by J. K. Holt
On the morning of the third day, Gowan ducked back into the shop amid the noises of a scuffle outside. Grumbling, he sat down the bags he carried and began to pull off his scarf. “Bunch of loitering, nosy twits, the lot of them.”
“Why? What’s going on?” Tess asked from her perch on a nearby stepstool. She’d been attempting to find room for some additional inventory.
“Never you mind,” he said, waving away the question.
“No, really. What is it?”
“Well, I suppose you’ll hear about it at some point. A local man was found washed up on the beach this morning. Looks like he jumped, or fell perhaps, into the ocean sometime last night.”
“He’s dead?”
“Aye.”
“Who was he?”
“Young fisherman, name of Tom Engles. Nice enough fellow, I suppose. Didn’t know him but in passing.”
Tess had frozen in place. How many men lived in a town this size by that name? It could just be a coincidence. “Did he happen to… did he have a wife name Laurel, by any chance?”
Gowan turned to her now. “Now I think of it, I do believe that’s her name. You know her?”
Tess was suddenly nauseous. She excused herself and slipped outside through the back door, into the small passage that ran parallel to the main alley. She threw up in a nearby drain, then sat next to it until her head stopped spinning. The man she had comforted, held, only a few days before, dead. What had happened?
She mourned for him, in the way any person might feel sorrow for the loss of another human life, and she felt more keenly for his wife, Laurel. She understood too well the pain of being left behind.
That night, she waited until the lantern was burning down and Gowan began to finish his reading for the evening. As he walked by the table to head upstairs to his room, she said, almost shyly, “Could we talk?”
He paused reluctantly, then slowly lowered himself into the nearest seat. She’d just poured herself a cup of tea, and she offered him one, which he wearily accepted. As she was pouring, he spoke.
“Honestly, girl, I’m not sure I’m the best to help with romantic troubles, if that’s what’s on your mi-”
“No, no, it’s not that,” she rushed to reassure.
“Oh? Apologies, then. I just assumed, what with your general sour mood these last few days that it might be a possibility.”
“It’s not, though I almost wish it was.” Tess said. “Truth be told, I’ve fallen out with the group of friends I was spending time with.”
Gowan grimaced. “Eh, I’m not much better at that. As you can see, I keep to myself-”
“No, it’s not that either, honest. At least, not directly. It’s something….well, I’m not sure. I have questions, and no one else to answer them, about some things I’ve seen lately.”
Gowan leaned back in his chair and picked up his tea. “Go on, then.”
Tess sighed. She’d rehearsed it in her head but now her thoughts were jumbled, confused. “Well, first I guess I should tell you why I reacted the way I did when you told me about that man, the one who drowned? Truth is, I’d just met him a few days ago. He was… well, there was something wrong with him.”
A crease began between Gowan’s eyebrows. “Meaning?”
“He wasn’t… there. He was just… staring out at nothing, kind of- uh, looking through people? He wasn’t talking, or anything. It was like he was gone, and just his body was left, I guess.”
Clarity dawned for Gowan then, and he looked like a man who had just solved a complicated puzzle. “Ah! That explains it. Poor man. But still, it makes more sense now, of course.”
“It doesn’t to me,” Tess said, exasperated. “That’s my problem, you see?”
“Ahh, I see. Didn’t run into this much in Merktown, eh?” The glint in Gowan’s eye was teasing, but Tess couldn’t find the humor. He knew she wasn’t from there, and he was just poking at her. If anything, it made her more worried she’d be found out, if she was so ignorant on this topic. She fixed him with a serious glare until his amusement waned and he cleared his throat.
“Right. Well, what do you want to know?”
“I’m fairly certain that’s obvious at this point. But in case it’s not- I want to know everything.”
“Well,” Gowan began, “Seeing as it’s late, let’s try for an abbreviated version, shall we?”
“Fine- for now. I reserve the right to follow up later.”
