by Alex Hughes
“Not a baby!” The kid screwed up her face.
I held out a hand, still keeping an eye on Bo Peep. “Don’t cry.”
The mother had already found the unsteady bench the mall stocked for parents that never came. “Can’t she just ride for awhile?”
“It’s fifteen dollars.” I needed her to go away.
The mother’s brow creased. Finally. The carousel was empty for a reason.
But the little girl jumped up and down. “Please please please please please?”
The mother shook her head, her blonde hair disheveled. Then she pulled out a worn wallet.
I looked at the creased bills. The rules said I couldn’t stop them if they were really determined. But: “You assume all responsibility for the risk,” I told the mom as sternly as I could. Inside, my stomach fluttered. It had been months...
She sighed, nodded, and started to push the stroller back and forth to soothe the hiccuping baby within.
I knew the rules. Unlocking the controls, I slowed the carousel, the shiny ducks and sheep turning slower and slower, while Mother Goose glared above them all. When the platform was still I opened the gate – it protested with a low, solid creak.
The girl shot through like a released dove, her little legs moving so fast they blurred. She looked up at Miss Muffet and the spider beside her. “What’s dat?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t influence the choice, and Muffet wasn’t so bad. As it went.
But the little girl looked with wide eyes and staggered around the edge – past Peter Piper. Past Jack Horner. Right to the grimly smiling Bo Peep and her retinue of sharp-toothed sheep.
The little girl’s eyes widened with wonder, as if she was looking at something beyond the plaster, bronze and paint in front of me. “Up!”
Bo Peep, huh? I felt like throwing up, but I raised the girl to the seat on Peep’s skirts. I set her down carefully, got her situated in the plaster. “Hold on,” I told her seriously, quietly.
Then, watching the girl with a heavy heart, I turned on the carousel.
Tinkling music swelled as the figures turned, faster and faster. The little girl squealed as she went past, and Bo Peep smiled ominously.
The mother, oblivious, rocked her baby back and forth in the stroller. Every line in the mother’s body was tired, worn, as worn as the figures on the carousel. The tinkling music played, echoing off the walls of the empty mall.
My hand shook over the “off” button, but I knew the rules. The girl went past me, once, twice, three times.
And this time I saw it happen. Bo Peep’s skirts snapped up and swooshed around the girl in an unbreakable hold. The girl shrieked in terror – and in the space of a second, froze solid, her skin ashen. The skirts crept up like the sides of a pitcher plant on a fly, enveloping the terrified girl in gilded plaster.
The carousel turned, the animals went up and down along their endless track while the music played. And quietly, without ceremony, the lump on the back of Bo Peep got smaller and smaller.
Three minutes later, I stopped the empty carousel. I knew the rules.
I wouldn’t tell the mother yet, though, I thought as I watched her tiredly move the stroller back and forth. Not yet.
Inky Black Sea
By Alex Hughes
On the deck of the schooner Josephina, fifty-five-year-old Captain Allende looked out over the waters near Cape Verde and wondered how he would survive as a landsman. It was to be his last journey, God and His Majesty decreeing that sailors should return to shore in old age. He didn’t feel so old, for all his body creaked with the creaking of the ship. He didn’t feel so old he must give up everything he’d ever known, not so old he must leave off adventures and joy. But most of his brethren died at two-score years, and His Majesty’s decree was law.
Sailors darted around him in every direction, and he kept an eye on the first mate. Ortiz handled the ship well, the sailors respecting him. He would make a fine captain. If Allende had to give up his ship to anyone, it would be Ortiz. But the loss of it sat in his chest like a bird in a cage, small and shivering.
The sea was choppy today, with a dark tinge underneath like the ink of some terrible monster released out into the deep. In forty years at sea, Allende had never seen such a color on the ocean, not even here, off the coast of Africa. Many a ship had disappeared in this area of the world, and he was superstitious enough to wonder if the color of the sea had aught to do with it. The ink-black ebbed and flowed, back and forth, as if it sat on the surface of the waves. He watched the horizon with the sextant, praying they would arrive safe at their destination, and yet praying in his heart of hearts they would tarry just a day longer, just a week longer, on the sea.
