Cape Grace

by Nathan Lowell

  “What, bad? Like a dead fish?”

  Sarah gave a noncommittal shrug. “Something like that, yeah?”

  “Nothing like that in here,” the girl said, pushing the door closed.

  “Wait!” Sarah said.

  “What?” the girl asked. “I’m kinda busy here. I don’t smell anything.”

  The girl wore a long-sleeved jersey but one of the sleeves had been pushed up. Sarah saw scars running up her forearm.

  The girl grunted and pulled the sleeve down, covering the skin. “What?” she asked again, less belligerent now.

  “I know you,” Sarah said, seeing the girl’s face more clearly. “We were in school together.”

  The girl stood still for a moment and stared at Sarah. “You’re the shaman’s kid.”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes. You’re Milly? Millicent?”

  “Mary,” the girl said. “What of it?”

  “Are you all right?” Sarah asked.

  The aroma vanished like somebody had flipped a light switch and turned it off. She moved her face around, sniffing to find it again.

  “What do you care?” Mary asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “I ...” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Can I help you with something?”

  Mary gave a dark and bitter laugh, short and sharp. “As if. Nobody can help me.”

  “What’s the problem?” Sarah asked.

  “The problem is that I got nothing. I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to do. My parents—who can’t be bothered to help me figure it out—are never here. Everybody is getting their shit together and I’m bouncing around in this house by myself all day every day. Why? What’s the point?” The words vomited from Mary, spraying Sarah and the front yard with her frustration and fear.

  Sarah nodded. “I know the feeling.”

  Mary blinked. “How could you? You’ve got it all sussed out already, don’t you? Marry some meal ticket. Carve your little figures. Practice your woo on the down-low for the rest of your life?”

  Sarah shook her head. “What?”

  “Isn’t that what girl shamans do?” Mary asked. “You can never be called a shaman. You need to get a job at the company, marry somebody who has a job, or leave the planet, right?”

  Sarah nodded. “That seems to be about the size of it. Yeah.”

  “So what’s it going to be? Marry or leave because you’re never getting a job with the company.”

  “I’m working for the company now,” Sarah said. “I’m crabbing. It’s not much but it’s a job.”

  “Really?” she asked. “That counts as employed?”

  Sarah nodded. “It’s just for the time being. My father thinks we can change the rules so I can stay and be a shaman.”

  Mary’s bark of a laugh echoed from the house across the street. “As if,” she said.

  “So what’s with your arm?” Sarah asked.

  “What?” Mary asked.

  “Your arm. I saw it. It’s got scars on it. You have an accident?”

  “No, dumbass, I did it on purpose.”

  Sarah felt the answer like a slap in the face. “You did, didn’t you.”

  Mary froze like maybe she just realized that she’d told the truth. “You believe me?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Oh, yeah. No doubt. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Mary stared at her. “How could you know?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Sometimes I just know stuff. It’s weird. Like last week I knew this guy was having a heart attack. Out of the blue.” She shrugged again. “I just feel it.”

  “Or smell it?” Mary asked.

  “Or that.”

  Mary nodded. She stared at Sarah for a moment, gnawing her bottom lip. “Ya wanna come in?”

  Sarah stood on the stoop and considered. “Do you want me to come in?”

  Mary shrugged. “You came all the way from the point?” Mary nodded at the headland across the harbor. Sarah could just make out the cottage in the distance.

  “Yeah. I suppose I did. I was going for a walk but the tide’s wrong.”

  Mary laughed. “Well, you got your walk in.” She paused and seemed to be weighing Sarah with her eyes. “May as well come in. Rest your feet before you head back. Cuppa tea?”

  Sarah nodded. “Thank you.”

  Mary held the door open and stepped out of the way, allowing Sarah to enter before closing the door. “Kitchen’s this way. Pardon the mess. It’s the maid’s year off.”

