Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories

by Caroline M. Yoachim

“I want more from my life than that.”

  Her sisters shook their heads and helped Tomiko haul herself back up onto the pier. Dagon had not given her much time, but after staying up all night, she could barely keep her eyes open. Robert was likely sleeping, anyway. She went home, and with her webbed feet cut into dainty toes, each step felt like walking on shards of broken glass.

  Tomiko woke before sunrise and put on her nicest outfit, a flowing red dress with delicate floral print that Mom had brought back the last time she’d gone to San Francisco. Tomiko’s hands and feet ached with the pain of her transformation, but her skin was a flawless golden brown, and her hair—once stringy—was full and black and permed in a fashionable wave. For the first time she could remember, she felt beautiful.

  She tiptoed past her parents’ room, where her father snored loudly, and she slipped outside. The streets were deserted as Tomiko hurried to the bus station. It was two hours before the morning bus was scheduled to depart, and Robert was nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of Joe either, so Tomiko rummaged beneath the hood of the motor-coach. She tore out belts and anything else she could pry free.

  It would take a while for Joe to fix the damage, so there would be no way for anyone to get out of town before evening. Sabotage completed, Tomiko went back to the ditch where she’d left Robert. He wasn’t there, but thankfully he hadn’t gone far. She found him walking on the road that led to the highway. She called out to him, and he regarded her with suspicion.

  “Come with me back to town, and I’ll tell you the history of Innsmouth. You can take the evening bus to Santa Cruz, and it’ll be faster than trying to walk.”

  He stood, obviously torn between wanting to flee the horrors of Innsmouth and wanting to hear more about its history. “The creatures,” he said softly, “are they gone?”

  “Asleep,” Tomiko assured him. “The town will be no worse than it was when you first arrived. Look, the sun is rising, see the pink glow above the hills?”

  She led him back to town, where they bought breakfast from the grocer. Tomiko got onigiri—rice balls wrapped in seaweed and filled with pickled plums and salted salmon. She encouraged Robert to do the same, but he insisted on more Western fare, though the stale rolls he purchased hardly looked appealing.

  They ate their breakfast on the front stairs of the inn. Tomiko positioned herself carefully, not too close, but leaning in suggestively, her hair blowing gently in the seaside breeze. Robert hardly noticed her in his eagerness to get more information about the residents of Innsmouth.

  So Tomiko changed her tactics, and tried to court him with her knowledge rather than her appearance. “Innsmouth is run down now, but it used to be a prosperous town, almost a city. The main industry was abalone. Ryuunosuke Kodama brought divers and harvesting techniques with him from his home in Chiba, Japan.”

  “Wait, I’ve heard that name. Kodama is the founder of the town, right? And the source of the—” Robert paused and his face flushed red, but then he continued, “the Innsmouth look.”

  Tomiko laughed, as though completely unbothered by his disgust for the fish-frog residents of the town. True, she had been cursed with the Innsmouth look, but she was human now. What did it matter if Robert found the fishy features of the other townspeople offputting? She herself had hated it, when she was afflicted. Still, she could not reveal the true nature of the transformation without explaining the Esoteric Order, and she felt it would be unwise to share such information with an outsider. So she skirted the subject by saying only, “Many of the residents of Innsmouth are descended from Kodama in some manner. He had six children, all of whom stayed here to run the family business.”

  They talked at length about the town. Several times throughout the day Robert attempted to make excuses and take his leave, but always she regained his attention by meting out historical facts, anecdotes, even idol gossip about the residents of the town. But by late afternoon she was no closer to winning his affections than she had been in the morning, and her time was running short. When once again he tried to make excuses, she made a desperate suggestion, “but first come out to the pier and I can tell you the story of Devil Reef. Joanne has always been an outsider, and the tale she tells is but a fraction of the town’s true history.”

  To her relief, this was enough to recapture his attention. She had hoped the pier at sunset would be a romantic setting, but the tide was low and the breeze coming in off the water bore an unpleasant stench of rotting fish. Tomiko could see the shadowy forms of deep ones not far from the end of the pier. The sun was low, and her time was nearly done. If she did not win her kiss soon, she would be their sacrifice, a feast for Dagon.

  Robert’s attention was focused on the reef, and a whisper floated up from the water beneath the pier. Tomiko knelt, and saw her sister, Amaya. Her stringy black hair was plastered to her gray-green face and her gills flapped gently in the open air. Her golden tiara was gone.

  “We’ve made a deal for you,” her sister whispered. She held up a knife carved from the shell of some large sea creature. It had an opalescent sheen as it caught the rays of the setting sun. “Sacrifice the human, and you can transform into one of us, and live your immortal life beneath the waves.”

  Tomiko took the blade. Robert had no part in her deal with Dagon, save for being the only human who happened to be in town. She wasn’t sure she could take his life for hers. She held the blade behind her back, hoping he wouldn’t see it.

  “Robert,” she said, calling his attention away from the pier. She was a beautiful woman, a human woman, and she would be bold and take this opportunity to live the life she wanted. She looked at him with deep brown eyes catching the merest hint of gold from the setting sun, and whispered, “kiss me.”

