The Hunted

by Anna Leonard

  While he went to fetch it, she leaned against the counter of the post office, her head turned just enough that she could watch people passing on the sidewalk beyond the plate-glass window of the storefront. She saw two friends walking past on the other side of the street going into the café, and realized that she hadn’t seen either of them in weeks.

  A dark-haired man walked past, on this side of the street, right in front of the post office, and Beth felt herself come to attention, somehow. A stranger with thick black hair down to his collar and a slender-hipped and yet sturdy build that caught her eye.

  “No.” It wasn’t the stranger from the beach. It couldn’t be. Or it could but even if it was, so what? Beth licked her lips, suddenly tasting salt and sea-musk on her skin, as though she had been out swimming, or washed her face with seawater. It reminded her of her dream, and her internal temperature rose several notches. The flush she felt inside was more annoying; what was she, sixteen again, to get so flustered at the sight of a good-looking stranger, dressed and ambulatory, or otherwise? And what the hell was she doing, walking out of the post office just to get a better look at him? Hello? Earth to Elizabeth?

  Her feet weren’t listening to her head, but she moved too slowly. By the time she went out the door, the bell jingling overhead, he was gone.

  Beth stared down the street, wondering at herself, and the aching disappointment she felt. Was she that hard up, that a good-looking stranger got her juices running? Pitiful. But there was something about the figure, even glimpsed out of the corner of her eye…She had to fight the urge to run after him, ask him his name, anything to get him to notice her. She’d never felt any pull that hard, like the lure of fine chocolate at three in the morning, multiplied by ten.

  “Oh, he was pretty, wasn’t he?”

  Beth flushed, and laughed at being caught—and by Sarah, of all people.

  “Is the town starting a new beautification project?” she asked her old schoolmate and current Beautification Board member, who had also stopped on the sidewalk, apparently to watch the stranger walk by. Humor was better than admitting she had been caught in the act of goggling. “Because if so,” she continued, “I gotta say, I approve.”

  “I wish,” Sarah said. “But we’d have to raise taxes too much to afford that kind of pretty. You know who he is?”

  “No….” Honesty forced her to add, “I think he’s our newest resident, the guy who washed up on shore.”

  “Really? Is he single?”

  “You’re not,” Beth pointed out, fighting a surge of bitterness in her gut that surprised her. Was the eggroll suddenly disagreeing with her stomach?

  “Oh. Right. Darn. And I was supposed to meet the hubby and the brats ten minutes ago. Don’t be such a stranger!”

  Beth promised, and then the postmaster waved from the counter, a large brown envelope in his hand. She went back in to pick up her packages, but her mind remained on the stranger in the street. Who was he? Why had such a quick glimpse of a stranger gotten her so worked up?

  Maybe she had been running a fever, some kind of twenty-four-hour bug. That would explain everything, the weird twitches, the visual fluctuations, even the acid churning in her stomach. Maybe.

  She walked out of the post office, her mail in hand, and looked across the street at the café where her friends had grabbed a table. She could see them inside, gesturing and laughing over their coffee. It was still early. Her bike was still locked up outside the diner. She should retrieve it and her safety helmet, go back to the house and get some work done. But even as she thought that, clutching her mail in one hand, Beth found herself torn between responsibility and a renewed restlessness.

  Should, should… Suddenly, she didn’t care so much about “should.”

  She tucked the packages into her bag and stepped off the curb, walking across the street to the café. She would take some time off, have a nice pot of tea with friends, instead of her usual solitary coffee. All in the name of taking care of her health, of course…

  And absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that their window seat would be the perfect place to spot the stranger, if he walked by again.

  Inland, across the bridge that connected the island to the mainland, in a small storefront office, a landline connected, and an old man picked up on the second ring. “Yes?” He didn’t identify himself. Anyone who had this number was calling for only one reason, and names weren’t required.

  What they did wasn’t illegal, technically. But only technically.

