Below the Surface
by Pippa Possible
Response

Twelve years old, she is strong and lean. Two years old, my little arms drape around her neck. My legs wrap around her waist. We dunk below the surface.

We are swimming in a lake of water so clear, we can see details as through a magnifying glass.

Every multicolored mottled stone and pebble. Every fish, illuminated by the midsummer midday sun. Scales glistening sequins. The air smells of aloe-vera sunscreen, and campfire smoke. The sun is direct, and immediately hot on my back. The water is comfortably cool, near tepid. Goose bumps still appear on my wet arms.

Below the surface, my sister and I are surrounded by fish. We swim rapidly through occasional schools of them. Synchronized swimmers. We attempt to join their underwater dance. Fish disperse in random directions upon our intervention. A few fish swim toward us, near enough.

I imagine that I can pet them with my bare hands. I want to pet these fishes as I have learned to pet cats and dogs, gently and calmly. A fish makes eye contact with me, before flitting rapidly away.

We are pretending to be a dolphin. My sister, the swimmer. She propels us through the water using the force of her strong legs. I feel safe, attached to my sister’s back, like a barnacle. In this moment, I can gauge my own strength. I hold on firmly. She brings us close to the bed of the lake.

My sister and I explore the bright depths. The water magnifies details. Rays of sunlight filter through the water from above. Illumination. We glide across the bed of the lake, slowly. My toes graze across the slick pebbles. Fish now swim beside us, seemingly undisturbed and unperturbed.

My lungs begin to burn. I signal to my sister with a light pinch on the shoulder. She changes direction and kicks fiercely, thrusting us rapidly to breach at the surface. Lob-tailing, we create as much splashing as we can. I am the blowhole, loudly coughing and spitting water into the air. Gasping to inhale as deeply as my lungs can bear.

Scorched breaths!

We can hear our parents at the shore, laughing at how silly we appear. My mother is sitting at the blue picnic table, tending to charlie-horses in her feet. My father is tending to the campfire, poking at kindling with a stick.

Below the surface, the fish again are scarce. Our dolphin act has frightened them away. I want to remain below, resting on the cool slick pebbles until the fish feel safe to return. I want to befriend these fishes, and swim with them, in synchronous movements. I want to grow gills, so my need for air will not frighten them away. I want to stay here with them, below the surface.

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Taxue
By Daniel David Watkins
Inspiration piece

One morning, quite a while ago, before Hong Kong became what it is, a horse appeared on the beach, just a silhouette small upon the white sand. It stood at the far end near the rocks wild but not free, being hemmed in on the right by the sea and on the left by the bank rising to the fishing village of Deep Wave Bay. The land beyond to Lantau Peak was hidden. Unknowable. I had come down in the early morning from the apartments – themselves, at that time, incongruous. The cold blue grey of dawn made me giddy and I blinked before I stared at the impossible horse thrown up by the sea. I thought I might hunker down where I stood above the beach to watch. Safe.

Wu Fong made wooden puzzles. He would take them to the market in Central for the tourists. He fashioned their intricacies from drift wood but you would never have known, once the grain was polished. The pieces were hard from the salt and bleached white and he left them like that so they felt good in the hand. And the boys would take them apart in their arrogant haste but never could put them back together with their fumbling fingers. All impatience.

In truth, the boys had woken me. Their feet had slapped down the concrete steps outside my door and I wondered at them in my half dream. But they were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had gone to the village to help with the nets. The thought of them unsettled me and I imagined they would appear suddenly on the low cliffs above the horse to throw stones.

The horse began to walk now close to the water’s edge. It lowered its head before shaking itself away and rising to a trot. Perhaps it had seen me or sensed me watching, and the possibility of a connection between us unnerved me so that, even from my vantage point, I decided to rise to my feet.

Mr Lau would know. He would know how the horse had appeared. He would know what to do. The boys said the horse had been stolen from the stables at Shatin by the Wo Shing Wo but the ransom had not been paid. In desperation the gang had brought it in the night to Lantau on an old dredger. I looked at Mr Lau the following week but he shook his head and said nothing. So I knew it wasn’t true. And the next day a rumour grew that the horse had swum across from Tsing-Yi to escape a cruel owner. I imagined the poor beast’s head bobbing above the waves, its eyes wild, its nostrils gaping red holes as it struggled against the currents and tides between the great container ships towering above. It could not have been like that. These were fumbling tales.

Just as suddenly as it had arrived that winter morning, so it disappeared. The impossible horse vanished after the second week. And they said it had been a ghost.

I met Taxue in the spring. I had been so lonely during the long winter that I wondered if I had created her out of my own imagination, that she had somehow emerged out of the breeze as alienation personified. My kindred spirit.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.