Lampfish of Twill

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  Eric’s thoughts about lampfish were especially vivid on the road that morning because of the fish he had seen only two days before at Cantrip’s Point. Twice the usual size it had seemed when it appeared suddenly, floating in the water off the rocks at dusk. He’d been crouched on a ledge, trying to mend a small net that had snagged and torn during the day. Quickly, he’d rolled onto his stomach and peered over the ledge just in time to see the enormous body pass directly beneath him, trailing mustaches like long silken scarves.

  The creature rubbed dreamily against an underwater rock. Then, with the unhurried grace of a descending hot air balloon, it began to sink. Its form became a pink ripple under the water, then a shadow. A minute later, it disappeared into a dark place under the ledge.

  Not for several minutes did Eric stir. So unusual was it to come upon a lampfish hole, to actually see a lampfish entering its secret home, that he completely forgot about the net he was mending. And when he finally did lift himself off his stomach, he simply sat on the rock and stared out to sea.

  It is well-known on Twill’s coast that no fishcatcher can look at a lampfish without wanting to catch it. No sooner is one of the giant floaters spotted than the spotter rings a bell to signal those fishing nearby. Lampfish are too big and too fierce to catch alone, so every fishcatcher carries a powerful hand bell as part of the regular gear. Eric’s bell, which had been his mother’s, and his grandmother’s before, was stowed, at that moment, in an unused crab trap lying behind him on the rock. He knew he should jump up and go get it. But he didn’t. Instead, he looked over at Gully, who was nestled nearby on a tuft of grass.

  “This lampfish certainly lives in a convenient place,” he remarked in a casual voice.

  There was a pause, during which Sir Gullstone located a pesky gull louse under the feathers of one wing, and swallowed it decisively.

  “You know what?” Eric went on. “I bet we could catch this fish by ourselves if we wanted to.”

  The sea gull’s bill came around at this, and his lemon eyes seemed to examine, doubtfully, the thinness of his friend’s arms, the knobbiness of his knees. Perhaps they even peered inside his skull to detect a lunatic band of brain cells there.

  “Stop looking at me! I bet we could!” Eric protested. But he added immediately, “If we were crazy enough to try.”

  He understood the risks all too well. Through the years, the number of lampfish netted by a single pair of hands amounted to pitifully few. Everyone in Twickham knew the names of the heroes who had done it. As for those who had tried and failed—those drowned in their own nets or throttled by their own lines or beaten senseless by a fish’s thrashing body—their names sank and vanished into Twill’s bottomless past.

  What with all the dangers faced daily by people on the coast, the idea of choosing to hunt lampfish alone looked foolish to most. Moreover, it looked arrogant. To go specially courting trouble when everybody else was trying specially to avoid it showed the worst sort of pride.

  Once the thing had been done, though, once a lampfish had been caught, Twickham folk were so awestruck that they forgot to be angry. They raised the catcher up on their shoulders and marched him or her around town.

  They threw a great feast and celebration in honor of the survivor, whose name was engraved on a plaque on the town commons.

  “Con-grat-ul-ations!” they screamed and sang and chanted. Many had tears in their eyes. Then the bones of the lampfish, the rare and wonderful lampfish that had been caught by a single pair of hands, were put aside for safekeeping. Much as the town needed fishhooks, these bones were kept apart. They were carved into the figures of famous Twillian fishcatchers, and also into scenes depicting the great lampfish hunts in history, so that the heroes and their stories would never be forgotten.

  Never…be…forgotten. Eric stared into the water off the ledge. He wasn’t greedy or conceited or foolish. Of course he wasn’t. But:

  “This fish really wouldn’t be that hard to catch,” he had found himself explaining to Gully that afternoon at Cantrip’s Point. “His hole is right under us. Look, you can see it yourself. All we’d have to do is roll the big net down here and drop it over.”

  He’d explained it so many times (while Gullstone kept on looking doubtful—he could be a most stupid bird sometimes!) that at last Eric had been late for supper, which made Aunt Opal cross because it was his turn to do the cooking.…

  Out on the north road, Eric spat on his hands and drove the net trolley hard around a rugged curve. For two days he’d kept the hole at Cantrip’s Point a secret, turning over various problems in his head. Now a perfect day had dawned, and he knew he’d have to try for the lampfish alone.

