September 2018

Viola, clad in her tight scuba mask and with the weight of her oxygen tank pulling her towards the water, leaned over the edge of her small boat, and fell through the soft, smooth surface of the bay. Viola adjusted her eyes to the pale sunlight streaking the sands and oriented herself as she did every day. A fish, a common Gray Spout, swished by her face, narrowly missing. That’s funny, she thought, Gray Spouts are usually predators, but this one seems to be running away from something. Just as she finished her thought, Viola saw a streak of glittering orange fly by her eyes. She looked after it and saw a fish that looked to be made of solid gold, unlike anything she had seen during her life by the sea. Viola had come by plenty of goldfish in her day, but nothing quite so massive. The girl immediately kicked off from a bit of coral, rocketing after the fish. Because the creature was going at a breakneck pace, it was quite a challenge for Viola to catch up to it, and the Gray Spout was long gone by the time she did. Viola watched the golden beauty retire into a home in a rock and disappear from sight before she realized what was living around it. Beautiful glittering seaweed towered above her, as far as the eye could see. It shimmered like nothing the girl had ever seen, and continued on in every direction. It was like a forest bathed in bright, full sunlight, the same color as that fish. Daisy would love this, she thought, thinking of her sister lying in her bed, yearning for the waves they had so loved in their childhood. Viola snapped out of her awe and cut a small piece of the plant to inspect later, tucking it into a pocket in her wetsuit for further examination. She swam up, finally surfaced, and saw her boat nearly a mile away. Viola began the long journey home. *          *          * Viola arrived home, hair damp and very exhausted as she did every day. “Daisy, I’m home,” she shouted. “I’m up here, right where I always am,” a soft voice called back. Viola leapt up the stairs, the seaweed in hand. It had a lovely odor, not one of salt water, but one of warm sunny mornings, a breath of fresh air. “Look what I found,” Viola exclaimed as she entered her sister’s room. Daisy lay in her bed, very weak and pale from having been sick for one year. Viola showed her the plant, and the girl’s face lit up. “It’s incredible,” she gasped. “Where did you find it?” “Out on the reef,” Viola explained, telling Daisy of her adventures. “I wish I could go with you,” said Daisy. “I miss the days when we went diving together. But that plant, it smells fantastic! I wonder. . . Could you perhaps make a wonderful tea with it?” Viola figured that it couldn’t hurt to try, and the seaweed seemed so magical. . . If there was anything that could help her sister heal, it was the mysterious plant. She boiled some water and steeped the plant in it, then gave it to Daisy. To Viola’s relief, her sister didn’t die, but nothing else happened either. She called Max and in the meantime she began to inspect the plant. *          *          * “Mornin’,” Max called as he stepped into the lab that Viola had made from the basement; he could always count on finding her there. “Max, you’ll never guess what I found!” Viola exclaimed, stepping aside so he could look through the microscope the plant lay under. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured as he peered through the glass. “I found it out on the reef,” she explained. Suddenly, she heard a shout from above. Viola sprinted up to Daisy’s room where she stood, overwhelmed with joy, staring at her reflection in a small hand-mirror. “Are you alright, Daisy?” “Look at me,” she said, trembling. “I look like I did before. . .” Her voice trailed off. “Before you were sick,” Viola finished, noticing for the first time that Daisy’s cheeks were rosier, her thin face and limbs were no longer thin. She felt happiness that she hadn’t felt since a year ago. “Daisy, you’re not sick anymore!” she exclaimed, hugging her sister closely. At a floorboard creak, Viola turned and saw Max, stunned. “Imagine how much money you could make from this,” he said, but in a tone Viola had never heard from him before. He sounded as though he had a horrible idea. Viola suddenly regretted telling Max of the seaweed, remembering what he had done a year ago, when Viola had discovered a new sort of fish. Max had taken it and sold it to a marine biology center, which named the fish after him. Max told her he needed the money to help his dad recover from a broken leg, but his expensive car and the fact that she had seen his father up and walking the next day said otherwise. Before she went to bed, Viola took the seaweed and laid it in her bedside table, where no one could get to it. “ If there was anything that could help her sister heal, it was the mysterious plant Maybe I’m overreacting, she thought. Max had been a good friend to her when her parents left them, when she had studied to become a marine biologist and turned her basement into a lab, when her sister fell ill. He had apologized extensively for the mix-up and said he had gone back to try and change the name of the fish, but why then had it stayed the same? *          *          * Viola expected to sleep that night like she never had before, without worry over