Fantasy Life

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“I’m sorry, child,” Cassie said, sounding more like Athena than she thought possible. “Old memories—”

  “I know,” Emily said with that matter-of-factness only children could achieve. “You do good with other people’s memories, but not your own.”

  Cassie started. Roseluna smiled, ever so faintly, and took another spoonful of ice from her cocktail glass.

  “What about the Walter Aggie?” Cassie asked, hoping her voice sounded calmer than she felt.

  “You do know how your people handled it?”

  “We wouldn’t let Walters Petroleum burn the oil on the water, and we cleaned up the slick as best we could. Then the storm—” Cassie’s voice broke.

  “Not—” Roseluna raised a hand, as if she didn’t want to go into that either—“not the surface oil. The remaining oil, in the tanks.”

  Cassie swallowed. These last two days had brought her more memories than she had allowed in years.

  “The Coast Guard and the Navy towed it about two hundred miles out to sea, and then they sank it—God, I can’t remember—something like two thousand fathoms deep. It was supposed to be very cold down there. They promised us that the oil wouldn’t leak.”

  Cassie’s hand was still shaking. She reached for her water glass and nearly knocked it over. Emily grabbed it for her, steadied it, and held it until Cassie could take it.

  She took a drink, more to calm herself than anything. It didn’t really work.

  “My mother and some of the other locals, they convinced the Coast Guard to keep checking the site. They did for years. They never saw an oil slick, except for a small one right after the ship sank.”

  Roseluna’s cool look continued. Her eyes seemed even darker than they had before, as if the irises were swallowing up what little whites she had.

  “The oil did not solidify as they expected,” she said, “but it remained trapped in the tanks. Until the paestish found it. They went diving into the wreck, searching for treasures, and became coated. Two of them managed to find a colony of water nymphs, who helped them surface, kept their gills clean, and made them breathe.”

  Cassie didn’t move.

  “But,” Roseluna said, “they never found the third. And she could not have survived on her own. That is why the reports of her on the beach made sense. She drowned, and somehow got caught in the current, making it to shore.”

  Cassie shook her head. “If she drowned in that deep water, she wouldn’t have washed up.”

  “They were able to swim some distance. It took a while for the oil to affect them. The warmer the water got, the less viscous the oil became. It seeped through their scales, under the protections, into their gills.”

  Cassie bit her lower lip. “But it’s their fault. They went into the wreck. I don’t see why this is a crisis.”

  “Because the oil has continued to seep. We have lost our people, paestish, and ailen have been lost as well, and who knows how many others.”

  “There’s been no report of a slick,” Cassie said. “If they left something in that ship open, the oil should have come to the surface and coated the entire coastline by now. July is a long time ago, surely long enough for someone to notice the problem.”

  Roseluna sat up straighter. “We noticed.”

  “I mean, someone in authority. Someone like the Coast Guard or people who handle that stuff. We try to monitor things like oil spills.”

  “Do you?” Roseluna’s voice was cool. “Really?”

  The shaky feeling left Cassie, replaced by anger. It went deeper than she expected.

  “Yes,” she said. “We do. There are whole organizations who monitor as best they can. We know things we didn’t know thirty years ago. We know how to clean this stuff up. We know how to prevent it. We are doing our best.”

  “Then your best is not very good.” Roseluna pushed her cocktail glass away. “Your own Coast Guard reports that there have been more than two hundred thirty thousand oil spills since 1973. I do not know how they compile their statistics, but I doubt that is worldwide, and I am sure it only counts those spills which were reported. The Walter Aggie was not reported, was it?”

  “It was a different time,” Cassie said tightly.

  “I thought people knew.” Emily looked up from her fish. “Otherwise, how did Grandpa Walters know to come here?”

  “Grandpa Walters?” Roseluna raised her eyebrows. “Your family sleeps with these criminals?”

