by Paula Guran
Drinking mostly brine, the bub grew plump and fast.
While Rid nursed the thirsty thing, Beetie and the mermaids disappeared over the rim of the world. Twice daily, fish drew them oceanwards and fish brought them back. The routine kept the town’s pantries full, the lasses’ figures hard. Before long they’d be pointing bowsprits east again, raising sails, whetting harpoons; until then, the women would work. Keep the iron in their muscles. It wouldn’t do for the island’s best hunters to run to suet in the off-season. It took steel to replenish stocks.
Billy-Rid knew this as well as anyone.
Folk wouldn’t survive without them.
With the b’ys at Kelloway’s, Billy-Rid laughed it off. His failure. He was no different from his mates, really. None of them had managed to cast their lines through a mermaid’s salt—except Tuck, just that once, when he’d barely learned how to handle his rod. That kid hardly counted, though. Within a day, the poor thing suffocated with a bellyful of air.
Even so.
By now Beetie must’ve been raw as Rid was, after a fortnight of his contributions. His trying and trying and trying for a bub of their own.
A real one.
One he’d made, not one she’d snatched.
Maybe the sea had grown too strong in Beetie’s blood. Maybe, or too weak in his. Maybe it was the way she rode him now, as she never had before. Maybe it was the bile in Rid’s thoughts, the burn of wondering where exactly she’d got the gup, from whom exactly, and how. Maybe it was the ache of not-asking.
Maybe it was that Beetie didn’t—wouldn’t—need him.
Maybe that’s what left him so empty.
The gup’s not right, Rid thought.
All afternoon on the quay, she’d huffed and chortled in Ma Clary’s lap, gumming a piece of dried cod. The gran doted on Beetie’s girl, watched after her while Rid sorted and cleaned and filleted a half-ton of trout. When name-day planning had called Ma up to the bingo hall, she’d passed the bub on to the coast guard. Taking turns, the young men harnessed Gup to their backs, buoyed by her weird fluting as they patrolled the harbour. At last, when no one else had been free, Billy-Rid was forced to bring the baby and her noise home.
The cottage had been dank as a bait-house when they’d got in—Beetie’d had the windows open again, despite the autumn squalls. Rid hadn’t bothered to sop the puddles beneath the casements, knowing they’d soon be propped and dripping again. Beetie claimed to like it that way, cool and blustery. Said it reminded her of being on deck.
Rid lowered the baby into clean bathwater, then dragged the tin tub near the hearth. Hunkering beside it, he sat back on his heels. Paddled his fingers down by Guppy’s feet, avoiding the spiked-curl of her toes. She sputtered strange notes, maw agape.
As if it hasn’t mastered its nostrils, Rid thought. As if the damp air up here is too dry for its mouth.
With one hand he soaked a square of flannel, wrung it out, soaked and wrung, soaked and wrung, splashing himself more than her. The other cupped his chin, held his head up. Orange pennants rippled in the flue-draft, tips jigging, hooking Billy-Rid’s lashes, dragging his lids to half-mast. Logs sighed and settled. Heat lulled like nostalgia, like sun-baked memory.
In the yawning flames, Rid saw golden days; time he’d spent with Beetie before. When there’d been no ships or guppies for them. No bucklers or harpoons. No tying ceremonies or name-days. No bub that wasn’t theirs, not really. When they’d been kids, and sweet on each other. When they’d taken shifts at the guttery together, quick-slicing salmon bellies, carp heads. When they’d snuck to the rock pools at lunch, smoked stolen cigs. When they’d decorated each other’s faces with iridescence, scales stuck to their overalls, and they’d pretended—Lord how they’d pretended—they were magical.
She was, Billy Rideout thought, now as then. Salt glistening in her hair. Freckles on her nose, blue and yellow in the sunlight. The chunk torn from her gums an inheritance, Ma Clary once said, of the first mermaid, the first hook that failed to snag her. It was the second cast that had done the trick, taken the girl home.
The second cast, Rid thought, up to the elbow in suds and warmth. The second had been strong and true . . .
“What the blight are you doing?”
At the cottage door, Beetie dropped her cloak and bag. Cold night gusted in as she dashed across the small room. Five strides and she’d shoved Rid away from Guppy, the bub burbling, submerged to the nose.
