Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural novella, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Ten. Start Here.
Previously, a sudden grief prompted Caroline to begin her own investigation—not into the supernatural, but into the man she thought she could trust...
In this episode, Caroline enlists all the help she can get to search for Reyville, and finds allies in some unlikely places…
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
Caroline stared at the nautical charts on the paneled wall of the Harbormaster’s office, the biggest maps of Ferris Island she had ever seen, as she waited for Dan to finish up her latest phone call. The small office was alive with voices under buzzing fluorescent lights, the handful of other harbor employees at their desks all talking away on their own phones, trying to hold everything together without Reyville.
Without Reyville. Lost without Reyville.
Dan was nibbling at her thumbnail, listening more than she was talking as a tired-sounding man on the other end explained something in a bored monotone. Dan’s eyes flicked over to Caroline’s, gave her a good grief widening of the eyes, and went back to writing something down on the page before her.
Caroline looked back up at the chart, imagining the Princess of the Weathers in miniature, floating up and down the tiny coastline, safe and sound. She tried to will it back to Port Salish, to its usual slip in the harbor down the hill. She tried to imagine Reyville walking along the dock and up to the office, striding through the door, greeted by all with relief and insistence that he explain himself.
But she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Somehow, she knew.
Dan set the phone down on the receiver, grunting.
“Well, that’s the latest report from the boat crews I deputized yesterday. They’ve been around the island four times, and no sign of Reyville. I’ve got every authority on the island looking. The Brack liaison has been notified. Zeke and his folks over at the Wake have been passing out fliers with Reyville’s face on ‘em. Even called in a favor with my former colleagues at the Seattle Coast Guard, and they’re keeping an eye out for the Princess.”
Dan sighed. “It’s tough to know how to mobilize Search and Rescue for the guy who always did the searching and the rescuing.”
Caroline looked down at her hands. “I can’t believe I wasn’t here.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Dan said. “I consider Reyville a friend, but even I don’t always know what he’s thinking, half the time. You said you had something for me?”
Caroline nodded, pulling out her phone. “I got this voicemail while I was in Denver, on Sunday,” she said. “I only listened to it this morning.”
If Dan found this odd, she made no sign. Just sat politely while Caroline pressed the voicemail and let it play again. Hearing Reyville’s voice, the fatigue in it, the lack of his usual jaunty charm, made her skin crawl.
But Dan listened with a more practical ear, and when it was over she said, “So he went to RUMOR, sometime on or after Sunday.”
“It definitely sounds like it,” Caroline said, tucking her phone away. “I tried returning the call earlier today, sent him several texts, but…nothing. His phone is off, I think, or dead.”
The word dead tasted tinny, and Caroline immediately felt nauseous.
Dan shook her head, more in wonder than anything else. “It’s not like him to do something like that on his own.”
On his own. Never on his own.
Caroline replied, “He didn’t know that I was…that I wasn’t in town. That’s why he asked me to go with him. I wish…I mean, I wish I had been here. I should have gone.”
Dan’s face softened. “I heard about your aunt. I’m sorry for your loss, Caroline.”
Caroline nodded.
“Was it at least good to be with family, for a bit?”
The idea of moving back to Denver was still sitting in a box at the back of her mind, glowing like a flashlight she had forgotten to turn off. “Yeah, it was good. Forgot how much I missed it. Tempting to…go back. You know, permanently.”
Dan shuffled some of the papers on her desk, chuckled. “That’s if the Ferris Fever will let you.”
“The what? Oh, that.” Caroline had heard about the Ferris Fever, back when she worked for the Chronicle. It was kind of a local joke, but the sort that lingers in the air to the point that you can’t tell whether someone who invokes it is truly making fun. “I don’t really believe in that.”
Dan shrugged. “It does happen. The longer you live here, the more the island draws you back if you try and leave. I’ve heard stories. It can be really debilitating, unless you push through it. The desire to leave has to be heavier than your love for this place, or it never works.”
