Windfall

by Tempe O'Kun

  Laura plodded up with a potted plant. “Sign them.”

  “I should’ve known.” The younger otter sighed. “You could’ve told us.”

  “Yes, but seeing the look on your face paid me back a little for having to raise you.” Her mother knelt by the creek that ran under the house’s skyway, digging a hole for the plant. “We need to forward them to the distributor by Monday.”

  Kylie scowled at her mother’s transformation back into an executive producer. “So we’re all going to just sit in the living room and sign these forever?”

  “Oh no, I signed my inserts for them over the past week.” She made a little signing gesture with her trowel, which she accented with a smirk. “They’re on the kitchen table.”

  A few hours later, the last of the special features chattered on the TV. Moving the boxes of DVDs inside had been an ordeal, though signing and inserting the 3,000 printouts for Laura was taking forever. The air conditioner droned to itself in one window, spilling cool air across the packaging-strewn floor.

  “Ugh!” Her will draining, Kylie groaned and flopped sideways on the sofa. “My wrist is getting sore.” She rotated her hand, dropping the pen. “What’s your secret Maxie? Nightly practice?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been signing every second one with my off hand. It’s like a game: how close can I make them match.”

  “You’re the biggest square, ya know that?” She shoved another paper into its case.

  His nose tipped in the direction of an open case. “I’m not sure you should be writing ‘Save me!’ notes on the backs of those.”

  “It’s meta.” She wiggled her webbed fingers at him. “Our viewers will dig it.”

  The husky shrugged and kept her pile from spilling into the dwindling unsigned stack.

  “So are you going to just keep one?” She waved the box set. “To complete your collection.”

  “Nah, I’m waiting for the Stranger Things edition.” The dog waggled his eyebrows with obvious delight. “It has the deleted scenes.”

  She popped up on a wave of sass. “You already saw those in the daily reels! And acted in them. And we’re going to have to see them again when we do commentary.”

  Nodding, he signed another copy left-handed. “Yeah, but I want the complete set.”

  “You’re not supposed to fanboy over shows you starred in.” Leaning in upside down, she scrawled her signature onto another insert.

  “I’m only the star if you ignore literally the rest of the cast, including you.” He tapped his name, tiny and near the bottom of the case. Being the end of the series, the DVD cover had a group shot of the entire cast. Serge was so far in the back that Max was pretty sure they’d just spliced in an old promotional shot. “Besides, it’s a good show.”

  Her tail swayed to and fro against the back of the sofa. “Someday, I’m going to wake up and you’ll have just become Serge.”

  Max slipped into his Russian accent like a well-worn glove. “We are inwestigating your missink uncle, Cassie.”

  “Don’t use the voice on me!” She poked the ballpoint at him. “That was always so weird on the show. I’m only now getting used to not having to wonder what you’re gonna sound like when you talk.”

  The husky snickered.

  The TV babbled extra loud: “Here at Crystal Caverns, we want you to help celebrate our grand re-opening.”

  “Man, being an actor has ruined commercials for me.” He jerked a thumb at the screen. “Look at this girl: I bet she didn’t even get a rehearsal.”

  The lutrine perked to watch the screen. “I don’t think that’s stage fright… And I feel like I’ve seen her around town.”

  As the ad cut between different shots of winding, shimmering caverns, a bunny continued her slightly-petrified wooden narration: “Come walk along our brightly-lit and well-marked paths! Spelunker’s Monthly called us the best-lit cave on the East Coast. Field trips welcome!”

  “Huh.” Still upside-down on the sofa, Kylie twitched her whiskers. “I would’ve done another take. That one had a weird vibe.”

  “Then it matches the rest of the town.” Max met her gaze. “We could go check it out.”

  She crossed her arms under her breasts. “You only want to go because there’s a pretty girl in the ad.”

  He held up the box set again and smirked. “The same reason you’re front-and-center on the box art, even though you’re billed third.”

  With a little pulse of joy at him calling her pretty, she eeled off the couch, turned off the TV, and signed a few more stacks of DVDs.