“Hmphh. My mother would have referred to you as sassy, d’you know.”
Tess chose to interpret that as a compliment. “Go ahead then,” she encouraged.
Gowan leaned back, considering. “Alright, let’s see: several years back, the town started to see symptoms of a new disease popping up, here and there. We started calling it the Blue Plague. Victims had the symptoms you’ve described Tom as having. They lost the piece of themselves that made them them, if you know what I’m after. Mind, they could still eat, and sleep, and perform the necessary functions of life, but the rest,” Gowan made a motion towards his skull, “was just gone. It didn’t return.”
“Where did it come from? What caused it?” Tess said.
“Aye, that’s what we all wanted to know. The king sent in medical experts from Turand. They deduced that it was coming from infected fish. Some sort of disease carried by them, you see, that someone could contract just by handling them, or the nets they had been caught in. More specifically, these experts isolated a particular area of the ocean that seemed responsible for the majority of the sicknesses- the Sea Dimple. It’s a spot of shallow water, in a crater pattern, a few miles off the coast from here-”
A memory twigged for Tess of the the map Ashe had returned. She pushed it aside and forced herself to remain attentive to Gowan, who had continued talking.
“-immediately cordoned off the area, made it illegal to fish there. It was a huge loss to the fishermen in this area, because the area was a prolific breeding ground for fish, but they had to fish elsewhere. The economy’s slumped a bit since then, I’ll not lie, though it’s recovering slowly enough, I s’pose…” Gowan appeared lost in thought.
“So, the disorder…” Tess prompted.
“Ah, yes. Isolated incidents still pop up here and there, but generally speaking, they are much less than they used to be, and they still tend to happen most with fishermen, such as your acquaintance Tom. Could be he and the rest of his crew broke the rules one day, tried to fish near the Sea Dimple, and Tom paid the price.”
“But wait- if it’s related to fish, why haven’t people just stopped eating them?”
Gowan looked at her as if she’d asked why people didn’t stop breathing the air. As if it was a choice. She considered- a town situated as they were, on the sea, the main livelihood revolving around fishing. If they stopped eating fish, if the fishermen stopped fishing, the town would dissolve.
“Alright,” Tess acquiesced. “But I still don’t get how it ended up with Tom washing up on the beach.”
“Ahh, that.” For the first time, Gowan looked uncomfortable; he frowned, rubbing his hand over the stubble on his chin. “Consider, then, the strain of having… no, caring for, someone with this disease. They are no longer themselves, no longer the person you knew, and in most cases, with few exceptions, unable to continue to work. And, in cases like Laurel’s, not only do you lose, in essence, your loved one, with no hope of recovering them, but you also cannot remarry, because your spouse is still alive, even if only as a husk of the person you knew and cherished. So you’re unable to find another spouse to help shoulder the financial burden. It’s an impossible situation to be placed in.”
Tess was having a hard time following Gowan’s logic. “But still, how does that explain how Tom ended up…. Wait. You’re not saying-”
“I’m not saying anything, girl. I’m only introducing you to the reality of the situation,” Gowan said.
“-that she, that he was purposefully-” Tess started, mouth agape.
“Stop
there, child. I mean it. Don’t make accusations with nothing to back yourself up. Disease or no disease, what you’re suggesting is a crime. People here turn a blind eye to it when they can, but still. Mind you don’t speak of such things with that loose tongue outside of these walls, or there will be consequences, d’you hear?” Gowan had become stern, and Tess was pulled back from her horror to recognize the worry mirrored in his own face, for her. She nodded her understanding.
Her mind raced as she struggled to make sense of the information that had just been imparted, as she attempted to integrate it into what had transpired those few days past, between herself and the others.
“That day,” Tess began. “The day I saw Tom, I heard someone say that he’d been ‘blurred’?”
Gowan looked resigned. “Aye, that’s another way to refer to it. Though that term often has more nefarious undertones. Who said that to you?”