Caroline let that sit for a moment, before she said, “You don’t think Reyville would leave, do you?”
“No,” Dan said, without hesitation. “No, he wouldn’t.”
“Then…” Caroline looked down at her phone. “Then RUMOR is our best lead, right now. It’s probably the only place I can get answers. Before I left for Denver, Reyville said that he had been talking with you about it, making a plan.”
“We hadn’t agreed on anything firm. RUMOR has a dock, down at water-level, that’s only accessible to RUMOR employees and it’s heavily guarded, even more than the main entrance to the campus. Reyville was convinced that that’s where the researchers were bringing their goods into the facility, after exchanging money with the poachers via the Brack. If they could just make it look like run-of-the-mill research equipment going in and out, no one would be the wiser. I wanted to handle it through official channels, but Reyville…”
Caroline smiled without humor. “Reyville doesn’t exactly go in for official channels. I know.”
“Whatever you do, you can’t make the same mistake he did,” Dan said. “If he went straight for the dock I can’t imagine he found a warm welcome waiting for him. I don’t care how charming he is.”
“And he is.” Caroline said it like a soft joke, but the thought of his frank gaze and jaunty smile lingered in the air, and she said, “All I need to do is find someone at RUMOR who will talk to me. I think I might have someone who will.”
She rose from her chair. “I’ll keep you updated. If I find anything out, you’ll be the first to know.”
“You can’t go alone,” Dan said. “Do you want me to send someone with you?”
“Oh, no,” Caroline replied, shaking her head. “Don’t you worry about that. I won’t be going alone.”
She left the Harbormaster’s office into the chill of a drizzle, the inhale before a February rain, startling some keen-eyed crows looking for bugs in the wet grass. As she walked down the path along the harbor toward the parking lot she dialed the number for the Clinic.
“Hi there,” she said, when the receptionist picked up. “May I speak to Andy Yun, please? Tell him it’s Caroline Phelan, and she needs a favor.”
*******
Andy climbed into the passenger seat of the car and gave Caroline a tight smile. “Well. I admit, this is a surprise.”
“Thanks for agreeing to come along,” she said. “I know it’s a…weird thing to ask.”
He shrugged. “Not really. I heard about Reyville. Doc Mulligan was notified early on, told to look out for him. We’ve all been on alert for a few days. How are you…doing?”
Caroline wasn’t sure she liked Andy’s tone on the word doing as she backed the car out of the parking lot and headed toward the highway. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Andy glanced at her. “I mean, Reyville is…you know. You two are…”
Caroline wasn’t sure if Andy was that perceptive or if she and Reyville were just that obvious. “I’m fine. I’ve got my journalist hat back on, okay? Following leads, staying sharp. Nothing more than that. And your help means a lot. Really.”
Andy nodded, unconvinced, but said, “So, what’s the plan?”
“The plan is to meet up with our old friend, Dr. Ernie Hawkins.” Caroline tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “i made an appointment after I called you. I may or may not have made him think that, uh…that we’re ready to give him Druid.”
“Oh, fantastic.” Andy sighed. “We’re not, though.”
“No, we’re not. But I just need to get him to talk to us. I just need to know if RUMOR is rotten to the core, or if there’s something more going on.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Andy said. “Either way, I’m glad to help.”
Caroline didn’t want to tell him the truth. That without her partner in crime, she felt like she was missing an arm. That without Reyville, she felt like one half of her brain didn’t work. She knew she was capable, smart, and focused. She knew she was good at her job. She knew who she was. She was Caroline Phelan.
But she missed him. Pure and simple. Liam Lucas, Frederick Nestor…whoever he was.
She wanted him found, no matter what.
It was a relatively short drive down the highway from the Clinic in Damascus to the edge of the State Park where RUMOR had its headquarters.
