Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural mystery novel, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode One of Season Two.
{New to this story? Catch up with Season One here!}
In this first episode, Caroline Phelan and Captain Reyville track a mysterious danger in the woods, and are approached by a new acquaintance with an intriguing proposition…
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
Caroline sighed and shifted her weight to relieve the pressure on her knees as she crouched in the underbrush, watching the trailhead for any movement. It had been over an hour, and her muscles were screaming for her to stretch, but curiosity kept her in the same position, hidden.
That, and a certain unease; it was too quiet. Too still.
It was early morning, but even so: in Mothwood—the largest and oldest forest on Ferris Island—sunlight was only ever a suggestion, and the always-gloom had a way of making the trees feel like they were leaning in, listening. Caroline focused on the gap in the woods ahead, a disused lumber road completely overgrown with overhanging alder limbs and weeds, choking it down to a mere, slim deer-trail. She pulled an errant twig out of her tight, black curls but otherwise kept as still as she could. Waiting. Watching.
In truth, she wasn’t really sure what she was waiting for. Not precisely. The reports from the folks on the Old Road and along the forest-side of Lake Damascus had been scattered and disjointed, but the consensus was that something—something big—had been snagging livestock from nearby paddocks and pens and dragging them off into the woods. There were a few apocryphal accounts of long limbs and many eyes, bloody fangs and pattering footsteps, but nothing confirmed. Nothing concrete.
A handful of intrepid hunters among the wronged livestock-owners had tracked their stolen animals as far into the forest as they dared go, but no one chose to linger in Mothwood for too long if they could help it, and search efforts were quickly abandoned. No trace of the stolen animals had been found except piles of bones and gore along an abandoned trail—this trail, in fact.
Caroline’s phone buzzed in her coat pocket, and she pulled it out. A text:
Nothing yet?
Simple, to the point. Captain Reyville wasn’t one for unnecessary chat.
He was directly ahead of her, a straight shot through the woods, waiting on the beach for her to flush this thing out of the trees in his direction. She could imagine him braced against the sea-cold wind in his navy pea-coat, black felt cap pulled low, standing beside the beached white dinghy as his old trawler—the Princess of the Weathers—bobbed, anchored out in the swells.
Blue eyes over a golden beard, a new scar—healed, yet deep—snaking across his lip, waiting for her reply.
She texted back: Nothing.
But no sooner had she slipped her phone back into her pocket than she was aware of a sound, a new sound, slicing through the off-putting silence. A shrill call, rising up and over the treetops, repeated. It trembled up into a long whistle and then descended into a series of clicks and groans. It was a panicked sound. Desperate.
Caroline waited for a moment, listening, then pulled her phone back out of her pocket.
Do you hear that?
Reyville responded within seconds. Yep. Follow?
It wasn’t much, but it was the only lead they had.
So Caroline texted back: Yes. See you there.
She stood, the sweet pain of blood rushing back into areas of her legs that had gone numb, and followed the sound through the trees.
It was not easy going. The old trail ended abruptly in a thick patch of salmonberry and Devil’s club bristling with thorns, and Caroline picked her way around and through as best she could, sharp intakes of breath when a thorn caught a sleeve or the side of her face, slim cuts rising on her brown skin. But the brush eventually opened into a cleared area, thickly floored with moss, surrounding trees hanging low with lichen, where an old, abandoned cabin—a ruin, barely a shed—sat mouldering at its center.
The shrilling was coming from further on, still, and Caroline knew she didn’t have time to linger, but something about the cabin caught her eye. A strange quality to it, something wrong with the shape, the color.
At first glance, it appeared as if the cabin was covered in frost. But this was late May, the danger of frost long since past, the day promising to be sunny and warm.
Caroline’s fingers itched. She wished—not for the first time, not for the hundredth—that she had her beloved camera, its magic lens able to see things that her eyes couldn’t. One photo with Scully, and all of this would have been much easier.
But Scully was gone. Stolen. So, instead, she stepped a little closer, thinking she could get a better look. But the shrill cry rattled her from further on in the trees, and she would never forgive herself if she didn’t press forward.
She left the cabin behind, its secrets untold.
Deeper she went, and the louder the shrilling got, until she finally broke through the treeline and found Reyville, standing with his hands in his coat pockets, looking up. The sight of him in the dark woods was a welcome relief: familiar, solid.
