SHINee Shorts 2015: quagmireisadora
Title: Odd Eyed
Author: quagmireisadora
Pairing: Jinki / Kibum
Genre: merman au
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: midly gory descriptions
Word Count: ~6888
A/N: Based on the Greek myth of Nassos
"We caught one!"
The compass rose fell from Jinki's grasp when he ran out of the wheelhouse and in the direction of the shout. As he clambered over steps and slipped over floor in his hurry, the voices of his crew grew louder and more rowdy on the starboard gangway. For every step he inwardly cringed before preparing himself to their crass and uncultured behavior, still unused to boorish growls and uncouth language.
When ship opened to sky, his first mate welcomed him onto the rolling and heaving capstan with a wide rotten-toothed grin.
Jinki immediately noticed how the weapons were lined up and ready to use when the need arose, but none of them were manned. Because every hand on deck was engaged in what looked like a fierce tug of war, pulling on the same thickness of rope, wrenching it to their chests like their lives depended on its extrication from the seas.
"What is it?" the captain seemed to ask of the wind that whipped his hair about, carrying flecks of salt into his eyes. "What have we caught?"
"A male, cap'n," his first mate answered, his gruff voice lined with unbridled excitement, his fingers running over a disheveled white beard. "The creature be mighty strong, sir. First a merry chase and then a gory fight. Enough for twenty of our own lads, and I'll bet all me gold he's important to that lot." The man jerked his chin in the direction of the ship’s aft, following the action with a hearty chuckle.
Jinki briskly walked to the wooden railing along the quarterdeck and craned his neck, trying to see what the other meant. The ship rocked wildly before he heard the sound of at least a thousand fists thumping against her keel, possibly rendering irreparable damage to the vessel.
"He'll fetch a treasure, sir, he will." The first mate hobbled over, continuing his speech regardless of his captain's distress. His weathered hand gestured in the direction of the struggle and a faraway look of enchantment stole his attention to a cloudless sky. "Aye. When that reward be ours, we'd live like kings till the end of days..."
A rhythmic chanting started up among the tugging crew of the ship, and the first mate shouted premature triumph, raising his fist and shaking it encouragingly. Then he limped closer to his captain and resumed his report. "Harpoon went straight through his gut, sir! Then there was… there was ink! Everywhere!" he explained with exaggerated expressions and movements. "Boys shot 'im out without aiming and he caught on like the stinking fish he is. It was glorious, sir! Glorious!" the old man laughed at his own joke.
Jinki frowned at the account, but listened to the silly ramblings with responding silence. He calmly turned back to peering over the railing, into the frothy waves where green scales glimmered on and off through a massive blot of dark blue, glinting a hundred colors against sunlight as it danced over their heads. “I thought I said I don’t want them hurt…” he muttered after a while, cutting through his first mate’s blather, knuckles whitening out of frustration.
He glared at his silenced subordinate. “The prize is for a live one. What will I do with a gutted fish-man on my hands?”
All smiles dropped at the sternness of tone-the captain’s temper was not one to be trifled with as the first mate had learnt over his stay on board; little scraps of gossip had been floating around for weeks now. Crewmen were said to have gone missing overnight, bodies were known to wash ashore on the evening tide, cut right in two with what looked like a military man’s sword. A military man like Captain Jinki.
At less than half his age and without any visible weapons on his waist, the old first mate could tell with just one glance: the captain was a dangerous man.
And so he backed away like an obedient subordinate, teeth visibly chattering. "Apologies, cap’n. But our net was cut straight through. We had no choice but to attack him with our... that is... We've already been at sea for weeks, sir, and the prince had asked us to return within the moon... He's a real fierce catch, sir. We had no choice..." the explanation trailed off weakly.
Jinki shook his head, expression starched by disdain. “Reel him in," he allowed. "Then I will deal with yo-”
His threat was speared through by a scream, a shrill sound halfway between human and harpy. All eyes shot to the starboard sky, where what they guessed was their captive fish-man flew into view. The creature wildly dangled upside-down off the end of a rope. A long blade embedded into his side dripped dark fluid off of its freed tip. The creature screamed and waved his trident around, trying to snip himself free.
"Pull him over!" Jinki yelled over the sudden din, palms covering his ears to block out the deafening inhuman shriek. "Pull, you unwashed miscreants, pull!”
A loud groan resounded from all the men, the rope strained in the scuffle, the ship rocked wildly by the force of a large multitude of fish-people. Jinki’s sight whipped over the ship’s side to glower at them once more. Apparently they hoped to sink the humans' ship and free their injured brother. The steam of revenge bubbled up to the surface, all human and non-human faces contorted with effort.
A loud thud later the crew began to cheer and whistle, dancing and stomping their feet like the contemptible troublemakers they were. But Jinki paid them no heed for he had other things to keep his gaze occupied.
Body crackling like a dying fish, the captive fish-man sloppily landed onto their deck, skidding around and oozing cobalt blue onto the wooden boards.
Jinki rushed to its side immediately, his fingers inadequately trying to cover the gaping wound on the creature’s abdomen. A careful measurement of strength, a swift flick of his wrist, a quick tug against resisting muscle… and the harpoon was pulled out, spraying an arc of deep blue blood and bits of muscle with its release from the fish-man’s body.
The creature looked at him, trembling and shuddering as if slithering down the steps of death. Its mouth opened and closed in shocked gasps, its tail shivered as if from the cold breeze. Tears pooled from the corners of its eyes, and as they dripped off its temples, they became oddly shaped half-formed pearls.
The captain frowned in concern. “Is there a way to help you heal?” he asked of the fish-man, who only coughed tarry liquid in response, splattering Jinki’s mouth and cheeks. “Do you understand our language?” he tried once more, and was met with wordless fright once more. The fish-man shuddered on Jinki’s lap. He jolted in repeated convulsions.
"Then you’re useless," it was concluded. The captain made to stand up.
But a tight grasp round his wrist pulled him still, a sharp tug making him stumble and fall back to the deck. Immediately and allowing no chance to fight back, he was rolled over. A heavy weight pinned him down and clasped his neck, trying to choke him. The screaming returned, much louder and closer than before, silhouetted against the glaring sun. The screaming returned but sounded nothing like its scared predecessor. This scream was filled with unrestrained fury.
Emerald green and royal blue drenched Jinki's sight.
------
Smears of vomit and a trail of inky blood led to their prisoner where he lay unconscious in a pool of his own filth.
The tub was nailed to floorboards in a dingy room, south of the ship in the holds. Two weeks ago the water in it was as clean as it could be in the middle of the ocean. But it hadn’t been changed since. Two weeks ago a struggling prisoner had been thrown into its sloshing mass and tied down with a heavy ball and chain round each of his wrists. And now the being lay vulnerably caught, comatose and pitiful.
A course was set for home. The prince would be delighted with this gift.
Meanwhile, a duty chart was pinned on the door of the room. Every day, three of the men from the crew would take turns to stab the fish-man. This would go on for several hours. They were supplied with harpoons and daggers for their task, but someone from the company jokingly suggested they use the fish-man’s trident on himself. And thus a cruel joke became a cruel reality.
The tears their violence produced were collected in a jar by a fourth man. They were never whole pearls as they fell from the creature’s eyes, but in the jar they would harden enough to resemble beautiful prismatic drops of treasure. These masses of pearl were to be presented to the prince as proof and gift upon the ship’s arrival at Goryeo.
Captain Jinki came in occasionally, only to ensure the fish-man was alive and that his idiot crew wasn’t being too rough. He would go in for no more than a few trickles of sand and then leave promptly. He may have been a man of strict discipline and he may have been harsh with some of the young inexperienced boys on his ship. But he wasn’t one to condone torture.
“Ease up on him for a bit,” he ordered on one such visit.
As he made to turn around and walk away that day, the fish-man muttered something incoherent in his direction. Jinki paused and looked at the being, frowning in concentration to make out the words.