Caroline turned left off the highway at the sign—RUMOR Laboratories, with the stylized dragonfly logo—and plunged immediately into a tree-lined two-lane driveway. About a half-mile down, there was a security checkpoint straddling the road with a booth and gate in the middle, and a military-grade fence with razor-wire looped around the top extending out in both directions and disappearing into the woods on either side. The security booth was bristling with cameras, and the guard at the booth was armed, a holstered sidearm at his hip.
RUMOR wasn’t playing around.
“Name and reason for visit?” the guard said, standing in the open door of the booth.
“Caroline Phelan,” Caroline said, “and Andy Yun. We’re here to see Dr. Ernie Hawkins in Robotics. We have an appointment.”
The guard tapped something into his computer, and clearly approved of what he saw there. He printed out two red Visitor badges with dates and times stamped on them, handed them to Caroline through the car window.
“Proceed to the right at the turn,” he said, pointing ahead of them. “Dr. Hawkins’ office is in the Main Lab, which is clearly marked. Any questions?”
Caroline shook her head and thanked him, and they pulled ahead as he lifted the arm of the security gate to let them through.
They turned right at the fork, as the guard had told them to, although Caroline’s interest tingled at the shadowy left-hand turn, which was labeled HARBOR - NO ENTRY WITHOUT SECURITY CLEARANCE.
Continuing down, the trees finally opened up and the RUMOR compound lay before them. It was a campus of around twenty squat, square, small buildings, grouped around three larger multi-story offices, surrounded by a circular parking lot that wove around the entire compound. Since it was a typical weekday the parking lot was relatively full of employee cars and visitors alike, folks in lab coats walking back from their lunchbreaks with coffee in hand, or milling around the greenspace in the central part of the campus. There were benches and trees and water features designed to give the place a more organic, welcoming feel. Under the low, pregnant clouds, the overall effect was more like a hospital.
Caroline found a parking space in the Guest Lot in front of the main building—very clear, as it was the largest one on campus with a giant RUMOR sign above the double-doors—and she and Andy got out of the car.
The hospital comparisons didn’t end once they were inside. The lobby was brightly lit, almost shockingly so, and unnaturally clean. The receptionist all in white sat behind a large semi-circular desk with an earpiece in one ear, tapping away at her computer. Behind her, the words were emblazoned on the wall under the ubiquitous dragonfly logo:
RESEARCH UNDERSTANDING MANUFACTURE OBSERVATION RESTORATION
The receptionist directed them to the elevators, up to the third floor, and the deeper they went into the facility the more uneasy Caroline felt. It was like they had left Ferris Island behind with its smell of rain and moss and fern and had wandered into another world, shiny and chrome, glassy and sleek, artificial piped air and a view of an atrium below crowded with unnaturally-grown tropical plants and modern art.
At the third floor, the elevator doors opened and Dr. Hawkins was waiting for them, wringing his hands with some mixture of nervousness or excitement. He certainly looked more at home in his white lab coat than he had as a civilian in the Seavend General Store, but otherwise the same. Behind him, the floor was alive with research assistants in cubicles, and beyond that a rabbit warren of glass-sided laboratories and other offices. A buzz of activity.
Hawkins’ face fell almost immediately upon seeing Caroline and Andy framed in the elevator’s open doors. They had not brought Druid with them, as he had clearly hoped.
“Miss Phelan,” he said, extending a hand awkwardly. “I thought you said on the phone…”
“Let’s chat in your office, Doctor,” Caroline said, quickly. There were too many cubicles in this open-plan, too many windows, too many cameras pointing down on them. Hawkins hesitated only a moment before leading Caroline and Andy down the short hall to his office, where he closed the door.
The office was exactly what Caroline would have guessed for a successful robotics researcher, shelves cluttered with relevant books and studies, awards and accolades and degrees framed on the walls, but dusty from neglect. All of the furniture was utilitarian, substance over style, and covered with blueprints and half-finished projects. This was the office of a man who cared more about his work than about impressing anyone. One big window on the right side of the office looked out over the atrium, a false green warmth.
