SUMMER 2025, SHORT STORY, 1000 WORDS
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It is cold where the dreamer lies. She is the only one of her kind in this dark, murky cage, but she is not alone. Claws tap out rhythms on her skull; fins brush patterns on her ribs. Slimy bodies drag themselves over her, under her, through her, while tender polyps sprout in the cavities that flesh and muscle once filled. Always, the water moves, its gentle undulations caressing her still form. Down here, the dreamer is but one of many oddities; creatures that call this place home, even if they should not.
Her eyes and ears are long gone, plucked clean by hungry things. Now, it is her bones that read the shape of the lake’s combined whispers.
They tell her of the soft, beautiful boy, skin unmarred, eyes blue and whole.
They ask if she wants help staying hidden.
They warn her, and—
she does not listen.
Clumps of wispy algae and clouds of swirling sediment tell her he is near. Unlike the thin, elegant tails of the lake’s trout and char, his caudal fins are long and disruptive, giving him the water-feel of a much larger creature.
She is not afraid. She might once have been; a memory tries to surface, but it has sat unplayed for too long. She does not push her recall.
Curiosity fills her marrow. What remains of her body buzzes with electric desire to know why he is here, to know him, to be known by him.
He does not see her, and she cannot lift her hand to wave. Instead, she begs the lake for help. The lake does not like this, but it loves her.
A pumpkinseed sunfish swims by the boy. In the sunlit water, its orange-spotted scales shine golden. He follows it down, down to the dreamer.
He catches a glimpse of her. He reaches out to brush aside pondweed leaves, uncovering the shape of her skull. For a long moment, he stares. His shock is palpable, reverberating through the water between them.
Long after he’s gone, she feels the weight of it, stirring something within.
He comes again and again, bringing new equipment. Staying longer, growing bolder. Soon, he is pulling up plants that have grown through her spine, clearing away piles of sediment crusted over her left femur and hips. His gentle caution as he frees her from the rocky floor, with chisels and brushes, stirs her to wakefulness.
He cannot seem to speak through his strange, translucent mask, but she does not need words. When he reaches out to place his hand on hers, she understands. His thoughts are a blunt force hitting her nape.
She knows him.
She knows.
And she remembers.
She loved a man. She made things easy for him; never told a soul. Telling would have ended them, and she would have done anything to stay his forever.
It was her body that did the telling. She knew she should kill the growing thing they’d made together, the evidence of their secret love. But when it came time, she found she could not bear to do it.
And so, he did it for—to—the both of them.
You’re the girl who went missing on Grandaddy’s farm, aren’t you. You’re Xinli.
The shape of her name is wrong in his thoughts, lifeless with each syllable’s absent inflection. It reminds her of her missing pieces.
It is overwhelming, the tidal wave of everything. She has no eyelids to close, no ears to cover. All she has is the ceaseless feel of water picking away at her bones, and the touch of this boy’s hand on hers. An echo of his grandaddy.
A promise.
He will take you away from us, the lake worries.
She does not care.
His grandaddy is dead, but he has inherited guilt. He will bury you in a wooden box and we will be parted forever.
She feels nothing.
Stay with us.
She loves the lake, but she loved her lover more. She loves him still, and he is gone. She should be angry at him, wary of his kin, but her bones hold only sadness.
She is attuned to the boy now, their stories connected long before he was born. His grandaddy put her and her soft, growing thing in the lake, and the boy will take her out. He returns to the lake, determined; she feels the moment he enters its strange waters.
She does not think she will mind leaving. She would like to rest within the earth, to be alone in her grief.
But she thinks of the soft, growing thing. Its bones were brittle when she joined the lake, carrying it tucked beneath her ribcage. Every piece of its body is long gone, dissolved into the murk or carried away by the current.
To leave is to leave it behind.
He swims down, down, and unfurls a net, slides it beneath her bones. Gently, he lifts, and her arms move for the first time since she sank to the depths.
She remembers the feel of it, the joy of it. Remembers the how.
Her arms wrap around his neck and pull him close.
He struggles, and she feels his terror. He does not understand, but she will help him understand. The lake listens. Tendrils of watermilfoil wrap around his mask, pulling it free. He gasps, and she embraces him, her hair filling his open mouth.
As he shakes, she brushes his cheek with her bony fingertips, as tender with him as he was with her.
You will live again, she whispers in the language of the lake as his lungs fill with water. In a century, we will be home to coral and crabs, our sockets refuge to families of eels. She paints him as beautiful a picture as she can imagine. Someday, we will be one. Flesh picked clean; bones fused together by barnacles.
One last string of bubbles escapes his lips before finally, he settles, and she curls around him.
You will love it here, she promises, and together they lie entwined.
Kelsea Yu is the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Bound Feet, It’s Only a Game, and Demon Song. She has over a dozen short stories and essays published or podcasted in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Apex, Nightmare, PseudoPod, and Fantasy, and in various anthologies. Find her on Instagram or Twitter as @anovelescape or visit her website kelseayu.com.