Clockwork Phoenix 4

by Mike Allen

  This was what Jerusalem Parry found himself momentarily balanced above—a chasm of open mouths, all waiting to take a bite, before what was left of him drifted to the ocean’s mucky floor. Yet even as he summoned his last few shreds of power to stave that judgement off, if only for a breath, he opened himself to the surprise attack he should have most feared, all along: Mister Dolomance, leaping high in mid-spasm to bite deep into the Captain’s unprotected nape, severing spine and the spell which kept him man-shaped alike. The shared arc of that jump threw them both sidelong, dragging Parry off-balance even as Mister Dolomance’s legs shrank vestigial, once more fusing to form a tail; the weight of it put them down together with a great slap, waves gouting high, and slammed shut a blue-water door upon them both.

  It was done, then—our revenge, complete—and Mister Dolomance surely got the lion’s share of spoils, though I was the one self-condemned to live out a false man-life ’til laid in some land-bound grave. And since cowardice, at least, could never be counted amongst his sins, I somehow knew the Captain would go down fighting, to the very last … that image bringing me a variety of pleasure, at least, even as grief for my own losses cored my buried seal’s heart.

  The quartermaster pulled to with a will, meanwhile, and I took up oars as well, helping him put enough distance between us and the Bitch’s overthrow to make sure we were well out of range before the true frenzy began. After which we drifted, delirious with heat and fever, with hunger our only company; it occurred to me more than once, during this phase, that if I had managed to regain my true shape then the man I shared this boat with would have slit my throat long since, and be already picking his teeth with my bones. But thankfully, another ship picked us up before he could fully recall what lurked inside me, instead of thinking of me only as a boy—a tender thing, more his kin than not, to be protected rather than eaten.

  “Ye’re one of us now, son,” was the last thing he spoke to me, which I know he meant kindly. Yet I just shook my head, waiting until he slept to steal what few coins he still possessed to pay my passage and roll him out through the sluices with a splash so quiet I reckon it was barely heard, either above-decks or under.

  It was an impulse and no doubt an unworthy one, for I did feel bad after, if only a little while. But the feeling did not last long, confirming what I hoped was still true, even in my current skinless state: That we were not alike, he and I, no more than I and Mister Dolomance. That we never could be.

  By ship after ship and voyage after voyage, sometimes spaced years apart, I made my long way back to the Skerry where I took up residence on the shore, gazing each day from cliffside across to the home I would never regain. I built myself a boat, and fished from it; I made myself a life, and lived it. At a midsummer dance, I told a girl my name was Ciaran, and married her. Our son became Young Ciaran, in his turn.

  And then, one day, I pulled up my net to find a skin—my skin—inside it.

  * * *

  Now it is late, and the fire is almost out. In the other room, Young Ciaran and his mother lie sleeping; my tale is told, in almost every particular. So I sit here and stroke the long-lost pelt spread out upon my knees, so soft, so durable … barely a mark on it, though my own hide has grown rough from ill-use, and not even a tear to show where the scar I once took from Mister Dolomance’s teeth should be. Indeed, it reminds me of nothing so much as its polar opposite, my former co-conspirator’s skin, which—like Captain Parry himself, as one man learned, to ill-profit—could hardly stand to be touched at all, at least from some angles, without danger of wounding. Never without cost, of one sort or another.

  Tonight, I think, I will go swimming. And I smile, even knowing what probably awaits me, out there in the dark stretch of water between beach and Sule—something cold-blooded, grown huge as a bull in its far-roaming freedom, with little about it to indicate it was ever forced to walk upright, bowing and scraping at the whim of a man whose magic kept it prisoned in a shape it never would have chosen otherwise. For unlike my own kind, Mister Dolomance was only made to be what he is, not what he could be; his sort have no use for contradiction, let alone for metaphor.

