He poured himself a mug of granapple juice and grabbed a muffin from the larder. He ate the muffin over the sink so he wouldn’t have to clean the crumbs off the table, and washed it down with the cold juice. The first tasted so good, he decided to have a second, but in less time that he thought possible, he stepped out of the kitchen door and headed for the workshop. “Driftwood, first, then I can fish until the boats come in.” He got a thrill from the idea of watching for his folks to return from the vantage of Bentley’s Head.
The workshop was where his father kept “the shaman stuff.” It was a combination woodworking shop, herb shop, and den. It always smelled of the dried plants hung on the overhead–a kind of spicy, musty smell–and something else that he came to believe was his father’s smell. It was similar to the scent on the inside of his father’s winter jackets, but not something Otto was really aware of, even when his father was in the room, unless he stepped into the workshop. It was a curiosity to him, at times, that something so distinct could have such a localized presence.
An old canvas shoulder bag hung on a peg just inside the door. Stained and ratty looking, his father used it to collect driftwood for carving the whelkies. Whelkies were small animal carvings inlaid with shell or bone. The tradition held that the whelkies were the spirit guides for people who needed help, strength, or guidance. Otto wore a seabird on a leather thong around his neck that his grandfather had carved before Otto had been born. He’d replaced the leather a multitude of times. The wood had taken on a rich sheen from being against Otto’s skin for year upon year. The wood and shell came from the beach somewhere on the South Coast. Otto’s gaze strayed to the workbench where several of his father’s completed figures rested, waiting to find their owners, if tradition was correct. More were in various states of carving and inlay, waiting for his father to free them.
When much younger, Otto had watched his father working with wood and shell, but was never able to discern how the shapes were “hidden” nor really what “freed” meant. The resulting work was pleasing to look at, and they all felt good in his hand, but the whole concept of a “spirit guide” was one that even a young man of thirteen stanyers had trouble grasping. Guardian angel became his most reasonable ideal, but it still left him unsatisfied.
Still, he was the shaman’s son and would be shaman himself one day, if all the plans laid out for him came to fruition. He shouldered the bag, and closed the door behind him as he left. His father’s many passages had worn an easily followed trail from the workshop to Sandy Long. As he followed, literally, in his father’s footsteps, Otto let his mind drift back along all the times he’d walked with his father on this very errand. He realized with a certain horror that he’d never contributed a single bit of wood or shell to the process before. Now he needed to collect a bag full–and still leave time to fish.
He fought down a moment of panic. “Not a bag full. Just a few pieces. Just like Father would.”
In his mind’s eye, he saw his father striding along the beach, stooping to pick up a bit of this or that, rolling it around in his fingers, holding it up to the light. Sometimes he’d toss it aside. Other times he reached down and slipped it into the bag. That very bag flapped on Otto’s own back.
Long ago Otto had asked, “What makes you keep some and throw others away?”
His father had shrugged. “I don’t know really. Sometimes I can see how the whelkie is in the wood. Other times, it’s just a nice piece of shell. And sometimes,” he said with a sort of embarrassed grin. “Sometimes I just need a piece of wood and it’s the right size and shape.”
Otto picked his way down from the headland and started along the beach, his feet carrying him where they would along the strand. “Here, whelkie, whelkie. Come out, come out, where ever you are.”
He stooped to pick up a long straight piece of driftwood with an interesting knot on the end. He brushed the loose sand off it and started to use it as a walking staff. The butt end was useful for stirring through the piles of dry weed and upending the odd pile of twigs. Almost immediately, his eye was caught by a bit of rich purple shell in the sand. When he picked it up, the sunlight glinted off it. A moistened thumb polished the smooth inner surface, revealing a pleasing pattern to the layers of calcium carbonate. He tucked the shell into the bag and kept walking.