“A splash in the basin is more than enough,” Beetie said, scooping the child, voice lowered, aiming to soothe. “More than enough. You don’t want her to drown.”
Of course not, Rid thought, sinking to the floor. Beetie slapped his hands when he reached for a towel. Cooing and fussing, she turned her back. Swaddled the girl tight, held her close. Bounced the near-miss from her nerves.
Left eye trained on Rid, right on the overfull tub, Guppy keened. A rippling, uncertain song.
Oh, how the b’ys would snort to see Billy-Rid acting so mawkish.
Steaming Gup’s bottles, scrubbing her unders, airing quilts between downpours. Plumping Beetie’s pillow with fresh-plucked down. Roasting stones in the fire, slipping them under the blankets, keeping the ice from her toes while she napped. Bartering crayfish for spuds, onions, carrots; sweet-talking Ma Clary out of a vat of new cream. Cooking huge batches of the Staggs’ favorite chowder. Bypassing Kelloway’s in the evenings, heading straight home to see Beetie off to the docks. Waking early to greet her at dawn. Brewing new leaves for her after-sail tea.
The week leading up to Gup’s naming-day party, Billy-Rid did what he could. To help. To make things right. He threaded garland after garland of urchins, ribbons, coral, and kelp. He hung them from the bingo hall’s rafters so Beetie wouldn’t have to do it. He lugged tables and benches galore, set them all up, leaving plenty of room for dancing. When Kelloway came to stock the bar, he stayed the hell out of the way.
But still.
Even so.
Beetie had stopped tangling her legs ’round his at night. She’d started bringing Guppy with her down to the docks. Saying: the nans loved the girl so. Saying: they cared deeply and dearly. Saying: they wanted nothing but to spend time with the child.
“It would be cruel to deny them,” Beetie said, freeing Guppy from Rid’s grasp. “They’re only trying to make her feel welcome. They’re doing their best.”
As if Rid wasn’t.
That night, Kelloway’s overflowed with rum and revelers. The whole town was expected to show the next morning, bow-tied and be-gartered, before mermaids lifted anchor for the first catch. But a naming-day just wouldn’t be a naming-day if folk weren’t fur-tongued and skull-sore, retching into the buckets Billy-Rid had scattered around the hall. The whole island was expected at dawn: sea-striders and sand-runners, tykes and cane-toters. Those born to men, and those taken.
Every last soul would have to be out of their blimmin senses come morning, to pretend that Guppy belonged.
“Limber up,” Rid said to Eli Stagg, flexing and throwing back another belter of screech. His words burred, slow in coming. “Got a big ask tomorrow.”
One minute Beetie’s da was tilting the rim, the next his glass was drained on the bar in front of an empty seat. Rid’s neck swerved. A pint foamed in his grip. A second later it was shards glinting beneath his stool, replaced by a plastic kiddie-cup. Black mash and sour-cherry swilled down his craw, scorching a path to his stomach. Behind the taps, Kelloway scowled as Billy-Rid ordered another, but served it up anyway.
“Good man,” Rid said, or something like. Maybe, “Lucky man.” The barkeep leaned over the counter, lit the cig Rid had stuffed arse-end into his gob. The publican never had gups of his own, lucky man, never had planted nor sea-sowed. Good man.
“How about a splash of the bland stuff,” Kelloway said, sliding a pitcher of melted ice down the plank. “Might be you’ve had enough of the harsh.”
“Might be,” Rid agreed, but it felt good in him, the blaze i
n his heart, the lava in his belly. It got him up off the stool, onto the dance floor, where Beetie spun and spun, locks flying loose, baby on her hip. Squeezeboxes hawed and fiddles wheezed as Rid barged through the crowd. Flutes, real flutes, no mere ha’pennies these, tootled like Gup as he wrenched her away from the mermaid. His wife.
“Thing’s squawking for a feed,” he said, cradling the bub. “Look how thirsty—”
“Give her back.”
Around them, sailors thumbed knife hilts, toyed with sword belts. Pipers trilled, undaunted, while wooden spoons clacked, missing beats. String-pluckers and sawyers climbed off stage, tension bloating into the gaps of their music.