  Ahead, the land flattened out and water came into view. The sun was just up. It hung low and red in the sky, like a great lampfish itself floating over the silver sea. A stream of rosy light poured from it, straight across the waves to Eric.

  The road crossed several open fields before its final plunge to Cantrip’s Point. Eric hurtled over one field, passed through a second, and was well into the last when he realized with a gulp that his mind had wandered. The trolley was approaching the plunge too fast. There was no time to change course.

  The cart struck the slope’s crest with an earsplitting whack. It soared for several feet through the air, hitting the hill’s downward side at a tremendous rate of speed. Eric was yanked off his feet. Somehow, he managed to right himself in back of the trolley. Then he dug his heels into the dirt to try to brake the cart. A spume of dust poured out behind him. The big net roared downhill. Only a few feet above the ledge, it came to a shrieking stop.

  Eric wiped the dirt out of his eyes and looked around in embarrassment to see if anyone had been watching. Luckily, the distant rocks seemed clear of fishcatchers. Even Gullstone had been left behind. The sky was empty. Eric was about to whistle for him when a faint gurgling sound caught his ear from the water under the ledge. He crept forward on the rock to see what was there.

  Below, a huge lampfish wallowed in seaweed. Perhaps the creature had been alarmed by the noise of the net trolley crashing downhill. It had stopped feeding and seemed to be waiting or listening for something. But shortly, it resumed the gentle nibbling of weed stalks that is the manner of all lampfish. Its mustaches twirled and spun in the waves. The rosy scales of its great round back blended perfectly with the rosy morning light. Eric never could have seen it if he had not been looking directly down. He let his breath out and tiptoed away to fetch the big net.

  “Yo-ho! Congratulations there!”

  The shout made him jump and whirl around.

  “Yo-ho! Almost lost your trolley overboard, and yourself as well, I see!” a voice crowed joyously. “I was watching from Strangle Point, next one up. Thought for a minute you weren’t going to make it!”

  Eric flushed. “Of course I was going to make it.” He scowled at the approaching figure.

  It was an old fishcatcher, a truly antique specimen from the look of his rubber boots and his long tarpaulin coat. No one wore things like that anymore. He came swaying across the field like a ship before the wind, and when he got to Eric, he rapped him rudely on the chest.

  “I said I wasn’t sure you’d make it!” he shouted again. “There’ve been some accidents on this place. Don’t think there haven’t!”

  “I’m sure there have,” Eric answered, with a furious glance toward the ledge. “And thanks for coming over, but I’m all right, as you see. So you can go back to—”

  “What’d you say?” howled the fellow. He was deaf as an old dog. Eric mopped his brow with a hand. On second thought, he dried the hand on his pants and held it out to the fishcatcher, whose own sea-wrinkled paw rose to meet it.

  “Thanks!” Eric yelled at the aged ears. “And goodbye!” he shouted, shaking the paw with extra vigor. The oilskin coat exuded a musky, tarlike odor, and creaked whenever its occupant moved. It must weigh a ton, Eric thought.

  The fishcatcher grinned. “Not at all. Not at all
! Glad to be on deck. There’s dark water off this point, you can bet your cleats and battens.”

  He really was an old man. He used phrases and bits of speech that had been out of fashion in Twill for years, that Eric had only read about in old books.

  “Dark water?” Eric repeated. “If you mean the whirlpool, everyone knows about that.”

  “Aye, the spout, the spout. That’s as grand a spout as ever was. Some say there’s more to it than what appears. Some believe it don’t stop at the ocean floor, but digs down through the earth and comes out the other side.”

  The fishcatcher winked. “Where’d it come out, would you say, if it did come out someplace else?”

  Eric shrugged. “China?”

  The old fellow laughed.

  “I’d put my bet down on a place a whole lot farther off than that,” he said, and winked mysteriously again.

