Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural novella, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Six. Start Here.
Previously, Andy enlisted Caroline and Reyville’s help with a strange nocturnal intruder in the Clinic’s garden.
In this episode, Reyville and Caroline are drawn into a most unusual hostage situation…and deeper into their partnership than ever before.
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
Caroline yawned and kneeled to check the cupboard under the coffee machine, counting up the cups, lids, and the bags of ground beans, making a note on her clipboard. Around her, the General Store settled and creaked, old beams whispering and scolding among themselves.
It was evening, just before nine o’clock, and Mr. Banfield and Noah had been called away to a meeting, something to do with Noah’s move to college this summer. Caroline had welcomed the overtime pay to take over the usual task of evening inventory.
She stood, set down the clipboard on the counter, and rubbed her eyes. The only lights on were the ones over the cash register and in the kitchen; the rest of the building was dark, the rows of store shelves and booths ghostly in the gloom. Outside, a gentle January drizzle glittered on the gravel parking-lot, the grass, the marina walkway, and veiled the tiny harbor.
The Princess of the Weathers was elsewhere.
Caroline picked up the clipboard, ready to tackle the kitchen next, when a sound above her made her pause. It was the hesitant groan of a footstep on the upper walkway, a space she had seen only once when she was first given the tour of the building at her hiring. It was used as a storage space, choked with boxes of extra supplies and long-forgotten inventory, even more crowded now that Caroline had taken over the cottage.
She froze, listened. But she was met only with silence.
Clutching the clipboard tightly, Caroline crossed to the light switches near the door, flipped them on. All down the rows the lights flickered, buzzing softly, illuminating the shadows around the booths and tables and store shelves, canned soups and bags of sugar standing shocked in the sudden brightness.
But the upper walkway was still unlit; there was no light switch down here, for those.
Caroline considered, for a moment. The light had made her feel a bit less vulnerable, and she could already sense the fluttering bird of her heart settling down behind her ribs.
Making her decision, she decided to continue with the inventory, taking the clipboard into the kitchen and leaving the lights on in the building, for comfort.
She was just about to count out the bags of oyster crackers in the bin beside the kitchen door when she heard it:
thump thump thump
Footsteps retreating—fast—down the upper walkway.
Caroline left the kitchen and the safety of the counter and stood in the center of the store, looking up, staring into the gloom of the walkway, looking for any movement. But there was none.
She was suddenly very aware that Scully was sitting on her desk in the cottage. Did she have time to go grab it?
Did she want to take the chance?
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and walked toward the far corner of the long counter, where a small, narrow stairway led upward to the walkway. She climbed the stairs as quickly as she could, holding her phone out in front of her for light, and at the top of the stairs—just before the walkway proper—there was a landing, and a light switch. She tried it. It did not work.
“I see how it is,” she whispered. She peered into the darkness, holding still, looking for any sign of movement. But there were only the slouching silhouettes of piles of cardboard boxes, rimed with dust and long forgotten.
But then, wait—
There, across from where she stood, the chasm of the shelves and booths below stretching out between them…was that the shape of a…was that…
It could have been a trick of the shadows, a strange reflection from the light underneath, a mirage. But it looked like a face, staring at her from behind the pile of boxes. Broad shoulders. And—
Her phone buzzed. She jumped.
The vision disappeared.
“Shit,” Caroline hissed, looking at the screen.
It was Reyville. She tapped to accept the call.
“What?” she said, harsher than she intended.
But he didn’t seem to notice. “How fast can you get to the Port Salish harbor?”
Caroline blinked. “Oh…uh…is everything okay?”
“How fast?”
“I’m not sure…maybe an hour? I have to finish up here.”
A beat. Then, “Quick as you can.”
Then he hung up.
*******
Twenty minutes later, Caroline pulled into the parking lot of the Port Salish harbor. In the end, she had reasoned that she would just have to go into work early to finish the inventory. Whatever this was, she couldn’t miss it.
The drizzle was a fine mist, and there were lights on in the Harbormaster’s office, a small, blocky building perched up the hill from the docks. Caroline could see people moving around within. She parked, threw her bag over her shoulder, and walked quickly across the lot to the office.
It was uncomfortably warm inside, and crowded. The office was modest and practical, only meant to house a couple of desks for the Harbormaster and staff, along with a small waiting area, but the gathering had spilled over to dozens, and everyone was talking at once. In one corner, Dan leaned over a desk—her own?—that had been commandeered to hold only a large nautical chart, speaking emphatically with a group of sailing-types with cross looks on their grizzled faces. Everyone else filling the space seemed to just be waiting, talking in disgruntled pockets of twos and threes. But waiting for what, Caroline had no idea.
