KIRA NOLAN
Kelp Forest Love Story
It is a little-known fact that women live in the kelp forest. They live in the shadows where the holdfasts root. It makes sense that they would go there. They lead quiet lives, down there. They could scream at the top of their lungs and their voices sound faint, lost somewhere back before the crashing seashore.
To accurately record the details of their existence remains a challenge. They mostly feel cold. No one sleeps more soundly than they do, cocooned in their kelp cradles, rocked to the heartbeat of the deep, the inhale exhale of moon-tugged tides. In the kelp forest, insomniacs slumber for twenty days straight.
It might be easier to start with what their lives do not include. They’ve left behind duvets and throw pillows, fabric softener, midnight bicycle crunches, midnight cigarettes at screen windows, black coffee, wave sound machines from their mothers-in-law, red stains on starched sheets that they burned away with a gas station lighter in a moment of awakening.
Now those who bleed command the worship of tiger sharks. The great beasts flank them, bump their heels with broad noses. Admire their trailing red nebulae with black hole eyes.
Now the women recline as queens in kelp towers. They dream of childhood and smile. When they flail in their nightmares, the kelp holds them close in slimy arms.
Scientists say that without a circadian rhythm, the brain will unravel. The kelp forest women do not worry about this. Newcomers still harboring concerns about the darkness should look to befriend an angler fish.
The women mostly drift along solitary orbits. They come and go with the currents, their paths crisscrossing in space but rarely in time. Or they pass so close that they might reach out and touch, if not for the impenetrable walls of kelp all around them.
Some of them wish for more emphatic encounters. Some of them long for solidarity, eyes meeting or heads bowing acknowledgement. They wish they had said something. Something like:
“So do you like the way it feels to be numb cold also?”
“Wherever did you get that lovely kelp scarf?”
“Were you an empty hermit crab shell, too?”
Some of them want to smash something and hear it shatter. Some of them rip a kelp frond to smaller and smaller pieces. Then they feel sorry. Will they face a jury in a kelp-ringed courtroom for this injury? Might they, for this transgression, be tossed in a pit to duel a great white shark with nothing but a limp kelp blade, all while the crowd places bets and slurps squid delicacies? Moreover, they wish for another woman to talk to through the gratings of a kelp confessional.
None of these scenarios come to pass. Instead they float on through the silent static, muttering sorries to whichever understory algae might listen. They will not find justice in the kelp forest.
Some of them have hair that webs all around their plump fly bodies. Some of them have no hair at all. And no, this does not indicate witchcraft; they achieve such styles with sharpened mussel shells and patience.
One of them has a head bald, shiny smooth as a pearl, highly admirable. She frequents the deeper currents, where elk kelp grows like a herd of bodiless antlers. She sees herself as the custodian of this underworld. Of course, like many of the kelp forest women, she spends most of her time asleep. She dreams of the Bermuda Triangle. The dream used to start in sunshine and flat waters sloshing against the ship hull, a distant vortex through the eye of the daring adventurer’s spyglass. Now her dreams tend towards efficiency, so upon falling asleep she continues her fall, into the chasm, the dark and infinite spiral. Or does she fall into the toilet bowl ride at the waterpark? The one with chlorinated pee water and high school lifeguards, which will spit her out somewhere recognizable in just a minute. When not dreaming, she bears witness to the kelp that grows and decays, the brittle stars and isopods and tubeworms and the direction of the currents and the slant of light filtering from above, which trace comfortable patterns for those who pay attention.
At this point, life in the kelp forest must seem boring. The kelp forest certainly does not offer any greater purpose. As such, life goes on.
Most of them spend their days drifting with the currents. Rarely do they pass by the same woman twice. Statistically such anomalies may occur. Some of them recognize each other. Some of them allow the recognition to show on their faces. On the third passing they signal “pardon me.” On the seventh passing their arms brush. Their skin feels slippery as kelp. Some of them, when observed up close, have barnacles growing in the shadow of their jaw.
On the ninth passing (they were both counting), their fingers might interlock, yanking them from their separate currents. To clarify, this does not typically occur in the kelp forest.