  As the piles dwindled, the dog gave a deflating sigh.

  “What?” She scooted a little closer.

  “Nothing really.” Those powerful shoulders shrugged. “This is the last time we’re going to be doing this.” He signed another paper with a wistful tone. “I’ve been noticing things like that ever since we got the news the show was cancelled. Last time I slept in your apartment, last time we shot a scene, last time I flew out from LA…”

  Her paw landed on his shoulder. “You gonna be okay, Maxie?”

  “It’s no big deal.” He flashed her a brave smile. “Gotta move on, right?”

  “Not from everything.” She bumped him with her elbow, then leaned against his bulk.

  He hugged her close, resting that square muzzle between her ears.

  She squirmed closer, enjoying his soft embrace. Max could be a little sensitive, but she liked that in a guy. He never sank so deep, though, that few words from her couldn’t get his tail wagging again. She liked that too.

  The forest loomed, aloof and ancient, as its undergrowth hid stones and scurrying creatures. Searching the property swallowed the next two days. Some parts of the woods prickled Max’s hackles, though nothing ever came of it. He’d spent too much time in the city, filming the show. His father would scoff. He didn’t even recognize some of the wild animal tracks, especially the ones with three big claws. Maybe some kind of large bird?

  He and the otter walked on. Together, they tramped over moss-quilted earth and gnarled roots. Nothing to do but talk and joke around; it felt so right, so much like old times. Granted, he couldn’t stop staring at her tail, what with her tendency to balance on logs, putting her butt at eye level.

  Max tried to focus on his mental map of the property. She’d wanted to check out the property’s link to the ocean, so they’d been walking along the low stone cliffs. Waves crashed over a rocky coastline. He hoped they wouldn’t have to swim across the choppy waters to the tiny islands included in the Holt or, worse, drive her car there. After a ways, they found a shallow valley, which ended in a strip of purple-gray gravel beach.

  An old structure hunched against the cliffside.

  He lifted his ears at it.

  “We’re still on Bevy property.” She swiped her fingertips over the satellite map on her mobile, zooming in. “That could be the shack my uncle talked about.”

  Max looked around, chose the least treacherous path, and plodded down it. Maybe if he led the way back up the hill later, he wouldn’t be so tempted to stare at her tail. The pair picked their way down a narrow inlet to the sea. A dirt road once led down it, but wild plants had grappled it into submission.

  Near the bottom, the otter perked up and trotted to the beach. She pointed to seaweed-ringed PVC pipe sticking up from the shallows. “Hey, an oyster bed.”

  He crossed his arms and smiled. “You’re not gonna go oyster-crazy, are you? We don’t have any way to get them home.”

  “Are you kidding? The oysters here are sharp. I need tools to take them on.”

  “Weapons, technically, then.” The pebble beach crunched under his boots.

  “I’m sure the manor has an armory somewhere.” She hurried over to the sun-bleached building. About the size of a garage, it looked drafty, but stable. Max guessed it hadn’t been maintained in about thirty years, which fit their timeline. The weather-beaten door wobbled as they opened it, holding on by a single hinge. A faded sign
above the door read “Øysterholt” in ornate lettering.

  “Huh.” Kylie peeked around the dark space. “It’s a boathouse.”

  His eyes traced the lumber track where a dinghy could fit. “With no boat?”

  “I don’t think this is what we’re after.” She shrugged, then poked at some pale fishing nets hung from a rafter. “Leister wouldn’t have called this place a shack.”

  He nodded and followed her back up the slope. They’d found several outbuildings over the last few days, though nothing one could call a shack. The structures, like this one, were weathered but clutching to the hillsides, still furnished. Ancient tools, toys, newspapers, and even framed art haunted the buildings. Either they’d been abandoned in a hurry or Kylie’s family never had the manpower to clean them out.

  Adrift in his thoughts, Max’s attention refocused on his friend’s tail, which happened to be at eye level once again. The otter had managed to slip ahead of him and her supple body waggled up the slope. He averted his gaze to the sky, the rocks, the breaking waves, anything else. He couldn’t afford to be such a horndog when his best friend needed him. He resolved to be more vigilant about not keeping watch on her rear. Behind them, the ocean surged and sank, eroding stalwart stone with every graceful splash.

