Cape Grace

by Nathan Lowell

  Mary sighed. “Yeah. I think it does. I don’t think about it up here.”

  “Where do you think about it?”

  “In my room.” She took a few more steps. “It’s not something I really think about. I just do it.”

  Sarah nodded. “Does it hurt?” She tilted her face to peek at Mary without letting the wind blow grit into her eyes.

  Mary laughed. “Yeah. I suppose.” Mary nodded at Sarah. “You ever cut your finger carving?”

  “Once in a while,” Sarah said, a little chuckle bubbling out of her. “Stings a little.”

  “That’s about it,” Mary said. “It stings a little.”

  “Can I see?” Sarah asked.

  Mary pulled her shoulders in and tugged her sleeves down. “See? No. Sheesh.”

  “Sorry,” Sarah said.

  Mary shook her head and bit her lips between her teeth. “Sorry, that was weird.” She swallowed hard and looked anywhere but at Sarah. “Why did you want to see?”

  “Don’t know,” Sarah said. “Seemed like the thing to do. Don’t do it if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  Mary pulled a blade of grass from a tuft at her feet and started shredding it with her fingernails. “My parents want to see all the time.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They keep yelling at me. Telling me that I need to stop it.”

  “Yelling?” Sarah asked. “Really?”

  Mary shrugged and frowned at the grass in her fingers. “Well, mostly being real intense, you know? Like they won’t leave it alone. They just keep going and going.” She shook her head and clamped her jaw.

  “They’re scared,” Sarah said.

  Mary looked up at that, eyes wide. “They’re scared? You think they’re scared?”

  “I would be,” Sarah said. “At least I think I would.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Scared that you needed help I couldn’t give you.” Sarah looked away. “Scared you might do something worse.”

  “That’s dumb,” Mary said.

  Sarah looked back. “Is it?”

  Mary pressed her lips together and looked out to sea, shaking her hair back from her face. “Yes.”

  They stood there on the bluff without speaking for several minutes. Sarah felt a coil unwinding in Mary. A hot metal spring that she hadn’t felt before cooled slowly, easing the tension in the woman’s body.

  “It’s peaceful here,” Sarah said.

  Mary nodded. “It is.”

  “You wanna see my workshop?” Sarah asked.

  “Your workshop? What? Where you carve?”

  Sarah nodded. “It’s in the cottage. We’d have to walk over.”

  “Won’t your father mind?”

  “Why would he?”

  “Well, it’s shaman stuff. I’m not a shaman.”

  Sarah laughed. “Not like it’s secret and—technically—neither am I.” The image of Lette staring at her that night appeared in her mind. “It’s nothing special. Workbench. Little stove for heating in the winter.” She paused. “Unless you got something else to do this afternoon.”

  Mary gave Sarah a kind of side-eyed glance, pulling a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “Yeah. I’d like to see your workshop.” She took a deep breath and blew it out her nose. “I got nothing planned for the rest of the day.”

  “Do we have to go back to the stairs?” Sarah asked looking back the way they’d come.

  “There’s another set just ahead. Drops down behind the tram depot.” She started off along the path, purpose in her stride.

  Sarah smiled and followed along, pulled by Mary’s resolve. It seemed there was more to walking the beach than actually walking the beach. She glanced upwards to the unseen spot in the sky where the orbital would shine later when the sun wasn’t so high in the sky.

  * * *

  When Sarah stepped into the cottage, she found a note on the kitchen table. “He’s at the chandlery. We’ve got the house to ourselves.” She turned to see Mary peeking into the house from the doorway. “Come in. Close the door. You’re letting the inside out.”

  Mary laughed but stepped in. “I’ve never been in a shaman’s cottage before.”

  “Other than being stone, I suspect it’s a lot like your house.”

  “My house doesn’t have a workshop.”

  Sarah laughed. “I hope you don’t have this built up as some big production. It’s an oversized closet.” She beckoned. “Come on. This way to the side show.”

