Submerged Page 14

  There was no sky above him, no silvery sheen like in the shallows. Sunlight ended ten thousand feet away. By all rights he shouldn’t have been able to see what the Pamela thing was dragging him toward, and God knows he wished he could close his eyes and take it back. In the strictest terms, you could say it looked like a funhouse mirror’s memory of an anglerfish, all mouth and teeth, two stories high with room for an attic, round and squashed like a balloon sneaking through the cat door. The biggest teeth were tall as surfboards and something had broken the points off a few of them. This thing had fed plenty, though. The Pamela thing wasn’t bringing Mickey to its mouth. That wasn’t how it fed. Whatever it had evolved to prey on had probably died off eons or worlds ago and now it sat on the sea bottom with its mouth wide open, fat and greasy. Its skin was the color of cold lard, covered in slow wiggling parasites that probably wished they’d parasited something else. Its cheeks bulged so much its dead eyes had been buried in a squint. It needed to put its calories to use. It had fed and fed and fed and now it was full of eggs and good times, and it needed to be fertilized. It had sent the Pamela thing up, like maybe a siren, like maybe a mermaid, looking for something it could squeeze just right and turn those eggs into babies.

  The tendril this whole time was retracting into the base of its root on the thing’s head, a protruding ridge above those fatty-fatty-two-by-four eyes.

  The thing was never going to mate successfully left to its own devices, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, it was going to keep dragging men down into the ocean in the attempt, and if the lures kept not working, it might be smart enough to find a different tactic. It might start coming closer to shore. It was more than Mickey could do to rid the world of this kind of thing, but patrolling the shore and keeping it from coming to the beach, he could do that much. So far anyway.

  The tendril now was furling back up into the base so fast that Mickey was starting to spin in the water. But it didn’t pull him toward the head or that horrible toothy gob, but instead smacked him against its side. He was skin to skin with the thing, his warm fragile pink against its toadbumpy pulsating white.

  I change my mind, Mickey thought.

  I don’t want to do this. This was a mistake. I’m not the guy. I should have just gone surfing. I don’t want to do this again. I don’t want to have to be the one who does this. I don’t want to be here. It isn’t worth it, just for a place to live. I could just sleep in my car, I can just get the biggest bag of cheeseburgers you can even think of and just eat them and sleep in my car and get up in the morning and surf, and that’s all I ever need to do. Haven’t I done enough yet? Isn’t there anybody else?

  Pink and white began to come together, forgetting they were separate. It was trying to absorb him and make him fertilize its eggs. It was trying to burn him to fuel its species. It didn’t even have a choice in the business, but that didn’t make it any better.

  “I hate this so much,” he said when the thing had pulled him into its flesh deep enough that he could poke around. Even with the sigils, it just came out as gibberish, but he doubted the thing would have understood English anyway. It didn’t need to. The Pamela thing lifting his last name from his mind showed that it had the usual mild telepathy of Deep-dwelling horrors, and it probably even knew that it had grabbed the wrong guy, a really toxic mate who’d be all wrong for it. It knew that and maybe it couldn’t do anything about it, but maybe it was okay with the way this was going to go down. Maybe it would rather die here at the bottom of everything than keep getting fatter and juicier in a world where it could never find a mate.

  The cat’s eye ruby in his necklace had traversed the Silk Road once, in early days, when routes carved across the earth formed sigils that warded off the remnants of those things that used to dwell here before the before. It held a lot of power, but like any other battery, the only way to know how much of a charge it carried was to turn it on and see if it worked. One of these days it wouldn’t.

  This time it did. He wrapped the necklace around his hand like brass knuckles and burned through the fish-thing’s fleshy wall like a hot rock dropped into a bucket of butter. He pushed through it and down under the cavity of the gaping mouth to the egg sacs. There’s always more fish in the sea, the bartender had said. Wiser than you realized, Jonesey. Wiser, but pretty gross.

