The Kraken Sea

by E. Catherine Tobler

  To all who wish to find a place they will fit.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Kraken Sea

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Front Matter

  The Kraken Sea

  It began with a dragon in the pouring rain, the beast barely held at bay, balanced upon two thin steel rails. Steam poured from its black mouth and guts, billowing through the damp gloom. A brief spark of after-rain sunlight caught within its glassy green eye, against sharp metal tooth, and when the steam gave way, young Jackson could see it was no dragon, but a train. The train was headed as far west as it could go and Jackson, aged fifteen-and-one-half, in the Year of Our Lord 1893, would be on it.

  The ill-fitting wool coat wrapping him hung to his knees, gray sleeves rucked to his elbows. The coat’s wide collar served as a perch for the pinned paper bearing his name (lifted from a box of discarded daffodils in an alley) and his pedigree (none). No parent had given him his name, that party having only the decency to leave him in the box, partly sheltering him from the snow of a winter’s night. The much-worn box sat on a shelf in the foundling hospital, filled with penny dreadfuls above the narrow, squeaky bed Jackson had once occupied.

  Jackson served as first and last name both, the nuns never having time to decide which it was and provide another. Other children suggested “Francis,” for his affinity with the rooftop pigeons. Jackson corrected them at every opportunity, be it with words or fists or solid shoe heels. He liked Saint Francis well enough, but it was not his name.

  The nuns ensured he had three meals a day and shoes on his feet, even when every week these things became an increasing challenge. But the nuns told him someone was waiting for him in San Francisco — someone who had asked for a boy of his kind. A boy who was brown-haired and strong, a boy who was not afraid of water. Jackson didn’t know anyone in San Francisco, hardly knew anyone in New York, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter he was the oldest of the group, that those who had come to the foundling hospital with him were long gone. It didn’t matter that no family had wanted him before now. The train mattered.

  The sisters nudged him up the steps into the passenger car. His fingers moved over the green velveteen seats, polished boots thumping on the faded violet carpet between the seats. Other children already packed those seats, wrapped in coats similar to his, names pinned to collars. Their faces were all the same to him, wide-eyed, lips near chewed to bloodiness because they were so worried.

  He became aware of Sister Jerome Grace’s absence then, even if he thought he could hear her voice. She had not been chosen to join the orphan train across the country. He pictured her soft hand in his as he walked to the end of the car and crawled onto an empty bench near a window where he could look out at the people who bustled through the station. Where he could look at —

  “Sister Jerome Grace?”

  Her face tipped up, smiling at him from the platform. He imagined her hair was dark, though he had never seen it for the veil she wore, eyebrows the indiscriminate color of shadows hastily dropped. Rain pearled on her veil now, transforming the flat black fabric into a field of diamonds. When the sister walked toward the train, the rain slid off in a crystal curtain that hovered in the humid, fogged air. She was damp when she settled beside Jackson.

  “A change of plans,” was all she said, and smiled at him before beginning to count the children in the car and the sisters assigned to wrangle them. Her pale hand hovered in the air, her first finger pointing at each child counted, tallies made.

  Sister Jerome Grace was twenty-five, married to God for always and ever. She had never told him the name she was born with. Jackson turned his flushed face back to the window, chewing the inside of his cheek much as those other children chewed their lips. He swallowed the blood when he tasted it. He pulled the cuffs of his coat down to make certain his arms were covered, even though the sister knew all there was to know about him. She would not be surprised by a gleam of scale even if it often terrified him. What was inside him that made him so?

  When, at the shriek of the train’s whistle, he stood up on the velveteen seat and cried out, he shuddered. It wasn’t human, the sound the train whistle pulled from his guts. He sang a duet with the whistle, a high lingering note that said he was as ready as the train. Ready to go. Clear the tracks.

  Sister Jerome Grace’s voice reached him, but he couldn’t answer her when she asked what was wrong. His mouth tightened up, tongue pressed to teeth. He knew the children were looking at him as though he were mad, but he was long-used to such looks.

  One hand pressed to the window and the other pressed to his chest, where he could feel the resonating whistle. His fingers tensed against the window and when the whistle sounded a second time, he cried out again. It wasn’t alarm, only utter joy. Who knew the beast had such a voice? The sound crawled inside him, deep down into his gut where nothing but Sister Jerome Grace had lodged before. Only her and now the dragon’s call. His hand thumped against the window, leaving a smudge.

  “Get down, Jackson. Ssstoppit!”

  Someone tugged on the hem of his coat. Jackson smacked the hand away and it never came again. By the time the train pulled out of the station, Jackson had the length of bench to himself but for Sister Jerome Grace. When Sister Mary Luke suggested other children spread out and join Jackson, they shook their heads. He was oldest; he was strangest.

  A little girl thrashed in Sister Mary Luke’s grip when the nun attempted to move her, throwing herself to the floor rather than sit beside Jackson. He watched, impassive, content with Sister Jerome Grace nearby and the rumble of the train in his bones. His hand stayed pressed to the window as the city retreated into his past.

  His past was a place he didn’t know well, but a place the sisters had always speculated about. They told him he’d come to the foundling hospital as many children did, a tiny thing inside a tiny box. “A Christmas gift,” Jackson had said, making the sisters laugh. None of them minded the gift of him, even though it was another body to clothe, another mouth to feed.

  The rain returned outside the window, so Jackson turned his attention to the other children. He watched the way they spoke to one another, the way two heads bent together over a shared book, the way they poked and teased when the sisters were outside of earshot or arm reach. It was peculiar to him, friendship; he hadn’t made peace with himself and couldn’t see how to make it with anyone else Jackson missed the pigeons and their aviary on the roof, though Sister Jerome Grace promised San Francisco had birds.

  The sleeping compartments were small and narrow. Jackson vanished into his without complaint when the time came, wondering if it was because the space resembled that long-ago daffodil box. The sisters told him he couldn’t possibly remember the box, but he knew its neatly made walls, smooth wood to keep tender blossoms from bruising in transit. Only Sister Jerome Grace asked him about it. It was cold that night, he’d told her. The first snow of the season, and she said yes, yes, remembering too. He disliked being cold even now.

  “How long will it take us?” he asked the next day, the train continuing along endless tracks. The country spooled out along side them, always changing. Houses gave way to cities that gave way to plains until there were more houses, more cities. The buildings fascinated him, in hues of brown and sepia, ivory and black.

  “Just over a week.”

  The sister’s answer was thrilling and disappointing both. Being on the train for an entire week was something he meant to take advantage of. He wanted to learn its ways — her ways — how she was put together, how she moved over the rails. But disappointment was quick to follow. It was only a week and part of him wanted to stay on
the train wherever she might go, even if she only snaked back and forth over the same east-west track.

  It was with relief he discovered there would be stops along the way. Sister Jerome Grace offered him the map of the rails before she vanished in a flurry of black skirts to chase after a pair of children who had broken Sister Mary Luke’s rosary.

  The journey and its many pauses made sense, train depots and cities scattered along the way. Refueling, taking on more food. Jackson traced the lines on the map with careful fingers, realizing not all of the children would reach the coast with him, having been chosen by families closer than San Francisco.

  Families who had asked for them.

  He turned the map over then looked to his reflection in the train’s window. A common boy at first glance, he imagined his paperwork said; do not be alarmed by the discoloration of his skin, nor the way he may shed. Surely his papers said no such thing, and yet. A finger strayed to his wrist, rubbing until he saw an iridescent gleam where his pulse beat.

  “Jackson.”

  He looked at the sister, allowing her to take his hand and examine both fingertip and wrist. Her hands were warm from running after children. Jackson’s wrist gleamed with scale, a snakeskin pattern revealed. He thought hard about unbroken skin and slowly his own settled back to ordinary flesh. Sometimes control came easily, though he could not say why. He suspected Sister Jerome Grace was of help. She had never shied over his strangeness and that was a comfort.

  “There is a place I want to show you in Chicago,” she said and eased her hold on him. She lifted the map from where it had fallen and turned it to the side containing the train’s stops. “Here.” She touched a city resting against the edge of a large lake.

  “What place?” Jackson asked. Every place outside the windows called to him.

  “We will have an afternoon there, and you will see.”

  §

  If the train had given Jackson cause to shout, Chicago gave him cause to gape. Sister Jerome Grace said they called it the White City, but everything bled red around the edges for him — red with blood and life. He was a young man of books and lessons, of a life lived within specific confines, and to see things he had only read about had a way of stealing his speech. He disliked this reaction, but couldn’t force himself to speak. The hospital yard had been his chief exposure to grass and living things, the hospital roof where he learned the sky with its clouds and stars, and that other places lay beyond what confined him. He would count the buildings while feeding the pigeons, but never came to count them all. It was the same with Chicago and the Colombian Exposition.

  It was called a world’s fair and devastation flooded Jackson at the sight of its marvels. They would have the afternoon, the sisters said, but no more because the train was scheduled to leave. Jackson knew there was more to this place than could be discovered in a few scant hours. Two children were united with their foster parents at the train station and Jackson’s throat closed tight when those same parents told the kids the fair would be there through October. There was plenty of time.

  How time could be both in abundance and such dire need confused Jackson. Much as he found himself able to shut the strangest parts of himself away because they frightened him too much, he buttoned up the confusion too. The fair soon had its way with him, no matter that his slight time would be spent with a group of nuns and children he stood heads above. The children ignored him, as they always had, so Jackson soaked in everything else.

  The Ferris wheel against the sky reinforced how small Jackson felt outside the hospital walls. Watching the wheel disgorge people from its enclosed cars confirmed any one of them might be swallowed by something larger at any moment. It solidified his belief that the world was full of larger monsters than he — what was a little bit of snakeskin in the face of such a place as this? When he and the sisters and children piled into a windowed car to ride the wheel up and around, he held his breath, half thinking they would be flung into the clouds. He didn’t fear such a thing, but rather welcomed it, until he saw Sister Jerome Grace’s face.

  “I never even go onto the roof of the hospital,” she whispered. Her hands curled around the rail encircling the car’s interior until her nails gleamed white at the edges.

