CW: abusive relationships, implied harm to children.

When the American saw me sitting on a stone in the river, his mouth opened and closed, a brown trout caught on a fishing line. He kept his eyes on me as he hurried to pull off his socks and shoes, as if I would vanish otherwise. Then he rolled up the cuffs of his pants and waded into the shallow water. His toes were long and pale like the roots of a willow tree. When he came within arm’s reach of me, he stopped and let the current flow around his legs. He didn’t seem to know what to do.

“It’s my first time visiting the old country,” he said.

I thought he was calling me old, which I am, but not in a way he would understand.

“I’m teaching Michaelmas term at Trinity.” He grinned and nodded. “Are you familiar with Yeats?”

Maybe this is how American men seduce river women, but it’s not typical in my country. In my old country. As he continued to talk in his clipped accent, I grew bored, so I turned into a fish and swam away.

• • • •

Since I lost my sister, the days stretch ahead of me, sluggish and flat. It’s not fun to play alone. We used to take turns changing. If I became a tadpole, she became a newt, orange-bellied with sticky webbed feet. If I was a minnow, she was a dipper, a feathered fish, walking on the river floor, using her black wings to swim forward.

We were not limited to the natural world for inspiration. We could become diamond rings or porcelain teacups, plastic bags or tin cans. Treasure or trash, flotsam or forfeited.

She was better than me, I admit.

I was a silver sixpence sparkling in the water. My sister was a silver watch, intricately etched and embedded with jewels, still ticking time under the current. But I knew what people wanted to find. That was my gift. My sister’s was for detail, mine was for desire.

• • • •

The moon was as dark as the eye of an otter before the American came again. I watched him skid awkwardly down the riverbank, a bouquet of purple loosestrifes in one hand. He was growing a beard which suited him. He didn’t speak about his country or my country, but instead spoke a language we both preferred, so I didn’t swim away. Not that time. Or the time after. Or even when the weather grew cold and swans called out in the skies above us. The moss beneath my feet remained green and the water would not freeze, so the weather was all the same to me. But his breath came out like smoke and his flesh pimpled. He shivered and clung to me for warmth in a way I did not need to cling to him.

“How does it work?” He wanted to know. “Can you leave the river?”

I shook my head. I had to stay in the water. I’m not a mermaid, I have legs, but five steps away from the river and I will dry up and blow away.

I saw it happen with my own eyes.

Last year, a child fell into the river. He hit his head on a stone and my sister saved his life. She lifted his small body from the water and carried him up the riverbank and placed him in a bed of ferns. When she turned around, her lovely legs, smooth and tinted green, started to darken and crack, the fissures deepening like the bark of an aging alder tree. Desiccation spread so fast up her thighs and chest, into her neck and face, that I barely had time to scream her name before she broke apart completely. In her final transformation, she became ash, blown away by the wind and caught in small eddies along the bank.

“You turned into a fish the first time we met,” the American said. “Can you do it again? Would you do it again for me?”

I nodded. Who else was there now? No one. I was alone. When he kissed me, his lips were cold, but his chest was warm and his heart beat hard and fast.

• • • •

The last time the American came to the river, I turned into the most beautiful fish for him. Pink and purple iridescent scales, tail like delicate lace, fins shaped into tiny hearts. A creature that would have pleased my sister. Or better yet, made her jealous.

As a fish, I could only see the surface of the water reflected above me, so I swam to the top and poked my head above the current. The American’s eyes were filled with delight. It pleased me to please him. His arm was hidden behind his back. Maybe a bouquet of marsh marigolds this time? But when he brought it forward, he wasn’t holding flowers. He was holding a net.

Before I could swim away, he scooped me up, dropped me into a plastic bag of water, and twisted it closed. The world spun and blurred. I tried and failed to get my bearings. As he climbed back up the riverbank, before he got too far away, before he climbed into his car, I should have transformed. I might have made it back to the river without turning to ash. Now I will never know if I could have been faster than my sister.

