Fantasy Life

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  As well intentioned as Aluke was, his attitude toward selkies and every other magical being in the sea was one of hatred. He would always see the dark side.

  Aluke had a stack of clothing on the front seat, most of it suitable for the Salvation Army. Apparently, he had come here as prepared as he said he had. Cassie wondered what made him want to work in the dark, then got the answer, filtered, directly from him.

  He didn’t want to see people looking at him, blaming him the way he blamed himself.

  She wished she knew how to comfort him, but words were empty against such a strong belief. Maybe if he spent some time with Spark Walters, Aluke might change his mind about his own culpability.

  Aluke handed her a flannel workshirt and a pair of Levi’s that were stiff with mud. She took them gladly, along with the pair of gloves he handed to her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll return them to you.”

  “Please don’t. I brought them because they’re not worth anything.”

  “Okay.” She adjusted the clothes and put a hand on his arm. “I appreciate this.”

  “I know.” He pushed the pile of clothing back and leaned on the seat, letting the interior light from the truck illuminate his face. It was a gentle face, made harsh by years of exposure to salt water and the elements. “Do me a favor. When you see your boyfriend—”

  “Husband,” Cassie murmured.

  Aluke didn’t seem to notice.

  “—tell him not to do anything rash. Tell him he’s got you to think about. And tell him to make sure he knows all the implications before he listens to the rest of his group.”

  “Tribe.”

  This time, Aluke seemed to have heard. “Just tell him.”

  “I will.” That much she could promise. “Thanks again.”

  He closed the truck door. “Don’t mention it.”

  Cassie started across the parking area. A cinder-block building with bathrooms on either side stood at the southern tip of the wayside. The coffee table that some local women had manned all day was still there, but no one sat behind it.

  Cassie headed for the women’s room, a two-stall that always smelled of disinfectant. Still, it would be the best place for her to change. She would just leave her clothes there and pick them up when she was done.

  The wind was starting to pick up. It was cold, and Cassie shivered. She’d never felt a wind with such bite to it, not in all her years in Anchor Bay.

  Still, it was January, and she had seen pictures of snow on the beach. Her mother swore that Cassie had seen the snow too, but she didn’t remember—she had been much too young.

  Snow, and ice, would probably be the worst thing right now. The oil would become viscous and even harder to get off the beach. Or maybe, if it was more sludgy, it would be easier.

  Cassie let out a breath. She was out of her depth here, just like everyone else, and the only person who knew anything about oil probably wouldn’t help any of them out.

  The cinder-block rest room had a small wall that created a small hallway, a pathway into the ladies’ room. A dim bulb hung over the rusted steel door, revealing the filthy window and a pile of sand in the corner.

  Cassie passed the faucet that children used in the summer to wash the sand off their feet. It seemed impossibly low to her, although she could remember using it more than once, whenever she had come to the beach by herself, when her mother hadn’t allowed it.

  Cassie pushed the door open. The interior smelled worse than she remembered. The smell of urine had overpowered the disinfectant long ago. The pungent stench of the oil had also gathered in here, making the bathroom a gathering place for foul odors.

  The lights inside were dimmer than the one outside. A mirror, the silvering flaking off, hung over the sink. The concrete floor was wet and smelled as if it had never been dry. A single window was open several feet above Cassie’s head. Through it, she could hear voices, the honking of a car horn, and the ocean.

  Both stall doors were open, and Cassie took the one closest to the wall. She remembered seeing a hook in there that most women used for purses. She would use it for her dress.

  The wind whistled through the window, and the voices grew louder—people were arguing. She sighed. She had hoped that wouldn’t happen, but she supposed it would be inevitable. Emotions were high right now; people were frightened. Eventually, that would find its way to the cleanup site, particularly at night, when the workers were tired.

  She hung up the shirt and jeans and reluctantly set the gloves on the back of the toilet. She hoped the slight dampness that seemed to cover everything wouldn’t penetrate the gloves in the short time she would be in here.

  Then she pulled her dress over her head, shivering in the cold and damp. The lights flickered, and the wind howled, and her shivering got worse.

  A storm was blowing in, a rapidly moving storm. She wished she had listened to the weather predictions, then she would have been prepared for this. But she hadn’t. And storms could come in quickly during the winter, particularly when the system had high winds.

  She grabbed the flannel shirt and slipped it on. It smelled of cheap cigars, but it was warm. The shirt’s ends went down to her knees, and she had to roll up the sleeves.

  A gust of wind hit the building, and the lights flickered again. On the beach, she heard shouting—people warning each other to take cover.

  Cassie had never heard that before. Coasties were a tough bunch; they usually didn’t need warnings.

  She slipped off her shoes, but kept standing on them so that her sock feet wouldn’t touch the wet floor. Then she pulled on the jeans as fast as she could, losing her balance more than once and catching herself on the flimsy metal stall divider.

  As she put on her right shoe, a gust of wind hit the building so hard that the cinder blocks shuddered. The window rattled.