  Yet we are both equally treacherous, he and I—just as our Mother the sea is, in Her changeable yet unchanging heart. We cannot be overborne even by the subtlest magics, as Jerusalem Parry learned too late; we cannot be trusted, ever, even by those who love us. And as the sea is my home, so I will be proud to die there, if I must … more proud than I ever would have been to die on land, had I been forced to, as for so many years I was certain I would be.

  Perhaps, though … perhaps I will fight, this time, the way I declined to, so long ago. Why not? What more do I have to lose?

  Little enough, in the end.

  The tide turns. The fire becomes ash. I rise. And here—in silence—is where I take my leave of all you who listen, closing the circle with these words: Just as any man may seize power if he consents to pay for it, by whatever method, any selkie may be Great, eventually …

  … if he cares to.

  ICICLE

  Yukimi Ogawa

  “You should stay,” her mother said on the day of her departure. “You really shouldn’t go. Things are only worse out there. Humans. Heat. Currents. And … Humans.”

  The daughter shrugged. “But I’m half human, an’t I?”

  “That,” her mother heaved a sigh, which froze the moisture in the air into shimmering dust, “was the biggest mistake…. Not you. He was.”

  “I know what you mean. But. You know what I mean.”

  The mother gave another sigh, this time faint. “Yes.”

  The daughter hugged her mother tight, and then, iced tears rolled out of the mother’s eyes, like mercury out of a broken thermometer.

  “Go well, Tsurara, my dear,” said the mother as she pulled back. “And be careful of the mountain crone.”

  The daughter nodded, and started to descend her way, through the forest, out of the mountain. Before and below her, the plain spread; beyond it, she imagined, the ocean that she had never seen.

  * * *

  Although she was half human and half snow-woman in blood, Tsurara turned out to be almost human. She couldn’t freeze things to death like her mother, nor could she disassemble into a snow storm and then freeze back into shape. All she could do as a snow-woman was float high in the air and sleep in the clouds, where the temperature was low enough so that every drop of water remained as ice fragments; when she was conscious enough Heat didn’t bother her so much, but when she was off-guard it could melt her for good (she had lost half her hair when she was three).

  Another peculiar thing about her was that she had an icicle resting just beside her heart.

  Her mother decided it was probably some mutant kind of thing, and she blamed it on the girl’s father, who was a human, and who was a “pathetic, stupid thing” that wandered into the mountain long ago. One day when Tsurara was less than a year old, he left them without a word. “How could he?” her mother would demand, usually of her fellow mountain spirits, or sometimes even crows, who weren’t really friendly to mountain spirits but surely hated humans. “How could a father leave his child with an icicle in her chest, constantly threatening to pierce her heart?”

  The heart itself was made of the year’s first snow that fell on the couple the day they met. It hurt easily when the tip of the icicle touched it. When Tsurara was very small, all the spirits who lived around her cave were always worried that her icicle might stab her heart at any moment, and so they decided to protect her. When she stumbled, one or two gusts of wind always appeared from nowhere and supported her. When she got lost, all the ghost fires in the mountain came to light her way home, always keeping well away from her so that their heat wouldn’t irritate her skin. Even the mountain crone, whose best recreation was to suck blood out of a human child and therefore was despised by all other mountain spirits, left Tsurara alone.

  They all loved Tsurara (except for the crone), for she was the first child
in a long time in the mountain. And they all (including the crone) hated her human father. She grew up protected, and was taught to hate her father.

  One winter, when she was eleven or twelve, Tsurara found a stray wind, crying behind a cedar tree. She instinctively went over and hugged the little wind with her cold arms, and the wind shivered but giggled, and thanked her for the coldness.

  “I got astray from my family,” the wind said, after rubbing its already red eyes for a long time.

  “Where are you from?” asked Tsurara.

  “Ocean of the north.” The wind shook happily at the memory. “We came up the mountain from the north side, and we were going down the south side all together, to the ocean of the south.”

  “What’s … o…”

  “Ocean? You don’t know the ocean?” The wind’s eyes were round. “Ocean is where all the winds and waters drift down to. Everything is blue there, but nothing’s the same simple blue. Its surface is sometimes so flat that you could sleep on it for hours, and sometimes so rough that you could never bat an eye for days.” It looked up at somewhere midair dreamily.