  Mary snickered and followed, her head on gimbals as she peered at everything they passed.

  Sarah opened the door and led the way into the nook where she and her father shared a work bench. She tried to look at it through Mary’s eyes. The solid workbench against the narrow end wall. The paired chairs, both battered and looking like rejects from a fire sale. A small woodstove tucked against the wall with a sheet of aluminum behind it to reflect heat away from the stone and toward the room, its chimney a thigh-thick pipe arrowing through the roof. “It’s not much, but we like it.”

  Mary approached the bench as if it were an altar of some kind, her lips parted in awe, her eyes raking back and forth across the surface. “You carve here?”

  Sarah pointed at her chair. “Actually, I sit there. My father sits over there.”

  “What do you use the bench for?” Mary asked.

  “Tea, mostly.” Sarah shrugged. “It’s a really sturdy tea table.”

  Mary laughed. “I can see that.”

  “It’s handy when we need a solid surface to do the inlays. That’s not something you can do in your lap,” Sarah said. “But it takes a lot of carving to get a piece ready for the inlay, so mostly it’s a handy place to put our mugs.”

  “I can’t believe you carve whelkies,” Mary said, her head still swiveling to take in all the corners. She glanced up at the cans on the shelves above the bench.

  “That’s mostly my father’s stuff. I’ve got a can of older work up there, too.” Sarah pulled out a small drawer from the back of the bench. “These are some of mine.”

  Mary leaned forward and looked into the drawer. “Oh.” The single syllable sounded almost breathless. She looked up at Sarah. “Can I touch them?”

  “Sure, why not? I do.”

  Mary picked up a whelkie and held it to the light. “It’s a seal.”

  “Yeah.” Sarah made an ‘urk-urk’ sound and clapped her hands together like flippers. “You get the seal of approval.”

  Mary laughed. “That joke is so old.”

  “My father does it every single time,” Sarah said. “He can still make me laugh with it.”

  “You carved this,” Mary said, turning the small figure back and forth to look at it from all angles.

  “Yeah.” Sarah watched Mary’s face. “You like it?”

  “It’s amazing,” Mary said.

  “It’s a seal,” Sarah said. “A mazing has more right angles.”

  “What?” Mary blinked and looked at Sarah.

  “Nothing. Joke. Not worth it.” She pulled out another drawer. “These are some of my father’s. You can tell we have really different styles.”

  Mary looked into the drawer and her eyes widened. “Those are ... something.” She leaned down almost as if to smell the wood. “They’re ...”

  “Shocking? Brutal? Primitive?” Sarah said, supplying some of the adjectives she’d heard in the past.

  “They’re wonderful,” Mary said. “How does he do that? So jagged and rough but still perfect.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No idea. He gets a lot of crap from some of the other shamans about his style when they get together. I think they’re jealous.” Sarah fitted the drawers back into their slots, and slid them shut.

  “What about this one?” Mary held up the seal.

  Sarah shook her head. “That’s not mine anymore.”

  Mary frowned, her eyes blinking too fast. “What?”

  “That one’s yours now.”

  “That’s not
right,” Mary said, trying to put the small figure on the bench.

  Sarah closed her hand around Mary’s. “Whelkies find the person who needs them. That one found you. It’s yours now.”

  “But I can’t take this. It’s ... it’s perfect.”

  “It’s also yours. Better you have it and love it than it sits in the drawer here,” Sarah said.

  “You don’t have to give me things,” Mary said, her lips pressed together. “I’m not some kind of charity case.”

  Sarah smiled at her. “I know. That’s not how I see you at all. That whelkie found you. It’s why I carved it. Hoping that someone might need it someday.” She shrugged. “Honestly, that’s the first one anybody’s ever got from me.”

  “You think I need it?” Mary asked, her eyes hard.

