Chapter Text
When fog clings to the water’s surface like a jealous lover, Amelia knows she's overslept.
Her back aches and her eyes are blurry and sea salt clings to the back of her throat with enough ferocity to make her gag. Nautical charts dance in the corners of her vision when she stands, and she can swear that the seagulls are laughing at her expense when she ducks outside of her cabin. It’s the perfect day for a swim.
It was hard to be a marine biologist in a landlocked state. It was even harder to find suitable jobs that paid enough to make a dent in the vast ocean of Amelia’s student loans.
She wasn’t picky, snatching up any and all available jobs that held even the tiniest relation to her Master’s degree. The blonde had done just about everything: souvenir shop restocker at a small zoo nearby, marine wildlife photographer, mascot for an aquatic pet store foolishly named Loan Sharks, she even picked up a janitorial position at an aquarium three towns over. Amelia has been a firm believer in the ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ mentality and had been for as long as she could remember.
That’s why she’s here, thousands of miles away from home in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, acting as a nearby island’s not-very-local fisherman and living on a ratty boat. It pays well enough when the tides are kind, and there’s enough free time to poke around in the name of science at a few fish that are too small to sell. She’s learned a remarkable amount in the past few months, but she’s always aching for more.
Steering her borrowed ship, The Sunfish, into harbor and docking it only takes a few minutes. Hauling the night’s catches onto shore takes a handful more. But soon enough Amelia is in front of the elderly man (who is simultaneously blinder than a bat and the most impressive fisherman she’s ever met) who cleans and sells her fish. She can tell by the look on his face that something has happened.
“What have you got to feed the people of Indigo Waters today?” The fishmonger asks, pulling himself into a proper seated position just inside of his wooden shack. His discolored rocking chair creaks beneath his weight as he rises, and the man approaches without even so much as a walking stick at his side. Amelia is convinced that the hazy gleam to his eyes wasn’t from an accident out at sea like he claimed it was- something about the jagged slashes across his face promised more. “I’ve been craving Mahimahi something fierce.”
Hauling the larger of her ice chests onto the counter, Amelia snorts. “Nothing quite that exciting. Mostly mackerels, a few sardines, and some sole.”
The fishmonger reaches into the chest, pushing past clumps of ice to run calloused fingers over flared fins and limp gills. She’s caught enough to feed the handful of people that resided on Indigo Waters, with a few pounds extra for the traveling merchants and hired help from nearby islands. Amelia is always sure to only haul the largest of her catches onto her ship, allowing the local ecosystem time to recover from her pilfering.
Satisfied, the old man moves to the drawer where he keeps his checks. “You’re growing more impressive by the day,” he says. The scratching of an old ballpoint pen accentuates the sound of the sea nicely. “Used to be that all you offered us were measly crabs and half-eaten shrimp.”
“Cut me some slack,” Amelia laughs. “I didn’t exactly learn the ins and outs of steering a ship in driver’s ed.”
“That’s because you’re from the mainland,” the fishmonger replies. He hands the piece of paper over, just shy of something worthwhile. Amelia’s bank account cries across the ocean. “Had you grown up here, you would’ve gotten your sea legs before anything else.”
At least she can afford to pay the owed rent on her boat, which was weight removed from her sunburnt shoulders. Pocketing her livelihood, the blonde moves towards the back of the shop to begin helping. The fishmonger was quick and efficient in his work, but that didn’t eliminate the risk of losing a finger or two. “Whatever you say, old man.” Even if he was significantly faster and more careful than she could ever hope to be, she had working eyes where he did not. Taking up a knife and dragging one of the larger sole towards her, Amelia begins the slow process of removing its scales.
Scraping sounds fill the air as they work, occasionally interrupted by baying seals or hungry seafaring birds. It’s nice, calming. The kind of peace that has Amelia wishing she were doing something a little more productive than learning how to properly cut different species of marine life from head to tail. She is halfway through preparing her third fish, and him his ninth, when the fishmonger seems to remember her existence.
“Have you seen anything strange lately?” He’s got a look in his eyes. She isn’t quite sure what to describe it as other than just that: A look.
Amelia accredits it to allergies attributed to the change in seasons. Maybe he’d run out of Benadryl from the local store and needed a refill. “No stranger than usual. Why?”