  This is when time gets thick again, when the coldest and saltiest things sink to the bottom. The Pamela thing was going to sit here forever, dragging hapless male after hapless male to it trying to fertilize these eggs in vain. If there was a male of her species, she would have found it by now. But this ruby of Mickey’s, it could do some things even Argo couldn’t do. The ruby was how he conjured fire, how he navigated the Deep, and now it was how he reached through time to another moment, another sea. It was like helping Zinger splice tape. Pasting pieces of moments together. One moment was the one Mickey was in, surrounded by the Pamela-thing’s unfertilized eggs. The other moment … involved a male of her species. Fertilizing some other somebody-thing’s eggs, some eon ago. It was a foul thing to witness, but when it came to an end, those eggs were fertilized and wiggling. Popping and crackling like Rice Krispies.

  He didn’t think he could kill this thing himself, even with the ruby, even with Argo. But he knew he could kill the babies. And he knew the babies needed to eat.

  The Pamela thing dried up and broke off the tendril; it would probably wash up somewhere someday and make some money for a tabloid photographer. It floated off and left Mickey alone to watch the gobbling chomping little toothbeasts eat away at all the good lardy flesh their mother had stored up over the ages, each of them the size of a grasping hand. When they’d eaten enough of the mother her body started to collapse, draping over him and them and all the awful business like a tent that’s lost its poles, and that’s when he had to scoop them up one by one and burn them with the ruby. Truth is, maybe he missed one, maybe two, and maybe that’d turn out bad someday down the line, but he got enough, and it’d be nobody’s problem for a long time.

  Without Argo it was a long paddle back out of the Deep and onto the shore, a long cold silence with nothing for company but memories of the thing’s dying flesh around him and the other things’ brand new bodies dying in his hands even as their teeth nipped at his fingers. He could still hear the sound of the Pamela thing’s voice and the way it hadn’t synced up with her mouth. He figured the fish-thing had known what he was doing maybe even before he’d known it himself.

  * * *

  When he got back to Echo Beach, Mickey’s heart was pounding so hard it was hard to breathe. He made fists in the sand, grinding the wet sand against his palms the way his grandmother used to rub lard into biscuit flour. Somehow he kept forgetting how to breathe, and his throat hitched like a hiccup, his chest filling up staccato and exhaling in exhausted sobs. His eyes were hot and his back hurt and he wanted to run away, not from the beach but, yes, from the beach, too, not from the world but, yes, from the world, too, but mostly from his own body. He wanted to wrench free of it and sail off into somebodyelseness someother-wherewards.

  He pulled his knees toward his chest, face down on the beach, tried to feel small, and instead felt like a rocket trembling with the anticipation of escape velocity. He was going to need that lude as soon as he could get to the car. He was going to need to remember to tell the Trip to get more for him from that doctor in the city.

  “Okay,” he said. “All right. Okay. All right.”

  He wasn’t sure how long he was like that before Jane found him. Maybe she’d been watching for him, maybe somebody told the old lady that this old dude was freaking out on the beach. Maybe somebody thought he’d got jellyfish stung. But her hand was on his back and she had a cold can of Bala Club black cherry soda, and soon enough he turned around, sat next to her in the sand, and drank the soda while they passed a joint back and forth.

  “I’m sorry about your daughter, Jane,” he said. “I should’ve said it before.”

  “Th
ank you. What are you, Mickey?”

  “Just doing my best. Just doing the work. Are we square?”

  “We’re more than square. The place is yours.”

  And for the next eleven-twelve years, until Jane died, Mickey Lyric always had a place at Echo Beach.

  THE WINDLOST

  Jenna Rhodes

  The airship came ka-pock-pock-eting over the island, blocking out the sun and sky with its bronze bulk. Island winds shredded pure white clouds into streamers like fine silk about its wings, stretched out like the fins of a great sea-going fish. Their scalloped edges vibrated while turbines noisily moved propellers at the fore and rear, steadily thrusting the airship forward. Bevan ran to the sea cliffs to shake his fist and curse because one of them, or rather one of their officers, had taken away his wife, leaving him with anger that could not fill his emptiness.