  The pair crossed back into the forest. Trees towered overhead, ancient and inscrutable; their shadows hung like black silk; their branches clutched at every turn. A few miles later, another inlet opened to the sea, spreading to choppy waves and spattered white spray. Brine wind swept through his whiskers. They wound their way down along the rocky shoreline. All along the tideline lay strips of pink-white dune. The dog crouched to examine them the strange sand. Up the cliffside, a grassy road led into the woods.

  Kylie spun a slow circle, tail curved after her. “Oh hey. I think this is Crab Beach.”

  “Crab Beach?” He combed fingers through the sharp, pale sand.

  “Mom used to tell me how her family held parties at a beach where the crabs swarmed ashore every year. Guess it was this big annual shindig.”

  His ears perked. “Journals never mentioned this?”

  “Not that I remember, but there’s a lot of them.” A shrug traveled down her limber spine. “Somebody probably kept annual tallies of crab hauls somewhere.”

  He rolled his eyes to keep them off the sway of her tail. “About the only kind of bookkeeping I could see you tolerating.”

  She nodded, paws rubbing together. “I’ll take another look through the boring parts, see what I find. In the mean time, we should keep looking.”

  The third day, Max found himself dragged to a particular spot in the woods, instead of sticking to his search grid. Kylie had brought along a shovel and kept insisting their target was a surprise. He suspected “surprise” meant “manual labor.” He wasn’t disappointed.

  Sunlight poured through openings in the canopy, flashing on Max’s shovel blade as stabbed it into fresh earth and hit what felt like another rock. The canine panted in the summer heat. Even accustomed to farm work, his muscles ached. His clothes clung to his body, plastered with damp soil and clay. Brick-brown dirt stained his white fur. He huffed, tossing another shovelful of dirt out of the chest-deep hole he stood in. Who knew otters got so serious about burying things? “If there’s a coffin at the bottom of this hole, I’m not going to be a happy dog.”

  “There won’t be!” Kylie paced and peered into the hole, wearing floral-patterned gardening mitts. They belonged to her mother and had been designed for webbed fingers. She’d helped at first, but kept dumping the dirt on her own head instead of out of the pit. Otter geometry was not conducive to shoveling, so she’d taken up stone removal duty.

  He lifted another scoop of dirt, this time filled with jagged flakes of old metal. Through his weary gaze, he examined the debris. “Huh.”

  “Ooh!” Her eyes lit up. “Let me get in there! If this is what I think it is, I don’t want you to break it with the shovel.”

  “Fine, fine…” He climbed out of the hole, stuck the spade in the fill pile, and rested his weight on it. He did his best to puff and glare at her at the same time. “I hadn’t expected my vacation to include grave robbing.”

  “It’s not a grave—it’s loot.” Kylie hopped down into the excavation site. “Or a ‘cache,’ if you wanna be boring. One of the journals mentioned it.”

  The husky closed his eyes and tried to recover his breath, letting the cool earthy scent ease his irritation. His best friend, admittedly, had a habit of getting wound up about things. He reminded himself that he really liked her passion most of the time. Just not when it resulted in him working to exhaustion.

  Inside the pit, the otter scrambled about, clutching a borrowed garden trowel. She poked and prodded with little chitters of otter interest. The tool clanked off something. She straightened with interest, cute little ears perking. “Hello, what have we here?”

  He glanced to the cairn of stones they’d had to dislodge before they could start digging. “More rocks? A whole lockbox of rocks?”

  The trowel prodded into a rusty shell that had once been some kind of steel. It flaked apart as she touched it, revealing smooth, shiny surfaces within. “Ho-ho! Look at this.” She pulled a heavy glass bottle from the ruined box, wiped the dirt from it, then hefted it in triumph. “Still good!” Red liquid glistened in the sunlight, as did dozens of tiny silver fish suspended in it.

  Max stared at the bottle.

  The bottle won the staring contest.

