Either way, the sun was crawling toward the sea in front of Ian. He never liked to pray for help with fishing; it was a trivial matter, he thought, even for a quick Hail Mary. But as the sun slid to darkness, he was about to ask for divine help when his line began to buzz out from his reel. He kept a firm grip on the pole and let the line play out, letting the fish tire itself. The reel buzzed and line poured out like water. Ian Frost had spent his working life as a fisherman, and knew the way of fish, but he had never seen a fish run this one. Finally, when there was little line left on the reel, the buzzing slowed. It would be a long, slow fight to get this one in, Ian thought. `But it will be quite a thing to show Issie.'

Ian started reeling in the line. He had several feet of rolled on when it went limp. Ian's face fell. The fish had broken free, he thought. The monster he had planned to proudly display had escaped. Sighing his disappointment, he reeled in the slack line.

"I shay, friend fisherman, hullo."

Without slowing his reeling, Ian looked around for the speaker. He saw no one.

"I shay," said the mush-mouthed speaker, "down here. Look down."

Confused, Ian looked down at the swirling waters that covered his feet. There in the foamy surf lay the largest flounder Ian had seen in a lifetime of fishing. And there in the mouth of the largest flounder Ian had ever seen was Ian's hook.

"Fisherman," called the flounder around the hook and line. "Help me. I am hooked."

"That you are," Ian answered. "And it's my hook that has you." Ian crouched and sat on his heels in the water beside the fish. "How be it you speak to me? In all my years, no catch has ever come to chat."

"That'sh becaush you never hooked me before. You won't find another like me you will find in the sheash." The fish had trouble talking around the hook. "You have hooked me, which is more than most have done. And now that you have," the fish continued, "I pray you turn me loosh."

"Turn you loose?" The sound of the talking fish drove other thoughts out of Ian's head. Whether to keep the fish or turn it loose had not occurred to him. "Turn you loose?"

"Yesh, turn me loosh." The flounder swam a figure eight in the surf. "I can grant you a wish or two, if that's what it takes."

A wish! That shocked Ian from his trance. "A wish! No, there be no need for that," the fisherman said. He grabbed the end of the line close to the fish's mouth and pulled it through his hand till he reached the hook. "It'd be a bit less than Christian to scale a creature with thought and speech." Gently, gently, he worked the hook out of the fish's lip. A couple of drops of blood fell into the salt water, and with a quick twitch of his tail, the flounder vanished into the surf.

Ian dropped the hook into the water, picked up his rod and began reeling in the loose line again. "Are you all right, then?" he called out across the water.

The flounder popped his head out of the water in front of Ian. "Quite fine," it said. It worked its jaw a little. "The mouth will heal. And now, are you sure there's nothing I can give you? You're far kinder than most."

Ian cranked in his line. "It's as any Christian would do. I've no need of wishes. I've my home and my wife and my fishing. That does for me."

The flounder swam a few lazy patterns in front of Ian. "You're not as I remember men, friend fisherman. Well, if you've nothing to wish for, I'll be putting to sea again. Many things to check." The fish dived under the surface and popped up again a few feet farther away. "But if you do want something," it called back, "you call."

Ian waved to the fish and cranked in his line. The light was dying away now, and it was time for home. Slinging his pole over his shoulder, Ian slogged out of the surf and on to the wet sand of the beach. He had not quite reached the shore rocks when two fat flounders jumped out of the water to land near his feet. They were much smaller than the one he had hooked, but these seemed the normal, non-talking type. The fisherman smiled and put the two fish in his bag. At least he had something to give Isabella. With another wave to the sea, away he went for home.

With his boots squishing as he trod across the hard packed ground of his `yard,' Ian made his calm, plodding way to his back door. "Issie," he called, "I'm home." He needn't have announced it. The shack was not big enough for anyone to enter the kitchen unknown.

"And did you catch anything today?" Isabella asked.

Ian smiled and held up his bag. "A couple of fine ones," he answered.

"A couple? Humph!" Isabella snatched the bag from his hand and slammed it on the counter next to the pot bellied stove. "Not quite a trip to the market, is it?"

Ian flopped onto one of the rickety chairs at the kitchen table and unlaced his boots. "Oh, they'll do for supper tonight. There'll be more fish tomorrow. Besides," he said, ignoring the sour look Isabella gave him and the fish, "it was worth having a light sack to catch those the way I did."

"And how was that?" Isabella slapped one of the fish out on the cutting board. "Did they just jump out of the water at you?"

"As a matter of fact," Ian started. And with that he explained his big catch to his wife. Her face grew harder and harder as the story went on, her anger building. Did he think she was such a fool as to believe such a story?! She was about to explode at him when he explained that he turned it loose.