  “There’s nowhere farther off than China,” Eric replied. “China’s exactly halfway around the world from Twill. You can’t go any farther and still be on the earth.”

  “That depends on who’s doing the traveling, and where and how, don’t it?” the old fishcatcher said.

  Eric was about to ask what this was supposed to mean when he saw the fellow glance up at the sky. Though it looked perfectly clear and blue, the fishcatcher gestured and began to back away.

  “Will you take a glint of that!” he cried. “Dirty weather coming in. I’ll be getting back to my traps. You’d best pack up that big net of yours and head off home. The morning’s broke for fishing, I’d say. Aye, broke as a boat on the rocks of Twill.”

  This was such an old-fashioned expression that Eric couldn’t help smiling as the fishcatcher staggered away across the fields toward Strangle Point. The man was a little daft. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky for as far as Eric could see, and the breeze had dropped to almost nothing. The ocean rocked peacefully around the point. Waves ruffled over the spot where the big whirlpool churned, several hundred yards offshore. Otherwise, nothing moved, nothing squawked, not a murmur or a gurgle could be heard from the water.

  Not a gurgle! Eric ran for the edge of the rocks. He peered over and then flung himself on his stomach and craned his neck far out over the ledge. The long weeds were still there, swirling underwater, but the lampfish was gone. While the fishcatcher had prattled on, the light had changed. The creature had gone back into its hole.

  Eric turned and glared in the direction of Strangle Point. Now he’d have to wait all day for the light to would return. Who was that idiot fishcatcher anyway? The old blatherer, the walking tar-skin—

  A shadow moved across the sun. Looking up, Eric saw a bank of black clouds surging up the sky from the horizon. The clouds billowed and blew forward like tremendous capes, swirling over one another, swallowing each other up. The whole eastern half of the sky became one sweep of churning black, and then, as Eric watched in amazement, the sun was attacked and swallowed, too.

  “Gullstone! Gullstone! The weather’s changing!” he cried. He ran along the ledge, waving his hands. The sea gull was nowhere in sight.

  “Gully!” The wind started to blow. In the trolley, the crab traps began to rattle and then to jump and slam together. Still the bird would not come. Eric knew he must wait no longer. The storm was closing in with a speed unusual even for Twill’s coast, and from its looks, it was a bad one.

  Zot! Zing! There, away low on the horizon, Eric saw the first flickers of electrical activity as he raced for the trolley. He tucked the wooden handle up over the big net, jammed the crab traps tighter inside, and began the laborious job of pushing the cart backwards uphill. The road back from Cantrip’s was always a hard one, especially the first climb to the fields above. Eric threw his weight against the trolley and heaved it up the slope with all his strength.

  “Gully!” he yelled, whenever he had breath, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the storm.

  Across the water it streaked like a black-winged dragon, rumbling, hissing, breathing out tongues of fire. Halfway up the hill, Eric turned to look back. He glanced over to Strangle Point. Mountainous waves were crashing onto the beach and hurling themselves up the ledges into the fields.

  “Gully! Please come!” Wind and salt spray pelted his eyes. He wondered how the poor hobbling fishcatcher would ever get his traps, or himself, stowed away in time.

  4

  ERIC’S AUNT WAS ALREADY home when he arrived, wringing wet and with his hair whipped across his face.

  “Gullstone’s still out,” he told her breathlessly. “He disappeared on the way to Cantrip’s Point and never came back.”

  Aunt Opal sighed. “Go sit by the fire,” she said. “I’ll watch for him. You look half blown away.”

  She went to stand by the window. Outside, the wind shrieked along the road, bending bushes into crazy, streaming shapes.

  “It’s a tempest sent straight from the Season of Storms,” she observed, while Eric peeled off his wet jacket. “The Old Blaster couldn’t wait for his turn to come around, so he’s showing us a bit of his stuff beforetime. It’s nasty of him, all right.”

  Eric nodded. The Old Blaster was what people along the coast called bad weather during the Season of Storms. Or rather, they saw the weather’s fury and violence during those months as issuing from a single, brutal personality. The Old Blaster was vengeful, malicious, and uncaring. He wreaked havoc whenever he could, sparing no one, not the smallest child or the weakest old person. He was often tricky and unpredictable. Sometimes he’d lie low for weeks just to drive up the suspense. Then he’d attack full force and scare the daylights out of people.