  “No.” Sarah shook her head. “Well, yes. But that’s not important. Whelkies are funny. You had the chance to look at two drawers full of them. A couple of dozen. You picked that one out of the bottom of my drawer. You went past a few that are probably better carvings to find that one. You haven’t put it down since. You had a chance to pick up one of my father’s. You found them astonishing, powerful, but you held on to the seal. Look at how you’re holding it.”

  Mary looked at her hand, wrapped in a fist around the body, just the seal’s nose peeking out.

  “You don’t want to put it down. You don’t even want to risk it getting away from you.” Sarah grinned. “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see.”

  Mary looked at Sarah and shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “I carved a whelkie, Mary. A whelkie that found the person who needs it. I carved that way last fall, long before I knew who would have it. I just carved it. Now it’s found you. Don’t you see?”

  Mary shook her head.

  “I’m a shaman.” Sarah felt filled to bursting.

  Mary laughed. “Did you have any doubt?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Well, yes. Actually. I mean, my father thinks I am. Odd enough things keep happening, but this?” She waved her fingers at the whelkie still clasped in Mary’s hand. “This makes it real.”

  Mary chuckled and opened her fist to display the whelkie in the light again. “Whatever you say. Are you sure I can have this?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure.”

  “Sure about what?” The voice came from the doorway.

  Sarah looked up. “Sure she can have that whelkie. Hi, Pops. Did you get what you needed at the chandlery?”

  He nodded and walked up to the bench. “Hello, I’m Otto Krugg.” He held a hand.

  She shook his hand. “I’m Mary Kraft. Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “And you have a whelkie,” he said, tilting his head to look at the seal in her hand.

  “Sarah said I could have it.” Mary’s voice sounded a little unsure.

  “Oh, indeed. No question.” Otto looked at Sarah with a raised eyebrow.

  “We were talking earlier. She showed me a path to the top of the bluff. I brought her here to show her the workshop.”

  “We don’t have anything like this in our house,” Mary said.

  Otto’s smile fell like a blessing on Sarah. “I dare say. And you found that whelkie?”

  “I showed her my drawer. It picked her,” Sarah said.

  Otto’s eyebrows shot up. “I see.” He looked at Mary, his smile still in place even as he seemed to peer deep into her eyes. “I see,” he said again. “Well, then that’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

  Mary blinked and nodded. “I should be going.”

  “Oh, don’t let an old man drive you off,” he said.

  She looked down for a moment before shaking her head. “I really should get some chores done before my parents get back.”

  “Come on. I’ll walk you out,” Sarah said and led her out of the shop, through the house and onto the stoop.

  “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble,” Mary said, casting a nervous glance back at the door.

  “Not at all. At least I don’t think so.” Sarah shrugged. “He didn’t seem angry to me.”

  “You bring people here a lot?”

  Sarah shook her head. “You’re the only one so far.”

  “Really? Why me?”

  “Why not you?” Sarah shrugged. “Pops and I don’t get out much. Off to the beach and back again. I don’t think I’ve been down to the village except to visit the chandlery in a stanyer.”

  “You should get out more,” Mary said.

  Sarah nodded. “I think so, too.”

  Mary looked at the whelkie still clutched in her hand. “Thank you for this.” She grabbed Sarah in a fast hug and stepped back almost as quickly. She looked as surprised as Sarah felt. “So, uh. See ya.” She turned and hurried off down the path toward the village.

  Sarah chuckled and glanced up at the sky before heading back inside.

  Her father stood at the stove, a tea kettle coming up to boil. “That was unexpected.”

  “In more ways than one,” Sarah said.

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what to say. I went to go for a walk on the beach but the tide was wrong. I smelled something bad and the next thing I knew I was ringing Mary’s bell.”

  Otto nodded. “You never cease to amaze me.”

  “She’s having trouble. She’s lonely and needed somebody to talk to,” Sarah said.

  Otto nodded again.

  “You think she’s in danger?” Sarah asked.