“Now, that’s a new one on me,” he said, in his nonchalant Lancaster buzz, removing one hand from his pocket to point into the treetops.
She followed his gaze, and couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
Up high, between two dead firs, their trunks wracked with flicker-nests and woodpecker holes, stretched a web. A spider’s web. But it was enormous, monstrous, easily the size of a large pickup truck, each strand of silk about as thick as bungee cord. The web glittered in the light, and tensed and stretched with every frantic movement of the thing that occupied it.
It was a bird. A great, dark bird, and the shrilling was coming from it, caught fast in the web’s upper edge, wide wings—over six feet from tip to tip, if Caroline’s eyeballed-estimate was accurate—tangled in the thick silk.
“Wow,” Caroline said, not sure what else to say. “That’s…”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of bird is that?”
“It’s an albatross,” Reyville replied. “A black-footed albatross.”
Caroline did not hide her surprise. “Is that…normal?”
“No.” Reyville seemed to consider. “They’re certainly around, this time of year, but I’ve never seen one land on the island before. They nest further out, in more remote spots.”
Caroline felt pity sour in her stomach. She regretted not eating breakfast.
“Are we going to talk about the web?” she asked.
Reyville grimaced, swallowed. “I’d just as soon not. I’m not…fond of spiders.”
“You think that’s what we’re dealing with? A giant spider?”
Reyville winced. “I’m not sure what else would make…that.”
Caroline then realized, with a tug of panic, that this web was not the only one. She swiveled in place, looking up, to see various webs across the tall tops of the trees, each similar in size to the one holding the albatross.
A pang of epiphany: the old cabin. It wasn’t covered in frost. It was covered in silk.
The albatross—exhausted—lolled its head, thick slate-gray beak open as though panting for air, and the sudden silence was almost more chilling than its desperate calls.
“We’ve got to get it down,” Caroline said, looking around for a long branch, anything. “I can’t stand seeing it like that.”
But there were no sticks even close to long enough, so Caroline sized up the trees. The ones holding the web were too dead and soft to be safely climbed, but a stout cedar beside the right-hand tree seemed strong enough. She didn’t need to get all the way up to the albatross; she simply needed to get close enough to the bottom of the web to cut it away, weaken it enough to drop the bird down and cut its wings loose.
She told Reyville her plan, and he handed her his knife without question, always at his belt. She stuck it in her coat pocket and began to climb. Memories of childhood came flooding back, the feel of bark under her hands, the instinct of which branch to grab, of where to place her feet. But though she wasn’t especially tall, she was certainly taller than she had been as a child, and the changed center of gravity made her a little less sure of herself.
Still, the cedar was thick with options, and she managed to push her way up and up, leaving the ground behind, drawing closer to the albatross where it lay slumped in the web, suspended above her.
She looked down, and Reyville was peering up at her, his felt cap in his hands.
“Alright?” he called up.
“Yep, fine,” she called down.
As she reached the right height, abreast of the lowest boundary of the web, she planted her feet carefully on a lower branch and pulled the knife out of her coat pocket. It was a mariner’s knife, sharp enough to cut line and thick netting with minimal effort when wielded by the right person. She leaned over, holding tightly to the cedar with one trembling hand, and swiped out at the silk with the other, holding the knife.
The silk shivered, but she hit it at slightly the wrong angle and it didn’t slice through. The albatross stirred, desperation renewed, and it began to click and groan and cry.
Caroline cursed and tried again, slashing out with the knife, and managed to cut through the silk anchoring the bottom corner of the web to the tree. It trembled, folded in on itself. The albatross screamed, flapping its huge wings ineffectually.
Then, a cry from Reyville, below:
“Caroline! Up! Look up!”
Caroline glanced up to see…something. Something big, crawling fast across the swaying treetops, heading toward her. It was too fast, too bizarrely-shaped, the woods too gloomy to see properly.
But she thought she saw long, thin limbs.
And many eyes.
Frantic, she climbed up a bit higher, leaning with all her might forward to hack and slash at the webbing, silk fraying and buckling, the albatross shrilling to the heavens as the treetops shuddered with the passage of the thing, the thing silently drawing closer with long limbs and many eyes all open, bearing down on Caroline…
Then, it all happened at once.
Web broke. Branches snapped. Dead tree tipped, swayed.
Caroline, web, branches, and huge bird all plummeted through space, together.
