~3900 words, ~21 minutes reading time
On the day Lina Cheng goes into labor, the last horseshoe crab harvest begins. Her water breaks as the crabs are scooped from their coastal homes; she rides to the hospital as they’re transported to the lab. As a nurse helps Lina into stirrups—leaning her head back, spreading her legs wide; scientists strap the arthropods into specially designed contraptions—angling their faces up, folding their tails under.
Lina pushes and pushes; the pads beneath her soak red. The crabs are intubated; their bleeding jars fill blue. By the time Hai crowns, the last crab has been bled. A nurse wipes Hai clean and hands her to Lina; scientists hose down the crabs and send them back to the water.
Snuggled tight in Lina’s arms, Hai screams, engulfed by the crabs’ pain and disorientation. She cries, and the ocean shudders.
#
At Hai’s six-month checkup, the pediatrician leans in to inspect her face. “Those dry, red patches indicate eczema.”
Lina frowns, rubs her eyes. “Eczema? We have no family history of that.” She hasn’t had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep since Hai was born; the last thing she needs is a condition to deal with.
“Does she often pick at her skin?”
Lina thinks of the tiny mittens she and Wei started putting on Hai because she was scratching herself all over. The times Lina’s watched Hai flip onto her belly and start rubbing her scaly red cheeks against the carpet. The nights Hai cries and cries until Lina soothes her with a baking soda bath. Lina sighs. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“I’ll write a prescription for a cream you can apply to her skin twice a day. And I’ll have my assistant print you an info sheet. I wouldn’t worry too much. Most kids outgrow their eczema within a few years.”
#
Hai does not outgrow it. In preschool, she’s scolded at nap time because she can’t stop fidgeting, can’t stop itching. In second grade, she scratches her thumb hard enough to tear it open, and when it gets infected, she ends up hospitalized. In fifth grade, a pediatric dermatologist declares Hai’s eczema the worst she’s ever seen and asks Lina permission to photograph Hai’s skin for a medical paper.
When Hai is in sixth grade, the Chengs move to a little town on the coast. Wei wants to finish unpacking, because otherwise how will he know if the movers damaged anything—didn’t Lina see how careless that bearded guy was? But Lina’s loud, long-suffering sigh is enough to remind him that they moved here to get away from the petty stresses of city living, of material concerns. What’s the point if they don’t enjoy the beauty of their new surroundings? Wei sets down the box. Together, Wei, Lina, and Hai walk the two blocks to the beach.
It’s Hai’s first time seeing the ocean.
For once, she isn’t thinking about her itchy skin. All her attention is caught by new sensations, by observations. The cry of gulls as they glide by; the roar of waves licking the shore; the scent of salt and sulfur on the wind. The mesmerizing beauty of gentle ripples moving across endless water, disappearing into the vast horizon.
While Lina and Wei fight over where to set up their towels, Hai walks toward the water. The breeze blows her parents’ argument away as she dips her toes in.
As soon as saltwater kisses Hai’s skin, a thousand fleeting moments rush through her. She is a humpback, releasing the whalesong caught in her throat; she is a remora, nibbling parasites off her companion shark’s underbelly; she is a leatherback, opening her soft beak to swallow gooey jellyfish; she is a wolf eel, lurking in a dark cave—
Startled, Hai stumbles back, but she’s unprepared for the way her feet sink into the wet sand. She falls, catching herself with her palms, and an eager wave engulfs her.
As always, Hai’s body is littered with tiny wounds: punctured blisters and fingernail-wide lacerations and patchy rashes scraped raw and red and angry.
Each one an invitation.
