“Who is he?” she whispered.
“Whoever they sent this time. When there’s an emergency, you don’t have time to ask.”
Cassie stepped into the darkness, wishing she had a flashlight. She could hear the selkie in front of her, his bare feet slapping against the stone steps.
A beam of light came on behind her. Athena had a flashlight. Her mother thought of everything.
“Hurry, Cassandra.”
Cassie ran down the stairs, unable to see most of the way. These stairs were different from all the others in the house. They were shallower, sharper. She got the sense that if she fell, she would cut herself as she slipped down them.
“What are we doing?” she asked as she ran.
She could sense her mother behind her, pushing her forward, making her go faster than she would normally have.
“I have no idea,” her mother said. “He said something about a barrier.”
“What?”
“We’ll know when we get there.”
Athena seemed so accepting, as if nothing had changed at all, as if she did this every night.
Maybe she did. Cassie had no idea, and she wasn’t about to ask. She was worried about the staircase. The walls had grown narrower, and they were covered with water.
She had never been in this part of the house before. It had the damp chill of the sea. She wished she could smell something besides the rotten eggs, so that she would know how close to the water she really was.
Then another scent enveloped her: smoke. Her eyes burned, and she gagged again, stopping, and clinging to the wall.
“Cassie?” Athena asked.
“Fire,” Cassie gasped. She clutched the wall, unable to move. She couldn’t see at all. Smoke surrounded her, and she couldn’t tell if it was real or a vision.
“Here?”
That answered her. The smoke was part of a vision. But of when? Of now? And where?
“I don’t know,” Cassie said.
“Athena.” The selkie’s voice echoed from below.
“Go,” Cassie said, moving her hand in the direction of the voice.
“But this might be important—”
“Go,” Cassie said again. “I’ll catch you if I can.”
Even though she knew she wouldn’t. Her eyes were tearing, and her lungs were filled with smoke. Something was wrong. Somewhere. Something awful.
“Child, what can I do for you?”
“Go!” How many times did she have to say it? Athena had been right. Cassie didn’t have the same powers. Athena and the selkie would do fine on their own.
Even though Cassie was guessing. Her mind was working as sluggishly as her lungs.
She leaned her cheek on the wet stone and listened to her mother’s slippers click their way down the steps. Athena’s voice called out to the selkie, and he answered, his voice coming from far away.
Cassie closed her eyes, and gradually the vision faded. The smoke disappeared and the thick feeling in her throat was gone. Her eyes still burned, and her face was streaked with tears.
She wouldn’t be surprised if her skin were covered in soot. But she still didn’t know what had happened.
Or what had caused the vision to fade.
She sank onto the steps. She would need a moment before she could go farther, to join her mother and the selkie on the rocks below.
She brought her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and rocked, trying to find some comfort.
Only she had a feeling she’d never feel real comfort again.
Anchor Harbor
The wind had come up. Rather than gusting at forty knots, it was sustaining at forty-five. John Aluke had to fight to get the Anchor One close to port. Even then, he knew it would take all of his skills to bring the tugboat in safely.
His radio crackled and hissed. It had been doing that ever since he’d radioed the Walter Aggie. He had been contacting them repeatedly, trying to tell them to anchor as far out as they could. The storm was serious, and this part of the Oregon Coast had the worst shoreline for a vessel in a storm. There was no working lighthouse, and the rocks were treacherous, especially near the twin pillars of the bay.
Aluke had seen too many pleasure boats hit the Goblet or the Candlestick and sink before anyone could get to them. Even though the Walter Aggie was not a pleasure boat—it was a tank vessel that wouldn’t fare well in these choppy waters.
The waves revealed the pointed rocks below the surface. The volcanic uprising that had created the Candlestick and the Goblet had littered the entire area with jagged rocks and a basalt shelf that had ground up more than one boat.
It took special skills to be a tugboat pilot, but to be a tugboat pilot near Anchor Bay took the best of the best.
And even Aluke was calling it a night.
The radio spit once more, then a voice said, “Anchor One, this is the Walter Aggie. We are at the rendezvous point, but we can’t see you. Over.”
Aluke cursed. They hadn’t gotten any of his messages. His hand kept one hand on the wheel as he lifted the microphone.
“Walter Aggie, this is Anchor One. Do not go to the rendezvous point. Return to deeper water. We cannot tow you into the harbor in these conditions. We will come to you when the storm abates. Over.”
They didn’t respond. Aluke continued guiding his tug toward port, wondering what it was that made his messages impossible for them to receive. The captain of the Walter Aggie should have been smart enough to know they couldn’t dock in this kind of weather. He had the charts; he had to know how treacherous this area was.
Aluke tried again. “Walter Aggie, this is Anchor One. Do not go to the rendezvous point. Return—”
“Anchor One! Anchor One! We need assistance.” This was a different voice, and it was panicked. “Help us please! Help us!”
The hair rose on the back of Aluke’s neck. He’d never heard anything like this. Even in the most dire emergency, radio operators remained calm.
But this clearly wasn’t their radio operator.
“What’s the trouble, Walter Aggie?”