In the tangle it was a softer landing than it should have been, cedar branches cushioning underneath. Lucky, just a few bumps and bruises.
Reyville lunged forward to make sure that Caroline was unhurt, but she waved him off—“The bird, Reyville! The bird!”—so he grabbed up the knife and finished the task of freeing the albatross where it flailed on the ground. Deft cuts, a keen sailor’s cuts, silk falling in sticky pieces, and then a tumult of giant gray wings as the desperate bird fluttered up and away from them, shrieking.
Caroline pushed herself to her knees and watched as the albatross climbed higher, out of the dark woods and away, disappearing into the distant sky. A black speck, then gone.
Reyville helped her to her feet and they waited, breathing hard, for the thing in the treetops to make itself known, to show itself, to enact its vengeance for stealing its meal.
“Where is it?” Caroline said, panting, searching the trees for any sign. “Where did it go?”
But it did not come. The woods were still, the remaining giant webs glittering in the treetop breeze, waiting for more passing victims.
*******
In late May, at the threshold of summer, the seaside village of Seavend at the north edge of Ferris Island was alive with newcomers: retirees moored at the marina, summer-home folk making their seasonal pilgrimages, tourists visiting the island for the first time. And they all descended upon the shingle-sided Seavend General Store for their every need, their snacks and simple groceries and toiletries, their ice cream and sunscreen, their boat-fuel and their bait-fish. The old place was filled to the brim with customers in those summer months, rubbing elbows with the regulars playing cards over chowder or sipping soda by the big picture windows in the creaky leather booths.
Caroline and the Captain sat at their usual spot in the corner, twin cups of steaming coffee, a plate each of apple pie, watching the human drama play out before them, the new faces passing to and fro. As rituals go, it was a simple one; whether a mission went well or ill, they always celebrated—or commiserated—with pie.
And despite freeing the bird, Caroline counted this mission a failure. She couldn’t get the horrible calling of the trapped albatross out of her mind, the feeling of the web snapping under the knife. The derelict cabin covered in silk, and the way the mysterious creature vanished instead of attacking them.
Never enough answers on this island to suit her.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Reyville said, tipping a packet of sugar into his coffee.
Caroline poked at her pie. “Well, there’s a giant spider making webs in Mothwood. I kinda thought we had seen it all.”
“An assumption. We don't know it's a spider. And we certainly haven’t seen it all.” Reyville chuckled, sipped, reached for another sugar packet. “What’s the plan?”
“Not sure. Never tried to catch a big spider, before. If that's what it is. We’ll have to get a crew out there to clear those webs, too.”
She paused, gazed out the window at a seagull down the shoreline, rising into the air with a mussel in its beak, rising, rising, hovering, before dropping it to smash on the rocky beach below. She turned back to Reyville. “Very weird about the albatross. They're bad luck, aren’t they? Isn't that a sailor thing?”
Reyville shook his head. “Only if you kill one,” he replied. “There are all kinds of stories about them. To most sailors, an albatross is a good omen, and killing one brings a curse on the killer. That’s the trick, really. When it comes to luck, most things could go either way.”
Caroline thought of the albatross soaring, unharmed, into the sky. She nodded, absently. “We let it go. So we’re safe, then. Lucky.”
“For now.” Reyville lifted the coffee cup to his lips, but his eyes flicked to hers and he smiled.
She returned the smile, but her heart squeezed, some mingling of fondness and sorrow she was forced to keep to herself. Locked tight.
They fell into a comfortable silence, something they had perfected recently. They had already been through so much together, she and the Captain, and it was hard sometimes to remember ever being strangers.
And yet, there was still so much left unsaid. It lingered in the air in ways that Caroline could almost taste, sometimes. They kept it professional. They kept it simple. All business. Still, there were unanswered questions. An unexplored past full of shadows and pitfalls. The uncertain future. Threads between them interweaving like spidersilk, delicate enough to fray and snap, yet strong enough to hold and catch. To trap.
“Caroline Phelan? Captain Reyville?”
Caroline and Reyville looked up together to see an unfamiliar woman standing beside their table. She was about Caroline’s age, tall, with shoulder-length brown hair and dark brown eyes. Stylishly dressed, corporate, all white teeth and a slim, handsome face.
“Please excuse me,” she said, and her voice was warm and friendly. “My name is Flora Burnside. I’ve heard a lot about you, and I was hoping…actually, may I sit down?”
