Weird Tales #358, page 6
“Hurts,” Rak managed.
The colours and light muted, and the vision narrowed at the edges so that it seemed Rak was running through a tunnel. She unclenched her hands, breathing heavily.
Better?
Rak grunted.
You are seeing through my eyes. This is the outside world.. But you are safe inside me, my child.
“Mother,” said Rak.
Yes. I am your mother. Which of my children are you?
The voice was soothing, making it easier to breathe. “I’m Rak. From the Belly.”
Rak, my child. I am so glad to meet you.
The scene outside rolled by: yellows and reds, and the blue mass above. Mother named the things for her. Sky. Ground. Sun. She named the sharp things scything out at the bottom of her vision: mandibles¸ and the frenetically moving shapes glimpsed at the edges: legs. The cold fear of the enormous outside gradually faded in the presence of that warm voice. An urge to urinate made Rak aware of her own body again, and her purpose there.
“Mother. Something is wrong,” she said. “The babies are born wrong. We need your help.”
Nutrient and DNA deficiency, Mother hummed. I need food.
“But you can move everywhere, Mother. Why are you not finding food?”
Guidance systems malfunction. Food sources in the current area are depleted.
“Can I help, Mother?”
The way ahead bent slightly to the right. Mother was running in a circle.
There is an obstruction in my mainframe. Please remove the obstruction.
Behind Rak, something clanged. The tube slithered out of her nostril and she could see the room around her again. She turned her head. Behind the hammock a hatch had opened in the ceiling, the lid hanging down, rungs lining the inside. The hammock let Rak go with a sucking noise and she climbed up the rungs.
Inside, gently lit in red, was Mother’s brain: a small space surrounded by cables winding into flesh. A slow pulse beat through the walls. Half-sitting against the wall was the emaciated body of a male. Its head and right shoulder were resting on a tangle of delicate tubes, bloated and stiff where they ran in under the dead male’s body, thin and atrophied on the other. Rak pulled at an arm. Mother had started to absorb the corpse; it was partly fused to the wall. She tugged harder, and the upper body finally tore away and fell sideways. There was a rushing sound as pressure in the tubes evened out. The body was no longer in the way of any wires or tubes, that Rak could see. She left it on the floor and climbed back down the hatch. Back in the hammock, the tube snuck into her nostril, and Mother’s voice was in her head again.
Thank you, said Mother. Obstruction has been removed. Guidance system recalibrating.
“It was Ziz, I think,” said Rak. “He was dead.”
Yes. He was performing maintenance when he expired.
“Aren‘t there any more pilots?”
You can be my pilot.
“But I’m female,” Rak said.
That is all right. Your brain gives me sufficient processing power for calculating a new itinerary.
“What?”
You don’t have to do anything. Just sit here with me.
Rak watched as Mother changed course, climbing up the wall of the canyon and up onto a soft yellow expanse: grassland, whispered. The sky sat heavy and blue over the grass. Mother slowed down, her mouthpieces scooping up plants from the ground.
Angular silhouettes stood against the horizon.
“What is that?” said Rak.
Cities, Mother replied. Your ancestors used to live there. But then the cities died, and they came to me. We entered an agreement. You would keep me company, and in exchange I would protect you until the world was a better place.
“Where are we going?”
Looking for a mate. I need fresh genetic material. My system is not completely self-sufficient.
“Oh.” Rak’s mouth fell open. “Are there… more of you?”
Of sorts. There are none like me, but I have cousins that roam the steppes. A sigh. None of them are good company. Not like my children.
* * * *
Mother trundled over the grassland, eating and eating. Rak panicked the first time the sun disappeared, until Mother wrapped the hammock tight around her and told her to look up. Rak quieted at the sight of the glowing band laid across the sky. Other suns, Mother said, but Rak could not grasp it. She settled for thinking of it like lights in the ceiling of a great room.
They passed more of the cities: jagged spires and broken domes, bright surfaces criss-crossed with cracks and curling green. Occasionally flocks of other living creatures ran across the grass. Mother would name them all. Each time a new animal appeared, Rak asked if that was her mate. The answer was always no.
