Author: C. G. Aubrey

Managing Editor, Fiction Co-Editor, CNF Co-Editor

C.G. Aubrey is a queer, AuDHD writer and outdoor enthusiast obsessed with yellow leaves, swamp rainbows, and em dashes. She holds dual-masters degrees in US History and Religious Studies and often finds inspiration at the intersection of cultural memory, religion, and the environment. Her story “A Predatory Transience” appeared in Reckoning in 2023; she’s been editing here ever since. Find her occasionally on Bluesky @cgaubrey.bsky.social, Instagram @c.g.aubrey, and www.cgaubrey.com.

Editorial: Becoming “We”

[An Exquisite Corpse]

Humans use words. Mushrooms use mycelia. Who’s to say which is better? This is why we have infused each copy with spores.

If you’re reading this, the psychedelics have already entered your bloodstream. Get ready.

C. G. Aubrey, Priya Chand, Michael J. DeLuca, Ruth Joffre, Hope Joseph, Andrew Kozma, Ellis Nye, Offor Chidera, Catherine Rockwood and Bernie Jean Schiebeling

[An Exquisite Corpse1]

Humans use words. Mushrooms use mycelia. Who’s to say which is better? This is why we have infused each copy with spores.

If you’re reading this, the psychedelics have already entered your bloodstream. Get ready.

The language of our nervous system, the solar system, any system. We don’t hear it? Can you hear the earth burning? The shrieks of languages travailing across species like migrants from another destroyed solar system. The voices of the non-human neighbours pleading to billion deaf ears. Betrayed by alphabets, the language killed by a deficit in the bank of vocabulary. Do you speak/understand the language of the planet?

And if you’re not fluent in Disregulated Polysystem, if sometimes these days it seems impossible to believe reason, attention, goodwill, a ‘decent ear’ should be enough to turn so much noise to signal, well then: what’s the strangest living thing you can love and listen to? Stranded between ice and melt, with January sheeted over sidewalks and March shaking the treetops, maybe you think of lichens, moss; if moss, then tardigrades; if tardigrades, then irritated bears who also suffer from unsettled weather. If bears? then skunk cabbage, which heats itself inside a fruitful mire. Red-hulled stinking food. Saying in its own way, come here—come soon.

Listening gathers silence and casts light into the countless corners of an ever-connecting web. We coalesce at the intersections like dew drops, each our own glimmer until we all become a single shine. Until we are all water and sunlight and rainbow refractions, myriad reflections we only sometimes believe.

Below us, we know, is a darkness we cannot fathom, a hollow our refractions cannot touch. But it’s always been there.

The rain ends and the worms squirm forth, singing. Like orpiment wine, the sun spills across the field; the tender brush unfurl to tap into the light, decussate leaves bobbing up eastward. This is the force of change. No one gets what they want—except us, and we want a happy ending.

So go, sip at the new sun. Listen for what you’ve always missed. Thousands of years ago, human hands traced ochred animals along Chauvet’s stone, painting the slope of a snout, the hunch of shoulders. Let your fingertips sink into warm clay, and know that it is not too late to begin again.

1. Exquisite Corpse is a storytelling game, invented by French Surrealists in the 1920s, wherein each participant adds a single line after having seen only the previous line. The title refers to a line from one of the game’s first incarnations: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.” (“The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”)

Editorial: Everything’s Environmental Justice

C. G. Aubrey

As Michael says, “Everything is environmental justice”, and well “everything” is a lot, but it’s also true. Take fair elections. They may not seem at first glance to be connected to environmental justice, but in places without fair and equal representation, those who stand to suffer the most have the least power to protect themselves from environmental injustices like climate change vulnerabilities, pollution, and displacement.

In red-lined and gerrymandered states across the US, privileged political and economic elites vote against clean energy and line their pockets with money from oil and coal lobbyists, but coal ash doesn’t wind up in their water supplies. They invite and encourage pollution hotspots like data centers, power plants, and refineries to build or dump in poor, rural, disproportionately racialized communities with willful disregard for the health and welfare of the people, the surrounding land, and the water supply. Because dumping—both literal and metaphorical—always occurs downstream.

We’ve seen this kind of inequality before in places like Flint, Michigan, where it’s been twenty years and the primarily Black community is still only beginning to see justice. We see it continuing in climate-vulnerable communities, especially along the coasts where rising sea levels threaten those who can’t afford to leave. We see it across Appalachia, where mountain top removal mining contaminates water, air, and creates ever-worsening health crises. Now, maybe more than ever, we need free elections. To move the scales towards justice everyone must have a voice, and those voices must be represented equally.

In this way, environmental justice is connected to gender equality, to disability rights, to fair lending practices, to immigration and labor laws, to education, and communication. The list is endless because, ultimately, environmental justice challenges unequal and failing systems; it demands new ways of thinking, of communicating, of being.

Environmental justice reminds us, more than anything, that we are all (and always) connected. I hope the works collected here in our beautiful tenth issue show how much those connections matter.

Thanks to all of you for an amazing decade.

Editorial

C. G. Aubrey

In the US this year, we neurodivergent folks have heard a lot about what we cannot do or will never do. Our differences have been increasingly pathologized, demonized, and used to deny us basic respect and decency. Our diagnoses have been dismissed, our personal autonomy, access to medications, and medical care threatened. All because we will never write a poem? That is true for some of us, but poetry is hardly a standard skill set among neurotypicals. It is, after all, uncommon experiences and mindsets that shape creativity. What is poetry, after all, but the manifestation of uncommon wonder?

