Fish Goddess
words by anya shen
illustration by jennifer fong li
A major source of suffering for salmon and other farmed fish is the abundant presence of sea lice, which thrive in the filthy water. These lice create open lesions and sometimes eat down to the bones on a fish’s face—a phenomenon common enough that it is known as the “death crown” in the industry.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
Monster or lover. Predator or prey. Friend or food. Offend not the species who wears the crown of death. Shouldn’t your mother have taught you better, child?
Come closer. Don’t mind the gore, it will all be gone at the command of the next bidder with the highest price. Look into my eyes. I want you to remember them. My silver-green dark and mysterious eyes that once told stories. Crusted with vermin and deflating in my shredded cheeks, unblinking. They will not close even after the end of the meal. Come closer; I want to tell one last story. You can touch my body if you want, if you don’t mind the slime and grease from the fingers of other children. The body of the dynasty’s last daughter of the sea, drying out on a bed of crushed ice smelling of lemon and guts.
The bodies of humans have always been entwined with bodies of fish.
I can understand it. Love, lust, fear, and violence bind us together. It is only human instinct to revel in the thrill of conquering round, smooth, wet, confoundingly wonderful bodies with bare hands. They like to kiss flesh with tongue when it’s still warm off the knife’s edge. They like the danger of spending too long, getting too close, going too far on their flimsy pieces of architecture, discovering our land which is not land. They never discovered much. They never figured out how to breathe in water without cheating.
What they did discover was science, history, poetry. It’s all stories. There are beautiful, frightening stories that they tell.
There are stories about the Tiktaalik, the fish that grew a spine and limbs and became man. Before you know it, your bones too, will end up in a museum for another species’ children to gawk at. In the anthropocene wing, no one’s going to remember what a dinosaur was. There are stories about creation and home, about shell creatures that hold up the world for the people who came from the stars. There are stories about old men and the sea and young men chasing whales with strange names; the men always come home with nothing at the end of the day, but they like to tell me about how that makes the stories important. Most of all, there are stories about pretty girls, dangerous girls, dead girls. Tell a sister to keep an eye on her sealskin, take good care of her wild green hair, send my best regards to Odysseus coming home late, and sink Columbus’ goddamn ship when she has a chance.
Then there are beautiful, frightening stories they do not tell.
I would tell you that it comes in the night, because that is how the story starts when humans want their children to be afraid, but that would not be true. There is no night when you cannot decipher the direction of the light under the writhing, bleeding, sinking bodies of your neighbours. Neighbours, not siblings. We are not so close. We lose our siblings at birth, naturally.
It is always coming. It is always night. In swarms, in hives, in chaotic splatters of wriggling legs, teeth, antennae. Order and violence are both natural evolutionary instincts. This is not natural anymore. There is no order amidst the pulsing, frantic gore of violence like this.
What comes to mind when you think of salmon? Every harvest season, the salmon follow the stars home, so their children may begin their voyage from the same place as their ancestors. When I close my eyes, I think of the old faithful shimmer of travelling fish, silver under moonshine. When I open my eyes, I see fish shipwrecked with children unborn, and apologies too-late strewn across riverbanks, dry for the first time in history.
The dynasty of fish decays under the crown of death. The fish goddess of once upon a time lies dehydrating on the rocks like a common whore waiting for a cab that isn’t coming.
Still, if humans insist on being descendants of fish, I’d believe it. Sharp bones and vicious teeth and majestic monstrosity run in the bloodline. Silver hooks on mysterious lines bind us, one species with another. They shouldn’t have toyed with chemicals they couldn’t control, and they’ve gotten too good at finding things that didn’t want to be found. But you all are my children still.
It’s coming for you too, you know.
None of this is anyone’s fault, I know.
Water is the most beautiful thing in the world, and this world is a place worth fighting for. Truth and love and everything all boils down to that. Where there is life, there is water, and where there is water, there is life. Water is the origin of existing in tandem—taking care of the others that keep us alive. That means holding your baby cousin’s hand as they taste their first snow like it’s chocolate ice cream. That means calling your parents from the turnstiles at the airport, and they’re already waiting outside with the car. That means reading poetry at the library with your best friend, then stumbling home on a sugar high and curling up on the floor laughing over jokes that aren’t funny. It means tidying up before you leave. It means respecting the trees, the sky, the rocks, the water, and the fish like family; and when something is hurting your family, you put up a fight.
I’m tired of telling horror stories, my dear. I want to go home and I hope you come to your senses. Because it’s too late to wait until you have a crown on your head to be missing home.
So let it go, kid, all the things that don’t matter. I’ll be waiting by the winter sunlight, by the ice caps holding on tight to centuries of tracks, by the rivers roaring back to life to cherish the wisdom of fish. Then, when the storms clear and the waters calm, we can set sail and go check out the mermaids or something.