  Robert pushed her away. “I will not defile myself with some perverted mockery of the human race, some horrifying creature of the Yellow Peril. Your eyes are hideous, bulging and nearly lidless with their epicanthic folds. You smell of the fish you are always eating, and your skin is a color better suited to simians than to men. I was curious as to the history of this town, but I want no part of you with your Innsmouth look.”

  “I saved you! I could have told them where you were, but I protected you. And this is how you repay me?” Tomiko held up her knife and called to her sisters. They dragged themselves out of the water and stood beside her to lend their support against the unspeakable horror of his xenophobic hatred.

  Tomiko stepped closer. Her sisters formed a wall behind her, making it impossible for him to escape. She pressed the tip of her blade against his chest, and red blood bloomed like a flower against the white of his shirt. His pale eyes widened with terror at her attack, and he hurried backwards, careless of the slick boards at the end of the pier, where the waves had splashed up and soaked the wood.

  He screamed as he fell into the water. Dark shapes beneath the surface pulled him down, and his screams transformed into incoherent burbling as his head disappeared beneath the waves. Tomiko hurled her knife at the spot where Robert had disappeared. The deep ones had their sacrifice for Dagon, and they swam back to the reef, content.

  The sun set.

  Tomiko’s skin burned as though the last rays of the sun had lit her on fire. Her face melted into itself, and the red lines of gills sliced into her neck. Human skin fell away to reveal a scaly back and a slimy white belly. Her hair fell to the pier, leaving her completely bald. She had lost her deal with Dagon, and she was human no more.

  But the love of her sisters had saved her from being a sacrifice. She didn’t have the human form she wanted, but she was determined to live her life. She dove with her sisters into the cool ocean water, and together they swam out past the reef. Her sisters returned to their underwater city, but Tomiko swam north along the coastline, to San Francisco.

  Mom would be furious, but maybe there was a place for a fish-frog waitress at Uncle Yuji’s restaurant.

  ON THE PAGES OF A SKETCHBOOK UNIVERSE

  The First Page of the Sketc
hbook

  In a sketchbook of pure white paper, a watercolor king met a pencil queen.

  The king was made of sixteen shades of watercolor paint, with colors pressed together in thin diagonal stripes. His fingertips were brushes and his heart was a jar of water that had no lid. He dipped the end of his pinky-finger brush into his heartwater and loaded the brush with yellow paint from the stripe that ran down his neck.

  He touched his brush to the blankness of the white, leaving a tiny dot of yellow that spread into a circle as it seeped into the page.

  Nothing happened.

  The queen was stiff and straight, made of wooden pencils with graphite cores. Her joints were erasers and her heart was a steel blade. She pulled one fingertip across her heartblade until the graphite core came to a delicate point, and tiny curls of wood dropped down to the page. She scooped them up and offered them to the king, but he shook his head. He had no use for them. It seemed wrong to discard little bits of herself, so the queen held the shavings with one hand and used the sharpened finger of her other hand to draw a box.

  She drew an outline in delicate straight lines, but nothing happened.

  The king came to examine her sketch, and when he reached out to touch it a smear of yellow stained one corner of the box. As the paint dried, the corner began to jut out from the paper, as solid and real as the queen and king.

  The queen sketched the king’s yellow circle into a sun, which rose above them and lit the page in a glorious warm light. The king painted the rest of the box, and the queen put her pencilself shavings inside. Together they created a forest of deep green pines and a sparkling blue lake. The queen sketched distant mountains and a handful of clouds to diffuse the light of the yellow sun. Everything she sketched, the king painted, and together they created a beautiful realm.

  The clouds darkened, and rain began to fall. Water ran down the king’s face and pulled his paint down to the paper, leaving murky brown puddles of mud on the once-white ground. He ran and hid beneath the branches of a dark green pine, horrified that the clouds they had created could turn against him so thoroughly.

  In this, his first moment of need, the queen abandoned him, disappearing into the vast undrawn white. He huddled against the tree and waited for the rain to stop.

  The pencil queen had come to love the watercolor king, for his colors were beautiful. The box he’d painted for her pencilself shavings fit neatly into her chest, nestling up against the blade of her heart. When the rain drove him into hiding, she decided to sketch him a castle, a place where he could be safe.

  A castle required an empty expanse of paper, so she left the forest and walked toward the center of the page. As she traveled, most of the page was pure and blank and white, but halfway between the upper bindings and the unbound lower edge, there was a great rift, a tear in the paper. She detoured to walk the length of the tear. It ran a great distance, starting at the leftmost edge of the page and running nearly to the center. On the right side of the page, there was a second tear, a mirror-image of the first. She sketched a large stone at the end of each tear, in hopes that the weight of the rocks would keep the rifts from spreading. When she finished sketching the king’s castle, she would ask him to paint the rocks real.

  The queen continued on past the rifts, and found a wide expanse of blank paper. She sharpened all her fingers to make the work go faster and placed her shavings into their box. White paper gave way to sketched-stone walls—storerooms and apartments and a cavernous great hall, all connected with covered walkways so that the king would never need to face the weather. At each corner, she drew a tall tower, so that he could look out over the realm in all directions. In the center of the castle she sketched an even taller tower, so that she and her king could sleep close to the heavens.

