Seawitch

TWENTY-ONE

“Fend off?”

“Well, you don’t say ‘repel boarders’ when it’s not human, do you?” Quinton shouted back. He snatched a pole from a pair of clamps beneath the rail and shoved it into my hand. “You go to the bow and smack down anything that tries to come over the rail—this is going to hurt and I’m sorry about that rib, but we have no choice. Solis, you stay on the side deck—your back will be protected by the cabin, but you’ll have to move up and down the deck pretty quickly to keep off whatever’s coming. I’ll take the stern until Zantree tells us otherwise. We don’t have time to tie off to safety lines since we didn’t run any, so be careful, keep your flotation vests on, and grab or tie yourself to something whenever you can.”

He ran back to the stern and returned in a moment with a wicked, narrow hook on a short handle. He thrust it into Solis’s hand and then dashed back the way he came.

Solis blinked and paled, then turned to me. “What is coming and how will I know?”

“I think you’ll see it just fine—these guys aren’t being subtle. And if you can’t tell, hit anything that isn’t one of us or part of the boat.”

“What about Zantree?”

“He’s pretty busy on the bridge.” I gave his shoulder a steadying squeeze. “It’s just like any other fight. Only wetter.”

I didn’t wait to hear him object but ran forward to take up my position on the bow, partially as the specially talented lookout, I realized, as much as a defender. I was puffing uncomfortably by the time I reached my spot and my side was already achy.

The waterspout was less worrisome than the roiling sea ahead of it. The gleams of Grey energy I’d spotted earlier were uncoiling now, reaching toward our boat and spreading like blind vines groping for us with seeking tendrils. And as they came, the strands formed outlines of shapes, monstrous and strange: creatures half-man and half-fish with wide mouths full of jagged teeth and extra appendages like the grasping tentacles of giant squid. The lines began to fill with sea foam whipped by wind and our own personal squall drew in fast, accompanied by harbingers of magical destruction and a high, keening song that caught across my ears and my throat, sharp as the metal taste of ozone. I risked a drop into the Grey to get a better look. . . .

The ghost world roared with the voice of a storm and the cold blackness of the Sound flickered with lightning rising from the depths to burst through the surface in gouts of green, blue, and violet light. The colored energy from the depths reached into the smoky substance of the Grey, twisting it into vaporous shapes and running in quicksilver streams through the billowing eddies of ghost-stuff. Farther away, the Grey held a small cohort of more solid shapes that surged through the water. At this distance it was hard to be certain, but the things seemed to be the same shapes as the monsters projected in the magic and sea foam that was closing in nearby. One of the fast-running threads of energy snapped toward me with the sound of lightning and a stink of ozone; it clamped around my upper arm and yanked backward, trying to drag me off the boat. I snatched at it with my free hand and tried hooking one of my legs around the nearest upright on the rail and bracing my feet against whatever solid purchase I could feel to resist the strand’s tugging me into the water, but the rail was insubstantial so deep in the Grey. I threw myself backward, pinching off the energy strand that had wound itself around my arm as I tumbled back into the normal.

And into a descending wave cresting over the rail.

“I’m getting . . . a little sick . . . of being wet all the time,” I muttered, picking myself up, wincing and gasping.

A storm front pushed by the waterspout had closed in on the boat with unnatural speed while I’d been “out” and Mambo Moon was already pitching against thrashing water and gusting wind. Just keeping my footing on that moving deck was a painful task. Beyond the squall line the water was a little choppy but otherwise undisturbed and other boats seemed to have no trouble turning aside. But no matter how Zantree maneuvered, the waterspout closed on us, bringing bigger and bigger waves that soon broke over the rails. Trying to maintain my hold on the normal world and the boat, I didn’t dare fall deeper into the Grey and had to content myself with glancing at the incoming storm from the corner of my eye, scanning for the horrors it concealed and breathing in uncomfortable gulps.

