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There's a class of fish that gets its name from illuminated freckles and sometimes bulbous light fixtures hanging off its skull. It swims with the precociousness of a predator and throws its teeth in to the abyss to grab at less fortunate creatures that search for light in a less than metaphoric sense.
"Lanternfish." Allison had started with its common name, speaking out to a room full of professors and alumni and two board members.
She cited that a current running in arctic waters off of Iceland housed two species of rare fish that were recently discovered by way of dumb luck in a fisherman's net. She spoke about the underfunded expedition her colleague embarked on (falsely stating their friendship considering they'd only ever skyped once) and showed photos of his gamut on a little sail boat. And she spoke louder about his critical mistakes that she'd avoid (making it apparent that this friendship wouldn't suffer the competition) if only the board would give her this research grant.
And, in their infinite wisdom, they did. But only after she'd finished the thesis and gotten the permit.
-
God they were pretty. The archaic bone structure holding up their special effects leather mask, marked with cascading teeth sharper than an insult. Their little milk tender eyes creamy with apathy.
Everybody loved Anglerfish; you'll be hard pressed to find someone who didn't. Most people thought the illuminated bait was entertaining or funny enough to call other fish stupid for giving in to the trick of their evolutionary marvel. Maybe somebody liked the cartoonish appeal of their anatomy. Maybe they just thought sex jokes about male specimens with parabiotic reproduction was great for chain emails. Maybe they liked Finding Nemo.
But maybe they were like Allison and gushed about how pretty they were. Two glasses if wine in to a date and she'd go on tangents about these monstrous creatures in icy waters who hide from scientists like her.
Then her date would correct her. "Biologist," they'd say. "Scientist makes you sound creepy when you do that hand thing."
And she'd hide her palms in the pockets of her coat for the rest of the date and let the poor sap across from her talk about how annoying it was to make frappucinos or some retail woes or something about calculus, whatever it was that they did. But all the while she'd be in her own head with the wispy thoughts of photophores and upside down swim routines to entertain her.
-
"How about a pill bug?" Isaac asked.
"I've eaten a pill bug...I've eaten a lot of pill bugs..."
"I mean a giant pill bug." He emphasized what he meant with his hands, not turning to see if anyone was looking at him.
"Hmm, how good would an isopod grill? Maybe with some A.I., or siracha." Allison hummed under her blanket, the flashlight in the crook of her neck to read by and color in all the diagrams with her pencil. They were three hours to a research center in Westfjords, bitter cold fogging up all the windows save for the constant battering wiper blade on the diver's side. If they hadn't left this late, or early according to their Icelandic handler, the road wouldn't have existed again until the spring.
"What about you, RK? Would you eat a big bug?" Allison asked, turning off the light when she pulled the cover off her head. He'd asked her to shield the light when he drove under the discretion that they might hit a snow bank if it caught his eye.
RK mimicked Allison's humming in the trill of his voice. "It would not be the most weird thing I've ever eaten."
"What would be the 'most weird'?" Isaac asked, moving his hands for the umpteenth time.
"My mother makes good Slátur. That is what my grandmother tells me. I ate it once when I was very young and then, oh, never never again." RK tapped his finger on the steering wheel. He seemed to be chastising his tongue for remembering the taste.
Despite the apathy of sleep Isaac was interested and pushed on. "What is that? Slaughter?"
"There are many kinds, it is just blood pudding. Our folk make it very strong and sometimes made in the stomach of sheep with its blood. That is how my mother and my grandmother and also, her mother have made it. They say it makes it taste like home but I think it tastes...too much like home." RK laughed at himself and Isaac followed to be kind. Possibly Isaac was just amused by the way he talked in sparsely sewn together phrases. English was the only language RK didn't tie to a home he grew up in. He preferred the Icelandic voice of his mother's lineage and the German voice of his father and uncle. He let Isaac and Allison in on these facts during the drive whenever prodded. Isaac said it was like a better version road trip bingo and he didn't stop with the questions.