  Sarah tried to parse the meaning behind the words. She followed Mary through a living area, down a short corridor, and into the kitchen.

  Mary filled the kettle and set it on the burner, cranking the heat up before pulling down two mismatched mugs from a cabinet. “Take anything in it?” she asked.

  Sarah shook her head. “Water? Tea by itself is kinda crunchy and unsatisfying.”

  Mary chuckled. “Did you just make a joke?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I’m not very good at it.”

  “It made me laugh,” Mary said. She leaned against the counter while Sarah slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “What’s it like being a shaman?”

  Sarah grinned. “I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s always been there.”

  “Is it hard?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s nothing to compare it to.”

  “You carve?”

  “Oh, yes. Carving is like a meditation. You and the wood and the blade. You work together to find the figure.” She smiled and looked at her fingers twining on the table in front of her. “It’s relaxing.”

  “Don’t your hands cramp?”

  “What? From holding the knife?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I don’t need to hold it that tightly and the blade is sharp. I just ease the wood off in shavings. My father always told me it was easier to take the wood off than put it back.”

  Mary laughed and the kettle came up to boil. She busied herself at the counter.

  “What do you do?” Sarah asked.

  Mary didn’t turn around, just gave a quick shrug. “Tried to get a job on one of the boats. Nobody’s hiring this season. Worked in the packing plant for a while.” She sighed. “It didn’t work out.”

  “What do you want to do?” Sarah asked.

  Mary turned with a mug in each hand and slid one across the table to Sarah before taking a seat across from her. “I don’t know.” She cupped her mug in her palms and shrugged, staring at the center of the table. “That’s the problem. I can’t think of anything I want to do.”

  “Well, where would you like to live?”

  Mary looked up and frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have to stay here. If you could live anywhere, where would you live?”

  Mary’s gaze focused somewhere over Sarah’s left shoulder. “My uncle has a croft out east. We visited one summer. Stanyers ago. It was peaceful. Quiet.” She gave a little laugh. “You ever notice it’s never quiet here?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I listen to the sounds. I like the ocean. It’s comforting.”

  “What about the storms?” Mary said, not looking up.

  “Storms are exciting.”

  “People die in storms,” Mary said.

  Sarah nodded and sipped her tea. “More people die in pleasant weather,” she said.

  Mary looked up, wide-eyed. “How can you say that?”

  “Logic. How many storms do we get in a day?”

  Mary shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Do we have a storm now?” Sarah asked.

  “Of course not. You just came in.”

  “Most days there isn’t a storm,” Sarah said. “Most days at least one person dies. With as many millions of people as there are here, I suspect that more than a hundred people die every day. Heart attacks, accidents, old age.” Sarah shrugged. “Lots of things to die from that don’t involve storms.”

  “Suicide,” Mary said, looking down at the table agai
n.

  “Suicide,” Sarah said. “You don’t need to die today.”

  Mary looked up. “You knew?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No idea.”

  “You just smelled something on the wind?”

  Sarah nodded. “Didn’t know what it was but it brought me here.”

  Mary sipped her tea and placed the mug back on the table. “It’s too much.”

  Sarah listened.

  “I don’t know what I want to do. Living with my uncle in a croft is just taking the problem somewhere else.”

  “It’s somewhere peaceful,” Sarah said.

  “Where do you find peace?” Mary asked.

  “On the beach.” She shrugged. “In the shop with wood in my hand.”

  “Do you get lonely?”

  Sarah thought about that, looking at the ripples on the top of her tea. “I don’t know. I never feel like I’m really ever alone. Closest I got was actually up on the orbital last week. Which is odd, because there are so many people up there in a really small volume.”

  “You went up to the orbital?”

  “Yeah. My great-grandmother is a broker up there. We had a nice visit.” Sarah grinned.

  “What’s that grin?” Mary asked.

  “She’s crazy. I mean really old. She’s my grandmother’s mother so ... you know ... old.”