"Turned it loose?" She swung around to face him with the carving knife quivering in her hand. "You ol' fool! Did you not think of what we could have gotten for such a creature? Did you not think of what people would pay for it?"

Ian looked shamed. "But, Issie, it were not a simple old fish. I'd've been inhuman and unChristian to keep it. It could think and talk. The poor old thing even offered me wishes. Wishes! As if it must pay for its freedom."

"Wishes!" Isabella shrieked and stabbed her knife into the counter beside the fish. "This thing offered you wishes and you didn't take them!"

"But, how could I -"

"By just wishin', that's how!" She turned back to the cutting board and began to attack the flounders again. "What kind (*SLAM* went the knife) of man did I marry," she grumbled, "what would let a wish (*SLAM*) go without askin'? Of course, he (*SLAM*) didn't want anything. But did he ever think if I did? (*SLAM*) Nooooo! (*SLAM*)"

Ian knew there was no winning here. He decided to go outside to clean the mud and sand from his boots. Isabella continued to grumble and attack the fish, and Ian was afraid he had not heard the last of this.

That night Isabella earned the title `fishwife.'

She spotted the empty bag the instant he walked in the door. "Ian," she yowled, "you have got to go back to that fish and demand your wishes."

"But, Issie -"

"None o' that!" She stabbed a finger at him from across the room. "Tonight or tomorrow you're goin' back to that beach and you're gonna get those wishes. You tell that creature what you could have done instead of turning it loose. You demand (*SLAM!* went a frying pan on the stove) the wishes the thing offered you."

"But, Issie," Ian tried again, "do ye really expect a fish to go about granting wishes? And besides, what am I to wish for? We don't be needin' nothin'."

*SLAM!* "You! Always thinkin' of you! `Ian don't need nothin',' you say. Well did you ever think of me? Do you ever any time of the day think about what I want?"

Ian opened his mouth to answer. *SLAM!* went the skillet.

"NO! You don't. You never think of me." *SLAM!* Her voiced dropped. "Well, this time you will. You're gonna find this talkin' fish, and you're gonna get them wishes!"

"And if I can't find it?" Ian asked quietly. "It be a big ocean and only one little fish we're talkin' about."

"Oh, you'll find it. You'd find it sure if it were somethin' you were wantin'. All this time bein' your wife and puttin' up with you and your shiftless ways. This is gonna be different. You're gonna do somethin' I want (*SLAM!*) and get something I want."

Ian slowly threaded the fish sack between his hands. "And what would that be, Issie?"

"A house!" Her chin jutted out a little to the left, her teeth set, her left hand wrapped tightly around the handle of the skillet. She stared at Ian, daring him to say something. He didn't. "You'll tell this wishing fish that you want a house, a nice house, a fine looking house instead of this old shack you forced me to stay in all these years! You wish for a house that I can have people come to see." The skillet twitched.

Ian knew if he said anything the frying pan would slam again, and maybe not just on the stove. He stared at her cold, gray-blue eyes and thought of the long years they'd spent together - the cold touchless nights, stormy days when he could not work and they sat silent for hours, endless evenings of complaints about the women at the market, women she wanted to invite to this new home. Ian thought of the wonderful sights he found at the beach - how, like snowflakes, no two skies were ever the same, of beautiful, naturally polished shapes that washed up to him on his beach, marvellous ocean creatures that came and went with the seasons, the moods of the sea and the rhythms they marked as life lazied by. All the things that made his life worthwhile that he never mentioned to Isabella. She measured his day by the weight in the burlap bag.

He remembered he was married. "I'll try tomorrow," he said quietly.

*SLAM!* "You'll go tonight! You're hopin' I'll forget about it by mornin'. Well, I'll not spend another night in this shack!"

Ian stared at her a few more seconds, then nodded, turned and walked back out the door. He still carried the burlap bag, and by habit he picked up his pole before plodding off to the night beach.

Ian planted his feet wide against the push of the water and watched the bright gray clouds scudding across the sky, backlit by the moon and carrying a day's worth of storm. He did not like any part of this business. The Flounder (and Ian thought of the fish with a capital letter like anyone else's name) was one of God's thinking creatures and ought not be threatened or coerced. The man wasn't sure a Christian had any business dealing with faery creatures or wishes. And to be honest, he rather liked the simple little fishing shack. Why should a plain man care about a fancy shack?

But taking care of Issie was something he had taken on himself all those long years ago when they had knelt before the priest and been joined as husband and wife. Living as a good husband was part of living as a good man. He had to demand the wishes from the fish.