  Cassie slipped on her other shoe. Then the rain started, pounding the ceiling as if rocks were falling from the sky. The window’s rattling continued, and the rusted chain holding the window open vibrated dangerously.

  The jeans were too long, but they fit loosely around her hips. She grabbed her shawl, rolled it up thin, and used it like a belt to hold the pants up. She had to pause to roll up the legs. The glass above her bounced as another gust hit.

  Then the chain broke. The glass window fell next to Cassie and shattered. Instinctively, she closed her eyes. Glass shards pelted her, like tiny needles against the skin.

  “Run!” a man outside yelled. “For god’s sake! Run!”

  And then the lights went out.

  Cassie cursed and felt for the door, finding her dress. It was still warm from her body, but the fabric was covered with more glass.

  The wind was flowing in like a live thing, howling, knocking everything inside around as if the wind were trapped here with Cassie. She fumbled for the lock, found it, and unbolted it.

  Except for the wind, there was only silence outside. She couldn’t even hear the ocean—and that freaked her out. She hurried across the damp floor, her shoes splashing in water she hadn’t even realized was there.

  The moon was gone, and no light was filtering in. It was very dark. She could only guess where the exterior door was. She flailed for the exterior wall like a blind thing. Her knuckles scraped cinder block, making her wince, but she kept her left hand on it, using it to navigate toward the door.

  The silence had an eerie cast to it. She couldn’t remember silence like this, ever. Even the wind seemed to have died down.

  Then it hit the building with so much force that the walls shook. She didn’t know what it took to shake cinder block. Her flannel shirt rose up as wind got underneath it, sending shivers through her.

  She was breathing through her mouth, more rapidly than she had believed possible. Her heart was pounding, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. She had lived through storms before—countless storms—and power outages and high winds. But something about this one felt wrong, unnatural.

  Then sh
e heard Daray’s voice, as if it were coming from inside of him, as she had heard it just a few hours before: They say the resulting storm will clean all foreign matter that we designate from the sea and its shore. We just need a place to dump it.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. His father had warned him against this. But maybe Daray had found a volunteer, someone who was willing to help him and the humans.

  Someone willing to sacrifice himself to save Anchor Bay.

  Daray wouldn’t do it. He loved life too much. He and Cassie were together now, and they were going to have children and raise them to love the sea—

  Still, she cast about in her mind for Daray, but she only got darkness. Her arm, the one supporting her weight against the wall, was shaking.

  Maybe she was too frightened to find him. Maybe her powers didn’t work in situations like this. Maybe something as simple as the storm was blocking her.

  He was all right. He had to be. They were linked, heart and soul. She would know if something happened to him.

  Wouldn’t she?

  The building shook again, and she thought she heard a scream from outside. Several screams. And then a roar—like a train engine, only worse. Like the helicopter, without the motor. A whup-whup-whupping sound that made her breathe even faster.

  The ground rumbled, but this wasn’t an earthquake. She would know an earthquake. It would feel different. It would feel like—

  And then something slammed into the building. Water poured in through the open window, pushing the door open and shoving it against the wall. She heard the metal hit, felt the water, ice-cold around her ankles.

  She screamed—not for help—but for Daray, and she wasn’t even sure she opened her mouth to do it.

  The water pushed at her from two directions and rose so fast that she had only a few seconds before she realized she’d better close her mouth and hold her breath.

  She kept her hand on the cinder-block wall, but the water shoved her away. The entire bathroom filled, water pouring in from above and through the door.

  She rose with it, trying to keep her head above water, until she crashed into the ceiling. The pain filtered through her, a sudden, unavoidable headache, but she didn’t gasp aloud. Instead, she felt around in the icy water, hoping to find the top of the stalls.

  If she found that, she could find the window and get out when the water receded, because it would recede. This had to be an awful wave, something that she had only heard about.

  Not a tsunami. Those were caused by earthquakes and there had been no earthquake. But this was something else.

  Something other.

  . . . this is no ordinary storm, my son. It makes the storm that drowned the oil ship look like it was nothing . . .

  Cassie found the metal top of the stall. It still held. But her oxygen was running out. Her lungs hurt, and she wanted to take a breath.

  Daray! she screamed for him with her mind. Daray, help me! Help me!

  But he didn’t answer her. Maybe she had cast for him too late. Maybe he hadn’t known the storm was coming either.

  If he had had this idea, maybe other selkies had too.

  She screamed for him one final time—Daray!—and then made herself focus on two things: holding her breath, and using the stalls to guide her toward the window.

  The water’s push didn’t seem as strong now, or maybe that was simply because she was submerged—the force of the water was going over her.

  She flailed upward with her right hand, keeping hold of the metal with her left—and her fingers broke through the water, their tips scraping the ceiling.

  The water was receding, like she had hoped.

  Instead of pushing herself forward, she just held on. Her lungs felt like they were going to burst. Stars flashed in front of her eyes.

  Daray!

  She kept her hand upward, felt the water go down to her wrist. Then she brought her hand down and pushed herself up, like a kid trying to chin herself on monkey bars.

