“I thought you weren’t going to build another one of those,” Echo said.
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” Barnabas said, looking up from his table, revealing a comical monocle over one eye acting as a magnifying glass, creating the look of one enormous eyeball staring at her. He noticed that she was about to laugh and removed it. “I really didn’t intend to build another one, but it’s just so effective, y’know? And if we’re going to go into dangerous situations, I’d rather have a magical focus I know how to use rather than trying to learn something new.”
“You could pick up an actual magic wand,” Echo said. “I know I’ve seen them in this room before.”
Barnabas pointed at a shelf. Echo walked over and picked up a smooth wooden case, cracking it open. Inside was, in fact, a wand, made of some sort of gleaming bone.
“That’s one of them,” Barnabas said. “I think I have three or four. I forget. I sort of… acquired them before we left the island.”
“So why not use them?”
“Magic’s a funny thing, Echo,” Barnabas said, putting aside his work and standing up, stretching. When they’d first met, he seemed older, but she’d come to realize much of it was hard living. He was still young enough that she learned he had looked up to her mother in an almost parental way as well. Barnabas Coy had been hired by an Atlantean spy to watch over the family, and Echo’s mother Meredith had been very kind to the struggling young magician and smuggler. He’d had a harder life than he let on, though, and carried those rough years in his eyes, hiding behind enchanted tattoos and a wild beard.
“Funny how?” Echo said.
“It’s very personal. I’ve met wizards who only use a magic staff. Others who use wands. Others can’t use a focus at all. I met one magician whose focus was a cat. A cat! She cast spells through her cat because she herself could not see, but she could share her cat’s vision and use that bond to see the world.”
“I think you should trade in your pistol for a cat,” Echo said.
“I wish I could do that,” he said. “But look, you know I hate actual firearms. It’s just…”
“Why don’t you put a trigger on a wand if that’s what you need?”
“How did you know I need a trigger for my focus?” Barnabas said, honest surprise in his voice.
“It’s a crutch,” Echo said. “We all have crutches. I have crutches. You think I can’t pick up on yours?”
Barnabas scratched his head.
“Remind me to never play cards with you,” he said. “Anyway. You come down here to tell me I’m doing magic wrong, or is something on your mind?”
Echo inhaled deeply.
“I think we should go find Yuri,” she blurted out.
“Absolutely,” Barnabas said.
“What?” Echo said.
They’d left Yuri Rodriguez, her best friend before all of this happened, alone since the battle. He had fled the fight, either in fear or shame, Echo couldn’t tell, after learning he’d contracted shark lycanthropy, transforming into a man/shark hybrid. That transformation had turned the tide of the battle not once but twice, and Echo would be forever grateful for that, but Yuri hadn’t stayed around for her to tell him that, darting off into the sea without saying goodbye. The group together agreed to let Yuri have his privacy. Barnabas gave Yuri a magical artifact to help him find his way home, a compass that pointed to Echo. The magician suggested Yuri could decide for himself when he was ready to return. Echo had avoided pushing to search for Yuri as long as she could, and anticipated Barnabas refusing to violate Yuri’s privacy.
“I really thought you’d say no,” Echo said.
“Nope, absolutely not, I am not going to argue against this,” Barnabas said. “I was wrong. Yuri may be a were-shark and therefore very powerful, but he’s also an extremely naïve young man out there alone and I’m a terrible person for suggesting we don’t go find him.”
“Why didn’t you say this earlier?” Echo said.
“Because I thought you agreed that he deserved his privacy and I didn’t want to contradict you. Or myself. But I’m wrong. Let’s go find Yuri. He’s probably in the fetal position somewhere waiting for you to find him.”
“You are a horrible man, Barnabas Coy.”
“Who gave him the compass to find you?” Barnabas said.
“You did.”
“And who may have maybe cast a spell on said compass so that I know if Yuri’s injured?”
“You what?” Echo said.
“I am totally low-key spying on your friend,” Barnabas said. “Sorry.”
