“You don’t have to watch.”
My lungs burned and I couldn’t speak.
“You can turn away.” She placed her hands down upon my shoulders and turned me from the catchment in the far distance. There was not enough light to see anything and I marveled at what the girls could all be looking for on a night such as this.
A warning cry rang out. And then, before I could do anything to stop it, the sky exploded with light.
Rubena and the carriers shouted. Tears streamed down their faces as an explosion rocked the steady and impenetrable wall of the dam. The roar reached us even where we stood, and although we couldn’t see, we heard all as the wall came crashing down. I fell to my knees.
*~*~*~*
Not one of us had ever reached the border of the island. The anticipation of not knowing what to expect, the fear and excitement, pervaded the air as the sun rose. The girls’ steps slowed. As the sky turned from gray to gold, and then to amber, and the indefinable hues only I as head mother had seen, each one witnessed her own personal freedom. It wasn’t sand-rasped-teeth, and it wasn’t a number scribbled incorrectly for reasons even I could not name. It was the sky above marking a new time, and it was a world away from the motherhood and the carrying of another’s water. It was one more mile to go. My own fears hadn’t diminished. All I could think about was what had become of Dragonina and her men. I thought of the writhing snakes and the earthenware urns all smashed—every one. I thought of limestone degrading and flawless seams materializing in the afternoon blaze.
Rubena squeezed my hand. “This is where the rain falls,” she said. “Wait until you hear it.” She turned her face upward. “Just wait until you hear it.” She let go of my hand and ran across the sand. I didn’t know where she was going, and I knew she didn’t either. It was very clear from the look on her face as she’d smiled up at the sun that she didn’t care. This was the real road to freedom for her. And for a reason I couldn’t name, I would follow her there one step at a time.
A winner of the Writers of the Future contest, DAVID PARISH-WHITTAKER writes for the steampunk series Space 1889. He has written tie-in fiction for the upcoming game Dragon Assault by Symbiant Studios and Europa Universalis by Paradox Development Studio. His short fiction has also appeared in Every Day Fiction. Besides fiction, he writes videogame reviews and analysis for Bag of Games. By day, he’s a captain for a national airline. In previous incarnations, he has been a naval flight officer on the carrier based Viking jet, traffic watch pilot and aerobatic instructor. He lives in San Diego with his dog Molly and his horse Rocinante. He likes to play harp, screw around with small planes and joust.
You can find out more at parishwhittaker.com
The Seas of Heaven
David Parish-Whittaker
I was there when Marianne first sang the fish into the sky, so I suppose one could blame me for not stopping what happened. I know I do. Survivors are allowed the solace of guilt.
I first met the girl as she was wandering the shore like some would-be Byronic heroine, hair down and her excessively white dress stained with the oily sea spray. I’d dropped by to court her older sister, albeit without any real hope or interest. The damnable mercury treatments had brought my bout with Cupid’s pox down, but the attendant hair loss and diminished ardor did little for my temperament.
“The fish are dead,” she said without looking at me.
Well, yes. They were floating in great bloated cakes, rising and falling with the surf. Oddly, they didn’t wash up on the shore. But the scent still burned your nostrils.
“No use fretting about it. They’ve no doubt gone on to a better place,” I said, scratching under my scrub wig. Abating or not, I still itched to the point of burning. “Miss Arland, correct? Shall I escort you back home?”
“Does it matter?”
“It depends on whether one is indifferent to the difference between an abattoir and a drawing room. I’m told the tea is typically better in the latter.”
“How can you joke? This is all the fault of you and your mines.”
I sighed. Her sister had warned me. “The waste needs to go somewhere. That’s why it’s called ‘runoff’ instead of ‘stays put’. But don’t worry yourself. The ocean is vast, dear girl. As the saying goes, there’s other fish in the sea.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to care,” she said, sneering theatrically. “Those mines make you rich.”
“And give the former fishermen work.”
“They had work! But because of you, there’s hardly any fish to catch. They had a good life before you came.”
“Tell that to the families who starved whenever the fish found somewhere else to summer.” I had no idea why I was arguing with this witless girl. True, even my languid libido couldn’t help but toy with the notion of seduction. The innocence of youth and all that. But even so, she clearly had an unfortunate fondness for talking.
Marianne was staring at me with wide, puppyish eyes. “Somewhere else to live. That’s it.”
“Excuse me?”
“How to save the fish. I need to tell them to leave.”
“Shoo fish!” I said, waving at the water. I shrugged. “Didn’t seem to work. Of course, they’re all dead. Makes one deaf, I believe.”
She shook her head. “Not all are dead, not yet. Come with me.” She tugged at my sleeve. I was bored enough to follow.
Marianne took me to a broken down pier I’d forgotten about. As she’d said, the fishing fleets had long ago left for kinder shores. The surf surged around the pilings, keeping the water there thankfully clear of the dead fish.
She walked to the end of the pier and spread her hands out, her dress flapping in the sea breeze. I suspect she was aping a romantic painting she’d seen at some gallery or another. I’ve always maintained that little good comes from the education of women, and she wasn’t proving me wrong.
