Boiling Sea

Bailey stirred. Her back was cold, which was usually where her sister would curl up to her. But she wasn't there. Where was she? Bailey's shouts woke the sleeping village.

***

"We have to do something! We're just sitting here and he or they or whatever it is just keeps..." Baron paused, distressed. He gulped and swallowed down his emotion and lowered his tone to show that he was in control. With a deep breath, he continued. "Every year. It just keeps...happening. This one will be no different unless we act!" Baron had called this emergency meeting, not to frighten but to cause action. He had young children and since having them, he was forever fearful of them being taken by the unknown predator of Summer Solstice Night.

Two years this had happened now. The first one had been perceived as random but last year, well, it was too specific a date to be coincidence. He scanned the crowd around him, his eyes pleading with them to be reasonable. He knew that the relatives of the lost children were present in the village's hall, a motley construct which allowed them all to gather. It had previously been a place of feasting and celebration but more recently, its walls and rafters were overhearing the most macabre and distressing discussion in gatherings tinged with sadness.

He felt tactful and tactless paradoxically in his oblique referral to the abduction of the village's children but he hesitated to say the words that they were all thinking: killed, murdered, eaten.

"We need to do something," he repeated to the silent room.

He looked around at the worried, anguished faces of his friends and fellow fishermen. He knew them all so well and the majority, he liked. Most of the time, everyone rubbed along well together. But this seemingly annual incident was threatening to fracture their world - people were scared and eager to flee. Most thought it was something external to them that was stalking them every summer solstice, a terrible thought made worse because it was meant to be a celebration, a joyous gathering on the brightest and brilliant of all the summer's days, to laugh and dance and drink, without a care - a magical time. But this had become tainted.

More recently, the suggestion had been made that it may just be someone closer - a villager. The eye of suspicion was casting its wary glance at every available instant to anyone exhibiting behaviour which could be felt out of the norm as the inhabitants of Gren sought desperately for an answer to the most disturbing and grief-making scenario in which they found themselves: Who was stealing their children?

Finally, the depth of the silence was broken.

"It's a curse. That's the problem."

It was Tom, one of the residents of Gren and the one most derided. Everyone had strange habits but Tom, of later years, had always been more wayward than most, a tinge of madness blurring his edges and causing distrust. More than once his name had come up as the person responsible for children missing but there had always been proof to refute this: an alibi, a prolonged departure, him being in the presence or eye-view of someone respected.

"Oh, Tom," Meredith said. "You think every bad piece of luck that happens is because of a curse. This is serious now. We need a clear solution, not baseless talk."

This was not said unkindly as Meredith had strong feelings for Tom, but had assuredness and authority. He had not always been the man he was now. She remembered him when he was strong in mind and body and someone to be respected and admired. The change had occurred when he had lost his own child some years previously and his wife shortly after - childbirth could be a gift and...a curse. He had lost everything that night and had struggled since. Although the signs of his burgled happiness had been clouded by grief, the villagers had only tolerated his different behaviour for what they believed to be a reasonable amount of time - and that had expired. He was avoided and talked about but not to, and everyone was wary of his haunted eyes. Except Meredith. Meredith always had time for him. She too had known loss and the hold that it could relentlessly keep for years - babies unborn, husbands lost - crippling, stifling loss.

"No, Mer, you need to hear me out." He looked keenly and Meredith saw some spark of the man he once was, a clear speaker with purpose and a sharp mind.

He spread his arms wide and stood, a little shakily but determined that he should be seen and heard. "All of you. You all need to hear this." He paused. "I know what you all think of me. I don't always hear what's said about me but I can guess."

There was an uncomfortable movement across the hall of acknowledgment and shame, eyes cast downward and upward and beyond Tom's pleading face, and hands twitching in laps.

"I see it in your faces and I know how I appear to you."

He took time to look toward everyone there, some holding his gaze and others looking away.

"And you need to listen to me on this."

He took a deep breath before continuing.

"I know what it is like to lose a child. You all know that. But this...this.."

He paused again as he searched for the word.

"This craven taking of our young is the work of a predator and one that is compelled to do this. And I believe a curse drives it."

Silence permeated the hall. Tom took a moment to wipe his brow. He was sweating with the pressure of talking the most words that he had in months to the most people he had ever been in front of. But he had to say it. If he didn't, he knew he could no longer live with himself. Life was hard enough anyway without debilitating guilt. Solstice Night was approaching and this thing that was plaguing them had to be stopped this time.