“Please, uh, have a seat,” he said.
Caroline and Andy took the two leather seats across from Hawkins’ desk, and the doctor sat in his own chair.
“Miss Phelan,” Hawkins tried, again, “I thought you said on the phone that you were going to bring Druid with you.”
“I did say that, Doctor, and I’m sorry,” Caroline said. “It was a bit of a false pretense.”
The doctor stiffened, suddenly defensive. “What do you want, then?”
“We’re looking for Captain Reyville,” she said.
Hawkins looked lost. “Who?”
“Reyville,” Andy repeated. “You met him when you met all of us, at the General Store.”
“Oh. Bearded fellow, yes. I recall. Why are you looking for him here?”
“RUMOR was his last known location,” Caroline replied, a slight fib. “He was investigating some of the organization’s more unsavory practices.”
She waited for a response from Hawkins. A denial, a show of surprise, a flick of an eyebrow, a twitch of a lip.
But instead, the old doctor’s shoulders drooped, just a little. “Unsavory practices. That’s…that’s…I don't know about that.”
Andy caught the uncertainty, dropped his voice to sound gentler, understanding. “We know you’re a man of principles. Your careful design of Druid proves that. But not all of your colleagues share those principles with you, do they?”
This made something in Hawkins’ eyes go steely, remembering. Caroline had seen that look before, in people she had interviewed, right before the dam burst.
Mild-mannered Hawkins had a secret resentment. Something locked deep.
Gently, gently, she pushed. “Have you seen anything that’s given you pause, Doctor Hawkins?”
The doctor’s eyes shifted, uncomfortably, to the camera outside his office door. When he spoke again, his voice was very low, almost a whisper. “I promise you, most of us got into this field because we love it, you know. For the love of science. For the cause of forging deeper connections between humans and nature. RUMOR is built on the right tenets, and it always was. But…in service of the research, some do go further than others…”
“What have you seen?” Caroline asked.
“Nothing empirical,” Hawkins said, licking his lips nervously. “But…chatter. I hear my research assistants talking, sometimes, about other projects they’ve worked on. In particular, dock clearance is not granted lightly. We’re told to stay in our circles, and we do. Robotics is a relatively small team, and we keep ourselves to ourselves. But there are twenty labs on campus, not to mention the offices and basements and warehouses that I’ve never seen, even after working here for as long as I have…”
He stopped himself, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I love my job,” he said after a beat, with an appeal in his eyes. “This is the first place I’ve ever worked where I felt that…that I was making some kind of difference. But I can’t pretend that there aren’t others here who have different motives in mind.”
“If we wanted to find these…bad actors, say… where would we start?” Caroline asked.
The doctor winced. “The docks lead straight into a shipping warehouse, down at water level. I’ve never seen where the unloaded goods end up. I’m sure some of them are normal research equipment, but others…”
He shrugged. “That's all I can say. I do hope you find your friend. If he went after whatever is going on down there, I imagine he found trouble. Especially if he was alone.”
Alone. I let him go alone.
Caroline tried to keep her voice level. “How far up the chain of command could this go?”
Dr. Hawkins said, “I hate to think it goes any higher than certain team leads. But…who can be sure?”
His eyes slid to the camera again, and he added, “I think you should go.”
Caroline stood, and Andy followed her lead.
“Thank you for your time, Doctor,” she said, shaking his hand.
But as they headed for the door, Hawkins said, “Please. Could you at least tell me…is Druid safe? Is he…”
He trailed off, and it was Andy who answered, “He’s safe. And he’s doing what he was designed to do, and more. Perhaps serving your good purposes more than you ever intended.”
Dr. Hawkins nodded, gratefully, and they left his office.
They didn’t dare speak until they had safely exited the building and the watching eyes of the cameras and the receptionist.
