Fantasy Life

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “I’d like it returned to its normal pristine condition,” Cassie said. “But that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?” Walters asked.

  “Because I’ve been listening to my mother talk about the conversations she’s had with people all over the world.” Cassie looked at Athena, who was leaning back in her chair, her hands clasped on her lap. “They never fully recover. You don’t get the fish back or the birds or the clamming season. You don’t get any of it back, Mr. Walters—”

  “Spark,” he said.

  “You don’t get it back,” Cassie said, ignoring his directive. “You might be able to restore some of it, but not even that, sometimes. The people in Perranporth, where the oil drifted after the Torrey Canyon disaster, they said they’re still finding oil, deep beneath the sand. And that accident happened when? Three years ago? How can we live like that?”

  Athena nodded slightly, and Cassie felt her anger turn toward her mother. This was why Athena had brought her—not for her youth and ability to flirt with Walters, but for her indignation. Athena could be upset, but she still had to negotiate with the man. Cassie didn’t have to be diplomatic at all.

  “We’re going to do everything we can,” Walters said.

  “And it won’t be enough,” Cassie said. “Everything you can is coming too late. Your captain screwed up. He got too close to shore in the middle of a storm, and his ship wasn’t built for that kind of punishment. We both know it. Admit liability, pay people for their lost wages, do what you can to clean up, and help us survive this. Don’t make empty promises.”

  Spark Walters’ smile had faded long ago. He had flung his arm over the back of his chair, in an attempt to look relaxed, but it wasn’t working. He looked sad and more than a little trapped.

  “So I’m the enemy,” he said.

  Cassie sighed. “It’s not about you. It’s about Anchor Bay, and all the places that this oil will eventually drift. Did you know the Torrey Canyon, which went aground in Cornwall, created three separate slicks, two of which made it all the way to France? We don’t know where the currents will take this stuff. We’ve been lucky so far. The oil’s been trapped in the bay. But that won’t last, Mr. Walters. Other people are going to be affected. Your precious company’s going to be affected.”

  He swallowed so hard that Cassie saw his Adam’s apple move. Athena leaned back even farther, keeping herself out of the conversation. She must have approved of what Cassie was doing.

  The waiter finally arrived with their food. He set down a sizzling top sirloin in front of Walters, a petite filet in front of Athena, and an overcooked, yellowish slab of halibut in front of Cassie. Her stomach turned, but she ignored it.

  She did wait until the waiter had left before continuing. She also lowered her voice. No sense in letting the entire restaurant in on the conversation.

  “I keep telling myself that maybe some good can come out of this. Maybe, if this spill gets the attention it deserves, this country’ll start talking about alternative fuels and less environmentally dangerous ways of continuing our lifestyle. Or maybe—”

  “Oil is natural,” Walters said. “It’s naturally formed. We extract it from wells, just like we do water. And we need it. We accomplish a lot of good things with oil. Not just petroleum, but plastics and—”

  “Save it,” Cassie said. “I don’t really care. You may believe in this stuff, but I don’t. All I see is how it’s destroying my home and damaging my friends, and I keep trying to find a way that this could be turned around. I don’t think it will. I think the word disaster isn’t big enough to cover what this spill will do to this area. You have no idea what kind of creatures live here, how unique this place is. You don’t know—”

  “The point is,” Athena said quickly, apparently afraid Cassie was going to tell Walters about the refuge, “that this isn’t something that’s going to go away.”

  Athena leaned forward and templed her hands over her steak. No one had touched the food yet. No one seemed interested.

  “Right now, you and I have a vested interest in keeping this spill quiet,” Athena said. “Tourists won’t come back here if they think Anchor Bay is destroyed forever. But I’m willing to risk that to make Walters Petroleum accountable. I know many reporters, Mr. Walters, and in these volatile times, they’d be more than willing to write a story with a slant my daughter would appreciate.”