  Cassie could feel the conversation slip away from her. “My daughter didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know her father-in-law was a criminal or did not know about the Walter Aggie?”

  “She didn’t know any of it until last night,” Cassie said, “and she still doesn’t know all of it.”

  Roseluna raised her chin. “She does not know about Daray? She does not know how he died?”

  Or how he lived. Cassie’s heart twisted. She clenched her hand into a fist.

  “My family has devoted itself to you people,” Cassie said softly. “My mother and I, we have sacrificed everything. We’ve done all that we can to keep you alive. We’ve—I’ve—given up more than we should be asked to give up, and now it starts with my daughter. Last night, someone from your refuge begged her for help, and she has no idea what to do. Now you come to me, and you tell me that all our sacrifices have been for nothing. Because you have an education—and an inadequate one at that—you believe you can destroy Anchor Bay. I don’t see how the Walter Aggie and the tragedy with your friend gives you any license to take out an entire community.”

  “Because,” Roseluna said, “nothing has changed.”

  “Nothing?” Cassie asked. “You want to know oil statistics? I can give you oil statistics. The number of serious spills has declined by more than two-thirds since 1970.”

  “While the number of minor spills remains the same,” Roseluna said. “And those so-called minor spills account for most of the spills that occur. Nothing has been done to alter this. If anything, the crisis has grown worse. You people ignore everything. You do not change.”

  “I don’t know why we’re discussing this,” Cassie said. “I don’t understand why this has become important to you now.”

  “Because the Walter Aggie is a symptom of a larger problem. You call my education inadequate—”

  “Of course it is,” Cassie said. “You’re throwing statistics at me like they matter. They don’t. Even if we got rid of all of the oil usage in the world, there’d still be oil in the ocean. Oil occurs naturally and it seeps into the ocean from the floor below. We aren’t the problem here.”

  “You are always the problem. It is not just oil. That is a symptom. There are others, and they have gone on through time. Your Saint Patrick, for whom you wear green and drink hideous beer in March, he did not get rid of the snakes in Ireland. He got rid of the c’au’de. He slaughtered them and drove them into the sea, where they drowned. My people tried to save some and heard the tales, but c’au’de were not able to survive in water, and whenever they returned to land, they were killed.”

  “That was centuries ago.”

  “And then there were the arctic wolves, murdered for their pelts. In this country, as recently as forty years ago. The arctic wolf, which your press confuses with the white wolf, has a native intelligence to rival your own, and the powers that kept the northern forests safe for wild creatures. When the last of the arctic wolves disappeared, the forests began to disappear, until there is little left.”

  Cassie spread her hands apart. “All of this happened somewhere else. We got rid of the oil here. If we had known about the Walter Aggie sooner, I’m sure so many of your people wouldn’t have died. But we can’t do anything about things we do not know about. And I don’t understand why you have to punish Anchor Bay for helping you.”

  “We are not punishing,” Roseluna said. “We are leaving. We have not been safe here, not as you predicted.”

  “You have too!” Cassie leaned forward. “We’ve taken care of you. We’ve—”r />
  “Two dozen pelts stolen in Whale Rock three years ago, and our pups murdered. Ailen captured in fishing nets and stuck to walls with pins, as they were not alive when found. The senseless slaughter of the paestish in Seavy Village in the mid-1990s. I could go on. We are not safe from your kind.”

  “Nor is our kind safe from yours,” Cassie snapped. “We’ve overlooked how many murders? The paestish, as you call them, kill women who are married to men that interest them. Those creatures even brought down a ship in the 1930s, all because a young man they claimed for their own—a man who had no interest in them—was having an engagement party on it. And those are only the things I know about right now. My mother probably has a longer list.”

  “Your mother has been good to us,” Roseluna said softly. “That is why we’re warning your family.”

  “And not telling the rest of the town, which has tolerated you and made sacrifices for you and told no one about you, even though it would have made for more tourists and maybe even made some of us rich?”