Allison smiled all on her own and waited for Isaac to ask her what other odd thing she would eat from the Bathypelagic level. She wanted to take a turn of her own and ask what cnidarian he'd try. The urge passed when he and RK started chatting about more Icelandic food.
She went back to her aimless coloring and notes in margins about diaphus. Scrawls of her hand writing in harsh letters show her ego and the zealous name of Diaphus Aregenti.
-
Allison's research team was composed of 4 technical assistants, two marine scientists, two professors from the university, and three engineers. Only a few who had names that she could spell. Taxonomy and Greek letters came easy to her but the diphthongs of Nordic countries evaded her tongue.
She made her mark gradually, the first week of this 5 months was spent adjusting to the cold. California weather was a welcome memory compared to the kissing frost that burst onto Allison's chest when she opened doors. Shrill breezes came in from all places, seeking her out and palming at her skin, the mouth of the wind at her nape and ear lobes. Forming habits without heat felt impossible but she took to sweaters and wool and insulated socks easy enough.
Her favorite of the assistants was a woman pushing 35 and the expressions of a satiated house cat. Pála was her guide when RK seemed to have his hands full or at the call of Isaac. Of two emotions, listless boredom and apathetic laziness, Pála had a lexicon of bothered sighs to speak without need for words. In the way the cold would blister skin to make tendons into rawhide and made every surface as sharp as a knife, Allison appreciated her quieted company. She appreciated the way Pála shucked her own coat in the lab to drape it over Allison's shoulders. She appreciated the touch of her nails, always painted a pale pink, on her wrist to remind her to eat. She appreciated how warm she was when they snuck in to each other's bunk and nestled noses to nape, knees to knees, and palms over palms.
Pála's presence was ultimately short lived. Her contract let her search for illuminated fish until the end of the second month. That deadline brought another educator from Buenos Aires in to study the microplankton of the region. If Pála had any opinions on the change she kept them to herself.
The day before Pála was due to leave she took Allison on a hike through to a light house a fair piece away from the center. They bundled up in thermals and scarves, Allison draping one of her Christmas shawls over Pála's shoulders when she saw how bare her neck was.
"You can't get frostbite before you travel. It might be bad luck," Allison said. "Or, maybe the frostbite is just the bad luck of leaving."
"I'm taking you to my favorite place. It is not bad luck to go to your favorite place," Pála replied, tucking the scarf in to her coat and running her nails over Allison's wrist.
They meandered down to the pier with the gurgle of water easing their tension out with the cathartic moans of the shiftless concrete. They held hands in thick gloves while Allison carried a thermos under her arm.
"I like to wait for dolphins." Pála put her arm around Allison when they sat down at the end of the pier. Allison tried to get comfortable but the bench seemed frozen. The hollowing of petrification made it feel like stone.
They stayed there, watching the current rise in the tide. Dolphins never breached the far off waves but when Pála lit a cigarette for herself the cursory smoke matched the swells enough to simulate them. When they poured coffee from the thermos in to their single mug the steam became sea lions and diving gulls tempting each other to spar.
Leaving was hard for Pála, even in her silence, but they retreated when Allison's toes felt less like limbs and more like static. Allison's grip on the thermos was slack and neither of them had the energy to dive for the mug when it clattered to the ground and rolled off the pier, disappearing in to the water.
---
Nine weeks in to the five month stay was a section of eternity that Allison couldn't break from. The days without Pála were tiring and frigid, a burrowing hunger in her belly. Eventually she slept warm, easier in the rising season changes and decadent blankets delivered when she asked, and she set alarms on her phone for meal reminders to satiate her exhaustion.
"You have to promise you will be good here, Ástin mín." Pála said, pushing her coat in to Allison's awkward arms. "Stay warm and good."
Allison made her take her scarf in exchange, the garish green contrasted against her dun brown hair and pale freckled cheeks. It brought color to Pála's face the same way compliments and kisses on her temple did. When she left, Allison kept her eyes fixed on the lamplight of color and silhouetted snow flakes as long as she could.
