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SEALIGHT

By Ian R. MacLeod

* * * *

“YOU WILL BE CAREFUL, dear?”

“Of course I’ll be careful.” Ran Kirving carried his mother from her bed to the

wicker wheelchair, smoothing the blankets over the remains of her legs.

“Tomorrow’s a big day, son. The happiest day of your life.”

“Yes, Mother.” He kissed her temple.

“So you will be careful, won’t you?”

Ran smiled and patted her hand. Then he picked up the bag of skidling

sandwiches she’d made him the night before. “See you this evening.”

He took the stairs of the creaky tenement three at a time, past the screams of

babies, the slow rumble of household arguments that would last into the night, the

cabbages talk reek of too many lives pressed too close together.

The courtyard was filled with flapping washing and sunlight. Ran paused to

take a breath of the relatively fresh air. As always, it was flavored with rotting

seaweed and stagnant canal.

“What a lovely morning? a voice called.

Ran looked up and saw Piir leaning from the creaky balcony of her parents’

tenement. She was still in her nightgown, her red hair tied back from her wide and

innocent face.

“Yes,” Ran said, squinting at her through the fluttering sheets, telling himself

over and over again how lucky he was to be marrying her, hoping that with enough

repetition he might come to believe it.

“I’ve just got the hem of my dress to finish,” Piir said. She laughed. “Think of

me, all in white.” She turned slightly and the flashing sunlight caught the rounded

shape of her figure, the curve of her belly that people were already starting to notice.

“I’ve got to go,” Ran said with a wave.

Piir waved back. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

It was a fine day for fishing. The wind had veered away from the dimly foul

stench of the marshes and Ran’s sail snapped taut in the breeze. The sea was flat

blue and almost waveless. Even the ancient hull of Ran’s boat had decided not to

leak for a change.

Ribald shouts rang across the little flotilla. Ran’s fellow fishermen knew that

he was getting married tomorrow, and were full of advice as to his wedding night.

Ran made the appropriate gestures to them, knowing that they would be unable to

tell whether he was actually smiling.

The wind hurried them down through the main channel toward the lagoon. The

seagulls circled and cried. Spires and cupolas flashed bronze and drifted to leeward.

Off to the east, the last island of the city soared darkly from weedblack rocks.

As he had done each morning since his childhood, Ran gazed toward it. This was

where the palace of Torea raised the dark shoulders of its impenetrable seaward

face, shrugging off storm and time. He had learned of its legend, which is also the

legend of Lady Jolenta, from his long-dead father as he sat at the prow of this same

little boat. How Jolenta had been cursed with ageless beauty five centuries before,

and how it was said that she still lived somewhere beyond those ragged battlements.

Every few decades, some nobleman would tire of writing turgid poetry in her honor

and vow to release her, make her his lover, even his wife. But the stories always

ended there. The abandoned Eastern Quarter of the city was a dangerous place at the

best of times, where ghosts darted in the dark canals and the mined houses held

secrets best left undiscovered, those who tried to penetrate the walls of Torea were

invariably never heard of again.

What Lady Jolenta needed, Ran had decided long ago, was an adventurer, a

hero from the dazzling pages of the books Ran lacked the talent to read. Some giant

built with shoulders like a milk yoke, golden hair and flashing blue eyes, a magic

sword and a dark secret. Ran gazed up at Torea’s massive central tower, topped by

a widening profusion of roofs, weathervanes and turrets like a warted mushroom.

Sometimes, when he returned weary from a day hauling the nets and stared up at it

through the grainy evening, he thought he glimpsed a light flickering from the highest

window. But tomorrow he was to be married, and the sun was already bright enough

to douse a thousand lanterns. It seemed that there was no room left in his life for

such mysteries.

Ran hawked up a gob of spit, lobbed it an admirable distance. He swung the

boom toward the wind and cut through the water, leaving the little flotilla behind.

Partly, he wanted to spend his last day of bachelorhood alone, but also the further

west he sailed along the coast, the bigger his catch of skidling was likely to be.