I began this editorial back in May, when we here at Reckoning first decided to produce this special reprint collection. This was seven drafts ago. Each time I sat down to write, I found myself wanting to avoid vulnerability and to explain . . . well, everything. I wanted to be certain we all understood that neurodivergence is more than ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder; that the face of neurodivergence is neither white nor male nor USAmerican. Neurodivergence is complex and intersectional, and what is considered neurodivergent can vary greatly with cultural norms. I wanted to define terms and provide helpful links. I was drafting a rebuttal to a certain US public official’s list, both scholarly and emotional. Then I realized that I was coming perilously close to defending our existence.

We should not need this kind of defence (though too often we do). We do, however, need acknowledgement, and we deserve celebration. Neurodivergent folks live with differences and difficulties that shouldn’t be dismissed, but likewise, with determination and daring that cannot be disregarded. We are out here, every day, doing the deep, meaningful work of living. And there is much work to do. There are voices to find, voices to lift, especially among the most vulnerable of us. There is art to create. There are discoveries to be made, policies to change, and stereotypes to dismantle. We’ll get to all of those, and more, because

We have been doing, all along, the very things we continue to be told we can’t.

If we must speak in generalities (because this is apparently what we do, /irato/), let us speak instead of neurodivergent curiosity and creativity, of the many artists, writers, and, yes, poets among us. Let us speak our devotion to making sense of life’s chaos, and not ignore the ongoing contributions of neurodivergent scientists and scholars. Let us speak of our strong sensitivity to injustice, of the many neurodivergent individuals who pursue careers in social work and activism. We should also speak of our determination to connect with others, to understand and to be understood. There are communication deficits among many of us (this is also a cultural malady affecting neurotypicals, but never mind that), and yet we persist. We listen for words unspoken; we acknowledge the silenced. We continue, despite so many obstacles, to find our voices, to speak for ourselves and for those who cannot.

Among the works collected from Reckoning’s first decade, you’ll find these refrains. Short stories like T.K. Rex’s “SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN SWIMMING TOGETHER” and Taylor Jones’s “Possession” build communication bridges between disparate communities and species. Powerful works like Mari Ness’s poem “Green Leaves Against the Wind” and Ariadne Starling‘s essay “The X That Means Both Death and Hope” remind us that justice is both personal and political, inextricably intertwined. Jacob Coffin beautifully imagines a greener, more tenable, infinitely possible future, repurposed from an unsustainable present. We meet our current uncertainties with actionable hope.

This special neurodivergent reprint collection is for us—to celebrate, to encourage, and to fortify our neurodivergent contributors, readers, and supporters. However, it is shared in hope and gratitude with everyone, wherever you might fit within humanity’s sprawling neurodiversity. If you have found yourself a little lost in reading this editorial, please know that I did, in fact, find a way to over-explain. In the back pages of this issue you’ll find definitions, explanations, and resources.

When I consider the struggles of this present moment, and the voices that seek to drown out those of neurodivergent individuals and communities, I am reminded of nature’s song. Cacophony seems an overused word, and yet it is filled with breath, with the rise and fall of syllables, notes dulcet and discordant. It embraces every cadence of birdcall, every splash and screech, scurry and slither; it holds within it the dissonance of the chase, the flee, the sweet stench of decay, the quiet flights, and the screaming iridescence. There is room for the consonance and dissonance of humanity’s harmony, though many of us would rather not consider ourselves a part of it, and some of us try too hard to decide who gets to sing at all. We forget that the chorus has always been divergent, that the moth’s silence is not unspeaking.

There is poetry in its wings.

Bonus Content

C. G. Aubrey

Neurodivergent, adjective [English] (neu·ro·di·ver·gent)

: having or relating to a disorder or condition (such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder) that impacts the way the brain processes information : exhibiting or characteristic of variations in typical neurological development.1

Neurodiversity, noun [English] (neu·ro·di·ver·si·ty)

1: individual differences in brain functioning regarded as normal variations within the human population

2: the concept that differences in brain functioning within the human population are normal, that brain functioning that is not neurotypical should not be stigmatized, and that people with neurodivergent brain functioning should not be excluded from groups, organizations, etc.2

“[The neurodiversity paradigm] challenges us to reexamine all categories and concepts that currently fall under the pathology paradigm, lest it turn out we have wrongly medicalized suffering in any strand of human life that might better be accounted for in terms of social marginalization and oppression.”3

Important Notes

The words “neurodivergent” and “neurodiversity” are rooted in the English language and English speaking and cultural contexts.

Definitions of neurodivergence and disabilities (as with other marginalizations) are culturally and societally ascribed. What is labeled as such in one culture may not be in another.

While we will often find “neurodivergent” and “neurodiversity” used together, it is important to understand that “neurodiversity” and the Neurodiversity Movement represent a paradigm shift from pathology to diversity. This shift, however, does not (and should not) include the very real and disabling experiences of neurodivergent individuals.

Podcast Episode 39: A Predatory Transience

C. G. Aubrey read by Bernie Jean Schiebeling, produced by Aaron Kling

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:18 — 80.8MB) | Embed

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Bernie: Hello again, Reckoning Press Podcast! I’m Bernie Jean Schiebeling, the reader for this episode, with Aaron Kling as producer. Today we’re sharing C.G. Aubrey’s “A Predatory Transience” from Reckoning 7. What I admire most about this piece is its grounding in a present moment. The rich imagery that C.G. brings to the landscapes of the South Carolina salt marshes as well as the embodiment of her narrator. This story asks us to consider the ways we change the world as we move through it, the way the world changes us, and what form we want those changes to take. In an interview with E.C. Barrett for Reckoning, C.G. had this to say: “Even just going out and picking up trash when you kayak, like my main character does, makes an immediate, quantifiable impact. We’ll be so much better off if individuals feel like they can make a difference.”

Enjoy your time in the salt marsh, everyone! Take only pictures, leave only footprints, and pick up any trash you find along the way.