In the car, with the doors closed, Andy finally said, “All that talk about Druid gave me idea. Let’s head back to the Clinic.”
*******
The afternoon was wearing on as they pulled back into the parking lot of the Clinic. They got out of the car, and Andy led Caroline along the side of the old farmhouse to the herb garden, which was just beginning to bud into tentative life again, past the greenhouse, and then into the woods. They were taking the same path they had taken when they pursued Druid, all those weeks ago.
“After we figured out what was going on with the garden,” Andy explained, while they picked their way carefully through the underbrush, “I started leaving things out for Druid. Stuff he seemed to like. Plants, mostly, especially native plants. And pretty soon…I dunno, he seemed to get used to me.”
Caroline arched an eyebrow. “You mean you tamed a robot?”
“Kind of, I guess.” Andy grinned, fondly. “He’s led me to a few good spots to find rarer native plants, and he seems to get that I’m not trying to hurt anything. Just collecting what I need for my studies, and moving on. Occasionally he’ll oblige me and answer questions, when I have them. He’s a handy little guy to know if you like plants.”
“How is he going to help us find Reyville?”
“Well,” Andy said, “I figure, if you’re trying to find something on an island covered in trees, it might be best to…you know…ask the trees.”
It was sound logic, Caroline thought, but only on Ferris Island.
They reached the clearing where Caroline remembered snapping the photo of Druid, and Andy paused, lifted his fingers to his lips, and whistled, like you might for a dog.
There was a pause, and then a rustling in the salal at the opposite end of the clearing, before Druid stepped out.
In the daylight the robot was even stranger to behold, striding easily and with practice on three articulated legs, covered with moss, his branch-arm playing host to three separate spiderwebs, the walking stick in his other claw-hand worn down with time and use. He paused when he realized that Andy was not alone, his triangle of eyes focusing and refocusing on Caroline.
“Hey, Druid,” said Andy. “Do you remember Caroline?”
The robot tilted its rounded head.
“Friend,” he said, in a buzzing, raspy little voice, turning his gaze on Andy.
“Yep, friend,” Andy replied. “Just like me. And uh…we’re looking for someone. For a friend. Caroline’s friend. He’s lost.”
The meaning of this did not clearly land with the robot, who stood watching, listening.
“His name is Reyville,” Andy said. “He's uh, a captain. He has a big boat. And if you could ask your family…if you could ask them if they’ve seen him?”
Druid stared solemnly at Andy for a moment, then turned to Caroline, striding forward on his three strange legs. He looked up at her—only about as big as a large dog—and even though she knew he was made of circuits and wires and steel, there was something in those eyes that disarmed her, somehow. Something that felt…alive.
“Friend. Lost,” said Druid.
Caroline nodded. “Yes. Yes, he’s lost. My friend.”
The robot tilted his head, and said, softly, “Family.”
Hot pressure of tears swelled behind her eyes, but Caroline was not about to cry. Not now. Too much to do. Journalist hat. Staying sharp.
But she nodded again and felt the gentleness in her voice toward Druid as she replied, “Yes, he’s…he’s close to me, Druid. Like family. I care for him, very…very much.”
This seemed to satisfy the robot, because he backed away from her, over to the edge of the clearing, and planted his three feet firmly into the leaf-littered soil.
“This is what he does,” Andy said. “He uses some kind of sensor in his feet to talk to the trees. It’s…it’s pretty wild.”
Whatever was happening, it didn’t appear to be much, and certainly not wild. Druid stood very still for a long time, not moving a mechanical muscle. And then, without any fanfare, after about ten minutes, he suddenly lifted his feet, turned to Andy and Caroline, and said, “Follow.”
And then he disappeared into the woods.
It was all Andy and Caroline could do to keep up. Druid had had years of practice learning his routes through the forests, and he was surprisingly agile for a piece of machinery. Caroline was dimly aware that they were following along parallel with the cliffs, but it wasn’t until the robot turned and took them right up to the edge that she truly understood where they were.
