Sea People

“Voice” by Zoe Huot-Link

The horse wandered into the field on New Year’s Day. Blue-hued and hungry, hooves leaving the barest trace of life in newly-formed mud, the storms lasted weeks, the farm didn’t notice the horse until it was much too late, hours wrapped around the clock like invasive vines, a breakup already underway.

Shade in the kitchen where begonia grew in large clay pots. Buckets for barberry, mustard plants, bush violets and angel’s trumpet abounded. The wife, a woman named Grace, washed dirt off her arms in the sink. Her lover, whose beard was cloudy as dust in a chimney, hair still black as a raven’s belly, stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, trying to keep track of her heartbeats.

Did she still care about him? If he tried hard enough, could he feel her bare feet across the tiled floor?

One light illuminated the top of her head. A brown the shade of mice, now honey, occasionally halo as she dipped, scooped mussels from the murky water, scrubbed their navy surfaces. Fickle things, hidden gems, one tilt of the neck and down came sweetness, the Atlantic ocean, spring days catching yellow spiders and lobsters in the cove with his father, someone played guitar, someone tracked the clouds. He caught his fingers often on the lobster crates, scraped both his knees to blood, to ribbons, stared into the void that was the cove and prayed his father would never leave him. But what good are dreams if they aren’t broken. And what was the name of that month his father left, repelled by his mother and her own secret lover, the house smelling distinctly of honeysuckle and spilled alcohol, the barest hint of copper floating through the doorway, like a needle to a nose.

Grace’s husband, Victor, chopped wood. His shape visible beyond the window, movements making storm lamps blink, cloud of bugs, desire knotting his shoulders, the wood would be perfect, the relationship saved, fresh meat for dinner, it had been weeks since he’d had killing on his mind. He longed for fresh milk, Grace’s cold hands around his back, neck, hungry kisses in the light of the fridge, ribeye wrapped in butcher paper, bloody pucker of purple-pink juice on the third frost-flecked fridge shelf, to be himself again was a goal he could never reach.

The distance didn’t make a difference to the blue horse. She waltzed, became a flower, it grew an exhausting abundance of loveliness and human hair, a wreath around its neck similar to the spots around its blue-ash neck, freckles like a necklace, she wondered if men might lick her newly human skin, call her pretty names, different names than she was called when she was still horse, enduring, only blooming alive beneath the full moon every other month. What did these humans—any humans, really—know of loss, of spells. What did they know of the chrysanthemum she swallowed whole in the forest, her own father and his father up ahead, warning her not to interact with the surrounding wildlife unless it interacted with her first.

The flower had winked, glossy ornament, red as a snack, twisting her limbs like doll limbs, muscles popping, twisting like worms, the old razzle dazzle, what good were her memories of being a girl, two men she cared for disappearing into the brush like they’d never witnessed her birth, her body was a tear in time, she hid in the forest until the moon revealed the creature she’d become.

Grace saw the woman first. Talking to her husband, flame dangling from her palm, wrought-iron lantern, pea coat, hair in two buns, everything blue against the backdrop of their bodies.

A sky of stars observed. Old forest quivered, its lakes recalling the feeling of her mouth dipping below the surface, snacking on weeds and the occasional frog, discarded treats from sparrows stolen from other daughters’ windowsills, the days she sat in patches of dawn and sighed, the hunters who tried to kill her and the couples who tried to take her, all that a faded memory for one night only.

“Someone you know?” Jacob asked.

She wondered how they must have looked; mirrors of each other, two couples illuminated by fatly light sources.

“Never met her in my life,” Grace replied, but something felt familiar, and her hands, coated in brine, faintly smelled of warm apples and home.

She continued to scrub the sink, piling oysters into a bowl, small scallops with amber centers, fresh tomatoes for the fisherman’s stew. There were so many days she abandoned her heart, her husband, herself, crawling home at three, sometimes four in the morning, body smelling ripe, imprinted with grass from where they laid in his yard, the water just beyond eating up the shore. Those days, she woke lonely and cold.