Stinging saltwater rushes in, relentless and sharp and cruel, and she is a blue-ringed octopus, curling her tentacle around a delicious snail—
Hai opens her mouth and screams, screams, screams—
She is an abyss-dweller, drawn to a glowing orb in the black ocean—
Saltwater mixes with Hai’s blood, flowing through her veins—
She is a ghost shrimp, tunneling through sediment—
Briny blood floods the chambers of Hai’s heart, pumping back out through the arteries, searching, seeking—
She is a vampire squid, pulling her webbed arms up and around, turning herself inside out—
Suddenly, Lina and Wei are there, shouting as they pull Hai back from the shoreline, away from the water; but before their connection breaks, the ocean finds what it was looking for.
Deep within Hai, something stirs.
#
Hai dreams she’s bound to a surgical bed. Her torso is angled up just enough to see a tube trailing out from between her legs. She knows the feel of a catheter, knows something about this one is wrong. She tries to reach down, to pull it out, but her wrists are strapped in tight.
You’re helping us, little one. Helping us create vaccines that will save countless human lives.
Hai doesn’t know if it’s a voice or a thought she’s hearing. She doesn’t know anything except that she can’t move, and she shouldn’t be here, and this is all wrong.
Liquid begins to flow out of her body, through the tube, but instead of yellow, it’s blue, it’s blue, it’s blue.
When Hai wakes, there’s a pool of blood on the sheets beneath her.
Lina finds Hai curled up on her bed, sobbing. When Lina spots the stain, she leaves and returns, bringing with her a pad and a practiced speech about what it means to grow up.
#
Hai’s been in her little beach town for half a year when she learns about the annual class field trip to the big city aquarium.
Before they moved, Hai was fascinated by the lobsters crawling over one another in their tank at the Chinese grocery. She used to drag her parents to the pet store to check out the tropical fish. Now, she picks at her food when they sit too close to the lionfish tank at the only Thai restaurant in town, and she cries when she sees the goldfish lined up in little plastic baggies at the summer fair.
The thought of all those creatures locked away behind glass makes Hai’s skin crawl. She begs her mother to let her stay home.
Lina’s barbed sigh burrows into the fragile hope Hai had that her mom might, for once, give in. Hai knows there’s no point arguing with Lina in the same way she knows she shouldn’t pop her blisters.
Knowing isn’t the same as being able to stop.
“Please, Mom. I’ll help you cook dinner for a month. I won’t ask you for anything for the rest of the school year. Please.”
“Hai, you’re making a big deal out of nothing. You used to love the aquarium.”
“It didn’t hurt me then.”
“It can’t hurt you now! It’s in your head! You need to deal with whatever this is. It’ll be good for you. Exposure therapy.”
“But Mom…”
“No more arguing. You’re going. I can’t take any more time off work, and I don’t need your teacher on my case again about how you never join in social activities. I already get enough shit for not having time to chaperone. Of course, no one hassles your dad about how he never volunteers.”
On the bus, surrounded by chattering classmates, Hai’s nervousness turns into more blisters, more itching. Lina’s right. Hai is different now.
The aquarium towers above all the surrounding buildings, a twisted, modern thing covered in gray panels laid out like fish scales. Hai feels the oppressive charge of it, like a pressurized can ready to explode, but no one else seems to notice. The kids follow Mrs. Anderson inside, Hai at the end of the line.
Their voices echo in the entryway as Mrs. Anderson sorts out their tickets, and then they’re inside the metal gate. A burst of excited energy rushes through the class as everyone hops onto the moving walkway through the underwater tunnel.
Hai tries to stay back, but one of the chaperones grabs her hand and pulls her forward.
The tunnel glows cyan, lighting up the busy ecosystem within. Hai looks up, unable to help herself. All those creatures living out their entire lives behind curved glass. It’s a work of art, as beautiful as it is painful. Her palms itch, and she scratches them just as a little kid runs into her.
Hai is knocked off balance, but she catches herself with a hand on the thick glass of the tunnel. As if drawn to a beacon, a white bellied shark swims straight for Hai’s outstretched palm, scattering a school of sunny yellow fish. It swerves at the last moment, garnering exclamations of delight.
Hai is suddenly dizzy with want, a desire so potent it has a heart and a pulse.