Every so often he’d pick up a small bit of wood. He looked for those that were smaller than his hand, something with a shape, or a knot in it—maybe a weathered hole or a twisted bit of wrack. Anything that would make it more than just a piece of weathered wood. He was surprised at how much there was to see when he really took the time to look. He picked up several likely-looking bits of wood and, undecided, thrust them into the bag. He wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be looking for. Worst case, they’d make nice kindling in the small wood stove in the workshop.
He was completely engrossed in the task of looking at wood and was startled when he looked down to see a tiny dolphin swimming across the sand. He jumped back and blinked. It was just a bit of curved stick. He pulled it out of the sand and brushed it off. He held it up to the light but couldn’t see the dolphin in it. Somebody with a blade and some sandpaper could take a bit of wood off here and there to make a realistic dolphin shape. The thought made him smile. He tucked the bit of wood safely into the bag with the rest.
Several more times over the course of the next two stans, Otto spotted something out of the corner of his eye, or just beside a piece of wood that he was reaching for, or–in one instance–clunked with the heel of the walking stick. He was never sure what he saw, but impressions of seals, deer, fish, and birds all swam in his mind. Some he didn’t know what they were. Was that a cat? Or some kind of odd shaped fox? Was it a wolf? A dog? A hyena? He didn’t always know, but he collected those pieces, along with a lot of other pieces as he walked. After a couple of stans of walking along the beach, he stopped and looked back at his meandering foot prints. The bag on his back wasn’t flapping any more, and he’d collected much more in the line of wood and shell than he’d expected to.
He’d come to a place on Sandy Long where a series of large flat rocks formed a crescent. Each roughly rectangular rock stood about a meter across. They looked like some kind of blunt teeth in the jaw of sand. Normally, he and his father stopped there for a break before heading back, so he knew he’d come far enough. It would take another stan to get back to the house, but he was in no hurry. He knew it would eat into his fishing time, but the pull of the relatively unexplored beach drew him on.
As he continued to walk, he found more and more pieces that looked like animals to him. And many bits of shell and even some bone. At one point, he found a seabird’s primary feather and stuck it into a crack in the wood at the head of his walking stick. As the sun got up higher in the sky, he began to regret having left the house without a hat. He turned back toward the house, and discovered still more bits of this and that retracing his path down the beach. Some pieces went into the bag. Some found its way as decoration for the staff—a colorful feather, some large scales, and a bit of colored twine. Otto felt almost disappointed when he came to the end of the beach and the trail back to the cottage.
In a few ticks, he was back at his father’s workshop. He placed the bag carefully on the end of the work bench. He was almost startled to discover that he still had the walking stick. He’d become so used to having it in his hand. Shrugging, he took it with him to the house and stood it beside the kitchen door before entering. He washed up a bit, and made himself a couple of sandwiches of cold meat and too much mayonnaise. He washed it down with more juice then filled a travel bottle with fresh cold water to take with him. He rummaged around until he found a broad-brimmed hat. Grabbing the hand-line tote, he jammed the hat on his head, and left the cottage. As he walked down the lane, he couldn’t remember retrieving his walking stick from beside the door. He stopped in his tracks and looked at it, then back over his shoulder at the cottage. With a shrug, he kept it as he strode down the
lane, out onto the point, and settled down for an afternoon of fishing.
As he stepped onto what he’d come to think of as “his rock,” he eyed the water. The tide was well out and there was a lot less water right where he normally would fish. He leaned on his staff and scanned the water close in to the rocks, having a much more realistic idea of how far he could throw a line than he had in his first few attempts. “Something nice for dinner, huh?” he said to himself, recalling his mother’s note. “What would be nice for dinner?”
As his eyes skipped across the wavelets, a flash of silver deep in the water caught his eye. As he tried to focus on it, it disappeared, but he could see that the water in that spot, just in front of the next rock over, was a bit different, deeper perhaps. He cocked his head and saw that there was a hole there under the water. Shrugging, he climbed down between the rocks, found some bait in the rock weed, then clambered up onto the next rock. He wedged his staff into a crack so it stood up in the breeze, feathers flapping, and proceeded to bait up the hand-line. Without getting too close to the edge, he tossed the baited hook over the rim and let it fall until it struck bottom.