They were standing on a bluff overlooking the open water and out west toward the sea, several stories high, a tumble of cliffs stretching down and down to a reef of jumbled rocks in the surf. Far below them and slightly to the east she could see a buoy, looking tiny at this distance.
After a moment of staring, she recognized it. It was the Fishmaid Sanctuary buoy. They were overlooking the fishmaid sanctuary, down below Damascus.
Druid pointed down with his walking stick at the reef of rocks.
“See,” he said.
It was difficult to make out what he was pointing at from this distance, but sure enough: there was a shape, leaning up against one of the large rocks down below. It would not be visible from any boats in the water looking toward shore, and nearly impossible to see from any other vantage point, tucked within the labyrinth of stone down there.
But when Caroline realized what it was, her heart began to pound even louder than the waves against the cliff’s feet.
It was the Princess of the Weathers, run aground.
*******
All that happened next was a blur.
She thanked Druid over and over, the robot tilting his head at her in friendly confusion as she patted his mechanical, mossy shoulder. She told Andy to stand by with Doc Mulligan; it was possible she was going to need their help before the day was through.
And then, she was running. Running and dialing her phone at the same time to call Dan, to tell her that she had found the Princess. The rain began to fall in earnest after threatening all afternoon, but she hardly noticed.
At her car, she peeled out of the Clinic parking lot and drove as fast as she could back to the Port Salish Harbor. When she arrived, Dan was waiting for her with one of the official Harbormaster boats, a speedboat, small and agile, designed only for exploratory tasks like this one. Caroline sat in the bow of the boat, slowly soaking without cover, as Dan navigated them out of the harbor and westward around the island. She wasn’t as adept a sailor as Reyville, more used to a desk than the sea at this point, but her former Coast Guard skills came back to her quickly, and the little boat was receptive under her command.
Caroline stared out at the horizon, willing the speedboat to go faster.
We’re coming, she thought, hoping beyond hope that Reyville would feel it. We’re coming to find you. Just wait. Just wait.
They passed the buoy on the south side of the sanctuary, and Caroline turned her attention to the reef of rocks, forming a maze around the base of the cliffs. Looking up and trying to figure out where she and Andy and Druid had been standing, she navigated for Dan, this way and that way through the rocks, keeping her eyes peeled for the blue trawler.
Soon, they rounded the corner and there was the Princess. It was jutted up at a horrible angle, the stone beneath crushing up through the bottom of the hull, dark water passing freely in and out, the cabin door swinging fretfully on its hinges in the wind.
“Reyville!” Caroline called as they pulled the speedboat up alongside. Dan picked up the radio to call in a crew to come and get the Princess, and Caroline grabbed the gunwale and pulled herself up onto the deck, slippery and soaked in the falling rain and rising tide, the trawler creaking like an injured animal under her unexpected weight.
Caroline heard Dan tell her to be careful, and she leaned forward to keep the boat from rocking over, pulling herself into the cabin. The whole world was sideways, topsy-turvy.
“Reyville?” she called out, again.
The woodstove was cold. The lights were all doused. The mugs and dishes were smashed on the floor from the hull’s impact against the rocks, cupboards swinging open. The bed was empty, and so was the small washroom. There was water seeping up from below. The Princess was a wreck. Caroline scrambled up the stairs to the pilothouse. Empty, except the box of CDs tumbled across the floor. The dart gun was missing from the case.
No sign of Reyville.
She climbed carefully back down the stairs and stood steadying herself in the cabin doorway, trembling. Dan circled the small boat back around to her, blinking in the downpour.
“He’s not here,” Caroline said, hearing the words and hating them. She leaned forward to walk to the gunwale, careful not to tip over the side.
“The dinghy is missing, too,” Dan said, pointing. “He must have gone ashore, at some point.”