It wasn’t so much a concealment as it was a literal front. The magic wasn’t deep and it probably wouldn’t hold up past a certain degree of damage, distance, or time, but how long or far we’d only know when it broke. The first real assault came over the side as blue-green figures of foam and water, reaching for us with tentacles and teeth. I heard Solis shout in alarm as the watery specters heaved aboard. I swung my boat hook at the nearest one, feeling the shaft connect with a slow thud to the mass of animate liquid. But the pole didn’t stop; it merely bogged down against resistance and snapped out the other side too fast under the power of my muscles, causing me to stumble and twist forward as the hook came free into the air on the other side. The figure I’d swung through dissolved into a huge splash, as if I’d shattered an aquarium.

I swore as pain broke across my ribs and I jabbed the pole’s butt backward into the next sea-foam monster. That, too, fell into a dousing explosion of water that knocked me down onto the deck, breathless and unable to refill my lungs as each heaving attempt was cut short by the sharp agony in my side. I needed to hold on to something or I’d pass out and the enchanted waves would wash me right off the other side. I rolled onto my back with care and started to shove my feet against the next one, but my foot passed through it and I felt a wet, electric shock as something gleaming wrapped around my leg and yanked me toward the rail.

“Oh no you don’t,” I gasped, getting a mouthful of seawater for my pains.

I braced my other foot against the rail as I was dragged to the edge and jabbed the boat hook into the gaping maw of the thing, shattering it. I dropped back onto the deck, free, but still down and hurting like I’d been beaten with a stick. I gagged on water and pain as I scrambled up, panting and not sure why the pole worked but my foot hadn’t. My leg stung where the aqueous phantom had clutched me and my chest throbbed. I gulped mouthfuls of air to refill my lungs and stabbed at every shape that came toward me.

I cut my gaze to the side for a moment to check on Solis. He seemed to be holding out, though he was soaked and confused, moving in quick lunges side to side following the jerky turns of his head. I could see the whites of his too-wide eyes and he slashed and reposted again and again with a surprising economy. If I’d had time, I’d have admired his fighting form, but there was no such luxury.

“Just poke them. Don’t waste energy; they’re not real,” I gasped, but my voice had no strength and he didn’t hear me.

A few more of the sea-foam creatures boiled over the rails and I dispatched mine with simple jabs, conserving my strength so I could get up and fight the denser forms beginning to thrust through the vanguard of shaped liquid as the gleam of magical energy began to fade and the scraping, spiraling song with it. They were difficult to see through the water and spray, but I assumed the new assault was formed by the merfolk themselves—if the monstrous things I’d seen in the distance were they.

One of the merfolk—a creature only vaguely human above its muscular dolphinlike tail—broached the surging wave and snatched at Solis with arms like the leaf-shaped tentacles of a squid that shot forward and wrapped the sergeant tight before the monstrosity fell back toward the heaving surface. Solis gave a shout as he was lifted and dragged over the rail, flailing his hook against the thing’s body, the point gouging into the monster’s flesh. Red blood spattered onto the deck and the hook caught on a rail stanchion, arresting their fall for a moment.

“Rey!” I shouted into a gasping silence in the attack.

The illusions collapsed in a crashing wave and the horrifying monster forms of the real merfolk—a mere handful, though they’d seemed like a hundred—began to recede as the one grappling with Rey tried to yank him under the surface. It opened its mouth, showing the rows of shark teeth within, and I lunged forward, driving the prong of my boat hook into that dreadful maw.

The mer-thing made a gurgling cry and jerked backward, tearing Solis’s hold free of the stanchion as it fell into the water. Solis fell after it, free of the tentacles for the moment as he vanished into the foam and spray of the merfolk’s retreat. I tried to heave myself over the side after Solis, but I wasn’t breathing well and my legs had gone limp under me while my ribs seemed to catch on fire. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.

“They’re falling back. I’ll get Solis,” Quinton shouted in my ear, rushing onto the side deck to shove me back. “You get to the bow and get ready to throw the life preserver to us.”

“Life—” I started, forcing my watering eyes open.

“Big orange ring with a rope on it,” he shouted back, pointing.

Then he was over the side and gone into the water.

