Lucky Iron Fish

by Ava Steiner

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Lucky Iron Fish

Blythe needed more iron.

Specifically, she needed an iron fish- for her blood iron, or was it blood sugar that Theodore had said she was lacking? But she had eaten three pints of strawberry cheesecake ice cream and Theo still hadn’t called her back. Though, vampires were fickle like that. One would think that with their years, decades, eons even, of living, they would learn to exist with boredom. Sameness. But perhaps that longevity had dulled their sense of patience, and their senses, their sensibilities always needed to be stimulated. And Theodore hated when she called him Theo anyway.

She tried to invite him back into her life, subtly and unsubtly. She always slept with her window open- “You’ll get bats”, he said, “and sequentially, rabies”- though partly because her air conditioner was broken, and her landlord was a bit, well, stingy. “A god damn penny pincher”, Malia said with a sneer. She was funny like that, Malia. Even during full moons, her muzzle could still curl with the force of one thousand suns, showing off the lime green tooth gems her and Blythe had stuck on one night they had spent drinking to forget their exes- well, Malia’s ex, really, a siren who dumped her for an older fisherman. Blythe could never put her finger on her and Theo’s relationship.  The warning flags that normally were so vibrant with her fellow human exes were so easily explained away with Theo’s vampirism. She only saw him at night because, obviously.  He couldn’t meet her family because they were devout Catholics (crosses littered the house like thrown glitter). He never posted her on social media because he didn’t understand it, thought it was fleeting. Plus, he didn’t even show up in pictures. 

And Theo had been turned in the “olden days” (but wasn’t that so subjective anyway?) so he was such a prude when it came to relationships. He hated PDA- but so did she, Blythe had tried to convince herself when he had (gently, she relayed when telling Malia later) pushed her hand away where she rested it on his shoulder one date night.. His hands were so cold, and it had been the first time he let her paint his nails- they could be nothing other than black of course, but it still counted to her. His cuticles were perfect, but then again, everything about Theo was. And what was awful was that he was so humble about it. Or perhaps, it was the sort of “quiet confidence” that Larissa, the siren ex, had called it. Not kindly, might Blythe add. Larissa was also intensely beautiful in the way sirens had to be, but she was much louder about it. The snarky way she put down Malia - “My friends keep telling me I’m out of your league” - and Blythe - “It’s crazy that a human like you was able to bag a vampire like him”- , but Blythe digressed. It was crazy. What wasn’t crazy was him pseudo-dumping her. 

The great thing about the reason Theo dumped her was that it was fixable, she told

herself. Malia had laughed in her face when Blythe told her; her grin dropped when she realized Blythe wasn’t joking. “You’re being stupid”, she said, “because Theodore is using that as an excuse”. Potentially true, but Theo was too blunt for that. There was this strange stereotype about vampires and their purple prose, their fanciful, flowery language- No. Theodore (and Blythe presumed, all of his friends she hadn’t met), was terribly indelicate. Not brutal honesty, not towards her at least, but no elaboration in his terse responses to Blythe. 

(“Have you ever been in love?”)

(“No.”)

So there  was an easy solution when he told her he had no interest in seeing her anymore, to which Blythe obviously asked why, to which Theo responded that her blood iron was too low and he didn’t want to drink from her anymore. The doctors confirmed this when she had burst into a human-centered urgent care, that she had anemia. They had to repeat it quite a few times, since Blythe was so fascinated by the loopy, swirling tube that had collected her blood. Her bland, boring blood.

There was a note in her post-visit summary from the nurse who did her bloodwork. It was one line, five words, but Blythe had half a mind to report her to the board of physicians, or whatever it was called.

“Take caution in vampire-human relationships.”

It was so rude, it was so disrespectful, and Blythe had gone down a rabbit hole trying to justify burning the urgent care facility down to the ground. She had opted for biting her nails to the quick and pacing around her apartment instead. Take caution, take caution! She regretted even admitting to the nurse that she was seeing a vampire. But what explanation was there for “one of the most obvious cases of unnatural anemia” they had ever seen? Patterns consistent with frequent bloodletting. Plus, Blythe had been so frantic she’d forgotten her signature paisley-patterned ascot, and every attending had seen the little pockets of scar tissue near her jugular. 