  “You’re certain?” he asked, pulling out a notepad and writing down the details. There was a plastic sheet under the page, preventing an impression being made on the sheet underneath. The technicality they worked under was best never tested in court.

  The voice on the other end of the line was quite certain. The circumstances suggested, blood work confirmed, and he would like his bonus now, please.

  “No sighting bonus until our team confirms,” the man on the receiving end snapped, exasperated. Freelancers, bah. Every stray surfer, they tried to claim. “You have your stipend to tide you over, same as always. If you’re as certain as you claim, then the bonus will be cut soon enough. We will be in touch.”

  He hung up the phone, and then picked it up again and dialed a single digit. There hadn’t been a verified sighting here in almost two decades. But before then, this had been a major harvesting area. You didn’t take chances, not with so much money involved.

  “This is Station 22. I need to schedule a Hunt.”

  Chapter 4

  The storm passed, but the restlessness remained. This morning, Beth didn’t even pretend to be exercising, but instead found a large rock overlooking the ocean and climbed out onto it, letting her legs dangle off the edge exactly the way they warned teenagers about doing. A carafe of coffee beside her, and the remains of a cinnamon Danish on her lap, Beth stared out at the morning waves and tried to capture some of her usual serenity.

  Now, that serenity felt more like death, and the camera on the opposite side of her, the object that usually gave her context for her moods, remained capped and unused.

  She had dreamed again last night. Not an erotic dream this time, but a sad one. A dream of loss, and longing, and lose-lose scenarios. On waking, the details had fled. But as she stared into the gray-blue of the Atlantic, the memory stirred…

  His daughter was crying….

  In the dream, it was a lovely summer’s morning, the sun barely breaking over the rooftops of the village. A man stood in the surf, the cold blue-green Atlantic waters washing about his ankles, the gritty wet sand moving below his bare feet, a fish braver or more foolish than the rest of its school nibbling curiously at the rough fabric of his trousers. The rest of his clothing he had left, clean and neatly folded, on the bed in the cottage. When his son, his Isaac, grew to a man’s height, he could wear them.

  Or they could be passed on, still fashionable, if Sarah took another husband.

  The thought should not be a hook in his gut, so surprisingly sharp and painful. Was he then so easily replaced? He had never meant to linger so long, never meant to make a life here, never meant to create children…Isaac and baby Ruth. His children, his and Sarah’s.

  Bright-eyed Sarah. Fearless Sarah, who faced down storms and sickness with such calm courage and practical sure-handedness. Who had found him wracked up in the rocks after a bad storm four years before and taken him in, nursed him to health, and asked no questions when he slipped out of her bed and down to the sea—and asked no questions when he came back, wrapping sea-damp arms around her, kissing away her tears with salt-streaked lips. Who ignored the tsking of the village women to bear his children, sell his daily catch of fish in the market: who had every reason to believe that she would grow old with him at her side.

  The thought pained him, that he would disappoint her so. And yet…

  Come home, the sea whispered to him, as it had for a week or more, now, until he could no longer resist. It is time to c
ome home.

  He had loved Sarah, their family, as well as he could, as much and as long as a mortal could be loved by one such as he. Sarah knew that. They had their season, and more. It was time, past time for him to go. That was how all stories such as theirs ended.

  Come home.

  He missed his colony, the sounds of his kin. And yet…

  “I can’t.” He didn’t know who he was speaking to, what he was denying. His feet moved him deeper into the water, even as his heart tied him to the land.

  His brave Sarah, crying.

  His daughter was crying.

  Come home.

  The water always takes back its own.

  He took another step, and stopped.

  “Not this time. Tethys, forgive me, not this time.”

  A stillness in the waves, the water chilling against his skin, urging him in.

  “I…cannot. My home is here now.”

  The stillness broke, the sea’s voice replaced by another. There is a price for what you ask….

  “Anything. For them…for them anything I will pay.”

  The voice went on as though it had not heard him. There is a price…that all must pay. Forever.