  Cassie felt her cheeks heat up. She hadn’t just been brought for her indignation. She’d been brought here as a representative of the New Left side of her generation, the people protesting in the streets in other cities. The people who actually cared about the earth, unlike Walters, who seemed to have taken up his father’s banner—profit at all cost.

  “Such a story would destroy you, Mr. Walters,” Athena said.

  “It won’t help your tourism either.” He leaned forward, grabbed his steak knife, and deliberately sliced into the top sirloin.

  “No,” Athena said, “it won’t. But it might save some lives, which are, after all, more important than industries and tourism dollars.”

  “Are they?” Walters took a bite of his steak. He spoke as he chewed. Cassie had to look away. “My father says that life is the most abundant renewable resource on this planet. And when you have a surplus of something, it really isn’t worth very much, is it? Basic economics, after all.”

  “How can you say that?” Cassie asked.

  “I didn’t.” Walters cut another piece of steak. “My father did.”

  Cassie felt herself grow cold.

  “Don’t lie and say you disagree,” Walters said. “Not with a bit of cow sitting in front of you, Mrs. Buckingham, and that poor dead fish in front of you, Cassandra. Arguing with that point makes you both hypocrites.”

  Cassie pushed away from the table. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I can’t stay here.”

  Athena nodded, as if Cassie had met her expectations and disappointed her at the same time. Walters cut another piece of steak and, before eating it, waved it at Cassie, smiling at her cheerfully.

  He leaned back, his chair blocking her exit. “I can’t decide if it’s too bad that you’re so pretty, or too bad that you’re so naive. Someday, you’re going to find out how the world works, honey. And then you’re going to realize that perfection is impossible. You just gotta do what you can.”

  “I know the world’s not perfect,” Cassie said, sliding a nearby table sideways so that she could get past Walters’ chair. “The Walter Aggie has taught me that.”

  Thirty-Nine

  January 1970

  Highway 101

  The Village of Anchor Bay

  Cassandra didn’t go directly home. Instead, she walked out of Arno’s, down Highway 101, toward the center of town. The January night was calm, with hardly a breath of wind. Perfect for working until all hours, no matter how she was dressed.

  Above her, the stars winked. The night sky seemed even clearer than usual. The full moon cast enough light for her to see the highway, even though half of the streetlights were out.

  As she walked, she really looked at her town in a way that she hadn’t looked at it in years. Most of the houses lining the highway were empty—second homes for the rich of Portland, people who thought they knew the coast, but really didn’t.

  The local businesses were dark and run-down, from the effects of the salt air. Behind them stood the shacks that a number of locals had lived in for years, buildings that had somehow withstood the winds and the rains.

  Most people in Anchor Bay had no money. They lived here because they wanted to be near the sea and were willing to make sacrifices. They ran gift shops that got almost no customers in the winter, or they waited tables—again, making no money in the winter—or they mined the sea for its food, a marginal living at best. People who lived here year-round knew they wouldn’t be rich, but they would enjoy the quality of life.

  A quality of life that Spark Walters and his stupid company might have destroyed.

&nbs
p; He had seemed so sincere, trying to show Cassie and Athena that he wanted the same things. And then he had said all that stuff about life being cheap and tried to cover it by saying that was his father’s philosophy.

  Of course it was. His father ran one of the largest oil companies in America. The man couldn’t care about living people. He couldn’t, not and work with oil. Oil, which when burned became a pollutant. When used, its by-products were dangerous, and horrible.

  And that didn’t consider what it came from. Millions of years ago, oil had been living creatures. The prehistoric era had created a resource that was limited, that took forever to make, and was being used in the space of decades.

  She sighed. She would have had that argument with Spark if she had stayed. But she knew better. He’d probably heard it before and had the corporate answer.

  And he was already getting into the hypocrisy argument, which she knew she couldn’t win. Because if she truly believed that oil and oil-based products were evil, she couldn’t use any. And much as she appreciated the arguments of the back-to-nature hippies, she didn’t want to live that way. She liked a warm house in the winter, and she liked traveling by car, and she liked plastic’s smoothness beneath her fingertips.

