killed and cleaned each one thereafter until only the big storyfish with its dark blue head and golden eyes remained. He dipped his hand into the creel and hooked his fingers into the fish’s gills; this caused a hidden barb inside the gill to pierce the crease of his palm. Chilingana cursed and yanked back his hand.
He stared suspiciously at the trickle of blood veining his wrist, then at the fish watching him from just beneath the surface, only the tip of its snout protruding. He could see its tiny mouth and harmless knobby teeth. He couldn’t see the barb and thought maybe he’d foolishly impaled his hand on one of its spines.
With much greater care he started to reach into the container again, but before he could touch the fish, the world began to tip over. Chilingana grabbed the big gutting stone, sure that he was about to tumble right over the edge and into the sea. He tried to cry out, but poison in the barb had numbed his lips. His legs trembled and gave, and he fell like the moon rolling across the sky.
When her cooking stone was so hot that it smoked, but the fillets had still not arrived, Lupeka went looking for her husband. He had been gone much too long. And where were the fish?
When she arrived at the gutting stone, she was amazed to find her husband nowhere in sight. A row of pale fillets lay there, all in a straight line, but one of the fish had jumped out of the creel and lay on the ground, barely breathing. Lupeka picked up the fish and dropped it back in. Let Chilingana finish up with these last two when he returned. She told herself that he must have gone back down the steps. His absence disturbed her more than we can imagine, for in those days there was nowhere to hide, nothing but the great house on stilts and the empty sea all around it. No other people but these two.
After looking over the edge for him and seeing nothing but the sea, his wife took the prepared fillets back inside. Wherever he was, he would smell the cooking. Surely that must bring him out of hiding.
Chilingana came to his senses to find himself swimming. Beside him a vast blue island protruded from the dark water, and he supposed that he must have fallen from the house into the ocean, miraculously surviving, and floated away. He must have floated far, for there were no islands visible from his stilt house, and the sky was a peculiar dark brown. Despite this, the island looked oddly familiar. It seemed to rise and fall in the water.
All at once he realized it was no island at all. It was the snout of the storyfish. Beside him. And the sky was no sky, but the wicker of the creel. He began to struggle to pull himself out, but he had no arms. What had happened to him?
The fish laughed. The sound made the water bubble and roil.
Then the fish spoke to him. “This is how it is for us. We don’t have the luxuries of you who’ve been dreamed into being by greater forces.”
It was the first Chilingana had heard about this. “Dreamed?” he asked, and although he didn’t think he’d said this out loud, the fish replied, “Yes, dreamed into being. You in turn are capable of dreaming a reply to the creators. Where your dreams meet theirs the world takes shape. Today your fisherman dream met my dream of being a fish, and mine prevailed. So here you are, having fished yourself into my story.”
“Is that what happened to me?”
“I put you in my tale before you could take hold of mine.” The fish chuckled.
“Am I a fish forever, then?” The storyfish did not answer, and Chilingana grew nervous. The silence likely meant there was no good news for him. His terror broke loose. “I don’t want to be a fish!” he cried.
The fish said, “Is that right? Too good to be a fish? Very well, then. But before I’ll help you, you must grant me three wishes.” The island swam nearer.
“What?”
“First, whenever you catch a fish of my kind, you must throw it back.”
“Of course. How could I eat you after we’ve spoken?”
“Second, you must show respect for those fish you do catch, and return to the sea the ones too small to make a meal.”