“Are you feeling better?” Rak said eventually.
No. A sighing sound. I am sorry. My system is degraded past the point of repair.
“What does that mean?”
Goodbye, my daughter. Please use the exit with green lights.
Something shot up Rak’s nostril through the tube. A sting of pain blossomed inside her forehead, and she tore the tube out. A thin stream of blood trailed from her nose. She wiped at it with her arm. A shudder shook the hammock. The luminescence in the walls faded. It was suddenly very quiet.
“Mother?” Rak said into the gloom. Outside, something was different. She peered out through one of the eyes. The world wasn’t moving.
“Mother!” Rak put the tube in her nose again, but it fell out and lay limp in her lap. She slid out of the hammock, standing up on stiff legs. The hatch to Mother’s brain was still open. Rak pulled herself up into the little space. It was pitch dark and still. No pulse moved through the walls.
Rak left Mother’s head and started down the long corridors, down toward the Nursery and the Belly. She scooped some mucus from the wall to eat, but it tasted rank. It was getting darker. Only the growths around the round plate between the Head and the rest of the body were still glowing brightly. They had changed to green.
* * * *
In the Nursery, Papa was lying on his cot, chest rising and falling faintly.
“There you are,” he said when Rak approached. “You were gone for so long.”
“What happened?” said Rak.
Papa shook his head. “Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”
“Mother isn’t moving,” said Rak. “I found Her head, and She talked to me, and I helped Her find her way to food, but she says she can’t be repaired, and now she’s not moving. I don’t know what to do.”
Papa closed his eyes. “Our Mother is dead,” he whispered. “And we will go with Her.”
He turned away, spreading his arms against the wall, hugging the tangle of cabling and flesh. Rak left him there.
* * * *
In the Belly, the air was thick and rancid. The peristaltic engine was still. Rak’s feet slapping against the floor made a very loud noise. Around the chamber, workers were lying along the walls, half-melted into Mother’s flesh. The Leg accesses along the walls were all open; here and there an arm or a head poked out. Hap lay close to the entrance, resting on her side. Her body was gaunt, the ribs fully visible through the skin. She had begun sinking into the floor; Rak could still see part of her face. Her eyes were half-closed, as if she were just very tired.
Rak backed out into the corridor, turning back toward the Head. The sphincters were all relaxing, sending the foul air from the Belly toward her, forcing her to crawl forward. The last of the luminescence faded. She crawled in darkness until she saw a green shimmer up ahead. The round plate was still there. It swung aside at her touch.
* * * *
The air coming in was cold and sharp, painful on the skin, but fresh. Rak breathed in deep. The hot air from Mother’s insides streamed out above her in a cloud. The sun hung low on the horizon, its light far more blinding than Mother’s eyes had seen it. One hand in front of her eyes, Rak swung her legs out over the rim of the opening and cried out in surprise when her feet landed on grass. The myriad blades prickled the soles of her feet. She sat there, gripping at the grass with her toes, eyes squeezed shut. When the light was less painful, she opened her eyes a little and stood up.
The aperture opened out between two of Mother’s jointed legs. They rested on the grass, each leg thicker around than Rak could reach with her arms. Beyond them, she could glimpse more legs to either side. She looked up. Behind her, the wall of Mother’s body rose up, more than twice Rak’s own height. Beyond the top there was sky, a blue nothing, not flat like seen through Mother’s eyes but deep and endless. In front of her, the grassland, stretching on and on. Rak held on to the massive leg next to her. Her stomach clenched, and she bent over and spat bile. There was a hot lump in her chest that wouldn’t go away. She spat again and kneeled on the grass.
“Mother,” she whispered in the thin air. She leaned against the leg. It was cold and smooth. “Mother, please.” She crawled in under Mother’s legs, curling up against Her body, breathing in Her familiar musk. A sweet hint of rot lurked below. The knot in Rak’s chest forced itself up through her throat in a howl.
