The Portion Overboard

The sea lay black and patient under the hull of the Sea Rose, her deck flooded with sodium light and the wet slap of silver bodies. Malin Jandley stood at the port rail, arms crossed, watching her crew work the midnight haul. The winch groaned. The net rose, heavy and dripping, a pregnant belly of fish and brine.

She could feel it in her bones. Tonight was a good night.

The crew moved with the practiced rhythm of men who had been at it for years. Danny at the winch. Old Pete sorting. Ricky hauling the gilled bodies into the hold, his boots slipping on the slick deck. The smell of blood mixed with salt and diesel exhaust hung thick in the air. Malin breathed it in like perfume.

She stepped forward as the net swung over the deck. The cod came down in a silver cascade, thrashing and gleaming. Her lips moved in a silent count. Two hundred. Maybe three. The night was still young.

Danny spat over the side. "That's a fine haul, Captain. The fish are running for you."

"They run for themselves," Malin said. "We just happen to be in the way."

But she knew what he meant. Every captain on the coast knew what he meant. The Sea Rose had luck that couldn't be explained by charts or currents or even skill. Malin had inherited that luck the same way she had inherited the boat and the house on the hill and the habit her grandmother had taught her when she was nine years old.

"A portion for the deep," Grandmama had said, her hands gnarled and smelling of brine. "You take from the sea. You give back. It's not charity, girl. It's rent."

Malin had never questioned it. She had never told a soul where the habit came from, though the crew had noticed. Every haul, every trip, a portion went over the side. They called it her superstition. They called it her good luck charm. They didn't know it was the only thing standing between them and the empty nets of every other boat in the harbor.

She waited until the hold was packed and the deck was hosed clean. The crew moved below for coffee and cards, their voices a low rumble through the deck planks. Malin stayed above.

She took her portion from the last basket. A fat cod, still gasping. She held it in both hands and walked to the starboard rail. The water below was so dark it looked like a hole in the world.

She tossed the fish over. It disappeared without a sound.

"For the deep," she said quietly.

The water accepted. It always did.

She stood there a moment longer, watching the black surface. Something moved down there. She felt it more than saw it, a shift in the darkness that was different from a wave. A presence that had been there for as long as she could remember, vast and waiting.

She shook her head and turned back to the deck.

Ricky was standing at the corner of the cabin, his face pale under the deck lights. He was young, only nineteen, and he had the kind of eyes that saw too much.

"Captain," he said. "I need to show you something."

She followed him to the port side where the net lay coiled for the morning. Ricky pointed at the wet tangle of rope and mesh.

"Look at the scales," he said.

They were different. She saw that immediately. Mixed in with the ordinary silver and gray of the cod were patches of something else. Something darker. Something that caught the light and bent it sideways, like oil on water. She touched one. Hard, smooth, cold against her fingertips. Not a fish scale. Not anything she recognized.

"Where did this come from?" she asked.

Ricky shook his head. "I don't know, Captain. It was just there. In the net. Like it got caught on the way up."

She looked at the scale in her hand. It was the size of her palm. What kind of creature could grow a scale that big? The darkness beneath the hull came to mind. Her grandmother's voice followed close behind.

You take from the sea. You give back.

She pocketed the scale. "It's nothing. Just some deepwater trash. Get some sleep. We haul again at dawn."

Ricky nodded and shuffled below. Malin stayed on deck.

The wind picked up, carrying the smell of open water. She walked to the stern and leaned against the railing, looking out at the darkness where the horizon should be. The water lapped against the hull. The engine hummed below her feet. The crew laughed in the galley.

She took the scale out of her pocket and turned it over in her fingers. It was beautiful in a way that made her chest tight. Wrong and right at the same time.

She spoke to the water.

"I don't know if you can hear me," she said. "I don't know if you're listening. But I've been feeding you for twenty years. My grandmother fed you before me. And I've never asked for anything. Never complained. Never even wondered out loud."

The water was still. The wind died.

"But I'm wondering now," she said. "What you are. Whether you're real. Why you've been watching me all this time."

She waited. The water said nothing.

She laughed at herself. A grown woman talking to the sea. That was what her grandmother had done. That was what her mother had refused to do. Her mother had left town at eighteen and never looked back. Malin had stayed. Malin had learned the rituals. Malin had taken the boat.

She held the scale over the water.

"Is this yours?" she asked. "Do you want it back?"

The scale lay in her palm. She could drop it. She could keep it. She closed her fingers around it and put it back in her pocket.

"Maybe I'll keep it," she said. "Maybe I'll keep it until I figure out what you are."

She turned and walked to the cabin. But before she went below, she looked back at the water one more time. And she could have sworn she saw something break the surface. A curve of darkness. A flash of something iridescent, bending the light in that same strange way.

Like the scale in her pocket.

She went below. She didn't sleep well. She dreamed of a vast shape moving under her hull, ancient and patient, and when she woke in the dark of the early morning, the first thing she did was reach into her pocket and touch the scale.

It was still there. Real. Solid. Warm against her skin.

She smiled in the dark. She didn't know why she smiled. She just did.

The crew found her on deck at dawn, coffee in one hand, the other hand in her pocket, touching the scale like a talisman. She gave the orders for the day's haul. The nets went out. The fish came in. The portion went over the side.

But this time, she lingered longer at the rail. This time, she watched the water with different eyes.

And when the scale in her pocket seemed to warm under her fingers, she didn't flinch. She pressed her palm flat against it and let the warmth spread up her arm.

She didn't know what she was inviting.

She didn't care.

The sea had been patient with her. She could learn to be patient with the sea.