***

Victor woke around four, cloaked in sweaters, red scarf, knit hat she’d made him for his birthday, the morning made for him. He’d sit at the head of the dining room table, sipping coffee, focusing on a space beyond the trees. Further, brush, mangroves, willow and maple. Discarded sea grapes glowing in the half moonlight, warblers watching the fishermen packing their boat with first aid kits, rods, water, sandwiches made by their husbands and wives, Victor’s own lunch still in the fridge. On nights she couldn’t sleep she’d rub water on her face, heat tea, sit across Victor. He’d smile, seemingly in love with her, though his gaze never went to her face. Always he searched the edge of their property for someone, or something, refusing to arrive.

Despite Grace’s reservations, Pearl was invited to dinner. She sat at their dinner table and ate her stew. She preferred shrimp over scallops, complimented Grace on the seasoning, took whole pieces of heart-shaped butter and ate them in one bite. Victor and Jacob loved Pearl. Or rather, they loved her appetite, feeding her seconds and thirds, when she asked for a fourth bowl they made her garlic bread with extra butter, a BLT, Victor offered up his remaining turkey legs, the slice of apple pie he’d been saving.

Victor and Jacob looked so similar they could almost be brothers. Victor stood tall, muscular, his arms covered in tattoos of anchors, poisonous fish, discarded lines from poems Grace had written when they were first dating. Jacob only had tattoos on his wrists, the left bearing an octopus, the right a squid, one for each of his kids. It was the reason Grace would never fully leave Victor, even though her heart marched away from her body every time she walked in the room, saw his dark brown eyes and curly hair, wanted to tug on his beard so badly she had to sit on her hands. But she knew she’d never love them the way their mother had, she, too, would turn into a ghost. Even the word—motherhood—felt like a smother, her own mother encouraging her every fight to give up.

The woman’s name was Pearl. When asked follow-up questions—where did she work, was her partner also a sailor, did she travel for work—she’d respond by eating oyster shells, her canines crunching loudly on shell bits, teeth a complicated shade of green flecked with small coils which resembled barnacles.

“My husband passed away recently,” Pearl said, covering her mouth with her hand as she consumed an entire mussel. “He always loved to fish.”

“Oh god,” Grace found herself saying, even though she’d never experienced the loss of a lover. In fact, she’d always had too many people caring about her at once, to the point where she felt suffocated, empty as post-storm sky.

“Thank you, that means a lot to me. You three must be great friends, if you can withstand loss like that. The ocean always takes more than it gives.”

Grace shivered slightly. Victor, focused on dessert, wiped whipped cream from his chin. He’d recently shaved his beard and gave off the impression of a too-hungry man in his early twenties, unsure which woman to devour next.

Jacob, on the other hand, observed Grace. Now Pearl had stopped asking for more food, he was able to rest, try to connect with her across the table. His eyes flickered to her nose, her lips, the space on her neck he liked to bite. She felt her cheeks grow warm, noticed Pearl noticing the two of them. But when Grace tried to explain with a shrug, Pearl shook her head.

It was the first time Grace had met someone—another woman, to be precise—who understood her body language, and Grace, hers. When Pearl picked up her coupe soup bowl to lick its edges, she thought to herself, finally, someone who understands hunger.

Things were different with Jacob. Sure, there were nights spent covering their tracks, walking over the old town paths, writing each other’s names in the surf, shouting to the seals, baiting the sharks. The day he pressed her against the innermost wall of her husband’s ship (Victor fast asleep in the house, wrapped in his blanket like meat in foil, sweet, savory), Jacob’s own chest glowing pink from early evening, Grace’s nails raking his skin, eyes squeezed shut, crush looming, always threatening, soon to be love, she thought to herself, this was it. Everything smelling like raw halibut, a spare crab crawling across the floor, its violet-grey feet making echoes in a thin stream of water, what if the ship is sinking? he pressing his teeth to her before she could finish her sentence, pulling out her bottom lip, always looking for better ways to consume.

