Giles tries to help. “That they’re…”
“Down there, I mean,” she offers. “That they might…?”
Neither can finish. That is all right; they both know the question as well as they know that, for them, there will be no definitive answer. Giles squeezes Zelda’s hand and sighs, watching his plume of breath—still strong, he observes—dissipate beneath a shower that he believes might, at long last, be waning. He waits until after they are swaddled in hospital blankets, after they are in the back of the ambulance they insisted upon sharing, after he suspects Zelda has forgotten the question, before he offers his best guess at the answer.
33
ELISA SINKS. POSEIDON’S fist grabs her, rolls her back and forth like a crocodile rolls its prey. Twice she has pushed herself to the surface only to see Baltimore, her homeland, diminish to a piddling twinkle. She is shot, and can’t kick, and slides under for the final time. Down here, it is dark. There is no air. There is only pressure, like dozens of hands pressing her flesh as if to staunch her wounds. Blood escapes anyway, spreading through the water, a scarlet gown to replace the natty bathrobe that has floated away.
Elisa parts her lips, lets cold water pour in.
From blackness he comes. She believes he is a school of glittering fish until each of the million points of light is revealed as one of his scales. He brings his own underwater sun, and by its radiance she watches him move in unimaginable ways. He is not inside the water, but rather part of it, walking straight through it as if down a sidewalk, quite the trick, only to then rebel against gravity, pirouette like a flower caught in the wind. With perfect precision he meets her with a kiss to her head; he wraps his arms around her, enveloping her in his sea-sun. His wide palms slide up her back, crest her naked shoulders, and dive between her breasts. He then wiggles away to hold her by the sides, like she’s a child on a bicycle she’s only starting to learn.
Elisa blinks, her eyelids oaring aside pounds of water. The hole in her chest has been erased. The surprise is that she feels no surprise, only an easy, pleasant approval. She looks up to find the creature has swum off to her right, holding only to her hand. Elisa becomes aware that he is preparing to let go. She shakes her head, her hair aswirl like seaweed. She’s not ready. She brings her free hand close to sign her apprehension, but human appendages are lousy at cutting through water. His hand unleashes hers, and she is falling, falling, falling, though it is tricky to say for sure in so black a void. Perhaps, in fact, she is rising, rising, rising. She kicks her legs. Julia’s beautiful silver shoes tumble past her like exotic fish. She no longer needs them.
He emerges again from the deep. They stand before each other on nothing but water, new and naked, the ocean their Eden. His gills expand and contract. Elisa, too, breathes. She does not understand how, and doesn’t care, for the water-air is wonderful! It tastes like sugar and strawberries, fills her with an energy she’s never felt. She can’t help it: She laughs. Bubbles rollick from her mouth and the creature playfully swats them. She reaches out, caresses his soft gills. She believes she could look at him forever.
And she might. Something inside her is beginning to expand. These are the parts, she realizes, that made the Matron, maybe the only person to know the truth, call her a monster. Elisa feels no hate for the woman; she realizes that, down here, hate has no purpose. Down here, you embrace your foes until they become your friends. Down here, you seek not to be one being, but all beings, and all at once, God and Chemosh and everything in between. The change in her isn’t only mental. It’s physical, of skin and muscle. Yes, she has arrived. She is full. She is perfect.
She reaches out to him. To herself. There is no difference. She understands now. She holds him, he holds her, they hold each other, and all is dark, all is light, all is ugliness, all is beauty, all is pain, all is grief, all is never, all is forever.
34
WE WAIT WE watch we listen we feel we are patient we are always patient but it is difficult the woman we love it takes her a long time it takes her so long to know to see to feel to remember and it is not happy to see her struggle it is not happy to see her with pain but we struggled too we all struggled and the pain and struggle are important the pain and struggle must happen if she is to heal as we all have healed as we have helped heal her and now it is happening it is happening there is understanding and it is beautiful she is beautiful we are beautiful and it is a good sight a happy sight the lines on her neck the lines she thought were scars but are not scars it is a good sight to see those lines split open for the gills to open for the gills to spread wide it is a happy sight and now she knows who she is who she has always been she is us and we speak together now we feel together now and we swim into the distance into the end into the beginning and we welcome all who are willing to follow we welcome the fish we welcome the birds we welcome the insects we welcome the four-legs we welcome the two-legs we welcome you ///
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Guillermo del Toro is the award-winning director of numerous critically acclaimed feature films, such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Pacific Rim. His most recent film, The Shape of Water, received the Golden Lion at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. He is the coauthor of the bestselling Strain Trilogy (with Chuck Hogan), which was turned into a popular television series on FX, and Trollhunters (with Daniel Kraus), the source material for the Netflix series of the same name. You can sign up for email updates here.
Daniel Kraus has landed on Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Year (for The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch) and has won two Odyssey Awards (for Rotters and Scowler). His novels have been Library Guild selections, Bram Stoker finalists, and more. He lives in Chicago. Visit him at danielkraus.com, or sign up for email updates here.