The speech set unease in his stomach. He studied the creature’s constant mumbling for days on end, tried to understand its meaningless utterances for two long weeks. Coaxing it to speak clearly would’ve been foolish because the fish-man obviously talked in a cruder, more guttural language than that of the humans. Perhaps it cursed its captors, perhaps it wished for its own death- the captain tried hard to decipher the mystery of all those strange sounds.
And when he gave up, a shaman was brought before him in chains matching their captive.
“Cap’n,” one of the men dragged her in as the ship swayed wildly. She struggled to get out of the burly man’s hold. It was a little comical for a weakling of her size and apparent age to fight back like that. “Hold still, woman!” she was given a violent jerk. “Found her rowing off like something crazy. Near of one of ‘em enchanted islands. Just past Nusantara,” the man recited. “Picked ‘er up for questioning. The scurvied hag be following us, cap’n.”
Jinki studied the woman for a moment and then barked a curt, “Leave us.” She was dropped onto a stool even as she squirmed. She didn’t remain sitting there very long and slipped off her perch, scurrying to a corner. Her glance remained unmoving from the fish-man in the grimy water, her face wincing every time the creature groaned.
“Do you speak their tongue?” the captain asked of the frail old lady. He would’ve liked to interrogate her himself but there were more pressing matters to be dealt with.
She cowered away from him, trying to squeeze her hunched body in a corner of the room. Her wrinkly arms were covered in peculiar shapes of green ink, her windswept face had no left eye, and when she moved Jinki suspected one of her limbs to be a wooden stump. Her eyes leaked wetness to her scarred cheeks, her broken lips twisted and trembled with panic; senseless mumblings fell from her as she scuttled about and clanked her chains.
“Do not be afraid,” the captain assured her, motioning for her to come closer. “The thing is restrained. It will not harm you.”
“Not scared of fish-man!!” she screeched. “Fish-man strong, but wise. Not scared of fish-man!” Her head shivered as she talked, her words coloured with an odd lilt. The shaman spoke as if in a dialect. Her accent was strange, it pulled on the wrong sounds and stressed around unusual places in her sentences. “S-scared of… scared of two-legs!” she pointed a crooked finger at the captain’s appendages and whimpered when he scowled.
“Watch your mouth, impertinent wench,” Jinki seethed. “I could have you thrown into the sea for the sharks to eat.”
She held her hands up between them as if to clarify. “Fish-man is… fish-man is king of fish-men. See, see, here--” she hobbled over to the creature and gestured to his forehead. An intricate design of what looked like a crown hid below creased skin and dried ink.
Jinki looked at the pattern in wonder. It felt strange to think of the creature as a person with a designation. As a sentient being with a life and memories. It felt odd in his mouth to refer to the thing as him. “So what of it?” he challenged the old woman.
The shaman opened and shut her mouth a few times. “T-two-legs… two-legs catch king of fish-men. Strong brave king. King who hold all seas on his back. Two-legs catch king of ocean. Two-legs is king of two-legs? King of land?”
“No,” Jinki said. “But I am a soldier of the king of land. And I am bringing him this puny thing as a gift,” he bragged as he motioned to the defenceless, unconscious fish-man. “This is our strength. This is our bravery. The king of the ocean means nothing to us.”
With every one of his utterances the shaman let out a horrified sound, covering her toothless mouth with an aged hand.
The reaction should’ve pleased Jinki but it somehow made him feel shameful. Of himself and of everything he was doing on this ship. Regardless, he sorted his feelings aside and smirked, pulling another stool to himself and sitting down on it. “So,” he began in a leisurely way. “What else can you tell me about this wretched thing?”
------
When it began to snow one morning, they had reason to celebrate. It meant they were nearing Goryeo and its cold mountains. Land ho was hanging off of everyone’s excited lips. Even the boatswain was agreeable enough that Jinki didn’t need to threaten him up the masts. The vile man broke into song and climbed up there by himself, chipping ice and hulking the shards off the side of the ship.
The captain adjusted his heavy coat before entering the hold. He found the shaman crouched over her own weak body, lying close to the fish-man as if protecting it. The very idea was absurd. Jinki would’ve kicked her awake just to see her amusing scramble, but he let her stay there and took a seat near them.
As he opened his mouth to speak, a wall of stench hit him from the fish-man’s direction. He coughed, choked, covered his mouth with a kerchief, and grimaced in the direction of the grimy pool the prisoner lay in. Its chest moved fast, its breath sounded shallow like that of a man who’d been cut with a sword. Its eyes were rolled up under their lids. Its previously shimmering skin flaked and fell off. Its webbed digits hung lifelessly in their shackles.
“Mudang,” he woke the old woman up in a hurry. He needn’t stay in this mist of stink for too long or it would get on his clothes. “Mudang!” he shook her insistently by the shoulder. She jumped in a rush, then settled when she saw who it was. Her good eye dropped as low as the empty socket. She bowed to the captain in her seated position, holding her hands to him as if in prayer but the action lacked its previous fervour. It seemed she had already resigned herself to the fact that he would kill her as soon as she became useless.
But the shaman had been of much help. She told Jinki that his prisoner could not attack them even if it tried with all its might.
“Fish-man need water to live. No water, no strength. Two-legs break fish-man.” He would’ve beamed with pride at that statement--he had broken someone’s will to fight. He had dominated them. He held victory over their very life. Jinki would’ve flashed a smug grin at that had he not seen how sallow-faced the hostage looked. They had been torturing it for its tears but it suddenly occurred to the captain that they hadn’t thought to feed it. Not once in the several weeks since its capture. He stared long at the being that seemed to be at the gates of hell.
“Fish-man called Dariyai Mard,” the shaman continued to explain the language of the fish-folk. “Shasak. Masey Netey. Samrakshak.” Jinki tried to pay attention but his mind wavered back to his prisoner and the condition it was in. He was in. “Ruler and protector from two-legs. Fish-man save dying whale and whale baby. Made king because fish-man strong but choose to be gentle.”
It was a smirk-worthy comment. A man who never used his strength was nothing more than a weakling. A man who had the power to crush those lesser than him but chose to live amongst them instead, was a mere oaf. There was no glory in such a timid demeanour. Several slaves from the Mongol plains were of a similar disposition. The king of Goryeo used them to heft weights and stones on their backs. He considered them no better than draught animals.
Jinki scowled behind the cloth over his nose. Because despite all these pointedly derogatory thoughts, the irises in that head had been far from those of a weakling. That emerald glance had pierced through him the first time it’d set itself on him and he’d been left charred.
He’d felt like a man being crushed. Clearly the fish-man was not a weakling. Not in the least.
“Fishing, looting, fighting, killing, throwing trash into sea--fish-men protect from everything. Fish-men not harm anybody. Fish-men stay in kingdom with fish-women. Live quiet life in quiet water. Only two-legs take what is not for two-legs to take. Why king of two-legs take king of fish-men?” the shaman voiced wearily.
Captain Jinki took a choked breath. “Because the weak cannot survive against the strong. Such is the way of our land,” he justified.
The shaman shook her head sadly. “But fish-man not from land. Fish-man from water...”
Many old legends of the sea made rounds in his village, and he’d heard them recited by old lips when he was a child. He’d erased the words from his memory a long time ago but that night, when the song-the dirge-echoed through the hull of his ship, years of neglect were swept off the stories and Jinki woke from his slumber. He shrugged on a jeonbok over his underclothes and walked out from his room into the cold night air.
The oceans were deep around the peninsula of Goryeo. There were beings that lurked in the lonely depths of the Sea of Yamato; beings that humans could never comprehend. Truthfully, humans never tried to comprehend the difference between them. It was better that way. It was better to think of human life as one that is worth more than any other life. Because such was the way of the land. Deviations from this thought were considered perfidious to the throne, and disloyalty of any kind meant capture, imprisonment, and death.
Jinki walked out to the main deck, slowly approaching the rail to look out at the water. For twenty years he had sailed over these waters. First as a young boy and now as a captain. A bounty hunter. At the young age of twenty-nine he was the farthest-travelled captain of the king’s fleet. His ship was always ready to sail, ready for another adventure in unchartered waters. Court cartographers hailed him. Ministers and scholars applauded him. The people spoke his name in general awe. He’d won several accolades for his voyages, and bags of gold awaited him even now upon his return to the prince’s palace.