  By the time she had finished, the rain had stopped, so she returned to the forest and found the watercolor king.

  “Did it honestly take you this long to realize you can’t make anything real without me?” the king asked. His diagonal stripes were smeared from the rain, and all around him were formless blobs of paint where he had tried to make—something—in her absence.

  “I was drawing a surprise for you,” she said, but her excitement about the castle was dampened by her guilt at leaving him to suffer the rain alone.

  It was many days’ work to paint the castle, and by the time it was finished the king had forgiven the queen for abandoning him in the rain. He fell in love with her angles and her strength, and he admired the delicate lines that she drew. He painted the rocks she had sketched to stop the page from tearing, and admired her foresight and ingenuity.

  The queen drew birds and beasts and fish to live in their beautiful realm, and he brought them to life with his colors. He painted the night sky black, and she sketched a moon and stars. He painted the celestial bodies in whites and yellows and tossed them into the sky.

  “Let’s make ourselves a child,” the king said. It was the right time. From his tower window, he could see reflections of moonlight dancing on the lake. “We’ve made a beautiful world, and all it needs is a child for us to share it with.”

  They’d left one wall of their tower bedroom blank with the original page, intended for just such a purpose. The queen began to sketch a pencil child.

  “I thought,” the king said, “that we could have a watercolor child.”

  “The eldest will be heir to the realm. Clearly a pencil princess is the better choice. When she is finished, she can sketch herself a prince that is to her liking.”

  “It is no more your realm than it is mine,” the king answered. “If not for my paint, your sketches wouldn’t even be real. A watercolor prince would make a fine heir.”

  “And then what? He would paint a formless princess for me to sketch?” The queen kept drawing her straight-lined wooden child, with a sharp-blade heart and eraser joints. “I’m not going to sketch you a prince.”

  “And I’m not going to paint you a princess,” the king said.

  So the royal couple remained childless, and the heir was nothing but a sketch, abandoned in the highest tower of the castle.

  Strange art crept in from beyond the edge of the realm, giant lizards that flew and breathed fire. The king named the creatures dragons. They gathered on the white page beyond the proper boundary of the realm, up near the bindings of the page. Periodically, they fought amongst themselves, soaring high above the page and spewing jets of fire from their mouths.

  “The fire is too dangerous. We must fight the dragons,” the queen said, “before they destroy the realm.”

  “They have done nothing to attack us,” the king said, “and they only breathe their fire when they are in the sky, well away from the paper.”

  “This is our page of the sketchbook, and we have to defend it. The beasts have been flying wide circles over the realm, scouting. It is only a matter of time before the dragons attack the castle, and everything we’ve worked so hard to create will be destroyed.”

  “We should have someone to tend the realm if we fail,” the king said, choosing his words carefully. “Perhaps instead of one heir, we could have two, a prince and a princess—”

  The queen didn’t let him finish. Her mind was as rigid as the pencils that formed her body, and she lacked the flexibility for compromise. She believed the realm had to be controlled by someone who could sketch. She led the king up to their tower and pointed to her sketch of the pencil princess. “Here. This is your heir. Paint her and be done with it.”

  She left without waiting for the king to reply.

  The king considered the drawing. It had the form of a princess, true, but that didn’t mean he had to paint the child as pencils. He dipped a red fingertip into his heartwater and painted the core of one pencil red. He did the outside of the pencil in red paint, too, all but the bit of wood where the pencil had been drawn already sharpened. That detail was a credit to the queen—the heir would not begin with blunted fingers, as she had, but would begin life ready to create a
rt.

  He stepped back to admire his work. A red pencil with a core of watercolor paint. He set to work on the rest of the sketch, giving the heir watercolor pencils in all his sixteen shades, and four ordinary graphite pencils as a token to the queen.

  It was not quite the prince he had envisioned, but he would have to do.

  The queen was furious at the king’s trick. She refused to speak to him, and instead spent hours sketching an army of soldiers to lead into battle against the dragons. The soldiers were not pencils or watercolors—not artists at all—though they had limbs and faces. They would have no purpose but defending the realm, and she sketched hundreds of them to be her army, each one identical to all the others. When her sketches were finished, she sent the king to paint them so that she could have a private audience with her heir.

  The princess was a mess of bright colors, but the king had given her some true pencils. The queen set up several easels around the room. She would teach the princess how to be a proper heir for the realm. “Begin by sketching spheres.”

  The heir approached the first easel and touched it tentatively with a purple-pencil finger.

  “No,” the queen corrected. “Sketch in pencil, in black.”

  Under the queen’s watchful eye, the heir drew a circle onto each of the easels. “Now may I have water, so that I can paint them into spheres?”

  The queen smiled. The king had painted her princess in colors, but he couldn’t change her heartblade into a jar. Without water, the heir could not paint, and therefore she truly was a princess. “The sketches are not finished. A sphere is too simple. You must imagine something grander, and draw in the details. A sphere can become anything—a planet, an orange, the eye of a spider—all it takes is the right details. With enough practice, you will be a lovely queen.”