentine body, the shaggy head and bulbous long-lashed eyes. Its sinewy appendages were about the length and girth of Isemi’s own legs, but compared to the gargantuan body they appeared stubby, helpless if not for the fierce five-clawed grip. Even in the dim, cloudy undersea, the siroko’s scales shimmered as if under the afternoon sun, and each talon gleamed as if dipped in gold.

The creature stirred. A movement akin to a shrug rippled from its neck all the way down to the barbs of its tail. Isemi became still. But the siroko’s eyes never fluttered open; it was asleep. Isemi wondered what it dreamed—if it dreamed. Did it dream of thunder and rain, of precious jewels pouring from the split hulls of storm-ravaged ships? Did it dream of succulent fishermen falling from the sky?

A creamy, iridescent flash caught her eye as the siroko’s shaggy beard wriggled lazily in the current.

The pearl.

Isemi swam toward the siroko’s head with steady, even strokes and gently combed its beard with the tip of her knife. The silky tendrils parted, revealing a smooth, rounded surface. She tucked the knife into the loop of rope at her waist and stretched out her shaking fingers, forcing them to curl around the orb.

The siroko’s treasure slid out easily from under its chin. The pearl was the size of a man’s fist, and heavier than she’d expected. She unlatched the lid of her basket and dropped it in. The siroko stirred and rippled. She froze; giant bubbles rose from the siroko’s quivering nostrils, but it continued to sleep. Isemi would have sighed with relief if she’d had breath to spare in her lungs.

Isemi raked the water with one hand and her body shot upward. Seaweed followed, clinging to her arms and legs. The sand on the ocean floor swirled again, obscuring the siroko’s golden coils. More than once she kicked in panic, imagining that the seaweed at her ankles was the siroko’s silky beard.

But no needle-sharp fangs sank into her leg; the only enemy she had to elude was her own fatigue. As the sky above her head brightened, her vision blurred and her air-starved lungs felt as if they were being shredded by the siroko’s gold-tipped claws.

At last air and sunlight burned her eyes. Isemi broke the surface, forcing herself to take slow, measured breaths. She still had to reach the shore before water-chills and her own tired muscles betrayed her. She began to paddle for land, straining against the weight of the pearl at her waist. She paused, fumbled with the rope and hauled the basket to the surface. She tipped it to one side, letting the water drain until the basket floated.

Something in the basket flopped against the woven straw. Curious, Isemi unlatched the lid and flipped it open, assuming that a fish had squirmed inside.

A baby lay at the bottom of the basket, wriggling its arms and legs. A baby wrapped in a familiar scrap of blue cloth. The baby that Kimabe had never named. Isemi’s sister.

Isemi’s gasp was lost in the sudden roar of an oncoming wave. She latched the basket and swam for shore, towing her precious cargo behind her on its rope. She craned her head, hoping that the approaching wall of water wasn’t as high and angry as it sounded.

There was no wall—only a golden-scaled, serpentine shape that wove in and out of the water like a bindweed vine. A scream, louder and more poignant than a seagull’s cry, pierced the air; startled petrels took to the sky.

Isemi’s feet scraped against polished pebbles and broken shells. She winced and stumbled out of the water onto the shore. She scanned the horizon, hugging the precious basket to her chest, wondering if the baby could feel her heart pounding through the straw.

The siroko was still far away; the golden curves that protruded between the waves appeared small, almost human in scale. Then Isemi realized that her eyes deceived her; the curves were small. She stared at the unexpected sight of human buttocks, hips, shoulders. What she thought was the siroko’s barbed tail was actually a pair of fluttering human feet.

The siroko could take the form of a beautiful maiden, she remembered. There was only one set of footprints in the sand, after all, pointed toward the sea.

Isemi staggered up the slope to the diving-hut as fast as her tired legs would allow her. The sky darkened. Lightning crackled. Thunder crashed a heartbeat afterward, sounding as if the sky had been split in half. A storm was approaching, quickly, as if it had followed Isemi out of the water.

