Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

But he did not actually see her until a day came when, for a wonder, all her work was done, all her tasks out of the way until tomorrow, when they would begin all over again. At such times, rare as they were, Mirali would always wander down to the water, borrow a dugout or an outrigger canoe, and simply let herself drift in the lagoon — or even beyond the reef — reading the clouds for coming weather, or the sea for migrating shoals of fish, or her own young mind for dreams. And if she should chance to see a black or gray or brown dorsal fin cutting the water nearby, she was never frightened, but would drowsily hail the great fish in fellowship, and ask it to convey her most respectful good wishes to the Shark God. For in that time children knew what was expected of them, by parents and gods alike.

She was actually asleep in an uncle’s outrigger when the Shark God himself came to Mirali — as a mako, of course, since that is the most beautiful and graceful of all sharks. At the first sight of her, he instantly desired to shed his fishy form and climb into the boat to wake and caress her. But he knew that such behavior would terrify her as no shark could; and so, most reluctantly, he swam three times around her boat, which is magic, and then he sounded and disappeared.

When Mirali woke, it was with equal reluctance, for she had dreamed of a young man who longed for her, and who followed at a respectful distance, just at the edge of her dream, not daring to speak to her. She beached the dugout with a sigh and went home to make dinner for her parents. But that night, and every night thereafter, the same dream came to her, again and again, until she was almost frantic with curiosity to know what it meant.

No priest or wisewoman could offer her any useful counsel, although most suspected that an immortal was concerned in the matter in some way. Some advised praying in a certain way at the temple; others directed her to brew tea out of this or that herb or tree bark to assure herself of a deep, untroubled sleep. But Mirali was not at all sure that she wanted to rid herself of that dream and that shy youth; she only wanted to understand them.

Then one afternoon she heard a man singing in the market, and when she turned to see she knew him immediately as the young man who always followed her in her dream. She went to him, marching straight across the marketplace and facing him boldly to demand, “Who are you? By what right do you come to me as you do?”

The young man smiled at her. He had black eyes, smooth dark-brown skin — with perhaps a touch of blue in it, when he stood in shadow — and fine white teeth, which seemed to Mirali to be just a trifle curved in at the tips. He said gently, “You interrupted my song.”

Mirali started to respond, “So? You interrupt my sleep, night on night”—but she never finished saying what she meant to say, because in that moment she knew the Shark God. She bowed her head and bent her right knee, in the respectful manner of the island folk, and she whispered, “ Jalak. jalak ,” which means Lord .

The young man took her hand and raised her up. “What my own people call me, you could not pronounce,” he said to Mirali. “But to you I am no jalak, but your own faithful olohe ,” which is the common word for servant . “You must only call me by that name, and no other. Say it now.”

Mirali was so frightened, first to be in the presence of the Shark God, and then to be asked to call him her servant, that she had to try the word several times before she could make it come clearly out of her mouth. The Shark God said, “Now, if you wish it, we will go down to the sea and be married. But I promise that I will bear no malice, no vengefulness, against your village or this island if you do not care to marry me. Have no fear, then, but tell me your true desire, Mirali.”

The market folk were going about their own business, buying and selling, and more chatting than either. Only a few of them looked toward Mirali where she stood talking with the handsome singer; fewer seemed to take any interest in what the two might be saying to each other. Mirali took heart from this and said, more firmly, “I do wish to marry you, dear jalak —I mean, my olohe —but how can I live with you under the sea? I do not think I would even be able to hold my breath through the wedding, unless it was a very short ceremony.”

Then the Shark God laughed aloud, which he had truly never done in all his long life, and the sound was so full and so joyous that flowers fell from the trees and, unbidden, wove themselves into Mirali’s hair, and into a wreath around her neck. The waves of the sea echoed his laughter, and the Shark God lifted Mirali in his arms and raced down to the shore, where sharks and dolphins, tuna and black marlin and barracuda, and whole schools of shimmering wrasse and clownfish and angelfish that swim as one had crowded into the lagoon together, until the water itself turned golden as the morning and green as sunset. The great deep-water octopus, whom no one ever sees except the sperm whale, came also; and it has been said — by people who were not present, nor even born then — that there were mermaids and merrows as well, and even the terrible Paikea, vast as an island, the Master of All Sea Monsters, though he prudently stayed far outside the reef. And all these were there for the wedding of Mirali and the Shark God.

The Shark God lifted Mirali high above his head — she was startled, but no longer frightened — and he spoke out, first in the language of Mirali’s people, so that she would understand, and then in the tongue known by everything that swims in every sea and every river. “This is Mirali, whom I take now to wife, and whom you will love and protect from this day forth, and honor as you do me, and as you will honor our children, and their children, always.” And the sound that came up from the waters in answer is not a sound that can be told.

In time, when the lagoon was at last empty again, and when husband and wife had sworn and proved their love in the shadows of the mangroves, she said to him, very quietly, “Beloved, my own olohe, now that we are wed, shall I ever see you again? For I may be only an ignorant island woman, but I know what too often comes of marriages between gods and mortals. Your children will have been born — I can feel this already — by the time you come again for your tribute. I will nurse them, and bring them up to respect their lineage, as is right. but meanwhile you will swim far away, and perhaps father others, and forget us, as is also your right. You are a god, and gods do not raise families. I am not such a fool that I do not know this.”

But the Shark God put his finger under Mirali’s chin, lifting her face to his and saying, “My wife, I could no more forget that you are my wife than forget what I am. Understand that we may not live together on your island, as others do, for my life is in the sea, and of the sea, and this form that you hold in your arms is but a shadow, little more than a dream, compared to my true self. Yet I will come to you every year, without fail, when my tribute is due — every year, here, where we lie together. Remember, Mirali.”

Then he closed his eyes, which were black, as all sharks’ eyes are, and fell asleep in her arms, and there is no woman who can say what Mirali felt, lying there under the mangroves with her own eyes wide in the moonlight.

When morning came, she walked back to her parents’ house alone.

In time it became plain that Mirali was with child, but no one challenged or mocked her to her face, for she was much loved in the village, and her family greatly esteemed. Yet even so it was considered a misfortune by most, and a disgrace by some, as is not the case on certain other islands. If the talk was not public, it was night talk, talk around the cooking fire, talk at the stream over the slapping of wash on stone. Mirali was perfectly aware of this.