Tempest (12 page)

“I suppose you should know,” Lew said at last, breaking his silence. “So that you don't head out there by accident and get your fool self killed. Even those as don't believe the tales still won't be caught in the waters close to Cairn Rock.”

“What tales?” Colm asked.

“Dark ones, boy. Cairn Rock's carried that name for centuries, and it's because the place means death. No one knows it better than I.” Lew stared down at his hands, rubbing them together compulsively. “I used to be in the coast guard. 'Twas smaller back then, under the old king. Not the fat, bloated thing it's become now.

“Our boat was sent up the coast,” he continued, managing not to get sidetracked as Colm had half suspected he would. “There were reports of fishermen vanishing, boats disappearing, that kind of thing. Our captain suspected pirates. Cairn Rock had a bad reputation back then, but it had been years since anything had happened round there. So we went to see what we could see. She was a fine boat, that one.
Mary's Mercy
, named for some admiral's wife. Two masts, her timbers strong and true. She could weather the worst squalls with hardly a rope out of place.

“The sea was churned up when we got there, debris scattered all over the water. I could see bodies floating on the surface, and we figured the good thing to do was to collect 'em so they could be burned properly. Three of my mates got down into the lifeboat and rowed out to fetch them. They'd barely touched the first one when we saw it.”

“Saw what?” Colm prompted when Lew seemed to freeze. “What did you see?”

“A great dark shape beneath the water,” Lew murmured, his eyes distant with the past. “It loomed up like a sudden wave, just a coil of it, with tremendous spines along the back. It looped right over the lifeboat and crushed it, and the lads as well. They were pulled under before they had a chance to get more than a single scream off. We had harpoons on the deck, but none of those newfangled cannons that make war so miserable now.

“We fired on the creature, and the lines stuck, but then it must have dove down, for it pulled us so hard that the
Mercy
tipped over and spilled us all into the sea. Those of us who were uninjured and could swim made it to the surface, but many of the men were lost then. And it still wasn't done with us. The serpent, for beneath the water I could see now that it was a serpent, stretching down into the depths past my ken, lifted its tail from the water and smashed it down onto the boat, turning 'er into naught but kindling. One of her spars floated my way, and I grabbed on to it and held on for my life. The water was so unsettled that I couldn't tell which way was up and which was down. I heard the few men who were left screaming, and I knew that this was the end for me.” Lew's voice drifted off, and he sat in silence, staring down at his knotted hands.

“What happened next?” Colm asked. He couldn't let Lew
leave
it like that. “How did you survive?”

“By havin' the best bad bloody luck in the world,” Lew said darkly. “All of us had drifted in close to Cairn Rock by then. Too close, though I didn't know it. One moment I was waiting to be pulled down into the depths by the serpent, and the next I was surrounded by mer, streaming by me as they swam out to do battle with the rival for their territory. Didn't give me a second glance, but if they had, I'd have been gone for sure.”

“What is a mer?”

“A creature made by the Two to plague us. They've the tail of a fish instead of legs, but the arms and chest of a man. The heads, though, the heads are all wrong.” Lew held up a hand and gesticulated around his face. “No hair, just a fin from nose to nape, and their jaws are too wide and full of teeth that could tear your arm right off your body. Got gills along their neck, like a fish. Terrible, terrible beasts. A group of 'em is termed a
rending
by those who know, but even just one is more trouble than a man can take.

“They're the worst creatures in the sea, and even worse than you'd imagine, because the females are beautiful in a way. Look much more like us, and they use themselves as lures, they do, to get men to abandon their reason, and then the males set on them and tear them to bits.”

“Why didn't they kill you?” Colm asked.

Lew snorted. “Disappointed, are ye? They just didn't have time to bother with me, boy. Serpents and mer, they both feed along this coast, or they did for many a year. They compete for food and a safe haven, and the serpent had come too close. The water, it turned purple with blood. I kept my wits about me long enough to paddle my broken spar down the coast until I found a beach to land meself at. Fifty-two men, and I was the only survivor.”