  He should have guessed she’d leave him. Any escape would have been more interesting to a young society woman who married a historian and treasure hunter. He had promised her fame and prestige and what had he given her? A hole in the ground that he feared to excavate. When she’d left him, he’d told the tradesmen and busybodies in port that she’d died suddenly, as people can. They had probably known the truth, but let him pass the fantasy.

  Built like a barge, the airship carried cargo stacked on open decks as it began its low pass. Those not docking for repairs soared above so high and swift that crewmen racing along their decks looked like twigs. This time, as the current dragged them down, he could almost see the expressions on their faces, the colors of their green and gold uniforms, the static discharges as they climbed the rigging, their steps marked by lightning outbursts. It all held him in thrall. So enchanted was he that he almost did not catch their scrambling to and fro, battered as the wind roared up. His island had a reputation for savage currents, in the sea and sky.

  The airship rocked. He thought he could hear orders being shouted as the airship canted dangerously, one scalloped wing dipping low. Crates on the deck began to shift against securing lines that groaned with the strain. The cargo, clearly in sight now, had sigils etched into wood that made his pulse jump as he read them. Artifacts! What site had been looted? What treasures drifted overhead that he stood denied?

  The ship’s flag snapped open, revealing a death mask, black on red silk. Plague ship. The great, dark shapes on its deck carried not cargo but massive coffins, each designed to hold multitudes. He staggered back as the entire airship shuddered. Ropes snapped. The lid flew open on one of the coffins. He could see the small bodies wrapped in white, stacked like logs of firewood inside. Children. Once. Now they were silent, gauze-wrapped packages that shifted as the airship strained to stay aloft. The crate slid along the deck, the open coffin tilting precariously. A child fell from the sky.

  It plunged downward, the many layers of gauze tearing open, trailing behind and billowing. He watched it breathlessly, as the only witness, the crewmen engaged in straightening their rigs. Arms akimbo, he yelled, “Oy! Hey there!” with no real hope of being heard. The massive lid snapped shut as the airship righted itself and then soared to gain both height and speed.

  He quickly turned away to see the white bundle meet the afternoon tide. A bared arm broke the surface.

  He ran.

  Sand sprayed from his boots as he bolted downward, brush and salt grasses tangling his steps as his eyes focused on the white shape bobbing in the sea. Impossibly, he thought he saw struggle as the child fought to claw its way out of the waves. He dove into the icy water without a second thought.

  Wrestling with both tide and child, Bevan found his way back to shore. A white face turned to him, mouth open, coughing, choking, eyes unseeing. He managed to keep the head out of the waves, as the child went limp when he hauled her onto the sand.

  Her gauze trailed about them, and he saw henna marks on it fast dissolving in the salt water. She began to cough, deep rasping sounds, and he turned her on her side, letting her spew upon the sand.

  Wiping her face with trembling hands, he leaned over her in both wonder and fear. “You live.” How, he could not guess.

  A flicker of understanding moved through her eyes as she blinked into the sun’s dazzle. She covered her face with one hand and turned away.

  Bevan held her while she retched again, and then he bent and hoisted her thin, small body in his arms and carried her off the shore.

  * * *

  He watched her for a few days, uncertain of his actions except to feed her soup and water, amazing over her while she slept in one of his old shirts, soft and warm. How was it she lived at all? He’d heard no rumors of a deadly sickness raging, and yet the flag had flown boldly. The crates could be mistaken as nothing other than coffins. In his scholarship, he’d read innumerable accounts of plague. Soldiers’ journals. Traders. Even missionaries. He watched for fever. Pustules. Blistering stripes. Vomiting. Bleeding from the eyes and nose. Hoarse coughing that would not stop. All the signs of disease that he could remember, and saw none.