Before Caroline could answer, a splash on one side of the speedboat, and a chattering sound, a squeal and a wail.
“Oh, shit,” Dan said. “Maids. Back up, get back away from the side. Cast no shadow.”
Caroline pushed herself backward away from the gunwale, but the Princess’s odd angle made it difficult to stay away from the edge, the deck slippery underfoot.
Ripples slid toward the speedboat as fishmaids zeroed in from all sides, and Caroline’s heart was in her throat. The chittering and chattering surrounded them, splashing and thrashing in the waves. She tried to steady herself again in the cabin doorway, and watched with terror as a dark arm encrusted with barnacles slammed onto the gunwale where she had just been leaning, hauling up a wide-eyed face.
A young fishmaid, with a quizzical mark on her forehead, shaped like a “V”.
“Oh,” Caroline said, at the sight of the familiar face, voice trembling. “Oh, little one. Hi.”
As Caroline watched, the creature deposited something carefully onto the deck with her other, clawed hand. It was a waterlogged hat.
Reyville’s hat.
Chrrrrrrt! said the fishmaid, and blinked up at Caroline before slipping back into the water.
Caroline didn’t dare breathe. It couldn’t be. It was impossible.
The young fishmaid bobbed in the water not far from the Princess, as though waiting. But waiting for what?
Chrrrrrt!
Caroline called to Dan, “I think…I think she wants us to follow her.”
Dan looked at Caroline as if she had grown a third arm. “Are you crazy?”
“It’s just…that one…she’s…I know her. I mean…” Caroline realized how wild it sounded. “Help me back into the boat, would you?”
With Dan’s help, Caroline climbed back into the speedboat, and the young fishmaid was still there, waiting only a yard or so away, big seal-eyes blinking, that “V” like a question.
“She brought me this,” Caroline said, holding up the hat.
Dan recognized it at a glance, it was clear from the way her eyes widened.
“Look, let’s…let’s just see what happens,” Caroline said. “First sign of trouble, we get out of here. Okay?”
Dan hesitated, sighed, then started the engine and trawled slowly toward the young fishmaid, who immediately turned and began to swim toward the base of the cliffs.
As they passed through the reef, shapes rose up around them, other fishmaids following along, eerily quiet.
“Caroline…” Dan said, slowly, but Caroline shook her head.
“It’s okay. They’re just…they’re just keeping an eye on us, I think.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Dan murmured, but as they drew near to the base of the cliffs they were overshadowed by the stern faces of the towering rocks. There was a very small beach there, only a few feet wide in the high tide, and the young fishmaid hauled herself onto it with her strange long body, looking over her shoulder, waiting.
Dan pulled the boat up as close as she could.
“I can’t get any closer, or we’ll scrape,” she said. “I don’t want to risk getting stuck.”
So Caroline climbed over the side of the speedboat, sinking into the icy water up to her knees with a sharp gasp, and she waded up to where the fishmaid was waiting for her.
Dan stared from the boat, helplessly. But Caroline said, “Just wait here. I’ll be right back. The crew will be along any minute for the Princess, right?”
Dan nodded, backed the boat away from the rocks. “Call if you need me,” she said.
Caroline turned to face the creature.
The young fishmaid blinked up at Caroline, then crawled with her strong arms a short distance, and disappeared into a cleft in the rock that barely looked like an opening until you were right up next to it. With only a moment's hesitation, Caroline slipped in after her.
Within the cave it was humid and windless, and it smelled of low tide and rotten fish and shellfish shells and a deeper, musky animal smell. Caroline held her sleeve up over her nose, shivering in her wet clothes as she followed the strange eel-tail of the young fishmaid. When she understood just how dark it was going to be, she pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight, and startled when she realized that the cave was full of fishmaids, curled into the corners and sitting on rocky promontories overhead, watching her as she passed with curious eyes. Big ones, small ones. Young and old. Black eyes, deep as the ocean floor, watching. Waiting. Holding steady.
