Why You Were Taken

11. A Swarm, a Smack

Johannesburg, 2021

The ragged tooth shark swims straight towards her. His dull eyes virtually unseeing in the water the colour of an overcast sky. Serrated teeth hanging out at all angles, as if he has long given up hunting. Her pulse quickens as he approaches, her finger on the trigger. He glides quickly with little effort. The water is murkier than she had hoped. Kirsten fires away. Just before it reaches her – a severed arm's length away – the shark turns to avoid the tempered glass of the tank. Superglass.

She gets a few shots of his profile: a vast muscle-and-cartilage body wrapped in slate sandpaper. Her head throbbing, she flicks through the thumbnails on the screen of her camera, making sure she has enough that are in sharp focus.

The lighting had been tricky because she couldn't use her flash; it would bounce off the glass. She was shooting in MultiFocus 3D to get more drama out of the looming shark. The shots were certainly dramatic, but shooting in MF3D always gives her a headache.

She sits down for a moment, watches the dancing blue light of the water (Aqua Shimmer) paint her arms and hands. The pressure in her head makes her feel as though the silicone-framed glass is going to give way and knock everyone over in a tidal wave of exotic fish, eels, and strangling seaweed.

She has a long gulp of CinnaCola from the can her assistant hands her. She had been at it for ages and she still wasn't sure if she had the shot. She powers up her Tile and looks at the pictures in subpixel HR. The pictures she had of the Leafy Sea Dragon, the Blanket Octopus and the Sea Wasp jellyfish were fantastic. The Blanket Octo looks like a silk scarf underwater: a billowing maroon cape. She could have watched it for hours.

The Sea Wasp was almost invisible: smoke caught in a bubble underwater, with elegant silver tentacles and enough deadly venom to kill up to sixty humans. If you get stung by this jellyfish in the sea, said the digital projection on the glass, it causes you such intense pain and shock you won't make it to the shore. A group of jellyfish is called a swarm or a smack. Such grace in its movement: hypnotic. She makes a mental note to do a jellyfish project in the future.

Her assistant offers her a ganache-glazed kronut but she, for once, declines. She doesn't feel great. A bit dizzy, nauseous. It had been a long morning and she still had to shoot the model. Her eyes are strained and she is battling to concentrate on the photos, so she closes the window and looks around the aquarium for a moment.

It's deliciously cool and quiet inside; even the children whisper. The cobalt luminescence ripples over the floor and the visitors, making everyone seem calm. It has a clean taste: ice and fresh mint, with a hint of citrus.

Who would have thought that an aquarium would work in Jozi? It had been an impromptu idea of some BEE-Kitten who had more investors than sense. There were so many things up against the project: the water shortage, the protesting fish-hippies, the transport costs. Can you imagine the logistics of trucking sharks, dolphins and other endangered fish from some sleepy coastal town to Johannesburg? It was a joke. Until it wasn't anymore, and now it's AQUASCAPE: a gushing money-spinner, a veritable pot of liquid gold. She looks around at the illuminated faces of the kids and their parental units, and feels a twinge. In drought-blasted South Africa it does feel magical to see so much water. She had always loved water – rivers, lakes, waterfalls, oceans – and swimming. She often wondered why she lived inland. Perhaps one day they would retire to the Cape Republic.

As a teenager she had read an article in the New York Times about the 'loneliest whale in the world'. It was about an animal that looked like a whale and sounded like a whale, but her call was slightly off, which meant that even though she called and called, no other whales could hear her.