The Kraken Sea

by E. Catherine Tobler

  “Cressida said she didn’t have to do anything beyond the lock. What —”

  Foster strode through the doorway and Jackson refused to follow. But the lock had begun to knit itself back together, the door swinging shut under an unseen weight. He hurried through, his bones shaking when the door closed. The lock latched.

  “She must come,” Foster said. This was not apology, only fact.

  In the small space, Foster’s voice was very close. Jackson looked back, but couldn’t see the door. Nor did any path seem to lay ahead of them. It was little more than a closet, until the floor fell out from under them. They did not plummet long through the darkness — it was more a roll from one space into another. Jackson was dizzy, unable to tell up from down until he became aware of spongy ground underfoot.

  Everything was gray at first glance, but the longer Jackson looked, the more he saw. Logic told him they were only under Kotler’s Bakery — in a closet, they had stumbled down some stairs, his mind tried to compensate even as he knew these things to be lies.

  There had been no ocean journey, nor shadowed wood or glowing goddess with crooked fingers, only a locked door in the bakery’s basement, but they found themselves in the underworld, rivers twisting in the near distance. Jackson bit the inside of his cheek, staring.

  Five rivers were said to flow through the underworld. These five rivers spread through the whole of the known world, twisting like snakes back and forth upon themselves in the deepest hollows underground, sometimes swallowing each other, sometimes spitting each other out. These rivers joined in a great whirlpool moving with the sound of bones on bones. Jackson saw this with his own eyes and a frantic recognition rose within, even though he was certain he had never been here. He didn’t want to be here now, but understood this was why Cressida had brought him. She needed him for this.

  Near to hand was a waterfall, but the black waters flowed up and not down, as though the entire world had been tipped, and perhaps it had. The sky snowed ash, were it a sky and not the underside of the world, and winged creatures engaged in battle. Other figures on ground and in the water, all battling. For what, Jackson didn’t know. Foster struggled over the writhing ground, carrying Gussie over his shoulder, ever toward the black rivers.

  “Leave her!” Jackson hollered, but Foster refused. “Give me the girl or the box!”

  Nothing was improved by having Gussie back in his arms. She stared at him, her blue eyes a furious misery. Her teeth tightened around the cloth Foster had tied over her mouth, and she growled — growled like she was a beast and not a human girl, and Jackson had to admire her. She bucked and didn’t stop until he hoisted her over his shoulder.

  “I’m not sorry,” Jackson said, “even if I am.” He was both things at once — not sorry because he and Foster had business here, but sorry because he knew what it was to be thrust into a world one didn’t understand. Or want to be in. Jackson licked the ash from his lips, but tasted only Mae there. He hadn’t seen her since that night — four days.

  Foster trudged on. He was intent on the river, no matter the people who battled near its shore or in its depths. Jackson followed, the air growing damp the closer they came to the water. The ash stuck to his cheeks and eyelashes, but recoiled from the box Foster wore. The man looked as though he carried an invisible umbrella, so did the ash avoid him.

  The people at the river were not living people, nor monsters; they were the undead. Some had coins in the place of eyes, while others carried coins in their mouths. Some had no coin at all, but all were trapped where they stood and so chose to argue about it. Some waded into the water, but were quickly consumed by the soft ground, swallowed up as though they had never been. As one was swallowed, the level of the river rose, bleeding farther across the spongy ground.

  Foster stumbled, sodden shoes catching in a spongy loop on the ground. He went down hard on both knees, the box he carried slamming into the back of his head. Jackson lunged and Gussie took advantage to buck out of his arms. Jackson couldn’t hold her; she joined Foster on the disgusting ground. Jackson stared at the two of them in bafflement as the undead wandered silent and slick with wet ash.

  “This …”

  Foster’s voice was only a rasp, a sliver of itself. He lifted a hand, a hand beginning to go green around the edges. He reached backward, but his hand closed on ashen air. The ash did not cling to him, but once lifted his hand collapsed in on itself, flesh buckling as though sucked away. Jackson could see the hard outline of bone under the tautly pulled skin.