But how? With the other decisions made, this question left him lost. How did a man call a talking fish? He had little hope of catching the creature again. He didn't even know the thing's name. The fisherman watched the moon and the clouds and the waves and waited, silent and solid. Something would come to him, he thought. Just wait.

And something did. Everyone liked songs and rhymes, he decided. Maybe fish liked them, too. Ian couldn't sing, but he tried a little rhyme, one of his own making, pausing long after each line before forming the next. This is the rhyme he called out over the waters:

"Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Come, I pray, and talk to me,
For my wife, the Dame Isabel,
Wishes something I fear to tell."

"Friend fisherman," said a voice from the foamy dark waters at his feet. "You come to visit me?" A darker form swam about in the surf, and then a large flounder head popped out of the surface.

"I have come to speak to you," Ian answered quietly. "I have come to claim a wish from you. You remember you offered me a wish when you were hooked on my line?" The fisherman tried to sound forceful, but it came out apologetic.

The Flounder dived back under water and swam a quick figure eight. It resurfaced. "I remember," it said. "I offered wishes."

"Well, I have come to claim the wish." Saying the words made Ian queasy, and his voice dropped to a mumble. "But if you can't really do it, I'll understand."

The Flounder did another quick underwater turn. "What would you wish?" it asked simply.

Ian couldn't look at the dark shape. "A nicer house," he finally spat out.

Diving under the surging surf, the fish popped up in front of Ian. "You go back, now," it said. "You go back to your nicer house." It dived and surfaced again.

The fisherman nodded to the fish. "I thank ye, master Flounder," he mumbled. Without looking more at the mysterious creature, Ian slogged back through the pounding surf. The waters slammed the rocks along the beach, and Ian was glad to get away so easy. He did not think to ask what had changed; he didn't care. The pole still on his shoulder, the dripping bag still in his hand, Ian retraced his steps across the grasslands to where his shack stood.

The door, heavy with frosted and stained glass, swung silently open. Isabella stood on the other side, glowing.

"Ian, isn't it wonderful? Wipe your boots off and come in. I have to show you my house." She grabbed the fisherman by his calloused hand and pulled him in. Isabella spent the rest of the evening giving Ian a whirlwind, then a detailed tour of their new Victorian cottage.

And new it was. From the well-scrubbed and varnished hardwood floors to the dainty but solid hand-made furniture to the ruffled chintz curtains on the windows, it all had a sharp-creased newness unfamiliar to the well-worn Ian. There were impossibly bright copper and brass pans hanging in the kitchen, small flower pots of fragrant herbs on the back porch, brass andirons and over-stuffed furniture in the parlor. That night the Frosts slept on sheets that smelled of lavender and open air, and next morning Ian sat in a new bent-wood rocking chair on his new front porch and watched new chickens scratch in the new grass. A vegetable garden now grew in the back yard, and ducks floated happily on a pond that had not been there the day before. Isabella was horribly pleased and even the wind in the new elms had a happy new whisper. Ian hoped this marked an end to this dealing with the Flounder. But he didn't think so.

Eventually though, as Ian feared, the newness wore off the house. Isabella showed it off to everyone she knew and to everyone who would see it, whether she knew them or not. Taking care of the house turned into job, and a bigger one than taking care of the shack since the cottage was a bigger place and Isabella had higher hopes for it. As she tended the garden, fed the chickens and scrubbed the floors, she thought of things other people had. Things like - maids. Cooks. Butlers. She grew angry.

"Ian should have thought of this when he wished for this house," she told herself. "Just like him not to think of all the work I have to do."

The old fisherman saw trouble coming like a small, gray, snow-filled cloud sliding over the horizon; a tiny thing no one else would think a problem until it grew large and it was too late to prepare. But Ian knew when he saw such a cloud, and saw it now. Trouble coming, and nothing a man could do to stop it.

It had rained since midnight the day Isabella could take no more. She hated walking to the market in the rain, wet chickens stink, and Ian, coming home early from the shore, still had mud on his boots when he entered the kitchen.

"You never," she began, her familiar opening on her lips, her familiar hate-filled tone in her voice. Ian knew he was lost. He stood near the back door waiting for her to finish explaining why she wanted something, and start explaining what she wanted.

"You are goin' back to that fish, and you are gonna demand that I be Lady Isabella with a mansion and a staff to do all these chores. God knows I have put up with enough to deserve a little help!"

Ian sighed. "But Issie, the fish has already given me a wish. I don't think -"

"Whoever heard of just one wish, I'd like to know? And don't the ungrateful creature owe you for freein' it when it could have been supper, I'd like to know? Now, (*SLAM!*) you will -"

The old fisherman didn't hear any more. He waited until she hit a pause, the kind she took so he could disagree and she could get angrier. Instead of saying anything, however, Ian pulled his cap back on his head and sloshed across the yard through the rain on his way to the sea. And the Flounder.