The noise of the boat and the storm dropped to a high whistling and dull clanging and splashing, the merfolk—stripped of their monstrous illusions, but still monsters—sweeping back from whence they came. Zantree came scrambling around to the side deck and got me on my feet.

“You all right?”

I panted at him. “Just. Winded. You?” I hurt all over and thought I was going to throw up from it, but I wasn’t going to say so.

“Had to cut the engine so we wouldn’t run over the boys and cut ’em up with the props. Why did those things break off like that?”

“Out of power . . . I think.”

“I hope they aren’t just regrouping. . . . But I’d better get back topside and keep an eye out for the boys. If you miss with the ring, we’ll have to circle around—if we can and if this hole in the weather holds long enough. Can you manage?”

I would have to: There was only the two of us left aboard and I couldn’t maneuver the boat like he could. I nodded.

Zantree spun around and bolted back to the flying-bridge ladder.

I held the rail near the life preserver and stared out toward the water, looking for any sign of Quinton or Solis. I spotted something dark, splashing a distance out from the side of the boat but well to the rear. I wasn’t sure how to throw the life preserver that far from the bow, but I felt as much as heard the engines roar back up to speed and the boat turned, coming around and moving toward a point above the splashing. The engines cut back to a burble and the boat glided, turning a bit more so we weren’t coming straight on it. In a moment the splashing resolved into the shape of two heads and a thrashing arm. I grabbed the life preserver and tossed it like a giant Frisbee, letting out a sharp squeal of agony as it flew free from my outstretched arms. I folded over the jabbing in my side, scraping my arms against the rails as I went, and forced my eyes open to see the ring splash down.

The orange ring skimmed out over the water and plopped onto the surface near Quinton’s head with the grace of a belly-flopping eight-year-old. But it was close enough for him to stroke to and grab and I thanked every god I could think of that I wouldn’t have to throw it a second time. The ring wasn’t big enough to shove around any adult’s head, but Quinton held on to it with one arm while he kept the other wrapped around Solis’s chest. I ran the line around the anchor winch and started walking—crabbing painfully—backward to haul in the slack until the men bumped into the side of the boat.

It took a bit of mucking around with the rope to get Solis and Quinton to the swim platform at the back. Solis came up coughing and sputtering as Quinton lifted him, and the edge of the platform butted into his gut, forcing out air and water. He wasn’t steady on his feet and Zantree had to push, pull, and haul him back up to the main deck and then into the main cabin, but he was alive and whole when he got there. By the time Solis was dried off and bundled up in new clothes and warm blankets, sitting in the galley with a cup of hot coffee, the wind had risen and the boat was being shoved by wild gusts and unexpected waves once again.

“I don’t know why those monsters fell off—and thank God for it—but it’s still going to be a fight all the way up,” Zantree said, sticking his head in through the hatch to the enclosed bridge above the galley. He looked at me. “You think they’re coming back anytime soon?”

I took my best guess and shook my head. “Can’t maintain the storm and the illusions for long. There weren’t very many merfolk and they retreated as soon as one was hurt. I suspect she can’t afford to lose people. She’ll put her energy into wearing us down with the storm and save the rest in case we make it to the cove.”

“I’ll take your word on that, ’cause the winds aren’t dying down, but I sure don’t see any more of those fish men. I’ll keep the helm a while longer down here in the pilothouse station while you guys dry off and warm up. I may need a lookout on deck before that, but I can handle the wheel myself. You think you’ll be ready to take over in an hour or two?”

“Yeah,” Quinton replied from under a towel. “Are we still running for Roche Harbor?”

“That’s my plan, though it sounds like we need to go on and find Gary’s cove before we’re out of time or battered to pieces. If this storm keeps up we may have no choice—we’re way off course and fighting the shore current on the west boundary. The wind pushed us out a good bit and if it keeps on the same way, we’ll be pushed back toward the rocks around the Chatham Islands. I’ll have to work her out of the current and back into the main channel as soon as it starts to slack up. Then we’ll have to scoot across to the west shore of San Juan and hope for a lift up the inside current once the tide’s turning. We’re going to be two or three hours later than we thought, if we can make it at all without overshooting Mosquito Pass.”

