Operation Arcana - eARC

by John Joseph Adams

  He approached Glandore, and the directions he’d gotten from the man at the bar and the actual available roads he encountered didn’t quite match up. But he could see the ocean the whole way down.

  That gave him his compass.

  The town itself was ridiculously picturesque, a perfect sleepy fishing village. Sailboats dotted the harbor. Richard kept driving to the far side of the harbor. Anticipation welled up. He thought he was going to keep his eyes open for a B&B, one of the cute little houses-turned-inns that seemed to cover the island. But he kept going. He wanted to see if the roads ever stopped.

  He wanted to get away from people, away from buildings and boats and civilization. Go someplace where he could be sure to be the only person for miles around. Then maybe he’d be able to think clearly. But the farmland, cultivated squares of fields and pastures, went all the way to the coast. People had lived on this island for a very long time.

  Eventually, he parked the car on the verge and walked out to where the roads and farmland couldn’t get to—broken cliffs where the waves had eaten away at the rock. There wasn’t any room for him to move, between the water and the land. That was all right. He made his way over stone ridges and crevices where he could, letting the spray of breaking waves soak him. A big one would wipe him right off the cliff side. He wouldn’t even mind. He could get washed away here and no one would ever know what happened to him. No one knew where he was, no one would look for him—

  Instead of letting himself fall toward the comforting waves, he inched farther along the rocks until he found a spot where he could lean back, rest a moment, think.

  There were seals in the water. They were smaller, sleeker than the hulking sea lions living off the California coast. These creatures were elusive, blending into the color of the water. Domed heads would peek up from the surface, revealing liquid dark eyes and twitching, whiskered noses, then vanish. This—this was what the world might have looked like a million years ago, before people.

  A little farther on, the cliff curved sharply into an inlet. He’d continue on, explore what was there, then maybe climb up to the top to see where he’d ended up. Maybe find a village and start asking around to see if anyone knew of a guy who’d knocked up an American tourist some thirty-five years ago.

  A hopeless quest for the fortune-seeking soldier.

  In the inlet, cut not more than twenty feet back, he found a boat. It must have been set on a narrow ledge of rock during high tide and left dry when the tide went out. A standard aluminum rowboat, the kind you’d take fishing on a lake. A niggling in the back of his mind was sad that it wasn’t one of the hide-bound currachs Ireland was famous for. Just as well. That would have been too perfect.

  He looked around for the boat’s owner, thinking maybe someone had come out here to fish, had gotten in trouble and needed help. Nothing—just him, the waves, and a couple of seals glaring at him from afar. He got to the boat and looked it over—it had been here awhile. A pool of brownish water filled the bottom; a film of green scum clung to the sides. Algae, along with salt and water stains, discolored the outside of the hull.

  But a pair of oars still lay inside. The pool of water suggested the thing didn’t have leaks and was still seaworthy. However it had gotten here, the boat now looked to him like a challenge.

  With a lot of awkward bumping and banging, he managed to get the thing unwedged from the rocks and let it slide down to the water. He kept hold of the edge, scrambling over the crumbling outcrop to hang on to it while nearly falling over, and in, getting smashed up by the waves in the process. It was a fight, but a satisfying fight, and in the end the boat was in the water, drifting away from the cliff, and he was inside.

  No oarlocks for the oars, but that didn’t matter. First thing was to get away from the cliff. The waves helped. Once he was out and drifting, he made a perfunctory effort to bail out some of the water. He was already soaking wet; sitting in the stale pool didn’t seem to make much difference.

  Felt good to be out on the water, though. Out on the water with no job to do, just the sun and sky and the gentle rocking. He stretched out on what passed for a bench, lay back with his arms under his head. Maybe he’d take a little nap, see where the waves took him.

  That would be an adventure.

  The boat thudded, and he started awake. That was a collision, something hitting the hull from underneath. Doug or one of the other guys playing a prank during training, he thought. Except he wasn’t off Coronado; he was in the Celtic Sea off the coast of Ireland.