Caroline saw Reyville’s navy-coated back and she jostled her way through the crowd to reach him. He was talking with a white-haired man and a woman, and even from a distance Caroline clocked them as siblings. Twins, even more likely. Nearly identical faces, same narrow noses and sharp, clever eyes. Even their posture was similar. Despite their advanced age, they carried themselves in such a way that Caroline could almost see the weight of their knowledge and experience like a tangible thing, riding their shoulders like wings.
The man and woman were sitting on either side of another man—dressed as a fisherman might be—holding a cup of water in his trembling hands, staring blankly at the gathering as the room kaleidoscoped around him.
Reyville noticed Caroline’s approach, and a flicker of a smile crossed his lips before he fell easily into introductions.
“Doctors Paul and Marie Mulligan, have you met Caroline Phelan, yet?”
Marie Mulligan shook her head genially, gray eyes twinkling, long white hair like a curtain down her back, and she reached up to extend her hand without a pause.
“Marie,” she said. “So pleased to meet you, Caroline. We’ve heard many good things from Andy. And from the Captain, here, of course.”
Paul Mulligan was more guarded, giving a nod, keeping his hands in his coat pockets. “Pleasure,” he said, softly, but with a sincere smile.
“An honor to finally meet you both,” Caroline said. No one introduced the fisherman with the cup of water. She glanced up at Reyville. “So. What’s going on?”
The Captain tried to look over the crowd to see Dan, but it was impossible. “Honestly, I’m still piecing it together, myself. But from what I gather, Dan got a radio signal from a squidding boat that they had been attacked and run aground. By fishmaids.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“We’re not sure. We can’t get to them. The fishmaids…” Reyville paused, sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the fishmaids seem to be holding the boat…hostage. A crew of about ten. The maids are ambushing any boats that get close.”
Doc Mulligan glanced at each other over the fisherman’s head.
Caroline frowned. “Is that…normal?”
“No,” said Marie. “It’s not.”
The fisherman took a weak sip of the water, eyes flicking up to meet Caroline’s for a moment before sliding away.
“Is this a witness?” she asked Reyville, keeping her voice low.
He nodded. “Yeah, think so. He managed to swim ashore at Portview and a bystander brought him here.”
Reyville’s uncertainty was pregnant with meaning. Caroline waited.
Then, the Captain leaned in, tilting his face out to the crowd behind so that the fisherman couldn’t see his lips. “I know most of the crews around here, and I don’t know this man. He can’t tell us which boat it was. Hasn’t named any of the crew. I think…there’s something strange going on.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. If he’s involved, he wasn’t with the squidding boat. But he hasn't given any other reason why he was there.”
Caroline studied the fisherman, letting her journalistic impulse take charge. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him that would set him apart from any of the other fishing folk in the room—dressed for the sea, stubble about his ruddy cheeks, hands roughened with work—but there was something about the way he kept glancing at the door, like he was looking for his moment to leave. To escape.
He wanted to get away from here. But why?
Only one way to find out.
“Keep your eye on me,” Caroline murmured to the Captain. “When I move, follow.”
The trust in his gaze was galvanizing. He nodded. She pulled away, turned back to the fisherman.
“It’s amazing that you managed to survive that ordeal,” she said “I bet that was really terrifying.”
The fisherman nodded, sullenly.
“I imagine,” Caroline continued, “that you’d like some air, maybe? It’s pretty stifling in here. You look like you could use a minute of quiet.”
Paul and Marie opened their mouths to protest, ever the concerned physicians, but the fisherman was already rising from his seat.
“Yeah, actually, I would like that. Thanks.”
He handed the cup of water to Marie Mulligan and didn’t wait for another word. Instead, he pushed his way through the crowd and disappeared out the door.
“Come on,” Caroline said, but Reyville was already at her heel. Keeping a safe distance, they followed the fisherman out of the office.
*******
The fisherman walked at a quick clip, away from the Harbormaster’s office building, down the hill, and toward the Port Salish dock, bristling with sailboat spires and heavy with canvas-covered yachts. Behind him, Caroline and Reyville pursued, trying to look as casual and inconspicuous as possible.
He passed by the entrance to the main pier and continued on to one of the smaller docks, heading quickly down about halfway where a long, aluminum rowboat bobbed.
