A very strange and trying day.
“Doing—” Tea waved a hand around. “Whatever it is you’re doing. Pretending you’re this.”
“I’m not pretending anything,” Grant said, laying out wire, hammer, nails. “I’m the same person I was yesterday.”
“No, you’re not!”
The heat flared up in Tea’s head again. The hiss, one she now associated with the eels rushing and scraping against each other in a mad liquid dance, stretched her nerves further; a strange pulling of the breath from her lungs, a squeeze into the cracks of her mind, swirling instinct and her better intent into a whirl she didn’t know how to contain. If Mum saw her now, there’d be a swift clip around the ear.
Anger is a man’s place, this is a man’s job. Grant and Izzy are trying to make me angry, make me into something I’m not!
Grant straightened and sighed, scratching under the rim of his hat. “Tea, come here.”
“Why? So you can turn me into a horse too? Or a dog?” She put the sheer size of Clarissa between them again.
“No. I need you to hold this wire so I can staple it into the post.”
“Oh.”
*
Prickle-sweet pine. Manure, settling dank and loamy at the back of the throat; the hardness of sheep pellets and oozing delight of cows’ paddies. Sluggish ditches with worlds below thick water. The lick of green-yellow-sunshine grass-hay. Flea dip hard and high in the nose. Smooth-chewy lanolin over everything.
And her. The scent of her. Something old, and something new to this old place. Like the other one but deep-warm, sunshine on salt-sea-sand driftwood charcoal, the scent the river left in its wake a long time ago. The scent of what an eel thinks.
Whaiwhaiā.
Barely contained.
A lick of the chops, to wipe such a scent all over the face. To dig the nose in it, roll in it. Want to become a part of it. Take it all inside.
Tap tap tap. That is the hammer.
Is Clarissa one too? That is the voice, rough-sweet, smooth as river running over rocks.
One what? That is the other voice, round and long, a voice that waits.
Like you.
No. A laugh, a bray. We do get on well because of commonalities.
Common come on come one commonalities. Come all.
Like Izzy and the dogs.
Ears up, nose to the wind. Scent the dirt under fingernails, whisper from the creek, sweat. Come on.
Yes. Like you and all animals.
Yes yes. They like.
Taste-scent the hurt-fear how it rattles her skin and seizes her bones. Tiptoe around the deeper buried wild fruit that could over-ripen if not watched. Shake off the scrape-touch of the water reaching out for her. For her. Swallow jealousy.
What do you mean?
Watch your step there, the bank gets slippery under the ferns. I mean, the dogs, they like you. The chooks don’t fight you or run away. The horses are placid around you, even the boss’s Kingly. The sheep fair walk up and drop their fleeces for you.
That’s silly!
You’ve never been on a farm before, have you?
Well, no? Woah there, Clarissa. Good girl.
Sunlight side-eyeing dust slanting up from the grass. Beyond, taste-scent of loam offering up the depth of its knowledge, a wealth of a thousand years. Ponga, flax, lemonwood, manakura, macrocarpa, and all the delicate morsels that make it their home. The fast-scent of feathers bob above, out of reach.
Bring her forward a bit more so the sled’s hard up. Thanks.
Wait, what’s that?
The traps. So, the dogs and horses, it usually takes them weeks to trust a new hand. You had them at first glance. Unh, this one’s bogged down. Give me a hand, will you?
Slick mineral lick and longness of weed. Meaty rub against mud water stone air. The eels they come, they come when they should be away, away. Squirm squirm.
Yuck! Now my boot is wet!
It’s alright. If you’ve oiled them properly, they should be waterproof. Ever had a pet?
No, Mum didn’t like pets. Said they were bad for Grandad’s lungs.
Hmm. Is your Grandad alright while you’re on service?
He … he passed. Just before the war.
I’m sorry.
Taste-scent of thick red, salt, hot meat, sweat. The mix is wrong, twists in ways that can’t be unravelled. The air, it calls, close. Even at this distance she tastes she tastes she …
Oh God! No! Let it out, stop it, put it back! No!
Auē. The wages of skin, they must be addressed.
*
The inky water let go its grip on the weed-draped cage. Blunt at one end and tapered with an inset cone at the other. Tea had never seen its like before, but instantly knew the death it brought.
Thick, rough whispers brushed her fingers as she hauled at the trap, some slapping like blame, others arching around in infinite coils of comfort.
A wet nose brushed her shoulder, then became hot breath against her ear whispering human words she couldn’t – didn’t want to – make out.
“It’s not moving,” Tea wept. “We have to send it back!”
Back to where she did not know. She should have known, what with the boss’s talk of traps in the water, and memories of awful boys with sharp sticks and damp bags who tried to frighten her with oily eel faces, their bulbous lips and gnawing teeth. But to Tea they hadn’t been ugly or scary. They simply belonged to the water, and the water belonged to them.
Larger hands engulfed hers, guiding her fingers to the hinges. Hunched in the mud, weeping, Tea cradled the dead eel in her hands. It was heavy, long, old, textured like fine sand. The coolness of it a reckoning, not the resistance that had sat ugly and coiled within her for so long. A resistance that nipped (unladylike), thrashed (loud), pushed and squirmed (not marriage material).
Unhuman.
The hand, again, gentle rough between her shoulder blades, a familiar comfort that hadn’t been replaced since Grandad left.
A murmur-hiss of meaningless words, assurance from above and below the water.
We want the same want. We flow. Body here. Body in us. Body water beyond.
“They can’t have them.” Tea’s voice hitched. Her tears mingled with the soft flowing creek, as was their right. She stroked the flaccid whiskers of the dead eel, but it wasn’t creepy. It was skin she should know. “There’s food enough. When we are hungry we are for our people.” She knew she didn’t mean human. “We can take each other inside when the time has come. Our hunger is ours. We will give willingly.”