• • • •

On the long journey, I thought I would die. My belly dropped in the darkness. The plastic bag rolled and bucked. I was sick and had to stay in the sickness. I closed my eyes and went back to the river. I imagined catkins above my head, felt mud squish between my toes, heard my sister laughing, her voice so light and sweet she never startled any living creature, even the heron who waited downstream for his meals. I would never see her or the places we lived together again. I would never be able to apologize for what I had done to her.

• • • •

He released me into warm water. “There,” he said. “That’s better.”

I became a woman again, gasping as I lifted my head into the air. I sat up and took in my surroundings. I was in a porcelain tub. The American crouched nearby, turning a silver knob left and right, left and right. Each time he cranked it, something rattled in the wall.

“Old pipes.” His smile was drooping with fatigue. He was still wearing the coat he travelled in, rumpled and dirty. “I can make it colder,” he said. “Whatever you like.”

My feet pressed against the bottom of the tub. It wasn’t big enough to lie down and submerge myself in. There was nowhere to swim. My view was of a closed door. I thought of reaching for the American, gripping a handful of his brown hair and pushing his head beneath the tepid water. He would thrash until he didn’t. A man in water is a fish out of water. But then where would I go? I would be stuck in this room with his rotting body.

“This is temporary,” he assured me. “I’ll find a better arrangement soon.”

I gestured at the door, made a swimming motion with my hand. He had taken me to his country, his new country, and though it was unfamiliar, I knew well enough that outside the door were rivers because I could hear their voices. They were big and foreign and wild, like him, but they would welcome me. I demanded he take me to them.

“I can’t,” he said. “Everything is frozen. You have to wait until spring.”

I slapped his face and he stepped away from me, rubbing his cheek, wounded in a way that made me even more furious.

“I love you,” he said. “I couldn’t leave you behind.”

There was a plastic curtain hanging on a rod above me and I tugged it closed and hid myself from him. Then he left and locked the door behind him.

• • • •

Alone and bored, I opened bottles of blue foam and purple gel. I ran my fingers through crystals that smelled stronger than any flower I’d ever known. Everything created bubbles that made my skin itch. I watched the bubbles swirl down the drain and refilled the tub again. And again. What else was there to do? Unclog hair from the drain? Scry? There was no need for scrying to tell my future. It was a hard lump of bright green soap.

So I pretended the running faucet was my river running, that the drip from the tap came from rain hitting rocks. I rested my head on the lip of the bathtub and stared up at the rusted showerhead, at the ceiling blooming with black mold. I talked to my sister.

Remember the time we tangled those fishermen’s lines and I swiped their beer and we swam down river and drank away the afternoon.

Remember when you turned into a toad so fat you couldn’t swim.

Into a condom wrapper.

And finally.

Why did you save the child? There were other ways.

• • • •

I could hear the American inside the house. Flipping on light switches and opening doors, rustling papers and rattling dishes. He twisted on top of his squeaky mattress at night and snored. During the day, he turned on something that played music or cheering crowds, but when he left, he turned it off again. He was gone a lot. He would call out, I’m off to work, but I couldn’t speak his language to reply. I imagined him standing in front of a classroom of other captives, droning on and on about the old country in this new country.

When he was out, I turned the knob all the way to the right and let water flow into the tub until it overflowed, cresting the edge and then spilling over the side. Water crept across the tiles, grew a little higher with each minute.

Curious about the rest of the bathroom, I quickly left the tub and splashed over to the porcelain chair. I pulled down the lever. This caused water to disappear then reappear inside the chair. I pulled the lever again and again and again. Soon, water poured out of the chair too, adding another inch to the floor. I stepped back into the tub and crouched down, my weight causing a massive surge of water to flow over the edge. I stayed like that for hours, listening to the water build, seep, and drip, drip, drip somewhere far beneath me.

When the American returned, I heard his shoes, the ones he so carefully left on the riverbank, skid across the downstairs floor. Then I heard two hard thumps. One, I imagined, as he hit the wall, the second as he landed on the floor.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He cursed as he climbed the stairs towards the bathroom. He didn’t knock, just yanked the door open, and water poured out and soaked his shoes. His face was bright red as he gawped at the little bog I’d created.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted. “Did you have the water on all day?” There were puddles on the tile floor, saturated towels, a gurgling porcelain chair. “I could have serious water damage. This is not funny.”