“He’s going to leave,” Caroline muttered, panicking. “Reyville…”
But the Captain had assumed his role as Harbor Security, striding fast down the dock to the rowboat, and leaning one foot on the cleat to keep the fisherman from untying.
“Going somewhere?” Reyville asked, as Caroline caught up, breathless.
The fisherman, standing in the boat, held up his hands. “Look, I’ve got nothing to do with any of this business tonight, alright? Let me get out of here. I can pay you.”
“What’s the hurry? You sure seemed like you were part of it when someone dragged you out of the water.”
“I’m not, I swear. I just—”
Chrrrrrrrt!
A sound, tremulous and sorrowful, from behind the fisherman. What Caroline assumed was just a pile of clutter, covered with a tarp in the stern of the rowboat, made an eerie, unusual sound.
But it clearly wasn’t unusual to Reyville, and he stiffened. “What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing,” the fisherman said. “Move your foot, damn you.”
Chrrrrrt chrrrrrrrr…
Reyville reached down, and with a force Caroline had never seen from him, he pulled the fisherman out of the boat and onto the dock by one arm, climbing in, himself. He kneeled, lifted the tarp, and his shoulders slumped.
“You jackass,” he said. “You absolute bellend…”
But the fisherman had taken off running, down the dock and away. Caroline said, “Should we…?”
“No,” Reyville said. “We’ll handle him later. Everyone saw his face; he’ll never be able to do anything around this island, again.”
“What is it?”
Caroline climbed carefully into the boat as Reyville threw the tarp off of the shape in the stern. When she saw what was lying there, her blood froze.
It was a fishmaid. A small one, perhaps only as long as six or seven feet if you uncurled the tail. Its front limbs and clawed hands were tied roughly together with a ziptie, its eel-whip tail was coiled and wrapped with rope, and there was another rope anchoring it by the neck to an amidships cleat on the gunwale. A bit of blood had pooled underneath the creature, but it was impossible to see where it might be injured.
Caroline had never seen one up close, before. It defied any vision she may have had about mermaids; the two could not compare. The top half—head, arms, torso—certainly felt reminiscent of a human, but narrower, more alien. The eerie orange mercury light of the harbor cast a strange pall on the creature’s skin, but even in this dim modern gleam Caroline could see that it was rough like shark hide, dappled gray and dusted with the seedlings of tiny barnacles, only just settled.
The creature’s heart was fluttering visibly in its strange, skeletal chest, and those eyes—big and black like a seal’s—were staring at nothing, the way a prey animal does when it’s too terrified to move.
“Animals,” Reyville spat, but it was clear he didn’t mean the animal in front of them. “He was a damn poacher. I should have known. Probably working with a partner and they got separated.”
“They poach fishmaids?”
“They try. Usually the maids are too smart for them, but this one looks young.”
The initial shock had worn off, and Caroline’s heart squeezed, suddenly. “How young?”
Reyville gently touched the fishmaid’s arm, looking closely at the spots. “I’d say not even a year old. Female.”
“Just a baby,” Caroline said, mostly to herself. “Poor thing.”
At Reyville’s touch the juvenile fishmaid had started to shudder, panicking, making that strange purring sound, chirping and squealing. Reyville and Caroline backed away a little to give her space, Reyville soothing her with a low murmur until she settled back down again, wide eyes still starry with fear.
“Reyville,” Caroline said, quietly. “Would fishmaids take revenge on humans?”
“Revenge? They’re wild animals, I don’t know if they understand revenge.” But he said the words thoughtfully, considering it. “You think the hostage fishing boat is because of this?”
Caroline shrugged, gazing at him. “Is it any stranger than anything else we’ve seen since we met?”
He returned her gaze with that frankness, that certainty with a shiver of impossibility in it, reading her thoughts.
“Worth a try, I suppose,” he said.
*******
The rowboat’s outboard motor was not nearly as powerful or as fast as the engine of the Princess, but within a short order Reyville had managed to guide them out of the harbor and into the open water, hugging the island’s shoreline as tightly as he could, the aluminum boat much more delicate to the mercy of the waves.
Caroline sat on the bench seat amidships and watched the fishmaid. She couldn’t handle seeing the beautiful and unusual creature bound so cruelly, so she had used the folding knife Reyville always kept in his pocket to remove the ziptie around the maid’s wrists and the rope from around her tail. They had discussed untying the rope from her neck, too, but Reyville had put his foot down. He hated seeing her bound as much as anyone, but he didn’t want her trying to jump overboard. If she was injured, she could be lost and drown or at the mercy of other predators. They needed her to stay put until they could return her to her fellow fishmaids.