Mostly, the fishermen in their fragile boats preferred to keep together and net the

thinner shoals in the middle flats of the lagoon rather than risk going near the

marches. Even the surrounding waters were places of uncertain danger, tied to the

past by a gray pall of nightmare legends. But Ran’s boat was close to the end of its

life. His grandfather had bought it thirdhand many years ago. Now, the boards were

split and the sail was more patch than canvas. Within the next year or two, and if a

storm didn’t catch him before, Ran would need a new boat. With his mother to

support — and now Piir and the child that was forming in her belly— it was

imperative that he find the money.

The keel creaked and the ominous coastline grew nearer as Ran daydreamed

of heroes and quests. Green scum veined the water. Islands of slick black sand

slumped to the horizon, tufted biliously green in patches. The catches were abundant

here — the water was like soup and the fish thrived — but so were the risks, not

least of which was grounding the keel on some hidden mudflat. The sail sagged in

the still air. Ran unstowed the oar and swept it slowly to each side, canoe-fashion.

The wooden blade made a sucking sound. Otherwise there was silence.

Ran glanced down over the side of the boat, praying for the continuance of

open water, wishing, too, that he did not have to fish here. He jumped as water

erupted close to his elbow, but it was no more than a bubble of marshgas,

foul-smelling but harmless. The disturbance caused a shoal of skidling to scatter

through the silt like spilled coins. He nodded to himself and leaned forward to stow

the oar. This was as good a place as any. He unfurled the nets.

The dark air was hot. He sweated as he worked, drawing the nets through the

sleek water. Gutting the skidling, feeling the bright shudder as each life spilled in a

gathering slick, he pictured Jolenta, alone in her tower. He saw the fall of her hair

against pale shoulders, the gleam and shift of silk across her limbs, a sea-diamond

glinting in the soft valley between her breasts. . . . He shook his head and squeezed a

skidling eyeball between finger and thumb until it popped.

Noon came. Time for Ran to eat the skidling sandwiches his mother had made

for him. Off to the west, he had noticed astony gray island that seemed more

substantial than the rest. Welcoming the prospect of resting on solid ground for half

an hour, Ran eased his boat through the maze of channels. He threw a grappling iron

across the last few feet. It struck the gray surface of the island with an oddly liquid

smack. He hauled himself in.

Ran had half his mind on the grim horizon, watching the glint of distant

marshlight. If he hadn’t been doing so, he might have noticed the gray-green coils

that began to seethe beneath the boat a vital moment earlier. As it was, when he

jumped from the prow his feet struck the island with a fleshy slap. His right boot

split the surface and black blood puddled up over his ankle, but by then it was too

late. The water was starting to boil with angry, seeking flesh.

Tentacles writhed dripping from the water. A rough grayish lump that Ran had

assumed to be a rock set in the middle of the island split open to reveal a malevolent

yellow eye. A tentacle swung around his arm like a wet rope. Others smacked across

his waist, his neck. The muscular flesh bulged, then relaxed, holding without

crashing. It lifted Ran lightly toward its steaming maw. Ran screamed and straggled,

but the creature’s strength was enormous. And he was no hero — he could think of

nothing he could do that would make any difference to his fate. He thought instead

of his mother, he thought of Piir, the way she furrowed her brow when she was

unhappy, the way she crinkled her eyes when she smiled. The beak and lips dilated

to accept his kicking feet, his legs, his thighs.

It would all have been over quickly enough had the creature not been indolent

and ancient, used to eating nothing larger than the frogs and snakes and gray things

of the marshes. Somehow it couldn’t swallow Ran past his hips. He was stuck —

the mouth would widen no further. The throat pulsed uselessly, grinding Ran’s legs.

The creature began to thrash wildly, turning pinkish in anger, then red as it began to

choke. The yellow eye watered and blinked. The creature grew desperate. One of the

tentacles pulled hard at Ran’s right arm. For a moment, he felt as though it might

bust from its socket, but the creature’s strength was failing. It was choking, dying.

