15 May Greenland Sharks, by Akeria Sun

 

Take the long way home with me, the girl thinks. She is small, slender, a frail-boned thing, with pale freckled skin and hair as dark as ashes. Her eyes are huge and black, large enough to act as mirrors even in foggy light, and rimmed by wispy, doelike lashes so pertinent to children between the ages of seven and ten. Her gaze is fixated on the game in front of her.

On the dirt field, the boy is getting ready to shoot some marbles with three other boys. Two of them are larger, sons of the fish merchant down the river, well-fed and stockily built from a profitable fishing season. The smaller one is their cousin, stunted by a lack of household rations and ongoing family feuds. All four of them have short, cropped black hair that can nearly be described as shaven, and are adorned with dirty clothes that are hardly more identifiable than kitchen rags. The marbles themselves are merely smooth rocks found along the river bed, covered in dirt from games prior. But to the children, the collection may as well be precious jewels. They are crouching on the perimeters of a dirt square drawn into the mud, an imaginary fence for their playground of stones. To the side, a small pile of coconut candies remains, compiled from an entire afternoon’s worth of games. 

The boy holds a long, pointed stick, eyes narrowing with focus. He leans his head down, close to the corner of the dirt square, and draws the stick inwards to his body. In the square, there is a line of small, rounded marbles, poised as if they are dominos waiting to be toppled. All five children suddenly hold still, caught in a long breath. The boy pokes the stick forward, striking the biggest marble in a calculated hit. The children blink as the dirt-crusted sphere ambles forward on the ground, striking the line of smaller rocks.

All at once, the marbles lurch forward with the impact. Some of them roll to the side, halting before they reach any of the dirt lines. The children watch, captivated, as the marble at the end of the line inches forward, struck by the faint impact of its larger counterpart. As if moving through honey, the marble slowly tumbles towards the edge of the line, losing motion with every second. When it has barely touched the vestiges of their dirt square, the marble stops. The mousy cousin peers at the stone to ensure it has stopped rolling. The marble is staunchly planted within the etched lines, as close as it can be without escaping their dirt kingdom. The boy has won. 

For all their rough-and-tumble appearance, the boys have never stopped the girl from watching. Unlike them, the girl has no siblings or cousins, which means she has fairly few built-in companions. This also means that occasionally, she has room to contribute more coconut candies, which in effect means she is welcome forever. From a less euphemistic perspective, it could perhaps be said that they silently acknowledged she had no other friends. But amongst young boys, there is little need to point out instances of pity when it can instead simply be established through a mutual, silent understanding. There is no shame to be had, nor need for it amongst children. 

The girl watches as the boy gathers up the coconut candies and triumphantly shoves the stick in his pocket. He bids his companions farewell, stating he will see them tomorrow afternoon at the same time, so long as it does not rain. When they leave, the boy and girl start on their way home together, weaving their way through the dust and grassy splotches of the small park. 

The girl’s family bought her a bike last autumn, which she brings to the marbles games. She rides the bike with one foot dragging on the ground, kicking up the dirt slowly, the boy walking alongside her. The leaves on the willow trees sway in the breeze, rustling around them.

When they exit the park, they make their way down the wide city street, full of bustling people going their respective ways. The ground on the street is greying dirt, so packed down and worn by hundreds of feet that it may as well be pavement. On the side of the road, street sellers are touting their red bean buns and hot soy milk. The fragrant smell of lotus leaves and sticky rice wafts through the air, punctuated by the thick scent of frying oil and ripening fruit. The yells of the hawkers drown out the sounds of conversation, blending into the chorus of the city.

The two children flatten themselves to the side of the street to avoid being hit by the adults wielding their baskets of lotus heads and papayas. 

“Here’s a candy,” the boy says, uncurling his small palm to offer one to her. 

“Thanks,” the girl says, popping it into her mouth. The coconut flavour is caramelized, rich and warm as it floods her tongue. 

The two children weave through the crowd of people, making it to the apartment courtyard after twenty minutes. Even on the dirt road of the city, well-worn from use, the complex appears dilapidated. 

The girl gets off her bike to drag it inside. 

“Bye, Liyan,” she says, her cheeks stuffed with coconut candy. She waves to him, her small hand white against her clothes crusted with dirt. 

“Bye-bye,” the boy says. He takes his coconut candy treasures and winning stick, and heads home. 

…

 

An ocean across from the girl and the boy, a greenland shark swims in the depths of the Arctic sea. Greenland sharks, though hulking in size, are almost completely blind due to parasites. They swim in lightless waters, in temperatures colder than freezing, scavenging the remains of whale carcasses on the ocean floor. 

The Inuit use combs made of their teeth to cut human hair, especially on children, where the use of metal objects to brush the scalp is considered dangerous. 

There have been no attacks on a living person ever recorded. Greenland sharks reach maturity at a century old, giving birth to a litter of pups after a decade of gestation. The oldest greenland shark ever recorded is around five hundred years old, swimming around the same cold oceans for half a millennium. With their slow metabolisms and timeless nature, it is widely believed these sharks can live forever. 