The rain grew colder and heavier as he reached the shore, and the sea was choppy and ragged. Ian felt slightly sick, but he waded into the surf and called out his childish rhyme over the waves.

"Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Come, I pray, and talk to me,
For my wife, the Dame Isabel,
Wishes something I fear to tell."

Ian averted his eyes, could not look the fish in the face as he laid out Isabella's demand for land, mansion and title.

Dive. Surface. "Done. Go see your new house, friend fisherman." Dive. Gone.

With rain pouring down the neck of his jacket, Ian slogged back to his property. This time the fence was stone instead of wooden pickets, and the forty room mansion sat far back from the black iron gate. Ian picked his way across the well-manicured lawn, careful not to disturb the flowers or hedges.

The servants who answered at the kitchen door first tried to turn him away, but he finally convinced them that he was related to "The Lady." They made him comfortable by the fireplace until Isabella came to fetch him. She led him on a tour of the rambling estate and introduced him to the army of servants they met along the way. With each new ornate room, Ian felt sicker.

Though Isabella had the land, the house, the title and the time, she had no way to show it off. None of the real gentry would have anything to do with her, calling her "that fishwife" (which she was, after all). And none of the villagers would visit her, calling her "that snob" (which she was, also). The ladies would not take tea from hands that handled halibut heads, and the market women would not curtsy to some one with whom they had haggled over halibut heads.

Meanwhile, her discontent weighed heavier and heavier upon Ian. He felt that no matter how he tried, he failed as a husband, and he was sure that no matter how he felt, there was another trip to the Flounder looming in his future.

It was immediately after everyone in the county, commoner and otherwise, had turned down Isabella's invitations to a dinner party that she next erupted. She tracked down Ian in the kitchen where he was warming himself after a cool day in the surf. The temperature was falling, the wind gaining strength, and Ian was giving thanks for the steamy kitchen's coziness when Isabella burst in.

As she browbeat him for destroying her social life by his lowly station, the fisherman was pulling his boots back on. With half his mind he counted out beads of a rosary, and with the other he waited for her demand.

"Blah, blah, blah! Blah! (*SLAM!*) Blah blah blah queen with a castle, blah blah blah. Blah!" (*SLAM!*)

Ian knew his mission and he knew his route. With his whole mind turned to telling his beads, he stalked back into the blustery, wet twilight.

The seas were rougher than when he had gone home for the evening, and the wind whipped the words of his rhyme back into his face. But the Flounder swam up to him, and without protest granted this wish as well. `He almost sounds sorry,' thought Ian. `Me, too.' The man turned his collar to the cold, damp breeze, and hiked to the blue-gray castle that now stood where his old shack had once been.

As he stomped mud off his boots in the kitchen, Ian wondered if it was just that the houses were getting bigger, or if he was, indeed, getting smaller with each of these trips.

Trivial matters to Isabella since there were many other would-be diners from which to choose. Well, trivial at night when the banquet table was laid. More important, and far more annoying, were the daytime callers - local people with property disputes for her to settle, merchants wishing contracts and loans for business, guard captains discussing defense positions. Isabella knew less than nothing about these matters - which annoyed her and the people who came to her for wisdom.

The day the messenger delivered a demand for a water rights treaty from the adjacent kingdom, Isabella knew she was in trouble. The only part of the demand she understood was the possibility of invasion if things were not settled to the other monarch's satisfaction - and she could not guess what would satisfy him! As bad as she hated it, she had to talk to Ian again.

Her fisherman husband, meanwhile, had settled into a life of his own in a small corner of the castle. He had befriended several of the servants who took him to be one of their station. The servants were thus surprised and terrified when they saw Her Highness bearing down on Ian.

"You selfish keggler!" she yelled. (She tried to insult him with a term she'd heard at table, but she didn't really understand the word and called him a bowler instead.) "You were always out to beat me down. It wouldn't surprise me if you were behind this water rights demand. Blah blah blah. Blah!"

Ian's attention went fishing. He didn't know how she could have a new demand. He just hoped she would get tired and go away.

"Blah blah, blah! Blah blah Pope, blah blah!" (*SLAM!!*)

Ian fainted. A bucket of cold mop water, pitched in his face by the queen, brought him sputtering back to life.

"Issie, did you say you wish to be Pope?"

"And what of it?! Have I not suffered enough? It wouldn't take you and your fish anything to do it. I can reign. I shouldn't have to suffer through all these commoners and their problems with cattle and water."

