Flora Carr Greenland Shark
I
am adrift. I let the water wash over me. My body is worn smooth and ageless as stone. The sea embalms me. Only my skin gives me away: mottled green and grey. The colours of rot. Above me, the seal sleeps, its head breaking the surface. Plump and oily smooth. Slippery. Difficult to get your teeth into, at least at first. It could outpace me if it were awake. But all creatures need sleep. Rest. And I am in no hurry. The parasite attached to my left eye floats outwards in the current. A dangling white worm. It will blind me one of these days. I have had centuries of sight, so I suppose I should be grateful. The land-people claim I am four hundred years old, give or take a decade. That I have been gliding beneath their boats for centuries. A deity; watery immortality flooding my cold flesh. A monster; a drifting spectre. They are wrong, of course. For I am even older than they say. I squint with my right eye. This seal is not as skittish as its Arctic cousins. But even those spend too much time looking out over the frozen lands, searching for the white bears that spring from the ground. Noisy and bloody. The ice floor creaking beneath their weight. Once, a dead bear sank beneath the waves, a blue-black tongue lolling out from its gaping muzzle. I saw it float towards me. The bear was thin and weak, the meat chewy. Some wounds on its side. A tear in its black skin. Blood blossoming out in red plumes. I am never drunk on blood, like other sharks. The White Belly is driven mad by its scent. I have seen them feed in frenzy, ripping lumps of flesh like some short-lived hot blood. They prey on the land-people, too. A foolishness. Each time, they retaliate. I have seen land-people
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flora carr