“You really are a terrible person,” Echo said.
“I know,” Barnabas said. “I…”
Before he could finish, Echo grabbed him in a rib-cracking hug. Barnabas exhaled with a high-pitched, pained squeak.
“So, he’s okay?” Echo said.
“I mean, he’s Yuri,” Barnabas said. “Okay is a relative term. He’s unharmed, I know that.”
“And do you know where he is?” Echo said.
“Right now? No,” Barnabas said. “But I am your favorite sea wizard, Echo. Your favorite sea wizard can cast divining spells to do things like locate enchanted objects.”
“Like his compass,” Echo said.
“Like his compass,” Barnabas repeated.
“I almost don’t hate you right now,” Echo said. “When can we leave?”
Barnabas gestured upstairs.
“Go talk to the ghosts,” he said, referencing the spirits who crewed the Endless. We can leave whenever they say we’re ready.”
Echo darted for the stairs. Before leaving, she turned back to Barnabas.
“You’re not really as awful as you pretend to be, are you?” Echo said.
“Oh, I’m awful,” Barnabas said. “Just not all the time.”
Chapter 2: Something to make me feel human
Yuri Rodriguez no longer needed glasses.
Of all the physiological changes he’d experienced since contracting shark lycanthropy, his improved vision was, perhaps, the one he found most off-putting. Sure, the other changes were scarier, transforming into a massive were-shark, breathing underwater, the fact that he was constantly hungry. But having perfect vision for the first time in his life made him uncomfortable.
He rose out of the water, transforming from shark man to human more easily than he did even just a few weeks ago. He still felt a strange dragging on his body when he moved from the ocean to the surface, as if his entire frame felt more at home beneath the waves.
Pulling an enormous tuna behind him with one hand, he reached into a protective pouch he kept at his side in both human and were-shark form and withdrew his glasses, placing them gently on his face. It was a useless act. He’d carefully removed the lenses a while back, wrapping them in soft cloth and storing them safely in case he ever needed them again. But the frames he kept, devoid of glass, an affectation rather than vision correction.
“I’ve seen a lot of strange habits among the changed ones, Yuri, but your need to keep those glasses is one of the funnier ones,” the brute waiting for him on the shore said. The other man, wide-jawed, thick-necked, with a shock of white hair slicked back atop his head, was also a were-shark. Whitetip, as he called himself, was brother of Maw, the huge shark-man whose pack had infected Yuri during a frenzy, and he’d spent all this time helping Yuri acclimate to his life among the were-sharks. Whitetip, despite looking like a sea-faring gladiator, had maintained his sense of humanity better than most of his fellow lycanthropic sharks, and saw an opportunity in Yuri to help the younger man to not lose himself to this new, more bestial nature.
“They’re something to make me feel human,” Yuri said, hauling the tuna onto the shore and immediately beginning to prep it for dinner. He’d learned to cook from Whitetip, who, unlike many of his fellows, did not let his baser instincts dictate his diet. They cooked together, and talked about life as were-sharks, about the vastness of the ocean, about what Yuri could do to control the dark
er parts of his newfound nature.
“They do make you look smarter than the average were-shark,” Whitetip said, running a scarred hand through his swath of bleached hair and drawing a knife to help Yuri clean the fish.
It was strange, Yuri thought, this whole relationship. Yuri lost his dad at sea when he young enough that his memory his father was more myth than a man. Some idealized hero he barely knew. His mother passed away early, too, but at least, afterward, Yuri had found family with Echo and her mother. Meredith had been very much a second mother to him in the end, and his grief for losing her was nearly as powerful as Echo’s own. But this time with Whitetip—a gruff man, and hard, but also surprisingly understanding, and a teacher of understated ability—had been the first time in a very long time he felt a sense of fatherly affection from anyone. He hadn’t needed it, but he had certainly appreciated it.