  Mary nodded. “Got it.”

  “She runs a really successful business. I guess. I really don’t know for sure, but she has a nice apartment up there. She has a really nice assistant.”

  “That doesn’t sound crazy to me,” Mary said.

  “The first night I was there, she took a client out for dinner.” Sarah leaned forward. “She didn’t come home until morning.”

  Mary blinked. “Really? Your great-grandmother was mashing on her clients?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t say anything when she got back other than to ask how my evening went. She showered, changed her clothes, and went to work. That was it.”

  “Why is that crazy?” Mary asked.

  Sarah pondered that. “I guess because it’s not what I’d expect from an old woman.”

  “Your father’s single. Does he date?” Mary asked.

  Sarah shook her head. “We’re pretty much focused on the beach. He works with the company rep some, helping people, but no. We’re both in the workshop most nights.”

  Mary frowned. “And that isn’t that lonely?”

  “I’ve never felt lonely. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Lucky you.” Mary took a swig from her mug. “I get so lonely I just want to scream sometimes.”

  “Do you have any friends?” Sarah asked.

  “I used to. They’ve all gone off to work the boats. When they get back, they hang together. We don’t have much in common anymore, I guess.” Mary scratched her forearm through the jersey. “They can go out, do things. I can’t afford to go and I’m not gonna skim off them, yanno?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah. Not a lot of unallocated funds around my house either.”

  Mary looked up. “How does your father make a living? He doesn’t get a paycheck from anywhere.” Her eyes went wide and her mouth made an O. “I’m sorry, that just slipped out. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  Sarah laughed. “We’ve been living off investments from my mother’s insurance.”

  “Didn’t she die when you were born?”

  “Yeah. We don’t need much.” Sarah shrugged. “My great-grandmother paid for me to go up to the orbital and visit. That’s not something we would normally be able to afford.”

  “Still. That’s a long time.”

  “The cottage is rent free,” Sarah said. “We get a food allowance from the chandlery. It’s part of the agreement we have with the village. We don’t need to buy much. Clothing. Utility costs.”

  “So, the village pays him, sorta,” Mary said.

  “Yeah. We’re lucky. Not all villages are so generous. Mr. Comstock and the elders seem to think having a shaman here helps more than it costs.”

  Mary shook her head. “I never really thought about it before.”

  Sarah grinned. “I never have either. It’s just normal life for me.”

  “And you’re a shaman?” Mary asked.

  “I’m pretty sure. I don’t have the title or anything, but I carve whelkies. I walk the beach and listen to the world.”

  Mary shook her head. “What does that mean? Listen to the world?”

  “Hard to explain.” Sarah closed her eyes and thought about it. “It’s like you settle into the place you’re at. You push out and try to feel what’s around you without looking at it. It’s not exactly listening but that’s the nearest way to think about it.”

  “What do you hear?” Mary’s voice sounded far away in the tiny kitchen.

  “It’s busy,” Sarah said. “The world is always busy. It’s like listening to the ocean at night. You can’t see it, but you can hear the waves always making some kind of noise. The splash of the breaker and the hiss of the water on the sand. There’s a rhythm to it but it’s never the same.”

  “Wow,” Mary said, the word more exhaled than spoken.

  Sarah opened her eyes and grinned. “Sometimes I feel what people are feeling. Like, I said something to my father the other day and I could tell it upset him. I could just feel it rolling off him even when he didn’t show it.”

  “What? Like mind reading?” Mary said.

  “No. More like mood reading. It happened a lot on the orbital. Strong emotions.” Sarah shrugged. “It’s not something I can control apparently.”

  “Have you tried?” Mary asked.

  “What? Controlling it?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Not really. It’s just something that happens.”

  Mary took a swallow of tea and shifted in her chair. “You smelled me,” she said.

  Sarah sighed and took a sip of her own tea, buying time to consider her response. “I think so. Well, I smelled something. It wasn’t like smelling you. And you didn’t smell it, so it probably wasn’t a real smell.”