But over the years he had watched this sea slowly die. Long before his father, a nobleman at the kin’s court, had been ordered to induct his only son into the fleet, Jinki had been told stories, shown books and illustrations about the vastness and beauty of the ocean. But now, tonight in particular, the ocean looked marred with death and decay. It was a beast well into its final days.
Off the side of the ship, around the entire vessel, he saw a large cluster of jelly fish, glowing with their translucent bodies. As a boy he’d enjoyed looking at the sight of them, lighting an iridescent path into the deep. Tonight though, they seemed to have congregated around his ship for a reason. They swayed with its swaying and sailed with its passage. They followed it like a rain cloud following the sun through the skies. Jinki frowned at the lights. He felt surrounded.
The song continued. Its notes were strange. It was nothing like the music of the king’s court, or anything alluding to the gisaeng girls who sang and entertained the ministers at their meals. This song was more… celestial. But it seemed to float up like steam, rise up into the air from the sea itself. It was like all the creatures in the sea, the waves, the very water was singing. Jinki’s hand on the wooden railing felt a profound vibration against it.
Perhaps his ship was singing, too.
------
Everything cried. The room holding their prisoner cried. The decks being fed with spray and salt cried. The captain’s medals and trinkets cried. The crew’s weathered fingers cried. The sky in the south and the east cried in unison. Seagulls and sharks and whales and even plankton cried. Had Jinki been soft enough to their presence, he would’ve cried too.
The fish-man was dying.
It did not matter in the great scheme of things. The ship had been at sea for far too long. Rations were running low and fights were breaking out more often in the nights. The sea had swallowed a few bodies already. Another week would send them reeling into the mouth of doom. Another week of sailing would not end as a good week.
But the crying and the wailing was of no consequence at all. Jinki’s mind was fixed on the whistling pines of his hometown. The shadowy oaks and silvery zelkovas. His thoughts wandered on the path to his return and from where his mind’s eye could see, nothing obstructed that path. He was sure of his own safe return, at least. He couldn’t care less what happened to this filthy band of pirates under his command. Did that make him a bad captain? Perhaps. Did it make him a great sailor? Definitely.
But it was possible to lose one’s head if the prince’s displeasure fell upon them. And knowing that madman’s usual disposition from his days at the royal court, Jinki knew he could pay a heavy price if his bounty was lost. And when it came to survival, the captain gave no quarter.
The three men on duty this morning, stood before him looking utterly baffled. The fourth hid behind them, an empty jar in his hands. “He won’ cry no more, cap’n,” they explained to him, holding the trident like it was a walking stick. “He won’ make no sounds neither.”
The pearls were necessary. They were important because without them, there was no proof of the fish-man power. They’d captured many other creatures on this voyage but without the fish-man, the changeable prince would not entertain anything else Jinki gave him. A dead fish-man was worth nothing and no one’s time. It could mean the end of his travels, and possibly his life.
“Feed the thing,” he said in displeasure. “Enough to keep him awake. And change his water, it stinks. I cannot bear it.”
The men gave him odd looks when he realised he’d referred to the prisoner as him in their presence. He’d called the fish-man a person. He dug his teeth into his tongue as a hidden act of self-flagellation. He needed to watch what he said in front of the crew or they could report him as being mad.
------
The bowl was a tiny distance to go around; a perfect oval. Jinki was confident enough in his strides that he could cover the entire perimeter in one breath. If he rethought on that point for a moment though, it had less to do with confidence and more with efficiency. The water had to be cut through. Precisely and cleanly. There was no trace of opulence in actions. His movements had to be simple, needing the least amount of energy so he wouldn’t tire easily and his breathing would remain level.
There would be nothing left behind for another to find. Like the oars of his ship, his hands and feet needed to maintain the speed so there was no disturbance in the pattern. The target needed to be met. All targets needed to be met.
On the other side of the bowl, constantly on a point opposite to Jinki, the fish-man was taking his own time. He was floating and weaving through the depths without a care for targets or speeds. He stopped here and dallied there, keeping no regularity in his time and yet. And yet so gracefully doing just what he was supposed to do. Whenever Jinki distractedly looked over to the other side he would find nothing but rhythmic motion. He would find dance. He would find effortless precision, like someone displaying their second nature. Though savage and unrefined in ways a human may be unfamiliar with, the fish-man swam with elegance. Every circumambulation was a sight to behold with the glinting of his blue-green scales and rippling of his powerful muscles.
And it took no time for Jinki's enthralled mind to come to the conclusion that he was not swimming to meet a target at all. At first he swam like so to keep the balance; to keep the fish-man from reaching him. But now he swam so his sight would be rewarded by a flash of green and a slip of grace. His eyes were constantly wavering from what was before them to what was beside them because. Because now he was pursuing the fish-man. He was being teased into a chase. He was forever swimming to catch up with the other being in their little bowl. And if Jinki continued to swim at his steady pace he would never catch up.
When the water shook and a set of harpoons sliced through the surface, aimed randomly by an unskilled hand, his heart felt a tremor. He broke his pace to a halt and pressed up against the edge of the bowl. This would only lengthen the delay in his meeting the set target. One metal arrow missed his limbs by a mere breadth of hair. The trailing rope rubbed against his cheek when he shook in surprise. He felt afraid. And his fear gave birth to his rage, his violent and burning rage.
He weaved through the regular path once again, filled with anger for his attacker but not blinded by it. He dodged the repeated attacks expertly. He continued to swim because that was his first instinct--to reach the other if he could.
When he finally reached the other end of the bowl, he froze because there was the fish-man. There he was right before him. There he was, within an arm’s reach of Jinki. All he hand to do was stretch out.
A harpoon beat him to it and shot the fish-man through. It cleaved between his ribs in one prompt thrust. The fish-man’s mouth let out a million bubbles of pain, some hitting Jinki’s own chest like a harpoon of muted sound. The other slowly sunk towards the dark bottom of the bowl, leading a trail of black ink that blotted deeper and deeper around his body. He descended like a lazy comet. Like a drooping star that was now too tired of remaining up in the sky and had to fall.
Jinki wished to approach and help the other. To save it. Save him, his head reminded even in that situation. He wished to finally touch that burnished olive skin, to finally be able to run his fingers over it with tenderness. To comfort the other and tell him every thought that crossed his mind when they were together. He wished it and swam down to follow the dying fish-man. Dark blood billowed up to meet his face, choking him. He hesitated, stopped moving for a moment to reconsider.
As another harpoon went through his own back he knew the dream was trying to wake him up by force.
He did not jolt up from his bedding like he usually did after such fevered night terrors. His eyes opened calmly enough that the colours of the world slowly, carefully crept over his vision. His blanket rustled against his inner clothes and created an odd static that crackled and stung his skin. A wetness leaked and streamed from the corner of his eyes, into his ears. He was not sure if they were from sadness or sleep, but the streamed endlessly and wiping them away was a cumbersome thing to do regardless. He wished they could dry themselves but the humidity of the sea kept that from happening.
Day broke on their part of the ocean. There were sounds of movement on the decks outside. Jinki turned in his drowsy state, being uncharacteristically lazy. The shaman's words of foreboding echoed in his head. A curse would befall him. A curse would befall this whole ship because they'd dared harm the sanctity of the ocean. They'd dared harm its king. He suddenly felt ill. Sweat broke on his forehead. The air began to freeze around him. He burrowed into his blanket and remained there even when one of the crew knocked on his door.
Later that day, but early enough that only the cleaning boys were at work, Captain Jinki ordered some of his more obedient subordinates to quietly transport the fish-man into a better tank. "There is a glass box in my quarters for the strange crabs we caught in the South China Sea. Put him in there with them. I charge you to clean the water in the tank daily. No harm or sickness should befall the bounty until it is delivered to the prince."