One woman dreams of outer space. She tumbles slow motion head over heels through that void. Bathes in the current of high energy particles and wane starlight. She holds her head high with an assuredness befitting her acclaimed position as an astronaut. Dives on a dérive down the unknowable eddies of dark matter. You can see how one might easily mistake the kelp forest for outer space: the cold, the dark, the alien nature of both these frontier lands.
At first she believes she must have encountered an alien, this strange hairless creature with sunken eyes and frowning lips. An extremophile wandered too far from the safety of its hydrothermal vent. She does not feel afraid. They still hold hands, and she thinks that if they were to let go, the currents would whisk them both off, never to meet again.
Their locked hands feel warm. They wonder if this warmth comes from the alien’s hand or their own. Though now they realize the alien is in fact another kelp forest woman. They wonder why they never prepared a script for this occurrence. They uncover mothy memories of what they might have said once, words that would sound as absurd as gurgling like a baby.
How old are they? The kelp forest has no time, formally speaking. Of course sun dials don’t stand a chance. Something about these depths manages to befuddle the average pocket watch, not to mention that such gadgets eventually succumb to rust, which itself might measure time in its inevitable creeping. One could point to an assortment of such proxies for time. Orbits completed round this little backwater of the greater forest. The dimming and brightening of refracted moonlight. The kelp which grows up from the reef until it is tall enough to join the overstory high above, and then eventually sinks back down to the seafloor in its death throes.
They realize their eyes are still locked. A real-life girl next door story, and most shocking, there of all places, in the kelp forest. Around them the scenes of the kelp forest come and go: here a patch of bull kelp, there a mollusk blending into the sandy floor. They lead transient lives in the kelp forest.
“Have you seen the shipwreck?” the not-alien signals.
“The shipwreck,” muses the astronaut. She imagines the carcass of an interstellar cruiser, shot down by mercenaries or more likely felled in an indiscriminate meteoroid field. Either way, left behind to rest in some desolate no man’s land.
The alien tugs her hands, and they dive down towards the cold and dark. The shipwreck flickers in and out of existence in murky water. The wood barely visible beneath barnacles, kelp fronds growing from the crumbling figurehead.
Most kelp women would frown on such an expedition. Understandably, they treat all things associated with their previous lives as suspect. Surely, such a wreck must come with some amount of haunting. Some kelp women can’t understand how such an excursion could be interesting anyways. Most kelp women still feel fear.
They slip like eels through a porthole. The alien has explored here before, but she likes to check in. Measure the advance of fuzzy microbial colonies across the counter which must have once held cocktails and platters of oysters. She enjoys seeing the astronaut look with new eyes on her familiar haunt. Space walk across the jade tile floor. Inspect the now pictureless golden frames as though they hang in a Parisian art museum. They look at everything but each other.
What they could say is, “I just want you to understand me the way I understand me. But that sounds self-centered, I’m sorry. I just want to understand you the way you understand you.”
The astronaut stops at one of the spinning bar chairs, its copper skeleton now adorned with barnacles and anemones. She purses her lips. Taps a finger to her temple. Searches her memories for the word.
“I’ve got an idea,” she at last says. “We should open a barbershop.”
It’s not easy, but they manage to liberate the bar chair. After some scouting, they choose a peaceful kelp clearing to set up shop. To get there, they peel apart the thick curtains of kelp and pull themselves through. The tight kelp circle shields them from the more powerful ocean currents, lending them a rare stillness. The alien collects a set of abalone shells of various sizes, and sharpens them until they could slice a kelp frond like a samurai’s sword. Meanwhile the astronaut arranges bioluminescent phytoplankton in glowing constellations up above. In a plank scavenged from the shipwreck, she carves SuperCut (which just barely fits, but looks smart all the same).
With all the necessary preparations complete, the astronaut fixes two cups of tea and they settle down to wait.
If a traveler were to arrive in the kelp forest, and, eager to treat their travel-weary bones to a drink, ask for directions to the local pub, some kelp women wouldn't understand. What meaning can drinking have when underwater? You may as well say breathing. Others see past this minor incongruity. They brew kelp moonshine in the cover of underwater caves. They think about when they were little and collected rain water in a clear glass bowl. They couldn’t believe all those tiny drops tossed about on the wind could amass that. It was the sweetest thing they’ve ever tasted.