  She just wasn’t sure oil was worth the price of Anchor Bay.

  As she reached the wayside, she saw that a different set of cars were parked there, their headlights trained on the beach. The ocean’s natural glow was gone, buried beneath blackness. Two dozen people were scattered along the coastline, raking the oil-covered straw and placing it in buckets. Still other people were gathered around the flatbed of a truck, parked illegally on the beach, working with some birds in the glare of a dozen flashlights.

  Cassie stopped for a moment and stared at her friends, who were working as hard, and cared as much, as she had. Spark had seemed sympathetic enough when he had arrived. He had looked at this scene on the beach, and his entire face had changed. He hadn’t even tried to cover the shock that she had sensed from him.

  He had been as upset by the damage as she had, and it wasn’t just because of lost profits. It was also because he knew something beautiful was being destroyed.

  All of his bravado and his quoting his worthless father couldn’t disguise that.

  Cassie made herself take a deep breath and shake off all thoughts of Spark Walters. She had come down here in search of Daray. She hadn’t done a mental search for him—she didn’t want to get in the way of his conversation with his father, if that was still continuing—but she would if she had to.

  She looked down at her dress, which was certainly not oil-cleaning clothing, and shrugged. If she had taken the car instead of walked, she could have stopped at Cliffside House to change before she had come down here. But she hadn’t. And after that conversation with Spark, she felt uncomfortable even thinking of driving.

  If she ruined these clothes, so be it. The dress wasn’t that important anyway. She had made it one summer afternoon when she had had nothing else to do.

  Cassie turned into the Wayside. As she did, she noted several other cars scattered throughout the parking lot. Their lights were off. Maybe they were going to be used for light later, or maybe they were the cars that belonged to people working the cleanup.

  Did those people think of the contradictions too? Or did they just focus on this one slick, this one mistake? Maybe they blamed it on the Walter Aggie’s captain, or maybe they blamed it on Walters Petroleum. Maybe they deliberately avoided the big picture so that it wouldn’t interfere with their day-to-day work.

  She moved through the parked cars to the ones giving up their battery power to provide light. A man leaned against one of the trucks, his right leg crossed over his left. He was sipping from a thermos of coffee, a half-unwrapped sandwich in his left hand. Over the stench of the oil, Cassie caught the smell of tuna fish.

  Her stomach growled. Except for some radishes, carrots, and celery, she hadn’t had any dinner.

  She stepped closer to the man. He turned toward her, half of his face catching the light from the cars.

  “Cassandra Buckingham,” he said.

  “John Aluke,” she said. “What’re you doing down here?”

  “I live here, same as everyone else.” His voice was defensive, and she realized, in that moment, that he thought she believed he should have done more to prevent the Walter Aggie from going aground.

  “I just meant I hadn’t seen you down here before.” She was digging herself in deeper. “Some folks help in other ways.”

  He nodded. “They never answered the radio.”

  “I know. My mother told me. You couldn’t’ve piloted them into the harbor that night, even if you did get in touch with them. Anyone with half a brain knows that.”

  He looked out at the ocean, and she got a sense from him. He was willing to fight for his honor, but deep down, he didn’t believe it. Deep down, he thought that the loss of the Walter Aggie was his fault.

  Cassie’s stomach growled again, and Aluke turned back toward her. “My wife made a lot of sandwiches. You want one?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She walked over to the truck as Aluke reached into the flatbed. He handed her a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. The sandwich smelled much better than that yellow halibut had at Arno’s.

  She would enjoy it more too.

  “You’re not dressed for working,” Aluke said.

  “I just ran away from the Walters Petroleum guy. He’s out to dinner with Mother at Arno’s.”

  “Made a pass at you, did he?”

  Cassie sighed. Some men would never believe that women would be involved in business discussions, particularly conservative men who made their living at sea.