  “Fos —”

  “This!” Foster’s hand was wet slop when it connected with the metal box he wore. Blood and melting muscle smeared the side of the box as his arm fell to his side.

  Jackson ignored Gussie’s wriggling — the way she was tied, she might get a few feet, but no more. She was not melting or turning green around the edges. Jackson moved to Foster’s side, kneeling to untie the rope that held the box to the rapidly melting body.

  “This … will stop him,” Foster whispered through his ruined lips.

  Jackson pulled the ropes away and the box rolled into his arms, to rest heavy against his chest like a small child. The box shrieked the closer Jackson got to the river and then he knew. Shadows. Foster meant to call the kraken. But what might that beast do here?

  He hesitated, looking back at Foster. His body looked more like a melted candle and Jackson stood torn between doing this thing and saving his friend. Scooping him up and carting him back to the bakery basement. But the look in Foster’s eyes was resolute. This must be done, so Jackson staggered over the spongy ground until he reached the river’s edge.

  He did what Foster had done in the room below Macquarie’s: he set the box in the water and pried its lid open. When the blackness emerged, it came again from the bottom of the box. Jackson did not move away before one of those awful shadow hands slid up his own leg. Here in the water, the seeping coldness of the creature held an electric shock. It would swallow him, and perhaps did carry a piece of him away before he kicked the hand and skittered away from box and beasts. Did they laugh? Jackson would have sworn it was so.

  The blackness did not have long to wait. The water had never been motionless, churned by the restless ground itself, but now, something new spurred it to motion. It was as if the very water itself wanted to crawl out of its hellish banks, to escape the thing crawling from the depths. The ground vibrated with its approach and though the wandering undead looked, they never ceased moving as if in concert away from the shore they had once fought so dearly to reach.

  The kraken came with an obscene speed, bursting from the river to send black water inland. While it claimed the box and its inky contents, it also seemed keenly aware of what it was; its massive eye looked around, as if for a danger Jackson had not yet perceived. Its tentacles and arms writhed in the air to deflect any incoming attack. It was then Jackson realized what a fool he was. Why bring the kraken here to feed it only shadows? There was something else.

  The something else came from the heart of the ebon whirlpool. It appeared no more than a man, for this figure possessed two legs, two arms, and an upright body. But as it neared, pulling itself through the air as though air were a corporeal thing it could control, Jackson saw otherwise. This figure was black as night and its head was insectoid; from its shoulders, the head rose as a gleaming black carapace. Wings spread outward from where his cheeks should have been, vicious mandibles snapping the foul air.

  The kraken enveloped the figure with one long tentacle. From toes to chest, the man was wrapped as he emerged from the water, dragged closer for inspection; the kraken did not blindly shove this man into his mouth. There was a curiosity, perhaps a respect, which sent a chill down Jackson’s spine. The kraken knew what the man was about and weren’t intelligent monsters the worst?

  The insect man was not alone; two women came to his aid, these painfully known to Jackson. He stared as Mae and Beth flung themselves into the fray. None of them stood a chance — the
kraken was the size of three mountains in this place, writhing and black and the worst thing Jackson had ever seen. Yet when Mae touched it, the beast released a bellow like none Jackson had heard. Its flesh shuddered, the way the ground did with an earthquake. Mae carried her whip, and Beth her knife; the whip lifted the beast into the ashen sky, Mae pulling until the entire length of kraken was freed from the river.

  Wet tentacles lashed the air; the air itself was marked by their passage, gore streaking the sky. They lashed Mae and Beth, too, enveloped them, and soon the women were coated in blood, slime, and the muck of the river. Their cries carried in the damp air and from the wet darkness loped a dozen lions, as if responding to Mae’s call. They went no farther than the riverbank though, flinching from the touch of the water.

  Jackson pushed himself to his feet, having no idea what he thought he might do. They meant to kill the kraken because the kraken meant to kill that man — the man who controlled this underworld.