He reached out and patted the single slender mast. “I kept the spar, turned it into the spine of this boat. It helps to remind me that every day I'm here, that's one more day than I ever thought I'd have. I reckon the Four have forgotten about me, let me slip through the cracks, and I can live with that. I'd rather not be seen,” he muttered, then shut his eyes resolutely and turned onto his side. “Enough, now. Let me know when the nets are full, boy.”

The nets took a while to fill, but not so with Colm's imagination. Mer? Sea serpents? It made a certain amount of sense, Colm reasoned. If there were people who could turn from seals into women and back again, then the idea of half-fish, half-human beings was at least plausible. It was the first he'd heard of them, though, and Colm had spent a fair few evenings listening to drunken stories from behind the bar at this point. Sea serpents, those he'd heard mentioned. He could even picture them, much larger versions of the eels that fishmongers sold at market. Kraken, those were just the larger cousins of octopi, even Nichol had seen one of those. But fish people?

It reminded Colm of what Farrel the farm boy had called him on the road. It seemed too ridiculous to be true. According to the priests, humanity had been formed by the Four, a concentrated effort toward perfection, and they were meant to be unique among all the creatures of the world. Selkies were technically an abomination, Colm had learned, a fusion of humanity and magic that harkened back to the bad days, although not one that many people made a fuss about anymore. Mer, if they existed, were probably classified the same way. How could anything else look so like them that it lured men to their deaths?

Colm knew his own ignorance was deep. He'd lived a sheltered life in Anneslea, and his education had been tightly contained by the village priest, limited to essentials of reading and writing, history and religion. The few tales his father had told were misty things, dimmed by time and grief. But Fergus had spoken of manticores and curses, and he had the ears to prove at least half of it. Ignorance didn't sit well with Colm, and he decided he would ask Megg, and perhaps Nichol, if they knew anything about mer or sea serpents as well.

They had a good catch of lionsmane perch by midmorning, about as big as a dancer but without their vibrant colors. Lionsmane perch were a good fish for soups and stews, though, and their elaborate fins were used by the fancier establishments in the city as a special garnish for some dishes. Colm hauled in the nets and set about freeing the fish while Lew sailed them back to the harbor, the silence between them deep and seemingly untouchable. Lew wasn't going to say any more, and Colm wasn't going to press.

They sold most of their catch to Carroll, who was happy to receive it, and split ways right after. Colm headed back to the Cove and gave Megg the dozen fish he'd held back for her, accepted her kiss of thanks and set to work cleaning them for her. His sharp little knife cut smoothly through firm bellies, and it didn't take him long to turn the fish into fillets that Megg chopped up and put in her nightly chowder.

“Those'll be a right treat for our guests tonight,” she told him, taking the delicate fins Colm had carefully cut away and examining them in the light. “And these are so lovely and thin! I think I'll pickle them. They'll be a nice little indulgence in the winter.” They worked together to clean them and get them packed in brine, and finally Megg sent the last of the jars down to the cellar and wiped her brow.

“You're quiet today,” she commented after a moment. “Did you have a bad time with Lew?”

“No, not really. He told me some things, though, that I…I don't know. I can hardly find it in my mind to believe him.”

“What tall tales has that man been spinning?” Megg asked.

“He told me that long ago, he served in the coast guard, and that his boat was destroyed by a sea serpent.”

“Ah, that.” Megg nodded after a moment. “I remember when that happened. Word of it came down to the city not long after the boat was destroyed. Some people claimed it must have been a waterspout, that our water was too shallow to support a serpent of that size, but enough people have seen them over the years that Lew likely remembers it right.”

Colm felt inexplicably relieved. “Then there really are sea serpents?”

“Oh yes, love. But most of them stick to open water, far out into the sea, and they don't surface very often. They eat whales, I'm told, and fight with kraken in the deeps. Bad-tempered beasts, it seems.”

“And mer? Do they exist as well?”