She longs to explore the places where her ancestors roamed, letting instinct and magnetoreception guide her through deep waters. She is newly mature, ready to make her way to the place where her kind meet and mate. She wants to be a small creature in a vast ocean, not an expensive specimen circling endlessly, never finding a way out. She wants, she wants, she wants.
Hai yanks her hand back from the glass. She can already feel bubbles forming beneath the surface of her skin. Pushing up, up, and out, rounding into clear little domes ready to burst. Suddenly, the glass around her feels like it’s shrinking, keeping her there. Collecting one more trapped thing to scoop and place in a tank.
A turtle looks straight at Hai with a doleful gaze, and another wave of want pulses through her. Hai’s skin responds, growing itchy all over.
Two more school groups arrive, a hassle of loud middle schoolers and backpacks that fill the tunnel. Hai’s head throbs, the urge to flee stronger by the moment. She glances at the entrance to the aquarium, but there are too many attendants near the door. There’s only one other way out of this too-crowded tube. Hai slips through the crowd, winding her way deeper into the body of the beast.
For a time, the pain and longing ease. Not quite a surcease, more a dull ache now that Hai’s no longer packed in that tunnel like an empty-eyed sardine in a can. Hai passes a tank filled with translucent shrimp and another with a starfish pressed against the glass, its underside on display for passersby. There are more creatures in each tank, little fish that dart away and tiny snails ambling along the pebbled ground and sea anemone swaying with the imitation tide, but Hai doesn’t stop to look. She can’t afford to dawdle when someone is sure to notice her absence soon.
She does not wonder why no one chases her. Why none of the aquarium visitors seem inclined to stop her and ask where her adult is. Why there isn’t a voice booming through the speaker system right now, letting everyone know a child is missing.
Hai is only eleven, after all, and she is used to being ignored. She hurries past blue-ringed octopi and bioluminescent jellyfish. Skates that blend in with river rocks and bubblegum-bright coral. Fish in more shapes and sizes, colors and patterns, than Hai could ever have imagined.
At last, she encounters a welcome sight. Up ahead, sunlight shines on the patterned gray carpet, exposing fibers worn down from years of trampling. Hai follows the light to a side door propped open by a rubber wedge. Freedom is close enough to grasp.
But there’s an archway to her left, and from somewhere beyond, Hai hears an instrument playing, rhythmic and percussive and beautiful. It’s strange and enchanting.
Her feet carry her forward.
As Hai nears, the sound clarifies into something more like a clack or a tap, somehow both odd and familiar all at once. Hai clicks her tongue along with the tempo, as if finding her way back to a lullaby buried deep in memory. It shouldn’t be possible; the meter is inconsistent. Yet somehow, she keeps perfect rhythm.
There’s a wide tank at the end of the corridor, its sandy surface covered in rust brown discs bigger than Hai’s face. They skitter across the tank, crawling on one another. One of the bigger creatures knocks over a smaller one, and Hai startles, seeing the little insect-like legs tucked within the smooth shelf. It reminds her of a giant cockroach.
The upended animal arches its back, twitches its tail, and waves its spindly legs in the air. Hai shivers and steps back. As she turns to step away, that beautiful rhythm drifts into her ears again.
It is only now that she puts the pieces together. These strange critters are the source of the mesmerizing music.
For the second time that day, Hai reaches out a hand to touch the glass. As soon as her fingertips make contact, a wave of pain and love and hope and desire rush through her. She feels the distress of a thousand silent screams as they’re forced into place, the needle pierced through their membrane. The exhaustion of the weakened, bled crabs, desperate to escape the subsequent hose down. The shock as they’re returned to the ocean, many dying shortly after.
Tears stream down Hai’s face, and a shudder runs through her. She feels the way she did two days after her parents told her they were moving, when it finally hit her that her whole world was about to be rewritten.