He left again, squelching down two flights of stairs. Then the water stopped. Nothing came from the tap or the chair. Not even a drip. It had all run dry.

He didn’t bother coming back into the bathroom. He banged his fist against the wall and called up from the lower floor. “The water is off. I’m leaving it off until I can trust you. I suggest you don’t pull the plug.”

• • • •

After a few days, the American turned the water back on, but he didn’t visit again for a long time. When he did, he brought a bottle of wine and two glasses, setting them gingerly on the tile floor.

“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I’m sorry we fought.”

I shrugged. I was not sorry.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” he continued. “I’m working on it.”

He took a lock of my damp hair between his fingers. I wanted to kill him, but I wondered what my sister would do. She was always the kind one. And clever. And soon I was swimming in the bathtub, having changed into a large trout, mottled with irregular brown spots, sporting sharp and spindly teeth with whiskers like a sailor lost at sea.

“You’re upset,” he said.

Upset? I thought. I had tried to flush myself down the porcelain chair half a dozen times. Upset? I lifted my fat tail from the water and slapped it down hard, spraying his trouser legs. He seized his wine and left.

• • • •

Each time the American returned I was the same ugly trout. He stopped reassuring me, stopped telling me how he would fix things.

“You’re not the only one sacrificing,” he said, his shadow looming over the cloudy water that I refused to refill anymore. “I’ve been using the bathroom at work and showering at the gym. All for you. Because this is your space now.” He reached into the stagnant water, tried to grab me, but he was no bear, and I slipped away easily. He swore and kicked the bathtub. “You spend more time in this room than my ex-wife did!”

Other times, he pleaded.

“Please, come back. If you become yourself again, I promise I’ll take you to a river. The rivers are opening now. It’s thawing. It’s spring.”

I knew full well he could put me in a plastic bag anytime he wanted and take me to a river and free me. I recognized a trick. I played plenty of my own.

And finally, to my great pleasure, he began to doubt himself.

“I know you’re not a fish,” he said, though there was a thread of uncertainty.

I made my underwater expression especially trouty, like who is this crazy man talking to a fish in his bathtub?

“You’re a woman. I know you’re a woman.” He paced the small bathroom and slammed the door open and closed several times. “Not a woman. A bitch!”

• • • •

The next time he brought flowers, red roses, which he placed in the sink. When he looked down at the tub, he cried out in horror and sunk to his knees.

“No, no, no, no,” he sobbed.

He plunged his hands into the bathtub and lifted out my fish body, which had been floating belly up in the water. He raised me into the air, still muttering no, no, no and held me for about five seconds before I jerked from his grip and dove back into the water, flashing a toothy grin.

I expected a fit of rage. Maybe even pulling the plug and killing me. Instead, he was quiet. The silence went on so long that I rose to the surface to see what he was doing. To my surprise, he was taking off his clothes. His jacket was already abandoned on the floor. Now he was unbuttoning his shirt, then pulling the undershirt over his head. He took off his belt, unzipped his pants, removed his boxers, and left the clothes in a heap on the bathmat. He climbed into the water with me and sat down, his arms around his knees, his knees to his chest. He was crying. He dropped his head and tears fell into the water.

“I thought you loved me,” he said, without looking up. “I thought you understood what I was doing when I brought you here. Now it’s too late. You’re here. In a new country. I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I was a river woman disguised as a trout trapped with a naked American man weeping in a small bathtub. Pity stirred me. Or maybe it was boredom from being a trout for so long. But I didn’t want to be myself anymore, especially not with him. So I did something different.

When he lifted his head, my legs were pressed up against his legs. His red-rimmed eyes grew wider than the first time he saw me sitting on a stone. Confusion mixed with relief as he gazed at this new woman who was also the old woman. I stood up to give us more space and water streamed down my body. His desire became obvious. I turned my head and saw my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My sister’s beautiful face hovered over red roses and my heart broke again.

• • • •

He didn’t mind the new body. She was my sister after all, not much different than me, her hair a bit darker, her eyes a bit lighter, fuller in the hips and breasts, but much the same.