They weren't the great summer love that made it in to paperbacks. They were a comfort easily shrugged in to, something so familiar and rational in the astute impossibilities they faced constantly. The formulaic set up of their small form of love expired as easily as it came together. Coming apart was a clean break and then a slow harsh healing to the wound.
Making the trip up to the lighthouse came as a surprise to Allison's assistants and staff. She shivered so much they joked about using her as a generator when snow banks piled up on the electrical towers, no one could guess why she elected to brave the cold so often now. But she did all the same, trekking out through the rock path to the pier in Pála's coat. She took the same thermos each time with a paper cup stuffed in to her pocket.
She never stayed out on the pier for more than an hour but her visits were elongated by a moment more everyday. And she never did see any dolphins, though she had read up on the seasonal migration patterns. Nothing was predicted to pass though in the late season but early autumn forecasted blue whales and sharks.
There wasn't anything she looked for in the waves, the small hope of a grey hump in the water didn't excite her.
Pála had forgotten a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of her coat when she gave it to Allison. The bright red packaging was crinkled at its edges and the smell of tobacco was a pheromone that Pala had enriched in herself like it was written in her genetic make up.
Allison had asked Isaac for a lighter, getting a matchbook in return. She'd strike one and let the flame linger, taking in the photograph in her mind that reminded her of campfires and barbecues, and then she'd light a cigarette. There wasn't any compulsion to take in a drag, but she wafted the smoke around her like sage. Minding the ashes, she caught them in the bottom of her paper cup and mixed them with the last of her coffee, swirling them in obnoxious turns of her hand.
This would go on until she didn't need to take the paper cup anymore, having found the thermos mug placed on the edge of the pier by the petrified bench. Full of sand, like it was made to be an offering, it stood by itself with two petite fangs settled on top.
--
They weren't fangs.
"They are teeth," Isaac said, or rather, yawned. He'd been asleep when Allison called him up. They all took naps when they could and didn't care for curfews. Isaac spent most of his time cooped in his bunk with bottles of wine snuck from the cafeteria. He'd be found by a research assistant, eager with questions about cnidarian lifestyles, with a blanket slung over his shoulders and a paperback in hand. It was a wonder he got any work done.
The teeth were elongated and shapely with lettuced edges and slight inclines coming from the apparent root. Dull edges made them lesser than fangs and questionable for the sake of mastication.
"They look old. There's no stress signs so I doubt they were pulled out." Isaac turned one over in his hands and followed the edges. "My expertise isn't with teleost, as you know"
"I don't think it's a teleost. I mean...fish, at all. These edges don't match species I've seen." Allison said. "But the surface has abrasions, it's aquatic but...I don't know."
"Can you try cross matching the DNA samples here? RK says the library is big." Isaac handed the tooth back and crossed his arms to contemplate.
"I think I'll try in the morning." Allison glanced at the clock on her open laptop. "Or in a few hours. God, I'm sorry I woke you up for this."
"It's fine," Isaac said, dismissing it. "You were spooked. I have an excuse to call home now, anyway."
"You don't need an excuse to call," Allison said, catching herself when it sounded too heated. "They miss you all the time."
Isaac scoffed. "They down play it but they hate that I'm gone. I've noticed it." He sat down in the rolling chair opposite of Allison. She followed his spinning to and fro with his feet.
"How are they anyway?" Allison asked. She put the teeth in to a specimen box on the table but didn't seal it close. There was cause to examine them again and scrape off testable samples.
"She's almost done with the first trimester. Finally has a diet she and the baby can stand." He fumbled with his hands, the dirt under his nails suddenly so interesting. "Boyd sent me the sonogram photos and took pictures when they were at the doctor. It's just Erica glaring at the monitor. Boyd said she got through it fine.
"She hasn't been talking to me. Not because of the time difference. I call Boyd, he offers the phone to her, she avoids. Dramatically. Heard her pretending to vomit from another room just so she'd get out of talking to me.''
"Can you blame her?" Allison grinned, judgement withdrawn from her voice.