It’s overwhelming, this shift in awareness. But unlike the claustrophobia of the tunnel or the discordance of the rest of the aquarium, something about being here feels right, too. Instead of pulling her hand away, Hai reaches out with her other hand, pressing it against the glass.
Collective hope and desperation twist together, forming a question that sears itself into Hai’s mind. She opens her mouth to answer—or cry out, she can’t be sure which. That’s when the intercom finally buzzes to life with a crackle and an announcement that an eleven-year-old Asian girl is missing. A worker nearby suddenly notices her, and then the ordeal begins.
As Hai is hauled away, her eyes stay locked on the receding tank of horseshoe crabs. Her tongue clicks in time with the skittering of their chitinous little legs.
#
For once, Lina and Wei agree on something: Hai must be disciplined for her escapade at the aquarium. They settle on grounding her for two weeks. Other than the hassle of having to sit through Wei’s mostly-off-topic lectures and Lina’s rants about how she should never have had children, Hai doesn’t much mind. She has no friends for Lina or Wei to keep her from.
Besides, Hai is under a spell.
In the mornings, she wakes with the feeling of sand between her toes, the taste of sea salt and fresh clams on her tongue.
Those first few days go by in a blur, the heady rush of a new obsession overriding all earthly concerns. She reads article after article, meticulously copying every newly acquired fact in her notebook. She watches recordings of marine biologists picking up horseshoe crabs at the coast, pointing out their compound eyes and five pairs of clawed pedipalps; the book gills that jettison streams of water for quick getaways. She finds a video from that aquarium, where a woman in a lab coat describes the team’s conservation efforts—the way they meticulously breed and incubate new baby crabs, some of whom are eventually released into the ocean.
Hai finds a clip showing rows of horseshoe crabs strapped in and bled, accompanied by a voice-over explanation of how their blue blood will be used to test vaccines. Though she isn’t sure why, she can’t stop playing this one on repeat, watching again and again until Lina finally takes the computer away.
Hai hasn’t broken any rules. She’s always been given free reign when it comes to research, to learning. But the purse of Lina’s lips makes it clear that Hai’s behavior has somehow crossed into the realm of too odd. Lina leaves Hai locked up in her room without a computer while she decides what to do. Lina has only ever asked for two things from Hai. One, don’t make things difficult. Two, for the love of all things holy, just be normal.
Hai has never quite managed either.
With nothing to do, she sits in her room, rereading her notebook and picking at her skin. It’s the worst kind of itchy. The kind that feels like no matter how she scratches, the itch is always a little too far below the surface for her to reach.
#
Wei is gone again. Lately, he’s been on business trips more often, but Hai knows better than to mention it.
To Hai, Lina has always been more schedule manager than mother, but she softens a touch when Wei isn’t around to raise her hackles. And she makes the best meals when he’s gone.
Hai is upstairs doing homework. It’s fun, for once. She had to pick an animal to write a report about—the final assignment of the year—and of course, she picked her favorite. She knows everything about them already, so she doesn’t really need to research, but it gives her an excuse to read up on them again without Lina giving her a hard time.
She’s doodling a crab in her notebook when she hears the front door open and shut. Her mother must be back from the market. Hai tries to go back to her drawing, her research, but her arm begins to itch something fierce, and she’s lost the train of it. Downstairs, the faucet turns on.
Hai walks to the bathroom. She opens the top drawer, pulls out the little tube of fast-acting anti-itch cream, and applies it. Then she pinches her underarm to distract herself as she starts a slow count backwards from a thousand. No scratching, no scratching, no scratching. She only has to make it until the medicine kicks in.
Hai is somewhere in the two hundreds when she hears the scream. She runs for the stairs full speed, heart beating a mile a minute. She’s terrified of what might be wrong, the roar in her ears drowning out all other thoughts, no room to wonder at little things like how the scream sounds nothing like Lina.
She grabs the rail, hopping down the stairs two at a time. As her feet hit the fourth step down, the scream turns to an ear-splitting shriek. Every inch of Hai’s skin feels like it’s been set aflame, erupting into red hot boils.