  It happened again, something slamming into the hull hard enough to make the boat jump. Dolphins playing? Maybe some of those seals. Some whale species lived in these waters as well. He leaned over the edge to look.

  Just gray water, chilled and opaque. He touched the surface, splashing his fingers in the sea.

  Hands reached up and grabbed hold of him.

  The hands came with powerful arms that pulled him over the side before he could take a breath. He splashed into the water.

  There were more of them, many hands grabbing his shirt, clamping around his arms and legs, and brushing fingers through his hair. He could just make them out underwater, like looking through a fogged window. Women, muscular and graceful, with flowing hair fanning around them in the water like seaweed. They surrounded him, curling their long, scaled tails around him in weird embraces.

  One of them, black hair rippling in streamers, wrapped her fists in the front of his T-shirt and pulled him close. He squinted to see her, but human eyes weren’t meant to see underwater. All he could see were their shapes, and feel them diving and circling, rubbing against him as they passed.

  He was dreaming. He’d fallen asleep and was dreaming. Or had fallen overboard and was drowning. That was okay, too.

  When she kissed him, he didn’t really care what happened next, but as his arms closed around her, the kiss turned into a bite, sharp pain on his lower lip that stopped being fun awfully quick. He made a noise; heard laughter, like the chittering of dolphins. When she pulled away, he tasted blood. Bubbles from his last breath streamed away from him.

  She shoved him away and dived straight down. Her sisters followed her, ivory and silver bodies falling into the depths, propelled by muscular tails, stray bubbles trailing behind them. Then they were gone. Loose, limp, his body drifted up of its own accord. He broke the surface and took a reflexive breath.

  He didn’t appear to be dreaming. His lungs burned, and his eyes stung with salt water.

  He had no clue how far out he was. Treading water at the surface, bobbing with the waves, he looked around to get his bearings. That far-off strip of land, dark cliff topped with an edge of green, was where he’d been climbing. The boat was gone. Like it had been set out as bait and he’d taken it.

  In the other direction lay the low, rocky profile of an island, a spit of rock so low he couldn’t see it from the mainland, of a slate gray that blended with the color of the ocean, the skin of seals. This was closer, so this was what he aimed for, just to get out of the water and catch his breath.

  The rock wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t even that dry—likely, high tide would submerge it. At least the sun felt warm. He peeled off his T-shirt and wrung it out. Pausing, he looked around.

  The rock inlet was covered with seals. Writhing bodies humped across the rocks, slipping into the water then lurching back out, grunting, squeaking, barking. Dozens of seals, all looking across the rocks at him, blinking with large wet eyes, studying him. Out across the water, heads bobbed among the rippling waves, eyes and nostrils just above the surface. The mermaids were there too, black and brown-haired, mischievous smiles flashing.

  He was sure if he tried to make a swim for it, the mermaids would force him back if the seals didn’t. He was trapped. Captured. He smiled a little because training never covered a situation quite like this. Maybe he could wait them out. If he could hunt for a weapon, maybe he could make them back off.

  Then the seals on the inlet parted
. With raucous barking, the crowd of them moved away, some of them sliding into the water, some of them waddling aside and looking back, as if staying to watch.

  Three men appeared, standing on the inlet’s highest point. There wasn’t a boat around. They might have been hiding behind the rock outcrops. They couldn’t have swum here; they were dry—and naked, unselfconscious about their lean, tanned bodies. They looked like California surfers without the swim trunks. Muscular, rough hair, pompous smirks. Young guys with something to prove. And they held weapons—spears of pale wood tipped with what might have been broken shells, the jagged edges threatening, and bound with green fibers of seaweed.

  Richard wondered exactly what he’d fallen into here.

  “Hi,” he said, making the word a challenge.

  Two of the guys dropped their spears and ran at him. So that probably meant they didn’t want to kill him, at least not right off. Small comfort.