They prepared the tuna and ate it alongside a strange salad Whitetip made from seaweed and scavenged materials. Yuri hadn’t had much inclination towards eating vegetables before becoming a were-shark, and even less so since, but Whitetip insisted—he said that doing things that went against their were-shark nature helped encourage the human side to stay in control.
Eat plants. Breathe air. Read poetry. Talk to people, Yuri, whatever you do, talk to people, Whitetip had told him during those first few days together. There was a temptation as a were-shark to give in to a baser nature, to be the silent, relentless predator their animal side was famous for being. A perfect hunter, silently stalking the depths… that was what they could be, what some were-sharks argued they should be. But they were also human. The shark within them would always remember what they were, Whitetip explained. The human side needed reminders. It needed anchors, else the hunter would swallow them whole.
“I suppose at some point I need to leave this island,” Yuri said.
“That’s up to you,” Whitetip said, eating his seaweed salad with a ridiculously elegant pair of chopsticks he had salvaged from a sunken yacht, which were among the older were-shark’s most prized possessions. “You don’t have to leave here. But it’s a big ocean, Yuri. And there is little out there you need to fear. You could go anywhere.”
“You know the funny thing? Before all this, I was a homebody,” Yuri said. “I never figured I’d leave my hometown. Work at the icehouse, marry a nice girl, have some kids who would go to the same school I went to…”
“Fate hates when you make plans,” Whitetip said.
“I’m picking up on that,” Yuri said. “I suppose at some point you’ll get sick of me.”
“I’ll get tired of this spot,” Whitetip said. “I’ll be honest, kid. You’re better conversation than most of our brethren. I wouldn’t refuse the company if you wanted to travel together a while. It’s my brother’s fault you’re out here anyway. We’re practically family.”
“Yeah,” Yuri said. He looked out across the waves, the sky above turning a lavender-pink as the sun neared setting.
“You have family, though,” Whitetip said.
“I shouldn’t go to them until I know I’m not a threat,” Yuri said. Whitetip had been teaching him ways to control his transformations, to keep the ferocious anger of the were-shark form under control, but he still felt as though he were at its mercy, that at the slightest provocation he could lose control and become a killing machine.
“Everything out here’s a threat,” Whitetip said. “If you wait until you think you’re perfectly safe, you’ll be alone a long, long time.”
Yuri shrugged. The two men sat in silence for a while, eating as their nature demanded they do all the time.
A smell tickled the inside of Yuri’s nose. An uncomfortably familiar scent. He turned to Whitetip, whose face had become a mask of concern. Brushing sand from his legs and butt, Yuri stood up to scan the horizon.
Something was in the water. Dark, shapeless. The waves pushed them closer to the beach. Whitetip stood up as well and together they walked to the edge of the shore, waves lapping over their ankles.
“What the hell is that?” Yuri said.
He moved to wade out into the water, but Whitetip put a hand on Yuri’s shoulder.
“Patience,” he said. “Let the tide bring it to us.”
Minutes rolled by. It felt like hours. But as the sun began to touch the horizon in the west, the first of the objects washed up on shore.
It was a body.
Whitetip stomped out toward it until he was knee deep. Yuri joined him. As Yuri reached down to grab the body, another bumped his leg. Whitetip grabbed the first corpse by the collar and Yuri did the same with the second. They dragged the bodies to shore, but it was a pointless endeavor, the tide depositing a third on the sand without any help from either man.
Yuri rolled his corpse over, involuntarily sucking in a breath between his teeth.
“This is an Atlantean,” Yuri said.
The body itself had been ravaged, pierced by sharp points and torn elsewhere to the point that it might be unrecognizable if Yuri didn’t remember the stylistic appearance of Atlantean armor. This was a soldier, he knew. Glancing over at the body Whitetip had dragged ashore, he confirmed both corpses were dressed the same. The body Whitetip dredged up was legless below the knee.
“What did this?” Yuri asked.
“These wounds are from bites,” Whitetip said. “Mostly. Look at the circular patterns.”
