Becky Bravo’s

sculptures by
Daniel dela Cruz
This book belongs to:
 Becky Bravo’s

Copyright ©2014
Published and printed by CANVAS.
All rights reserved.
First printed in hardcover 2014
Originally published in English
Printed in the Republic of the Philippines

Please direct all inquiries to the publisher:

CANVAS, No. 1 Upsilon Drive Ext., Alpha Village,
Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines 1119
Or email [email protected]

Graphics, book and layout design by Daniel Palma Tayona

Edited by Annette Ferrer
Front cover artwork “Water the Chances?” by Daniel dela Cruz
All artworks are originally rendered as mixed hand-sculpted metal sculptures
sculptures by
Photography by Ocs Alvarez
Daniel dela Cruz
Recommended entry:

Bravo, Becky.
A Fish Tale / story written by Becky Bravo;
artowrks by Daniel dela Cruz.
-Manila: CANVAS; c2014., 48 pp.

ISBN number: 978-971-95878-2-8 (hardcover)

1. Short stories, (English) 2. Philippine short stories

I. Barvo, Becky
 In the underwater world
of the Mer, hidden deep
beneath the sea, there lived
extraordinary creatures far,
far more complex than average fish.
Certainly, they swam like fish, and possessed the
general contours of fish, but that was where all
likeness ended.

2 3
 Each of the Mer had the power to take
anything he saw above the water and wish it into
becoming part of his own form. And so there
were some of them who sported wings,
some who sported wheels, and some who sported
gadgets, tools, and all sorts of thingamajigs.
There even some who had taken it into their
heads to wear human faces.

4 5
 This was an unusual preference sometimes
looked upon with dismay, though only by an
inconsiderable few. But what an uproar arose when
there was a boy born to them who did not have the
fishlike form and silver tail that made the Mer who
they were, but an objectionable human body.
Far worse, he did not have the ability to alter his form.

6 7
 His father would have nothing to do with
him, and placed the blame for the boy’s deformities
firmly upon his mother, who he had once seen making
eyes at a mortal man, a lowly fisherman, around
whose boat she had swum lazily in circles, flicking
and swishing her silver tail.

8 9
 Grandfather Agu
named his grandson Koi, and
raised him the same as any other
Merling. And Koi certainly was,
Neither of his save for the fact that he looked
parents wanted the just like a human child.
boy, so his grandfather
took him in, and he
was glad to do it, for he
was a rather lonely old
fish. He had a motor for a
heart, but that didn’t mean
he had lost the ability to
feel. He looked through his
spectacles at the pitiful little
creature, and saw only a
grandson in need of his love.

10 11
 Koi never outgrew the inability to alter his

appearance, but grew up able to do everything else
the other Mer boys could. He swam just as well as any
other, did as well as could be expected in school, and
rarely never made trouble for his grandfather, except for
he occasional scrapes young boys were won’t to find
themselves in, being at such an impressionable age.

12 13
 Koi’s oddness did not make it easy for him to
make many friends. The ones he made were those
who themselves were a little unusual. One of them was
a rather foolhardy fellow named Kuda, who had a habit
of spending much of his time with his head above the
water, gazing up at the sky. It was on one such occasion
that he had turned his fins into a biplane’s wings.

14 15
 One day, at Kuda’s insistence, the two of them

went swimming close to the fishing boats, where the
elders always warned young Mer never to go unless
they were looking for trouble. Koi knew this to be
foremost among Grandfather Agu’s rules, but Kuda
was not a friend easy to refuse.

16 17
 “You’re not afraid, are you?” asked Kuda,

smirking.

“Certainly not!” answered Koi, though his knees

shook at the thought of breaking the rules.

“Then let’s go. Stay right behind me!” cried Kuda,

and he shot off towards the boats. Koi followed,
swimming as fast as his legs could take him.

18 19
 Kuda came to a stop beside the hull of a fairly
large skiff, and when Koi came up behind him a
moment later, the two of them poked their heads out of
the water.

Five burly fishermen were in the boat, their backs

towards them as they strained to draw their nets back
on board. Koi and Kuda watched in wonder as a
wriggling mass of sardines struggled inside the
bursting nets. They were afraid, and yet they couldn’t
tear their eyes away from the gasping fish.