  Richard was ready. They would go for his arms, hoping to restrain him, so at the last minute he swerved, shoved the first aside, twisted to get out of the reach of the other. Threw his shoulder into a punch at the closest, rushed to tackle the second. They were strong, and fast, dodging and countering all his moves. He’d underestimated them.

  But they’d underestimated him as well.

  One stuck out his leg to trip Richard, a move he should have seen coming. He fell on the rocks and felt a cut open on his cheek, blood running. From the ground, he grabbed a loose stone, big enough to fit in his hand, with sharp edges. He saw his target’s eyes widen as Richard swung up. The guy ducked, which meant Richard caught his chin instead of the forehead he’d been aiming for. The spatter of blood was still satisfying, and the target had to pause a moment to clear his head. This guy’s partner was smart enough to stay out of range, so Richard threw the rock at him instead. He didn’t think he could lay the guy out, but it might buy him time.

  He was reaching for another rock, his only available weapon, when the first guy grabbed his arm—his right arm; they’d paid attention to which arm was his strongest. Richard changed direction, tried to leverage himself free—didn’t work. The second guy grabbed his left arm and pulled the other direction. They stretched him out between them, forced him to his knees. He made a token struggle, but he had nothing to fight against from this position. When he tried to swing a kick at one of the guy’s naked, unprotected genitals, the man swerved out of the way. Their muscles were taut, straining—at least they had to work to keep hold of him.

  The third guy hadn’t joined in, not even when Richard did damage to his companions. He stood before them, leaning on his spear, regarding Richard with a clear sense of victory. He was the leader of the gang—and he had an agenda, a reason for all this. He was studying Richard. Sizing him up.

  “Think he’ll do, then?” one of the henchmen said in the thickest brogue Richard had heard since arriving in Ireland. The man might have grown up not speaking English at all. “He can surely fight.” He sounded impressed, but the compliment only annoyed Richard. If they’d wanted a fight they could have asked for one.

  The leader, Richard assumed—the one who’d kept his hands clean—said in an equally thick brogue, “What are you, then? Not so big as all that, not so tough. And I’d heard you were a big, bad man.” Richard grinned back in an attempt to piss the guy off, but the man ignored him. “There’s some that think we can use you—a strong man with the sea in his veins, even if it’s just a little of it. A warrior with skills that none of us have, that might be useful in our battles. There’s some that think that blood, calls to blood and if I called, you’d answer.”

  Richard’s mind raced to keep up with the words and the tangle of meanings. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Show me your hand,” the leader said. Richard didn’t move, because he couldn’t.

  Clamping his arm against his side to keep him still, the goon on the right forced Richard’s hand up, squeezing his palm to straighten and spread his fingers.

  “Webbed,” the leader observed. “You know the stories?”

  Richard struggled, mostly on principle, and the two guards gripped him even harder. His hands were growing numb. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me the story.”

  His mother met a handsome stranger under circumstances she never talked about. He’d always lived by the sea, and his mother would always look out at the waves as if she was searching for something. It was just the waves, he thought. How could anyone not look at the waves with a sense of longing? It was just the way things were.

  “Tell me the story,” the naked man repeated, stepping forward and lifting his spear to threaten.

  Richard was sure the guy wouldn’t actually hurt him. Pretty sure. “The story goes, the child of a selkie and a human will have webbed feet and hands.”

  “You believe that? You think it’s real, those stories you’ve heard?” the man asked.

  Just a mutation. Richard’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

  The man smiled like he’d won something. “Well then. Why are you here, selkie’s child?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard said, suddenly tired. “I don’t even know.” He’d wanted to find something, but he hadn’t known that he’d been looking. He’d wanted an answer, an origin—but this wasn’t quite it. “I think it’s fate.”

  The leader nodded, and his two guards let go. Richard’s arms dropped. He wiped blood from his cheek and stared up at this man with salt-crusted hair. “Do you know who you are, selkie’s child?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.” Richard chuckled, letting go of good judgment, of trying to make sense of this. He ought to be thinking of escape—he was sure he could swim to shore. But he couldn’t swim faster than seals or mermaids.