"No," he said, smiling. "I really can't."
----
The teeth were in her front pocket. She'd been pulling them out every time a college talked about the dumb luck of discovering a new species like those fishermen.
Allison wasn't good with secrets or the shyness of being so embarrassed by ignorance. But the way her colleges would pick up the teeth, twist them between fingers and set them back down was still humbling. At least in this ignorance she wasn't alone.
She went back to the lighthouse often enough to be a habit, the smell and comfort of it to calm her. She sat without change in this routine, on the bench with a cigarette out burning faster than incense.
The first return after the teeth didn't merit any fanfare. Nothing replaced the offering she took and there wasn't a place to leave crude messages. She went on like normal, coming and going at odd hours, until the second penance was left on the pier.
This seemed more peculiar, nearly childish. A small pile of luminescent scales with rigid edges and soft points. Their undertones were a dull purple and green hidden under a shimmering silver that faded to a translucent nothing.
Allison dropped to her knees in front of them to examine. She cradled enough in her hand to cover the fortunes of her palm. Two scales laid flat on her life line that ran to the pad under her middle finger. They didn't have the oval shape of normal fish, the novelty of their design making them crafty looking.
But the smell lingered in them like something familiar. When Allison brought them a few inches from her, the scent of salt and sea and grime wafted in updrafts. The darkness of water stuck in her brain when she closed her eyes and inhaled.
The sucking sound of a fish breaching water in the motionless waves brought her out of it. The glossy shifting surface gave some clearness to see the outline of a large tail and fins and shimmering green and purple scales but nothing more.
--
Allison kept the scales a diary secret in her front pocket. They rattled in a a specimen bottle next to the teeth when she walked. The outlines in her jeans were mistaken for bottles of aspirin and ibuprofen.
She started wondering if this had happened to Pála in her treks to the lighthouse. Maybe it had been a long standing joke between her and the lighthouse operator. Or she'd left some kind of detailed instruction to the research assistants to keep Allison entertained for the dark months. None of these reasons seemed plausible.
It intrigued her at first, worried her second, and nearly drove her insane the third time.
A fish spine, still wrapped in the plush flesh of tendons and straggling nerves. Pink muscles kept the bones in place and it lay on weathered concrete, dripping with salt water. She found it chilled in the obnoxious wind but the heat of what was once a pulse seemed apparent. It was fresh from a backside.
Allison's blood ran cold. She didn't examine the spine or hid it away in her pocket.
She wanted to scream out and demand an answer, pleading to whatever heard her to stop. When she did there wasn't a reply, just the consistent gurgling and splashing of waves near and distant.
She sat down on the concrete and tensed with each rush of a breeze that beckoned her off the pier. And she listened, putting nerves under the sound of the waves.
Then there was a whimper, something inhuman and mournful.
When Allison looked back she saw a curtain of red hair on the edge of the pier, hands gripping the railing, and the softened face of such wanton concern. Coppery wet curls covered big glassy eyes in relentless starring.
Allison muttered a nervous hello. She curved face her, this girl clutching up from arctic waters. The little points around her brow were eclectically decorated with ghost spaces of shiny lavender crystals that turned green in the light. Allison couldn't see past her naked shoulders and the slopes to pale curvatures of flesh.
This starring kept up until the girl dipped her gaze to where the fish spine lay. She hoisted herself up higher, bare breasted with cascading tricks of light on her chest, and pushed it with a timid flick of her hand. It flipped over twice and laid still.
The girl pulled up higher and awkwardly strained to catch a foothold in the concrete.
But it was in vain. No need for a foothold when her flesh spindled down to meet deep shades of murky green scales and fins more sheer than chiffon.
"Are you...an actor? Or... Something?" Allison asked, hesitate while watching the girl move and struggled up. Her head was working on logic, thoughts heavy and tumbling alongside fog.
The girl looked up to Allison again. The slack of her jaw trying to grin. When she opened her mouth there was nothing but fangs.
--
Teeth, not fangs.
The elliptical little teeth were nearly identical to the ones she had left there for Allison.
When Allison got the nerve to approach her, she took the specimens from her pocket and compared. The girl, this creaturous entity, didn't flinch when she brought timid fingers to run along her jaw. The pads of Allison's fingertips were slick against the scales covering the girl's face. They went from the corners of her forehead, confounded by the soft fire tresses, and followed the natural curves of her body in patches of color and grey cream.
The girl leaned in to Allison's hand when she flattened her palm. Over the constant of the water she still heard her sigh.
Allison kept up the search of her hands for little answers. Where was the spirit gum holding the scales, where was the end of her wig, where was the zipper to this tail and the seams to hold it. Where was the proof that only half of this girl was real and the rest was a fable.
What she found were warm beating pulses and the sharpness of animalistic shields. This girl's scales were sharp at the bases of long fins and the dips of her stomach didn't have the outward curl of a pelvis. But her chest siphoned gulps of air and her breath smelled of salt and her lashes held piques of intrigue and her blue lips quivered when Allison ran her thumb over them.
She didn't touch Allison back. Her hands were welded to the railing and she only catted in to the movements that were given.
Ever the scientist, Allison took notes. The girl seemed content enough to let her.
When she clutched at the girl's neck, setting her thumbs in the tiles of petit cycloid at her ending jaw line. There was a point she met when flexing the tissue beneath that made the girl quiver. The flesh and scales at her hairline wrinkled and glowed in pinholes of phosphorescence.
---
She named her Lydia. Lovingly so after the microbiologist that stressed the importance of acronyms in Allison's course work and flirted like she was 25. The red hair and the big eyes and the touch starved keening made her Lydia.
Diaphus Argenti Lydia in her head.
Lydia wasn't one for talking, never really making any effort to speak except for the quivers of a moan or listless sigh that fell from her mouth.
But eventually she touched Allison back. She tangled her hands through Allison's dry hair like a curious child. The texture stirred a mulling noise in her throat and the puckered tips of her fingers were soft on Allison's scalp. The gesture changed things for Lydia. She brought a friend with her the next day.
--
Malia Theresa Prescott was wild life photographer who wore accolades like girl scout badges. Her devotion to keeping her subjects habitats preserve was what propelled her in to celebrity status as a photo journalist. She would submerge herself in lakes and saltwater for days to catch glimpses of softshell turtles and rockfish, keeping gurgles of breath to herself when an eel crossed her path. In the wild for months at a time, she had the proof of entire species thriving and mirrored in the lens of her camera
It was something that Allison saw in the second creature Lydia showed her.
She was as gorgeous as Lydia but incomparable. Where Lydia has smoother transitions of flesh to scale, this girl was harsh edges and deeper tones running murky green to black. Scales of opaque marble and spiny armored joints to her elbows and knuckles. She looked like a weapon, stationery and calm.
The pooling of her sclera was grey as worn snow under lidded eyes. Even the tissue of her thin pressed lips were significantly darker. The inside of her mouth to her throat, dark and spaceless when she felt safe to breathe, looked like they were made for starlight. And when she exhaled too sharply the muscles of her chest pulsated and panicked in waves of phosphorus constellations.
Allison called her Malia. Diaphus Argenti Malia.
Lydia showed her where Malia liked to be touched and examined and held. She tried to show Allison in mirroring affections, cradling Malia's webbed hands in her own and cuddling her nose to the crook of her neck. Lydia tugged Allison to mimic her, pressing flat palms to scales and shivering joints. They communicated like this in subtle directions and the sighs of praise.
Yes, she likes the pads of her hands massaged. Yes, Yes, she likes when you hold her arms, she likes when your warmth slides over her belly. She likes when you go in the direction of her scales, no, no, don't go against them. No, don't touch her fins, don't touch her gills.
Malia didn't meet Allison's gaze but was mindful to follow her arms in their descent. She kept still, one cautioned pose like Eriksen's statue.