Their first customer may or may not have been lost. Either way, the astronaut doesn’t waste a second in ushering them to the barber’s chair. They leave with the sharpest cut this side of the Pacific, and from there word begins to spread that in the heart of the kelp forest there is a barbershop where you can sit and chat and get a haircut.
Some women have adopted echolocation as their primary form of communication. It usually starts because they have a knack for languages, but once they learn to navigate that syntax of clicks and clacks, they find it hard to return to the muddle of human words. In the sonic waves they find truths that do not exist in any human tongue. They listen to the poetry recited by whales thousands of miles away. Some even take on roles like air traffic controllers: cargo ship making 11 knots just north northeast of the kelp forest. Pod just crossed the meridian heading west. The sorts of useful information cetaceans like to keep abreast of. These women begin to dream in whistles and wails.
Luckily, the barbershop is equipped to welcome all languages and silences alike. Some women wonder when they learned to say nothing. The smile slips traitorously onto their face.
Some kelp women hire crabs to clip back their hair. Some arrange kelp around their heads in stylish wraps. Some, upon entering the barbershop, realize that what they’ve always really wanted is a mullet.
Inevitably, change finds them one day, riding into town on a cold current from the north. Dark ice melt which moves swiftly south along the broken coastline. A meticulous scientist, upon collecting samples of that flotsam and jetsam, might even find their ancestors puttering about under the microscope, although with this discovery they spasm and knock the glass plate so it shatters on the speckled plastic floor.
Later that night a storm arrives in the kelp forest. The giant brown kelp slashes an angry calligraphy, so that those below can’t help but duck and cover. The kelp forest women don’t tend to use umbrellas.
It is with these dramatic tides that the mob descends on the barbershop. They wear kelp masks over their eyes with narrowed slits to see through. They carry kelp pitchforks and torches, so that shadows dance across the shifting walls. They smash the shop to dust and debris, all of which slips away on dark and rolling waters. And with their destruction complete and anarchy reinstated, they disappear back into the kelp forest.
As for the barbers-no-longer, they feel neither anger nor sadness. Who among humans and the sea have not stomped down a sand castle at some point or another? They understand all things must pass, especially in the kelp forest. They stayed longer than they meant. They are relieved to discover that they stayed not for the shop but for each other, and they escape the wreck with this knowledge.
That’s not to say they don’t feel unmoored for a bit. Don’t take some time to find their way. In the kelp speakeasy, they sip moonshine and tally up their lost and their found.
Some kelp women remember before and some do not.
Some mourn what they’ve lost: homes and the attic shutters left open to angry raindrops and blustery elm branches. Children and lovers and bodies curled up by a desert campfire. Driving fast and singing and having a voice. Some prefer the quiet.
Some kelp women have simply forgotten how to speak, but that does not matter. They sit side by side, legs dangling off the edge of the continental crust, and share a joint.
Eventually, they decide to settle down. They put down roots in the heart of the kelp forest. No humans have ever treaded these waters. Truth be told, they are more kelp than human by now, the outlines of shadowed eyes, plush lips barely visible on their wrinkled forms. Just so a lost scuba diver might think, isn’t that funny, that kelp looks kind of like a face. And then shudder and never mention it to anyone.
In reality, the kelp women need not fear any grand rescue. They’ve escaped the plot. Their bodies spiral up to sunlight-warmed waters. Do not mistake their reaching for regret. They left the other world a very long time ago. They long only for each other. Their bodies belong only to each other. Beholden to no one. They hold each other tight. At last, at peace.
"Kelp Forest Love Story" is the runner-up for the 2024 Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction. Judge Elizabeth Crane says of the story: “‘Immersed’ is one of those blurby words you hear fairly often and yet here it is so exactly right that I would be remiss not to use it. The skilled and lovely prose drew this universe, and its women, in such beautiful detail that I felt that I was right there in this delightfully kelpy underwater world, sipping moonshine with my kelp women, free of the burdens of above. And above all, it felt like there was a real beating heart here that made it a very close second for this prize.” To learn more about the Calvino Prize, visit the University of Louisville's Creative Writing Contests online.