  “Sounds like a very dangerous place.”

  “What’s wrong with dangerous? That’s how the world is, isn’t it?”

  Tsurara didn’t know what to say to this. So she said, “Do you know how to get there? To find your family?”

  “Yes. Down. Just down, and you’ll always find the ocean. I got astray and I was feeling so lonely because I have to go down alone, but I’ll find my family there for sure.”

  “Good for you.” Tsurara nodded and smiled, still wondering why winds wanted to go to such a dangerous place.

  “Thanks. And thanks again for the coldness.”

  The wind swirled around her once, and went as high as it could, then down the southern side of the mountain. As it went it gathered speed, and was soon out of sight.

  That was when Tsurara started wondering about the ocean.

  * * *

  Years later, when she had learned not to let Heat bother her while she was awake without her mother’s help, she decided to leave, to see the ocean for herself.

  It took her months to persuade her mother. But in the end, her mother sighed her frost sigh and said, “I hate to say this, but sometimes you’re so like your father. Your eyes are so much like his when you try to convince me.”

  “Are they?”

  “That’s the eyes that did it, I think, just before you were born … Anyway, there’s no stopping you, is there?”

  “No.”

  Her mother took the daughter’s hands. Tsurara felt the comfortable coldness from the hands, and realized how much she would miss it.

  * * *

  For the first time in her life, she was out of the mountain, was walking along a gravel road that cut through rice fields. The climate was too mild for her to feel comfortable; Tsurara had chosen a midwinter day for her departure, but without snow and with the Heat constantly looking down on her, her travel wasn’t proving easy.

  Before leaving, she had asked other spirits (like winds and foxes and racoons, who moved about rather freely) to tell her about humans and their lives. So she knew about cars and bicycles, but actually being almost run over by one was quite something. Tsurara panted, her chest aching and stinging, as a middle-aged man yelled at her from his van’s window, something about kids these days not paying enough attention.

  She wondered how long it was going to take. And if her heart would make it.

  But once she decided to learn, she learned very fast, like a wind gathers speed as it glides down the mountain side. She soon learned to step aside as soon as she heard a car approaching, and then to walk on the edge of the road in the first place. And, by and by, she got used to surprises. Stray cats (who to Tsurara’s surprise didn’t talk) and plain spirits would dart out from here or there with no particular pattern or warning, and at first every time this happened she had to take a rest until her heart settled. She realized that surprises had always been there, they weren’t there in the mountain only because her fellow spirits worked hard for her.

  The next person she saw out of the mountain was an old woman who was carrying a huge supply of groceries, to whom Tsurara went over and helped on impulse, like she had embraced the young gust of wind. The woman smiled (humans smile!) and gave her a few rice crackers as a reward, and that was the first thing Tsurara obtained for herself.

  She soon started helping people, carrying groceries with her cold hands that never made foods go sour, or showing people a safe way through a forest and across a river, with instructions from the local spirits. In exchange she would receive crackers and dried persimmons and bean curds, declining people’s offer to let her share their pot of hot soup. At night she would float high in the sky and sleep among thin clouds, being carried away, from time to time, by Currents and getting lost. Her progress was slow, but everyday she was closer to the sea.

  She came across a big town one day, and saw, as she floated that night to sleep, the ocean behind the high buildings of the town. At first she wondered what the strange plain was, because it wasn’t blue at night and she didn’t know that the ocean wasn’t blue at night. But as she took a closer look, she could see that it was water rippling.

  In a few days she was on the beach at last.

  The sea spirits looked at her with curiosity. A white wave came to talk to her as she trotted into the cold water barefoot.

  “Someone had been waiting for you,” it said.

  That moment, Tsurara noticed a boy walking down her way, along the line the waves were marking on the sand. She looked at him expectantly, but the wave hastily warned: “No, not him.”