The tentacles fell uselessly into the water. Silt swirled, began to settle. Ran

heaved against the collar of flesh that held him. He pushed again, images of a slow

death inside the maw of this dead creature playing through his mind. Given the

choice, he would rather the thing had consumed him — but then he felt something

give. Lubricated by stinking saliva, he hauled himself out.

He picked his way across the bobbing island of flesh, trying to ignore the

white parasites that scuttled around his feet. Before he jumped back into the boat, he

noticed something glimmering at the comer of his sight. Filled with a weird sense of

curiosity, he decided to look.

He expected no more than light on water or a dead fish, but what he found

was an oddly shaped knife wedged into the wrinkled flesh where two tentacles

joined. The handle terminated in two golden loops. He took it and pulled. The blade

winked in his face, seeming to focus what little light penetrated the marsh. He smiled

and stuffed it into the belt beneath his sodden jerkin, wondering whether it might

finally signify a change in his luck.

IT WAS GROWING dark when Ran’s boat drew back into sight of the city. He

drifted on the stale evening breeze through the treacherous channels, past salt pans

and weed-strung bones of ancient wrecks toward the fishermen’s harbor. His body

responded to the boat’s needs as he stared east. Torea was black with night, but he

was sure he could see a filigree of light from one window. Breathing the gathering

aroma of the city, he thought of Jolenta, the white purity of her flesh. Clean and cool,

like sheets of new linen . . .

Most of the other fishermen were already back at their moorings. They all

wanted to know about Ran’s plans for the evening, which inn they would be starting

the traditional pre-wedding carouse in. Ran plucked a name at random — the

Captain’s Lash; a suitably lowlife dive. He told them he’d be there at seven bells,

and wondered how long they would sit there waiting for him with tumblers of spiked

ale before they realized he wasn’t going to show.

He made his way home across bobbing walkways, over creaking bridges,

through the courtyard and up the final stairway where the same babies were crying,

the same arguments rumbling. His mother was sitting up in bed in the smoggily lit

parlor; Piir generally came around about midday to see to her. Ran noticed that the

flask of cheap nullwine that she used to relieve her pain was almost empty. She must

have had a bad day—it was always worse when the weather was close and hot.

Her illness was now progressing toward its later stages. He remembered his

father first breaking the news to him many years ago. Him saying, Son, I’ve got to

tell you something that means you’re going to have to grow up quicker than your

mother and I would wish. Ran didn’t really understand then. Something called

mermaidosis. But then a kid from across the courtyard showed him a cheap painting

of a woman with the lower body of a fish and laughed and said, that’s what’s

happening to your Mum, stoopid. Mermaidosis was a virus that took women in

youth and slowly turned their legs and belly to fishscale and/in. The lucky majority

died when the silvering reached their waist, but it was said that some became fish in

the whole.

“Have you had a good day, dear?”

“You know.” He shrugged. “Average.” What was he supposed to say, some

creature choked when it tried to eat me? Now, maybe if he’d battled it to death . . .

“Looking forward to the wedding tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“Piir’s a lovely girl, Ran. She’ll make a fine wife . . . “ She gave him a look. “

. . . and mother. Living here with us, we’ll be more of a family again. Like long ago

when your poor Dad was alive. Come here.” She opened her arms.

Ran knelt beside the bed and leaned into the fishy scent of her embrace. He

could feel the pressure of the jeweled knife beneath his jerkin where he had pushed it

into his belt. When his mother’s hands patted close to it, he drew back.

Ran fried skidling for them both on the smoky hob. They ate in silence, both

wrapped in their own visions of the future. Afterward, he washed himself at the

communal tap, changed, refilled his mother’s flask of nullwine, settled her blankets

and snuffed out the lights. He tiptoed away, thinking she was asleep, but as he

reached the door, he heard her mutter, “You will be careful, won’t you, dear?”

“You know me,” he said. “I’m always careful.”

He descended the stairs to the courtyard, looking up, he could see the light of

Piir’s window through the shaggy curtain. He turned quickly left alongside the canal.

Ian R. Macleod - Sealight.pdf

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