We mated in the cramped bathtub, his breath hot in my ear, whispering empty words. Afterwards, we reclined uncomfortably, my head resting on his chest, his heart beating beneath me. The blood it pumped was mostly water. He was mostly water, his body constantly taking it in and sending it out again in pathetic tributaries. He was my river in this new country.

I must have dozed off because when I awoke a yellow duck was floating between my breasts. The American reached down and plucked it from the water.

“My son loves this duck,” he said. “He refuses to take a bath without it.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that the American had spawned offspring, though I knew he once had a wife. I wondered how long they were a happy family before they weren’t.

“Quack, quack, quack,” he said in a stupid high-pitched voice, turning the duck to face me and making its rubber bill move up and down as if it were talking to me. “Don’t forget to scrub behind your ears.” He made it kiss my nose and I frowned, and the rubber duck drooped in his hand.

“My son likes it when I make the duck talk,” he said defensively. “He just turned four years old. You’ll meet him soon. He’s staying with me for the summer.”

My frown deepened.

• • • •

When the American entered the bathroom wielding the same net he used to catch me in the river, he insisted, “Trust me.”

What could I do? I wanted out. Anything different had to be better. So I became a fish. I became transportable.

It was a short journey before I was released into what I thought at first was a pond but turned out to be a plastic pool in his backyard. I changed from a fish to my sister’s form and kicked my legs out, but they hit the hard sides of the pool. There was something hanging over the edge that looked like a snake. He lifted it and sprayed me playfully, a stream of mist that made rainbows in the air between us. I took it from him, and fresh water poured into the pool. It felt cool and pleasant.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “it won’t be like the bathroom. I can’t keep the hose on all the time. Water bills.”

When I said nothing, he gestured to a wooden wall behind him.

“Privacy fence. The neighbors won’t see you. So you don’t have anything to worry about.”

He was within arm’s reach, and I fought the urge, once again, to drown him in the water. The neighbors wouldn’t see. But I was still trapped. There was nothing I could do but smile. He stood on the moist lawn, clearly relieved, and smiled back. I lifted the hose and sprayed the front of his jeans, making it look like he pissed himself. The color rose in his cheeks, but he only chuckled and walked back to the house.

At the backdoor, he paused and turned around.

“I’m not sure what to tell my son,” he said.

I stared at him.

“He’ll arrive later this afternoon. Until I figure it out, I thought maybe I would tell him it’s a koi pond.” He made a swimming motion with his hand. It was the same motion I had made when I demanded he free me in a river. “Would you mind?”

It took me a few moments to realize he was asking me to become a carp in his son’s koi pond. When I obliged and changed for him, the American clapped and clapped.

• • • •

At night, I took my old form. Not a fish, not my sister, but me. If I kept my rotations tight, I could swim in circles in the pool. I did twenty laps. When I got too dizzy, I floated on my back with my knees curled around the plastic edges. Above me, stars dotted the sky. There was a waxing moon. I closed my eyes and focused on what was beneath me, beneath the pool and grass and soil. Not an aquifer but a river. It was flowing underground. As I listened, the river told me it opened downstream in a place where I could live as I once lived in my old country.

But how to get there?

Three paces from the pool and I would dry up and blow away just as my sister had. It still pained me to think about her death. The day she died I had made my most impressive transformation. It was a toy. A bright red fire truck, beckoning like a siren song beneath the river’s current. That’s why the child came splashing in. His desire drew him to me. I wanted it to. When he fell on the rocks, I had no idea my sister would be so softhearted, so fool-headed, so unlike me. She acted impulsively. There were other ways. Old ways. But in her panic, she forgot them. We could have kept the child alive, though he would have had to remain with us forever. If it were up to me, I would have let him die.

Drops of water landed on my face and I opened my eyes. Clouds now covered the night sky and rain poured down. I climbed to my feet and let the rain pound against my bare skin. It was a heavy rain, meant for roots and bulbs. I hesitated only a moment before stepping outside the pool onto the spongy ground. I took one step, then another, and another. Rain soaked me, running in rivulets down my body and I didn’t turn to ash. Instead, I danced around the yard, knowing I could go anywhere as long as it rained. I could follow the underground river to a new life. But then the raindrops slowed, and I crept back to my pool. Yet I felt no dismay. I could continue biding my time. My sister had finally forgiven me and granted me this wish. It was spring and the sky was dense with wetness.