  But before Tsurara could ask it who it meant then, the boy had reached her, had looked up, and then down, into her eyes.

  “Snow is coming,” the boy said, as if he had always known she would be there.

  “Yes,” replied Tsurara, looking up at the dear grey sky.

  * * *

  She demanded no explanation as she followed him to his small house, where he taught her how to clean fish, as if he were expecting her to stay with him for a long time. It seemed reasonable anyway, because her cold hands were perfect for handling raw fish. Only when he tried to touch her cheek, to rub the squid ink spattered there, she felt a sudden, sharp pain in the chest and crouched on the spot.

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he repeated, utterly bewildered and panicked.

  “My heart,” she said, panting, “it’s beating too fast. Let me have some rest, and I’ll be okay.”

  The boy nodded, and watched as Tsurara knelt down on a cushion, as though he was worried that another touch might be fatal.

  “My father died from heart attack a few years back,” he said as he passed her a glass of water.

  “I’m sorry,” Tsurara said and sipped the water. It came straight out of tap and was reasonably cold, but not icy enough to make her feel better. “I don’t have a father,” she said at length.

  “Everyone must have a father,” the boy smiled weakly, and she realized she couldn’t argue with that smile.

  When her heart had settled and she was fit enough to eat, the boy asked her if she wanted her fish cooked, and she said no, she wanted them raw. But even fish were different from the ones from the river. She missed the slight scent of riverbed coming out of the meat and missed the icy water that came out of the rocks, instead of metal pipes.

  The boy, on his part, tried his best to make her feel comfortable. When she said she had to sleep outside at night, he looked offended at first, but when she told him it was because of the heat from the stove, he cocked his head and frowned, but said no more.

  “Tsurara, are you up?” In the morning he called out from the door to his hut, looking this way and that, not knowing where she had been during the night. She carefully descended to the back of the hut, and then approached him from behind.

  “Morning,” he greeted as he turned, “I have something for you.” He indicate
d a huge linen bag on the floor beside the door.

  In the bag Tsurara found ice cubes that smelt of fish.

  “From the market,” he nodded, when she looked up at him with delight. “I’ll leave them here, in the cold, so you can come and fetch a few whenever you feel too much heat.” Then he hugged himself, as a wind blew away all the warmth from him.

  The boy smiled, trying best to not appear too eager to get back inside the hut, where the stove hissed. Tsurara wanted to hug him, but she knew her arms were too cold for him, and that her heart would beat too fast again.

  For the first time in her life she hated the icicle, instead of her father.

  * * *

  The boy worked at the fish market nearby, where fish-stall owners and cooks bought fish from fishermen. While he worked, Tsurara wandered through the market’s main building and found women repairing fishing nets and cleaning leftover fish to be dried or salted with guts. She introduced herself as the boy’s cousin and joined them, learning more about the sea, and informing them, in exchange, when their husbands shouldn’t go sailing even if the sea surface seemed flat, by translating the sea sprits’ words. The women somehow took her seriously; the girl was too pale, too thin, not fit enough at all to tell that kind of lies, and one of them had lost her husband to the waves when the sea looked exactly the same.

  After all, humans weren’t that bad. And at the sea, humans and spirits were getting on fairly well with each other, though humans didn’t know much about spirits.

  As days turned into weeks, she thought of how she could make her heart stronger. She didn’t expect there to be a way to remove the icicle, so she had to get along with it, but she didn’t want to concede to it and give up other things in life. One day as she sat beside the boy, in a room that was too hot for her but was not warm enough for him, Tsurara reached out for his arm and pinched an end of his sleeve. He let her remain that way as he listened to the radio. A few days later Tsurara touched his hand, just the tips of the fingers, and another few days passed before she traced the lines on his palm. He never moved, to squeeze her hand or even to look at her to question; he simply waited, just as someone trying to feed sparrows with raw rice grains, without scaring the birds. It took them almost a week to entwine their fingers, and still she had to breathe harder and deeper as she looked down at the two hands.