A Predatory Transience by C. G. Aubrey

From the Editors: Grief

C. G. Aubrey

When we decided to leave Reckoning 9 without a theme, I wasn’t certain what to expect. Speculative fiction brings to environmental justice writing endless possibilities. Within speculative fiction, we explore difficult topics like climate change, pollution, and human displacement from the comfortable frames of comic sci-fi, cozy fantasy, and solarpunk. “No theme” could have well meant chaos, but even as the submissions for this issue spanned genres and galaxies and uncertain futures, I found an oft repeating thread: we are all grieving.

Some of us are grieving for the lives of loved ones lost. Some of us are grieving the loss of our homes and livelihoods to climate change. Some of us are grieving the countless ecosystems lost or nearly lost to environmental destruction and degradation. Many of us are grieving the loss of community, of connection, with each other and with our planet. For some, this grief is new. For far too many, it is generational, an historic truth with consequences immediate and future-reaching, as the essays of Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis and Jacqueline St. Pierre so rightly remind us.

It is an immense privilege to grieve with you, to not only hold space for such profound losses, but to lift the voices and hearts of those whose grief has gone too long ignored or silenced. In the way of comfort, there is little that I can say that others, many collected here, have not said better. I can only offer, through their works, the power of resistance, the strength of community, and the persistence of nature, of which we humans are still very much a part.

I hope you’ll take what you need and share what you can.

21 December 2024

From the traditional border of Tuscarora and Siouan territory.

Reckoning 9 – Submission Call

Priya Chand, Catherine Rockwood and C. G. Aubrey

Reckoning 9 is open for general submissions! There is no specific theme for this issue; if your work concerns any aspect of environmental justice, from food sovereignty to ocean plastics to industrial cleanup to Indigenous rights, we want to see it. In fact, we look forward most eagerly to perspectives none of us has thought of. Please help us learn and understand.

The editors for the issue will be C.G. Aubrey, Priya Chand, and Catherine Rockwood, with help and support from the rest of the wonderful and brilliant Reckoning staff.

As always, we are seeking art, poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction up to 20,000 words in length, in particular from Indigenous, Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent and/or otherwise marginalized writers and artists from everywhere, and as of August 2024 we pay $75/page for poetry and art, 15c/word for prose. Deadline for this issue is the solar equinox, September 22, 2024.

Full guidelines are here. Please submit?

Issue 7 Author Interview: C.G. Aubrey

C. G. Aubrey interviewed by E.C. Barrett

In C.G. Aubrey’s “A Predatory Transience,” mysterious text messages direct a kayaking eco-defender to a boat of booze-soaked white men who are shooting bonnethead sharks for fun. We spoke about the importance of individual action and systemic overhaul, and artificially drawn divisions between human and non-human nature.

Our conversation, which contains spoilers, has been edited for clarity and length.

E.C. Barrett: Identity is an integral part of your story. I’m thinking of the different ways your protagonist is conscious of where she exists in the social order in terms of how people perceive her and what that allows her to do or doesn’t allow her to do. What are some of the connections you make between identity and environmental justice?

C.G. Aubrey: My character and I are both middle aged, or close-to middle aged, white women. I don’t get into her economic background, but I grew up below the poverty line in the South Carolina Lowcountry and that creates a very specific sort of worldview.

Environmental injustice is absolutely tied to racism and other forms of human injustice. You wouldn’t have areas that were heavily polluted if wealthy white men—though white women have definitely benefited too—weren’t the ones choosing where their runoff goes, where their factories are going to pollute. Most of our pollution doesn’t happen in pristine, beautiful areas of untouched, unsettled land. The same areas that become undesirable through pollution tend to be populated by marginalized individuals.

In the United States, we have a culture of early conservation that was very much linked to wealthy white people–our national parks being a very good example. That land was taken from people—indigenous people in particular—and then set aside for privileged white use. I won’t say they’re kept wild or kept perfectly, but they don’t have fracking or other sorts of environmental awfulness occurring there. That happens in lower economic neighborhoods, downstream or on the other side of the tracks, or whatever euphemism you want to use for land that has traditionally belonged to people that the elite don’t value. I saw a lot of that firsthand, growing up, because I lived on the other side of the tracks.

It’s also people in the top 10% economically who are doing the most damage, and it’s important to acknowledge that.

ECB: Right. I think about Elon Musk and Taylor Swift hopping on their private jets to get across town and I know nothing I’m doing is actually contributing anywhere close to what they’re doing in a couple of flights.

CGA: One year of their life is more damaging than anything you’re going to do over the course of your entire life.

It’s easy to look out and see things snowballing in a terrible direction and say, “Well, I’m never going to do enough good. I’m never going to do enough to matter when Taylor Swift, or anyone, can fly back and forth across the globe, or across town, and undo any possible good I might have done.” But there are whole species that are rebounding because people have yelled enough to stop stacking rocks in streams. So it’s important to remember that our actions do matter.

ECB: Your story offers some catharsis for that sort of despair, as well as a call to action.

CGA: I think it’s important for us to encourage each other. We have to take direct action. We have to be prepared for not just the good parts of our actions leaving a better world—like saving the sharks in the story—but also how that kind of action will change us. It changes my protagonist. She could be viewed as a very morally upright, good human, but then does these very horrible things without any real sort of remorse. And that changes people. We have to grapple with how we will be changed by our actions to improve the world and that’s one of the roles of fiction, helping us imagine ourselves in other situations, having made other choices.

ECB: Are there any books or writers who have helped inform your thinking about these issues?