The boys quietly bowed to him and set out to do as they were told.
------
Jinki looked into the fish-man’s eyes and for the first time he found life behind their shimmering green irises.
Those eyes held immense meaning in them. They carried the story of another world, another place. A faraway place. They spoke to Jinki without the use of words, without the utterance of sound. Those eyes had tested time, tested love, tested everything they’d been set on over and under the surface of the seas. They had witnessed shadows of distant stars and colours of silent songs. They’d broken through walls and spoken with swords, stubborn in their pulsating flesh and icy in their unwavering stare. Those eyes had cut through waves and cracked open mountains.
Jinki placed a hand against the glass and noticed the other do the same with his webbed digits.
The fish-man had been expected to regain a semblance of his feisty self from earlier, but he remained unmoved in the glass tank. Sometimes Jinki would walk in for a quick study of his map, and he’d find the other playing with the other creatures like they were his companions. Other times he would close his eyes and meditate in a corner of the tank, his powerful tail coiled like a seat.
His health was slowly returning to its livelier state. His cuts and wounds had disappeared like they’d never existed in the first place. He moved with apparent weakness but he moved now nonetheless. Whenever the captain entered his room, the other would regard him with a stare. A simple, wordless, emotionless stare.
Although his behaviour was nothing like his previous fiery self, his eyes were still ablaze with green infernos. Those eyes were birds of prey; they were beasts of burden. They smote with their claws. They trampled over Jinki with heavy hooves. Those emerald green eyes flapped their wings in a hard and bloody fight. They drove their horns into defenceless flesh.
The captain looked away first, but a gaze continued to burn into his cheek through the glass of the fish container. He may have shown the fish-man a moment of mercy, but he would get no gratitude for selling another sentient being like livestock. This was no better than slavery.
“Kibum,” Jinki said the name out loud. “That is a fitting name for you-Kibum.” He turned back to the creature and tilted his head in wonder. “Should I let you go?”
The fish-man showed no reaction because he clearly understood and heard nothing. But his eyes suddenly changed colour. Their stark green lightened to a much softer jade. They now spoke a language that needed no translations. They spoke with blade-like pronunciations. They uttered clauses that produced roars in Jinki’s ribcage. They mumbled like lips moving over the shell of an ear. They whispered warm secrets and warmer looks. They were a slip of tongue to wet the mouth between long sentences. They were the hot coals in a hearth. They were the silk of a bride’s hanbok.
Jinki’s cheeks suddenly crackled as if he were flustered. But then he picked up his smile again and dropped his palm from the glass. “If I let you live, I will live too. I let you die, I will also die. But if I let you go…” he paused, shaking his head. “I will have to let go of myself. I am just as much a prisoner as you,” he faced the truth, walking away from the tank.
------
The first few disappearances were obvious. At least six of the men had fled the ship overnight on rowboats. Their fate was simple to venture a guess at-death from either cold or the tide. Men like them often abandoned ship before the journey was complete because they were criminals. They didn’t wish to be taken in by the royal guards for questioning and detention.
But the disappearances after that night were nothing short of strange.
“Cap’n! C-cap’n!” a man flung himself onto the still-frosty deck early one day, and slipped. A laugh came from the crow’s nest but was silenced when Jinki threw a glare up in its direction. “Cap’n! I must tell you something! Please I must-” he slipped again as he tried to hang onto Jinki’s clothes for support. His eyes were wild like those of a madman. His breath carried the smell of alcohol.
Jinki leaned away from him in distaste. “What is it, fool?”
“Cap’n! Doksu... Doksu, from the other bunk. He-he’s,” the man looked from side to side before he craned in and spelled out a wine-tinged “he’s gone!”
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Jinki angrily questioned.
“Please, please, cap’n, please listen to me…” the mangy man appealed. “We was talking last night, and he said he was going to steal a jar of pearls from the hold so he could sell it for money. Was going on and on about how it could buy him a big house in the country and keep his family fed for generations. I fell asleep listening to his noisy talk. But cap’n!” The man gulped before he went on. “Cap’n, when I woke up some time later he be gone. Gone! Vanished in the air like he was never even born!”
“What is this rubbish?” Jinki dismissed.
“It’s not rubbish, cap’n! It really happened! Why would I lie to you?!”
“Enough!” the captain roared. “One more senseless word out of you and I’ll cut your tongue out!” he hissed.
Soon, a pattering of feet followed his threat and several haggard-looking men appeared from the crew’s living quarters below deck. They all seemed as shaken as the first man and they all started to speak at the same moment. Cap’n this ship is cursed, Cap’n strange singing was coming from the water last night, Cap’n some of our mates are missing, Cap’n please save us, we are going to die. A thousand other anxious shouts and complaints came to him in one lump of confused sound. He grit his jaw, trying to look angry when he felt as anxious as them.
He raised a hand to silence them. They immediately obeyed. “I will take your queries one-by-one. Come to my office.” He turned to speak louder. “The rest of you! Back to work! We are only a few days away from home and I want no more slack on this ship! If I see any of you wasting their time chatting about what happened this morning, my sword will make you disappear too. Remember that!”
Within the next hour or so Jinki had heard at least seventy variations of the same story. The crew had gone to sleep last night like every night, and when dawn came many of them were gone. He marched out to where the rowing boats were stacked but none of them were missing. No idiot, no matter how big a crime he’d committed, would attempt swimming to land in this weather. They would die within minutes.
Had these missing crew members been killed and thrown off the side? Had they been driven insane and jumped off voluntarily? The number of disappearances was too big for it to be a coincidence. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone was murdering boys in the crew. Whether to ensure a bigger reward for themselves or something else, he did not know. But he was certain these men hadn’t simply gone extinct. That was an absurd thought to entertain.
When two new boys entered his room that night to change the water in the glass tank, he noticed how their hands shook. Like they were afraid of the fish-man. “What is the matter?” he asked them, amused from their actions.
They nervously bowed and looked to each other, but lowered their eyes and remained silent.
“You may speak your mind. I will not punish you,” he assured them.
“Daewe-nim,” one of them began, face twisting with emotion as he spoke. “We are all going to die.”
“What?”
“Please, sir, hear us out,” the other boy pacified. He looked at the fish-man meditating in his tank. “We have committed a grave crime against the sea, sir. We-” he hesitated. “We have taken something valuable from it, and now it is trying to kill us.”
“I will not condone such superstitions on my-”
“If it were a superstition, we would be praying to our gods right now, Daewe-nim!” the boys resisted. “We are seeing it plainly as day. Ever since the merman has been on this ship we have hit calamity after calamity! We are running out of supplies, our gunpowder was soaked through in one of the storms, there were several days since we passed Nusantara when the sea became calm as a lake and we couldn’t move without oars!” the agitated boy counted on his fingers. “We’ve lost one of our most valuable maps, the first mate has stopped talking, some men have died of strange diseases, and now the rest a disappearing!” He flung his arms around. “Sir, can’t you see? We have been cursed by the sea gods.”
The captain drew himself up to his full height. “So what. Hmm?” he questioned. “What do suggest we should do? Throw him back in the water?” he jerked his chin in the direction of the fish-man. “You want me to let him go? Will that help us? Is that what you’re here to say to me, you imbecile?!” his voice rose to a yell. “I know we’re going to die! I know we won’t make it back to land because of what we did to him!” he pointed his finger at the other occupant of the room, stalking towards him and banging his fist on the glass tank. It rattled, rippling its contents. The fish-man calmly looked at him.
“Am I stupid?” Jinki asked of him. “What do you think? That I don’t understand you?! That I can’t tell what you’ve been saying to me all this while?! I understand!” he screamed. “I fully understand! It took me nothing more than one look in your eyes to know what you were going to do to us! I know!”
“Then why won’t you throw him over, sir?” one of the boys put a calming hand on his shoulder and demanded in a meek, sorrowful voice.
Captain Jinki laughed. It was a crazy laugh. “Because it cannot be undone. Am I right, Kibum?”
The fish-man smiled for the first time since his arrival. And in his mouth were rows of sharp, bloodied teeth.