Rak eventually fell asleep. She dreamed of legs sprouting from her sides, her body elongating and dividing into sections, taking a sinuous shape. She ran over the grass, legs in perfect unison, muscles and vertebrae stretching and becoming powerful. The sky was no longer terrible. Warm light caressed the length of her scales.
* * * *
A pattering noise in the distance woke her up. Rak stretched and rubbed her eyes. Her cheeks were crusted with salt. She scratched at her side. An itching line of nubs ran along her ribs. Beside her, Mother’s body no longer smelled of musk; the smell of rot was stronger. She crawled out onto the grass and rose to her feet. The sky had darkened, and a pale orb hung in the void, painting the landscape in stark grey and white. Mother lay quiet, stretched out into the distance. Rak saw now that Mother’s carapace was grey and pitted, some of the many legs cracked or missing.
In the bleak light, a long shape on many legs approached. When it came close, Rak saw it was much smaller than Mother—perhaps three or four times Rak’s length. She stood very still. The other paused a few feet away. It reared up, fore body and legs waving back and forth. Its mandibles clattered. Something about its movement caused a warm stirring in Rak’s belly. After a while, it turned around, depositing a gelatinous sac on the ground. It slowly backed away.
Rak approached the sac. It was the size of her head. Inside, a host of little shapes wriggled around. Her belly rumbled. The other departed, mandibles clattering, as Rak ripped the sac open with her teeth. The wriggling little things were tangy on her tongue. She swallowed them whole.
She ate until she was sated, then crouched down on the ground, scratching at her sides. Her arms and legs tingled. She had a growing urge to run and stretch her muscles; to run and never stop.
* * * *
Karin Tidbeck lives in Malmö, Sweden, and is a 2010 graduate of the Clarion SF & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have appeared in Swedish publications since 2002. Her Swedish book debut, a short story collection entitled Vem är Arvid Pekon?, was released in September. More stories in English are on their way.
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SANDCASTLE ALCHEMY, by Nik Houser
I remember the weight of the lightning rod in my hand. How light it was. How it balanced with the plastic shovel and pail gripped tight in my other fist as we marched down the beach, singing through the fog:
“The Queen of Mermaids fine and fair,
Felt no pain and knew no strife,
Only joy year after year,
Till whalers snared her husband. . .”
It was our reveille song at St. Ahab’s Home for Boys. Our cleaning the dishes song. Our tending the garden song. Our scrubbing the floors and hanging the laundry and chasing mice from the pantry song. It was our national anthem.
Six boys went down to the shore that morning. Five due back at sundown. No different from the year before, or a hundred years before.
“Her true love dead upon the keel,
The Queen looked on as through the night,
With fishing nets and hooks of steel,
The mongers caught her children. . .”
I remember the smell of the water on the air, coming not from the ocean, but from the sky, that clean scent of approaching rain as dawn struggled to rise above a pursuing phalanx of dark grey clouds on the horizon. The tide was out. Cool, dry sand ran off our feet like dunes of sugar as we walked.
“Left thus alone she turned toward home,
No lover and no offspring,
To take her kingdom and her throne,
When Death should come to claim her. . .”
“Here we are, lads.” Old Pete dropped his equipment in the sand. “Remember not to build too close to the water. Look at the water now, but mind where the tide’ll be when you finish.”
“Like building your house by a river, innit?” offered Handsome George. “Can’t build too close, or floods will steal it away when you ain’t looking.”
“Right you are,” said Old Pete. “Same goes for us today.”
“So once a year she walks on land,
To spy our royal off’ring,
And lift an heir up from the sand,
To rule the waves beside her.”
Old Pete wasn’t the oldest kid at the Home. In fact, being eleven made me six months his elder. But he talked old, so that made him old.
“How long you figure we have till that storm hits?” I said, shovel held tight in both hands to keep them from shaking.
Old Pete looked off to where bruise-colored clouds massed along the horizon. “I’d say we’ve got a good five, six hours. You lads think we can be done by then?”