CGA: Coyote at the Kitchen Door is a great group of essays that talk about how the nonhuman natural world is now encroaching upon us. More recently, I read A Natural History of the Future by Robb Dunn, which is very good. The world will be around so much longer than we will and non-human nature will rebound and it will produce new, beautiful things and we will just be the tiniest blip on its timeline. I think there’s a little bit of optimism in that, but as a human I would like for us not to destroy ourselves. I love the idea that nature is reaching out, because we all belong in nature, there shouldn’t be such a division between human and nature.

ECB: There were dandelions in my yard this January, when there should be snow on the ground, not flowers. It briefly made me incredibly sad. Then I noticed there were bees out gathering pollen from them and it was wonderful, because the dandelions and bees were working in concert and it was strangely comforting to witness how the non-human world will find a way to survive us. More to your point, though, the dandelions and bees were also in the process of making food and medicine that humans could use in a climate-changed January.

CGA: Bees are a great example of humans and non-humans in community. Bees need us to harvest their honey. Without human intervention, bees will produce so much honey that they then have to build a new nest or they’ll end up with so much extra honey that they produce two queens, which can lead to hive wars. They have evolved to live as long as they have, and continue to do all the wonderful things bees do, because they have done that in conjunction with us.

ECB: Your story blurs the division between human and non-human nature, as it seems the bonnethead sharks are in cahoots with whatever entity is sending the texts that, in effect, use your protagonist as a survival tool. I have to say, it’s a bold move, having a heroine who kills humans to protect marine life.

CGA: Yeah, I’ve read through Reckoning Issue 7 and I think my story may be the most violent–which will be unsurprising to those who know me.

Not that I’m particularly violent, but I have a very strong sense of justice. There’s so much frustration about the injustices going on and it’s important for people to feel that individual action does matter. You can make a difference, especially at the local level, in your community.

Of course, I’m not saying go out and murder the bad guys. Even just going out and picking up trash when you kayak, like my main character does, makes an immediate, quantifiable impact. We’ll be so much better off if enough individuals feel like they can make a difference. That is really important to me.

ECB: I was thinking about the violence in your story and how one of the things it does is take seriously the rights and value of the marine life that these men were killing. When I say take it seriously, I mean, it begs the question: is this violence actually bad? What makes the human hunter’s lives more valuable than the marine lives that they were taking? Could you talk to me a bit about that, and how speculative fiction allows you to take that seriously in a way that you maybe can’t in real life?

CGA: Normal disclaimer: murder is bad. The violence in the story is real, but the murders themselves are a metaphor. And the reason I say it that way is I don’t think that we can affect the kind of change that’s necessary without it being perceived as violence. When you displace people who have that kind of power over other lives, it’s going to feel violent to the people being displaced or even to the people who are affecting that change. Because it’s not as simple as picking up garbage. It’s going to take real systemic overhauls and those overhauls are going to feel very violent, whether they reach the point of actual bloodshed or not.

We know that the choices of the villains in the story are very deliberate. Most of us have, in some way or form, encountered those affluent white men who have no regard for the lives around them. For people that exist on the marsh, and South Carolina Lowcountry in particular, we see those guys all the time. And we know that they’re killing for the thrill of killing–with marine life in particular. Those same types of people are highly likely to be violent with humans in their lives, especially those at a lower power status.

The people who have devalued the lives of others, whether it’s marine life or tree life or marginalized human lives, they’re not going to just do the right thing because we tell them they have to. I think one of the things that happens, once you understand that as an individual, is that you then feel powerless.

Speculative fiction gives us a place where we don’t feel as powerless, a place to explore that systemic upheaval and create the changes we would like to see in our world.

A Predatory Transience

C. G. Aubrey

This is your reservation reminder from Palmetto Kayak Adventure Tours. Your four-hour self-guided tour is scheduled for today, 1–5pm. Reply 1 to confirm, 2 to cancel. Hope to see you soon!

The text is waiting when I wake up. White letters stark against the black text box. I don’t bother looking at the number. I’ve made no such reservation, nor the one for Lowcountry Marsh Tours that I was sent on last year, or Saltmarsh Wanderings the year before that. The origin of the texts remains untraceable, and I’ve had some smart people looking.

The first time, I thought I’d won a giveaway. I like to ramble down to Charleston and the Sea Islands a few times a year, spend half a day out on the water laughing with the gulls and crying in wonder at the rays and dolphins. A giveaway wasn’t too far-fetched. It wasn’t until I got where I was going that I knew why I was there. Now it’s an affirmation of faith, a call and response between me and the sea.

I text back to confirm and dress for the day. Water leggings, sports bra, and a long-sleeved sun shirt; baseball cap from a school in the northern part of the state. I’m what they call a local tourist, not quite a local, definitely not one of the out-of-state offenses the Sun Belt is forced to rely upon for revenue. Still, it’s an hour drive down to Folly Island and I have time to sit in the quiet truck and talk to myself, make sure this is what I want to do. What I still want to do. It’s not new to me. Ten years since that first text and I’ve taken over a dozen of these impromptu trips, trusting that I’m doing my small part to leave the marsh—maybe the world—better than I found it.

My friends marvel at my impulsiveness. My bravery. My joie de vivre. They can’t imagine going anywhere on their own, much less out onto the water, but I’m rarely more than a few hundred yards from shore and 80% of the water I’m on isn’t even over my head. It’s not like I’m out free climbing red rocks without a safety partner.

“Ms. McDonald?”

I’m never what they’re expecting and today less so. It’s a perfect November day and the weather is beautiful—bright blue sky, sun blade-sharp as it glints off the dark water—but there’s a storm off the coast and the breeze is fierce. I’ll be paddling into a 15mph wind and spend most of the paddle out against the tide. I don’t look like the athletic type.

Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

“Like the farmer,” I confirm with a very realistic moo-moo here. Sometimes the joke lands, sometimes it doesn’t, but the couple behind the counter is closer to my age, granola crunchy sapphics from the upstate who made their way south in the nineties and found Charleston more hospitable. Angela’s name tag boasts a rainbow flag pin not too different than the one she’s just noticed on my hat. She grins back and I add, “That’s me.”

“Gonna be a rough afternoon out there,” she warns, but she takes my credit card anyway. “But if you stick to the edges, you’ll be alright. Should be able to get a little paddling in before the wind gets worse.”

I’ve paid for four hours. I’m not coming in until it’s storming or dark, but I’m used to people underestimating me. When I was younger, when I had more to prove, it used to infuriate me. Somewhere around thirty, I realized it was a gift. By the time I turned forty, it was a miracle.

No one expects much of a round, middle-aged white woman. They suspect her even less.

Angela and I make small talk as I sign the necessary waivers and give them my emergency contacts. Her wife, Kathy, tells me to be careful. They seem a little reluctant to send me out until I show them my waterproof phone in its floaty bag. They ask if I have water and I show them my favorite insulated steel flask. It’s so big it has its own sling across my back and holds enough water for most of the day. If I have to I can use it as a bludgeoning weapon.

They don’t need to know that last part.

“There’s an old boat they beached on this little creek,” Angie says, handing me a laminated map of the King Flats Creek and its tiny tributaries. Some of the brackish waterways are so small they only really exist at high tide. “It’s full of crabs.”

“I’ll be sure to check it out.”

It’s all very up and up. They give me back my card and I head out to the landing. The salt in the air is holy, by day’s end I’ll be dusted and glittering like a sea pixie, anointed.

The Folly kid waiting with my bright red kayak is too young to be a burned-out hippy, but he’s burned out just the same. A full-time resident of the island, with long, salt-dried, sun-bleached hair that might have once been brown, skin burned and bronzed like the bottom of a biscuit. I couldn’t guess at his age; his face and hands are weathered from outdoor life. What brain cells he has left know more about the tides and marsh than I ever will.

But it doesn’t call to him.

“You’re a local right?” he asks, hope drawing a frown between his warm, brown eyes.

“Local tourist,” I admit with a smile that always disarms. “From swamp country, an hour or so north.”

We have our own tourist problem, though it’s migratory. Every spring, they come for the lakes and the golf-course weather. If there’s a polo-shirt, cleat-wearing version of me wildflower-bombing thousands of acres of pesticide-soaked bentgrass, I don’t need to know about it, but I wish her well.

“Ah.” Folly kid nods in almost approval, like he knows a little of what I’m thinking. Maybe he does. He takes a deep breath and I find myself inhaling with him, a slow toke of pungent pluff mud air. “Bit different down here.”

He likes me, feels safe around me just like most wild creatures. He smells a little sweet, like good pot and seawater. Nothing worse to him than the necessary evil of tourists.

“It is,” I agree. “But it’s nice to get out on someone else’s water every now and then.”

I’m not arrogant enough to think myself at home here. This isn’t my land. It’s not even the land of my people. Some of my people stole it from the Kussoe centuries ago. I’m an interloper. An occasional predator necessary to the ecosystem, but neither resident nor invasive.

He nods again, sagely, points with his chin at the rough, rippling water. “Too salty here for snakes or alligators.”

It’s mostly true. They’re what biologists call transient species. Animals who only spend part of their lives in the marsh. Alligators are as rare as I am; the daily commuters are dolphins, rays, and small sharks. Each drawn into the intertidal area by the promise of calm water and good hunting.

Local tourists, like me.

“It’ll be a little rough getting across,” he says. He’s worried about the currents too. The river is wide here, a dark reflection of autumn sky. Clouds may gather like omens a few miles southeast, but the way the weather wavers, it’s unlikely I’ll see rain.

I zip on my life vest just to make him feel better and assure him that I have been kayaking before. He gives me the same speech he gives everyone, marks a couple of points of interest on the map with a wet fingertip, including the crab boat.

“Just stick to the edge,” he says, finally. “Tide’ll be with you on the way back, make the return a whole lot easier.”

He pushes my boat half out into the water, and waits for me to get settled. I take my time, storing my water bottle out of the way, clipping my floaty-bag to a bungee by my seat. I have a multi-tool in my waist pouch and a mesh bag for litter. There’s always something out there that shouldn’t be.

“Ready?”

It’s been a rough two years, pandemic and all that, and this is my first trip beyond my own swamp in eighteen months. I brace myself, mentally and physically, for the send-off. I’m not a small woman, and part of me still expects to be too big, too heavy for something as simple and finite as the laws of buoyancy. I don’t know why—except cultural conditioning—it’s not like I’m close to the kayak’s weight limit, but it’s hard being a woman who takes up space.

Fat. I know we’re supposed to be reclaiming that word, giving it the neutral value it’s supposed to have, but it’s never been neutral to me. Maybe if I were a whale or a seal or a manatee. Maybe if fat was something you had instead of something you are.

I tug on my gloves and pick up my paddle. “Ready.”

On the water, I’m just another round marine creature. I’m heavy, but I’m strong. My body has never failed to do what I want or need it to. That’s all the water cares about. If it cares at all. Bigger and stronger than I get lost beneath its surface every day. Having come back from drowning twice as a child, I’m acutely aware of this. I still get a cold skitter down my spine whenever I cross deep, dark water. Doesn’t matter how many times I manage it safely. There’s only one wrong breath between us and oblivion.

The Folly kid was right; it’s rough crossing the widest part of the river. It’s deep water, permanent. I look both ways before I start to cross, a mostly useless habit out here. The big boats stick to the center, and most run a low wake, but not all. It’s not like a kayaker is fast enough to get out of the way. We rely on common courtesy, the laws—both written and not—of water etiquette.