He swallowed and continued.

"And I know because I have seen it. I have seen what is taking our children."

As Tom stopped to gather his thoughts in order to continue, Baron was resisting the temptation to intervene. This was not where he wanted the meeting to go. He wanted extra vigilance or patrols or something but not talk about a curse. He fidgeted in his seat but stopped when he received a warning glare from Meredith. He didn't want to let it continue, Tom and his fanciful ideas but that look had halted him before and he had a well-conditioned response to obey it, or else. As his mother continued to stare him down, daring him to move and interrupt, he dutifully lowered his eyes but shook his head slightly in an act of minimal defiance. He felt very uncomfortable with where the evening's debate was headed and he wasn't totally sure why.

"I haven't spoken before now because..."

Again, Tom paused, thoughtful and wary.

"Because...ah, you wouldn't have believed me. And I understand why."

He stopped as if it had just occurred to him: "You may not believe me now. But you should know."

He straightened his back, as if preparing for a difficult physical task and blurted out, "I saw it as it took poor Mina away."

The hall's silence was broken as a collective gasp issued from the lips of many present. Everyone's eyes went to Mina's parents who stared at Tom as he spoke.

"You'll remember two years ago, the solstice had been a brilliant day, glowing."

People nodded. It had been wonderful, full of such happiness, merriment and an air of the carefree.

"But the night, well, it was a bitter night. I had tried during the day to take part, drank a little too much. It made me maudlin. I skulked away to be on my own with a flagon, to see if drowning myself in liquor would help. It didn't...help."

He shook his head, the shame of it clear. He had been slumped against a house, with the leaves and the grime, in the shadows. It was starting to rain and the clouds had been grumbling. People had been returning home while he had been sat there but no-one had noticed him, or ignored him, in the dark, except the rat that had scurried across its legs, slick, black with a thick tail. He had blearily flicked it away but the detritus of the day's feasting was everywhere - the rat knew there were easier pickings. And then, there had been a flash of light.

"I saw it in the lightning."

Tom paused as he tried to draw up the image in his head that had haunted him since.

"The flash lit it up in an instant and I wasn't sure what I was seeing. Still not really sure."

He stopped again, the tension in the hall tangible as everyone waited for him to continue. Even Baron wanted to know what he had seen.

"It was tall and it looked like us, in form. It moved with stealth, like it was parting the air, like a boat through the sea. No deviation from its path. It knew where it was going."

Tom looked at Mina's parents then directly.

"You will remember, Gareth, Megan," nodding at them in turn, "that it was not long after I lost..."

Tears threatened to storm Tom's narrative, but his determination to continue proved a barrier to his emotions.

"You know..." he continued as Gareth and Megan's heads lowered in sympathy to their shared grief, recognising in Tom a kindred spirit, lost to loss.

"I was a mess. Still am."

He smiled in awareness but continued.

"But I did see it. And it was not of our world. It looked human but," and here he shivered, "its skin was grey, dark grey and thick, it looked. Thick, and rough. And its eyes were black. There was no glint to them in the light. No glint at all. Dead. Dead eyes."

Tom's speech had drifted into a kind of reverie and the crowd was starting to shift at his revelations but listened again as Tom continued to speak.

"But its mouth...its mouth..." Tom willed himself to continue."Its mouth was white when the lightning hit the night. And it was glowing. Stark. Stark white, a contrast to the dark. Full of teeth. Lots of them. Sharp. Lethal."

Suddenly, the weight of the guilt of that night punched Tom in the gut and he started to sob. Quietly, through his tears, he was heard to say, "I'm sorry. So sorry! I tried to get up and do something, but I couldn't. Nothing worked. I was gone...too far gone."

Baron watched as his mother and others went over Tom to offer him comfort. Now that Tom had finished, everyone had started to discuss what they had just heard, some with disbelief, some with anger, all with fear. Baron took advantage of the hubbub to leave the hall and get some night air. It all sounded so far fetched. Would the villagers believe it? Tom was so unreliable a witness to anything, but legends and myths permeated the life of his people like gilt threads in a rich man's tapestry. The sea always bred legends: huge sea beasts with grasping tentacles and beaks to snap at you; big fish with jutting swords that were part of them; bulky white fish, who looked like they were smiling as they emerged from the deep with a sharp point on their head, like unicorns of the sea; shadows below the surface but also glowing creatures, brighter than the moon; mermaids and mermen, half-human half-fish. But these were all in the sea, weren't they? Still, there was something in this, he knew it, sitting smugly on the edge of his consciousness, waiting for its moment, something willingly suppressed. Baron shivered and felt a ripple of fear.