  The dream, the memory faded and disappeared, yet forever echoed in Beth’s ears, a sense of inexplicable loss settling in her soul, and a single salty tear escaped, unnoticed, from the corner of her eye as she stared out into the hypnotic flow of the ocean.

  Dylan wanted to swear. Four days. Four days since he had given in to the itch, left the safety of his home and swum into human lands, the totally human world. This small village was close enough to his own home that he could adapt, but the bits and pieces he caught, in the ads and conversations around him, were overwhelming.

  Still, the basics were always the same. Food, shelter and clothing came first. Dylan pushed his selections across the counter, and watched as the clerk totaled the cost of each into a sum. He had enough to cover it, but the fold of bills in his pocket was not as thick as it had been only a few days before. Still, he needed the new underwear and socks, as well as the two long-sleeved pullover shirts, and a pair of cotton pants the same faded green as the knapsack he had picked out to hold it all.

  Army surplus, the clerk had said when he picked it up, and that triggered another set of memories in Dylan’s head. Men, and things exploding into the water. Men swimming, being pulled to land. Some of them going away, after, and some of them staying. His great-grandfather had been one of those men pulled to safety by his great-grandmother, according to family stories, Dylan remembered now. A human sailor: one of the ones who stayed. That was the source of the memories, then.

  He welcomed the memories, and the information they brought; his people were seal-kin, after all, not seals. This confusing land was as much his legacy as the ocean and wind, for all that he had never explored it much before now.

  He paid the final charge and shoved everything into the knapsack, adjusting the straps to fit comfortably over his shoulder. “Thanks,” he said to the clerk, who paused in shutting the register’s drawer to smile in return. “No problem. Have a good day, mister.”

  Leaving the store, Dylan paused in front of another storefront window, drawn by something in the display. Bright sticks of color, each the size of one of his fingers, wrapped in paper and just begging to be picked up and drawn across a surface. Like the chalks he used at home, but softer, creamier. It was only a hobby, his drawing, but he missed it.

  He mentally counted how much cash he had left from the anklet, after buying clothing and paying for the room, then looked at the chalks again. Not enough. Not if he didn’t find work soon. Dylan didn’t want to rely on Dr. Alden’s charity, but he didn’t know, anymore, how long finding Her would take, and… And he could almost feel the chalks under his fingers, could almost see the swaths of color they would leave behind.

  It was stupid. He was here to find his mate, and then go home. That was what drove him. The sense of urgency moved within him, reminding him that he didn’t have forever. He had enough paints and brushes at home, and he would be back with them soon enough, once his mission was done.

  And yet, suddenly he found himself inside the store, buying the sticks, and a pad of thick white paper, and a fat brush with soft bristles, to smooth the colors together in ways he could already envision in his mind. The thought made him smile.

  “Nice choice. You planning to do some sketching, while you’re here?” The woman standing next to him in line barely came up to his shoulder, with bright blue eyes and white hair sleeked back into a long, sophisticated-looking braid.

  “I might.” He hadn’t planned to, but while they didn’t soothe the restlessness in his blood any, the feel of the sticks—Cray-Pas, they were called on the box—made the tightness in his shoulders relax a little. Drawing always helped him think, and he needed to think, and to plan. He was already realizing that this village was larger than he had thought at first, with more people coming in and out. How was he to find his mate? Simply wandering around sniffing for her had seemed a good idea that first morning, but it wasn’t going to be that easy, he knew already. Standing in the green square outside and bellowing his claim might work for the old bulls, but he couldn’t quite see that working for a female, human or seal-kin.

  The woman made a noise through her nose, like a laugh but not quite, and Dylan looked curiously at her. Something about the way she looked at him…

  She avoided his gaze and moved off, apparently abandoning in a small red basket the assortment of brushes that she had planned to buy.

  Strange. Humans were very, very strange.