-
They let Allison map out their features. One muscle and tendon and curve at a time to make a guidebook. Sketches and notations on paper and scrap to be hidden away in the secret breast pocket of her coat. These were notes only for her. The opportunity to be nothing but an observer came rarely. This wasn't a chance Allison could muster the pride to ruin. She was an observer and nothing more.
At least until Kira.
Once in grad school, Allison had met the daughter of instructor. A little girl named Mai with a pouch of glitter pens who would ran around classrooms and hallways to look for mermaids. She'd run up to women with long hair and ask them where their tails were. When they were baffled she'd ask for their arms and crudely draw on flakes of scales with her pens. They would ooh and awe, thank her, and pull down their sleeves to hid the pen marks.
For months, Allison would appease her. She'd read with one hand while this mermaid obsessed daughter turned her in to a sea creature. Everyday she'd get braver and patterns more intricate, slowly following the dimensions of Allison's muscles and favor curvatures that were more pleasing to see with shimmers of gold or green. And she'd hum the only song she seemed to know, one day giving it words.
"Mai, what are you singing?" Allison asked her. "Can you teach me?"
In her a posture that would make her mother proud, Mai conducted herself to sing Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star in the language her family favored. She slowed down when Allison asked her to, carefully sounding out the words, "kira kira hikaru..."
When they could sing it together, Allison asked, "What does it mean? The first part?"
Mai giggled in her bubbly charm, "Sparklies!"
Kirakira, to sparkle, to shimmer, to glitter. She was a net of stars beneath the water and radiated light like a satellite.
Diaphus Argenti Kirakira
Kira was the only twin tail, long limbs like seaweed and foam soft fins that fluttered around to greedily catch at light. Her mirror scales reflected the late setting sun and the pristine stillness to mask her presence. She could disappear in the water under her scales and then reappear in a stately announcement of her godly image.
And she wanted to anoint Allison in her love and affection. Where Lydia and Malia showed caution to return touch, Kira went straight away. She pulled at Allison's coat, wanting to feel the warmth of her human skin and feel the tapping of her human nails. Feel the ghosting presence of her human breath in her ear. She'd let the salt of her own mouth line what Allison could hear and whisper dregs of songs too quiet to pierce through her. They were lullabies, the remains of them broken from deadly siren melodies that boiled blood and brain. But in pieces they were snips of electricity that had hair stand on end in elation.
Somehow, in this remote part of Iceland, it was the only thing that got Allison warm.
--
Isaac noticed it after a week.
"Where do you go?" He asked. They were drinking coffee on the observation deck that over looked the harbor. The light house was in the far distance where boats ducked to catch a steering current.
It was the third time he'd asked. Allison avoided until she found the words.
"Dolphins," she said.
When Isaac voiced his justified doubt it did nothing to shake her. But he glared in the way that use to make her crumble. "You don't like dolphins."
"Pála did. She showed me a place to watch them." She said, not meeting his glare but letting the words hang between them.
Isaac didn't combat it. "RK said she's doing well. Montez is putting her name on the paper."
Allison kept her eyes fixed on the lighthouse. She hummed a reply and then they said nothing.
--
RK noticed a few days later.
"You finally are liking the weather?" Rk asked. His voiced carried better in Icelandic and German. English made him inflect things as questions.
"It's fine." Allison was presently typing out notes from the water samples gathered a few miles out in to sea.
"That is good. I ask because you have been out more. It is good to see you do not fear the cold any longer." RK said.
Allison just turned and smiled back. Hers lips faded to a flat expression when she started typing again.
"Do you go with anyone?" RK asked. He made himself comfortable in the chair next to her. Slow familiar circles became his movements.
Still typing, Allison said, "No. I go alone."
RK paused his motions. "Are you doing alright, Allison?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"It is fine to be a little...lonesome. This is a new place, new people." RK stared without realizing, knowing that Allison wouldn't meet him.
"I'm...fine." She stopped typing, holding fingers over the keys and slacking her wrists to lay on the desk. Her exhale was frustrated and soaked with drags of bitter taste.