The jangling boot-steps of the nobleman stomped towards him. Allende braced himself before turning.
Allende bowed slightly to the man, a gesture of respect he felt he had not earned. “de Tera. I trust you enjoy the journey?” Dressed in finery from His Majesty’s court directly and a known supporter of the Inquisition, de Tera was an irritant at best and dangerous at worst. He must be treated gently, for all Allende wished to throw him in the sea a hundred times over.
“You should not have taken him onboard,” de Tera said, too loudly, across the deck where any common sailor could hear. “The Venetians are known consorters with magicians. You risk the wrath of God on this journey. And His Majesty’s wrath as well.”
“We have discussed the issue yet,” Allende returned after taking a few steps forward, his voice pitched more quietly so as not to carry. “The Venetian carries recommendations from a cardinal and more than enough money to justify his place. His port is a scant two days’ journey away now. There seems little point in debating what will soon be over. Besides, he is below, praying. Surely even you cannot object to a pious man.”
“You can still throw him overboard,” de Tera pressed, viciously. “If he is innocent, he will float. If he is guilty of foul magics, he will sink like a stone and cease to bother the rest of us. God says you shall allow no hint—”
“It is two days’ journey,” the captain interrupted, his voice a little too passionate. He paused, and chose a more even tone. Reason must stand against even the blood-stirred Inquisition. “Noble sir, the agreement is long since made. Shall I become an oathbreaker? Shall that please God? Save have a little patience, and we will leave him at his destination to not trouble us again.” But his eyes returned to the waves, calming now. The ink-black color grew stronger to the eye.
de Tera opened his mouth to protest again, but the first mate came with a question regarding course, and Allende chose to busy himself overmuch in its details.
Suddenly a cry came from the mast. “Ahead! Ahead!”
Allende moved to the very edge of the helm, looking out. There—in the distance—a cloud like a herd of galloping animals, throwing up dust above the sea against all reason.
“Pray get below deck,” he told de Tera.
“I will not move until you have answered—”
“Get below!” he interrupted, a tinge of panic in his voice despite his best efforts. The cloud was closing fast, far faster than the fastest ship in the armada, terrifying in its speed.
The wind died. Sailors stopped in their tracks, and an officer screamed. The crack of a whip, and movement again on the deck. de Tera stood and stared.
The ship slowed, hitching forward and back in a way that defied all nature. The sea grew black, black as thick ink from any nobleman’s pot, and the waves disappeared. The ship slowed further, lurching in the now-viscous sea, thicker than honey, impossible to sail.
The cloud was right on top of them. Lightning crashed.
And then the fog dissipated, revealing the terrible visage of a monster. Its face was as large as a sail, its teeth larger than a man, and its matted hair fell behind it, disappearing into the ink-sea as its body did. An almost-human body, it was, with scales covering it, a female body.
Men stared, and cried out. Some fell
on the deck, prostrated. de Tera crossed himself and began to chant in low tones, fingers white on his rosary.
Allende—and the sailors—waited for death. But the monster did nothing. Minutes passed, as de Tera’s chant increased, and the sailors’ superstitions built. One cried out that this was the Venetian’s fault, and suddenly a dozen men were below to fetch him. Allende did not stop them; he could do naught but stand, and wait.
And still the monster did nothing.
Finally Allende gathered his courage in his hands. He was the captain, and he was old. Better that he face the beast than consign any of the men, much less a passenger Venetian. He spoke in his loudest voice, “Who are you, fell Mer-maid? What do you want from us poor sailors?”
The monster tilted her head and moved forward, over the ship. An overwhelming smell of rotted fish extended with her breath. Sailors fainted.
“Come back to me, Marcello,” the monster said, craning her neck to look back to the rear of the boat. Grown men trembled.