“Doesn’t sound good . . . That was a hell of a storm,” Quinton said.

“I’d say hell’s exactly where it came from. Never seen anything like that. It was like the squall picked us out. And now it’s back, so I’d better hop to it.” He vanished up the steps and we could hear him moving around overhead.

I looked at Solis, huddled in his blanket. He looked pale but it appeared he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. I was still a bit damp and battered myself but better off than he was.

“You still with us, Solis?” I asked.

He nodded with more vigor than I thought needed. “To the bitter end—if it comes to that.”

“I hope not.”

“This is becoming a most bizarre adventure.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it an adventure,” I started.

“What else can it be? It’s no longer a case, per se. I cannot report most of what’s occurred today without running the risk of being accused of . . . flights of fancy.”

“You mean being crazy,” I corrected.

He shrugged with a small bow of his head and half-raised shoulder. “That, too. I am finding it quite . . . eye-opening.”

“If by ‘eye-opening’ you mean, ‘staring in terror,’ yeah, it is that,” Quinton said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going up with Zantree to take a look at the charts and nav and try to figure out where we’re going and how to spot it before it’s my turn at the wheel.” He gave me a significant look—including a half-raised eyebrow—and turned to head up the steep steps to the bridge.

When he was out of earshot, I turned my attention back to Solis. “I’m sorry—” I started.

“For what?”

“For getting you into this mess and getting you half-drowned.”

“You did not get me into any mess. This came with the case—which I requested—and while I find it uncomfortable, it is necessary. I would not be diligent if I didn’t pursue this, however strange it becomes. I’m not of a delicate mind that cannot stand a challenge,” he added, leveling a finger at me as if I’d implied any such thing.

“I never said so,” I objected.

“But you think me inflexible.”

“I find you . . . rather traditional.”

He snorted. “Hidebound.”

“No. Just somewhat . . . by the book.”

“It depends on which book. . . .”

I laughed. “I suppose it does. Which book do you favor?”

“I no longer know. But . . . I am not what you think I am.”

I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything to stop whatever admission he held, trembling on the verge of words.

He took several slow breaths, glancing around as if he were gauging the room’s ability to absorb what he was about to say without mutating into something even stranger than the creature that had snatched him from the deck. “I must be honest: I have looked into your background, Blaine. I . . . wanted to know if you were, perhaps . . .”

“Dangerous? Crazy?” I offered.

“Untrustworthy.”

“Personally or professionally?” I asked. I wasn’t offended; I would have checked up on him, too, if I’d had questions about the reliability of his information or person. And he’d had occasion to question mine once or twice, since I’m such a source of strange cases and freakish accidents. That was understandable and it didn’t bother me . . . anymore.

“They’re the same, in most cases. As you know.”

I nodded. I’d done enough background investigation and legal discovery to know that people who aren’t on the up-and-up in one aspect of their lives usually don’t meet a higher standard in any of the others. Unless they’re a particular variety of sociopath.

He spoke haltingly and without letting his eyes rest on mine for more than a second or two at a time. “But I found nothing of that sort, in spite of your . . . penchant for the unsettling. I have found you frustrating in the past—and still do—but I trust you.”

I think I let a tiny smile sneak onto my face at that admission; it would have been inappropriate to grin. I just murmured, “Thank you.”

“What we are heading into may require more than that. We may be stepping into the land of nightmares—my nightmares, at least. You seem to take such waking horrors in your stride, but I . . . When that creature pulled me over the railing, I fought because I did not want to die and I thought I might break free. But in the water where I was blind and couldn’t draw breath, my old nightmare returned.”

I sat still and breathed as quietly as my aching ribs would allow, letting him say what he needed to. He inhaled and exhaled slowly and went on, gazing directly at me for a moment as he asked, “You recall after we found the bell aboard Seawitch you asked what I had experienced? And I told you it was the bad dream of my youth: sharp circumstance closing in until I could only go helplessly forward. In the dark tunnel of the water with that song in my ears, I felt my death was inevitable, that I had no alternative but to go meet it.”