But Blythe had to argue- there were worse mixed-creature relationships. Malia and Larissa were number one, for example. Sirens could command entire crowds to throw away their agency for a chance with them, and wolves took to orders like, well, fish to water. Her orc best friend in high school, Orchid, had an unabashed human fetish. Pixies, fairies, brownies and elves were notorious for interspecies dating and having fantastic blowups. There was even a bill proposed to outlaw marriages between selkies and humans by a senator whose wife had apparently been seduced by one. Well, that last one didn’t really count. But still!

Underneath the rude and disrespectful note was advice: iron. More iron in Blythe’s diet would raise her blood cell count, be rid of her anemia, and win over Theo. There was one problem: Blythe, out of solidarity, chose to be vegan with Theo. Theo refused to drink human blood, save for enthusiastically consenting ones such as Blythe of course. He even protested against the creation of for-profit blood banks, citing a rise in human deaths since their inception. It was one of the reasons Blythe liked him; he was so caring, so conscious of human plights. But his revulsion made it so that he was forced to drink a cocktail of coconut water and animal blood to sustain himself. Until Blythe came along.

They hadn’t met in the most conventional manner, at least according to Theo. In fact, they met on a sugaring website, recommended by one of Blythe’s old coworkers. One of the website's features was an emphasis on interspecies romance. Usually, sites had tags to filter by identity. Not this one, so Blythe was surprised when an account by the name of TVD456 messaged her with a curt “Hello. How are you?”. It was strange not getting a cheesy pickup line, or something brazenly grotesque for the sole purpose of getting her attention. So Blythe responded, it seemed stupid not to.

Imagine her surprise! When Theodore (after much prodding and poking) had revealed his name and age (Theodore Von Dortmund,  456 years old), Blythe was charmed. It was sweet, how he apparently learned a few rules on internet safety and fiercely guarded his identity from her. How he was so formal in his texts, with no spelling errors like he proofread each and every one of them. It was sweet. Endearing, even. And Blythe liked to be chased, so when he broke down and revealed his location (which she knew to be the same metropolitan city as hers because she searched by proximity) to ask her to dinner, she eagerly (but hopefully not too eagerly) accepted. 

She remembered the first time he drank her blood too. With the distant air of a gentleman, he kissed down her neck and looked up with tar pit deep eyes. “May I?” he asked, not pleading. Never pleading. Like he knew her every decision. He was smart like that.

It was agonizing for less than a second. Then it felt weird, like he was giving a hickey with two straws. Left a similar mark too. Two little kiss points, then as he continued to feast the wound kept scarring over into an ugly, textured blemish. He bought her that silk ascot as an apology.

But the iron, the iron. Blythe had a deep hankering for steak, but her principles held out. Malia, the sweetheart, steamed all of the spinach she could find at the elven farmer’s market, but it tasted like nothing and slid down her throat in the most unpleasant way. Blythe scoured the internet for solutions- lentils were blegh and the cereals the “healthy” aisle pushed forward weren’t sweet enough. Then- the fish, the iron fish, the so-called “lucky” iron fish came across her path. Blythe could use quite a bit of luck. Aside from that, it added iron to any soup it simmered in. Not that Blythe ate a lot of soup, but she could start.  

Her luck was already starting to turn. They were sold in a little Satyr-owned bodega down the street. So all she had to do was not pass out on the way there. Little spots of black had been dancing across her vision every time she stood up, and it had been taking longer and longer to scrub them away with her knuckles each time it happened. Malia offered to accompany her, but Blythe felt like she was being a bad friend by complaining about her boy troubles anyway. So  Blythe tied the little ascot around her neck, smeared concealer around the pits beneath her eyes, and tried not to lick her chapped, chapped lips. 

Thank everything above that her apartment was on the ground floor. She slinked out, holding the last minute pashmina around her head, and briskly walked to the corner. 

It was chilly. Blythe couldn’t believe how people were dressed- it was early April, and yet the masses were wearing sundresses, shorts, itty bitty spaghetti strap tank tops. Gosh, she didn’t even remember the last time she wore a tank top. A few months after she started seeing Theo? That sounded right. Malia gave her, well, her neck, a weird look and it had been back to the ascot for her. 