It wasn’t worth the risk, despite the sad sight.
So Caroline gave her ample space, and the fishmaid—arms and tail now free—had curled herself against the side of the rowboat and rested her wide, earless head on her clawed hands, watching Reyville and Caroline with wondering, wary eyes. She had a patch of lighter dapples on her forehead in the vague shape of a wide “V”, giving her a quizzical expression, as if she had eyebrows. Caroline found the overall effect charming, now that she was getting used to the strangeness.
Suddenly, inspiration struck, and Caroline reached into her pocket to pull out a pack of oyster crackers she had stashed there from the General Store, thin plastic crinkling in her fingers.
“Can fishmaids eat crackers?” she asked Reyville, the first words they had spoken since setting off.
He laughed a surprised laugh from the stern where he was steering the outboard. “Now there’s a question you don’t hear every day. I’m not sure. I imagine so; they seem to eat everything. Omnivores. Can’t imagine anything hurts ‘em. I’ve watched a fishmaid eat a starfish in one go without blinking.”
“Good enough for me.” Caroline opened the pack, pulled out a cracker. She reached out with it and the fishmaid stared, blinking, nostrils flaring. She raised her head a bit, lifted one clawed hand—curious, inquisitive—hesitated, and then snatched the cracker out of Caroline’s fingers. A few curious sniffs, a lick, and then she put it into her wide mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
Caroline laughed, delighted. “Well, Mikey, I think she likes it.”
“What?”
“It’s an old commercial. My dad used to quote it all the time.” Caroline pulled out another cracker, which was accepted even easier than the first.
Reyville watched as Caroline fed the fishmaid each cracker in the packet, one by one.
“So,” he said, finally, practicing nonchalance, “have you listened to the CD?”
She smiled, holding out another cracker for the fishmaid. “I have. It makes a good mix for cleaning the house.”
She flicked him a grin, and he accepted it.
“Anything stand out?” he asked.
She thought about this. “It’s all very good. Catchy. The lyrics aren't bad,” she said. “Even Wonderwall. But I think Champagne Supernova is my favorite.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm. It just has something about it. It’s meaningful.”
He arched an eyebrow. “It doesn’t make sense, though. The lyrics. They’re just nonsense. Noel Gallagher said so, and he’s the one who wrote it.”
“I know, but…” Caroline considered, holding out the last cracker for the fishmaid, who took it in careful, clawed fingers. “It’s nonsense that you can feel the meaning of. The meaning is in the music, if you listen. It's deeper than words, you know? I don’t know...”
I don’t know. Are there any worse words in the English language than “I don’t know”? It’s my job to know. I like to know everything.
She looked down into the big, black eyes of the fishmaid, resting her wide head on her clawed hands, again, that quizzical “V” like a question without an answer. The depths of the seas were in those eyes, the underwater caverns and tunnels and currents that no human had ever explored. Cold seasons and hidden places, and untold terrors.
In so many ways, Caroline thought, with a fearful tremble, I know nothing.
“There it is,” Reyville said, and his voice had a ring of prophecy about it, and Caroline looked over her shoulder.
They were off the coast between Portview and the cliffs of Damascus, the place where Reyville had shown her the fishmaids for the first time so many weeks prior, and ahead of them a brightly-lit squidding boat was tilted askance on a spit of rock, run aground. The water around the boat appeared choppier than the rest of the waves, and only when they drew nearer did Caroline realize why: the water was absolutely boiling with fishmaids.
They were making an almighty clamor, hissing and chirping and shrilling, trying to convince the crew of the squidding boat to come out of the cabin, to cast their shadows over the edge, to be pulled over the gunwale and under the black sea. Caroline felt her stomach heave with fear.
Upon hearing the cries of her fellows, the juvenile fishmaid in the boat began to shrill and cry, pushing herself up to look over the side of the rowboat, straining against the rope tied to her neck.
“She’s going to hurt herself,” Caroline groaned, reaching out, but Reyville stopped her, sharply.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Not yet.”
He pushed the rowboat closer to the churning sea, the outboard rumbling, and the juvenile fishmaid continued to flail against the rope, tail lashing, shrilling loudly, her wide mouth open to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth.
“Reyville…” Caroline said, a warning.
Just shy of the edge of the tempest Reyville cut the outboard’s engine, the aluminum hull ringing against the water’s movement.
“Hey!” Reyville shouted, trying to be heard over the chaos, to get the creatures’ attention. “Hey! Hey!”