"But, Isabella! Pope?!"

The `queen' snatched a spear from a guard's hand and swung the butt of it at Ian. "Now! You married me, you promised to take care of me, and you're going to do your duty as a husband. (*SLAM!* went the butt of the spear on the floor by his head.) Now!"

Ian crossed himself, struggled to his feet and stumbled out the door into a storm-swept night. "Relax," he mumbled to himself again and again. "Not even a magic fish can make Isabella the Pope."

But he was wrong. He braved the storm, stood in the waves while lightening jumped in the sky, and called his rhyme over the waters. From within the storm a small calm voice came clearly back to him. "Go back, friend fisherman. Go back."

His feet were leaden rocks and each step was an uphill mile as Ian slowly hiked back to meet Her Holiness, Pope Isabella I.

Eventually the day Ian dreaded arrived. People approached Her Holiness with theological questions, and they asked that she conduct the Mass. Even Isabella was not ready to cross that line. She had no grasp of the eternal Truth, and she wasn't about to celebrate an unholy Mass even if she could have remembered the order.

Fishwife Isabella I summoned Ian for an audience. A member of the papal guard went to the beach to fetch him where he sat on a stone, a forgotten rosary in his hand, staring at the leaden gray sea. He went silently with the guard, and had his papal audience.

After chasing the guards from the audience room, Isabella explained, in her usual gentle manner, that she was not wholly pleased with her lot as Supreme Pontiff. While not doubting her own inherent qualifications for the position, there were certain items of information and background which she did not possess. Ian had it within his power to obtain these for her, and she knew that once he understood it was her pleasure that he should obtain them, he would do so. (At least that's what she meant. What she said was more like Ian had not bothered to make the proper wish and get her everything she wanted.) (*SLAM!*)

Ian nodded. All he wanted to know was what to ask for this time.

Her Holiness ordered him to return to the fish and demand she be made equal in all aspects to God. Then she would have answers to the questions put to her, and she could take care of what she wanted on her own. She knew Ian just wanted her dependent on him, but she would no longer tolerate that.

Ian nodded. It made perfect sense to him, or it made no sense at all. He no longer cared. For so long he had lived in horror and guilt at his part in this, he was numb. He left the throne room, threaded his way through the corridors to the kitchen, picked up his equipment, and plodded off to the beach, an image of the walking wounded.

The fiercest storm in the history of the coast raged as Ian approached the ocean. Waves the size of houses crashed against the shore, and ponds of salt water swamped over the rocks and hurried away again. Though he could not hear over the roaring of the storm winds or the explosion of the thunder, Ian whispered his little rhyme at the tempest. With a banshee howl, the wind tore the fishing rod and bag from the old fisherman's hand. He hoped they had whipped his words away, as well.

A wall of water rose before Ian, towering above him. It froze, suspended on the shore. The Flounder popped its head out of the giant wave. "Friend fisherman," came it's quiet voice, carrying somehow through the tumult. "You seek another boon?"

Dazed and confused, Ian numbly asked for his wife's apotheosis. The fish seemed unfazed by even this request and answered in that calm voice that somehow penetrated any storm. "Go home, friend fisherman. Your good wife has been given the portion given to each who make this wish. As bearer of the wish, you too are entitled to part of this boon. Perhaps you will enjoy your share. Go home, now."

Ian mumbled his thanks. Without knowing or caring what was in store for him, he ignored the storm, turned his back on the wall of water, and plodded home.

Just like the first night, Ian was confused by the lights. There weren't any. Well, that was not strictly true; the shack that stood on the site of the papal palace was dimly lit, perhaps by a tin lantern or turf fire. Ian almost missed having to thread his way past a fence and gate - almost.

Inside the shack Isabella sat in a heap by the table, her head hung low, her thin shoulders rounded. She was back in her dingy old frock, back on her rickety old chair, back in her dimly lit kitchen that forever smelled of fried fish and turf smoke. With the loss of her stuff, she had also lost her fire, her snotty attitude, the demeanor that had made her so disagreeable but had substituted for a real personality. Isabella the fishwife was back, but not herself.

The long remaining days and years of the former queen were quiet - very quiet. None of the market people would have anything to do with her and certainly none of the people she had met during her brief rise to power would acknowledge her. She had nothing and no one but herself, her shack and Ian. And truth to tell, she didn't want or like any of them.

Ian did what he could to care for Issie, but she wanted nothing from him. He continued to do what he knew: pray to his God, watch the beauty of His ocean, and pull fish from the sea. Sometimes he would whisper his rhyme, and the Flounder would visit his "friend fisherman," but each was careful to avoid a hook.