Jacob never said he hated Victor. Instead, he dreamt. Pushing Victor off the side of the boat, watching as he flailed in the center of the ocean, anchor a thing of the past, ghosts he’d summoned in a seance coaxing his body to the floor, they were hungry, after all, didn’t the food chain need to eat? Victor choking on his own shaved beard hair in the bathroom, throat dry from dinner, a twice-baked sourdough sandwich with no mayonnaise or tomato, only thick bacon, what was left of old lettuce, perhaps an onion ring for flavor. Sweet-toothed Victor who’d bought Grace a wedding ring in the shape of a heart, blue like the sea, bold underside of flesh peeled from fist, maybe fists, hazy Sunday evening, remainder of his heart tossed to the eels. His hunger, he noticed, was not unlike Pearl with her seemingly bottomless stomach, long navy dress and shawl making her look even hungrier, Prionace glauca, hair the color of buttermilk, eyes empty. Sometimes green, sometimes yellow, mostly swallowed by pupil.

“So where are you from, really?” Jacob asked, realizing no one had asked a question in over an hour.

“We moved around a lot when I was a kid,” Pearl said, gaze still focused on Grace. “My father was swallowed by the sea, as my mother liked to say, and she disappeared not too long after.”

“You and Grace would get along well, her mother disappeared, too,” Victor offered.

His jaw, now clean-shaven, worked as he chewed a particularly tough biscuit. Grace felt the urge to kiss his mouth. Jacob felt the urge to bite a hole through his cheek.

“My mother is still alive,” Grace corrected. “Jacob’s wife is the one who disappeared. Sinkhole in the ocean, right? Very Homeric, babe.”

She could have stabbed herself in the mouth right then and there. Babe hung in the air, a net.

Victor cleared his throat.

“Eaten by Charybdis.”

“Is that the monster who used to hang out with Scylla?” Pearl asked.

A woman after her own heart, Grace thought to herself.

“You read classical literature?”

“Lived is more accurate a verb, but I suppose I’ve read it on occasion, when I have the chance.”

Pearl’s eyes, normally yellow like a cat’s, had turned a storm cloud blue.

“For example,” Pearl went on. “Did you know when Heracles killed Scylla, he missed some of her heads? They turned into selkies then crawled out of the sea.”

“I thought there weren’t any selkies in Homer,” Jacob offered, though everyone knew he’d hated The Odyssey.

“Maybe you read an outdated translation,” Pearl offered. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to run to the restroom. Grace, would you mind showing me where it is?”

She didn’t need another excuse to abandon Jacob and Victor, who smiled politely at each other before their mouths dissolved and their minds returned to what she presumed would be thoughts of hunger.

*** 

The walls of the hallway were covered in drawings purchased from previous folk art sales. Some of the watercolors were detailed, filling the thick cream paper with gold-lined leaves, others spare, single fishes swimming in the center, each becoming more finned than the last, their eyes like marbles, teeth twinning with needles. Halfway down the hall, Pearl turned and smiled; Grace’s heart hummed, she was sixteen jumping the fence with her best friend, the two of them barefoot on a neighbor’s lawn, necks heavy with glow-stick necklaces, bags filled with pop rocks and condensation-coated iced tea cans, they were chasing down the sun, they were going to make a blood oath, they would be friends forever until Lee decided she didn’t love Grace anymore and left her for the next best thing. And the next best thing was a girl whose name she’d long abandoned, gold-rimmed aviator glasses and perfectly straightened hair, she was sleepy, she wore blue eyeliner, she kissed boys and girls and her parents never caused her trauma or grief.

“Are you okay?”