Across the water, miles of Spartina grass wave, green and gilded and filled with the surf-sounding tumble of a brisk sea wind. The water along the edge is calm as promised, and I’m halfway across when an offshore fishing boat goes zipping by too fast. Post-911 country music blares, louder than the breeze, and the tattered nylon buzz of an American flag hangs past respectful retirement on the Master Baiter’s stern. I raise my paddle and let the waves push me roughly toward the bank. Assholes. Serve them right if it’s them that I’m here for, but there’s no use worrying about that yet.

The kayak bottoms out, a soft bump then a harsh grate as the tough plastic scrapes against oyster shells clustered in the shallows. I wait for the water to calm again, for the smell of diesel exhaust to sweep past me and vanish, before I push back off, paddle digging into the muddy bank. A handful of long-legged oystercatchers dash along beside me, footprints disappearing in the damp sand, bright red bills flashing amid grey-shelled oysters. They’re not bothered by the assholes; maybe I shouldn’t be either.

Not yet.

My paddling form is terrible, clunky. Doesn’t matter how often I come. My arms are short or I’m clumsy. Maybe both. I don’t know. I just know practice hasn’t cured me. But the wildlife never seems to mind. I know it’s partly because they’re accustomed to worse than me, but I like to think they know I’m no threat to them, that they welcome me among them. I paddle ahead of the birds and grab my phone, snap photos as the wind pushes me back. A scoop of pelicans swoop low in front of me and I get their pictures as well before I lose too much momentum. Then it’s back to balancing, staying close enough to the bank that I don’t have to fight the wind, but not so close that I’m bottoming out every dozen yards.

I might not be getting my steps in, but I’m getting my workout. At least I’m not sweaty. Soaked through from wind and sub-par paddling form, but not sweaty. I love being out here. Surrounded by water, sky, and marsh. The entire day is blue-white and golden, a perfect mid-seventies. Overhead a red-tailed hawk circles. Tiny birds dart through the cordgrass, marsh wrens and saltmarsh sparrows, nibbling on grass seeds and insects.

Every time I check my map or stop for water, I drift back. I’ve kayaked before but nothing like this. The marsh is usually peaceful as a warm bath, and I’ve never really bemoaned my poor paddling form, but I’m regretting it today, even as I’m grateful to have remembered my gloves. My first time out I went home with blisters and that was on water as smooth as glass.

The grass opens up on my left, the small tributary with the promised crab boat. It’s not quite the halfway point of my four hours, but I’m tired enough to take the respite. The wind doesn’t roar here, it sighs, and so do I, letting as much of the last year go as I can. I take a selfie with a great blue heron who seems utterly unconcerned with my presence, post it and a few other pictures to the ‘gram. Establishing a timeline. An alibi.

Perfect fall day on the water!

As promised, just around a bend, a derelict fishing boat has been overturned and run aground. Repurposed as a crab habitat, its sun-scoured, barnacle-covered surface swarms with orange-fisted fiddler crabs, claws raised in warning as my shadow falls too close. I salute the intrepid arthropods and paddle past, bank my kayak and take a few more photos, then a water break in the quiet. The sun is nap-warm and my arms are just starting to get tired. I toy with the idea of hiding here for what little is left of the afternoon, but there’s work waiting for me.

A chip wrapper flashes silver from the bank. Beside it lies a plastic milk jug and a tangled knot of fishing line the size of my fist. The fishing line is the worst, but that silver flashes like a lure to more than me out here. I use my paddle to drag the rubbish to the edge of my kayak, throw one leg off the other side to balance as I lean down to pick it up. The water’s cold this late in the season, and even knowing the bottom is only inches beneath my dangling foot, I feel the silty truth of my own vulnerability. I distract myself with a few curses for all litterbugs and head back out.

The tide turns as I reach the widest part of the creek. It’s deep water here, and the storm current is strong, pushing me back the way I’ve come even as the leaving tide pulls me forward. I fight along with the water, because it’s not in me not to, because there is a single crystalline moment when it’s just me and the water and the wind and I am both insignificantly small and cosmically stubborn. Immortal, ephemeral. My entire being surrendering to the frantic pursuit of perseverance, ultimately going nowhere.

I hate it, but I am still paddling.

I have a moment to doubt, a moment to wonder if the marsh really chose me or if my descent into madness was the inevitable product of growing up in a late-stage capitalist hellscape, consuming too many Disney Princess movies and 90s environmentalist cartoons. What makes me any different than the white kids deep-diving into far-right radicalism on Youtube?

An hour before sunset, the marsh grass shadows stretch long, dark reflections in the unquiet water. The Atlantic is just a song away; the salt in the air thickens. Last time I was here, my sister and I turned back about a quarter-mile before King Flats merges with Folly and Oak Island creeks, but I’ve never been this far out alone. A pair of osprey crisscross above me, hunting cries all but lost in the wind, and even though I’m expecting them, I startle when the first bonnethead shark bumps the bottom of my boat.

“You’re late,” I accuse, as if there is any timeline but that of the marsh.

The second little shark swipes the side of my kayak, movements reminiscent of herding dogs. Soon there are a dozen swimming close to the surface, avoiding my paddle with enviable agility. Bonnethead sharks aren’t big enough to threaten people, even if they wanted to, which they don’t. They’re the smallest of the hammerheads—in hammer and in length—tending around three to four feet long and traveling in schools of twelve to fifteen. Omnivores, if you can imagine. They’re the only sharks we know of whose diet consists equally of plants. They forage into the marsh because they like swimming along the bottom of shallow water, grazing on sea lettuce and crustaceans.