It felt like an uneasy truce, but Caroline had no idea why.
The young fishmaid slid easily along the slippery, algae-covered stone, further into the cave, before stopping and slapping the stone with one hand, an alien gesture, but clearly meant to show Caroline something.
Caroline stepped forward a few paces, swiveled the phone light, and inhaled sharply.
Reyville.
She lurched forward, nearly dropping the phone. He was lying on a bed of piled seaweed as though dead, pale as a sheet, dried blood on his face and crimson staining his sleeve all down his left arm. His coat was gone and his clothes were soaking wet.
Caroline threw herself down beside him, reaching out to touch his shoulder.
“Reyville,” she said, softly, firmly. “Reyville, wake up.”
He groaned, and the sound might as well have been music to her ears. Alive. At least he's alive.
With gentle hands, she lifted his head to cradle him in her lap. “Reyville, it’s Caroline. I’m here.”
His eyes remained closed, but his chest rose and fell, rose and fell.
Chrrrrt!
Caroline turned, and the fishmaid with the “V”-shaped mark on her forehead was blinking beside her shoulder, looking curiously down at Reyville, up at Caroline.
“Thank you,” Caroline said, hoping the fishmaid would understand the gratitude in her voice even if she didn't understand the words. “I don't know why, but…you did a good thing. Thank you.”
The fishmaid blinked, purred. There was a tension in the air. It occurred to Caroline that if the tide shifted, this could all end very quickly, and very gruesomely. Best not to overstay her welcome. These were wild animals, after all.
She reached for her phone to call Dan, but before she could do so, Reyville stirred in her lap.
“Caroline?”
She looked down, and Reyville’s eyes had fluttered open. There was a horrible gash along the left side of his lip, a dark stain spreading into his beard. She swept her fingers over his cheek.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Reyville.”
“Caroline,” he said, and it was clear that he wasn’t really seeing her. It had been days, perhaps, and he was too cold, too dehydrated, in too much pain to know where he was, to know who he was talking to, except in his fevered mind. “Caroline, I don’t want to start over.”
She tried to calm him, but his eyes widened with panic, stormy and wild, tears gathering in them, spilling over.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t want to start over. I want to stay. Please, Caroline. I want to stay here with you. I don’t…I don’t want to start over…oh, God, please…”
It was too much, too fast. He slipped away from her then, into a sort of sleep, breath shuddering and lips shivering with unspoken words, dream-words.
With his sorrowful message ringing in her ears, though she did not understand it, she lifted her phone with shaking fingers to dial Dan’s number.
When Dan picked up on the first ring, Caroline said, “He’s alive. Dan…he’s alive.”
Dan promised to send the crew in to help as soon as they arrived. Told her to hang tight. Told her she did good.
Caroline hung up the phone, then she held Reyville close and let the tears flow. Great and terrible tears. Heartcrack tears. Deep breath tears. For Ida. For June. For the girl in the dirty shirt, and the innocents lost at sea with no Shag to save them, and every ghost wandering unnoticed through this world without a story, without a story, with no one to believe in them.
She grieved the ghosts that clung heavy to her heart, one by one, as she held the haunted man in her arms.
The singing woman and the sailor.
“I love you,” she told him, over and over again like a prayer while he slept. And when she had exhausted her words she hummed an old tune, something from a gift of music he had given her once, with only the curious fishmaids nearby to bear witness, flicking their eel-whip tails and blinking their sea-deep eyes in the windless dark.
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So many unanswered questions. Hopefully they will be answered in the last two episodes. I wish this would be extended beyond twelve episodes. Such a good story!
I'm torn between "Well, it's about time" because she finally admitted she loves him and the softie in me always loves when this happens in a really good story and also I'm awestruck at the beauty of the ending scene, the fishmaids' coming to the rescue, and Druid (buddy! the robot!) and everything. This was beautiful. This really was.