Caroline shifted slightly, and Flora sat down in the booth beside her, setting her purse on the floor and folding her hands in front of her on the table.
“I won’t take up too much of your time, I promise,” she said. “And I think that I should get this out of the way, first: I am a friend and colleague of Dr. Ernie Hawkins. At RUMOR.”
Caroline’s smile faded and she felt her stomach drop. RUMOR, the large research facility on the western side of Ferris Island, had been the source of much pain for herself and Reyville, and others on the island, too. She glanced over at the Captain to see his usually-gentle eyes guarded, dimmed.
“Believe me,” Flora continued, “I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear. But I swear to you, RUMOR is not the sum total of all the worst parts. Those are rare. There are many of us who care deeply about this island and want to see it thrive. I’m honored to count myself among them.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a slim stack of files, neatly labeled. “I am a botanist by training—”
“A botanist named Flora?” Reyville said, raising a skeptical eyebrow, but Flora laughed.
“Yes, I know. Just a bit too on-the-nose.”
“A bit,” Reyville murmured, but quieted to let her continue.
“Training aside, one of the beauties of working for a place like RUMOR is that you get to play in different sandboxes,” she said. “And I am currently on the research team for an initiative called Project Sea Lion. We’re studying the ways that the Pacific fishmaid interacts with other marine mammals, especially whales and otters and—obviously—sea lions. It’s truly fascinating, the things we’re uncovering about fishmaid behavior and its consequences in other fields. Linguistics, robotics, chemistry, botany, zoology…we’re all involved. It’s incredible.”
Despite her initial misgivings and Reyville’s clear mistrust—which he wore undisguised on his face—Caroline felt a stirring in her heart toward the files in Flora Burnside’s hands, her former journalist-hunger always a low-burning yet ever-consuming flame. To know everything…that’s all she ever wanted. She could never, ever know enough. And she had a sneaking suspicion that Flora Burnside was built in a similar way, based on the lilt in the woman’s voice and the glimmer in her eye when she talked about her project.
“How can we help?” Caroline asked. She glanced at Reyville; his eyes were still unreadable.
Flora smiled, shyly. “Well, here’s where things get a bit…off-book. You see, everything at RUMOR is very carefully logged and recorded. Which is for the best, of course. We have to make sure we’re not going over budget, especially in a project like Sea Lion, which is definitely not one of the facility's top priorities. But this severely limits our purview, which is a shame, since there is so much that this project can do for the island widely. Maybe even applications nationally, or internationally. So…”
Here she paused, like a child excited to share a piece of news, glancing between Caroline and Reyville in turn. Then, “I would like to offer you a proposition. If I could ask you for a few favors here and there, send you to go and check out some relevant things that would be cost-prohibitive for me to investigate through official channels…then I can promise you full RUMOR support in any of your endeavors going forward. Supplies, equipment, information, whatever you need that’s within our power. It would be a full collaboration, no holding back, no secrets. What do you say?”
She leaned forward in her seat, expectant.
Caroline’s heart was beating, a drum under her ribs. Wingbeats. Hope. Despite her suspicions about RUMOR, she did believe that there were good people working there. After all, Dr. Hawkins had never seemed malicious, only a bit disconnected from the reality of what was going on under his nose. And from what she remembered from working as a journalist at the Port Salish Chronicle, RUMOR had been directly behind or involved with many of Ferris Island’s conservation efforts and outreach pushes, even up to the state government level.
But Flora was new to her, an unknown quantity. Her research sounded fascinating, and the promise of full access to what RUMOR had kept under wraps until now? Intoxicating.
It was Reyville who cleared his throat, glancing at Caroline briefly, before he said, “We appreciate your offer, Miss Burnside. May I ask…why us?”
Flora's smile took on a different flavor, then. A deeper sincerity, admiration. “You can't live on this island and not know about Caroline Phelan and Captain Reyville,” she said. “You two are, well…kind of famous? In certain circles, anyway. And Dr. Hawkins trusts you and speaks well of you, which is good enough for me. I can't think of anyone else I'd rather offer this to.”
A brief silence, before Flora added, “Think of it this way: you would be doing the same things you already do. Only, occasionally, they’ll be requests from me, and I’ll just want a quick direct report when you’re done. Nothing more involved than that.”
Reyville seemed to accept this, and Caroline thought he might agree right then and there. But instead, he said, “If you don’t mind, we’ll need to chat about it in private before we can make a decision.”