Allende looked back. There was the Venetian, the small man in ragged noble-clothes who’d prayed the entirety of his stay aboard the ship. A dozen of his sailors hoisted him forward.
“Marcello,” the monster said, her voice rumbling like the fires of God.
The men holding the Venetian dropped him and ran, trembling, as far from the monster as could be.
The Venetian brushed himself off and stood. His anger was apparent in his visage, and he carried not a whiff of fear. “Mother, what are you doing so far south?” he called out. “I told you I would not stay.”
The monster drew back, offended, and the sailors trembled. She frowned in a horrific way down at the Venetian. “Your father treats with the French crusaders, and I grew bored,” she said. “Have done with your silly rebellion, I beg of you. We will visit the undersea palaces. I will make you your favorite boiled squid.”
“I told you when I left, Mother. This—”
de Tera finally found his voice and interrupted. “Monster! How dare you interfere in the lives of men! I told you, Captain, the—”
“Quiet,” the monster said, in a voice that shook the entirety of the ship. “Your betters are talking.”
“My betters!” de Tera turned so red with rage, Allende was certain he would collapse. But the man gestured with a fist, distain and rage carrying him away. “I get my authority from His Majesty and His Holiness directly! There are none my better here, much less a disgusting, ugly creature as does not know how to be quiet as suits a proper woman!”
Now the monster turned to him directly. She reared up to a magnificent height, her unbound breasts coming out of the water. “What did you say to me?” she said, in a voice most terrible.
“I… I…” de Tera stammered, suddenly afraid. He babbled on for a moment, some incomprehensible thing about His Holiness the Pope and the wrath of His Majesty, while the thick, inky sea curled up a ribbon of water, up and up the side of the ship.
Allende swallowed bile. “Dear Mer-Maid, pray have mercy on our ship. We mean no harm…”
de Tera continued his tirade, his rage overcoming fear until he screamed at the monster. The monster looked back, its teeth shown fiercely.
The ribbon kept coming, up and up by slow degrees, its thick darkness terrifying as it stood against all reason, against all rule of natural law. It curled then, into a noose—and darted, like a fish, to collapse around de Tera’s throat.
de Tera flew overboard. He hit the surface of the sea with a bone-shattering thwap, screamed like a tortured animal, and then was sucked slowly under its viscous surface until he was seen no more.
Allende held back bile. Others, sailors, screamed and vomited most foully.
“Anyone else want to interfere in my conversation with my son?” the monster asked, all too quietly, into the silence.
Again, Allende must speak when no one else could. He opened his mouth, but a small sound came out, a sound unfitting for a captain. He gripped his hands so firmly his nails drew blood. He would speak. For the lives of his men and his own immortal soul, he would speak.
But the Venetian had walked forward until he had passed him, close, far too close to the monster that would surely destroy the ship at any moment.
“I will make my way in the world,” the Venetian told the monster very intensely. “I have said it many times, and many times you have not heard. So long as I am in Venice, I am the doge’s son, I am your son. All are silenced long before I prove my mettle. How then shall I ever know what I am truly made of? How then shall I know who I really am? You hold me back from your fears, mother, you make me small.”
The monster settled down again into the thickness of the sea. “But what am I to do? I am lonely,” she complained quietly, with a deep emotion. “Can I not come with you on your adventure? I will be a great help in danger.”
The Venetian shook his head, his fists held tightly against his body, and Allende knew he would defy the monster. What matter of foul lineage the man claimed, their fighting would tear the ship into small pieces and Allende’s crew would not survive. His last voyage would end in shame.
And so he must speak, with whatever honeyed words he’d ever learned in purchasing goods from difficult foreign men. “My lady, I regret,” He began slowly, that noose of water always before him. “I regret, my lady, you cannot join us. Your magnificence is too large to fit in our small ship. Pray, only--”
She cut him off. “I can become smaller,” she said, in the tone of a fell child overcoming objections to her will.