Author: quagmireisadora
Pairing: Jinki / Kibum
Genre: merman au
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: midly gory descriptions
Word Count: ~6888
A/N: Based on the Greek myth of Nassos
"We caught one!"
The compass rose fell from Jinki's grasp when he ran out of the wheelhouse and in the direction of the shout. As he clambered over steps and slipped over floor in his hurry, the voices of his crew grew louder and more rowdy on the starboard gangway. For every step he inwardly cringed before preparing himself to their crass and uncultured behavior, still unused to boorish growls and uncouth language.
When ship opened to sky, his first mate welcomed him onto the rolling and heaving capstan with a wide rotten-toothed grin.
Jinki immediately noticed how the weapons were lined up and ready to use when the need arose, but none of them were manned. Because every hand on deck was engaged in what looked like a fierce tug of war, pulling on the same thickness of rope, wrenching it to their chests like their lives depended on its extrication from the seas.
"What is it?" the captain seemed to ask of the wind that whipped his hair about, carrying flecks of salt into his eyes. "What have we caught?"
"A male, cap'n," his first mate answered, his gruff voice lined with unbridled excitement, his fingers running over a disheveled white beard. "The creature be mighty strong, sir. First a merry chase and then a gory fight. Enough for twenty of our own lads, and I'll bet all me gold he's important to that lot." The man jerked his chin in the direction of the ship’s aft, following the action with a hearty chuckle.
Jinki briskly walked to the wooden railing along the quarterdeck and craned his neck, trying to see what the other meant. The ship rocked wildly before he heard the sound of at least a thousand fists thumping against her keel, possibly rendering irreparable damage to the vessel.
"He'll fetch a treasure, sir, he will." The first mate hobbled over, continuing his speech regardless of his captain's distress. His weathered hand gestured in the direction of the struggle and a faraway look of enchantment stole his attention to a cloudless sky. "Aye. When that reward be ours, we'd live like kings till the end of days..."
A rhythmic chanting started up among the tugging crew of the ship, and the first mate shouted premature triumph, raising his fist and shaking it encouragingly. Then he limped closer to his captain and resumed his report. "Harpoon went straight through his gut, sir! Then there was… there was ink! Everywhere!" he explained with exaggerated expressions and movements. "Boys shot 'im out without aiming and he caught on like the stinking fish he is. It was glorious, sir! Glorious!" the old man laughed at his own joke.
Jinki frowned at the account, but listened to the silly ramblings with responding silence. He calmly turned back to peering over the railing, into the frothy waves where green scales glimmered on and off through a massive blot of dark blue, glinting a hundred colors against sunlight as it danced over their heads. “I thought I said I don’t want them hurt…” he muttered after a while, cutting through his first mate’s blather, knuckles whitening out of frustration.
He glared at his silenced subordinate. “The prize is for a live one. What will I do with a gutted fish-man on my hands?”
All smiles dropped at the sternness of tone-the captain’s temper was not one to be trifled with as the first mate had learnt over his stay on board; little scraps of gossip had been floating around for weeks now. Crewmen were said to have gone missing overnight, bodies were known to wash ashore on the evening tide, cut right in two with what looked like a military man’s sword. A military man like Captain Jinki.
At less than half his age and without any visible weapons on his waist, the old first mate could tell with just one glance: the captain was a dangerous man.
And so he backed away like an obedient subordinate, teeth visibly chattering. "Apologies, cap’n. But our net was cut straight through. We had no choice but to attack him with our... that is... We've already been at sea for weeks, sir, and the prince had asked us to return within the moon... He's a real fierce catch, sir. We had no choice..." the explanation trailed off weakly.
Jinki shook his head, expression starched by disdain. “Reel him in," he allowed. "Then I will deal with yo-”
His threat was speared through by a scream, a shrill sound halfway between human and harpy. All eyes shot to the starboard sky, where what they guessed was their captive fish-man flew into view. The creature wildly dangled upside-down off the end of a rope. A long blade embedded into his side dripped dark fluid off of its freed tip. The creature screamed and waved his trident around, trying to snip himself free.
"Pull him over!" Jinki yelled over the sudden din, palms covering his ears to block out the deafening inhuman shriek. "Pull, you unwashed miscreants, pull!”
A loud groan resounded from all the men, the rope strained in the scuffle, the ship rocked wildly by the force of a large multitude of fish-people. Jinki’s sight whipped over the ship’s side to glower at them once more. Apparently they hoped to sink the humans' ship and free their injured brother. The steam of revenge bubbled up to the surface, all human and non-human faces contorted with effort.
A loud thud later the crew began to cheer and whistle, dancing and stomping their feet like the contemptible troublemakers they were. But Jinki paid them no heed for he had other things to keep his gaze occupied.
Body crackling like a dying fish, the captive fish-man sloppily landed onto their deck, skidding around and oozing cobalt blue onto the wooden boards.
Jinki rushed to its side immediately, his fingers inadequately trying to cover the gaping wound on the creature’s abdomen. A careful measurement of strength, a swift flick of his wrist, a quick tug against resisting muscle… and the harpoon was pulled out, spraying an arc of deep blue blood and bits of muscle with its release from the fish-man’s body.
The creature looked at him, trembling and shuddering as if slithering down the steps of death. Its mouth opened and closed in shocked gasps, its tail shivered as if from the cold breeze. Tears pooled from the corners of its eyes, and as they dripped off its temples, they became oddly shaped half-formed pearls.
The captain frowned in concern. “Is there a way to help you heal?” he asked of the fish-man, who only coughed tarry liquid in response, splattering Jinki’s mouth and cheeks. “Do you understand our language?” he tried once more, and was met with wordless fright once more. The fish-man shuddered on Jinki’s lap. He jolted in repeated convulsions.
"Then you’re useless," it was concluded. The captain made to stand up.
But a tight grasp round his wrist pulled him still, a sharp tug making him stumble and fall back to the deck. Immediately and allowing no chance to fight back, he was rolled over. A heavy weight pinned him down and clasped his neck, trying to choke him. The screaming returned, much louder and closer than before, silhouetted against the glaring sun. The screaming returned but sounded nothing like its scared predecessor. This scream was filled with unrestrained fury.
Emerald green and royal blue drenched Jinki's sight.
------
Smears of vomit and a trail of inky blood led to their prisoner where he lay unconscious in a pool of his own filth.
The tub was nailed to floorboards in a dingy room, south of the ship in the holds. Two weeks ago the water in it was as clean as it could be in the middle of the ocean. But it hadn’t been changed since. Two weeks ago a struggling prisoner had been thrown into its sloshing mass and tied down with a heavy ball and chain round each of his wrists. And now the being lay vulnerably caught, comatose and pitiful.
A course was set for home. The prince would be delighted with this gift.
Meanwhile, a duty chart was pinned on the door of the room. Every day, three of the men from the crew would take turns to stab the fish-man. This would go on for several hours. They were supplied with harpoons and daggers for their task, but someone from the company jokingly suggested they use the fish-man’s trident on himself. And thus a cruel joke became a cruel reality.
The tears their violence produced were collected in a jar by a fourth man. They were never whole pearls as they fell from the creature’s eyes, but in the jar they would harden enough to resemble beautiful prismatic drops of treasure. These masses of pearl were to be presented to the prince as proof and gift upon the ship’s arrival at Goryeo.
Captain Jinki came in occasionally, only to ensure the fish-man was alive and that his idiot crew wasn’t being too rough. He would go in for no more than a few trickles of sand and then leave promptly. He may have been a man of strict discipline and he may have been harsh with some of the young inexperienced boys on his ship. But he wasn’t one to condone torture.
“Ease up on him for a bit,” he ordered on one such visit.
As he made to turn around and walk away that day, the fish-man muttered something incoherent in his direction. Jinki paused and looked at the being, frowning in concentration to make out the words.
The speech set unease in his stomach. He studied the creature’s constant mumbling for days on end, tried to understand its meaningless utterances for two long weeks. Coaxing it to speak clearly would’ve been foolish because the fish-man obviously talked in a cruder, more guttural language than that of the humans. Perhaps it cursed its captors, perhaps it wished for its own death- the captain tried hard to decipher the mystery of all those strange sounds.
And when he gave up, a shaman was brought before him in chains matching their captive.
“Cap’n,” one of the men dragged her in as the ship swayed wildly. She struggled to get out of the burly man’s hold. It was a little comical for a weakling of her size and apparent age to fight back like that. “Hold still, woman!” she was given a violent jerk. “Found her rowing off like something crazy. Near of one of ‘em enchanted islands. Just past Nusantara,” the man recited. “Picked ‘er up for questioning. The scurvied hag be following us, cap’n.”
Jinki studied the woman for a moment and then barked a curt, “Leave us.” She was dropped onto a stool even as she squirmed. She didn’t remain sitting there very long and slipped off her perch, scurrying to a corner. Her glance remained unmoving from the fish-man in the grimy water, her face wincing every time the creature groaned.
“Do you speak their tongue?” the captain asked of the frail old lady. He would’ve liked to interrogate her himself but there were more pressing matters to be dealt with.
She cowered away from him, trying to squeeze her hunched body in a corner of the room. Her wrinkly arms were covered in peculiar shapes of green ink, her windswept face had no left eye, and when she moved Jinki suspected one of her limbs to be a wooden stump. Her eyes leaked wetness to her scarred cheeks, her broken lips twisted and trembled with panic; senseless mumblings fell from her as she scuttled about and clanked her chains.
“Do not be afraid,” the captain assured her, motioning for her to come closer. “The thing is restrained. It will not harm you.”
“Not scared of fish-man!!” she screeched. “Fish-man strong, but wise. Not scared of fish-man!” Her head shivered as she talked, her words coloured with an odd lilt. The shaman spoke as if in a dialect. Her accent was strange, it pulled on the wrong sounds and stressed around unusual places in her sentences. “S-scared of… scared of two-legs!” she pointed a crooked finger at the captain’s appendages and whimpered when he scowled.
“Watch your mouth, impertinent wench,” Jinki seethed. “I could have you thrown into the sea for the sharks to eat.”
She held her hands up between them as if to clarify. “Fish-man is… fish-man is king of fish-men. See, see, here--” she hobbled over to the creature and gestured to his forehead. An intricate design of what looked like a crown hid below creased skin and dried ink.
Jinki looked at the pattern in wonder. It felt strange to think of the creature as a person with a designation. As a sentient being with a life and memories. It felt odd in his mouth to refer to the thing as him. “So what of it?” he challenged the old woman.
The shaman opened and shut her mouth a few times. “T-two-legs… two-legs catch king of fish-men. Strong brave king. King who hold all seas on his back. Two-legs catch king of ocean. Two-legs is king of two-legs? King of land?”
“No,” Jinki said. “But I am a soldier of the king of land. And I am bringing him this puny thing as a gift,” he bragged as he motioned to the defenceless, unconscious fish-man. “This is our strength. This is our bravery. The king of the ocean means nothing to us.”
With every one of his utterances the shaman let out a horrified sound, covering her toothless mouth with an aged hand.
The reaction should’ve pleased Jinki but it somehow made him feel shameful. Of himself and of everything he was doing on this ship. Regardless, he sorted his feelings aside and smirked, pulling another stool to himself and sitting down on it. “So,” he began in a leisurely way. “What else can you tell me about this wretched thing?”
------
When it began to snow one morning, they had reason to celebrate. It meant they were nearing Goryeo and its cold mountains. Land ho was hanging off of everyone’s excited lips. Even the boatswain was agreeable enough that Jinki didn’t need to threaten him up the masts. The vile man broke into song and climbed up there by himself, chipping ice and hulking the shards off the side of the ship.
The captain adjusted his heavy coat before entering the hold. He found the shaman crouched over her own weak body, lying close to the fish-man as if protecting it. The very idea was absurd. Jinki would’ve kicked her awake just to see her amusing scramble, but he let her stay there and took a seat near them.
As he opened his mouth to speak, a wall of stench hit him from the fish-man’s direction. He coughed, choked, covered his mouth with a kerchief, and grimaced in the direction of the grimy pool the prisoner lay in. Its chest moved fast, its breath sounded shallow like that of a man who’d been cut with a sword. Its eyes were rolled up under their lids. Its previously shimmering skin flaked and fell off. Its webbed digits hung lifelessly in their shackles.
“Mudang,” he woke the old woman up in a hurry. He needn’t stay in this mist of stink for too long or it would get on his clothes. “Mudang!” he shook her insistently by the shoulder. She jumped in a rush, then settled when she saw who it was. Her good eye dropped as low as the empty socket. She bowed to the captain in her seated position, holding her hands to him as if in prayer but the action lacked its previous fervour. It seemed she had already resigned herself to the fact that he would kill her as soon as she became useless.
But the shaman had been of much help. She told Jinki that his prisoner could not attack them even if it tried with all its might.
“Fish-man need water to live. No water, no strength. Two-legs break fish-man.” He would’ve beamed with pride at that statement--he had broken someone’s will to fight. He had dominated them. He held victory over their very life. Jinki would’ve flashed a smug grin at that had he not seen how sallow-faced the hostage looked. They had been torturing it for its tears but it suddenly occurred to the captain that they hadn’t thought to feed it. Not once in the several weeks since its capture. He stared long at the being that seemed to be at the gates of hell.
“Fish-man called Dariyai Mard,” the shaman continued to explain the language of the fish-folk. “Shasak. Masey Netey. Samrakshak.” Jinki tried to pay attention but his mind wavered back to his prisoner and the condition it was in. He was in. “Ruler and protector from two-legs. Fish-man save dying whale and whale baby. Made king because fish-man strong but choose to be gentle.”
It was a smirk-worthy comment. A man who never used his strength was nothing more than a weakling. A man who had the power to crush those lesser than him but chose to live amongst them instead, was a mere oaf. There was no glory in such a timid demeanour. Several slaves from the Mongol plains were of a similar disposition. The king of Goryeo used them to heft weights and stones on their backs. He considered them no better than draught animals.
Jinki scowled behind the cloth over his nose. Because despite all these pointedly derogatory thoughts, the irises in that head had been far from those of a weakling. That emerald glance had pierced through him the first time it’d set itself on him and he’d been left charred.
He’d felt like a man being crushed. Clearly the fish-man was not a weakling. Not in the least.
“Fishing, looting, fighting, killing, throwing trash into sea--fish-men protect from everything. Fish-men not harm anybody. Fish-men stay in kingdom with fish-women. Live quiet life in quiet water. Only two-legs take what is not for two-legs to take. Why king of two-legs take king of fish-men?” the shaman voiced wearily.
Captain Jinki took a choked breath. “Because the weak cannot survive against the strong. Such is the way of our land,” he justified.
The shaman shook her head sadly. “But fish-man not from land. Fish-man from water...”
Many old legends of the sea made rounds in his village, and he’d heard them recited by old lips when he was a child. He’d erased the words from his memory a long time ago but that night, when the song-the dirge-echoed through the hull of his ship, years of neglect were swept off the stories and Jinki woke from his slumber. He shrugged on a jeonbok over his underclothes and walked out from his room into the cold night air.
The oceans were deep around the peninsula of Goryeo. There were beings that lurked in the lonely depths of the Sea of Yamato; beings that humans could never comprehend. Truthfully, humans never tried to comprehend the difference between them. It was better that way. It was better to think of human life as one that is worth more than any other life. Because such was the way of the land. Deviations from this thought were considered perfidious to the throne, and disloyalty of any kind meant capture, imprisonment, and death.
Jinki walked out to the main deck, slowly approaching the rail to look out at the water. For twenty years he had sailed over these waters. First as a young boy and now as a captain. A bounty hunter. At the young age of twenty-nine he was the farthest-travelled captain of the king’s fleet. His ship was always ready to sail, ready for another adventure in unchartered waters. Court cartographers hailed him. Ministers and scholars applauded him. The people spoke his name in general awe. He’d won several accolades for his voyages, and bags of gold awaited him even now upon his return to the prince’s palace.
But over the years he had watched this sea slowly die. Long before his father, a nobleman at the kin’s court, had been ordered to induct his only son into the fleet, Jinki had been told stories, shown books and illustrations about the vastness and beauty of the ocean. But now, tonight in particular, the ocean looked marred with death and decay. It was a beast well into its final days.
Off the side of the ship, around the entire vessel, he saw a large cluster of jelly fish, glowing with their translucent bodies. As a boy he’d enjoyed looking at the sight of them, lighting an iridescent path into the deep. Tonight though, they seemed to have congregated around his ship for a reason. They swayed with its swaying and sailed with its passage. They followed it like a rain cloud following the sun through the skies. Jinki frowned at the lights. He felt surrounded.
The song continued. Its notes were strange. It was nothing like the music of the king’s court, or anything alluding to the gisaeng girls who sang and entertained the ministers at their meals. This song was more… celestial. But it seemed to float up like steam, rise up into the air from the sea itself. It was like all the creatures in the sea, the waves, the very water was singing. Jinki’s hand on the wooden railing felt a profound vibration against it.
Perhaps his ship was singing, too.
------
Everything cried. The room holding their prisoner cried. The decks being fed with spray and salt cried. The captain’s medals and trinkets cried. The crew’s weathered fingers cried. The sky in the south and the east cried in unison. Seagulls and sharks and whales and even plankton cried. Had Jinki been soft enough to their presence, he would’ve cried too.
The fish-man was dying.
It did not matter in the great scheme of things. The ship had been at sea for far too long. Rations were running low and fights were breaking out more often in the nights. The sea had swallowed a few bodies already. Another week would send them reeling into the mouth of doom. Another week of sailing would not end as a good week.
But the crying and the wailing was of no consequence at all. Jinki’s mind was fixed on the whistling pines of his hometown. The shadowy oaks and silvery zelkovas. His thoughts wandered on the path to his return and from where his mind’s eye could see, nothing obstructed that path. He was sure of his own safe return, at least. He couldn’t care less what happened to this filthy band of pirates under his command. Did that make him a bad captain? Perhaps. Did it make him a great sailor? Definitely.
But it was possible to lose one’s head if the prince’s displeasure fell upon them. And knowing that madman’s usual disposition from his days at the royal court, Jinki knew he could pay a heavy price if his bounty was lost. And when it came to survival, the captain gave no quarter.
The three men on duty this morning, stood before him looking utterly baffled. The fourth hid behind them, an empty jar in his hands. “He won’ cry no more, cap’n,” they explained to him, holding the trident like it was a walking stick. “He won’ make no sounds neither.”
The pearls were necessary. They were important because without them, there was no proof of the fish-man power. They’d captured many other creatures on this voyage but without the fish-man, the changeable prince would not entertain anything else Jinki gave him. A dead fish-man was worth nothing and no one’s time. It could mean the end of his travels, and possibly his life.
“Feed the thing,” he said in displeasure. “Enough to keep him awake. And change his water, it stinks. I cannot bear it.”
The men gave him odd looks when he realised he’d referred to the prisoner as him in their presence. He’d called the fish-man a person. He dug his teeth into his tongue as a hidden act of self-flagellation. He needed to watch what he said in front of the crew or they could report him as being mad.
------
The bowl was a tiny distance to go around; a perfect oval. Jinki was confident enough in his strides that he could cover the entire perimeter in one breath. If he rethought on that point for a moment though, it had less to do with confidence and more with efficiency. The water had to be cut through. Precisely and cleanly. There was no trace of opulence in actions. His movements had to be simple, needing the least amount of energy so he wouldn’t tire easily and his breathing would remain level.
There would be nothing left behind for another to find. Like the oars of his ship, his hands and feet needed to maintain the speed so there was no disturbance in the pattern. The target needed to be met. All targets needed to be met.
On the other side of the bowl, constantly on a point opposite to Jinki, the fish-man was taking his own time. He was floating and weaving through the depths without a care for targets or speeds. He stopped here and dallied there, keeping no regularity in his time and yet. And yet so gracefully doing just what he was supposed to do. Whenever Jinki distractedly looked over to the other side he would find nothing but rhythmic motion. He would find dance. He would find effortless precision, like someone displaying their second nature. Though savage and unrefined in ways a human may be unfamiliar with, the fish-man swam with elegance. Every circumambulation was a sight to behold with the glinting of his blue-green scales and rippling of his powerful muscles.
And it took no time for Jinki's enthralled mind to come to the conclusion that he was not swimming to meet a target at all. At first he swam like so to keep the balance; to keep the fish-man from reaching him. But now he swam so his sight would be rewarded by a flash of green and a slip of grace. His eyes were constantly wavering from what was before them to what was beside them because. Because now he was pursuing the fish-man. He was being teased into a chase. He was forever swimming to catch up with the other being in their little bowl. And if Jinki continued to swim at his steady pace he would never catch up.
When the water shook and a set of harpoons sliced through the surface, aimed randomly by an unskilled hand, his heart felt a tremor. He broke his pace to a halt and pressed up against the edge of the bowl. This would only lengthen the delay in his meeting the set target. One metal arrow missed his limbs by a mere breadth of hair. The trailing rope rubbed against his cheek when he shook in surprise. He felt afraid. And his fear gave birth to his rage, his violent and burning rage.
He weaved through the regular path once again, filled with anger for his attacker but not blinded by it. He dodged the repeated attacks expertly. He continued to swim because that was his first instinct--to reach the other if he could.
When he finally reached the other end of the bowl, he froze because there was the fish-man. There he was right before him. There he was, within an arm’s reach of Jinki. All he hand to do was stretch out.
A harpoon beat him to it and shot the fish-man through. It cleaved between his ribs in one prompt thrust. The fish-man’s mouth let out a million bubbles of pain, some hitting Jinki’s own chest like a harpoon of muted sound. The other slowly sunk towards the dark bottom of the bowl, leading a trail of black ink that blotted deeper and deeper around his body. He descended like a lazy comet. Like a drooping star that was now too tired of remaining up in the sky and had to fall.
Jinki wished to approach and help the other. To save it. Save him, his head reminded even in that situation. He wished to finally touch that burnished olive skin, to finally be able to run his fingers over it with tenderness. To comfort the other and tell him every thought that crossed his mind when they were together. He wished it and swam down to follow the dying fish-man. Dark blood billowed up to meet his face, choking him. He hesitated, stopped moving for a moment to reconsider.
As another harpoon went through his own back he knew the dream was trying to wake him up by force.
He did not jolt up from his bedding like he usually did after such fevered night terrors. His eyes opened calmly enough that the colours of the world slowly, carefully crept over his vision. His blanket rustled against his inner clothes and created an odd static that crackled and stung his skin. A wetness leaked and streamed from the corner of his eyes, into his ears. He was not sure if they were from sadness or sleep, but the streamed endlessly and wiping them away was a cumbersome thing to do regardless. He wished they could dry themselves but the humidity of the sea kept that from happening.
Day broke on their part of the ocean. There were sounds of movement on the decks outside. Jinki turned in his drowsy state, being uncharacteristically lazy. The shaman's words of foreboding echoed in his head. A curse would befall him. A curse would befall this whole ship because they'd dared harm the sanctity of the ocean. They'd dared harm its king. He suddenly felt ill. Sweat broke on his forehead. The air began to freeze around him. He burrowed into his blanket and remained there even when one of the crew knocked on his door.
Later that day, but early enough that only the cleaning boys were at work, Captain Jinki ordered some of his more obedient subordinates to quietly transport the fish-man into a better tank. "There is a glass box in my quarters for the strange crabs we caught in the South China Sea. Put him in there with them. I charge you to clean the water in the tank daily. No harm or sickness should befall the bounty until it is delivered to the prince."
The boys quietly bowed to him and set out to do as they were told.