Flora nodded graciously, not a bit deflated.
“Of course. Take your time,” she said, with a genuine earnestness, pulling a business card out of her purse and sliding it onto the table between them. “Thank you for hearing me out. Truly.”
Then she stood, smoothing out her blazer and skirt, and gave them a smile. “I look forward to hearing from you. Call me anytime.”
And then she turned and was gone, out the door into the late-spring sunshine, heels clicking on the cracked pavement.
There was a pause, uncomfortable, as the two of them stared down at the business card on the table, before Caroline said, “So. I’m guessing you’re not interested?”
Reyville frowned. “I’m more than a little surprised that you are.”
“I know. I’m surprised, too.” Caroline thought about the files in Flora’s hands, the secrets contained within them. “I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve got a good feeling about her. She seems genuine enough. And…aren’t you the least bit curious about what she’s offering?”
“No,” Reyville replied, without a pause. “Because whatever RUMOR is offering, it’s probably nothing more than we already know. They clearly need us more than we need them.”
“But we can’t be sure of that.”
What Caroline couldn’t say was that she didn’t want to do this without him. She needed him to say yes. She thought of him leaping into action, cutting the web, freeing the albatross, the bird lifting away into the sky, wings heavy with good fortune.
That was Reyville all over. He never thought twice about doing the right thing. If he wasn’t on board, she knew she couldn’t be, either.
“Reyville,” she said, quietly, pie completely forgotten. “This could be an incredible opportunity to go even deeper into what this island is all about. This place we love. Isn’t that what we wanted when we started?”
When we started...
Here, in this very booth, on a drizzly day the previous winter. Meeting for the first time in person after three years as mere disembodied voices on the phone, strangers. Coffee and pie. An unusual partnership with a common goal: to explore Ferris Island’s oddest corners, its supernatural mysteries. They had done that. They had never stopped. They had only gotten better at it, more in sync.
Wasn’t this just the next step? More of the same, but better?
Reyville’s voice was gentle, but firm. “You know I’d do almost anything if we’re doing it together. But I don’t like this. It feels…off.”
When he reached for his coffee cup, Caroline paused, remembering. It had only been a few months earlier that RUMOR—or someone using RUMOR as a cover to do their dark deeds—had been responsible for nearly wrecking Reyville’s dear old trawler, landing him in the Clinic with a broken arm and permanent scars, and stealing Caroline’s beloved, miraculous camera. They had every reason to hear the word RUMOR and run the other way.
But still…those files in Flora’s hands. Knowledge at her fingertips. The possibility.
Just like luck, it could go either way.
“Listen,” she said, leaning across the table to rest her hand softly on Reyville’s arm. “Let’s just…hear Flora out. For one job. Just one. If it goes well, we consider carrying on. But if it doesn’t, we bail. Pull the plug immediately.”
The Captain looked down at her hand on his arm. He wanted to say no; she could see it in his eyes. Turmoil looked like open-sea storms in those eyes, especially when he and Caroline found themselves in rare disagreement. But he sighed, broad shoulders dipping in benevolent surrender.
“Right. One job,” he said, patting her hand with his. “One. And then we decide what to do. Together. Do you promise?”
Promise. What a word. Caroline swallowed it whole, the beautiful finality of it, the songlike quality. Oh, the things she would swear to this man, if only she would let herself! If only her heart would allow! If only the guilt didn't eat her alive, leaving the bones of her scattered along a lonely trail!
Like luck, like fate, like a huge bird clearing the treetops, a story like theirs could go either way. Good omen, or curse.
There was only one way to find out.
Caroline smiled and nodded, picking up the business card and slipping it into her pocket.
“I promise,” she said, and took her first real bite of pie, apple-sweet with possibility.
Thank you for reading! 📸
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Flora! She's back! Which means maybe we get to see Druid again! Hooray!
Also: "Turmoil looked like open-sea storms in those eyes, especially when he and Caroline found themselves in rare disagreement. " Oh, man, that was a good line.
So RUMOR is now a fully reformed, well-intended, benign corporate neighbor? Ha -- don’t you believe it! What a perfect re-launch for the second season. I’m ready for more coffee, a slice of pie, and a gripping and wonderfully-crafted tale of Ferris Island mystery, not to mention the unfolding relationship between Caroline and the Captain. Well done, SE Reid!!!