  “You’re the son of the seal king. And so am I.”

  The statement was no more outlandish than the fact of him sitting on these rocks, talking to these men in the first place, all of them slipped out of time and reality. He studied the man standing before him, trying to find any part of himself: eyes, nose, build, or manner. He couldn’t see it.

  “How do you know?”

  “The sea hears. The sea tells stories. You know it. You’ve listened.”

  He’d been watching the sea the whole drive down the coast. He parked because it seemed like a good spot. He’d been looking for something, or following something. He’d been trying to drown.

  He spread his hands, felt the membrane of the webbing stretch. A crowd of seals had gathered, staying a respectful distance off, but they watched, looking back and forth between them with an eerie awareness.

  The man—who somehow seemed at home on the rocky outcrops, even as he seemed terribly out of place, bare-skinned and primal in a modern world—moved to a spot and reached into a hidden depression. With his free hand he drew out an object, a folded weight of something, thick and wide, almost too large for him to lift. He held it up like a prize. It was gray, sunlight reflected off a rubbery sheen.

  Sealskin.

  Richard almost reached out to touch it, but stopped himself. His hand was shaking again.

  “My father—our father—sent me to find you,” the leader said. “I don’t like it at all—there should only be one Seal Prince. But I see why he did. I see the wisdom of it. We need warriors—”

  “Why?” Richard said, laughing outright. “What kind of wars can you possibly have to fight, when all you have are spears and seaweed—”

  The Seal Prince’s two guards tensed, and the damp seals around them grumbled and shifted.

  The Prince merely smiled. “There are other tribes of our kind. They raid our fishing grounds and we raid theirs. We defend our territory. But you—you don’t understand what it is to have a home, do you, selkie’s child? Would you like to learn? I can give you this.” The sealskin was a limp, still version of the creatures gathered around him.

  Richard had a flash of a vision, a lifetime encompassed in a beautiful moment, sunlight streaming through green-gra
y waters, nudged by a current as he dived along rocks, his body curving and twisting with the shape of the surf, clothed in the smoothness of the skin he’d been given, the second skin he’d longed for all his life without knowing—

  But it would be a borrowed skin, an act of charity. He wasn’t born to the water, not like these men were. He was born at the edges, in the surf, half of him in each world. He could swim like a fish and hold his breath for ten minutes. He could fight and kill—and was that all they needed him for? What then, when the war was over?

  “He left us. My mother and I—he left us. Why should I think that he, that any of you, care about me now?”

  “He’s been listening for you all this time, hasn’t he? We know about the boy you shot, the hostages you didn’t save. The feeling of fear and of failure, and how you haven’t had a good day since.”

  He didn’t need to be told. Being told made him angry, and it put him back there. That chaotic moment when your thinking brain didn’t know what the hell was going on but your training knew exactly what to do, and you already had the target in your sights. Enemy shots fired, and when your captain yelled, “Take it, take it!” you were already breathing out and squeezing the trigger. The Somali boy’s head whipped back. A crack shot on rough seas and a rush of triumph. This was the kind of shot they gave medals for. He didn’t really see the kid when he shot him. He saw the gun, he saw the enemy, he’d felt very rational about the whole thing. When it was all over, the water he’d swum in looked just like this. When they arrived at the skiff and examined the aftermath, the rush died. The pirates were dead. So were the three hostages. The pirates had been trapped, so they lashed out, took a stand the only way they could, and if Richard had made the shot two seconds earlier, the aid workers he’d been trying to save would have survived. Nobody’s fault, no reprimands needed. Just the bad odds of a bad situation. Two sides with guns face off, people get killed. But he should have taken that shot two seconds earlier. And this shouldn’t be a world where fifteen-year-old kids carried AK-47s and killed hostages for a living. That moment your training takes over becomes the moment you play in your memory over and over again, wondering what happened and if you could have done it differently.