Tess was surprised at her own reluctance to part with the information. After all, the others had forsaken her- why did she still feel some need to protect them? Out of some lingering sense of anger towards them, she responded. “I was with Ashe, and later Emmie, when we found Tom.”
“Right. Well, I can’t fault him for it, really, though I wish he and others would get such thoughts out of their heads. It’ll do them no good, nor you any good to be caught up in it.”
“What thoughts?” Tess said.
“It’s late girl. Let’s let that be enough for tonight.” Gowan rose and began moving towards the stairs.
“But, wait, what did you mean you can’t fault him for it?” Tess called after him. “Gowan! What did you mean? Come on, last question. Promise.”
Gowan continued his trek but answered over his shoulder. “Because of his father, girl. Silas Reed- he was one of the first to contract the disease.”
Chapter Seven
A holiday known as the Queen’s Jubilee arrived, apparently an annual affair, and with it the fanfare of a town of citizens hopped up on good cheer, as if the day itself was the excuse but not the reason for their excitement. Truly, it seemed as though the town had been holding a collective breath that it was now exhaling, one last hurrah before the winter months forced everyone indoors for good. Gowan closed the shop for the day and urged Tess to go and make merry, but she demured. Too great seemed the chances that she would run into Ashe, Emmie, or one of the others. The focal point of the festivities were held in the square, and it was too confined a space- one of them was bound to see her, and she wasn’t certain how she would react, or wanted them to react, for that matter.
In the fortnight since the curious incident with Tom had happened, Tess had gone back to her old behavior patterns, prowling the town in the early morning hours or late evening, taking her strolls to the piers, though the wind was becoming more foul-tempered lately and she didn’t think she could keep up the trips for much longer with the coming cold. Sometimes she had the suspicion she was being followed- some trick of the light in the corners of her eye, but she wondered if she was being paranoid. Other people, though few, were out at the times she was, but she couldn’t focus on all of them with any kind of sustained attention. And though she’d continued her meandering about town, she’d taken care to avoid the bakery, or the outdoors at all on market day. She’d begun to feel a bit shut in, isolated, and she knew she couldn’t keep it up forever. Soon, very soon, she thought it might happen that she would again succumb to the sharp bitterness of her grief, if she was unable to fill her time with something more socially meaningful.
Her anger and sense of betrayal towards the others had faded with both the passing of time and the information that Gowan had shared with her. Tess had no doubt that there was more to the story of the plague than what Gowan had told her, or at least Ashe and the others believed there to be; but she was more likely to acknowledge their reluctance in parting with that information, particularly given what she had learned about the Reed brothers’ father. Still, she had a fair amount of pride on the line, and it seemed a boundary she couldn’t force herself to cross, to be the one who approached bearing the olive branch of peace. At one time or another she’d considered it, but threw the idea away just as quickly when she imagined Dray scoffing at her attempts to reconcile, the others watching passively in the background, unwilling to challenge him. That was enough to halt any real action on her part.
Gowan had donned a blue buttoned shirt for the day, and he stopped in front of the small mirror near the counter to assess his attire before leaving.
“Got a date?” Tess asked.
“A what?” Gowan muttered, licking his hand and attempting to tame a stray hair.
“Oh, erm, a lady friend meeting you?”
Gowan grinned but did not respond.
“Really? Well, then, why don’t you actually use a real comb instead of your spit? You know, just to be extra classy.”
Gowan growled, but then considered, rooting around in the drawers until he found a brush. “Go out yourself, then, eh? Stop lurking around in here all the time. It’s bad for business. Customers will think we’ve malevolent spirits in here if you keep it up for much longer, darting across the front window like you do whenever you pass by it. You gave Ms. Mortinson an awful fright yesterday, you know.”
Tess frowned. “I don’t do that.”