  Emily had slid far down the bench, clutching her root beer. Her face was white, and Cassie could feel her distress.

  The knocking precursor to her headache continued as well, like a drumbeat to her own anger.

  “It is your job to warn those you believe worthy of saving,” Roseluna said.

  “Worthy of saving?” Cassie slapped a hand on the table. “Worthy of saving? What kind of bullshit is that?”

  Emily winced.

  “We think everyone is worthy of saving. That’s why we stay here, why the refuge is here. Even creatures we don’t understand, we consider worthy of saving.”

  Roseluna stood. “The information is yours to do with what you will. I do not care how you will use it. This place no longer concerns me.”

  “How can you leave the refuge?” Cassie asked.

  “How could we stay so long? It drains us of our power, reduces us to caricatures of what we once were. Your people slaughtered ours because we were dangerous and frightening to you. We gave some of your people power, and you thanked us for it. Now you expect us to be grateful for a few nautical miles of ocean space.”

  Roseluna shook her head.

  “We are not our parents’ generation,” she said softly. “We are recovering what was lost. We have realized that to live at the mercy of your enemies is no life at all.”

  “Enemies?” Cassie breathed.

  “You have been warned,” Roseluna said. “I have fulfilled my pact with my family and with yours. Except for one thing.”

  She turned to Emily, whose dark eyes mirrored Roseluna’s.

  “We had no idea you existed, child. We do not even know what others exist. You know the legend of the selkies, do you not? How we send our men to land to seduce human women?”

  Cassie’s cheeks heated. “Stop.”

  “We did so then to revive our lines. We had stopped until Daray—”

  “Stop!” Cassie shouted.

  Everyone in the restaurant turned toward her.

  Roseluna ignored them. She kept her gaze on Emily, and Emily did not look away.

  “You will be among the strongest of us, and your children, should you choose to have them with any of our people, will be even stronger. We need you to revitalize us.”

  Roseluna held out her hand to Emily. “Come with me. I will show you things you have never dreamed of.”

  Emily looked at the hand, then looked at Cassie. Cassie’s entire body felt flushed. She was too far away to prevent it if Roseluna tried to snatch Emily, but, Cassie supposed, she could call for help from the restaurant staff, who were all still watching.

  “Is that why I killed Daddy?” Emily said, her voice small. “Because I’m evil, like them?”

  Cassie’s breath caught.

  “We are not evil, child,” Roseluna said, her hand still extended. “Merely different.”

  Emily slapped at Roseluna’s hand. “Take it away,” Emily said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “Take that stuff you gave me away. Make me a normal girl. I hate this. I want to go home and see my friends and be with my daddy like he was before I made him go crazy. Take it away. Let me go home. Please.”

  Roseluna brought her hand to her chest. She stared at Emily with something like compassion.

  Cassie scrambled around the table, reaching her granddaughter’s side. She put her arms around Emily, who melted into them, shaking but not crying.

  “Get out of here,” Cassie said.

  But Roseluna didn’t. Instead, she crouched and put a hand on Emily’s back. Emily stiffened.

  “We cannot take it away,” Roseluna said. “We are part of you, and we can make you great if you but give us the chance. Come with me, child.”

  “No,” Emily said into Cassie’s shoulder.

  “Child...”

  Emily whirled. “I hate you! I hate all of you! Go away! Go away and wreck everything, I don’t care. Because that’s what you do. You ruin stuff, and you make my grandma want to cry. Just leave us alone. Leave me alone.”

  Her body was shaking, and she would have thrown herself at Roseluna if Cassie had let her. But Cassie held tightly and felt, within herself, a power rising in Emily.

  Cassie wrapped her mind around Emily’s, holding her in place, in case she decided to use that power in this tiny restaurant. Emily didn’t understand the consequences.

  Cassie did.

  Roseluna looked at her. “You can’t restrain her forever,” Roseluna said. “At some point, she will have to understand what she is.”