“Aye!”
We worked in a line down the shore. Handsome George staked his camp farthest out, at the north end of our small enclave. Next came Slow Alfie (who wasn’t so much slow as deliberate in his methods, but Methodical Alfie just doesn’t ring right to an adolescent ear), then the twins Felix and Helix working independently, then myself and Old Pete.
“I heard the Mermaid Queen’s so beautiful that she puts the loveliest two-legged woman on land to shame,” said Felix, digging out a foundation with his trowel.
“Says who?” asked his kin, also putting shovel to earth, as were we all.
“Says every fish I ever caught.”
“I heard the same,” nodded Handsome George. “I also heard the other mermaids in her kingdom are even prettier than she, and that the Queen herself is thought plain by comparison.”
“Aye.”
We knew this dialogue. Could have swapped places with any boy, like well-rehearsed understudies. Growing up in the Home, you knew the other Sons of Ahab. You knew their favorite colors, knew the names of the monsters they ran from in their nightmares, knew who cut the cheese because you recognized the smell. The only secret you kept was what you were going to build when your turn came to head down the shoreline. Because you didn’t dare write it down. Only a fool would draft a blueprint, lest someone nick your destiny for themselves. You kept it hidden in your head, where there was plenty of room because all your other secrets were spilt already, as was every tale could possibly be told, exaggerated, or just made up about the Mermaid Queen.
“You know clothes are against the law in her undersea kingdom?” I shouted down the row, up to my elbows now in damp earth. “Even the prettiest among them feels no shame.”
“Aye,” they agreed.
By now the sun was completely gone, smothered under black nimbus pillows.
“You know she used to save drowning sailors,” said Old Pete. Wind whipped the boy’s dirty blonde mop of hair in six directions at once so that he could scarcely see his labors. If he hadn’t already built his castle from mental scratch a thousand times or more, he might have had trouble.
“But they all fell in love with her,” he went on. The other boys had stopped their work to listen. Old Pete always told stories best because he told them like they were new, like we hadn’t heard them a hundred times before and retold them another hundred. “All the rescued sailors kept throwing themselves overboard again next chance they got, trying to get back to her. Ended up drowning themselves. ’Course even that wouldn’t have been so dear if they hadn’t told all their shipmates about the Mermaid Queen’s beauty and wealth, so that the rest of them all jumped in and sunk like stones as well.”
Old Pete sat back on his heels, waved a hand at the frothing blue expanse behind him. Out of us six, he was the favorite to win, wise as cats and sharp as claws. White caps formed beyond the farthest sand bar, the horizon line now erased by an encroaching wall of rain.
“Yessir, there’s a whole fleet of unmanned ships wandering the oceans out there somewhere.” With his foundation dug, Old Pete gave the sky a hard look, then set about his architecture.
Handsome George whistled as he worked, piping the Ballad of the Mermaid Queen into an atmosphere gone cold and bitter. Slow Alfie worked in silence, as was his wont. Helix and Felix told each other jokes, one relaying the setup before the other broke in with the punch line. I hummed a tune my mother used to sing to me before she and the old man brought me to St. Ahab’s. By rights I shouldn’t have kept the memory, seeing as they’d received the letter announcing my selection when I’d only been evicted from the womb a week prior, same as all the other Sons. But there you go.
Old Pete sang nursery rhymes. Not the Mermaid Queen’s, but all the rest he knew, and then only certain parts.
“London Bridges. . .had a great fall. . .along came a spider. . . who lost her sheep. . .and cried wee-wee-wee all the way home.”
He sang it to himself, over and over.
“What’re you on about?” I said.
At first, Old Pete made like he hadn’t heard. His hands continued their chores with the trowel and bucket. The structure rising before him stretched halfway up the ten foot copper lightning rod planted in its base. The key was building around the rod— setting it deep in the earth first, then working up.
“What’s that now?” he said, still focused on his sand.
“You’re singin’ just the bad parts,” I told him. “You’re singin’ crib hymns, but you’re skippin’ over all except the bad bits.”