“Isemi,” said a familiar voice in the blunt tones of the local fishermen’s dialect. “Give me back my pearl.”

Isemi turned, struck dumb with shock.

The siroko was said to take the form of a beautiful, pale, willowy maiden. Instead, Kimabe stood before her—her stocky brown flesh all curves and dimples, her hair as short and wild as Isemi’s own.

Thunder and lightning crackled again, startling Isemi out of her stupor. She bolted past the diving-hut and on to the road. The thunder devoured the siroko’s shriek until all Isemi could hear was her heart’s fierce hammering within her ears.

Rain as hot and harsh as angry tears began to strike the ground, battering the dirt road until mud oozed from the furrows. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, almost in unison; the storm nipped at her bare, muddy heels. The baby cooed and batted impotent fists against the sides of the basket. Isemi dared to lift her head, squinting. Black shapes loomed ahead, obscured by her waterlogged vision. She had reached the outskirts of her village.

Doors were closed and blinds drawn against the oncoming storm. Isemi stumbled down the deserted alleys, too troubled to care what the villagers would think if they peeked outdoors and saw her naked flight. She felt as if she’d turned a lifetime of sharp corners when she halted in front of her father’s house, her mud-spattered legs trembling from the novel effort of standing still.

She shifted the basket to one arm and slid the door open with the other. The storm howled and tried to follow her inside; she summoned her remaining strength to slide the door back into place. The storm’s fury was mute, now, powerless, punctuated only by bamboo blinds rattling over the windows. The rattling echoed inside her skull as her teeth chattered.

She snatched up a blanket from her room and wrapped herself in it. Then she tiptoed toward the sickroom, allowing herself the luxury of catching her breath. She slid the door open with cold-numbed fingers.

“Isemi?”

Her father’s voice was so faint and sibilant that at first she thought it was the wind whistling through the blinds. The word was no more than a sputtered, shallow breath, not much stronger than a sigh.

Isemi lifted the basket’s lid. The baby gurgled and stretched chubby arms toward her. Isemi picked her up; although the baby’s skin was unnaturally cool and dry, the familiar weight was comforting against her shoulder.

“I brought back the baby,” Isemi said, kneeling by her father’s side. “The siroko’s pearl, its treasure. Now you’ll be better, and we can go fishing, like the old days.”
Her father’s smile was so fleeting that Isemi thought she had imagined it. His hand lifted, then fell, and as she stared into his unblinking gaze she realized that she was too late.

Outside, the storm raged and howled, furious yet sorrowful.

A rainwater droplet flew from behind the rippling bamboo blinds and splattered on her father’s forehead, forming a little bow-shaped puddle. Suddenly Kimabe was there, kneeling beside Isemi, her lips pressed against the spot on which the rain had landed. She drew her hand over his eyes, closing them, and leaned back, saying nothing.

Isemi said, blankly, “She didn’t cure him.” The baby murmured and squeezed water from the drenched tufts of hair at the nape of Isemi’s neck.

Kimabe snorted. “Of course not. She’s only a baby. I did have a pearl, once, a long, long time ago. I lost it. But it doesn’t matter. It was only an oyster’s pearl.”

“She didn’t cure him,” Isemi repeated.

“He had lung-sickness. Nothing could’ve cured him, no matter what that hag Atsubo says.”

That frank statement eliminated Isemi’s last doubts that the creature beside her was her stepmother. “Kimabe,” she sobbed.

Kimabe’s face softened. She enfolded Isemi and the baby into her arms. Isemi noticed that her bare skin was as cool and dry as the baby’s, and her hair smelled like rotting seaweed.

“Why did you leave us?” Isemi asked.

“Didn’t you notice that the baby wasn’t growing any older?” Kimabe said, pulling away. “My kind doesn’t age as you do.”

The baby wailed. Kimabe took her daughter to her breast, crooning under her breath. Isemi looked away.

“I have lost everything,” she said.

“No,” said Kimabe, “you still have yourself.”

“But I miss her. And you. Stay,” she said, grabbing Kimabe’s hand. Despite the appearance of rounded, tanned flesh, it felt scaly. “Please. I need a mother.”