  Otto’s eyebrows rose just a fraction. “Do you?”

  She considered the idea carefully before speaking. “No,” she said. “Not at the moment.”

  “Was she in danger?” Otto asked.

  “I think so. Yes.”

  He smiled. “Then you’ve done well.”

  “Is it always like that, Pops?”

  He shrugged. “It’s always the same. You never know what is going to happen. Who will need help or how you’ll find them. That’s always the same.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  He laughed. “And carving whelkies does?” The kettle started shrieking so he turned to fixing tea.

  Sarah considered his words as that forlorn image of Lette came back to her mind.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Cape Grace: April 30, 2348

  OTTO WATCHED FROM THE headland as the Harbor Fairy worked the traps. The figures aboard were no more than shapes against the watery background but he smiled. They seemed to be working together well. Bobby’s hand on the helm got them on station and Sarah managed the traps fluidly as they made the rounds.

  He leaned on his staff and closed his eyes, listening to the world. The scent of spring blew on the offshore breeze. The hints of winter seemed fewer now. The water hadn’t warmed much yet, and still carried the salty winter tang in the air. He knew the summer would bring a greener scent and the tidal flats would contribute their iodine stink as the season rounded.

  He heard steps and turned to find Jack Flanagan striding along the beach toward him.

  “I love this time of year,” Flanagan said without preamble. “Air filled with promise and the ice and cold behind us.”

  “At least for a time,” Otto said.

  Flanagan grinned. “That your shaman out there pullin’ traps?” He nodded toward the boat.

  “Yep.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Welcome. Any news?”

  “They’re still going to try to pull the shaman language from the contract.”

  Otto frowned. “What’s their problem with it, anyway? Too many witnesses?”

  Flanagan squinted out to sea. “Just between you and me? I think it’s just cussedness. They only want company employees on the planet so they have some kinda leverage over them. The numbers don’t make that much sense in terms of percentage, but they’re sweating them anyway.”

  “That’s easily fixed.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Put the shamans under contract. Pa
y a stipend. Problem solved.”

  Flanagan stared at him. “What?”

  “Look at how many villages already offer a small stipend. Most places have a cottage like the one I’m living in set aside for the shaman’s use. I had to fish for my supper enough times at Maggie’s Landing. If it weren’t for Carla’s life insurance, Sarah and I would have had to do the same thing here. Only reason my father manages to keep clothes on his back is my mother’s job with the company. How many shamans are there that aren’t married to an employee?”

  Flanagan scratched his cheek. “Not many.”

  “So most would be here anyway as dependents. Even the men. They’re not gaining much by removing the language.”

  “That’s true.” Flanagan grimaced.

  “You live with an employee?”

  “Yeah. My partner’s the plant supervisor over in Langille’s Point. I’m too close to see it.”

  “I found out the hard way when I left Callum’s Cove and tried to make a go of it.”

  Flanagan nodded. “Been so long for me, I guess I’d lost sight.”

  “How much is it worth to the company to keep shamans on the South Coast?”

  “They say we’re not worth it, but I think we’ve got enough leverage to support the idea that we do the kinds of things that regular employees can’t or won’t.”

  “I think Ed Comstock would agree with you. I know my father works closely with the company even though he’s not on payroll.” Otto cocked an eyebrow at Flanagan. “You can’t tell me you’re not working for the glamour and honor of bein’ a shaman.”

  Flanagan snorted. “Hardly.”

  “None of us are. If the problem is that the company doesn’t want noncompany personnel on planet, hire us. Doesn’t have to be much. Then they can take the shaman rules out of the contracts and we’re all one big happy family.”

  “You think they won’t try to tell us how to do our jobs?”

  “No more than they do now.”

  “Once they’re payin’ the credits, they’re going to think they have some say.”

  Otto watched the traps splash off the stern of the small boat far out in the bay. “Maybe they will. Maybe they should.”

  “You want Comstock tellin’ you when to walk the beach?”