“She’s thirsty,” he said quietly, enunciating precisely. “I’ll take care of her.”
Beetie rested her palm on Billy-Rid’s forearm, firm but gentle. She smiled, a spark of fun in her expression. Humor he hadn’t seen in weeks. “Do what you gotta do, Billy-b’y,” she said, patting him like a child. “But mind you keep her wee snorter above water this time.”
Through the hot rush of blood in his ears, Rid couldn’t hear every mermaid’s laughter. Only the one closest to him. The loudest and least shy.
Outside, threadbare clouds blanketed the navy sky. Stars peeped through holes here and there, silvering billows above and swells below. Thigh-deep in the ocean, Billy-Rid crooned a lullaby. In his shaking arms, Guppy added garbled notes, high as the moon-chunk overhead. Its reflection hazed around them, wavering on the expanse of wet black. In the distance, dorsal fins broke the surface. Two. Four. Seven. Too rigid to blend with the whitecaps. Rid stood and watched like the sentries weren’t; the men slunk off for a stint of elbow-raising down at the pub. It’s been a month, they’d no doubt reasoned. Surely a month gone is time enough for the damned fish to forget.
Rid studied Gup’s elongated features, saw their likeness cresting the waves.
Still singing, he trudged further into the wash. Winter lurked in the deeps, shrivelling him. Shame boiled anew, thoughts of Beetie scorching his cheeks. How she’d left him. How she’d returned.
The baby gurgled as Rid plunged her. In and out, in and out, in and out of the water. She giggled as if it was a game, her skin-fronds flapping and floating, dripping. Sodden, her mess-cloth sagged, slid off, sank. Switching tunes, Billy-Rid disentangled Gup from her smock, let her ridges free, the hard clay of her skin. All spine and cartilage and bone. Better, he decided. The bub honked, wide-gummed with agreement. More natural, he thought. The way she would’ve been for her naming-day dip come daybreak.
The sea foamed as Rid churned. Submerged or not, Guppy was alert, eyes ever open, ever swerving. Salt water rushed in and out; her protruding lips sucked, spurted. Hoarse, Rid hissed “Come on, come on,” avoiding the bub’s mouth-fountain. Her odd gaze. Its unblinking ease, its alien color.
He played deaf to the squelch of liquid burps.
“Come on,” he repeated, louder now, holding the girl under.
Forearms straining, Rid whispered, “Come on, come on,” as ten seconds passed, twenty, the baby’s slow-wriggle turning full-squirm.
“Come on,” he said again and again, voice cracking, “Come on,” until, finally, she was wrenched from his grasp.
The creature was more man than seahorse, more stallion than pony. A trumpet nose dominated his long face; traces of sorrow in the round black eyes were undermined by the angry trumpeting of his snout. Spikes lined his muscular arms. Fronds the same shape and hue as the bub’s dangled from a strong jaw. A carapace of ribs toughened his chest, accentuating the round softness of his stretch-marked belly. His were a warrior’s shoulders: broad, ink-marked, boasting scars. Squiggles puckered the flesh on biceps and delts. A vicious, spark-shaped scab livid between clavicle and neck. Beetie’s wound.
Treading water for a moment, the hippocampus cradled his squeaking child. Mesmerized by her existence. Tail curled around weeds, the creature stretched to his full height—shorter than Billy-Rid.
Our Guppy would’ve been quite the runt, he realized. From the looks of it.
The seahorse nipped gills into his baby’s neck, then immersed her slowly, gently. As though afraid she’d vanish if let out of sight. As she was lowered, Guppy exhaled without music. Quietly grateful. The dissonant strain of her land-breathers hushed.
Not ours, Rid corrected as the bub drank the sea into her lungs. As she and her da sank into the star-speckled blackness, without a word. She was never ours.
Ripples arrowed east, flippers and arms slicing away toward plundered isles. Waiting for his pulse to slow, Rid tapped out the jig-splash of seahorses departing. When he could no longer tell the difference between liquid-peaks and fins, he turned and faced shore. Saw the yellow glow of Kelloway’s atop the hill, spilling like weak ale across the boardwalk. Snippets of song drifted on the quickening breeze. Caws of joy. Back-slaps of mirth.