  This storm, appearing from nowhere, certainly had all the earmarks of The Old Blaster, Eric thought, as he put on a dry shirt in a back room of the cottage. He wasn’t sure he really believed, as many in Twickham did, that a powerful old man who lived beyond the horizon was in charge of making life miserable for people. Still, he wasn’t sure he didn’t believe, either, especially when it might make. The Blaster angry to find out he was doubted.

  “Any sign of Gully?” he called to his aunt. “He probably can’t fly in this wind. I just hope he can walk.”

  “Nothing yet,” she shouted back. “I’ve brewed some hot tea, when you’re ready. I was thinking we ought to go lend a hand at the harbor. They’re trying to haul the boats from the water before dark. It’s rumored the wind will go to hurricane force tonight.

  “And your bird’s not the only one who hasn’t come home,” she added, when Eric sat down at the table with his tea mug. “There’s a fishing boat still out.”

  She didn’t look around at him. She kept her eyes on the window.

  “Whose is it?”

  “Granger’s, they say.”

  “Granger! Harold Granger? But Mrs. Granger was killed in a riptide just last month. Are Joey and Rachel with him?”

  “No one knows about the children.”

  Outside, a shutter had come loose. It began to bang against the side of the house, and Eric couldn’t help thinking how sometimes in Twill it seemed that everything was about to fly apart, that it was no good trying to keep things nailed down because the wind got them eventually, or the sea did. And maybe someday, some last evil day, The Old Blaster would tire of his ancient game against them and send one final, horrible blast. Then, everything in Twill would be swept off the land and drowned in the sea forever.

  “I hope Rachel and Joey are on the boat,” Eric said bitterly, when he had listened to the shutter a while longer. “Then, whatever happens, at least their whole family will be in it together.”

  Aunt Opal glanced around at him. “No one should wish for such a thing,” she replied. “How could anyone wish for such a terrible thing?” She looked at him hard before turning back to the window.

  “That is no shutter beating against my house,” she added after several moments.

  “What is it?”

  “Something with a screech.”

  “A screech!”

  Eric
listened. There amidst the banging and the howl of wind and thrashing of bushes came another noise:

  “Qwawk!” And again, “Qwawk, qwawk!”

  “It’s Gully,” he screamed. “Open the door! Let him in!”

  He leaped to the door and flung it open himself. The big sea gull blew against him, and past, into the cabin on a violent gust of wind.

  “Close up before we’re blown to smithereens!” bellowed Aunt Opal. So Eric hurled himself upon the door a second time and, after a struggle, managed to latch it shut.

  In the relative calm that followed, both turned their eyes upon Sir Gullstone, who had fallen to the ground like a shot goose the moment the door was closed. Never had they seen such a tangle of feathers, or such a twisting of wing and neck on a living bird. It seemed that the sea gull must be dead, that the pile of pieces on the floor before them could not possibly be brought together to work again.

  But then, a yellow bill moved with an impatient thrust. And two arrogant legs poked testily at the ground. Next, a body was hoisted upon them, a pair of lemon eyes blinked open, and the whole contraption began to limp with lordly strides toward the fire’s warmth.

  “Oh, Gully,” whispered Eric. “You are perfectly all right!” He heaved a tremendous sigh of relief and ran over to throw his arms around the precious bird.

  Aunt Opal, however, turned back to the window with a shake of her head. “We’ll not be going to the harbor after all,” she said grimly. “It’s clear that the wind has grown too strong for us to be of help to anyone now.”

  For two days, the storm ravaged and ransacked the coastline of Twill. Then it blew out to sea with such ghastly shrieks and moans that the noise could be heard for hours echoing back across the water.

  In its aftermath, the town of Twickham lay stricken under a pallid morning sun. For a long while, no one dared come out of the house The only sound in the streets was the dripping of eaves and, from the beaches below, the growling of still-maddened waves.