In a blink, she was gone, and in her place a beautiful woman of average height stood on deck, fully clothed in a gown of vermillion satin and lace in the latest fashion. “I have not quite so much power in this form, but for traveling it will do,” she said. “I will be a great help to you, I swear it by all that is holy, Marcello.”
“I will tolerate your foolishness any more. Leave me be or I will do far worse than father,” Marcello said, in a tone so terrible Allende feared for his ship and his very life. If such magic lived in the monster, that she could become small, what magic lay in the small man who’d inhabited the Josephina?
“My lady,” Allende forced out again, through choked throat.
She moved until she was very nearly on top of him, inches from his face. “Why you are a handsome fellow.”
He shook, but he stood his ground. He was drawn to her, a strange pull that must be magic, as she looked him over.
Her porcelain skin seemed nearly translucent, her eyes large and rimmed with thick lashes, her nose small and perfect. Her thick dark hair was braided with pearls, her dress rich and beautiful. She was the picture of the noblewoman he’d dreamed of, in his quiet moments, the prize he had never sold enough goods to merit. But under the skin she was no quiet widow, no blushing gentlewoman. She met his gaze boldly, and her powers could crush him in a moment, he feared. That inky sea was her true soul and he must not be enraptured by the appearance of things.
The Venetian sighed. “Mother, leave off tormenting the captain. I will not go with you, and you cannot stay, no matter what treaty you have made with the local sea-god. You know very well that the sea will not lose its viscous ink so long as you stand here. It is a poor adventure indeed when one never moves. Go back home, I will be back in a year or two if things go well. I have promised you thrice already.”
She turned, and stamped her foot at her son. “It isn’t fair! You get all the fun while your father talks to tedious men and cavorts with silly mistresses! I will not be ignored.” The sea grew shaky below them, until the ship’s boards groaned with the strain of this unexpected movement.
“And I will not adventure with you any longer. You must go alone.” The Venetian’s tone was quiet, sure, full of his own power. The air seemed tense around him, tense so much that Allende once more knew a battle between them would crush them all.
“Adventuring alone is not what I want.”
A sailor fainted just in Allende’s periphery, and the
ship groaned as the inky water began to rise. Shortly they would all be like de Tera, lost at sea, swallowed up against all nature. de Tera had been right, it seemed, about the Venetian. He was a magician, surely, if not worse. This one fare would kill all of his crew, and Allende was responsible for all of their lives.
“Give me your word you shall not harm the ship, my crew, or myself in any way,” he heard himself saying.
“What?” the Venetian asked. The woman-creature turned as well.
“You, lady. If I go with you, give me your word you will leave my ship be forever after and that you will not harm me.”
“Of what benefit is that to me?” the woman-creature said.
She was petulant, perhaps, but there was a mind there to appeal to. He prayed that there was. And great beauty, beauty such as he had never seen. This was to be his last journey, after all, and he could at least save the sailors from their fate.
“My lady, you clearly travel by means other than ships,” he said cautiously. “You have offered to take your son to underwater palaces, and unless he be far different than any other man, you have means to keep him hale. I have spent forty years at sea. I have traveled near all of the world, and what I have not, I have studied. If you give me your word to leave my ship be, not to harm me nor to allow me to come to harm in any way, I will go with you and show you all that I have seen. You wish to adventure, and to not adventure alone. I will go with you.”
She frowned, but he could see her interest. “I know the sea better than any man.”
He gripped his courage in his hands and stepped toward her. “Do you know the land? The bazaars of Istanbul. The camels of Arabia. The spice markets of the Indies, and the silk spinners of the Orient. Creatures with long noses that princes ride upon to war. Trees so large a dozen men holding hands cannot measure their breadth. There are wonders out there, and adventures a plenty. Who is to say your son should be the only one to test his mettle against the wide world?”
“This is a terrible idea,” the Venetian said. “She will break you like a shell the first time she has a temper.”
