First impressions review: A Cup of Salt Tears, by Isabel Yap & Into the Gray, by Margaret Killjoy
I read these two short stories back-to-back on the Tor website, and they were an interesting pairing. Both involve humans in love with genuinely monstrous – but not necessarily evil – aquatic beings. Both have a haunting quality that make one ponder what love really is, why we are drawn to certain other people (even if it doesn’t seem wise)…and, of course, as Contrapoints put it, “the inherent eroticism of the sea”.
A Cup of Salt Tears is set in (I think) modern-day Japan. Makino is a middle-aged-going-on-old woman whose husband is dying. She goes down to the onsen (hot springs bath) to try to wash of the smell of hospitals and grief, and a kappa joins her in the pool.
As the figure nears, she sees its features through the mist: the green flesh, the webbed hands, the sara—the little bowl that forms the top of its head—filled with water that wobbles as it moves…it smells like a river, wet and earthy. Alive… ‘Good evening,’ the kappa says. The words spill out of its beak, smoothly liquid. Makino does not scream. She does not move…She won’t make it. She presses against the cold tile and thinks, Tetsuya needs me, thinks, no, that’s a lie, I can’t even help him. Her fear dissipates, replaced by helplessness, a brittle calm. ‘This is the women’s bath,’ she says. ‘The men’s bath is on the other side.’ ‘Am I a man?’ She hears the ripples of laughter in its voice, and feels indignant, feels ashamed. ‘No. Are you going to eat me?’ ‘Why should I eat you, when you are dear to me?’ Its round black eyes glimmer at her in earnest.
As the story continues, we learn why the kappa feels that they have a connection, and why Makino knows that to be true. The kappa is far better behaved than the stories have led her to believe. Its affection for her seems genuine, and yet it also tells stories that suggest its own view of the world to be genuinely alien:
It tells her about the shogun’s daughter. How she would stand in the river and wait for him, her robes gathered around one fist. How her child, when it was born, was green, and how she drowned it in the river, sobbing, before anyone else could find it. How Kawataro had stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks and—Makino doesn’t believe this part—how it had grieved for its child, their child, floating down the river… Kawataro turns to her, face solemn as it says, “She drowned herself.” It could not save her, perhaps; or didn’t care to, by then?... She presses her damp forehead against Kawataro’s sleek green shoulder… “How will this story end?” she asks.
Still, Makino can’t help but wonder if this creature who claims to love her might help her save the human she loves (who actually has a fair number of similarities with the kappa) – and if there will be a price.
Into the Gray is told from the perspective of a trans girl thief in love with the Lady of the Waters, a man-eating mermaid who lives in the local river. Laria finds some of these men for her, though only ones she feels are bad enough.
“After you,” he said, gesturing at the water. He didn’t trust me. He was a terrible man, but not an entirely stupid one…With each step, the water lapped at my skin. With each step, the water washed away the filth of poverty and the filth of the town and the filth of work–honest work, illicit work, it’s all work. He watched me, of course. I would have watched me too. I was beautiful. The Lady found me when I was waist-deep, running her human hand along my thigh. I dove. She swam alongside me, pressing her body to mine, with her bare breasts and her fish-tail. We kissed, there, underwater, and I ran my tongue along her sharp fish teeth until just a drop of blood found its way into her mouth. I liked to tease her. I liked when she was hungry… He didn’t scream, because she removed most of his throat in the first bite. The rust-red, blood-red water slipped away over the rocks to feed the forest. It’s always beautiful to watch someone perform their life’s work. The man we’d murdered, perhaps he’d been beautiful at war. He might have been beautiful on top of me, inside me. But the Lady, she was beautiful as she stripped flesh from bone.
The Lady is even more alien than the kappa of the last story (who we don’t know for sure has every directly harmed a human). She clearly doesn’t feel the same urgency about their relationship. She is immortal, and content to merely have Laria visit her every now and again, to bring her a snack and to make love in the water and on the shore. But she won’t join her on land, even though she can make legs for herself. So why does Laria love The Lady enough to ask a witch to make her a permanent sea creature? Well, it doesn’t seem that she’s had particularly great experiences with humans. We are told “she was gentle with me, kinder than anyone with two legs had ever been”, and later “Ever since I’d taken a woman’s name and worn women’s clothes, people quickly sorted themselves into three categories: those who wanted to fuck me, those who were repulsed by me, and those who simply didn’t care.” She doesn’t have too much of a life to regret leaving. But the last man The Lady ate turned out to be more important than they thought. Can Laria persuade her languid, complacent love to run away with her? (“It would be nicer to stay here, don’t you think? Nicer to enjoy one another, then fight and die?”) And will she make it to her appointment with the witch in time?
I can’t make up my mind if I like the ending. I don’t dislike it, and it isn’t really sad, but it is just slightly lacking in catharsis. It does contains potentialities, and that is rather nice.
Overall recommendation: If you liked ‘The Shape of Water’ or like your mermaids a little bit monstrous, you would probably enjoy these stories.
