The fish swore that they haven’t, and the crabs and shrimps and scallops promised to sieve through the ocean sand, grain by grain, to find the hook. Only the sea bream remained silent, although his mouth opened and closed as he strained to speak.
“What’s wrong with him?” my father asked the tuna and the ocean perch.
“He hasn’t spoken in a while,” they said. “Something’s been caught in his throat for a long time, and he can neither eat nor speak.”
My father extended one of his great but slender claws into the bream’s obediently opened wide mouth, and soon it emerged with a shining hook caught in it. The bream breathed a sigh of relief and apologized for his mistake. But Hoori was so delighted to have recovered his brother’s treasure that he paid no mind to the bream’s mumbling.
“Thank you, O great Watatsumi no kami,” Hoori said to my father. “Now I can return home.”
I turned away, biting my lip, cradling my bulging belly in my arms. I would not argue, I thought, I would not beg. If the kelp forests and hidden underwater caves were not enough to keep him, what could I do? If the music and singing of the perches and moray eels did not bind him to our palace, what would my feeble voice achieve?
He took my hands and looked into me eyes. “Toyotamabime, my beloved,” he told me. “Will you follow me to the land?”
I’d never been on land before, and the thought filled me with fearful apprehension. Moreover, that would mean breaking away from my father and my sister, from my entire life. But what was I to do? “Let me wait here until it is time for our child to be born,” I begged. “Then, build me a parturition hut thatched with cormorant feathers on the beach. I will come there to give birth.”
“I’ll do as you ask,” he said.
“Just promise one thing,” I said. “Promise that you will not look into the hut when I am giving birth. Promise me.”
His face reflected surprise, but he agreed. “I will send a maid to attend to you,” he said.
I shook my head. “My sister will attend to me.”
“As you wish,” he said, already turning away from me to face my father. “Will you help me get back home?”
“But of course,” my father boomed. “One of my fastest wani will carry you home. But before you go, please accept this gift from me.” With these words, my father produced two jewels, the size of a bream’s head, one green, and one pink.
Hoori accepted the gifts with tremulous hands.
My father explained. “The green one is a tide-raising jewel Shiomitsu-Tama, and the other is the tide- lowering jewel Shiohuru-Tama. Use them if you need them.”
I smiled at both of them through my tears. In my naivete, I thought that the jewels were to make our meetings easier, so that Hoori could bring the sea to his doorstep and me with it. But I was wrong.
When Hoori returned home, born on the back of our swiftest shark, he discovered that Hoderi had a hidden purpose in sending him away to find his hook. While Hoori was away, Hoderi had taken over the land, installing himself as an Emperor, usurping Hoori’s place. I do not know what it is that men usually do to hurt each other; but I do know that Hoori used Shiomitsu-Tama, the jewel of flow, to call the ocean forth and flood his brother’s fields, poisoning the land with salt, to steal the breath of Hoderi’s men. The ocean flowed onto the land, drowned the fields and people who worked in them, until it rose all the way to the doorstep of Hoderi no mikoto’s house.
And we, the inhabitants of the ocean, we suffered too. The ocean fell so low that many of the shallow places were exposed, killing the coral and the slow starfish and sea urchins. Jellyfish flopped on the exposed rocks and collapsed into sad puddles of death. The secret grotto grew too shallow for the snails, and they fled, their mantles rustling on the dry sand. That was the price of your triumph.
And when you succeeded in subduing your willful sibling, you lowered the tides, filling back the ocean. Oh, how happy we were that day, and how we mourned those we had lost! But there was little time for mourning; it was time for our child to be born.
Tamayoribime and I dressed in our finest silks and mounted our loyal whale who took us to the shores of your country. Tamayoribime sang and tried to make conversation, laughing a little desperately, trying to recapture the carefree days of our childhood and failing. Soon, she gave up, leaving me to my thoughts. I worried if you remembered to build the hut and fretted that you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to look. And I felt guilty about my deception, about hiding my true nature from you, but when one was born a princess, a daughter of the Sea kami, one was bound to have some secrets even one’s husband was not meant know.
The night had descended, setting the ocean aflame with many tiny candles lit for us by the tiniest of our subjects, and they reflected in the fine sky canopy of black velvet stretching far above us. The roaring of the waves signaled that the shore was close, and anxiously I searched the outline of the dark beach against the darker sky for the sign of my beloved. I saw a flickering of a lantern mounted on the cormorant-feathered roof of a hut. The hut was small but warm and dry and richly decorated on the inside. You waited for me there, and the moment our hands met I felt the first pangs of birth pain.
Tamayoribime ushered you outside, into the darkness, where the waves crashed on the shore with a hungry roar and the air tasted of salt spumes. When she returned, she wiped the sweat off my forehead and comforted me as the contractions grew stronger, and I was no longer able to maintain my human form.
My hair unwound like the seaweed in the current and fell off, and my nose elongated as my mouth jutted forward, pushed wide open by the gleaming triangular teeth. My smooth skin turned into sand and leather, my arms turned into fins, and my legs fused into a muscular tail armored with a crescent fin. As a shark, I writhed in agony of childbirth, my entire body convulsing and my tail whipping the tatami covering the earthen f loor.
Just as the head of our son, open-eyed and screaming, pushed out of my body and my insides ripped and bled, I heard another scream. With my shark eyes I saw your face, pale against the sky, looking at me through the hole in the roof. Oh, the horror on your face would’ve been easier to bear than the disgust. Tears rolled from my lidless fish eyes, and with a downward maw, teeth gnashing, I begged and pleaded for your forgiveness, for you to love me again.
The color drained from your face, and I saw that with it all the memories of our life under the ocean drained out of you, as if they never existed. You forgot everything and could only see the loathsome monster writhing on the ground between your son and pretty Tamayoribime. What was left for me to do? I fled, lumbering, flopping, awkward, my gills full of sand. I struggled across the beach and into the waiting welcoming arms of the surf. It embraced me, washing away dirt and blood, forgiving, comforting.
I did not look back.
I returned to my father’s palace, leaving Tamayoribime to care for my son Ugayafukiaezu. The bond between us had been broken, and even she chose you and the child over me. I could not bear to look at my child or at you, and so I blocked the passage between land and sea, so that the journey between our realms would never again be easy. Only Tamayoribime passed freely, bringing me news of my son’s growth and an occasional poem from you.
I could not bear to hear the singing of fish anymore and could not forgive them for telling you about the whereabouts of the cursed fishhook, so I took away their voices. Now, they are forever silent, and only the mournful songs of their koto and shamisen and the silver bells of the jellyfish break the silence of our realm. I listen to their music, so sad, and yet not sadder than my heart. When all the tears are cried out and only memories are left, I wander like a ghost in the grand palace made of fish scales, dreaming of the voices of my sister and my husband.
And every time the ocean water churns, I am reminded of the ebb and flow of the tides, of the jewels you still have in your possession. You never use them anymore, not even to bring me closer to you. But every time the water turns toward land, I grow hopeful, and my love for you ebbs and flows with the ocean.
THERE IS A MONSTER UNDER HELEN’S BED