  “I wouldn’t have smelled myself, anyway, would I?” Mary asked. “I’d be too used to my stink.”

  Sarah laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Probably not.”

  Mary took the last mouthful of tea and stood, putting her mug in the sink. “Would you like another cup?”

  Sarah shook her head and emptied her mug before sliding it across the table toward Mary. “No, but thank you.” She stood. “I should be going.”

  “Shaman stuff to do?” Mary asked.

  Sarah grinned. “Something like that. I was going to walk on the beach but the tide’s wrong. After being on the orbital surrounded by all those people, I felt like getting away for a bit.”

  “Instead you came here.”

  Sarah shrugged. “Yeah. Well. We don’t always do what we want, I guess.” She smiled at Mary. “I’m glad I did. You asked questions I’ve never thought about before.”

  Mary folded her arms over her chest and looked at the linoleum floor. “You saved my life.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I just rang your doorbell.”

  “I know a place,” Mary said.

  “What?”

  “To walk. When the tide’s in. I know a place.” She looked up. “Wanna see?”

  The idea tickled the back of Sarah’s mind. She spoke without really thinking about it. “Sure. I’d love to.”

  Mary grinned. “Lemme get some walking shoes on. Be right back.” She disappeared down the hallway, leaving Sarah alone in the kitchen.

  In a matter of a couple of ticks, Mary led the way back to the street and around the corner, heading away from the bay toward the escarpment behind the village.

  “I found this place stanyers ago,” Mary said as they cleared the back line of houses where the developed land ended and the rougher terrain at the foot of the escarpment began. She pointed to a set of concrete stairs leading up from the flat,
coastal plain to the plateau fifty meters above.

  They crossed the verge and began climbing the steps. Sarah felt her thigh muscles complaining on the last half and had to stop to catch her breath at the top. “Whoosh. That’s a climb,” she said, leaning forward with hands on knees to pant.

  Mary shook her legs, one at a time. “Yeah. I come up here a couple times a week. I’m getting stronger but it’s still a workout.”

  “You didn’t warn me about that part,” Sarah said with a laugh.

  “Didn’t think of it, but look.” Mary pointed out to sea.

  From the top of the bluff, Sarah’s view of the village and the harbor beyond expanded to the open sea beyond. What had been a gentle breeze at street level became a salty blast at the top. She stood tall, flexing her back, and taking a lungful of the cool, fresh air. “This is spectacular.”

  Mary nodded. “I come up here sometimes just to get away.”

  “Get away from feeling lonely?” Sarah asked.

  Mary laughed. “Yeah. I guess.” She stood and gazed out to sea. “It’s hard to feel anything but awe up here.” She turned and pointed inland. “That’s pretty spectacular, too.”

  Sarah turned and looked out across a vast sea of grasses, the wind rippling the blades in waves as far as her eye could see. The ripples mesmerized her, the horizon flat in the distance.

  “It’s all grassland. It’s at least a hundred kilometers before the first farms. Flat as a sheet of glass,” Mary said.

  “It’s amazing.” Sarah closed her eyes and leaned back into the wind, stretching her senses out, feeling for the land the same way she reached for the sea. She felt calmness settle on her like a cloak. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah. Come on. There’s a path. We’re not the only ones who come up here.”

  Mary led the way down a narrow path along the edge of the bluff. It meandered around the edge, never getting too close nor too far. The escarpment had peninsulas and bays, just like the coastline.

  Sarah felt a different kind of peace walking along between sea and soil. “Your arm?” Sarah asked.

  Mary stopped and looked into the wind. It blew her hair back from her face. “What about it?”

  “Want to talk about it?” Sarah asked.

  Mary shrugged and looked down at the path, taking a few steps along. “Not really.”

  “Does walking up here help?” Sarah asked, looking out over the waving grass.