Fishmaids at the edge of the circle noticed, eyes glittering bright with menace as they turned to the new target, their cries changing tone and intensity; a language all their own.
To Caroline, Reyville said, “Keep center of the boat, remember? Stand clear, I’m going to let her go.”
Caroline clutched the bench seat as Reyville knelt, pulled the knife out of his pocket, and reached out to try and cut the rope. But the creature’s flailing made it impossible to get a good grip, and the whipping tail slapped at Reyville’s hand.
The movement of tail, boat, and knife all conspired at once, knocking Reyville backwards, his arm flailing back over the gunwale. A clawed hand reached up from the water to grab him, missed by an inch.
In a flash, Caroline was off the bench, kneeling beside the creature, crinkling the empty pack from the oyster crackers to get her attention, to calm her. Those big, strange eyes and that quizzical “V” looked at Caroline and—for just a moment—really seemed to see her, in a way unique to ancient and unknowable things. But just as quickly she was simply a young, frightened animal, desperate for help.
Caroline reached out to stroke the creature’s strange, spotted arm and shoulder, soothing her gently with nonsense. She glanced over at Reyville, gave him a nod.
In the stillness, Reyville reached out carefully with the rope, lifted the loop just enough from the fishmaid’s neck, and slipped the knife in. The knife was sharp and Reyville was quick, and the rope snapped with two tugs.
“Okay, girl,” Caroline said, looking over the side of the boat and wishing to God she hadn’t as the fishmaids from the churn surrounded, wide mouths gaping. “Go, go. Get out of here. Go home!”
The juvenile shook herself, almost like a dog might, and realized that the rope was gone with a purr and a chirp. Then, she reached out with clawed hands to grasp the gunwale, and launched herself overboard, slipping into the water as easily as anything.
The effect was incredible, and immediate, as the nearby creatures surrounded her, sniffing and touching and shrilling in an entirely different tone than before, something gentle and familiar. There was a ripple through the churn, fishmaids swimming over to investigate the return of their own, frowning wild faces peering up at Caroline and Reyville, who waited with held breath.
But whether the novelty interrupted their plans, or this was their hope all along, it worked. The fishmaids slowly began to vanish, diving down and away from the surface in groups, back to their haunts.
Within minutes, the water was quiet, again.
*******
All it took was a radio call back to the Harbormaster’s office to let them know that all was clear, and a veritable floatilla came out to help tow the injured squidding boat back to harbor, the crew safe and warm and regaling their friends with the terrifying tale of being stalked by the fishmaids.
Back at the harbor, the Fishmaid’s Wake had opened its doors special for the safe return, and Zeke was pouring a round on the house for everyone, the light and the festive noise spilling out over the dark water of the harbor. It was a packed house, with the squidding crew and the harbor staff and the fishermen who had gone out to retrieve. Even Doc Mulligan stayed for a round. And Caroline and Reyville told the story again and again of the poacher, and the fishmaid, and the oyster crackers, and the thrill of rescue.
And something unnameable happened to Caroline Phelan, that night, in the neon glow and stale cigarette perfume of the Wake.
That night, for the first time, Caroline truly felt like she and Reyville could be friends.
The spirit of the evening, the danger and the rescue and the teamwork and the partnership and the party, it all conspired together to make her see things, like a vision…and yet real. When she slipped change into the jukebox and queued up Wonderwall, she worried maybe he would think she was making fun of him. But when it began to play, his eyes lit up—those eyes, sky-clear and having seen so much!—and he sang it loud, lifting his pint of ginger ale to Heaven. He had a good, rich voice, a black-coffee-with-sugar voice, an unpracticed but genuine voice.
And the enthusiasm was so infectious that they all joined in the chorus, together, Caroline and the Captain and the roughened sailors of the sea:
Cuz maybe…you’re gonna be the one that saves me…
And after all…you’re my Wonderwall…
It was only later, when Caroline was bringing another glass of ginger ale back from the bar, approaching Reyville as he chatted amiably with a group of fishermen, that the desire to savor the moment, to feel like friends, turned back into a question.
It left her lips before she could think too hard about it, reaching out with one word.
“Lucas,” she said, aloud, to the Captain’s back.
He did not turn around. Did not even flinch, conversation carrying on apace. She thought about trying again, but something inside of her had deflated. Died, maybe.
“Reyville,” she said, a little quieter.
He turned to the familiar sound of her voice, his name. Smiled widely, accepted the pint glass. Those eyes, sky-clear, and yet…
I don’t know, she thought, taking her place beside him in the circle. I just don’t know.