It was while he was gazing at the stars and taking deep gulps of cool clear air that he realised that Tom may still be talking. What did Tom know about this curse? What else would he say? Turning quickly, he headed into the hall and hoped that he had not missed anything but it was as it was with people talking and Tom being comforted, most particularly by his mother.

Baron rushed over to where Tom was now sitting and scrambled to make his way through. He needed to hear what he knew. In his urgency, he pushed other villagers aside to get to Tom. He stood next to his mother as she placed a hand on Tom's shoulder and crouched down.

"Tom!"

Responding to her cry, Tom lifted his head and looked at Meredith. Kind, warm face. A face from his childhood.

More softly, seeing that she had his attention, Meredith held both his shoulders and said, "Tom. It's a crazy story but I believe you. I do."

Baron saw the skepticism cross Tom's face, then a glimmer of confidence at Meredith's affirmation.

"What's important now, Tom, is not what I or anyone else here tonight believes but this - do you know how to stop it?"

Tom shook and lowered his head. Baron omitted a groan, winning another look from his mother. Were they really giving this story credence? Why were they listening to this fool? A jolt of nervousness hit Baron's gut. Why were they giving his curse story the time of day? His face threatened to betray his fear for all to see when Tom lifted his chin and looked Meredith in the eye again and said,

"I don't but Merlin might."

Baron gasped. Merlin! Not only was the man talking about curse driven monsters stealing their children but now! Now, he was drawing on a mythical unknown to save them. He turned to go when Tom continued in a whisper:

"Yes, Merlin might. But there will be a price. With Merlin, there is always a price."

"Then to Merlin we must go. Do you know how to find him?"

Tom nodded.

"Good. Are you strong enough, Tom? Do you think you can go?" Meredith asked.

Tom nodded, again but hesitantly, a little unsure.

"It's alright, Tom, Baron will go with you."

Baron halted at this but did not dare turn around in case his face betrayed his emotion and his fear would be on full show.

"And if there is a price to pay, we must pay it," Meredith stated, with finality.

***

Merlin had been expecting the villagers for days and had been watching them through his seeing glass, approaching his humble dwelling, far away from others and their curious eyes.

Tom and Baron. He knew them from the glass; he knew what they were coming for; he knew that they would not want to pay the price he would ask. Baron had daughters. Two. One very young and one older but still a girl. One a sacrifice which would ultimately break the spell and one an apprentice, for him. But would Baron be prepared to sacrifice his own to save others? Merlin stroked his beard as the men, weary and frightened, entered the copse that was the entryway to his den.

***

"No! NO!" Baron's face was filled with horror as Merlin presented him with the answer to the curse.

"It is how it must be," Merlin stated. "It is the only way to stop the curse."

Baron was shaking his head in distress whilst Tom was staring wide-eyed at the man of the woods, his face a mirror of shocked terror.

"There has to be some other way! There has to!" Baron's reaction veered from anger to sadness to despair as he paced the small space that Merlin called home, crammed tight with bottles, pelts, strange vessels and figures. He had to get out of there, to think. How could he escape this?

"You can't stop it, Baron." Merlin eyed him. "Blood needs blood."

The inevitability was inescapable. Baron knew that it had to be him. He knew from the moment that Tom had described what he'd seen. It had to be his girls to break the curse. It had to, because he was its cause.

And Merlin knew.

***

It had been a day on the sea like any other. Until the last haul. He had been tired, hot and thirsty and just wanted to finish for the night. Drawing the net was a chore. Too much beer, not enough sleep.

He remembered the superstitions that ruled him and his fellow fishermen. He had guessed that they stemmed from living a life that could turn so quickly out of seemingly nothing, subject to the elements, the tides and the unseen swells: things that were very much out of their control. He had lost friends to the sea and her creatures and he knew the dangers. But he was also rational in his own head and disliked the emphasis placed on superstitions that ruled the boat: coiling ropes a certain way; checking the net for debris that may belong to the ocean and not ours to take; gathering the net using only the left hand at the front from the landward side of the boat, the right hand at the front on the seaward side; always release the young of sharks.

He thought he knew better.