  “It’s not so awful.” He noticed the way she had trouble even looking out the windows as the car rose. “Look forward, not back.” He turned her as much as her grip on the rail would allow, so she might see the car rise over the fair and into the sky. The sister floundered.

  “And then just move with the car.” As it lifted over the top of the wheel, Jackson turned her again, but the car paused there, to give everyone a good look at the fair spreading in every direction around them. It was its own little city, wholly contained if ephemeral. Jackson supposed it was part of the beauty; like the stars above the hospital on a clear night, it would be lost, no matter that others had more leisure to explore it.

  The children in the car jumped, which made it swing and the sisters swoon. But Sister Jerome Grace smiled now and Jackson let go of her. She turned when the car moved once more, so she could watch their descent along the backside of the wheel.

  “Would have been worse on a roof,” Jackson said as they streamed from the car and the sister steadied herself with a hand on the door, as if she had been at sea for years. At her puzzled frown, his mouth split in a smile. “The roof doesn’t move, but pigeons shit an awful lot.”

  Sister Jerome Grace laughed, a hand covering her mouth when Sisters Mary Luke and Roberta looked askance. The sister fell into line with the others and Jackson dropped to the back, to trail behind the way he often did in the hospital, knowing no one wanted to hold his hand and skip toward the next destination as they did with others. The children paired off as they had been taught, hands clasped while others pointed here and there.

  Jackson’s gaze wandered until it settled upon the striped canvas hanging near the great wheel. The canvas enclosed a hidden space and without a word to any of the sisters, Jackson made for it. Up close, the canvas was sloppy, red paint striped down fabric the color of old bone.

  A trio of young ladies clad in ivory day dresses emerged from a flap in the canvas, two of them supporting one who had swooned. Jackson stared at them and they did not see him, so he took his time in looking. They were as strange to him as this place, older than any other girl he knew but for the sisters, and the sisters didn’t count. Not in that way. The two girls dragged the third toward a log nearby and sat her down, fanning her face. She didn’t seem inclined to rouse, chin bent to chest, dark brown curls brushing pale cheeks.

  One of them saw him then. “Can you get her some water, please?”

  Jackson stepped instead through the flap the girls had emerged from. Whatever lay inside the tent had a hold of him and he wouldn’t be turned. He heard a hasty curse from the girls as the flap fell closed then a hand slid over his shoulder.

  “Come in, come in.”

  The tent smelled like the paint used to stripe the canvas, but other scents mingled: dark earth, rot, wet. The man who welcomed him was a sight in a gold coat, crisp white shirt, and crimson vest beneath. A watch chain gleamed at his belly, a mustache curling over his smiling mouth. Jackson was not well acquainted with men outside the priests of the foundling hospital, but this man had an oily feel to him much as they did. He wanted to sell something, wanted a belief drawn into young hands for coddling.

  “We’ve wonders to amaze and astonish, but if you’ve a delicate stomach, best go the way those young ladies did,” the hawker warned.

  Jackson’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t imagine what they might have seen, but wanted to take his turn at it. “I’m no young lady,” he said, and the man’s smile deepened.

  “Well then.” The man stepped back and inclined his head, as if to say good day. Jackson turned, attention already elsewhere. Someone cried in alarm, but this didn’t deter Jackson. It only made him more curious, silencing the normal voice of panic inside him.

  More c
anvas inside the tent was suspended from the ceiling to create hallways and walls. This canvas was unpainted and smelled musty. Smelled of shit, too, as if perhaps it had once enclosed animals, though what animals Jackson could not venture to say, picturing only tame things such as horses.

  He rounded a corner into the first small room and stared at the table in its center. Upon it stood a jar the size of a cask; the jar was filled with clouded liquid, a blooming flower suspended within. The flower was the color of a New York sunrise in summer before the day grew too warm. Jackson strode closer, to the table’s edge where he crouched to get a better look.

  He wondered if Alice knew this upon entering Wonderland, seeing everything she could not name. If, when she looked at one object, a flower, but abruptly realized it was something else. Not a thing grown in the ground, but rather a thing grown in a body.

  The clouded liquid supported not a flower, but a small body. It was no larger than a newborn pup curled in on itself. But where a pup could only curl once, chin to chest much as the young lady outside, this form curled into itself countless times. Where its chin was, Jackson could not say, for it was lost in a froth of cold flesh. There was a tail, or perhaps it was an arm, because there were three perfectly formed fingers at its end.

  Jackson’s lips parted. He had no idea what it was, but could not look away. Sounds deeper in the tent eventually drew him on, another cry and a rustle as if someone had been caught before they could hit the ground.

  There were twelve rooms in all and Jackson visited each, startled each time. The most startling, which was hard to quantify he decided later, was the woman in the cage. Her skin shone with the color of rotted green apples, bare hip and breast curving upward in shadow. She didn’t have legs the way a normal woman must (Jackson had wondered, of course, what might be hidden under all skirts, perhaps it was this, ever this), but large, scaled viper coils slithering over the ground. Such coils were painfully familiar to him. He wriggled his feet in his tight-laced shoes as if to confirm he was holding his shape. He wouldn’t let the beast out, he wouldn’t.