  “No, actually,” Cassie said, “I just couldn’t take his attitude anymore.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Aluke sipped from the thermos cup.

  Cassie ate her sandwich so fast she barely tasted it.

  “So,” Aluke said after a moment, “you just come down here to look at the progress?”

  Cassie shook her head. “I was looking for Daray. He was down here a little while ago.”

  Aluke gave a single nod, his face averted. He knew Daray was a selkie and didn’t like that Cassie had bound herself to him. In fact, Aluke had tried to talk her out of the marriage, one afternoon at Covington’s Market, saying creatures like selkies were attractive and interesting and had no feelings at all.

  “I seen him,” Aluke said, “talking to a whole bunch of his kind. They got something going, Cass.”

  Cassie crumpled the wax paper. On the beach, people were moving slowly, as if the darkness slowed them down.

  “Maybe they’ve figured out a better way to clean this up,” she said, remembering what little she had overheard of the conversation.

  “I don’t trust them like you do. Those selkies—they’re not like they seem, Cass.”

  “We’ve had this discussion,” she said, turning the wax paper over and over in her fingers. “We can just agree to disagree.”

  “The thing is, I’m a lot older than you. I seen what selkies can do. If they lost some magic, then I don’t want to know what they were like before. When they work together, they can be pretty dang scary. If they’re gonna try to get rid of this oil, they’re gonna do it in a way that’ll hurt us too.”

  Cassie looked at the round ball in her hand. “You got a place for garbage?”

  He took the wax paper from her. “I know you don’t want to believe me. I also know your mom’s told you the same thing. If you find out something, you tell us, okay?”

  Cassie bit her lower lip. She couldn’t see Daray on the beach. She would recognize his form, his familiar movements, the way he tossed his long black hair over his shoulders.

  He’d told her so many times that he liked humans, that he believed in them. He wouldn’t suggest anything that would harm her or Anchor Bay.

  “All right,” she said, hoping her voice wouldn’t betray her lie. “I’ll tell you.”r />
  Aluke nodded. “I got some clothes in the truck. They’re probably way too big, but they’ll work better than that dress if you’re heading to the beach. Otherwise, I can drive you to Cliffside House.”

  Athena had made noises about bringing Walters back to the house to impress him with it. We show him the front area, serve him a nightcap, and send him on his way, Athena had said. Maybe the house’ll put the fear of God into him.

  Cassie had objected, but as usual, her mother hadn’t listened. Cassie didn’t want Walters to know about Cliffside House or its powers. She had a sense that he was looking for something to manipulate, some kind of advantage so that this wouldn’t end badly for him, even though it looked like it was going to.

  “Cass?” Aluke said.

  “I don’t really want to go home, thanks. But I will take the loan of the clothing, if you don’t mind. Even though it’ll get ruined, you know.”

  “That’s what I brought ’em for. I figured other folks were going to need extra too.”

  She followed Aluke to the passenger side of the truck. He was a good man, and well-intentioned. She was sorry that she couldn’t agree with him about the selkies. He had offered to tell her his stories, and she had made excuses every time.

  Much as she trusted Aluke on most things, she didn’t trust his opinion of the magical creatures taking refuge off Anchor Bay’s shores. He hated most of them, spoke of wanting to crush the barnacle drivers that combed the bottom of his boat searching for food, and of the afternoon he had caught the Fish of Many Wishes, only to refuse the wishes it offered.

  Aluke had said he would have let it flop on the deck and suffocate, until he remembered that all protected creatures that lived in the water were amphibians—even the ones that looked like normal fish. He had wondered aloud about that—what did deep-water creatures need with the ability to breathe air?—and no one had answered him.

  It had been a speculation no one in Anchor Bay had wanted to make.

  Cassie had heard variations on those conversations her whole life and knew that the people who feared the fantasylife in the protected harbor could not be trusted when it came to legends about the various creatures.