"You must remember to never, ever kill a young shark, Baron," his father told him when he was a young boy, watching as his father with dexterity removed the shark from its trapping and placed it off the boat. "Never. Respect Nature's young as you would your own, especially those of the shark as they have a great capacity for vengeance, more so than any beast of the sea. People see them as dark predators and they are that but they are also creatures of myth and legend, alive for millennia, the ruthless rulers of the oceans. They must be respected." Here, he held Baron's shoulders. "Or penance will be paid."

It had an immediacy when he had first heard it and he'd followed it with fear, but as time went on and there had been few sharks to throw back, the tale's importance had receded in Baron's mind.

That fateful day, one was caught in the net, still thrashing to be released. Baron tried to loose it but it resisted, hurling itself about with an energy that seemed otherworldly and maniacal to Baron but he guessed that this was a trick of his tiredness and impatience and evidence of the fish's desperation. No fish should move like that out of water for so long. Eventually, it had sunk its teeth into his thumb, deep into his flesh, dragging its point through as it moved, like a saw. In pain and anger and frustration at being hurt when trying to help, Baron picked up a club and grasping it as firmly as he could through the slipperiness of his cut, he bashed at the creature, frenzied in his attack, until it was still. He stood over it, panting and looked at the obliterated form on the deck. The club was spattered, white, pink and red, grim evidence of his reaction. He felt a mixture of emotions, both satisfaction and shame at what he had done. His thumb was throbbing, a loose skin flap exposing his own flesh. Quickly, he took off the bandana that kept the sun off his neck and dipping his hand in the sea to cleanse the wound, he wrapped the small piece of material around it. Surprisingly, it was no longer bleeding. He returned to the net, tossed the remnants of the shark off the boat and continued sorting the net's contents, trying to ignore his injury.

He thought about his actions and focused on what he had had to do: he had been hurt; he had been trying to help; he had tried his hardest. He did not dwell on the rage and how he had inflicted it on what was essentially an innocent creature. He chose to think of the wrong that had been done to him and its justification.

He slept uneasily that night, the night before solstice. But it was where it had all began.

Baron made two mistakes that evening: one was washing his hand in the sea as his blood was floating across the brine, sending it to the senses of one who wished to know his identity, who would want to punish him and those close to him. The second mistake was doing this on the night before Summer Solstice, the day of magical myth and destiny, when supernatural power is at its zenith; even though the day had not yet dawned, its essence was abroad just looking for anything to permeate with its mysticism and timeless magical power. And when it found the traces of youth taken and the sharp tang of blood pointing to the culprit, a curse was actioned by the solstice magic against men who allowed it to happen, one that required balance to be restored to assuage it.

It was that first Solstice Night when the sea began to boil and hiss and steam and from the churning turmoil, the grey figure emerged from the white to walk towards Gren. And it was Merlin who had seen the figure first and knew of its presence and knew how to stop it. And it was Merlin who had seen the violent killing committed by Baron through his all-seeing glass. Merlin knew, but he did nothing to stop it as he knew that it was how it should be: the forces of the world were in action, forces he sometimes harnessed, but more than that, and selfishly, he would acknowledge, he knew that it would bring him his new apprentice.

***

It was dark as the figure found its way to the light. There was no sound other than the soft tread as it placed its foot, tentatively and without surety, to the ground. Steadily, it crept to the village, the torches ahead of it thick with smoke and the crackling of pitch as they burned.

This was the village it would always visit on Summer Solstice Night. Instinct was guiding it towards sustenance and it was trying to suppress urges, to plunge, to dart, to steal what it needed in one swift direct movement. It was a predator by nature and it wanted to explode out of the shadows and tear its quarry away. But it was no longer wholly one thing, one being. In its transformation, it had gained guile and intelligence and this was a mixed blessing: it meant a less direct approach but better results. Since coming to land, it had adapted and was feeding well.

Softly, it lifted the cloth covering that served as a door for the huts of the people of the village. In this hut, inside all were sleeping: four in total. An impulse for carnage threatened to take over it as it admired the still forms, so obligingly laid out for it to attack. But an innate knowledge told it that the littlest were the easiest to carry, subdue and digest.

It scanned the room: there. A little girl. Pushed from the pack by the shiftings of her parents and sibling from the protection of their sleeping masses. Easy to snatch.

It moved closer. A snort stopped its motion. Softly, it thought. Softly. It paused. It waited. Stillness descended, the snuffling and deep breathing of the dreamers resumed.

Gently, it reached and gently, it grasped and in one practiced move, both the figure and the girl were gone, the door covering as it fell back creating a slight draft which merely tweaked the hairs on the skin of the slumbering family like a slight shiver.