Pearl stepped closer, cold hand cupping Grace’s face. Oh, this, echoed in Grace’s head, a motion similar to her Lee’s, the times they kissed beneath her back porch while her mother, snake-like, watched them through the slats. Waited for Lee to return home. Threatened things Grace twisted out of her mind like nails twisted out of old wood, the last memories of her mother were a parade of disappointments, hatreds, the collected loathing, turning bisexual into a swear word.

You need to think long and hard about your choices, her mother had said.

“It’s all fine,” Grace said, noticing she was crying, pretended she wasn’t.

“You’re in love with him.”

It became difficult to formulate words.

“I’m not—I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But Pearl didn’t remove her hand.

“Don’t you ever miss winning?” she asked, but it sounded like swimming, bonding, melting, transforming.

“I don’t know how,” Grace admitted and she thought about apologizing, bit her tongue until her nerve endings became the edges of mountains.

When Pearl took Grace’s hand, she let herself be tugged away, even though Jacob and Victor were likely to have eaten each other alive by the time they got back, or worse, turned into a two-headed centipede she’d need to take care of until the end of time, it didn’t matter, here was a woman who understood hunger. Here was her boredom, slinking out the side door.

Pearl drew a bath. Grace showed her where she kept her favorite bath bombs, aquamarine orbs flecked with gold. They climbed in together, fully clothed, soaped each other’s hair.

“I have a favor to ask you,” Pearl asked.

“Anything,” Grace said. She ran her fingers through Pearl’s strands, noticing her body was dry, her clothes were like cardboard, her hair still fluffy and orange beneath hazy storm light. “You’re not wet.”

Pearl smiled. Had her teeth always appeared so sharp? Her eyes now entirely blue, sea swallowing the pupil, small sapphires, the alula of a blue jay.

“I’m returning to the sea and I want you to come with me.”

“You’re leaving?”

They’d only been together a few short hours. They’d eaten so many meals, seventeen surprise courses to be exact, the fridge was empty, the sink filled with cups, bowls, dried Riesling, so many spoons.

“You can come with me, if you want.”

She held Grace’s hands gently. Not like Jacob, who squeezed too hard, or Victor, who tugged at her arms as if she were receding into the arms of another but so slowly he might still be able to stop it.

“We can be friends,” Pearl suggested.

“Yes, I’d like that very much.”

“There’s just one last task I need your help with.”

“Anything.”

Grace hated how breathless she sounded.

“I need to eat your husband’s entire body. And if you’re coming with me, we could probably take Jacob, too.”

She didn’t let her smile waver, distracted by Pearl’s gentle touch, what appeared to be seaweed frills growing out of her neck, no, gills, everything smelling of blueberries and lemon, her mouth hurting from the sweetness.

*** 

Outside her door, spiders knit raindrops into ropes. A stray cat entered through a crack in the wall, its grey tail cutting the humidity like a knife. Further outside, storms. Trees clicking together, pinecones making impacts in the mud, the moon round as mozzarella, and twice as soft, casting rare light through the storm.

Jacob and Victor hadn’t moved. Grace and Pearl returned to find the men still staring at one another, grinding their teeth so loudly they were close to shattering their molars.

“What’s wrong with them,” Grace whispered, picking up Victor’s scarred hand, dropping it into his lap.

The scar he’d gotten from a fish fillet knife on the curve of his thumb, a nine-inch rope burn coiled around his arm from ledgering, the trawls too sharp, his body so exhausted. On their first date they compared scars, mother stories, women-shaped wounds.

“It’s a spell I cast,” Pearl said as if this were just another day in her life. “It’s to make things easier.”

“I don’t think I can go through with it,” Grace said.

What about the nights when they tossed their clothes on the floor, Jacob with his hand over her mouth so Victor wouldn’t hear her moans, then in the morning she kissed her husband’s back like she hadn’t betrayed him hours before, what about the times he knew but kept it quiet, not able to withstand the knowledge that another person might walk out of his life.

“Is this really the life you want?”