Megg pursed her lips. “That's a more difficult thing to know. Everyone has a tale about serpents, but Lew is the only man I've ever met to speak of mer, and he's also a drunk and a liar. But I seem to recall something, some story… Oh goodness, I'm losing my mind and my memory, love! Nichol would know.”

“I'll ask him later,” Colm told her.

Colm didn't get the chance to do the asking, though. Otherwise, he certainly wouldn't have asked Nichol when he was accompanied by the rest of the Sea Guard. He only even figured out they were there at all by the sudden burst of laughter that reached back into the kitchen. “What, really? Send him out, Mistress, we'll set him straight.”

Megg came back looking a bit annoyed. “Do keep in mind that they're all well into their cups, love,” she advised him as she bent over the cauldron to stir the chowder. “Anything they attempt to say with authority is suspect.”

Colm went out into the taproom, where he was immediately waved over by Nichol. “It's a good job you're so tall, otherwise I'd never pick you out in a crowd,” Jaime said jovially, then winced when Nichol punched his shoulder.

“Don't be an ass,” Nichol chided him. “Colm, sit. Ollie, get your dirty feet off the extra chair, you savage.” Ollie scowled but took his boots down from the seat, and Colm sat gingerly at the edge of it. “So Gullfoot finally told you about his epic battle with a sea serpent, did he?” Nichol asked.

“It seemed less like a battle and more like a massacre,” Colm said, and the four men laughed, even though there was nothing funny about it. “Was his recollection mistaken, then?”

“Not in that,” Jaime said. “Enough folk saw evidence of the serpent that we're pretty sure it was there, and the ruin of the boat was certainly no illusion. If it wasn't a serpent, it would have had to have been a waterspout out of a clear blue sky, but there've been no accounts of a creature that large along the coast since then. But the mermaids? He really got you convinced about mermaids?” Jaime scoffed, then took a long drink. “Half-fishy women pretty enough to tempt a man to drown himself? It's ridiculous. Nothing but a fairy tale.”

“No it's not,” Blake spoke up suddenly, to everyone's surprise. “The Roving Spectacular's got part of one in a jar. I saw it last year when they came through. A whole head. It looked pretty close to human, I'd say.”

“That spectacular is nothing but a traveling tramp show that preys on the gullible and spendthrift,” Jaime said firmly. “It's probably nothing but a human head that's been doctored to look like a fabled mermaid.”

“If they were gonna doctor it, wouldn't they have tried to make it look better?” Blake argued. “Because this is a manky head, mate. The face is regular enough, but the teeth are like little knives, and there's no hair on it, just a fin-thing.”

“If they made it look too nice, people wouldn't believe it,” Jaime told him. “People like to be scared by such things.”

“There is a story about one, though,” Nichol said, obviously trying to ease the growing tension between his friends. “It's an old story, but I remember my grandad telling it to me a few times. It was about a mermaid who fell in love with a man, and she prayed to the gods to let her join him on land. They said they would grant her prayer, only on the condition that if she ever changed her mind, she would have to cut out his heart and bathe in his blood in order to return to the sea. She agreed to the terms, became human and they married, but as much as she loved him, her heart still longed for the sea.”

“This is selkies, Nicky—” Jaime began, but Nichol stopped him.

“Look, I know stories about selkies, and this wasn't one of them,” he snapped. “There's no lore about selkies and blood, only pelts. At the end of the story the woman had to choose between her love for her husband and her yearning for home.”

“What did she choose?” Ollie asked, looking vaguely interested for once.

“According to the tale, she chose to return to the sea.” Nichol's demeanor was grave and unsmiling, as if such an ending was a personal affront to him. “She lay with her husband until he fell asleep, and then she took a knife and plunged it through his chest. She carved out his heart, carried it to the shore and emptied its contents over her legs, and she became a mermaid again.”

“As I said, a fairy tale,” Jaime said firmly. “Or at best an act of black magic, which is nothing that any of us should be discussing. Lew Gullfoot is just another washed-up old fisherman trying to relive his glory days by playing on a wide-eyed foreigner. No offense meant,” he added in passing to Colm.