The voice had disappeared. Aluke got nothing in return. He tried again, then again, the silence filling him with a panic he’d never felt before.
He’d never lost a ship. Were they in trouble because they had expected him? Or had they done something else?
There was no way he could help them. His tugboat was no match for this kind of sea. He kept steering inward, as he thumbed the microphone on and contacted the Coast Guard, feeling handicapped.
He didn’t know where the Walter Aggie was. He didn’t know what had gone wrong.
All he knew was that whatever it was, it was very, very bad.
The Base of the Devil’s Goblet
Athena stepped out of one of Cliffside House’s many exits, finding herself on what the locals called the Base of the Devil’s Goblet. Sea and time had worn the sharpness of the cliff way, bending it into a goblet shape, complete with stem.
Cliffside House grew out of the top of the Goblet, but stairways and secret passages all through the house provided exits at various points on the cliff. This one brought her to the top of the base, an unprotected area at the best of times.
On this night, it was damn dangerous. The wind was so strong that she could lean into it without falling, and it seemed constant, which was unusual for the Oregon Coast. The rain was so much a part of the wind that it seemed like someone had turned on a cold shower and leveled the showerhead sideways at her. She was drenched in an instant, and colder than she remembered being in her life.
The rock was flat here, and slippery. Her slippers gave her no traction at all, and she kicked them off. As she did, a wave slammed into the cliffside, the water frothing toward her. It stole the slippers as if they were its heart’s desire.
She wouldn’t be able to stay up here very long. She had no idea whether the tide was coming in or going out—she had stopped paying attention to tide tables long ago—but her time on the ba
se was limited.
Either a wave would drag her to sea or a gust—anything stronger than this current wind—would fling her over the side.
And then, no amount of power would save her.
She glanced once at the door behind her. It had vanished into the cliffside, just like it had been designed to do, even though she didn’t remember closing it. She hoped Cassie would know that this was the place to come, this was the door she needed.
Maybe Athena shouldn’t have left Cassie on the stairs. She had never seen her daughter like that, frightened, and in the throes of something more than she was.
Athena did not like how this night was shaping up.
The rain grew thicker, harder, and seemed to have chunks of ice in it. The temperature had fallen just in the time she had stood out here.
Her nightgown and robe were plastered against her, her long hair glued to her face. Up ahead, the selkie stood, hands on his hips, waiting for her as if they were about to go on a picnic.
Behind him, she saw other figures. Men, women, she couldn’t tell. Not all of them appeared to be human.
She clambered across the rocks, suddenly missing the chivalry of her own kind. All she needed was a hand extended, guiding, helping. But she had to make it on her own, the wind pushing her toward the restless sea.
A wave crested, sending spray across her face, mixing with the icy rain. She couldn’t see what the problem was out there in that ocean, how she was needed, but she knew she was.
She was the lightning rod, the connection, the power source. The waiting group probably weren’t strong enough to prevent the problem on their own.
She climbed the last of the rocks, and suddenly hands were helping her, grasping her upper arms, supporting her back. But instead of fingers, some of the hands had talons and others had scales instead of skin.
As she reached the very edge of the base, she saw some of the creatures. It seemed like the entire population of the refuge had gathered: fish women standing on the edge of the rocks, their faces turned toward the rain; real mer-creatures clutching the side of the cliff, hanging on despite the treacherous seas; selkies, some with their pelts and some without, but all in their human form; and more—creatures she had no name for, some so small she was afraid she would crush them with her bare feet.
The languages swirled around her like the wind, and the magic sent sparks into the air that felt like electricity, making her wonder about the danger of being electrocuted, here on the lonely lava rock, in the middle of a terrible storm.
“Athena!” The selkie who had brought her shouted her name. His voice, so deep and rich inside Cliffside House, seemed small here compared with the ocean’s pounding and the wailing power of the wind. “We need you in the center of the circle.”
A circle. She had never done one of these. Her mother had, and her grandmother before her, and they had never talked about them, only saying that they were the best and worst times of their guardianships.
Athena crossed the rocks and stood in the center of the creatures she had sworn to protect. They looked at her, not threatening her as they would other humans, and then they reached out—arms, appendages, tails, whatever worked—and touched the creature next to them, forming an unbreakable circle.
The wind howled around them, and the sea roared, and the rain became even fiercer.
Light surrounded her and the rain fell off her and she raised her arms. In the midst of the storm, the selkie reminded her, “Barrier, Athena, we need a barrier,” but she wasn’t sure if he spoke the words or sent them to her telepathically, like Cassie used to do when she was a child, before she had control of her powers.
Cassie should have been out here. This was a mind-magic, not a physical one. But something—someone—had crippled Cassie with a vision, and Athena had left her on the stairs.
The light grew brighter, and in the center of it she saw a ship, tilting in the waves. It was going to slam into the Candlestick. Athena set up the barrier, but too late. The ship had already hit rocks. The barrier prevented it from tumbling into the harbor.
Something that looked like arterial blood poured out of the hull, but it was worse, much worse, and she realized she had put the barrier in the wrong place. She set up protections all around the harbor and deep into the ocean floor, not letting anything from this ship contaminate her world, her people, her refuge.