He didn’t have long to wait before the line started jumping, and he burned his fingers trying to keep it from spooling all away. He managed to get his hands off the twine and onto the frame without dropping both of them and proceeded to wrestle with what felt like a large dog pulling on the other end. Before too long, he realized that getting the fish, whatever it was, up out of the water, and onto the rock might be problematic. His arms grew tired and he wasn’t sure that the line would hold. He slipped down between the two rocks where the weed disappeared under the waves and, on that slippery footing, proceeded to wrestle his catch ashore.
In the end, it didn’t look like that much, laying there on the weed. Otto gave thanks, though, because he’d landed a small abo. It wasn’t more than 5 kilos, but compared to the half kilo dace he’d managed in his prior expeditions, this was a real catch. He killed the fish quickly and dressed it there on the weed. His knife nicked his thumb and he stood and shook his hand in reflex before he realized what he’d done. It was a minor cut, so he ignored it and went back to work, preparing his fish to take home. He was reminded of it, somewhat forcefully, when he knelt to rinse the gore from his hands and knife, as the salty water flushed through the small wound and stung him. Wincing, he shook his hands dry and reckoned it a small price to pay for so fine a catch.
Carefully, he packed up the tote, retrieved his staff from the crack in the rock, and hefting the fish by the gill plate, headed back to the house, satisfied that he’d accomplished his chores for the first day alone.
~ ~ ~
Rachel felt tired but satisfied as she trudged back to the house after her first day at sea in almost fifteen stanyers. The muscles she seldom used while working the PlanetNet were complaining about the abuse, but the feeling of a good day’s work behind her made the pain a minor inconvenience–even a badge of honor. It had been a shakedown cruise for the Tiggy Anne, as well as her new skipper, mate, and crew. One of the three new side trawlers from the Inlet, the Tiggy Anne performed well. George Able was a steady skipper, having been a mate with Jane Gill for stanyers. Milly Malone moved over from the Neriad to make room for Susan Marsten. Milly and Rachel had gotten along famously all day.
With the new boat and new crew, George had called it an early day and hauled back after only a two stan second trawl. Luck had been in their favor in spite of that, and the short haul netted a very nice catch.
As she approached the house, she noticed the stick leaning against the wall beside the door, but didn’t think much of it until she noted the rusty stains on the wood near where a hand might have held it.
“Otto?” she called as she entered the house through the kitchen door.
Otto looked up from the sink where he’d been rinsing his catch and smiled. “Hi, Mom. Welcome home. Look what I caught!” He stepped back to reveal the large fish in the sink.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“It looks like blood on the stick out there. Did you hurt yourself?”
“Oh, yeah. I got nicked cleaning the fish.” He held up his thumb. “It bled like anything. When I got back, I put antibiotic on it and wrapped it. It’s nothing, really.”
His mother looked at the bandage job then looked in the sink. Her jaw dropped. “Where’d you get an abo?”
“Out on Bentley Head. Off one of the rocks. You said to catch something nice for dinner.”
“Well, you certainly did that. Abo steaks tonight!”
Otto grinned, pleased.
“Did you get wood for whelkies?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.
“Oh, yeah. I did that first. Got a big bag of stuff. It’s out in Father’s shop,” he said.
“Well, you may as well learn how to fix dinner. It’ll be a big help and if you’re gonna keep bringing in fish like this beauty, you may as well learn how to prepare ’em.”
For the next half a stan, he and his mother worked through the finer points of finny anatomy, carving the dense abo flesh into steaks of a uniform size and thickness. She showed him how to make a simple seasoning mix to sprinkle on the surfaces, and they set the steaks aside to rest. Afterwards, she took him out to the small garden in the back. They dug some new potatoes from one of the hills and pulled a sweet onion for seasoning. Last, they picked a mess of greens to go with the steaks.