Neither of them were aware of how long they

were frozen in place, but the next thing they knew,
a net came swooshing through the water underneath
them and caught poor Koi, who darted to safety a
second too late.

“Gotcha!” rang the voice of one of the men from

the boat.

“Kuda! Help me!” screamed Koi as the net was

dragged up to the surface.

20 21
 But what could Kuda do? He was afraid he’d be
caught as well. He watched helplessly as Koi, all tangled
up in the net, was swung into the boat and surrounded
by the fishermen. How astonished they were to find
that they had caught a boy instead of a fish!

With one last look at his friend, Kuda dove deep

into the water with a sharp flick of his tail, and swam
faster than he had ever swum before, back to the
realm of the Mer.

22 23
 When Kuda found Koi’s
grandfather, he and the old fish
raced back at once towards the boats,
hoping against hope that Koi would
still be there. But when they
got there, all the boats were
gone. Grandfather Agu
swam here, there, in every
direction possible. But Koi was
gone, taken by the fishermen,
away to their own land.

24 25
 Grandfather Agu was inconsolable.
The gradnson he had raised like his own child,
how did it happen that he had lost him this way?
Each day at the break of dawn, the old fish swam back
to that spot where Koi was taken, and looked for him.

27
 He waited for him, though he knew it
was unlikely that he would find him there.
He swam around in circles until sunset,
looking desperately everywhere.

28 29
 He peered into his old telescope, sweeping
the horizon for the slightest sign of Koi,
but there was nothing. Nothing.

30 31
 When a month had gone by he had been waiting for him right
with still no sign of his grandson,
there all this time.
Grandfather Agu gave up hope
of ever finding him. With a
Grandfather Agu was so glad
heavy heart he swam back home,
to see him hat all he could do
wishing he had never let
was weep for joy. “How--
the boy out of his sight
why--” began
for even a moment. Imagine
Grandfather Agu, but
how startled he was when he came
he was just so
through the doors of his house
happy he could hardly
and found Koi standing there,
speak. His mechanical heart
waiting for him!
raced so fast felt as if it might,
at any moment, jump out of
“What took you so long,
his chest.
Grandfather?” Koi said, as if

32
 Koi told him that one of the fishermen who had
caught him had taken him home to his wife. They had
no children, and it had been their fondest wish to raise
a son. They gave him everything a human boy
could wish for and treated him like their own
little prince.

Koi certainly had the time of his life. Never had

his feet felt so steady on the ground, and never had
his eyes been met with so much to see. Koi threw
his mind wide open to all the strange new things in
the world above the water, and discovered his own
wonderful ability -- an imagination which gave
him the power to take anything he liked and make it
come alive.

34 35
 “You won’t believe what it is like up there,
Grandfather,” said Koi, his eyes shining bright with
excitement. “The people there live in houses of stone,
and they travel here and there in crafts that move
on wheels. There are things like trees and
mountains and animals and flowers,
and all sorts of tools and contraptions.
There is so much to
do, and so much to see.
But here is the most
wonderful thing of all –
I am just like any other
boy there!”

36 37
 “But why have you come back?”
asked Grandfather Agu. "Why would
you leave such a wonderful
place where you say you are just
like the others?" He could not
understand why Koi had chosen
to return. He had finally found
somewhere he could belong.
Why had he come back to a
place where some did not think
of him as one of their own?

38 39
 “Because home is here with you, Grandfather,”
said Koi, giving the old fish a fond embrace. He might
look like a creature that belonged on land, but there
was only one place where Koi’s heart felt at ease.
When news of his return reached the rest of the Mer
and word spread of his adventures on land, it was with
awe and newfound respect that they welcomed him
back to the world under the water.

“It’s good to be home,” Koi told them, and if he had

had any doubts about it in the past, they now all
floated up and away from him, like bubbles rising to
the surface of the sea.

40 41
 Meet Koi of the underwater world of the Mer.
With two unsightly legs and an unmistakably human face,
he seems to have been born in the wrong place.

When chance takes him to the land of the humans,

he fits right in for the first time in his life.

But will he stay?

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