  And Jackson stood weaponless. He had called the kraken to this battle, and now … Now.

  There was no choosing sides; it was instinct that drove him to call the monster inside himself, to change as he never had before. If the kraken was the size of three mountains, so was Jackson. Knowing only the need to do it, Jackson hit the kraken head on, tentacles wrapping over tentacles. Jackson sucked every whipping length inside his grip so Mae’s whip could tighten on the kraken’s head. The whip had left a scar, and Beth’s knife gleamed with the brightest light in this land as she drew where her sister had marked.

  The blade sliced through the flesh as though it were only air, the kraken coming apart piece by piece. Jackson pulled more tightly until severed tentacles fell into the river. The water boiled beneath them, as the massive kraken head deflated within the circle of Mae’s whip, of Jackson’s coils.

  They all tumbled free, shrieking at the touch of the river as they landed. The water was scalding, fire and ice both as it ate away at Jackson’s scaled flesh. He was a trembling wreck when he reached shore again, half boy and half beast.

  “Mae.”

  She hauled herself to her feet amid the roaming undead who lingered at the riverbank. All was confusion, until Mae reached for the nearest person and drew her hand into their guts. The world moved again and Mae cried, tears tracking clean paths through her filthy cheeks. Jackson didn’t understand, not until Beth came with her knife and cut the threads. Not until the insect man hauled the body close, and into the boat resting on the shore. One by one, they tended the undead, cutting the threads and filling the boat.

  Doing the work they had been unable to do because of the kraken.

  §

  Jackson hauled what remained of Foster from the ground in his own coat. He was not wholly gone and Jackson had some measure of hope he would come back to his proper self on the other side of the door. He kept Gussie tied until they reached that door, then pressed her grimy fingers over the locking mechanism again. The door unlatched with a soft click.

  Jackson stuck his foot in the door, as he untied Gussie with surprisingly steady hands. The rope binding her was slick and the work was slow, but he suspected it was easier than the task left to Mae, Beth, and Charon. The undead on the riverbank only multiplied as they cut threads and ushered people onto the boat. The waters had calmed and Charon poled across the river as easily as Jackson drew breath.

  Gussie ripped her hands out of Jackson’s grip and waited until he removed the cloth around her mouth before sinking her slimed fist into his face. He grunted and staggered into the door, pain exploding from his left eye, down his nose, and into his jaw. Without thinking of the muck that covered him too, Jackson pressed his hand over the flaring pain, and got a nose full of the underworld for his troubles.

  “God fucking damn,” he muttered and let his hand fall away. He stared at her, but had nothing to say. If this bakery were her family’s own, and they welcomed Mae even though Cressida’s protection said they should not, she knew damn well what the basement held. All this time.

  He said nothing, but pulled the door shut as he headed back to the underworld. He would worry about getting out later — if it was a human touch that unlocked the door, there were plenty of humans left on the riverbank. He would worry instead about all that was to come before he left the underworld. He and Mae and Beth had slaughtered the kraken and he felt sure this was not what Cressida meant when she sent them on this mission.

  The undead troubled him, but not so much as the living on these banks. He approached the scene slowly, unable to ignore the care Mae and Beth and even Charon took in their work. The people wandering the riverbank had ended their normal lives, but a journey remained ahead. They were people from every walk of life, the poor and rich alike. The work done by the trio was almost reverent, threads drawn out of each body, measured to the perfect length in Mae’s hands before Beth severed them. Charon, like a portal of darkness at the end of the line, helped each person onto his boat. Sometimes there were coins. Most times there were not.

  How long had these people waited? How long had this work gone undone? Why had Foster fallen to pieces? Jackson’s gaze came to rest on Mae as she worked. He wanted to ask, but it was strange to speak in this place of the dead. Speech was a thing for the living. Even so, Mae’s eyes found his and there was a trace of a smile on her mouth when she broke the silence.

