Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology by Nancy Holder, Kami García, Saladin Ahmed, Jim Butcher, Jane Yolen, Heather Brewer, Rachel Caine, Gillian Philip, Peter Beagle

with the terrifying pity that belongs to the gods alone. Kokinja
could not bear it for more than a moment; but every time she turned her face
away, her father gently turned her toward him once more. He said, “Daughter of
mine, do you know how old I am?”
    Kokinja shook her head silently. The Shark
God said, “I cannot tell you in years, because there were no such things at my
beginning. Time was very new then, and Those who were already here had not yet
decided whether this was... suitable, can you understand me, dear one?”
The last two words, heard for the first time in her life, caused Kokinja to
shiver like a small animal in the rain. Her father did not appear to notice.
    “I had no parents, and no childhood, such
as you and your brother have had—I simply was, and always had
been, beyond all memory, even my own. All true enough, to my knowledge—and
then a leaky outrigger canoe bearing a sleeping brown girl drifted across my
endless life, and I, who can never change... I changed. Do you hear what I am
telling you, daughter of that girl, daughter who hates me?”
    The Shark God’s voice was soft and
uncertain. “I told your mother that it was good that I saw her and you and
Keawe only once in a year—that if I allowed myself that wonder even a day
more often I might lose myself in you, and never be able to find myself again,
nor ever wish to. Was that cowardly of me, Kokinja? Perhaps so, quite likely
unforgivably so.” It was he who looked away now, rising and turning to face the
darkening scarlet sea. He said, after a time, “But one day—one day that will come—when you find yourself loving as helplessly, and as certainly
wrongly, as I, loving against all you know, against all you are... remember me
then.”
    To this Kokinja made no response; but by
and by she rose herself and stood silently beside her father, watching the
first stars waken, one with each heartbeat of hers. She could not have said
when she at last took his hand.
    “I cannot stay,” she said. “It is a long
way home, and seems longer now.”
    The Shark God touched her hair lightly.
“You will go back more swiftly than you arrived, I promise you that. But if you
could remain with me a little time...” He left the words unfinished.
    “A little time,” Kokinja agreed. “But in
return...” She hesitated, and her father did not press her, but only waited for
her to continue. She said presently, “I know that my mother never wished to see
you in your true form, and for herself she was undoubtedly right. But I... I am
not my mother.” She had no courage to say more than that.
    The Shark God did not reply for some
while, and when he did his tone was deep and somber. “Even if I granted it,
even if you could bear it, you could never see all of what I am. Human eyes
cannot”—he struggled for the exact word—“they do not bend in
the right way. It was meant as a kindness, I think, just as was the human gift
of forgetfulness. You have no idea how the gods envy you that, the forgetting.”
    “Even so,” Kokinja insisted. “Even so, I
would not be afraid. If you do not know that by now...”
    “Well, we will see,” answered the Shark
God, exactly as all human parents have replied to importunate children at one
time or another. And with that, even Kokinja knew to content herself.
    In the morning, she plunged into the waves
to seek her breakfast, as did her father on the other side of the island. She
never knew where he slept—or if he slept at all—but he returned in
time to see her emerging from the water with a fish in her mouth and another in
her hand. She tore them both to pieces, like any shark, and finished the meal
before noticing him. Abashed, she said earnestly, “When I am at home, I cook my
food as my mother taught me—but in the sea...”
    “Your mother always cooks dinner for me,”
the Shark God answered quietly. “We wait until you two are asleep, or away, and
then she will come down to the water and call. It has