The colours and light muted, and the vision narrowed at the edges so that it seemed Rak was running through a tunnel. She unclenched her hands, breathing heavily.
Better?
Rak grunted.
You are seeing through my eyes. This is the outside world.. But you are safe inside me, my child.
“Mother,” said Rak.
Yes. I am your mother. Which of my children are you?
The voice was soothing, making it easier to breathe. “I’m Rak. From the Belly.”
Rak, my child. I am so glad to meet you.
The scene outside rolled by: yellows and reds, and the blue mass above. Mother named the things for her. Sky. Ground. Sun. She named the sharp things scything out at the bottom of her vision: mandibles¸ and the frenetically moving shapes glimpsed at the edges: legs. The cold fear of the enormous outside gradually faded in the presence of that warm voice. An urge to urinate made Rak aware of her own body again, and her purpose there.
“Mother. Something is wrong,” she said. “The babies are born wrong. We need your help.”
Nutrient and DNA deficiency, Mother hummed. I need food.
“But you can move everywhere, Mother. Why are you not finding food?”
Guidance systems malfunction. Food sources in the current area are depleted.
“Can I help, Mother?”
The way ahead bent slightly to the right. Mother was running in a circle.
There is an obstruction in my mainframe. Please remove the obstruction.
Behind Rak, something clanged. The tube slithered out of her nostril and she could see the room around her again. She turned her head. Behind the hammock a hatch had opened in the ceiling, the lid hanging down, rungs lining the inside. The hammock let Rak go with a sucking noise and she climbed up the rungs.
Inside, gently lit in red, was Mother’s brain: a small space surrounded by cables winding into flesh. A slow pulse beat through the walls. Half-sitting against the wall was the emaciated body of a male. Its head and right shoulder were resting on a tangle of delicate tubes, bloated and stiff where they ran in under the dead male’s body, thin and atrophied on the other. Rak pulled at an arm. Mother had started to absorb the corpse; it was partly fused to the wall. She tugged harder, and the upper body finally tore away and fell sideways. There was a rushing sound as pressure in the tubes evened out. The body was no longer in the way of any wires or tubes, that Rak could see. She left it on the floor and climbed back down the hatch. Back in the hammock, the tube snuck into her nostril, and Mother’s voice was in her head again.
Thank you, said Mother. Obstruction has been removed. Guidance system recalibrating.
“It was Ziz, I think,” said Rak. “He was dead.”
Yes. He was performing maintenance when he expired.
“Aren‘t there any more pilots?”
You can be my pilot.
“But I’m female,” Rak said.
That is all right. Your brain gives me sufficient processing power for calculating a new itinerary.
“What?”
You don’t have to do anything. Just sit here with me.
Rak watched as Mother changed course, climbing up the wall of the canyon and up onto a soft yellow expanse: grassland, whispered. The sky sat heavy and blue over the grass. Mother slowed down, her mouthpieces scooping up plants from the ground.
Angular silhouettes stood against the horizon.
“What is that?” said Rak.
Cities, Mother replied. Your ancestors used to live there. But then the cities died, and they came to me. We entered an agreement. You would keep me company, and in exchange I would protect you until the world was a better place.
“Where are we going?”
Looking for a mate. I need fresh genetic material. My system is not completely self-sufficient.
“Oh.” Rak’s mouth fell open. “Are there… more of you?”
Of sorts. There are none like me, but I have cousins that roam the steppes. A sigh. None of them are good company. Not like my children.
* * * *
Mother trundled over the grassland, eating and eating. Rak panicked the first time the sun disappeared, until Mother wrapped the hammock tight around her and told her to look up. Rak quieted at the sight of the glowing band laid across the sky. Other suns, Mother said, but Rak could not grasp it. She settled for thinking of it like lights in the ceiling of a great room.
They passed more of the cities: jagged spires and broken domes, bright surfaces criss-crossed with cracks and curling green. Occasionally flocks of other living creatures ran across the grass. Mother would name them all. Each time a new animal appeared, Rak asked if that was her mate. The answer was always no.