They spotted Richard trudging up the road from the village as they turned to re-enter the kitchen. His face practically glowed from fresh sunburn. His clothes looked like he’d slept the day away in a pile of fish guts, but he had an uncharacteristically broad–if tired–smile as he trudged along. Rachel and Otto waved to him and took their bounty into the kitchen, so they missed the curious look Richard gave the stick that stood beside the back door.
Otto scrubbed the potatoes while Rachel greeted her husband warmly with a long hug and lingering kiss. He smiled to himself at the display of affection and it occurred to him that he hadn’t really observed it for some time. His smile reached his mouth.
“Otto caught an abo at the point today, hon. We’ve got abo steaks for dinner.”
He grinned. “Excellent, Otto! I’m hungry enough to eat a whole one myself. I hope it was big enough.” He whistled in appreciation at the stack of abo steaks prepared on the sideboard and nodded his approval. “Okay, that looks like plenty, even for me.”
“So, how was it, Father?” Otto asked.
“How was what?” his father asked. “Fishing?” He gestured to his filthy and smelly clothing. “How do you think? Long, boring waits between backbreaking labor.” The broad grin belied his true feelings.
“Oh, so you’re gonna stay home tomorrow?” Rachel asked.
He laughed, a deep, joyful sound.“Not on your life.” When they’d all had a good laugh, he asked, “Did you get the wood I asked for, Otto?”
“Yes, Father. I almost filled your collection bag. It’s beside the bench in your shop.”
“Impressive. All good whelkies?”
Otto finished washing the potatoes, turned to rest his backside against the counter while he dried his hands on a towel. “I don’t know. Some are, I think. Some is just firewood, probably”
“You’re serious? You filled my bag?”
“Not entirely, but I got a lot.”
“Well, very good then. I really only expected you to bring back a few bits, but if you managed to find that many, I’m impressed.”
The praise from his father felt good. Otto smiled. “Well, I think we better cook some fish! You’re not the only one who’s hungry.”
Richard lit the small grill on the back porch while Rachel and Otto prepared the potatoes and greens. His mother even whipped up a batch of biscuits and slipped a gooseberry cobbler into the oven to bake while they ate.
Chapter Twelve
Aram’s Inlet
November 22, 2304
Jimmy t
ilted his chair back and stuck his feet up on a scarred corner of his desk. Casey raised an eyebrow, but Tony settled down in the chair. Outside, the wind whistled through the eaves of the office building and rattled the glazing. Periodically, the sleet would patter over the roof above them like somebody was throwing gravel.
“So, what do we know?” Jimmy asked nobody at large.
Casey said, “The Horse is up and buttoned down. Ferd has the tanks trained and the seal-case on it. She’ll be good until we’re ready to put her back over the side in March.”
Tony said, “Landings for the last few weeks of the season were good, but nowhere near where they’d need to be to make quota.”
“Who’d lose their boats?” Jimmy asked, already knowing the answer.
“If the projections are correct, everybody,” Tony said.
Casey frowned. “But that makes no sense. If everybody loses their boat then nobody’s left fishing. Where’s the profit in that?”
Tony looked over at her. “Yup. You put your finger right on it. And when you’re fired by the company, you’re eligible for deportation.”
Casey hadn’t made that connection. Jimmy saw it register behind her eyes. The shock of it was like a blow.
“They can’t do that,” Casey said.
“They who?” Jimmy asked.
“The company. Those bastard Pirano–” Casey’s mouth snapped closed.
Tony snickered and even Jimmy chuckled. “My parents were married to each other when I was born, but your point is taken.”
Casey blushed scarlet. “Um. I didn’t mean...” her voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, “you did, but it’s okay. I feel the same way.”
“The problem is the management company that the Ole Man has coordinating the businesses,” Tony pointed out. “Pirano has too many deals, too many planets, too many people to be able to function under the control of just one man.”
South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 7