And as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

***

It was a beautiful morning as Rhona walked across the beach. The sea was a bright blue and the waves were not roaring but playfully rolling to shore, breaking at the very last, like a little girl's giggle, to lap the sand and conquer it by degrees.

She had made some great finds today: no treasure to speak of, like coins or pearls, but a small crab, dead but perfectly intact, its claws closed but able to be pushed open with Rhona's enquiring little finger. And a jellyfish, bright purple blooms decorating its surface, like shamrocks in shape and its tentacles strewn around it. She kept her distance, knowing the power of the poison they held even on land but she couldn't help but think with sadness of how it was now immobile when once it had been this ethereal bobbing bubble of a creature, buoyed and buffeted by the currents of the ocean. And seashells! Glorious, wee mounds of seashells, dainty and white, clustered within weed and nestled brightly next to grey pebbles, blue pebbles, red pebbles. She had picked up a few of the shells to examine them more closely and marvel at their delicate nature; almost sheer in places, with the iridescence of pearl glimpsed in a certain light but so strong. She tried to crush them between her fingers, wanting them to crumble but they were like the hardest diamond.

With the sun on her face, she marvelled at the freeness of life and its marvellousness as manifested in the nature around her. She loved to be here. By the sea.

Looking across the beach, she could see something else prostrate on the shoreline. A mound. Driftwood maybe? She liked the gifts that the sea deposited and was sure to use them, transforming them if she could into something that she could utilise.

Filled with anticipation, she skipped and darted her way towards it and saw as she got closer that it was actually two objects, not lying side by side as such but cast at angles to each other, like they had been thrown by the sea at the same target but with a different result, like arrows at an archery tournament.

She slowed her pace and took more measured steps, inching slowly towards the first object. It looked malleable, like a net but it had a strange shimmer to it. She thought it was shiny because it was wet but reaching out to touch it, she realised from its extreme roughness that it was skin. Not human skin but some kind of fish. Fascinated and disturbed in equal measure, she moved her head closer to scrutinise it with her eyes.

Scanning it carefully, she was convinced: shark. But where were the fins? This was very, very unusual, she thought, moving carefully and cautiously around the object. It was lumpy and misshapen, maybe due to the constant tugging of the sea, like a needy toddler. She wasn't sure how old it was but she was pretty sure that the last time she had come this far up the beach, it had not been present. Spotting a stick, she used it to lift up the skin but all that was under it was other sea debris: bladder wrack, pebbles, hopping sand flies.

Puzzled, she pulled out the stick and for a moment, just stood and thought, mulling and surmising what exactly it was that she was examining. After a minute or so, she shook her head, having come to no concrete conclusion and walked deliberately round the object to the other offering that the sea had gifted.

This had been buried in a way that the shark skin had not. It was covered in bright green weed, layers and the swishing curtains of sea kale, which seemed to drape themselves over the form like the bandages of a mummy, but loose, not pulled taut. It seemed purposeful and reverential, respectful and caring.

Still with the stick in her hand, she delicately lifted one of the wide strips of kale and saw white. Stark white, seashell white. Bone white. As the realisation hit her, she gasped and withdrew the stick so that the kale concealed her discovery. Bone? In her brief glimpse, she had seen that it was not scattered bone but many bones, formed into a recognisable shape: a skeleton. If she had to guess, she would think human but without revealing it in its entirety, she was unsure and she did not have the courage to uncover it again.

What she had found rattled her. What did it all mean? A shark skin, complete but without fins and what she was pretty sure was a human skeleton. Whatever it meant, Rhona knew that this was no ordinary beach find.

She couldn't wait to go back and tell her uncle, Merlin about it and scampered back along the shoreline to the hut in the woods where they lived. He would be sure to be back from his morning walk and she could bring him here to see what she had found.

But Merlin already knew.

My inspiration:

I've always had a fear of sharks (a generation blames Stephen Spielberg!) but more recently, I have gained a respect for them. Living in Western Australia when drum lines were installed, images of young sharks caught, helpless, filled me with remorse and got me thinking: they are predators of the sea and if we are in their domain, are they really doing anything wrong? Isn't it up to us to be more aware of them? But ultimately, as with many other species, our dominance of this planet is absolute and we forget we share it.

Bizarrely, I had a dream one night where the sea started boiling and sharks became human, (dressed as the Village People!) emerging to wreak carnage on people watching on the shore who had come for the spectacle. Inspiration has strange sources.

And Merlin? Ah, why not?