“Are you feeling better?” Rak said eventually.
No. A sighing sound. I am sorry. My system is degraded past the point of repair.
“What does that mean?”
Goodbye, my daughter. Please use the exit with green lights.
Something shot up Rak’s nostril through the tube. A sting of pain blossomed inside her forehead, and she tore the tube out. A thin stream of blood trailed from her nose. She wiped at it with her arm. A shudder shook the hammock. The luminescence in the walls faded. It was suddenly very quiet.
“Mother?” Rak said into the gloom. Outside, something was different. She peered out through one of the eyes. The world wasn’t moving.
“Mother!” Rak put the tube in her nose again, but it fell out and lay limp in her lap. She slid out of the hammock, standing up on stiff legs. The hatch to Mother’s brain was still open. Rak pulled herself up into the little space. It was pitch dark and still. No pulse moved through the walls.
Rak left Mother’s head and started down the long corridors, down toward the Nursery and the Belly. She scooped some mucus from the wall to eat, but it tasted rank. It was getting darker. Only the growths around the round plate between the Head and the rest of the body were still glowing brightly. They had changed to green.
* * * *
In the Nursery, Papa was lying on his cot, chest rising and falling faintly.
“There you are,” he said when Rak approached. “You were gone for so long.”
“What happened?” said Rak.
Papa shook his head. “Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”
“Mother isn’t moving,” said Rak. “I found Her head, and She talked to me, and I helped Her find her way to food, but she says she can’t be repaired, and now she’s not moving. I don’t know what to do.”
Papa closed his eyes. “Our Mother is dead,” he whispered. “And we will go with Her.”
He turned away, spreading his arms against the wall, hugging the tangle of cabling and flesh. Rak left him there.
* * * *
In the Belly, the air was thick and rancid. The peristaltic engine was still. Rak’s feet slapping against the floor made a very loud noise. Around the chamber, workers were lying along the walls, half-melted into Mother’s flesh. The Leg accesses along the walls were all open; here and there an arm or a head poked out. Hap lay close to the entrance, resting on her side. Her body was gaunt, the ribs fully visible through the skin. She had begun sinking into the floor; Rak could still see part of her face. Her eyes were half-closed, as if she were just very tired.
Rak backed out into the corridor, turning back toward the Head. The sphincters were all relaxing, sending the foul air from the Belly toward her, forcing her to crawl forward. The last of the luminescence faded. She crawled in darkness until she saw a green shimmer up ahead. The round plate was still there. It swung aside at her touch.
* * * *
The air coming in was cold and sharp, painful on the skin, but fresh. Rak breathed in deep. The hot air from Mother’s insides streamed out above her in a cloud. The sun hung low on the horizon, its light far more blinding than Mother’s eyes had seen it. One hand in front of her eyes, Rak swung her legs out over the rim of the opening and cried out in surprise when her feet landed on grass. The myriad blades prickled the soles of her feet. She sat there, gripping at the grass with her toes, eyes squeezed shut. When the light was less painful, she opened her eyes a little and stood up.
The aperture opened out between two of Mother’s jointed legs. They rested on the grass, each leg thicker around than Rak could reach with her arms. Beyond them, she could glimpse more legs to either side. She looked up. Behind her, the wall of Mother’s body rose up, more than twice Rak’s own height. Beyond the top there was sky, a blue nothing, not flat like seen through Mother’s eyes but deep and endless. In front of her, the grassland, stretching on and on. Rak held on to the massive leg next to her. Her stomach clenched, and she bent over and spat bile. There was a hot lump in her chest that wouldn’t go away. She spat again and kneeled on the grass.
“Mother,” she whispered in the thin air. She leaned against the leg. It was cold and smooth. “Mother, please.” She crawled in under Mother’s legs, curling up against Her body, breathing in Her familiar musk. A sweet hint of rot lurked below. The knot in Rak’s chest forced itself up through her throat in a howl.