"I am always here to talk, Allison." RK wouldn't let up unless she knew this. He would continue to ask her until the answer was apparent, unless her fineness was visible.
"Can I ask you something?" She said. RK perked up through tired eyes and leaned in. "Are there any old folk tales about this area?"
RK hummed and chewed on the thought. "What kind of folk tales?"
"Ones about mermaids."
--
He told her of the Rhinemaidens.
Iceland and the Faroes and Greenland's blistering winds had plenty of mythical stories with sea maidens and sirens alike. But in the childhood lore of RK's family home, his father told him of the Rhinemaidens and let their music sing him to greet the morning and end the day.
RK's voice was too tireless and weak to sing their lamentation but he could hum the horns announcing Siegfried's entry and translate their premonitory arias.
"My father so loved Wagner. And the Rheingold was perhaps, I think, his favorite. I liked to look at the Rheintöchter on his records. They were, aha, never clothed." RK laughed and the tinge of a boyish blush on his cheeks.
"So they're mermaids?" Allison asked. "German mermaids?"
"They are like mermaids, sometimes they are mermaids. Mostly they are never clothed women of the Rhein. But they are also…more than they are.
"They… perhaps it is me. I dislike our fairytales at times. I like the archetyp of books and literature and of opera. And the Rheintöchter are like all kinds of nymphs and sirens and nykr, they are just also those things combined." RK sighed, losing his place in his words. "It is maybe not what you are looking for."
Allison glanced down at this his hands, mussing over in grips at his fingers and tearing away fingernails. This was the most they'd ever spoken alone. The most she'd ever spoken to anyone since Pála left.
She smiled and met his eyes. "What are they like?"
RK grinned of his own accord and pulled out his phone, quickly tapping away to search for something. "Everyone thinks of them differently but my favorite is Rackham. He made them so…I cannot say monstrous. But they are not like pretty nymphs." He aimed the screen at her to show an illustration in muted greens and vaporous swarming waters, three bare breasted maidens with outstretched arms and mournful expressions. They longed for something unseen.
"They are…"
"Swampy?" Allison said, biting back her laughter. She looked at them with praises in the back of her throat. "I can see what you mean. They're beautiful and they…" They look like mine, is what she wanted to say. Their harrowing faces distinct as long tresses melded in with the inky waters around them. Her thoughts of possession over them was consuming. And it didn't disquiet how comforting it was to express it.
"Do they have names?" She took the phone from his hand and zoomed in on each of the faces.
"They do." RK pointed at each in succession, "They are Woglinde, Floßhilde, and Wellgunde. They are the guardians of the Rheingold."
"What does that mean? Rhine?"
"It is a river. But it is funny because similarly, in German, Rein means pure. So, River gold or Pure gold. As it was explained to me by my father, at least. In the opera, they praise the ring of gold their father made as it looks down on them in the sunrise. They are meant to guard it because someone could rule the world with the ring."
"That seems very Tolkien." Allison said.
RK pointed knowingly at her, "Tolkien was very Wagner."
A thought chewed around in Allison's head and she asked, "so they live in a river?"
"Hmm, they do." RK replied.
"So they're not mermaids then?" Allison cocked an eyebrow.
"Well what do you call a mermaid?" RK asked.
"A woman with a fish tail?"
"Who lives…?" RK asked, motioning his hands for her to finish his thought. "Water! Mermaids live in water, Rheinmaidens live in water. Rheinmaidens are mermaids."
"That is sound logic." Allison just laughed and didn't disagree. She looked back to the illustration in her palm, "It's weird…they kind of remind me of something."
"Something or someone?"
"Grenadiers."
RK twitched in surprise, confounded shock on his face like it was thrown on him. "Fokk, really?"
"The Abyssal! They remind me of the Abyssal. But I like all grenadiers." Allison handed him back his phone, the ghosts of constant laughter under her breath.
"You are worse than Isaac," RK said, not letting it fall like an insult, only a gentle endearment.
"Can you send me that picture?" Allison asked.