  He glanced to Kylie, happy she only had one set of eyes to look back with. “So otters not only bury their wine, they make it from minnows.”

  “Not wine: sauce.” She cradled the ancient brown bottle, examining the play of light through the viscous substance. “And not minnows: anchovies. Caught, salted, fermented, and pressed like olives.”

  He squinted, suspicious. “Those look pretty whole.”

  “Oh, the whole ones are just garnishes.” With infinite care, she set the bottle on the side of the meter-deep hole, then started poking around for more.

  His arms crossed. “I’ve lived with you long enough that I thought I was cool with anything fish-related, but that’s kind of gross.”

  “It was good enough for the Romans!” More dirt flew out of the pit.

  He ignored the bottle’s gaze. “So was lead plumbing.”

  “Hey, Serge got sucked through a time portal that one time.” Kylie called from inside the hole. “You should know about this stuff.”

  Max crossed his sore arms. “I wasn’t there for a history lesson; I was there to justify why my character suddenly knew how to fight monsters. Filming it only took like two days—they deliberately didn’t show much of the training so I could spring in at the end and cut off the monster’s head with a gladius.”

  “Another one!” She popped back up to brandish another bottle, this one green but with the same pale beeswax sealing it. “I thought Mom sold it all when she auctioned off everything in the wine cellar.” She chittered and spun around, clutching the sauce to her chest. “This stuff is worth its weight in gold. And it’s all mine.”

  “You’re going to drink that goop?” A vision of the lutrine passed out and drooling tiny fish flashed into his mind. He wasn’t sure how he would get her to the hospital with a car too small for him to drive.

  “No!” Paws rubbing together, she cast a longing glance at the bottles. “Well, maybe, but it’s a seasoning, not a drink.”

  “For?”

  “Everything! Sushi, salad dressing, marinades…” She flashed an earnest smile.

  Max ignored the surge of happiness in his chest and counted on his fingers for emphasis. “Marinating fresh fish in liquid fish with antique fish floating in it?”

  “I know!” She performed a little happy otter dance. “Isn’t it amazing?”

  The husky chose not to comment and opted instead to sit with the mismatched bottles against a tree while the anchovies stared in judgement. Most seemed to have stayed
right-side-up over the past century.

  Kylie troweled about, but found no more bottles, only the bottom of the rusting strongbox.

  Eye closed, Max leaned his head back against the tree trunk. “So we dug a giant hole in the woods to get you condiments?”

  “And to verify the journals.” She scrambled out of the hole and dusted herself off. “Most of the directions in them refer to game trails and bends in the creek and impressive trees. That stuff doesn’t always last a hundred years, but a pile of rocks’ll stay put.”

  His ears lifted. “A point of reference.”

  “Exactly.” She padded across the soft earth and sat beside him. “Are you okay?”

  A sigh groaned through him; he stretched his sore limbs. “You do realize all we verified is one landmark from one journal, and that you’re all about this fish sauce.”

  “Hundred-year-old fish sauce!” She gripped his thigh. “It’ll be like slurping history!”

  For a moment, he just sat. Having her near, touching him, came as a blend of relaxation and thrill. He patted her hands. “In answer to your question, I’m tired.”

  “Sorry, Maxie.” She stood and offered him a paw. “We should head back. Pick it up tomorrow.”

  He nodded and let her help pull him to his feet. His muscles complained with every movement. They started back through the woods. Another sunset sliced the trees to grasping shadows. He took stock of the day. No sign of the shack. For all he knew, it’d fallen down years ago. Though he couldn’t complain about the company, he was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t a better way to be spending his time. “I am happy you got your sauces, but…”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think they’d be buried so deep and I thought at least there’d be more of a clue down there. I’m sorry, Maxie. Turned out to be a pretty lame surprise, huh?” A squirm of remorse wove through her frame. “Feel like a movie? Tonight’s viewing choices are Blast Radius and Brunch with Death.” Still holding the bottles, she hopped down beside him from a rise in the game trail. “I’d be happy to give you a shoulder rub or whatever. Y’know, undo the damage.”