Rak eventually fell asleep. She dreamed of legs sprouting from her sides, her body elongating and dividing into sections, taking a sinuous shape. She ran over the grass, legs in perfect unison, muscles and vertebrae stretching and becoming powerful. The sky was no longer terrible. Warm light caressed the length of her scales.
* * * *
A pattering noise in the distance woke her up. Rak stretched and rubbed her eyes. Her cheeks were crusted with salt. She scratched at her side. An itching line of nubs ran along her ribs. Beside her, Mother’s body no longer smelled of musk; the smell of rot was stronger. She crawled out onto the grass and rose to her feet. The sky had darkened, and a pale orb hung in the void, painting the landscape in stark grey and white. Mother lay quiet, stretched out into the distance. Rak saw now that Mother’s carapace was grey and pitted, some of the many legs cracked or missing.
In the bleak light, a long shape on many legs approached. When it came close, Rak saw it was much smaller than Mother—perhaps three or four times Rak’s length. She stood very still. The other paused a few feet away. It reared up, fore body and legs waving back and forth. Its mandibles clattered. Something about its movement caused a warm stirring in Rak’s belly. After a while, it turned around, depositing a gelatinous sac on the ground. It slowly backed away.
Rak approached the sac. It was the size of her head. Inside, a host of little shapes wriggled around. Her belly rumbled. The other departed, mandibles clattering, as Rak ripped the sac open with her teeth. The wriggling little things were tangy on her tongue. She swallowed them whole.
She ate until she was sated, then crouched down on the ground, scratching at her sides. Her arms and legs tingled. She had a growing urge to run and stretch her muscles; to run and never stop.
* * * *
Karin Tidbeck lives in Malmö, Sweden, and is a 2010 graduate of the Clarion SF & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have appeared in Swedish publications since 2002. Her Swedish book debut, a short story collection entitled Vem är Arvid Pekon?, was released in September. More stories in English are on their way.
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SANDCASTLE ALCHEMY, by Nik Houser
I remember the weight of the lightning rod in my hand. How light it was. How it balanced with the plastic shovel and pail gripped tight in my other fist as we marched down the beach, singing through the fog:
“The Queen of Mermaids fine and fair,
Felt no pain and knew no strife,
Only joy year after year,
Till whalers snared her husband. . .”
It was our reveille song at St. Ahab’s Home for Boys. Our cleaning the dishes song. Our tending the garden song. Our scrubbing the floors and hanging the laundry and chasing mice from the pantry song. It was our national anthem.
Six boys went down to the shore that morning. Five due back at sundown. No different from the year before, or a hundred years before.
“Her true love dead upon the keel,
The Queen looked on as through the night,
With fishing nets and hooks of steel,
The mongers caught her children. . .”
I remember the smell of the water on the air, coming not from the ocean, but from the sky, that clean scent of approaching rain as dawn struggled to rise above a pursuing phalanx of dark grey clouds on the horizon. The tide was out. Cool, dry sand ran off our feet like dunes of sugar as we walked.
“Left thus alone she turned toward home,
No lover and no offspring,
To take her kingdom and her throne,
When Death should come to claim her. . .”
“Here we are, lads.” Old Pete dropped his equipment in the sand. “Remember not to build too close to the water. Look at the water now, but mind where the tide’ll be when you finish.”
“Like building your house by a river, innit?” offered Handsome George. “Can’t build too close, or floods will steal it away when you ain’t looking.”
“Right you are,” said Old Pete. “Same goes for us today.”
“So once a year she walks on land,
To spy our royal off’ring,
And lift an heir up from the sand,
To rule the waves beside her.”
Old Pete wasn’t the oldest kid at the Home. In fact, being eleven made me six months his elder. But he talked old, so that made him old.
“How long you figure we have till that storm hits?” I said, shovel held tight in both hands to keep them from shaking.
Old Pete looked off to where bruise-colored clouds massed along the horizon. “I’d say we’ve got a good five, six hours. You lads think we can be done by then?”
“Aye!”