Two elder vampires (you could always tell, their skin had a glossy sheen that couldn’t be achieved with cosmetics) side eyed her under their black silken umbrella. Blythe wasn’t short by any means, but she felt like the mousy little creature their gaze made her out to be. Scarves were in, she wanted to snap.  But they would verbally (or literally, if you were inclined to believe fearmongering headlines) tear her throat out. Vampires were the second worst in accepting interhuman relationships. The first were fairies- their genetic code barely allowed for it in the first place. Humans love to lie, most of all to themselves. Vampires loooooved to forget they were human. They shriveled at the very mention of it; like it was so degrading to be one of them. When Blythe asked Theo what his life was like before he was turned, he looked at her like she had spat on him. Like it was asinine to want to know what the 1500s were like. He could boast for days about how he was part of the revolutionaries in France, or how he kissed Marilyn Monroe at the premiere of Some Like it Hot, but recalling the renaissance for a paper? Too much, far too much. 

Blythe pushed open the bodega door, cringing at the too loud bell. The satyr behind the counter was young, headgear wrapped around the ridged horns beneath a frizzy head of hair. Gone was the older one who usually manned the place, her own hair dragging behind her in a loc’d braid. Blythe scowled, tucking her face into her scarf. It was embarrassing to ask, looking the way she did. It was incredibly evident she was hooking up with a vampire. 

Iron, iron. Blythe scoured the shelves- unsurprisingly, stocked with food. There was the medicine aisle, fully stocked with iron supplements, but she hated taking pills. She’d gone to a majority fairy elementary school as a child, so iron and salt pills were swigged down with the orange juice next to her breakfast plate every morning. She distinctly remembered gagging quite a few times at just the thought of them, and clearly recalled her mother plugging her nose shut so she would finally swallow and be off to school. Not pleasant.

The click of the satyr’s heels behind her made her jump. Behind thick tortoiseshell glasses the satyr peered at her. On his matted sweater vest (finally, someone who dressed for the weather!) was a scratched plastic nametag: Memphie. His words came through as if through water - “Can I help you with anything?”-, through a haze of professional and paid concern. Blythe tapped her phone and pulled up the pictures of the fish- honestly, she wasn’t trying to be rude, talking felt like an insurmountable task reserved for the Herculean heroes that were meant to talk to satyrs anyway. He squinted (he needed a new prescription, Blythe thought distantly), and let out a small snort. He pointed to the back of the store- under a hand painted sign that read “NOT SAFE FOR FAIRIES” was a small selection of bells, sprigs of rowan, clovers, and- iron! Rings, clad decor, and the fish!

Blythe could have kissed the satyr. She trembled over to the selection- cheap, they were only sold for 9.99. Perfect. 

She got in line- short, only behind an elderly woman and her young companion. A vampire! The man, of course. The woman held a knotted wooden cane in one hand and his in the other. Her knuckles were mountainous, nearly blending in with the stick she gripped like a lifeline. Her dandelion puff hair was so wispy, it seemed as though it could float away in a strong wind. Blythe had the distant urge to make a wish. Her silken shawl slipped down her feeble shoulders- but there was something sexy about it, Blythe thought. Purplish veins mapped across her back like spiderwebs, and the man was tracing them with the tip of his finger absentmindedly as Memphie bagged their items. 

Blythe could have chewed off her tongue in jealousy. They turned- the man was sculpted by gods, cheekbones looking like they were carved in marble. The woman’s gullet sagged, looking like the Earth was physically pulling her down to rejoin it soon. There were no pockmarks on the woman’s neck, nor shoulder, nor breasts. It wasn’t fair. They gave Blythe a slight nod as they passed- well, the woman did. The man looked at his lover as though she were the immortal one, like he was the passing fancy in their relationship. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he wanted to make an impression before the woman passed, soak in her essence before he lived his days without her.

Blythe suddenly recalled Theo’s morbid interest in one of her smile lines- rubbing it with his thumb, not terribly gently either. She thought she was being flirty when she said “Spending time with you makes them deeper”. He gave her a half smile, like he was afraid of forming his own. He dumped her a few days later. 

She was snapped back to the present as Memphie called her forward. She took out the last bills in her wallet- Theo always gave her allowance in cash. She forked over the ten dollars, receiving the paper bag. When she left and opened it up, there were a few salted caramels thrown in as a treat. She couldn’t remember the last time she had gotten anything for free.

Blythe sucked on one as she entered her apartment. Putting a pot of soup on the stove, she closed her window. It was cold outside, after all.