“You’ve had two already,” said Kimabe, shortly. “How many more will you need before you can balance on your own two feet? I’ve been watching you at the beach; you can cross the sand on your own now. You don’t need me to steady your step.”

“Yes, I do,” Isemi blurted, flushing with shame as she remembered her fear and hesitation at the water’s edge.

Kimabe sighed. “What would you have me do, to convince you that you are old enough? Must I buy you a scrap of red silk to put in your hair, before you’re convinced? Or should I sell your maidenhead to the highest bidder, like a courtesan? The rules are different here, by the sea. There are no artificial rites of passage. Only everyday survival. And everyday joys and sorrows. The pleasure of finding a pearl in an errant oyster; the misery of a stubborn abalone that will not let go of its rock.”

“Please,” Isemi said, “I need a sister, at least.”

“My daughter,” Kimabe said, drawing the baby closer to her breast, “is my means of survival. My legacy. You must choose your own, now that you’re no longer a child. That’s what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it? More than the water, more than being without family. You’re afraid to grow up.”

Isemi bowed her head, recognizing the truth in Kimabe’s honest words. Atsubo and Hesiyake and the other villagers saw her as a child because she had never given them reason to believe otherwise. She had always been Momu’s indulged daughter, tagging alongside her parents instead of finding a place of her own.

“And anyway,” Kimabe said, lifting Isemi’s chin with a stubby, callused finger, “the village believes we’re dead. Imagine the look on Atsubo’s face if we appeared again!” She threw her head back and cackled. “It would almost be worth coming back.”

“I don’t care what everyone thinks,” Isemi said, fiercely.

Kimabe grinned. “I know you don’t. That’s why I believe you’re ready to stand on your own. You’ve tickled the siroko’s chin, after all.”

Isemi giggled, despite herself. Kimabe said, “Once you learn to depend on yourself, you’ll realize that you don’t have to be alone. I chose you, and Momu-don.” She leaned over the sickbed and kissed Isemi’s father on the forehead again.

“I hope you choose as wisely,” she said, touching Isemi’s cheek—and all of a sudden she and the baby dissolved into mist and the storm passed overhead, leaving Isemi kneeling by her father’s deathbed, alone save for the sunlight trickling through the bamboo blinds.

* * * *

Spring wind rolled against the hut’s creaking walls, blustering, battering, demanding entrance. Isemi flung the door open and welcomed it inside, despite her bare skin.

She descended the slope to the water’s edge, not caring if she stumbled or tripped. She heard giggling and spun around, her hands on her hips, a mock gruff expression on her face. A handful of village children squealed and jumped out from behind an enormous piece of driftwood, no doubt trying to catch a glimpse of the young fisherwoman who caught shellfish without a boat—or clothing. Isemi grinned, waving her knife and basket, and the children scampered away.

The lord was going to collect his tax next month. Isemi tied the basket to her waist and tucked her knife within the loop of straw rope. She pondered Kimabe’s words as she waded into the water. You don’t have to be alone. Perhaps if one of the village children showed an interest in diving, she would take an apprentice. There’d been a little girl who’d lagged behind, staring with curiosity at Isemi’s face rather than her nude body. But that was something to think on later, in the warmth of the diving-hut over a pot of rice drenched with fish drippings.

Damp tufts of hair clung to Isemi’s forehead and the nape of her neck. As she waded into the water, she looked at her reflection in the frothy surface; a round, brown face surrounded by a nimbus of coarse, water-logged tendrils stared up at her with solemn eyes crinkled by morning sunlight. Then the face smiled, puffed its cheeks with breath, and rushed up to meet her with a wet, enthusiastic splash of a kiss.

* * * *

E. L. Chen is also an artist, which means she’s pretty much screwed unless she marries rich. Her short fiction has been published in On Spec and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and her comics have appeared in Say ... Everything else that she doesn’t mind you knowing can be found at www.geocities.com/elchensite. E. L.’s story “Bobby’s First ABC’s” appeared in Challenging Destiny Number 14.