Tomorrow would be a rainy day.

• • • •

In the morning, I flitted around the pool as a sprightly silver and orange carp. Just one day and already I was a beloved family pet, named Dennis, and fed breadcrumbs. The little boy from the new country was not much different than the little boy from the old country. He was drawn to the water too.

Like yesterday, his father would make him a sandwich, removing the crust, which the boy would gather, tear up, and throw into the koi pond. His father would be reluctant today since it was starting to sprinkle, a sprinkle my body said would become a deluge. But the father would yield. He was soft-hearted in his way too.

And I would leave with the rain. Follow the river. Disappear downstream to sleep on lichen-covered stones once again.

But I had a score to settle first.

I waited for the boy carrying breadcrumbs. Today, I would not have to nibble obligingly at them because he would not find a carp waiting for him. Instead, he would discover his beloved rubber duck bobbing in the pool, as beguiling as yellow sunshine can be on such a gloomy day. And he would reach for me, and I would drift away, and he would reach further, further, further.

When his small body plunged into the pool, I changed back into a woman and snatched him up. He was light and warm against me. He put his arms around my neck in a way I didn’t expect. No screaming or kicking. He didn’t fight me at all. As we left the yard together, rain pouring down on us, he clung to me as if he were my own flesh and blood.

• • • •

As I navigated backyards, slipping past fences and hedges, the underground river guided me, urging me towards the wooded area where the river would emerge downstream. Above me, gray clouds hung low and heavy, keeping me saturated and safe. Behind me, I heard the American start to bellow. He sounded like a wild bear. Provoked and ferocious. Would he follow? Yes, he would.

The sky drenched everything. Clouds rumbled as they collided. I splashed through mud in the sparse woods, the child held tight to my chest. I landed in one puddle so deep it went up to my knee and I stumbled and fell, rolling with the child still in my arms. My leg felt like it was on fire. I was out of my element. I was clumsy. I might as well have been running on fins. Behind me, the American was gaining, his feet slapping on the wet earth, roaring with rage, and not only rage, he was terrified. If he caught me now, there would be no more games between us. I rose and rebalanced the child on my hip and kept running.

As we raced through the storm, the ground became rougher, jagged, slippery with rocks. I had to slow my pace again and pay attention to my footing. I couldn’t afford to fall again. I couldn’t afford to get caught. If I put the child down, I would make it, but I would not let him go.

The river was deafening, insistent, filling my head so it was all I could think about. Loss, captivity, escape, revenge. None of it meant anything to me now. I was going home. I stopped when I saw the river flowing from a cave, gushing over the side of a cliff into a waterfall.

My legs trembled with desire. The child felt it and gripped me tighter. It was a drop of at least ten times my body length from where the water cascaded out of the rock down to where it churned, frothy and roiling, back into the current of the river. The rushing water had a strength I’d never seen in my old country. It was painful to look away from it, but I turned to where the American stood in the downpour, watching us. He was barefoot, like me, his clothes and hair plastered to his body, rain dripping into his eyes. He held out his arms for the child, but I grasped the boy tighter and took a step closer to the edge.

“Don’t,” he begged. “Please.”

The child buried his face in my neck. If he cried for his father, I didn’t know or care. I tugged the child’s head back, so his face turned up to mine. His eyes were shut. His pale skin was slick with rain. I thought of my sister and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then I wrapped his body as tightly as possible in my arms, turned around, and dropped off the cliff.

The cry the American made was familiar. Anguish, grief, pain. The sound you make when you know you will never see the person you love again.

The water caught us, the child and I, in a cold embrace that kept us safe from the rocks below. I never let go of him. Under the water, his hair floated around his face and his eyes popped open with the shock of being alive and breathing. I would show this boy from the new country the ways of the old country. And we would live in the river, as I had with my sister, and I would not be alone again.

“Come with me,” I said. “Let’s see what kind of fish you have in your river.” He took my hand, and we dove deep.