Then she sang. I want to say something dismissive about the childishness of her voice, thin and high without a trace of proper vibrato to it. And if I’d been subjected to it in a drawing room while her proud and over-painted mother fanned herself in self-satisfaction, I’d have been reaching for my flask to numb the pain.
But here, it was right. The sea itself provided the necessary bass for the lightness of her voice. And Christ, it made you yearn, without telling you what to yearn for. For a man, eh, maybe it made one regret all the years of willful lovelessness, manifesting in tawdry nights that brought only sickness.
Mercury might burn out the blood, but it did little for my soul. But then again, what could one do?
She sang without words, but with all too much meaning, damn it. As I twisted my mouth to curse at her, the water boiled.
And the fish flew into the sky.
They hung there in a shimmering silver school, twitching one way and another, darting a hundred yards away, then two hundred in the opposite direction. They swirled around us without touching.
I watched them with wonder, but no shock. I’m not sure why I was so willing to believe what I saw. Perhaps, like the fish, my hopes for salvation allowed me to ignore reality.
And then they were gone.
When she stopped singing, I felt lethargy settle on me like the depression that follows coitus. I couldn’t speak. Breaking the silence seemed almost sacrilegious. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, that mattered to me.
“Why not the sky?” she said, smiling as she turned around. “It’s even larger than the sea, and the birds use so little. I told them it was all right for them to leave the water. That’s all I think they needed. Permission.”
I swallowed until my throat was moist enough to speak. “They were staying out of a sense of obligation?”
Marianne nodded. “Don’t we all?”
I found myself oddly angry, but the mood was quickly replaced by confusion. “How on Earth did you do that?”
“Voice lessons. Mother ensures practice, speaking of obligation.”
The anger ret
urned. “You know what I mean. How do you know all this? How do you sing to fish, let alone get them to pay attention?”
“I walk the beaches, and I listen. It’s a dying art.” She smiled again, this time with an attractively sardonic curl to her mouth. Perhaps there was some hope for the girl, after all.
*~*~*~*
It was some time before I saw her again, perhaps a year. I was out surveying the moors where my fleet of fishing balloons was working. There were a few schools of minnows nestling at the base of the hill, but most of the fish preferred to swim about in the clouds, hiding in them like aerial reefs. But that wasn’t anything that a bit of ingenuity couldn’t overcome.
I watched as a fishing net descended to the ground, stuffed full with a catch of wriggling fish. More herring, I noted with disappointment. We’d been catching them far too easily, flooding the market. I’d just have to have them pickled and stored until the prices rose again.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, I didn’t notice Marianne approaching. She may have said something, but I’d been plagued with ringing in my ears. For me, the world was filled with wind chimes that I had no way of silencing. At least my fevers weren’t as bad. I still felt warm, but they no longer burned.
“I should have known you’d turn this to your own ends,” she said, her sharp voice cutting through the chimes.
Filled with surprised annoyance, I turned to see her in yet another thin white dress, hands akimbo.
“Aren’t you happy?” I said. “The miners you pitied are now back to fishing. But with far more efficiency than before.”
“But they’re still dependent on you.”
“What can I say? I’m good at seizing opportunity.” I waved at the sky, filled with brightly colored balloons chasing fish-infested clouds. “I owe all this to you.”
She attempted to glare, but it was far too half-hearted. I knew I’d struck a chord there. She turned away from me to watch the minnows working their way through the tall heather. I could see her shoulders shaking, though I couldn’t hear her crying.
Thank God for small favors, I suppose.
A vague feeling of guilt settled on me. I won’t pretend I was fond of her, for all her fashionably frail prettiness. I try to dislike people who don’t like me, as there’s nothing more embarrassing than unreturned affection. Still, I didn’t want the girl sobbing away on my account. She was an innocent. Corruption might flow through my blood and liver, but I found unnecessary cruelty tawdry at best.
And after all, she had helped me. Whether she liked it or not.
I touched her shoulder to get her attention. She spun away from me, her wet eyes narrowing.
I cleared the phlegm from my throat, perhaps too loudly. “Listen. These fellows spend all day in the sky, enjoying fresh air and sun. I might not pay them as much as you’d want me to, but they aren’t starving. I challenge you to visit them and their families. You’ll see nothing but chubby children swarming about the local row houses.”
Her eyes opened, at least in a literal sense. “You actually call upon your fishermen?”
“Well, no,” I said.
She rolled her eyes.
“It’s simple logic,” I said. “Fishing isn’t easy. If they were malnourished, they’d be falling from the skies along with their nets.”
She pursed her lips in apparent thought. “You feed them the fish?”
“Too expensive to waste on them. Your flying fish are a delicacy.”
“You’re lying. You’d be the first to feed them the trash fish.”
Damnation. I’d best tell her the truth, I thought. Else she’d draw her own conclusions. Conclusions that could bankrupt me.
“Not lying,” I said. “Not exactly, I should say. The fish, they’re tasty enough. Absurdly so, in fact, as if they were the perfect example of what fish should be.”