  He examined the burial wrapping, but only a few of the henna designs remained, blurred and damaged by the water. He could make little sense of them and tapped his fingers irritably on his desk. He’d been out of touch too long, abandoning his own research when Rozany scorned him. Now he only used his education to translate and scrape out a living. Where had the hunters gone and what stupidity inspired them to bring plague infected to the great continent? What was he not seeing? And when would they come looking for her when they accounted for their cargo? They might remember the upheaval over Windlost Island. They might recall hearing a shout. They might have seen, in the corners of their eyes as they scurried to right the airship, a white star falling from their deck.

  Or they might remember nothing.

  * * *

  Convinced she merely rested, he returned to translating a technical manual for the port blacksmith Bartoff. He peeked in at her periodically, listening as she murmured soft words in her sleep, a few familiar to him as Trade common, though accented oddly. Still, no sign of sickness appeared. He told himself that they were both safe and set about making a supper. When he turned about, dusting his hands off, she sat at his table, bright-eyed, her chin barely clearing the table’s edge. Nut-brown hair wisped about her face, small tendrils escaping from her braid. His old shirt floated about her slender form.

  “Good day.” He fixed her a bowl of soup. She ate cautiously, wielding the wooden spoon with delicacy. “Do you understand me?”

  She put a finger up imperiously, stopping him. Her eyes narrowed and then she nodded. She pointed to an ear. “I listen. I know.” Her attention dropped back to the bowl.

  “Who are you?”

  She eyed him a moment. “Who asks?”

  His training dared him to place her diction, but knew that Trade Common evolved from people to people. His frustration grew.

  She tilted her head. “What are you?”

  An odd question. She watched him as if she knew it would peel him open, demanded it of him before she would give him her trust.

  “I’m a historian. A treasure hunter.” He cleared his throat, for such a romantic line had gained and then lost him Rozany. He’d gone to university, done his field studies, been declared a genius, and found the map. A scrap really, but it spoke to him of a fallen queen, mislaid in time, with a hint of where to find her. The promise of great achievements beckoned and then marooned him. Bevan paused in mild embarrassment. “Eat.”

  She tapped her spoon on her bowl. “This is good.”

  “Thank you.” He watched as she ate slowly, cautiously, still wary. “Have you a name? A people?”

  That gave her pause. “My name is Ardith.”

  Disappointingly, it lacked trace of a culture or lineage. “Mine is Bevan.” Curiosity drove him. “What were you doing in a coffin?”

  The spoon clattered from her fingers. “Sleeping. Only sleeping, until the sickness passed us by. The magicians put us away in safety.” Her sea-glass co
lored eyes brimmed for a moment.

  “What magicians? What land?”

  She eyed him as if weighing his right to answers. “I cannot tell you.”

  “Nothing about your city, your country? How long have you slept? You must remember something.”

  “Only the magicians.”

  Scarcely breathing, he nodded.

  “They laid us down in rows and touched our eyelids with their long, red-painted nails and promised they would awaken us later, when the cure arrived. They promised to come for me.” Her words rang like prophecy to his uneasy hearing.

  He would comb his library later for references.

  “But they didn’t.”

  “They will.”

  “Tell me about the sickness.”

  She rubbed her brow. “It starts with a stagger. Then you fall. A horrible rash covers you. You go blind. Then die. They made us drink boiled water. They shut us away from the wind. Nothing worked. A few days and then …”

  He covered her chilled hand in comfort, even as he damned himself for making her give a name. She had become a person, not a scholarly pursuit. “You’re cold.”

  She nodded.

  The present flooded back. “Come with me.”

  Rozany had left her trunk behind, filled with clothes she’d thought as unimportant to take as himself. He pulled it from under his bed, opening the lid, the scent of dried flowers floating upward. Ardith fell on her knees.