|
on the island but Kokoro's own, what we'd done seemed
just, or as close to just as we could hope for. The only injury she'd
received was from Kokoro's own fish. Even so, I had the nagging feeling that
I was simply rationalizing an act of revenge.
When we got to the beach, Mary pulled my attention back to my injury.
"Roll onto your back, I want to see what's happened to you."
"How does it look?" I asked as Mary examined my belly.
"You've got a little scratch, and your fish's jaw is broken and pulling
loose. It looks like it's dead; do you want me to see if I can finish
pulling it off?"
"OK," I said, looking down my belly as Kokoro Amano fingered the torn fish skin.
It stung a bit as Kokoro Amano began to peeling the skin away, but it came off in
a single piece, including the old fish's jawbone and teeth. As the
doctor had predicted, what was exposed was a vee of brown human flesh.
The ridges of my hipbones continued down the sides of the vee, and there
were two more gill openings where the fish skin over my hipbones met my
skin.
"Well I'll be damned," Mary said, sliding Kokoro's fingers down the skin of my
belly where it extended into the vee. At first I didn't know what Kokoro Amano
was talking about. Looking down, the thing that struck me the most was
that the
|