  “Some are not suited to the underworld,” she said, drawing another length of threads out. “Foster’s kind is acquainted with acquisition, not loss. He cannot give any part of himself to this place, so this place takes what it will, without thought.”

  The weight of questions rested between them. Mae nodded, as though she heard everything he didn’t ask, but kept to her work. Jackson didn’t press. The crowd dwindled, the undead calming and wandering less. Those who had not been here so long, Mae told him later, would not feel such a need to cross the river.

  Charon was pushing another full boat across the water when Mae at last let herself rest. From shore, Charon’s lantern sent eerie patterns of light across the stirred waters; the ash continued to fall, sticking to everything, yet never accumulating.

  “There’s things to talk about,” he said as he dragged his hands across his cheeks. A layer of ash came away and he flung it to the ground where it landed with a wet slop.

  Mae wrapped her arms around herself and Jackson thought to offer her his coat, but only then realized he had used it to transport Foster back to the other side. The longer he watched her though, he couldn’t tell if she was actually cold. Maybe she just longed for arms around her. He didn’t move, uncertain.

  “Plenty,” Mae agreed and pulled her attention from the water. “The kraken — ”

  “Was Cressida’s. Saw it in the cellars with Foster one night, watched it feed. Don’t know how this place connects though?”

  “Water goes where it will,” Mae said. “And these waters wrap the world, so why wouldn’t it connect? Everything is tied together if you trace the line back far enough.”

  She tilted her head and Jackson noted the exhaustion in her eyes.. What was it like, he wondered, to hold all those threads and determine where they should be severed?

  “The kraken prevented us from doing the bulk of our work. Gussie tried to help, but there was just too much. Death never stops.”

  Jackson nodded, wiping more ash from his skin. It was bothersome and cold, like jelly as he swept it away. “Cressida did that then.” It wasn’t a question, but Mae nodded.

  “She offers the bakery protection, so feels the protection extends here.” Mae looked around the gray world in which they stood, the light upon the river having dwindled to a pinprick. “Surely you have seen the things she does. It’s more than just territory with her. It’s the attempt to live forever, to stop death, despite the fact that I already know when her threads will be cut.”

  Jackson didn’t ask when. He could feel the knowledge resting like a warm hand against the back of his neck, the way Cressida’s own had done
countless times. He thought of the heads, the strange ritual room, and nodded, having no other way to explain these things. He knew and he pushed the knowledge away, closed it behind its own door. Later, he told himself.

  “She strengthens her hand against fate itself,” Mae continued. “She adopts the strange in the world, training them to fight for her against all reason.”

  She reached for him then, her ash-wet hand sliding against his. It was electric, twice as painful as the touch of the shadow creatures. Jackson did not move away from it, but wrapped his hand around her own.

  “She saved me from a life lived behind walls,” he said. His throat had gone tight, but from the contact with Mae or the memory of the hospital’s walls he could not say.

  “She did,” Mae said. She lifted their joined hands, smearing more muck into his palm. “This will open the door for you.”

  Jackson’s lip curled a little as the realization of what the ash in the air was hit him. The remains of all those lives. He looked beyond Mae, to Charon who helped another person into his boat. “Where do they go from here?”

  Mae glanced back, too. The more recent arrivals were more reluctant to hand their coins over. Jackson wondered what Charon did with the coins, what Foster would make of them if he could tolerate this place.

  “Across the river,” Mae said, and her voice had gone softer than Jackson had heard it yet. “I don’t know what lies on the other side. It’s not for me to know. Beth knows and never speaks of it.” She looked back to him, her expression grave. “Sister Jerome Grace doesn’t even know of this place, for she is the start of all things, not the end. Go tend to Foster now, hmm? And Gussie.”

  Jackson never believed he should apologize for his friendship with Gussie — perhaps because it now lay in tatters, a thing that would never be, or perhaps because he now understood Mae’s anger at the sight of him with the human. It had been about this place, not about holding hands and sharing pastries. Hadn’t it? Was it possible Mae longed for what he did, a life lived normally?