She actually smiled at me. And that made me happy. Looking back, I think I wanted her approval right then. I’d been feeling guilty. And if I could get her to say I was right, her of all people, I’d be absolved.
“Perhaps they were purified when they left the ocean for the skies.” She clapped her hands like a little girl. “They’re fish angels!”
“Never tasted an angel,” I said. “But if they’ve left the sins of the world behind beneath the waves, they’ve also left far too much substance.”
She knitted her brows in confusion.
“Those who only eat sky fish waste away,” I explained. “The fish are food in form and flavor only.”
“They’re poisonous,” she said, anger hovering behind her voice. “And you still sold them.”
“Not poisonous. Just not very nutritive, that’s all. I’ve no problem selling them to the toffs. The average gentleman could stand to lose a few stone, after all.” I stroked my chin. That might actually be a selling point. The truth might not bankrupt me after all.
A fishing net landed wetly nearby, sending the pungent scent of fish cascading over us. Taking to the air hadn’t abated that scent, but its character had changed somewhat. It smelled almost like bread.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, does it? The way you fish, they’ll all be gone in a year or so. You are far too efficient.”
“Thank you. But you’re wrong there, too. Damnedest thing, but the schools seem to replenish themselves every week or so. I could wipe the sky clean, but soon they’d be out cluttering it up again.”
She made a little “o” with her mouth. “They return to the skies after being eaten, that’s what’s happening. It would explain why people starve eating them.”
I felt myself frown. “After they’ve been cleaned, fried and presumably chewed thoroughly? Look up there at them,” I said pointing at the sky. “Not a speck of batter or drop of vinegar to be seen up there.”
“It’s miraculous, yes. But I believe in miracles. Don’t you?”
“Don’t care.”
She strode towards the net. It was swollen like a balloon itself, the fish swarming about inside it in a great floating, pulsing mass. She began to untie its lead weights.
“Whatever you’re doing, stop it,” I said.
She hoisted the net over her shoulder. It was almost as large as her. But as delicate as she was, she carried it with ease. I think the fish were helping.
“You won’t stop me,” she said. “I’m going to take some of your catch to the village to feed the fishermen’s families.”
“You want to starve them?”
“They’ll still have their daily bread to fill them. But they deserve more than just sustenance.”
“Those are my fish, damn it!” I stepped towards her, my fist raised. I could feel the fever rising in me as the ringing in my ears raged like an orchestra’s timpani.
I couldn’t hear what she said, but that was irrelevant. As she said before, I wasn’t going to stop her. It’s one thing to avoid charity; it’s another to interfere with it. My immortal soul was doubtlessly stained beyond recognition, but one never knew.
Dropping my hand to my side, I watched her walk away towards the slums where the fishermen lived. She looked so purposeful as she passed over the moors through the cloud-dappled sunlight. I can’t say exactly what I felt, but it may have resembled admiration.
It was her idea, of course. But I have to wonder, was it my touch that made everything go wrong? Am I so incapable of kindness that simply my allowing it perverts it? If so, then it’s just my nature. I can’t be blamed for it any more than a hedgehog can be blamed for his quills.
And if that’s a lie, at least it comforts me.
*~*~*~*
It was early winter when I visited her in the deserted tenements by the docks. With no people to chase them, the fish had settled here. Long schools wove in and out of empty doorways and broken windows like yarn through the loom of some maniacal weaver god. The sunlight splashed over them, making the sound of bells echoing down the streets. I trudged along, disturbing the rayfish on the cobblestones. Each click of my boots sp
at thick red lines through the air. I’d been seeing sounds of late, the latest symptom of my ongoing rot. But I didn’t mind. It let me see what I couldn’t hear for the ringing in my ears.
And the fever kept me warm through the loneliness of winter. I sometimes wondered where everyone had gone. The remains of their starved bodies should have littered the streets. But instead, it was as if everyone had packed up and left on holiday just before they died.
Come to think of it, that was close to the truth.
I arrived at the flat she had moved into over her mother’s protests. Pushing a sea turtle away from the doorway, I headed down the dark hallway to her room. At the end was the glow from the solitary lamp she’d left burning.
The bedroom was filled with the iron scent of stale blood mixed with a familiar bread-like smell.
“You’ve been eating the fish,” I said. “You need to eat real food.”
“It wouldn’t do any good, not anymore,” she said from the depths of her bed. “The fish are filling enough. I’m not hungry at all. In fact, I feel quite content.”
“You’re still starving.”
“I just want this to be over.”
I could tell that she’d tried to make herself presentable for the visit, but the pile of bloody handkerchiefs by her bedside told me that her fight with consumption was coming to its inevitable end. Even by the weak light in the room, blue veins were visible underneath her far too pale skin. She’d cropped her hair like a nun. The last time I’d visited, she’d told me she was going to do that. Her daily toilette had become too much work.
“I brought you a flower,” I said, pulling a white rose out of my jacket.
“The house of York?” she said. I could see her words trace themselves in light golden lines in the dark of the room. “Are you casting me as Richard the Third, crippled and mad?” I was glad to see she could still smile. I couldn’t.
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