I take a deep breath, my doubts sinking to the bottom like so much detritus. It won’t be long now. Longest it’s ever taken from pick up to target is ten minutes. I lift my paddle from the water and let the bonnetheads bump and nudge and push the nose of my kayak in the direction they want me going. Nothing about my escort is natural. They’re not false-smiling bottle-nosed dolphins charming boaters with swim-bys and strand feedings.

Whatever time is left, I spend preparing: turning off my phone, making sure it’s safely secured in the kayak. I take a few gulps of water. No matter how often we do this my throat always gets dry. My shirt is salt-crusted, lips wind-chapped. I’d be sunburned if I didn’t insist on an unreasonable SPF. I check the fit of my gloves, flex salt from the creases. My arms feel like jelly and my feet have pressed to the pegs for so long, I can’t tell what my legs are doing. That’s pretty normal, especially after a long time sitting in the boat. When I finally get back to the landing, Folly kid will tell me to go slow getting up and he’ll hover, not wanting a customer to land on their ass.

A curved fin breaks the water beside me, and my heart leaps free of its fears as a pair of dolphins breach gently, grey sides slick with watercolor sunset. They cross in front of my kayak and then something heavier than a bonnethead bumps beneath my seat. What makes me different from those radicalized kids? They do. An unnatural alliance. Sharks, dolphins, and the raptors overhead. Disparate species gathering together, water and wildlife willing me on their way.

Whatever my reluctance, it’s lost in exaltation. We make the last deep bend of King Flats Creek. Ahead is Folly Creek, then a half-mile farther the Atlantic. The Master Baiter is anchored in the confluence of the three creeks, and yes, I’m glad it’s them. The water is dark, filled with the sky’s reflection, but there’s something floating like oil just below all that sky. As I draw closer to the boat, I can see that it’s blood.

It’s legal to chum in South Carolina; it’s a standard fishing practice. There are certain restrictions around certain beaches, but I’ve never bothered learning them. I don’t care about what’s legal, I only care about what’s right. Here, in this quiet sanctuary, it is defilement. Sacrilege. I pick up my paddle, stick one end forward on my right and cut hard to port.

They’re “shark fishing.” The kind of nonsense that leaves hooks in mouths and bullet wound scars on heads, backs, and sides. We’re supposed to leave nothing behind, but some people think that the only way to be remembered is to leave a scar upon the earth. They’re always the same. White men with too much or too little money. Ignorant of all but their own entitlement. I don’t need to have the first fin brought to my attention, but whatever brought me out here wants to be sure of my investment, I guess. One of the dolphins swims up alongside, eye lifted out of the water, a dark certainty in the meeting of our gaze. The fin in her mouth is small, cut clean, not torn or ripped like any non-human might manage.

The Master Baiter looms with laughter and loud music. Three figures move along the deck, but they haven’t noticed me. It’s impossible to hear the gunshots over the wind, but the creatures around my boat recoil with every shot, and the kayak seems to reverberate with fear and anger and my own trembling rage. When my bow brushes the side of the boat, the sharks and dolphins dive. I don’t see the darker shadow that follows, but I can feel it, a low quiet rising from the deep water like a promise.

They’re too busy taking turns shooting into the water to notice me. I grab a line and tether my kayak to the ladder on the side of the boat. By the time they realize they’re not alone, I’m onboard, leaning back against the rail, situation and targets assessed.

Early twenties. Gym muscles and soft hands. Beach blonde hair growing out from hundred-dollar haircuts. Perfect teeth, expensive sunglasses. They’re not kids; they’re grown-ass men languishing too long under the protective banner of boys. Their parents have summer homes in places like Beaufort and Isle of Palms and Frogmore Isle, but they like to come to the marshes and cosplay the local rednecks in cut-up Dirty Crab t-shirts of buxom cartoon girls covered in double entendres.

“I called ahoy,” I lie with a nod back to my kayak. The boat smells like beer and blood and fish guts and there’s a red, white, and jingoist anthem twanging from the stereo. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but cruelty has its own cadence. There’s no doubt about why I’m here. “Water was getting rough. Y’all mind if I tie up for a few minutes, get my second wind?”

They glance back and forth between each other. The one holding the gun—it’s a 9mm Glock; I can’t even—tucks it into the back waistband of jeans he bought already ripped to hell.

“Naw.” His accent is bad, either a part of the south I’m not from or something he picked up on those faux southern reality shows, the ones that wouldn’t know a real southern accent if it blessed their fucking hearts. “We’re just doing a little fishing.”

He pulls at the brim of his trucker hat. I can’t tell if he’s trying to tip it at me politely or if he’s just nervous. I can’t see his eyes, but I don’t need to. He realizes he’s caught. He just doesn’t know what net he’s in.

“Water’s rough for fishing,” I say as his buddies fall back to flank him. They’re just out of arm’s reach, but that’s okay. I’ve nearly got my legs back.

The other two aren’t nervous. They’ve done nothing wrong and they’re used to being the most important people in any given room. The guy with the gun, well, he’s a little squirmy, wondering how much I saw, how much trouble I can get him in. He’s been in trouble for stupid shit before. I don’t know this for certain, but I recognize the type. Daddy’s important or wants to be; Junior keeps costing him money and reputation with the cover-ups.

“S’posed to calm down this evening,” says one of Junior’s buddies. He’s got blood and offal on the hem of his t-shirt, and I avoid looking at the mess on deck. It’s clear they’ve never cleaned a fish before; they’re not fishing for food or even sport. They just want to kill something. “Hoping to get a good haul tonight.”

Junior can’t decide what to do with his hands. He crosses his arms in front of his chest. Uncrosses them. I don’t say anything about the gun; I already know it’s mine. Just as soon as he turns his back to me. Whether that’s before or after one of his buddies hits the water is all that remains to be seen.