…

 

The girl’s mother is combing her hair in the girl’s bedroom. There is a little square window, where a yellow swallow sometimes perches, basking in the buttery rays of light. The ivy tickles the ledge of the window, tendrils threatening to swallow her room. 

When the girl’s mom brushes her hair, she takes these moments to teach her daughter about folklore. 

“Aina, you know the goddess of compassion, Guanyin?” she asks. This is a tale she has told many times. She passes down her knowledge. 

“Yes, ma,” the girl says, sitting up straight in her chair.  

“She is the concept we should all aim to embody. After all, out of all the deities, she is the one most present in our lives.” 

“I was telling Liyan about her.”

Her mother chuckles. “Were you? And what did you tell him?” 

“I just said what you told me. There was a princess called Miaoshan who wanted to be a nun. But her father didn’t want her to be a nun, so he sent her to a temple to do hard work.”

The mother smiles, massaging her daughter’s scalp as she talks.

“And since she was so kind, the animals helped her. And her father couldn’t stand it, so he had her executed. But she didn’t die, she floated to the top of the mountain forever.” 

“You are learning well, Aina.” 

The girl imagines if Liyan were here with them, what he would say. He was probably tucked in his own bed with his four brothers and sisters, vying for space on their floor. He would probably say it was silly. 

It is late at night, and there is no sunlight. The girl’s father is likely finishing up his late shift at the enamel factory. This is what the girl’s mother has always told her. When she finishes combing her daughter’s hair with the bone-toothed comb, she tucks it into the drawer and climbs into the same bed as the child to sleep, as she always has. 

…

 

Autumn comes. The boy and the girl are starting school for the last time, but they are unaware of its finality. They are still small, not yet gangly with the growth of puberty or the confusing emotions it brings. Liyan carries his prized marble-shooting stick all the way to the classroom door, where he is forced to abandon it in a safe corner of the dirt courtyard before entering. The boy and the girl sit next to each other at spindly, chipping wooden desks. The school does not have any textbooks, but rather a large blackboard where numbers are scrawled in pieces of chalk. 

The fisherman’s sons are sitting in the back of the classroom, for once having lapsed into silence. Their mouselike cousin is not with them; his family has sent him to join the military academy’s newest cohort, unable to feed another starving mouth. The streets do not have cobblestones yet.

…

 

The wisdom of the shark exists through its harmony with the environment. In many legends, the greenland shark embodies the concept of endurance and survival. Swimming in oceans where the sun never shines, rarely surfacing, the shark epitomizes the ability to prevail. 

For centuries, greenland sharks have survived in the Arctic abyss, completely untouched by the chaos above. Without the influence and evolutionary pressures of the prehistoric universe, greenland sharks have remained biologically the same for millions of years.

Due to their slumber-like state, the sharks are believed to have connections to the spiritual realm, a bridge to an unseen world.  

…

 

They are fourteen and the city is emerging from the arms of a massacre. With their school gone, there is little else to do except feel a sense of trepidation from the emptiness. The red bean vendors are gone now, all the lotus head has been plucked from the rivers, and the papaya trees have been razed to dust. The park, somehow, has been left alone. 

The girl plays marbles with Liyan. Only the younger of the fisherman’s sons remains. His older counterpart has now taken over their business, replacing their father who has disappeared from his dealings in the black market. He’ll be back soon, he told them three months ago. The willow trees sway in the wind, miraculously intact as the dirt-caked marbles roll in the field. 

Liyan wins again.

“Good job,” Aina says earnestly, smiling up at him. Their eyes meet, and for a second, it feels as if everyone is still here, as if she is still ready to take the pink bike on a ride home while he runs alongside her, ducking away from the bustling street vendors. Their friend does not comment on how strange it is that the girl plays marbles with them now. It only seems natural. Liyan smiles back, eyes crinkling with joy. 

When they go home, Liyan sees her to the apartment door. 

“Bye again,” Aina says, turning to go inside. When the boy leaves, she stares at his retreating back for a long second, watching his fading figure grow smaller and smaller into a coloured blur in the distance. 

…

 

The girl typically remembers to clean up. But in this one instance, she has not, and the little rocks she has collected for marbles are laid out across the kitchen. The marbles are lined up in a neat row, ready for shooting. They are entrapped in a small square on the kitchen floor, etched on the floorboards with a piece of coal. 

The girl’s father comes home early from the enamel factory for once. His footsteps drag. In retrospect, the girl knows that he just received news the factory is shutting down. 

When the door opens, the girl leaps to her feet, but it is too late. Before she can make out his face, the backhand and the subsequent scent of liquor strikes across her cheek, blasting against her head, then another, then more. The girl’s mother, hearing her cries, rushes in from the bedroom, her centre of refuge, and as if by instinct, crawls on all fours over the girl, sheltering her daughter with her own frame. 

When she looks through her mother’s arms, she notices her row of marbles has exploded apart, a singular stone pushed to the very edges of the charcoal line. The marble is victorious.