*******
It was one in the morning when Zeke finally kicked them all out.
Reyville walked Caroline through the harbor to her car in a companionable silence, still buzzing from the company and the music and the thrill of a job well done. Off to their left, the dark water between the island and distant Port Townsend was like a vast black void, and Caroline remembered when she was new to this place and the sea had seemed like a postcard view, a static thing. Just a vista to be photographed, though beautifully.
But now, it was full of monsters. Mysteries.
There are some things you just can’t un-know once you know them.
Reyville was still softly humming Wonderwall as they walked, and the drizzling rain from earlier had left behind a chill that turned their breath to fog.
“Well,” she said, as they neared the car. “Back to my haunted house I go. I need to get up in…oh, wow…four hours to finish that inventory.”
He laughed. She didn’t. But she did smile, quietly, and reach for her keys.
“Anyway,” she said, “goodnight, Captain Lucas Reyville.”
She had tried to infuse humor into it, a gentle test, but it must not have been enough. His smile dimmed.
“Oh,” he said, pained, and something in his voice made her look up to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, I…”
A pause. A breath. “I lied. To you.”
She waited, her keys cold in her fingers.
“My name. From the start, really. I’m, well…Lucas is not my real name. And Reyville isn’t either, for that matter. I should never have sent that text, I just made it more confusing. I’ve…dammit, this is harder than I thought it would be.”
He squinted out at the sea, thinking, forming words in his mind before they spilled out onto his lips. Caroline dared not breathe.
“I’ve left…a lot, behind me. In my life,” he said, finally. “A lot. More than…I can talk about. Some things that I can’t really explain.”
He sighed. “I chose the name Reyville, and it’s the only name I’ve got. I gave you Lucas because I could tell it mattered to you, to know my full name. I'm not used to that. Someone wanting to…know me. I panicked.
“But…since it's important for you to know, and I think we’re long past learning to trust each other…it’s Liam Lucas. My birth name.”
He fell silent, then, with these last murmured words, and it was as if this exorcism of the truth had left him slightly weakened, like a lonely tree on a windswept hill.
But to Caroline, it now felt as though she held something very precious in her hands alongside her car keys. Liam Lucas. A name. A real, solid name.
Uninvited, Aunt Ida’s face, dark eyes wise and cautious, full of concern. He’s only proven that he knows how to lie, Cora-girl. And that he will, if he feels he needs to. Where one lie roots, others grow.
But Caroline shook her head. “Liam Lucas, huh? Liam. Like Liam Gallagher. Oasis.”
He watched her, somewhat wary of being mocked, and muttered, “It's…one of the reasons I liked the band so much. Felt like fate to a young kid from just around their corner. Like we were brothers, or something, silly as it sounds.”
It was hard to picture Reyville as a youth, but not impossible. A reckless kid in a gray city in a far away place, half the world away from her own childhood in Denver.
Caroline slipped her keys back into her pocket, and reached out her empty hand to brush Reyville’s cheek with her fingers, his beard soft under her touch, his skin warm in the seawater chill.
“Thank you for trusting me,” she said.
He did not pull away, but instead reached up with his own hand to clasp hers.
For one wild moment, in free-fall, the crash of wave on stone felt imminent, the rise of warmth up to cheeks and down to toes, the spin of the stars and the moon and the whole of the wide world in space. Thousands of seasons in an instant, hundreds of years, the spill of desire from mind to fingertips, to eyes, to lips.
But no. The black void of the sea is full of monsters and mysteries. Still so much more unknown; big, black eyes full of questions with no answers, diving, diving...
Caroline stepped back, dipped her chin, then brought it up again with a smile.
“Goodnight, Reyville,” she said.
Grace and gratitude as he returned her smile, but the clouds remained in those eyes.
Those eyes, those eyes…
“Goodnight, Caroline,” he replied, softly.
Thank you for reading! 📸
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Dang.
You write good.
...
Anyway, maybe it's the dad in me, but my heart went out to that little fishmaid girl like you wouldn't believe, and believe me I felt Reyville's wrath there. Also, I loved the ending, and I hated the ending (not really though) because naturally I want them to get together (#ship and all), but that was so well done. All the feels, as they say.
Part of me likes the episodic nature of this, but part of me really is rather yearning to have a WHOLE BOOK about Ferris Island. No, scratch that, I’m pretty darn sure i want a whole series of them. Yes Ma’am.
As Michael said at 15.33 ‘you write good’ Miz Reid. Real good. 😊