I just want to kill something too.

“Not really the ideal spot for shark fishing,” I say lightly. They could shrug it off if they wanted to, but they’re not the type to take criticism from a woman who isn’t their momma or their unfortunate girlfriend.

“It is if you put enough bait out.” Junior laughs, and I decide I’m going to leave him for last.

I don’t answer. Instead, I make a show of stretching. When a fat woman does anything active, people tend to look away or stare in judgment. They turn back to the rail, and I’m instantly forgotten as the third one leans too far over, reaching down toward the water.

“Chad, on your right!” Bloody Hem says excitedly.

I get close enough to see that he has a bangstick partially submerged. I’ve never seen one in action—they’re used by divers and spear-fishers as shark deterrents—and I doubt this is anything like the right way, but I’ve seen the effects of them, photographs of three-inch deep holes in the broad beautiful heads of bull sharks somehow still swimming.

Chad leans farther out, stretching, stretching . . . stretching.

It doesn’t take much. The idiot isn’t even flat-footed. He’s on his toes, leaning out as far as he can and still keep his weapon in the water. His buddies are cheering him on. When he tips face-first into the water, it takes them entirely too long to realize I pushed him. Hell, if I hadn’t grabbed Junior’s gun—easily, far too easily—they might have kept laughing, assuming Chad was shit-faced enough to lose his balance.

But I have Junior’s gun.

“What the fuck, bitch?!”

The violence simmers up on an outraged shout that is always just beneath the surface with these kinds of men. Junior takes a step towards me and I shake my head once. He should be grateful I’m not stuck using my vacuum flask.

“Shh . . . .” I don’t know if they can hear me over the wind, over the country music twanging beneath cries of the gathering gulls, but they still, gazes darting to each other like frightened baitfish.

It’s been years since I held a handgun. I’ve always preferred revolvers, at least until the gun nuts ruined that for the rest of us. I have a rifle and a shotgun at home. One for hunting, the other for scaring off coyotes or any other uninviteds too close to my house. The 9mm feels like a toy, but Bloody Hem and Junior are taking me seriously now that I have it leveled at them. I wonder how many bullets are left in the clip.

“You can’t steal my boat.” Junior has misread the situation.

I can’t help but laugh. Confusion reddens their faces.

“I don’t want your boat.” I make eye contact with Bloody Hem through his polarized shades, point toward the water with the gun, then back at him. “Go on. You can take your chances in the water or don’t. But I’ma see how many bullets you have left in three . . . two . . . .”

They stare at me in disbelief, but they jump before I get to one. I’m actually a little surprised, though I shouldn’t be. Courage is in short supply among this particular demographic. They don’t know what to do when they aren’t the ones holding the gun.

Twin splashes quickly become desperate thrashing. Just off the bow, the water writhes and churns with blood and unidentifiable voids. When I see a terrified face too close to the surface, I lean out and down, close enough that skill hardly matters. Close enough that the Glock could have been a bangstick. I put a bullet between Chad’s wide blue eyes. Now he’s bait. If there’s an afterlife or a next life or purgatory, maybe someone can teach him about irony and just deserts.

Bloody Hem screams something watery and incoherent, but he’s no fool. He’s swimming hard for the ladder at the boat’s stern. He doesn’t see the unnaturally large bull shark gliding behind him, Junior’s arm hanging out one side of her beautiful mouth.

But I do.

She’s not a real shark. With very rare exceptions, even the biggest and hungriest sharks want little to do with us. She’s something else, both more and less than the reality of a bull shark. She’s vengeance and requiem, the physical manifestation of the marsh’s need.

Junior surfaces behind her with a scream, his remaining hand clutching the bloody stump of his arm. Bloody Hem looks back and sees . . . well, he’s not sure what he sees. He’s not the kind to recognize his own end, but I make sure Junior sees me raise the gun. His buddy falls back, eyes round and mouth gaping, blood spreading bright across Dirty Crab’s Bait Shack.

Junior doesn’t suffer nearly as long as I want him to, but I need to head home. I put the last bullet in his back and toss the gun overboard. When the scavengers come to feast, I slip down the ladder, feet just above the autumn sea, waiting. The bonnetheads and dolphins return, the little sharks feasting on the small bits of fresh bait. There’s a flash of metal at the corner of one gaping mouth, impossible to ignore. I slip out of my life jacket and into the bloody water. It’s chilly, not enough to be dangerous, but it’s not a pleasant swim. The earth is warming and so the waters are cooling from polar icecap melt. Another month and the bonnetheads may well be swimming south to warmer waters. It’s now or spring, if I even see the same ones again.

I’m never sure; I don’t always join them. Baiting is bad, even for the best reasons, like data collecting and scientific observation and what I’m doing now: pulling hooks out of lips and fishing lines off of tails with my multi-tool. The last thing wild creatures need is to get too accustomed to humans, but the reality is, they’re already tangling with us on the regular. Doing nothing feels like violence.

I tug loose one last hook from the mouth of a large female, fumble my multi-tool back into my pack with cold fingers and the jerky movements of prey that she’s polite enough to ignore. When I’m done, she glides around me, silking past me like a cat. Once, twice, three times. She presses her head up against my empty hand, shark-skin benediction scratching lightly at my glove. I would linger if I could, but this is her home, not mine. Maybe one day I’ll be another wild creature and not just their agent, but not today.

I climb back out and into my kayak, teeth chattering and shivering in the breeze. The dolphins bump me away, escort me through water painted mango-bright with Lowcountry sunset. Is that water-color reflection stained brighter red than the clouds? I can’t say, but it feels like it should be. Red skies and warnings and all of that.

When I turn my phone back on, there is a text waiting.

Thank you for adventuring with us today! We hope to see you again, but not soon.