But the smell enveloped her, dank and oily and thick, and she heard screaming—human screaming—and she saw more blood pouring into the sea.
They were dying. Everyone was dying, and all she had done was put a Band-Aid on the wound.
Seventeen
Cliffside House
“I don’t understand, Mother,” Lyssa said, sounding both tired and irritated. “What wound? What are you talking about?”
Cassie sank into her chair. Through the open kitchen door, she saw Emily, still wrapped up in the quilt, sound asleep. Emily would have understood. The child had a gift, a deep gift, that no one else seemed to notice.
“Oil,” Athena said. “She’s talking about oil. The Walter Aggie was an oil tanker. In the middle of the storm, it slammed into the Devil’s Candlestick, swerved around it somehow, and then ran aground in the bay.”
Lyssa got up and poured herself some real coffee. Cassie poured the last of the peppermint tea. It was cold, but she didn’t care.
Lyssa sat back down and looked at her grandmother.
“You tried to prevent that?” Lyssa asked Athena.
She nodded. “We were too late to prevent the grounding. I think it was meant to happen, as a kind of test against the refuge.”
“Lyssa doesn’t know about the refuge, Mother.” Cassie had been trying to get there, but the memories had overwhelmed her. That time lived in her mind much more than this one did. It wasn’t just her past; it was her present as well.
“The refuge?” Lyssa reached for a cookie.
Athena sighed. “It sounds so silly when you actually talk about it. But remember the end of the nineteenth century was the beginning of the conservation movement.”
“I thought we were talking about 1970,” Lyssa said.
“We’re talking about the refuge.” Athena took a cookie as well. She held it up, examined it, and said to Cassie, “If we’re going to be up all night talking, perhaps we should have a real meal.”
“I just bake,” Cassie said. “Real meals are your province.”
“The refuge,” Lyssa prompted.
Athena ate the cookie and stood up. Cassie had seen her do this before. Athena hated talking about the true nature of the Buckinghams, of Cliffside House, of their history. But she was going to.
“In the 1880s, 1890s, my great-grandmother hated the direction the world was taking. This was the era of the robber barons, the first industrial age, and everything was considered ripe for the taking—trees, land, oil—”
“I’m an historian, Gram,” Lyssa said. “I do know this stuff.”
“You know the official American version,” Athena said. “Not the real version.”
“But she does understand the context,” Cassie said. The conversation had gotten away from her, but she wasn’t going to lose it entirely.
Athena took a pan out of the rack beside the stove. She set it on the flat cooktop.
“Magic,” she said as if she were giving a lecture in school, “exists all over nature. Not all creatures build and achieve like we do. Sometimes they believe other things are more important. My great-grandmother believed that when we tampered with the natural environment, we were destroying magic.”
“A nineteenth-century environmentalist,” Lyssa muttered.
Athena paused in her preparations to glare at Lyssa. Cassie tried to give her a cautionary look, but she wasn’t sure Lyssa saw it.
After a moment, Athena went to the refrigerator and removed eggs, bacon, ham, several vegetables, and cheese. As she set them on the counter, she said, “Whatever you want to call her, my great-grandmother was adamant about thi
s. But she was a Buckingham, and she knew if she tried to tell the officials or the heads of the various businesses or any man in power—”
“Why is it that Buckinghams are anti-male?” Lyssa asked, loudly enough to interrupt.
Maybe she hadn’t changed from her teenage self.
“We’re not,” Cassie said. Then she looked at her mother, who had her back to them. “At least, not all of us.”
“You’re an historian,” Athena said with some acidity. “You know how well women were treated in the nineteenth century.”
“It was better in the West,” Lyssa said.
Athena turned, gripping a wooden spoon like a sword. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Lys, please,” Cassie said. She didn’t want them driving again, and she couldn’t let Emily go. She wouldn’t. The child needed more help than Lyssa realized.
Lyssa paused, as if gathering herself, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, Gram. I’m exhausted. I was kind of hoping to come here, collapse on a bed, and not think about anything for a few weeks. Now I’m faced with some centuries-old problem, not to mention the fact that my ex-husband’s death might be due to my mistakes, and I don’t know what I’m going to do to help Emily. So I’m not exactly primed for a history lesson.”
“Well,” Athena said, “you’re going to listen anyway.”
Cassie suppressed a smile. Her mother used to talk to her that way too, but Athena had never spoken to Lyssa like that.
“Can I help you cook?” Lyssa asked. “I’m good at omelettes.”
“Who said I was making omelettes?” Athena grabbed a mixing bowl.
“I can do this, Mom,” Cassie said, although she wasn’t sure if she was offering to finish the story or to cook the middle-of-the-night meal.
Either way, Athena rejected the offer with the wave of her spoon. “I was telling you about the refuge,” she said. “My great-grandmother came to realize that she couldn’t protect hundreds of places, but she had charge of Anchor Bay and, through connection, Seavy County. She convinced all sorts of species to come here, and because of who we are, she got mostly water creatures. She promised them protection, if they promised not to war upon each other, and she used her magic to help them create habitats all along this part of the coast.”
Fantasy Life Page 17
