Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology Read Online Free PDF Page B

that even Mirali could not share. This pleased her, for
she thought, watching them playing silently together, they will still have
one another when I am gone .
    The Shark God saw the children when he
came every year for his tribute, but only while they were asleep. In human form
he would stand silently between their floor mats, studying them out of his
black, expressionless eyes for a long time, before he finally turned away. Once
he said quietly to Mirali, “It is good that I see them no more often than this.
A good thing.” Another time she heard him murmur to himself, “ Simpler for
sharks ...”
    As for Mirali herself, the love of the
Shark God warded off the cruelty of the passing years, so that she continued to
appear little older than her own children. They teased her about this, saying
that she embarrassed them, but they were proud, and likewise aware that their
mother remained attractive to the men of the village. A number of those came
shyly courting, but all were turned away with such civility that they hardly
knew they had been rejected; and certainly not by a married woman who saw her
husband only once in a twelvemonth.
    When Keawe and Kokinja were little younger
than she had been when she heard a youth singing in the marketplace, she called
them from the lagoon, where they spent most of their playtime, and told them
simply, “Your father is the Shark God himself. It is time you knew this.”
    In all the years that she had imagined
this moment, she had guessed—so she thought—every possible reaction
that her children might have to these words. Wonder... awe... pride... fear
(there are many tales of gods eating their children)... even laughing
disbelief—she was long prepared for each of these. But it had never
occurred to her that both Keawe and Kokinja might be immediately furious at
their father for—as they saw it—abandoning his family and
graciously condescending to spare a glance over them while passing through the
lagoon to gobble his annual goat. Keawe shouted into the wind, “I would rather
the lowest palm-wine drunkard on the island had sired us than this...this god who cannot be bothered with his wife and children but once a year. Yes, I would
prefer that by far!”
    “That one day has always lighted my way to
the next,” his mother said quietly. She turned to Kokinja. “And as for you,
child—”
    But Kokinja interrupted her, saying
firmly, “The Shark God may have a daughter, but I have no more father today
than I had yesterday. But if I am the Shark God’s daughter, then I will
set out tomorrow and swim the sea until I find him. And when I find him, I will
ask questions—oh, indeed, I will ask him questions. And he will answer me.” She tossed her black hair, which was the image of Mirali’s hair, as
her eyes were those of her father’s people. Mirali’s own eyes filled with tears
as she looked at her nearly grown daughter, remembering a small girl stamping
one tiny foot and shouting, “Yes, I will! Yes, I will!” Oh, there is this
much truth in what they say, she thought to her husband. You have truly
no idea what you have sired .
    In the morning, as she had sworn, Kokinja kissed
Mirali and Keawe farewell and set forth into the sea to find the Shark God. Her
brother, being her brother, was astonished to realize that she meant to
keep her vow, and actually begged her to reconsider, when he was not ordering
her to do so. But Mirali knew that Kokinja was as much at home in the deep as
anything with gills and a tail; and she further knew that no harm would come to
Kokinja from any sea creature, because of their promise on her own wedding day.
So she said nothing to her daughter, except to remind her, “If any creature can
tell you exactly where the Shark God will be at any given moment, it will be
the great Paikea, who came to our wedding. Go well, then, and keep warm.”
    Kokinja had swum out many a time beyond
the curving coral reef that had created the lagoon a thousand or