Hai is the one screaming now. Her skin, which has learned to take a hellish amount over the years, suffers a shock even it isn’t equipped to handle, and she collapses, hand loosening from the rail as she falls, falls, falls.
#
“What did you do to her, Lina?”
“I didn’t! I didn’t do anything! I was boiling a crab when she started screaming and fell down the stairs for no reason!”
“That’s impossible. The doctor said…”
“You’re the one who’s fucking impossible. You’re never home, not that you do anything to help with Hai when you are home.”
“Work has been busy.”
“Yeah, work. Is that what we’re calling her now? You’re a fucking cliché, you know that, Wei?”
“Keep your voice down. Someone might hear your hysterics.”
“Fuck you. Go home. Or go back to work, whatever. I don’t give a fuck as long as you get out of my face.”
“You can’t treat me that way. Especially not after this.”
“Yeah? Except if we split up, you’re never going to try to take custody, because then you’d have to actually take care of her.”
Hai is intimately familiar with Lina and Wei’s arguments and empty threats. What she isn’t used to is the floaty, buzzy feeling or the pain that creeps up whenever she tries to focus on a particular body part.
“Hai?”
Wei looks down at her with sad eyes. Lina looks like she hasn’t slept in ages.
Everything hurts.
Outside, Hai hears the crash of ocean waves, the cry of gulls. She thinks of that first day at the beach. She opens her mouth to say…something. What, she isn’t sure. But as soon as she does, her lungs burn, and she manages only a small croak before tears begin running down her face.
There are some shouts, and then a nurse tells Hai they’re going to give her a bit more medicine. The world drifts.
#
When Hai wakes up next, she’s alone. The intense pain she felt earlier is now nothing more than a dull ache. Gingerly, she presses her palms into the hospital bed and pushes against them to sit up. As she does, she feels the bumps on her skin and sighs.
She inspects her hands in the light, frowning as she looks closely. Sure enough, they’re covered in blisters. That, she’s used to. But the pus inside them has a faint blue tint.
She knows she should figure out how to call for a nurse, but…
Hai pops one, and the scent of brine fills the air.
She pops another, and another, until salty ocean air overwhelms her with desire, outweighing her blister-popping compulsion. She climbs out of bed in search of satisfaction, her steps sounding strangely like the skittering of clawed legs.
The corridor of the tiny beach town hospital is inexplicably empty, despite it being the middle of day. As Hai walks, her badly burned skin begins to slough off, old giving way to new. What lies beneath is red and raw and itchier than her worst flare-ups.
With ocean air filling her lungs, Hai doesn’t bother holding back. She scratches at her arms, feeling nothing but cool relief as the new skin flakes and peels away. She scratches at her chest and something—four pairs of somethings—claw their way forth, bursting out with glee. From her lower back, a long, twitchy thing grows, stretching until it hits the ground and helps guide her path. From her back, a shell emerges, hard and ridged where her spine might once have been.
As Hai pushes open the hospital doors, her arms elongate, turning hard and spindly. She is near the ocean, near enough to taste it. Near enough to hear the shuffling, the call to join her kind growing ever more difficult to resist. She falls to her hands, her legs combining and sectioning into gills.
As her new little legs cart her forward, she hurts for all her brethren trapped in tanks around the world. She imagines them there with her, a mass of cinnamon-brown discs moving as one across the warm, familiar sands.
Ahead, the endless waters stretch out to greet her.
Hai dips forward, accepting the ocean’s embrace. Here, in the life-giving waters as rich and blue as the blood within her new shell, freedom awaits.
Kelsea Yu is the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Bound Feet, It’s Only a Game, and Demon Song. She has over a dozen short stories and essays published or podcasted in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Apex, Nightmare, PseudoPod, and Fantasy, and in various anthologies. Find her on Instagram or Twitter as @anovelescape or visit her website kelseayu.com.
Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash
