We were on a boat somewhere on the Aegean, with a table for breakfast nailed into the deck that shined like glazed pastry, and beds with high sides to stop us from rolling out at night as the sea ebbed. Dyma had invited a couple of us from university to celebrate our graduation, organised everything, pooled all of our pub money, and invited Nid, from her hometown, too. Nid was long, rectangular, with the sort of face that would sit well in an illustrated children's book. He baked us bread each morning on the grill - these little round things, puffing up with laughter and yeast - and quickly settled into the group without fuss. We spent our days floating, drying ourselves off, eating fruit with bread, and reading.
As the days crawled on, little hairs on our arms and legs crept out of the pores in our skin, as did our awareness of one another’s quirks and habits. Playful digs about snores were shared at the table in the morning, and snide comments about washing up were said in jest over dinner. But we were all getting along just fine, really. The water was latex, slippery, and whenever even a gesture of hostility arose, we simply slid into the sea, to wash it off again. We had little to worry about.
Early in the trip, on a night where the air was close, Nid and Dyma stood at the foot of the table together, to perform a shadow puppet show using a sheer parasol and a wind-up torch. Then, every evening after, the group would make requests, eking out the narrative of the production, with new characters, subplots and complications. Nid and Dyma stood close to one another, sun cream rubbing into one another’s skin, hands entwined with the residual oil having just eaten dolmades, or skordalia, or grilled fish. But what about your husband? Dyma would coo. What about her! Nid would satirically retort, and everyone would laugh.
It was clear to us on the boat that Nid and Dyma were well suited. They made one another smile, cared about what the other had to say, and listened intently, properly, to each other. Even without a parasol and a torch, their bodies seemed to work in unison, and it was surprising to see that they could split to become two shadows at the end of each performance. I liked to watch the way that they looked over when the other wasn’t aware. Through the corner of the eye. Through the rumble of a frothing wave. Through the smear of a dirtied galley window. To catch those looks between them was to be a part of them and those feelings somehow, and in those earlier days, that was enough for me.
Which is why I don’t understand what compelled me to pull Nid away from Dyma one evening, as she napped and burnt in the sun. I watched specks of white light pierce through the cotton onto her chest and stomach as she dreamed, and instead of waking her up to put on some sunscreen and go downstairs to help Nid cook as she liked to, I left her there, as constellations of red skin deepened and deepened in colour across her body.
So bring me fish with eyes of jewels, Nid sang to himself in the galley, pulling the flesh from the bones and the fins, his shoulders stretching with every rip - and I joined in, singing as I entered the kitchen - and mirrors on their bodies. He turned briefly, hey Falle, before returning to his knife. Can you salt those while I finish up on these? he said, pointing to a row of flattened fish on the counter behind him, next to a charred, dirty grill. With his back to me, he started sliding his knife over the back of some other fish, singing as he went.
Quietly, I turned the grill on, waited for it to come to temperature, and rested both of my hands on the hotplate, searing my own skin, waiting for something to happen, something to burn through myself and change how I felt. I waited twelve seconds, fifteen, and hardly sensed the pain. I was taken over by some sort of new purpose, as the smell of my burning flesh started turning savory, bitter, mixing with the vegetables and herbs surrounding me. It was only when Nid’s movement from behind jolted me into pulling my hands away from the grill by surprise, knocking the salt over the floor in the process with my elbow.
Ah! I gasped, looking down at the mess.
Don’t worry, I just mopped, he said, before resting his own hand on the grill where I had just been, to pick up the mounds of salt. Ah! he yelled, retracting his hand. I don’t remember putting that on. I looked at his hands blankly, then at my own. He noticed the burgundy bits on my palms, outstretched beside his, casting star shaped shadows over the the salty floor. Fuck, I’m so sorry, did I do that? Here he said, pulling my wrists towards the sink and holding them under the cold water. Hold them there for a few minutes, it’ll make it better. Are you in pain?
I could smell Dyma’s suncream on his t-shirt, under the scent of tackle and olive oil. Could feel the hairs on his forearms, bleached by the weather, bristling against mine, and because we had nothing to say to each other, and because I wasn’t in pain at all, and because we had nothing else to share in that moment, I kissed him. He tasted of nothing.
The next morning, everyone ate the fish that hadn’t been cooked the night before, with bread and olives. I knew Dyma had noticed our hands, now blistered and shining like beads, but she didn’t ask either of us what had happened. Instead, she gathered the spearfishing guns from a large metal case as the rest of us spooned cherry jam onto stale bread, and tightened a set of goggles over her eyes. The water’s really clear here, we’ll be able to see everything. She looked at me through the plastic. There aren’t many places for the fish to hide, either. You’re all welcome to join, there’s enough kit for everyone, then she fell backwards into the water, spearfishing gun in hand, bikini slick under the ripples.
She was right, the water was clear where we were, and cool, and so full of salt that it stung my sore hands even to tread water within it it, but I stayed underwater for as long as I could, to watch everyone, grouped together, looming in the shallows, snorkels peeking through the waves.
Hanging back from the rest, but together, were Nid and Dyma. Nid, with a spear gun pointed at Dyma’s chest, and Dyma mulling there, steady, letting him hold aim. Behind her, a lionfish leered, bedded in the nook of a rockface.
I watched Dyma count down with her fingers, my view blurred by the tide and the sand. Five fingers up, four fingers up, three, two, one. Nid’s spear went straight through the lionfish, easy as a knife in cheese. He wound it back towards him, spines outstretched, sharp and glittering under the thinned out sunlight, and lifted the spear upright, above the water, like a winning child in a treasure hunt. The lionfish fell down the spear in a quick dart, piercing him six times over his blistered hand.
You must go to hospital. You must take an important person. These are poison. Dangerous. You don’t have long.
We gathered around the table, Nid at the front with his hand in a bowl of iced water and vinegar. The rest of us dripping water onto the deck, foreheads and noses indented by goggles. Dyma stood beside Nid and the fish. She watched as it gasped for air, then looked at me.
OK. You. The captain said, with a hand on my shoulder. Go now. We go on the fast boat. Come.