“That was the song of the sea witch, not your dream.”

“It was more than that. It was everything I fear. It is why I wanted this case, why I joined the police, why I found and married Ximena. . . . The dream is an allegory my mind torments me with: my inability to stop something horrible from happening, my inability to make it right—to retrieve the moment the evil became inevitable—because I have already lived through it and it will never be right. As a young man—a boy—I helped my mother hide from my father the bodies of three men she had killed in our kitchen. I had watched her kill them. I did not help her—I was too afraid—and I did not save her.

“My mother had been frightened, too, but it did not stop her. When they lay dead, she cried. She sat on the floor and wailed as if they had injured her, and she was so covered in blood I thought they had—you could not even see the pattern on her dress through the gore—so I came out from my hiding place and I tried to comfort her. At first she seemed not to know I was there. After a while she noticed and she got up. Now it seems almost humorous that she tried to straighten her dress and her hair, but that’s the woman she was—very concerned for things to be proper. Perhaps even more so because the situation was so very improper. She put her arm around me and said we must clean up so my father wouldn’t know what had happened. I did not question that. My father was a policeman. Such a thing—such a mess—in his house would not do. Now that so many years are past, I cannot recall how we did it, but we carried the men away and we buried them and then we returned and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. . . . My mother burned her dress and we never told a soul. I never felt I had a choice as we did it. It seemed my life had led inevitably to that unforgivable moment where one evil piled upon another and I could never take it back. When I left Colombia, I hoped for something better—for a cleaner justice—than what we had done. For the ability to make things right.”

I was confused. “I can understand why you’d help your mother, but why did she kill them?”

Solis blinked and shook his head as if he had been sleepwalking and was now awakening. “They had come to rape her. The drug cartels were at war—Medellín and Cali—and she was the wife of a Cali policeman who would not take their payoffs to turn a blind eye. They thought they could destroy him by hurting her, by . . . making her worthless. You understand the culture of the place and time would have condemned her as much as the men who raped her. It would have reflected badly on my father to be married to a woman who was . . . soiled in that way. They told her what they wanted and she fought them. They tore her clothes and held her down, but they didn’t know how fierce my mother was. She killed two of them with a kitchen knife and the last with a shotgun my father kept at the back door.”

“And she didn’t want your father to know.”

He shook his head. “It would have embarrassed him. I told you she was a very proper woman.”

“How old were you?”

He thought a moment before he answered, “Twelve.”

“Your father never found out? Not even when the bodies were discovered?”

“They never were that I know of. Santiago de Cali lies in a fertile valley and there are places a body will simply melt into the ground. If picked bones were found some year after a cane burn, few people would ask where they came from.”

My stomach lurched a little at the image that rose in my mind of blackened skeletons and remnant flesh gnawed by the rats and other things that might run through the tangled growth of sugarcane fields. I’m still a wuss about that sort of thing, no matter how many times I’ve seen death memories or dead bodies, or died myself, and I hope I never become inured to it. “It didn’t bother you at the time?”

He blinked at me. “At the time I could not think at all—I only acted. But I have never forgotten the horror of it. Of looking down into the ruin of what was a man, of how my mother fought them and then cried over them, of the blood—how we scrubbed it and hid it and lied about the stains that wouldn’t go. We told my father I’d killed a chicken—it’s true, that saying about headless chickens—to explain the splashes on the walls that we couldn’t remove in time. That was what decided me to come here and join the police—somewhere I thought the law and justice did not give each other a cold shoulder. I have learned that it is not always the way here either, and I despise that, but it’s better than my home country was when I was a child and criminals thought they could harm my father by ruining my mother. There was no safe path once they came into the house. We let them dictate our shame, even if we did not let them win. My mother and I hid what had happened because dead criminals in her kitchen would have been almost as bad for my father as if she’d let them rape her. She killed them but they still owned a piece of her soul until the day she died, and they still own a piece of mine as well.”