Shivering, Rid gauged the distance between here and there.
A far walk, he decided. Farthest he might ever take.
Wilting to his knees, Rid felt his limbs vaguely, steeped in chill. Just a minute’s rest, he told himself, looking down at his freezing hands, flipping them a couple of times to make sure they were still there. On his palms, a swathe of scales shimmered in the moonlight. Had he touched the stallion? Had he soaked up some of his magic?
I must have, Rid thought. I must have.
Inspired, he sloshed to his feet. Shy Beetie always hated dancing and parties; he’d rescue her from the crowd, take her to the rock pools, freckle her pink prettiness with scales. Oh, how she’d glisten, then. How she’d love.
You’re a fool, Billy Rideout, he thought a second later, flopping into the shallows. Part-squatting, he rubbed his hands together, watched the iridescence flake slowly away. His body aching with cold. Useless cock shriveled. Balls in his belly. Overalls heavy with naught but seawater.
Only one way to fetch a bub, he knew. Only one that he could accept.
From the shallows, Billy-Rid swore he heard his wife’s heels skip-stepping on Kelloway’s floorboards. Emptied glasses thunking on the bar. Spoon-beats and hide-rappings and harmonica wails. Tilting his head, he listened to another, closer, deep-wooden rhythm. Tethered ships colliding with rails. Hulls bumping against pilings. Ropes creaking between gunwales and jetty. Masts swaying. Figureheads stretching, pointing to the fecund east.
Mind awhirl, Rid calculated.
He measured the span between here and way up the hill there.
Here and just over to the docks there.
Deciding, he bent and scooped a shot of salt water. Swallowed for luck. Steeled himself to go.
Lisa L. Hannett has had over sixty short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, was published in 2015. You can find her online at lisahannett.com and on Twitter @LisaLHannett.
“Let’s say a soul is what makes men different from animals . . . ”
STREET OF THE DEAD HOUSE
Robert Lopresti
What am I? That is the question.
I sit in this cage, waiting for them to come stare at me, mimic me as I once mimicked them, perhaps poke me with sticks, and as they wonder what I am, so do I.
I don’t think Mama had any doubts about what she was. I don’t think she could even think the question. That is the gift and the punishment Professor gave me.
I remember Mama, a little. We were happy and life was simple, so simple. Food was all around us, dangers were few, and there was nothing we needed. When I was scared or hungry Mama would pick me up and cradle me to her furry breast.
I was never cold. It was always warm where we lived, not this place, called Paris or France. Goujon cannot talk about anything without giving it two names. Sometimes
he calls me an Ourang-Outang, and sometimes an ape.
Mama called us nothing, for she could not speak like people, or sign as I have learned to do. That did not bother her. She was always happy, until she died.
The hunters came in the morning, firing guns and shouting. Mama picked me up and ran. She made it into the trees but there was another hunter waiting in front of her. He made a noise as if he were playing a game, but this was no game. He fired his gun and Mama fell from the tree. I landed on top of her but she was already dead.
My life has made no sense since then.
I remember the first time I saw Professor. He tilted his head when he looked at me and spoke. We were in his house. The smell of the hunters was finally gone.
He gave me food and tried to be kind but I was afraid. The food tasted wrong and soon I got sleepy, but not the kind of sleepy I knew with Mama.
I know now something in the food made me sleep. Things were confused after that and I would wake up with pain in my head.
He did things to my head. Each time I woke the room looked different, clearer, somehow. And one day when Professor spoke I understood some of his noises.
“Ah, Jupiter. You are with me again. And you are grasping my words, aren’t you? The chemicals are working just as I predicted.”
He held out a piece of fruit. “Are you hungry, Jupiter?”
I was. I reached for it.
He pulled it away and moved his other hand. “Do this, Jupiter. It means orange. Tell me you want an orange.”
After a few more tries I understood. I copied his hand and he gave me the orange.
That was my first lesson. That was my first surrender.
Many more sleeps, many more words, many more pains in the head.
Soon I knew enough gestures to ask Professor questions.
Where is Mama?
“Dead. Hunters killed her. When I heard they brought back a baby I bought you from them.”
Do you have a mama?