Yuri could see it now. Among the injuries were crescent shapes where rows and rows of teeth had sunk into and rent the flesh.
“Do you know what could’ve done this?” Yuri asked.
“There’s a lot of things in the sea,” Whitetip said. “I can’t say for sure I know what did it, but I could imagine a few dozen creatures that could have.”
“To a squad of Atlantean warriors?” Yuri said.
Whitetip shrugged.
“There’s a lot of teeth out there, kid,” he said.
And then the third body moaned.
The two were-sharks looked at each other and, abandoning the corpses they’d dragged ashore, ran to the one that had washed up on its own.
Yuri turned the living Atlantean over onto his back. He didn’t look any healthier than his peers. Covered in wounds, one eye completely gone, he seemed to drift back into consciousness as the two men tended to him.
“The scar,” the warrior said, his voice raspy and weak.
“Oh man, sorry, buddy, you are definitely going to have some scars,” Yuri said.
The Atlantean barely registered Yuri’s words.
“They came… from the Scar,” he continued. “So many… eyes… teeth… legion…”
Whitetip checked the Atlantean’s armor, trying to find a way to get the dying man loose and assess the damage. His hands came away covered in blood. Yuri noticed an alarmingly heavy trail of blood running from the Atlantean’s body into the ocean, the familiar metallic tang sticking with him.
“What did this to you?” Yuri said. He held the warrior’s head to maintain eye contact. “What was it?”
“From below…” the Atlantean said, and Yuri watched the life go out of the man’s eyes. Gone, like his companions. Yuri set him down gently on the sand and looked back out over the water. Other bodies floated there as well, unmoving, face down.
“I hate to say it, but someone should, like, warn Atlantis or something,” Yuri said.
“I don’t disagree,” Whitetip said. “But the likes of you and I won’t be welcome there. Can’t exactly mail them a letter. Or ship a dead Atlantean soldier to their gates with a warning note.”
Yuri grimaced, his heart simultaneously filling with anxiety and elation.
“I know who they’ll listen to,” he said. “I guess it’s time to go home after all.”
Chapter 3: Muireann
Muireann watched the sea unfold behind her, cold and merciless as the one who pursued her.
The ship she rode upon was destined for faraway shores, warmer than her homelands, more welcoming than thos
e she was born upon. Gone, she knew would be the black waters of home. The thought of clear seas, welcoming as a bathwater, did not bring her comfort. Home was harsh, but it gave her strength, and she would miss the music of waves crashing upon rock, the dark stone rising along the coastline, the green of so much life everywhere she looked.
She placed her hand in her pocket and clutched her stolen cargo, smooth as a pearl and not much larger than a golf ball, warm to the touch, radiating life.
She stole it from a man who did not deserve it, and would never use it, but men like that did not take well to thieves, especially thieves who put them off their guard with a smile and a song.
I need it more than he does, Muireann thought to herself as she pulled a knit hat down tighter over her dark hair. It would have gone to waste with him.
Still, she thought, she might have felt a little guilty about stealing it if he hadn’t decided to kill her for the affront to his pride.
The crew did not know exactly what to make of her, or why the captain allowed her onboard. If asked directly, the captain himself might have trouble explaining. Part of Muireann’s magic was the ability to pass where she needed to be unchallenged, and to mystify those who needed mystifying. Hers was a subtle magic, the sort fairy tales were made of, not adventure stories.
She sang, and the wind was at their back. She sang and their fishing nets were full. She sang and sailors slept without nightmares, thinking of home, and those they left behind.
Who ever said it was bad luck to have one of my kind on their ship? Muireann thought. I’m a good luck charm is what I am.
But then the storm hit, something ferocious and malevolent, as if it had a sentience of its own. They drifted over waves the size of skyscrapers, great colossi devouring the horizon. They took on water. They nearly lost men to the sea, saved only because they were lashed to the ship. One man lost a finger. Another nearly lost an eye.
And they began to look at Muireann as if perhaps she was the cause of their misfortune.
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