Pearl wrapped her arms around Victor, brushed his five-o’clock shadow. She rested her head on top of his and his eyes flew wildly around the room, resting on the hands, wrists flecked with baby pink adipose fins.

“To be honest, I don’t know what I want.”

She motioned for Grace to hold Jacob, which she did.

“Did you cast a spell on me, too?”

“I would never do that to another selkie, you have my honor.”

She smiled sadly.

“You know I’m a human, right?”

“No woman carrying around that much emptiness is still considered human.”

*** 

She became a woman who ate husbands. Or rather, a lover-eating woman.

It was difficult at first, finding the right angle, realizing her body was no longer human, her skin also populated with hooves and gills, wings and cannon bones; she was soft hock, fetlock, stomach filled with pyloric caeca, vitamin deposits, deposits of silver and gold in her lungs.

They stretched when they reached the shore. They were horses and houses and horseshoe crabs. They were haunted and haloed, angering the fishermen and women who tried to toss nets at them from the shore. Once beneath the surface of the water their lungs were dazzling, producing oxygen, they were daughters of sea goddesses and their hearts burned but no longer begged for love. On hot days, when the sea became untenable because of their human ancestors, they traveled to the trenches, submerging themselves so deep they were amongst lava sharks and bioluminescent bugs.

Grace could feel Jacob transforming her every breath. She longed to return to the shore, to his arms. She missed sweaters and rain boots and rainbows.

One night, when Pearl was off hunting scuba divers, Grace returned to land. She’d been told she could transform outside of the fool moon, now that she’d eaten the heart of a fisherman. She traveled to the old town bars, ordered rounds of shots for the regulars, went home with a man who had an anchor tattooed on his left breast. Mornings he made her French toast with sausage, vanilla coffee and biscuits that were neither flaky nor dry. Everything was dough, egg, soft, painless.

“Sometimes I get the feeling you’re not happy with me,” he said to her one night.

He was the first—and the last—man to ever confront her in this way.

“I miss my friend,” she said.

“You’re so forlorn and filled with daydreams, I think it’s safe to replace miss with love.”

She hated being confronted, so she ate this man, too. But she longed for Pearl’s company, so she invited her ashore, and they lived in the boat house by the sea, starting rumors, dancing till dawn, falling sleep wrapped in each other’s arms. Just outside the window, sea. Perfect salt water, blankets of seaweed, discarded dresses from pissed off brides. In the evenings, the moon revealed herself, cast her haze onto the house boat, tempted the women to relocate permanently to the water. They flapped half-tails, half-hooves at her from the bathtub and then, like parentheses, curled into each other.

About the author

Sam Moe is the recipient of a 2023 St. Joe Community Foundation Poetry Fellowship from Longleaf Writers Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Whale Road Review, The Indianapolis Review, Sundog Lit, and others. Her first full-length collection, Heart Weeds, was published with Alien Buddha Press (Sept. ’22) and her second full-length collection Grief Birds was published with Bullshit Lit (Apr. ’23). Her third full-length, Cicatrizing the Daughters, is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press.

about the artist

Zoe Mae Huot-Link is an illustrator, fine artist, designer, and creative writer located in the Twin Cities. Her work has been published in For Women Who Roar, Writing for Peace, and 86 Logic, among others. She has won superior ratings and scholarship awards at the Selections Visual Arts Festival and AZ Gallery. She is the recipient of two Undergraduate Research Grants for her curation and exhibition of "Bayt Jadeed: Seeking Home" (2019) as well as "La Femme" (2021), and is a winner of the Joseph O’Connell Art Scholarship as well as the Manitou Creative Writing Fellowship of the Literary Arts Institute at the College of Saint Benedict. She studied ancient calligraphy and martial arts in Bei Bei, China at Southwest University. In 2021, Zoe received her bachelor's degree in Studio Art with a minor in English Writing from the College of Saint Benedict. To process constructs of femininity and power she draws with graphite, ink, and colored pencils; makes watercolor paintings; and writes creative non-fiction essays and poetry.