We worked in a line down the shore. Handsome George staked his camp farthest out, at the north end of our small enclave. Next came Slow Alfie (who wasn’t so much slow as deliberate in his methods, but Methodical Alfie just doesn’t ring right to an adolescent ear), then the twins Felix and Helix working independently, then myself and Old Pete.
“I heard the Mermaid Queen’s so beautiful that she puts the loveliest two-legged woman on land to shame,” said Felix, digging out a foundation with his trowel.
“Says who?” asked his kin, also putting shovel to earth, as were we all.
“Says every fish I ever caught.”
“I heard the same,” nodded Handsome George. “I also heard the other mermaids in her kingdom are even prettier than she, and that the Queen herself is thought plain by comparison.”
“Aye.”
We knew this dialogue. Could have swapped places with any boy, like well-rehearsed understudies. Growing up in the Home, you knew the other Sons of Ahab. You knew their favorite colors, knew the names of the monsters they ran from in their nightmares, knew who cut the cheese because you recognized the smell. The only secret you kept was what you were going to build when your turn came to head down the shoreline. Because you didn’t dare write it down. Only a fool would draft a blueprint, lest someone nick your destiny for themselves. You kept it hidden in your head, where there was plenty of room because all your other secrets were spilt already, as was every tale could possibly be told, exaggerated, or just made up about the Mermaid Queen.
“You know clothes are against the law in her undersea kingdom?” I shouted down the row, up to my elbows now in damp earth. “Even the prettiest among them feels no shame.”
“Aye,” they agreed.
By now the sun was completely gone, smothered under black nimbus pillows.
“You know she used to save drowning sailors,” said Old Pete. Wind whipped the boy’s dirty blonde mop of hair in six directions at once so that he could scarcely see his labors. If he hadn’t already built his castle from mental scratch a thousand times or more, he might have had trouble.
“But they all fell in love with her,” he went on. The other boys had stopped their work to listen. Old Pete always told stories best because he told them like they were new, like we hadn’t heard them a hundred times before and retold them another hundred. “All the rescued sailors kept throwing themselves overboard again next chance they got, trying to get back to her. Ended up drowning themselves. ’Course even that wouldn’t have been so dear if they hadn’t told all their shipmates about the Mermaid Queen’s beauty and wealth, so that the rest of them all jumped in and sunk like stones as well.”
Old Pete sat back on his heels, waved a hand at the frothing blue expanse behind him. Out of us six, he was the favorite to win, wise as cats and sharp as claws. White caps formed beyond the farthest sand bar, the horizon line now erased by an encroaching wall of rain.
“Yessir, there’s a whole fleet of unmanned ships wandering the oceans out there somewhere.” With his foundation dug, Old Pete gave the sky a hard look, then set about his architecture.
Handsome George whistled as he worked, piping the Ballad of the Mermaid Queen into an atmosphere gone cold and bitter. Slow Alfie worked in silence, as was his wont. Helix and Felix told each other jokes, one relaying the setup before the other broke in with the punch line. I hummed a tune my mother used to sing to me before she and the old man brought me to St. Ahab’s. By rights I shouldn’t have kept the memory, seeing as they’d received the letter announcing my selection when I’d only been evicted from the womb a week prior, same as all the other Sons. But there you go.
Old Pete sang nursery rhymes. Not the Mermaid Queen’s, but all the rest he knew, and then only certain parts.
“London Bridges. . .had a great fall. . .along came a spider. . . who lost her sheep. . .and cried wee-wee-wee all the way home.”
He sang it to himself, over and over.
“What’re you on about?” I said.
At first, Old Pete made like he hadn’t heard. His hands continued their chores with the trowel and bucket. The structure rising before him stretched halfway up the ten foot copper lightning rod planted in its base. The key was building around the rod— setting it deep in the earth first, then working up.
“What’s that now?” he said, still focused on his sand.
“You’re singin’ just the bad parts,” I told him. “You’re singin’ crib hymns, but you’re skippin’ over all except the bad bits.”