…

 

Her mother’s voice is hoarse, as if there is a lump in her throat preventing her from speaking. 

“When Miaoshan died, all her guilt was released,” she says, her voice thick. There is a beat of silence. “When she became immortal, she crystallised.” 

The girl says nothing. Her mother stops speaking as her daughter dabs at her face gingerly with the cotton. The blood stiffens her lips quiet. 

Years later, when the girl becomes a young woman on a plane to Los Angeles, and she sees a woman wearing red lipstick for the first time, she will remember this moment. 

…

 

Despite their enigmatic status, greenland sharks serve as a powerful totem animal in Inuit mythology. Eyes white from their blindness, the shark drifts in the Arctic as if in a dreamless sleep. To many, they symbolise the quiet strength that comes with patience and age, the passage of time and stamina. 

Greenland sharks are not commercially hunted. To survive in the deep cold waters of their home, the greenland shark accumulates toxic amounts of trimethylamine oxide in their blood, rendering their meat highly poisonous to all living things. 

As they grow older, greenland sharks reach intense levels of toxicity, accumulating lethal amounts of fermented poison after centuries of life. Without it, the sharks would collapse in the otherwise uninhabitable Arctic sea; the perilous chemical becomes non-detachable from their flesh. Greenland sharks live a prolonged existence in inhospitable waters, their bodies both preserved and slowly poisoned by the relentless passage of time.

The effects of consuming their meat can mimic the effects of extreme drunkenness, as if one consumed hallucinogens or mushrooms, even resulting in death. 

…

 

The girl and Liyan are sitting in the park one afternoon. Underneath the swaying branches of the willow tree, few passersby can see them. Their friend who has readily supplied them with leftover fisherman’s wares is gone for the time being, leaving them alone while he sorts out business in the Southern gulf. They are too old to play marbles now. 

Both hope he will return; after all, he has been with them through all this time. Despite that, neither are delusional. They will likely never see him again. 

“We need to leave this place,” Liyan sighs. 

The girl looks at him. As a teenager, she has grown into her features. Her hair has been cropped short, shoulder-length now. Her freckles have faded on her tanned skin, now stretched thin across her face without the round chubbiness of childhood. Her large, dark eyes are still as reflective as mirrors on her face. In her eyes, Liyan can see his smooth jawline, almond-shaped eyes, and the wrinkle between his eyebrows from scrunching his face all the time. 

“I’m serious, Aina,” he says, leaning forward and resting his hand on her thigh. “We know it can only get worse. They’ll start rounding up people from the streets, even from our neighbourhood. My cousin was deported to the farmlands and we haven’t heard from him since.” 

“I know,” the girl says. She folds her hand on top of his, soft and slender. Liyan averts his  gaze. It is a conversation they have had many times before. They feel like overgrown teenagers, not quite yet adults, trapped playing children’s games and forced to deal with adult conversations. In this instance, the girl wants the moment to last in perpetuity. She is caught in the surreal beauty of existing forever.

She lays her head down on Liyan’s lap. Liyan says nothing, just looks into her eyes. He squeezes her hand. He has never been an expressive, gushy type. Their circumstances do not permit it. 

The girl smiles. Her skin pulses around him, not so much a craving for violence as a desire to become. 

…

 

The day before their departure, the boy and the girl are walking along the fisherman’s wharf, where their friend and his older brother used to sell their wares. Beside them, the salt-weathered fishing trawlers are docking, laden with black herring and glassy-eyed red snappers hauled in from the day. 

“Aina, I need to ask you a question,” Liyan blurts out suddenly, such a departure from his generally stoic nature. “Through all this, why did you stay with me?” 

Aina turns to look at him, surprised. Liyan diverts his gaze to the rickety fishing boats. An intimate sense of urgency hangs in the air. 

The girl tilts her head, a soft wistfulness settling over her features.

“You were the best of the lot,” she says. “And there was nowhere else to go.” 

“…Oh,” Liyan says, after a beat. His brow furrows. 

Aina presses her lips together, as if suppressing a smirk. Her gaze holds something warm but unreadable. “I also liked your shoes,” she adds, voice tinged with a smile. 

They both look down at his shoes. They’re beat up, worn-down leather sandals smothered in dust, nearly a decade old, passed down from his father to his older brother to him. There are sewn-on patches of shoddy repairs and miniscule holes peeking through the battered soles.

“Alright,” says Liyan, stunned. A stain of crimson spreads across his tanned skin, pinkening his cheeks. 

Aina smiles. She reaches out then, her hand catching the hem of his shirt, tugging it towards her gently. Her eyes tell. 

“You want me to be like the Americans,” the girl says, laughing as she pushes his shoulder. “To say it out loud, instead of showing it like we do.” Her voice softens, a dimple appearing in her cheek. “You want me to say—I love you.” 

Liyan laughs too, uninhibited and open. Aina’s eyes crinkle with fondness. Such is the nature of continental Shanghai. Their laughter tinkles into the ocean horizon, reverberating like the peals of a bell. 

An untold hemispheric distance away, where time slows and the cold water deepens, the shark continues to drift.