  “She told you to leave,” Cassie said. “That’s what you were planning to do anyway, so you might as well.”

  Roseluna opened her mouth, then closed it, as if she had changed her mind about what she was going to say. Instead, she nodded once and walked out of the restaurant.

  Emily leaned against Cassie. Tears dripped onto Cassie’s arms.

  “I’m not like her,” Emily whispered. “They made me evil, didn’t they?”

  “They’re not evil, honey. They’re just different.”

  “They’re going to kill people.”

  “No.” Cassie pulled Emily closer, so that she could speak into her ear. “If they wanted to do that, they wouldn’t have warned us. No one’s going to die.”

  “I think you’re wrong.” Emily’s shaking started all over again. “I think you’re really wrong.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Highway 101

  The Village of Anchor Bay

  A line of cars extended for five blocks on 101 heading south. When Gabriel saw it, he debated turning on his siren and flashers, but decided that would make people even more nervous than they already were.

  Instead, he turned east on NE Fifteenth, behind the McDonald’s, then went south on Quay until he reached the very center of town. In the illogic that dictated street signs in Oregon, the center street was not First Street or even Main Street, but McCool’s, even though no one knew who McCool had been.

  Athena was feeding some calls through the radio unit. It would spit and cough, then a small voice—usually androgynous—would complain about the weird creatures running across the road.

  Denne leaned forward, as if he were trying to hear the radio better. He brought the scents of antiseptic, sweat, and expensive cologne with him. He had offered to drive his own truck, but Athena had nixed that. She said there were already traffic problems on the highway; the last thing they needed was yet another vehicle.

  Zeke followed at a safe distance. At first, it looked like he was going to turn on his siren and try to drive along the grass, but apparently he decided against it.

  Which was a good thing, considering the grass disappeared into the sidewalks and the wayside farther down.

  As Gabriel crested the hill, he saw the ocean sparkling out in the distance. Hard to believe the last time he had crested this hill, a little south of here, the winds had been so strong that the ocean frothed, and the night had been so dark he couldn’t see the froth if he tried. />
  “Holy crap,” Denne said.

  He wasn’t looking at the ocean. He was looking at the side of the road.

  Gabriel glanced to his left and saw the usual run-down houses, badly in need of paint after years in the salt air, a few overgrown rhododendron bushes, and too many for-sale signs that people had forgotten to take down when the summer tourist rush was over.

  “What?”

  “Next block over,” Denne said.

  Gabriel slowed down—he didn’t want to hit anything while his eyes were off the road—and looked at the driveway linking two fenced yards.

  And then he saw it, the stream of creatures that everyone was talking about. It was so consistent that it looked like a dirt mound by the side of the road. Only when Gabriel squinted at it, really looking at each individual piece, did he realize that mound was moving—and it was composed of things of different shapes and sizes, some of which he would wager he had never seen before.

  The stream was thick and wide, and even though he couldn’t really get a good sense of perspective from here, he would wager that it covered the entire road.

  Zeke slowed behind him and leaned out the window, as if he was going to call to Gabriel. But Gabriel ignored him, moving forward, heading toward the bottom of the hill and the highway.

  A different mess greeted him down there. Not only were the cars stopped southbound, but the drivers stood outside their vehicles. A few people were talking, but most had left the driver’s-side doors open, the cars running, and had walked toward the first car, standing beside it and staring at the creatures as they made their way across the highway.

  “God,” Denne said. “They seem oblivious.”

  Gabriel couldn’t tell if he was referring to the creatures or the drivers or both. Gabriel pulled his squad onto the highway and parked it across the empty northbound lane.

  Zeke parked beside him.

  Then Gabriel got out.

  The wind was chillier than it had been that morning, and the air smelled of rotted fish. Usually he didn’t mind that smell—it was part of the ocean’s smorgasbord of scents—but this afternoon, it didn’t seem to be coming from the ocean.