He rips a mackerel's spine clean out of its flesh, flecks of still-fresh blood clinging to the skin beneath his nails. “No reason.” Deft fingers continue to rip fins from scales and sever heads from bodies.
Chills run down Amelia’s back. “Alright, then.” She doesn’t remember hearing about summer on Indigo Waters being so cold. From where she’s standing, she can see sandpipers chasing the receding waves. Their cries grow frantic when the sea threatens to drag them under, spindly legs taking them back towards the safety of the higher sands.
Silence washes over them once more, nearly drowning Amelia with its weight. She fumbles with her knife, tripping over cuts that should have been simple for even the most inexperienced of hands. Cold, lifeless eyes peer up at her with what Amelia swears is judgment. Chopping off its head with a bit more force than necessary makes her feel better, even if her fingers shake at the press of cold steel against nicked skin. The only solace she has is that the fishmonger is unable to witness her ineptitude.
“Be careful,” he warns. “Bleeding near the ocean is dangerous this time of year.”
Amelia fumbles with the knife, trying not to act as startled as she feels at the sudden voice. There are no words that spring to her mind in response, especially because she cannot tell if the fishmonger is serious or not. If she should be worried or not. If she should have read the fine print on this job description or not.
All she can do is keep her mouth shut, rend meat from skin, and hope that her catches are worthwhile.
xxx
A heat wave washes over Indigo Waters, laying itself over the island like a blanket fresh from the dryer except significantly more uncomfortable. It is sudden and it is horrible, with the few residents retreating almost completely into their homes in efforts to stay cool. The fishmonger is skittish and nervous when Amelia sees him next, telling her that he’ll be heading deeper onto the island until the weather’s stabilized once more.
She wants to ask what she’s meant to do about her catches, who’ll help her skin the fish and cut them into marketable pieces, but the fishmonger says something strange. There’s a wild glint to his eyes when he does, fingers shaking as he stuffs a duffel bag full of clothes and what Amelia swears is a long, steel blade.
“You’re better off staying away from the water.”
She laughs, assuming that he’s joking. “Yeah, right. And let everyone starve?” Shaking her head, Amelia throws her thumb over her shoulder, towards the long shadow that the Sunfish is casting over their beach. It’s empty now, unusually so. Many of the children on the island spent their summers splashing in shallow waters and plucking shells from the shore. The only sign of life Amelia sees now is the fishmonger’s hunched back. “I’ll just let the trawl run at night. I’m not afraid of a little heat.”
The old man stiffens, turning to Amelia with what she can swear is fear piercing through the haze of his eyes. “Don’t.”
Fighting against the strange feeling in her stomach, Amelia furrows her brows. “It takes days for shipments of fresh meat and fruit to come in from the other islands, you told me so yourself. I can’t imagine anything’ll be sent over until the heat wave passes.”
“So I did.” Shaking his head, silver and white catching the light of the dying sun, the fishmonger finishes packing and hitches his worn bag over a scarred shoulder. “But there is nothing for you out there, nothing for any of us. Not until The Depths have settled.”
xxx
The ocean grows quiet, and Amelia struggles to catch anything for the next few days.
Lugging the weight of her trawl across the deck, sun stinging the back of her neck, Amelia sighs. There are only a few small flounders struggling within the rope’s hold. It is nowhere near what she needs for the day, let alone the week. “C’mon, guys. Just because I ate one or six of you last month doesn’t mean you have to take it personally.”
The fish do not respond, struggling against wet wooden planks and stained plastic.
To add insult to injury, Amelia hadn’t been able to observe any new or rare species in what felt like weeks. Not even anything common with abnormal size or coloring, either. When poking around a tide pool during sunrise, the blonde had been graced with the presence of a single hermit crab. The seals that made the nearby beaches and rocky shores their home had all but disappeared, and Amelia only heard gulls and pelicans calling to one another just as the sun was setting. She never sees them, only hears the panicked cries that rise from their throats as they head away from sea and towards the safety of the island’s heart.