"Viss. And I will find you Rackham's book. The Rheintöchter plagued his life more than mine," RK said, pocketing his phone and standing.
---
They were peerless. Allison's maidens were incomparable to the advances of literature.
And they loved Allison. Uncommunicated adoration between three figures, only imagined in lore, to the curious presence of a scientist.
Biologist. But they didn't correct her.
They met her at the edge of the pier every day. She sometimes wondered if they could sense her coming. How else would they know to breach the water the moment her heel hit the end of the concrete? Or could they smell the cigarettes she still lit; memorium having become habit.
She started to wonder how long this could go on for. Surely they had remained undiscovered because they kept up with some kind of migration. And they couldn't be the only ones of their kind with such varieties of physicality. It was a curious topic to question how they'd evaded discovery for so long.
It dawned on her that perhaps they hadn't. As vexing as they were, they exuded a kindness. It never occurred to Allison that she could exploit them. To photograph their existence, take down field notes, convey it to documentation and publish her findings. She wouldn't have to only say Argenti in her head like an unsatisfied wish. And yet it didn't cross her mind. She never once considered them a secret and still she didn't speak of them to anyone. Perhaps this was how they did it, trusting a few of those without fins.
Allison let their trust in little by little with each touch they returned to her. They became scientists too, so interested in the human species. They evoked every tinge of pink on her skin and places that shivered under lingering caresses. It baffled her that their palms radiated warm. Their cold running blood somehow felt like fire.
And when they beckoned her in to the water with them she resisted until the warmth overtook her. Their sure movements were genuine and kind, hands cradling all her body to lower her in to the water.
*And when she was submerged the fire was torturous. Every limb and muscle clenching and heaving for purchase in the arctic water. But when Lydia pressed her lips to Allison's, all the breath came back in to her lungs in one swift punch. She felt the elasticity of her arms and legs in the pressure of the water and they pulled her farther beneath the throttling waves. *
Kira took her by the waist and showed her how to swim, pushing her two tails against the back of Allison's legs like she was kicking. In time they swam just below the surface, looking upward to surface and the magnitude of what lay around them. Visions like this couldn't compare to anything Allison had seen before. She was enraptured by the swell of tides and the hidden fissure of foam starched like clouds.
When Kira let Allison go, Malia was there to loop arms around her neck. She buried her face to Allison's jaw and mouthed at the underside of her hair line, the small presence of a murmur settling against her waterlogged ears. The lurch of Malia's mouth to her ear startled Allison but the sudden feeling of teeth on the flesh sent a calamity of shocks down her spine and through her skull. She could feel the ramming noises of currents against her at volumes that should have burst her ear drums. But as suddenly as it started the noiseless motion of the water ran through her.
A hissing sound radiated around her, unlike what she should have heard if she wasn't below the waves. The hissing came in fluttering bursts each time Malia opened her mouth, the blinking of stars all down the darkness of her throat. This was the way she could speak, hisses and not quite there squeaks.
But Kira could sing. She clutched at Allison and sang in to her ears like she was pouring in the folk tales a thousand years old. Allison could hear the lullabies of a species and the way the sea sang them to sleep in each lull of Kira's voice.
Allison never noticed before that moment how long Lydia's tale was. It reminded her of the rhinemaidens, of the Abyssal. She floated there astounded that her undiscovered Diaphus shared the same tail as Coryphaenoides, the same body as Homo Sapiens, the same face as a the daughter of a god, and the provenance of a legend.
None of them moved when Lydia wrapped her long tail around them, the slack grip of a touch surprising when the power of a python was in her. She pressed gentle kisses to their heads and they watched her silhouetted against the ring of light from above, her curtain of hair undulating in the calm swells.
Lydia broke them apart after a time. Reluctantly, they beckoned Allison to the surface as easy they had down when pulling her down. She ascended slow and graceful, letting them take her as she watched the water splinter down to an infinite darkness.
And when they let go, she breached the surface with a life's worth of breath in her lungs. Seeing dry land in the distance and an unyielding grip on her legs rendering her weightless, every direction felt heavenward.