“Yes you do. It’s just become such habit that you don’t notice it anymore. Which proves my point- you need to get out. Stop being so dramatic about,” he waved his brush at her, “well, about whatever it is you’re being dramatic about.” He gave himself one more look in the mirror for good measure before putting back the brush. “If you do decide to leave, just lock up behind you. I’ve my key, you can take the spare.”
“Fine. Have a nice time with your lady friend,” Tess said.
“I certainly will. And you have a nice time in here by yourself. The company’s a bit lacking, in my opinion, but I suppose you must take what you can get, eh?”
Tess made a face at his retreating back before gathering up the meager cleaning supplies in the storage room. As fastidious as he could be about some things, Gowan was not particularly inclined towards tidiness, and whatever cleaning would be done in the shop had fallen to her since she’d arrived. Tess didn’t mind.
With the dust motes swirling lazily, catching bits of the light as they followed their own spiraling pattern through the air, the moment seemed almost magical. Tess began to hum, filling the quiet with an old song, one of the favorites from her childhood, and she yearned in that moment for her old music. What she wouldn’t give to listen to some of her Maggie’s favorite music- Van Morrison, the Beatles, any of it. Instead, she recalled what she could of them, bits and pieces- relics, it seemed, from another time in her life.
She hummed while she cleaned her sparse space, making her bed and dusting around her small nightstand/dresser, before moving out into the larger space of the shop, twirling as she sang, mindful of the close shelves. Miscellaneous objects gleamed, reflecting and distorting the sunlight they grabbed, throwing rainbows across the space that she danced through. The smells now familiar of old books mingled with the stale odor of a space long since devoid of fresh air, and Tess decided to push out the small window in the front.
She was making her way towards this spot when the door opened at the front. “Sorry, closed!” she called out, considering it unlikely that it was Gowan returning so soon from the festivities.
“I know,” Emmie responded, entering and allowing the door to close behind her. “I came here to look for you.” She was wearing a brilliant red dress, her blonde braid flecked with the blues and greens of the ribbons intertwined within it. She was smiling timidly, and Tess returned the same small smile.
“Hullo, Tess.”
“Hullo, Emmie.”
Emmie sighed, pulling at her braid nervously. The gesture made her seem so very young and innocent. “I wanted to see you,” Emmie said. “To apologize, firstly, for what occurred the last time we saw you. We behaved so very b
adly.” Her face clouded at the memory. “And, also, I missed you.”
Tess softened. “I missed you, too.”
Emmie took a step forward, tentative, then another until she was close enough to wrap her arms around Tess. Tess returned the hug, surprised as her chest constricted at the gesture. Don’t cry, she schooled herself.
Once detangled, Emmie glanced about. “Anywhere we could sit, perhaps, and talk?”
“Oh, right…back this way,” Tess led Emmie to her personal space, grabbing a chair as they walked. She placed the chair inside the alcove before dropping onto her cot. Emmie surveyed the space. “You stay here?”
“Yes.” Tess felt a protective twinge for her small sanctuary. “It’s actually not bad.”
“No, of course not,” Emmie said, sitting. She tucked her foot delicately under her other leg, sitting half Indian style on the small stool. “So, as I was saying-”
“I’m sorry too.”
“You are?” Emmie seemed confused.
“Yes. I was just hurt, and I was harsher than I should have been. I see that now. I didn’t stop to think that there might be more to the story.”
“You couldn’t have known, could you?” Emmie said. She laughed without humor. “Here’s the ironic bit- Ashe and I were hoping to talk with the group, soon, about bringing you in, truly, and telling you everything, but we hadn’t yet. And then, Tom happened, and… well, we weren’t prepared for how to manage it, especially with Dray.”
Tess grimaced at the memory. “Yeah.”
“Truth is, we’re all sorry for what happened. Especially Ashe. He feels he let you down. He’s been awfully hard on himself for it. And Fish- well, he’d never go against Dray in front of the others, but he gave Dray quite a mouthful for it the first time he had a private opportunity.”