Collapsing onto the shitty lawn chair that acted as her resting spot, she fingers at the rusty fishing hook that hung constantly around her neck. Her Uncle Watson and Uncle Holmes used to take her out to the lake as a kid, pointing at all the different kinds of plant life that kept tiny, shimmering bodies safe from harm. If she had known that becoming a marine biologist would result in such a horrendous working history, she would have become a doctor or a detective the way her uncles had originally urged.
But she couldn’t help it. She wanted to study the strange things that happened out in the open ocean and the even stranger things that were said to lurk there. Amelia had learned that telling people she majored in marine biology with a concentration in mythic beings never went the way she hoped. Mermaids, kelpies, sea monsters- she wanted to study them all, find proof of their existence and figure out their place within the oceanic ecosystems. The Depths were what the residents of Indigo Waters called their own versions of things that went bump in the night, although nobody had ever quite seen anything to garner such a great fear of the open water.
The island had a horrible history with fishermen, sure, but there was never anything as damning as late-night attacks or missing residents. Just a few paranoid men and women who tended to regard Amelia with something like pity.
It’s hot out, painfully so. The humidity is thick enough to press down against her tired body, seeping into her bones, with the lack of wind adding insult to injury. She would resort to panting like a dog if she still had the energy to do so. Amelia had risen much earlier than normal, struggling to sleep beneath the small roof that barely shielded the Sunfish’s quarters from the worst of the weather. The small candle that she kept lit during journaling sessions winked at her from the shoddy desk where it spent its time, flickering over rough sketches of a swordfish that she had seen a few meters out at sea before heading to bed.
Staring up at the cloudless sky, trying and failing to keep her retinas from burning, Amelia let out a suffering sigh. “Might as well take a dip.” Her nets were empty, her lines were loose, and her skin was absolutely cooking. Sure, she would probably scare any potential fish away from her boat, but it wasn’t like there was much around anyways.
Slipping beneath the deck for a quick outfit change, throwing on a bathing suit and slathering herself in a disgusting amount of sunscreen, Amelia clambers back onto the heated wood of the Sunfish’s deck just in time to be met with one of her fishing rods dipping against its holder. She can tell by the way the line grows taut that it is something big, something heavy and worthwhile.
It takes all of her self-control to not let out a shout of triumph, skidding excitedly on bare feet as she goes to yank on the fishing rod before it threatens to snap in half. Whatever is beneath the waves is deep, fleeing from the overbearing sun and Amelia’s desperation with a ferocity that she can’t quite place. She and her rented pole fight against whatever’s on the end of her hook for what feels like hours, even though she knows it’s only minutes at best, before the line grows loose.
Groaning, sweat dripping against her temples and arms shaking from the effort, she tugs the handle of her rod back and begins to reel anew. There’s still a bit of weight on the end, probably from clumps of seaweed or something just as disappointing clinging to the hook and sunken bobber. Her hands slip against each other as she fumbles to recall the line completely, stepping back to plant herself more firmly against the Sunfish’s deck. As it, whatever it is, leaves the water her rod grows heavy once more, although there is no struggle to be felt when she presses her fingertips against thin wire.
Using her shoulders and waist to drag her catch into view, Amelia is struck with the smell of iron so suddenly that she breaks into a coughing fit. Laying on her deck, gills still working and mouth gaping, is the tattered remains of a large salmon. Chunks of flesh have been ripped from its belly and flank, with its dorsal and caudal fins both torn to shreds. Its intestines lay thrown atop the darkening wood, giving Amelia a good view of the creature’s innards as it dies before her.
It’s useless. There’s absolutely nothing she can do to help the poor thing, save traveling back in time, and Amelia knows that nobody on Indigo Waters will buy a fish that’s half eaten. Creeping closer, watching muscles spasm a few times in defiance, the blonde crouches to carefully examine the life-ending injuries with a more critical eye.
There are gauges along only one of the fish’s sides, as if whatever had attacked it approached quickly and with intent to kill. The small, uneven bite marks along its belly scream ‘shark’ to Amelia, but the circumference and torn skin are strange enough to leave her stumped on what species. All the wounds are fresh enough to tell her that they’d come from the same creature, making sense of the extra weight and thrashing that had occurred when she attempted to reel the salmon in initially.
What troubles Amelia, though, is that the claw marks almost appear to mimic that of human hands.