------
Jinki looked into the fish-man’s eyes and for the first time he found life behind their shimmering green irises.
Those eyes held immense meaning in them. They carried the story of another world, another place. A faraway place. They spoke to Jinki without the use of words, without the utterance of sound. Those eyes had tested time, tested love, tested everything they’d been set on over and under the surface of the seas. They had witnessed shadows of distant stars and colours of silent songs. They’d broken through walls and spoken with swords, stubborn in their pulsating flesh and icy in their unwavering stare. Those eyes had cut through waves and cracked open mountains.
Jinki placed a hand against the glass and noticed the other do the same with his webbed digits.
The fish-man had been expected to regain a semblance of his feisty self from earlier, but he remained unmoved in the glass tank. Sometimes Jinki would walk in for a quick study of his map, and he’d find the other playing with the other creatures like they were his companions. Other times he would close his eyes and meditate in a corner of the tank, his powerful tail coiled like a seat.
His health was slowly returning to its livelier state. His cuts and wounds had disappeared like they’d never existed in the first place. He moved with apparent weakness but he moved now nonetheless. Whenever the captain entered his room, the other would regard him with a stare. A simple, wordless, emotionless stare.
Although his behaviour was nothing like his previous fiery self, his eyes were still ablaze with green infernos. Those eyes were birds of prey; they were beasts of burden. They smote with their claws. They trampled over Jinki with heavy hooves. Those emerald green eyes flapped their wings in a hard and bloody fight. They drove their horns into defenceless flesh.
The captain looked away first, but a gaze continued to burn into his cheek through the glass of the fish container. He may have shown the fish-man a moment of mercy, but he would get no gratitude for selling another sentient being like livestock. This was no better than slavery.
“Kibum,” Jinki said the name out loud. “That is a fitting name for you-Kibum.” He turned back to the creature and tilted his head in wonder. “Should I let you go?”
The fish-man showed no reaction because he clearly understood and heard nothing. But his eyes suddenly changed colour. Their stark green lightened to a much softer jade. They now spoke a language that needed no translations. They spoke with blade-like pronunciations. They uttered clauses that produced roars in Jinki’s ribcage. They mumbled like lips moving over the shell of an ear. They whispered warm secrets and warmer looks. They were a slip of tongue to wet the mouth between long sentences. They were the hot coals in a hearth. They were the silk of a bride’s hanbok.
Jinki’s cheeks suddenly crackled as if he were flustered. But then he picked up his smile again and dropped his palm from the glass. “If I let you live, I will live too. I let you die, I will also die. But if I let you go…” he paused, shaking his head. “I will have to let go of myself. I am just as much a prisoner as you,” he faced the truth, walking away from the tank.
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The first few disappearances were obvious. At least six of the men had fled the ship overnight on rowboats. Their fate was simple to venture a guess at-death from either cold or the tide. Men like them often abandoned ship before the journey was complete because they were criminals. They didn’t wish to be taken in by the royal guards for questioning and detention.
But the disappearances after that night were nothing short of strange.
“Cap’n! C-cap’n!” a man flung himself onto the still-frosty deck early one day, and slipped. A laugh came from the crow’s nest but was silenced when Jinki threw a glare up in its direction. “Cap’n! I must tell you something! Please I must-” he slipped again as he tried to hang onto Jinki’s clothes for support. His eyes were wild like those of a madman. His breath carried the smell of alcohol.
Jinki leaned away from him in distaste. “What is it, fool?”
“Cap’n! Doksu... Doksu, from the other bunk. He-he’s,” the man looked from side to side before he craned in and spelled out a wine-tinged “he’s gone!”
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Jinki angrily questioned.
“Please, please, cap’n, please listen to me…” the mangy man appealed. “We was talking last night, and he said he was going to steal a jar of pearls from the hold so he could sell it for money. Was going on and on about how it could buy him a big house in the country and keep his family fed for generations. I fell asleep listening to his noisy talk. But cap’n!” The man gulped before he went on. “Cap’n, when I woke up some time later he be gone. Gone! Vanished in the air like he was never even born!”
“What is this rubbish?” Jinki dismissed.
“It’s not rubbish, cap’n! It really happened! Why would I lie to you?!”
“Enough!” the captain roared. “One more senseless word out of you and I’ll cut your tongue out!” he hissed.
Soon, a pattering of feet followed his threat and several haggard-looking men appeared from the crew’s living quarters below deck. They all seemed as shaken as the first man and they all started to speak at the same moment. Cap’n this ship is cursed, Cap’n strange singing was coming from the water last night, Cap’n some of our mates are missing, Cap’n please save us, we are going to die. A thousand other anxious shouts and complaints came to him in one lump of confused sound. He grit his jaw, trying to look angry when he felt as anxious as them.
He raised a hand to silence them. They immediately obeyed. “I will take your queries one-by-one. Come to my office.” He turned to speak louder. “The rest of you! Back to work! We are only a few days away from home and I want no more slack on this ship! If I see any of you wasting their time chatting about what happened this morning, my sword will make you disappear too. Remember that!”
Within the next hour or so Jinki had heard at least seventy variations of the same story. The crew had gone to sleep last night like every night, and when dawn came many of them were gone. He marched out to where the rowing boats were stacked but none of them were missing. No idiot, no matter how big a crime he’d committed, would attempt swimming to land in this weather. They would die within minutes.
Had these missing crew members been killed and thrown off the side? Had they been driven insane and jumped off voluntarily? The number of disappearances was too big for it to be a coincidence. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone was murdering boys in the crew. Whether to ensure a bigger reward for themselves or something else, he did not know. But he was certain these men hadn’t simply gone extinct. That was an absurd thought to entertain.
When two new boys entered his room that night to change the water in the glass tank, he noticed how their hands shook. Like they were afraid of the fish-man. “What is the matter?” he asked them, amused from their actions.
They nervously bowed and looked to each other, but lowered their eyes and remained silent.
“You may speak your mind. I will not punish you,” he assured them.
“Daewe-nim,” one of them began, face twisting with emotion as he spoke. “We are all going to die.”
“What?”
“Please, sir, hear us out,” the other boy pacified. He looked at the fish-man meditating in his tank. “We have committed a grave crime against the sea, sir. We-” he hesitated. “We have taken something valuable from it, and now it is trying to kill us.”
“I will not condone such superstitions on my-”
“If it were a superstition, we would be praying to our gods right now, Daewe-nim!” the boys resisted. “We are seeing it plainly as day. Ever since the merman has been on this ship we have hit calamity after calamity! We are running out of supplies, our gunpowder was soaked through in one of the storms, there were several days since we passed Nusantara when the sea became calm as a lake and we couldn’t move without oars!” the agitated boy counted on his fingers. “We’ve lost one of our most valuable maps, the first mate has stopped talking, some men have died of strange diseases, and now the rest a disappearing!” He flung his arms around. “Sir, can’t you see? We have been cursed by the sea gods.”
The captain drew himself up to his full height. “So what. Hmm?” he questioned. “What do suggest we should do? Throw him back in the water?” he jerked his chin in the direction of the fish-man. “You want me to let him go? Will that help us? Is that what you’re here to say to me, you imbecile?!” his voice rose to a yell. “I know we’re going to die! I know we won’t make it back to land because of what we did to him!” he pointed his finger at the other occupant of the room, stalking towards him and banging his fist on the glass tank. It rattled, rippling its contents. The fish-man calmly looked at him.
“Am I stupid?” Jinki asked of him. “What do you think? That I don’t understand you?! That I can’t tell what you’ve been saying to me all this while?! I understand!” he screamed. “I fully understand! It took me nothing more than one look in your eyes to know what you were going to do to us! I know!”
“Then why won’t you throw him over, sir?” one of the boys put a calming hand on his shoulder and demanded in a meek, sorrowful voice.
Captain Jinki laughed. It was a crazy laugh. “Because it cannot be undone. Am I right, Kibum?”
The fish-man smiled for the first time since his arrival. And in his mouth were rows of sharp, bloodied teeth.