  He paid for the supplies with his precious cash and left the store, trying to decide if he could fit the white plastic bag of supplies in his knapsack along with the clothing, or if the shoving required would crease the pad. Finally he decided that he couldn’t, and resigned himself to carrying the bag in his hand.

  “Hey. You. Dylan, right?”

  He turned slowly, still not comfortable with the sound of the name he had given himself, even though his race-memory said it meant “of the sea” and should therefore fit him as well as any. “Yes?”

  The man who had hailed him was tall and skinny, sun-browned skin stretched tight over bones. “Thought so. You move like a local but you don’t look like one. Don’t sound like one, neither. Anyway, Mike said you were handy with a tool kit?”

  Mike was the innkeeper, Mike Brandt.

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. You need work and I’ve some things need fixin’. Shames me to say it but I never got the hang of hammer and nails. And I’m too cheap to pay a professional to do it, and here you come along like it was all planned to be. Oh, I’m Nathan,” he added, naming himself almost as an afterthought, part of the running flow of words. “Come on, come on, I’ll show you what I need done, and we can argue over how little I’m going to pay you. I’m cheap—cheap and poor. But there’s lunch involved. I can’t hammer but I damn well can cook.”

  Dylan juggled the bag and knapsack to more comfortable positions for carrying, and followed Nathan down the street, as helpless in the talking man’s wake as a newborn seal pup in an undertow.

  He hated that feeling as he had never hated anything in his life, hated being dependent on others, hated not being able to simply go through the town until he found Her, swept Her up in his arms and took Her away with him.

  That thought made him shake his head in self-disgust. He might be new at this wooing thing, but he wasn’t an idiot. That would get him slapped, if not worse, by even the most forgiving of seal-kin women. No reason to think human women would be any different.

  He had to find her, first, and then figure out the best way to approach her. Find out what she was like, what she liked. Then he could woo her properly.

  Home, he would have brought her a particularly tasty, fresh-caught fish or colorful deep-sea shells, made fragrant reed baskets or whimsical sand structures…. Maybe she liked paper drawings? Or needed something re
built?

  Seal bulls had it easier. But they also had to go through it every season, searching through the available females of the colony.

  The one thing Dylan knew was that he had to be careful, out among humans. That lesson was taught early on, along with the dangers of sharks, barracudas and riptides. It wasn’t all swimming and seducing, the way the songs claimed. There were more dangers on land than on sea. Humans hated what was different—hated, and envied it. And all too often, killed it.

  So he needed to be careful. Careful, but not so careful he wasted any more time, and risked losing her scent.

  While he was trying to figure out how to ask what he wanted, they arrived at their destination: a storefront with “Eat Here. You Won’t Regret It” in red lights, under a larger wooden sign proclaiming the space a diner named Apollo’s.

  “After you,” Nathan said, holding open the glass door. There was no jingle of bells or chimes overhead, unlike most of the other stores Dylan had gone into, but the wall of sound was a pleasant unbroken hum, even as the people seated inside paused to see who had come in before going back to their lunch.

  “Over here,” Nathan said, bringing Dylan with him to the counter. Dylan took one look and winced, all other thoughts going out of his head.

  Nathan hadn’t been kidding when he said that he wasn’t handy with tools. The mess he had made out of something as simple as fixing the hinges on the counter made Dylan flinch, and before he had time to think about what he might charge, the hatch was removed, the hinges unscrewed, and he was ordering Nathan to go find him some sandpaper, wood oil and rust remover, as well as a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.

  Nathan got all of those things, plus a large Coke, which he set on the counter next to Dylan, and watched the younger man start sanding down the area around the hinges, removing the splintered areas. “You really do know what you’re doing.”

  “Mmm.” Dylan wasn’t much for talking, but Nathan clearly was. The human leaned against the other side of the counter and watched him work, when he wasn’t shouting orders to the rest of the staff. The café, Apollo’s, seemed to cater mostly to old men and teenagers, even though there were framed watercolors of children on the wall, and soft music playing in the background.