  Her head burst through the water, slamming into the ceiling again, but she didn’t care. She took a breath of icy air and panted, glad for the oxygen, glad to be alive.

  She was shivering—much too cold to make it long. The ocean was too cold for people without wet suits.

  Too cold and too powerful.

  She frowned, thinking that the water felt like water, and realizing suddenly that that was odd. It should have been slightly thicker. She should have felt the oil on the surface, just like she had been feeling it for the past few days.

  The wind continued to howl, but the water was draining. It had receded to her shoulders, and she didn’t have to hold herself up any longer. She could tread water if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to tire herself. She had no idea if another wave would come.

  She propelled herself, hand over hand, toward the window, and looked out. The moon had returned, which she hadn’t expected, casting a thin light on the ocean before.

  The ocean was phosphorescent again, the white, foaming surface of the waves glowing in the moonlight. The surf seemed outrageously high, and it came all the way to the base of the wayside. Water poured off the concrete parking lot as if it were part of a waterfall, draining into the sea.

  The cars were gone, and so were the lights. She couldn’t see the people either.

  And to her right—movement. She looked, saw something she had never seen before, at least not outside of television news reports.

  A funnel rising out of the water, black and dark and thick, whirling, whirling away from her. At first she thought it was a cloud, and then she realized it was the oil.

  Oil, floating away, as if it had a place to go.

  A place to dump it.

  “Daray,” she whispered. But she didn’t send. She didn’t want him to feel her fear, not now, not when he might be behind this.

  He probably thought she was safe at Arno’s far from the beach, high enough to be protected.

  The water poured out suddenly, as if whatever was keeping it inside the building had moved. She flopped to the floor like a fish when the tide went out.

  Her breath had been knocked out of her and she lay there for a moment, shivering in the cold.

  But she hadn’t been hurt. She was all right.

  She got up, her clothes squishing as she moved, the additional material a weight that she hadn’t expected. In vain, she reached behind the stall door, hoping against hope that her dress was still there, but of course it wasn’t.

  So she sloshed toward the door, which was still open, and stepped outside.

  The wind was even stronger here, but it no longer howled. The train-engine roar was gone, but there was still an underlying hum—the sound of the funnel, perhaps. She stepped around the concrete wall and stood in the rushing, ankle-deep water, somehow able to keep her balance.

  The funnel still rose from the beach. Breezes caressed her, as if they were spun off from the greater wind that caused the funnel. She was alone in a parking lot that had been full not long before. She couldn’t see anyone else. No other cars, no people.

  Not even Aluke, whom she had somehow thought indestructible.

  She looked behind her, saw the empty highway, and several shattered buildings. The cinder-block bathhouse and the elementary school were the only things inside of a mile still standing. Yet no debris was in the water that ran toward the ocean.

  The ground had been cleared of all human contact—all but hers.

  Her throat was dry. She was shaking, but not so much with the cold. Had Daray known where she was? She had found his mind earlier without his noticing. Had he found hers as well, protected her as best as possible?

  The funnel rose, its end looking like a little tail, wagging in the breeze. The wind gust the funnel created slammed her into the building, then disappeared, like the last taunt of a bully.

  Cassie remained against the cinder block, staring up at the clear night sky. The wind was gone again, everything was calm. The water dripped off
the edge of the wayside, but there was no longer an ankle-deep rush toward the ocean.

  The waves were still angry, still high, but they weren’t coming in as deep. The ocean was receding into itself, returning to normal, as if the last few days had never been.

  Making it as if the accident had never happened.

  She blinked, colder than she had been in her life. She stepped forward, hoping she would find someone else alive, when the wind kicked once more.

  Only this time, it came to her from the ocean, a powerful gust carrying something in it. The something whirled like a leaf trapped in a breeze.

  And the gust let up, and the something dropped out of the sky, landing with a thud in front of her.

  It was a body.

  She crouched, her breathing shallow again, as if she knew before she actually saw. Her hands reached forward as if they belonged to someone else, her body moved with them, and she saw—

  Daray, eyes closed, face so pale that it didn’t look like his anymore. His body was arched in an unusual position, his head turned awkwardly.

  She touched his face. His skin was cold, too cold to be natural. His skin had always been warmer than hers—compensating, he said, for the lack of a pelt.

  A shadow was on his neck, a scarf, something that made it dark. She touched it—

  —and cried out.

  Her fingers had found jagged flesh, a bit of cartilage, maybe bone. And cold. Deep cold.

  He was dead. And bloodless. Completely drained. His throat cut, his blood pouring into the sea.

  The storm had come like his father had predicted. Come, worse than ever. And Daray hadn’t listened to him.

  Daray had saved Cassie’s beach, her home, just like she had wanted. Only not like this.

  Not like this.

  Daray! Daray!

  But there was emptiness where her husband should have been—a coldness where there had once been heat.

  Noooo, she cried, and tumbled against him—against what was left of him, between the cinder block, the concrete, and the water trickling back to the sea.