Fennel reached for the hem of Yan-yan’s blouse, and was rebuffed. "What are you hiding under your blouse?" she asked. Her mind was already supplying her with answers: It was mottled peachmark hickeys, it was the marks of someone else’s teeth, it was ten raking scratch lines from the buffed and manicured nails of some office girl with a made-up face who wore skirts and pretty heels and better understood the needs and wants of an ambitious creative director in her forties, in her primetime, a somebody who was going somewhere.
Yan-yan laughed the way rocks do when they fall, crushing everything in their path. "Nothing. What do you mean?"
Fennel hesitated for two excruciating seconds before unknotting the question that had tangled in her mouth. "Who is she? This girl you’re seeing?"
Now Yan-yan’s expression turned hard. She stood up. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
"You come home late every night. Ten, eleven o clock. Hoping that I’d be asleep already?" Fennel knew she was heading for the edge of the bridge, she was going over the railing and she couldn’t stop herself, but the sea was rushing up at her and it was already too late. "When I ask you about your life you never answer or you give me some silly excuse. I’m not stupid. Who else are you seeing?"
Yan-yan’s face coloured. "I’ve been very busy at work. You think my job is easy? I don’t see you complaining when I bring home the money. I’m not like you—"
"A glorified cleaner? That’s what you called my job, right?"
"That’s right." Yan-yan’s expression had turned igneous, her face harsh-edged as geologic structure. "The way you act, it’s like you’ve forgotten who pays for the house you live in. Who buys you clothes, pays for your vacations." She began up the metal stairs, each footstep ringing out. "If you’re so unhappy with me, you can stay here with your stupid krakenmaid. See how you like it."
"Are you going back to the other girl now? Are you?" When Yan-yan didn’t reply Fennel sprang up after her. "What’s she like? Does she look up to you like a big sister? Does she make you feel ten years younger?"
"Fuck you," Yan-yan said, and stormed out.
Fennel sat down on the steps, cold from the bones out. Sudden explosions of temper were a fact of life with Yan-yan, but something felt different this time. It felt like something had broken in their flood of words and would never be put back together. It felt like Fennel was standing in an vast and open field of debris, and she didn’t know which of the pieces she should pick up first.
So she just sat and waited. Waited to see if she was wrong. Maybe Yan-yan would change her mind. Maybe she would come back and tell Fennel it was a mistake, she was taking her home, all was forgiven. All was back to normal.
Hours passed. Yan-yan did not return.
Fennel was startled from the torpor she had sunk into by a tapping noise. When she turned, Ursula the krakenmaid was hanging in the water mere feet from her, pressed up to the surface of the glass. There was something strange about her expression. A smile—that was what it was, her lips spread out to form a curve, dimpling the flesh of her cheeks. Ursula beckoned to her. She had been watching them. She had been learning.
Fennel climbed to the top of the staircase, her mind turning slow as tower clock gears. Cephalopods were very intelligent, of course, and they quick to mimic behaviors that they saw. Even as invertebrates they were hard to manage, hard to keep in check. How much more so for Ursula with her human shape and dolphin intelligence.
Fennel stood on the platform, at the edge of the water. Ursula came swimming up to her, and pulled herself out of the water with her arms. The gills under her jaw flapped wetly in the air. Pigmentation in blue and orange circles ran down her shoulders and dispersed over her back, but if Fennel squinted hard enough she could pretend that Ursula’s wide-eyed, flattish face was completely human.
The krakenmaid ran one hand along Fennel’s calves, before sinking back into the water. Her hair formed a small silver cloud around her face as she looked up, still smiling.
Fennel began to strip, down to her shirt, down to her underwear, down to nothing at all. When she was naked she slipped into the water.
Ursula rose up to meet her. Fennel felt the tentacles wrapping around her, a dozen muscular tubes enveloping her lower body. Ursula rose out of the water until they were face-to-face.
Look at me, look at me, tell me I’m pretty.
Ursula kissed her, mouth closing over mouth. Her lips were rubbery and the teeth hidden beneath them sharp, reinforced for cracking the shells of mollusks. But her tongue was long and strong and Fennel thought she would choke from the force of it.
The krakenmaid grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled her downwards, into the water.
From the inside of the tank the laboratory looked warped, surreal. Ursula kept her mouth over Fennel’s as she swam downwards. Fennel’s arms and legs trembled in Ursula’s grip. Her flesh clenched the tentacles invaded her, easy as anything. The water filled with low, harmonious sounds: Ursula was singing, singing into her mouth, an she could feel oxygen bubbling between them.
Weightless in the water, surrounded by glass on every side, Fennel felt like she was detaching from her body. If it writhed and bucked it did so of its own accord. She was the alien in here, cut off from all the things she needed to live, and so alone. Alone, alone, alone. There was a whole world out there, filled with Disneylands and cheating girlfriends and angry sign-carrying students, but in here there was only water and krakenmaid song and the sensation of something moving against her, again and again.
Ursula sang and sang and sang.
Fennel was shrinking into herself. Perhaps tomorrow morning Prof Lam, he of the Disney plushes, would come in to see Fennel emerge naked and sated from the water, still carrying tentacle-imprints around her thighs, and he would fire her on the spot, scandalized. Or Ursula would drag her to the bottom of the tank and hold her there until her body stopped thrashing, and it would be she that was discovered floating limp-armed and heavy, waiting to be retrieved for the morgue table. Perhaps Yan-yan would finally turn up and apologise for what she had done, and she’d ask Fennel to take her back even though she could never satisfy Fennel like a krakenmaid could, not a million years. Or perhaps she would pack her bags and fly away with her new lover to Shanghai or Tokyo or somewhere else glorified janitor Fennel could never follow. She was probably packing already, in the space that used to be their shared bedroom. Underwear and shampoo and warm socks. Boarding passes in hand.
Fennel closed her eyes. In the darkness that unfolded, where the milkweb sparks of oxygen deprivation danced, she listened to the words of the krakenmaid’s song, filled with strength and grief and loss, before their meaning slipped away from her completely.
END
Isabel Yap
Milagroso
Originally published by Tor.com
It’s late afternoon on the eve of the Pahiyas Festival when Marty finally drives into Lucban. The streets are filled with people congregating outside their houses, stringing up fruits and vegetables shaped into chandeliers. Entire roofs are covered in kiping, leaf-shaped rice wafers, their colors flared to dazzling by the slowly setting sun. Someone has tacked poster paper all over the preschool wall, and children with paint smeared on their cheeks are making trees full of hand-shaped leaves. Vendors have already set up shop, prepping for the onslaught of tourists.