Ecotones: Ecological Stories from the Border Between Fantasy and Science Fiction Read online

  While he waited, he worked, telling himself each day that, if this were to be his last day in the family home, then he would make the most of it. As he had done every morning since the children left, he reached for the battered old binoculars kept on the bookshelf and looked for signs of life. On this bright, clear morning he could see as far as the flatlands on the other side of the harbour, now permanently inundated by saltwater that glistened green in the sun, no longer able to sustain the garden crops the city had once required.

  He caught hints of movement, not just white spray like that breaking in front of the house, but distant spouts and whirlpools. The undines were hunting again. In packs, isolating the vulnerable, tipping them into the water and then pulling them under. They toyed with their prey, like the whale pods that hunted in packs alongside the city’s fishing fleets.

  He should leave, should be with his children, protecting Piotr and Nina, helping Vitaly find a new place for them in Odinograd. But that far city was on a river and Yuri knew that they’d find no peace there. He could not make himself go. Not without seeing Ana one more time. Nina would understand that, at least.

  That he did not search for Ana, though… that she would not.

  A week passed.

  One of his former neighbours returned for some prize furniture and brought a big boat to the bottom of the street; he also came by with a note from Vitaly. The children were all safe, but procuring a horse was proving difficult so Piotr and Nina were staying with friends in the tent city. Yuri had never liked this man, but appreciated him passing on the news, and was thanking him when they heard a splash from the back of the boat. They both went to look, cautiously, but found nothing.

  When he returned to the kitchen, Yuri’s daughter was sitting on a stool at the counter, beaming a huge self-satisfied grin.

  Pleasure at the sight of her warred with both fear and fury. “I told you to stay away,” he said, swallowing down all three.

  “But mother—” she protested.

  “She’s left us, Nina.”

  “She wouldn’t do that to us! She wouldn’t just leave me. What did you do to her? Why did she leave in the night? Why didn’t she say goodbye?”

  He wasn’t surprised that she blamed him. He had always doted on her, and Nina had always exploited that. Ana had been the authority in Nina’s life, and, without her, the adolescent girl sought scapegoats and struggled for answers.

  He couldn’t tell her the truth. That Ana had left just as the King entered the bay. She had woken him, made coffee, talked until he understood, until he agreed, and then made him swear to protect the children. She had taken nothing with her, departing naked into the night.

  “I told you that she’s gone.”

  “But why? And how will she find us now that all this has happened?”

  “When you’re older you’ll understand. Some people are just different, special, and when two people are so different, well, as different as your mother and I…”

  He trailed off. Nina was fighting to hold back a sob. He could see from her expression that she thought he was confessing to an affair.

  “What did you do?” she said again, then stormed out of the kitchen and up to her room without waiting for an answer, slamming the door behind her.

  He sighed, remembering the two teenagers he had already raised, knowing to give her more time. Tomorrow he would row her back to the camp and they would find Piotr, and maybe even have some food with Vitaly’s friends.

  The next morning she was gone.

  He woke in the middle of the night from dreams of swimming to find that the water had reached the second floor. He climbed out of bed and swore, stepping into warm and murky seawater that now formed an inch-high layer over the carpet and rug. He splashed to the window in disbelief and was shocked to see the waters lapping just under the windowsill. Another tidal surge had taken the ground floor from him while he slept, and he hadn’t even stirred.

  Over the preceding days the waters had risen slowly and he had navigated the lower half of the house in rubber boots, then waders, but that was now impossible. Small waves jostled flotsam at the top of the staircase outside the bedrooms, and he was irrationally glad that they had moved all of their treasured possessions upstairs. But his boat was too small and the ocean would take everything it couldn’t carry.

  “Nina, we have to leave!” he called, went into her room when there was no answer, and found only an open window waiting for him, that and a note written in her looping hand on the bed.

  Through the window he could see his boat. The dinghy they had dragged behind it was gone.

  He stood at the window, calling her name into the dark, knowing to paddle out into the night would be futile and praying she was still near and would return.

  She did not.

  Yuri went through the top floor—the last floor—of the house, surveying the remains of their lives, the memories imbued in even the smallest cushion or knick-knack. The humidity and the moisture that accompanied the flood made him feel puffy and weak, but even though he hadn’t worked the sea for a decade or more he knew that he still had reserves of strength, knew that he would find her.

  He went to the chest of drawers in Ana’s dressing room, noting with dismay the water seeping under the wardrobe door. She had no further need for the dresses and skirts and coats she had so loved, but he winced at the reminder that he would never see her wear them again. The chest was a simple artisan piece, plain oak with no varnish, but they had called it their treasure chest and so it was.

  He lifted her rings from the first drawer. He took a key from the cord he wore round his neck and added Ana’s engagement and wedding rings in its place before he fastened the knot once more. The key opened the middle drawer, which contained four jewellery boxes, once so important and secret. Three were empty, but he took the fourth, checked its smooth, shimmering contents, and carried it back to the bedroom and placed it at the bottom of the canvas rucksack that was his ready-to-go bag. He quickly gathered a few other things—the artist’s sketch of the family at the agricultural show when the children were young; their first hand paintings; a few other keepsakes—wrapped them in an oilskin, then took the loaf of bread and dried food he kept on the highest bookshelf and placed them all on top.

  He no longer changed to sleep so he was already dressed, but he added another thick sweater to the bag and some of Nina’s clothes. He imagined her in the sea, lost and dangerously unprepared, then shook away that terrible thought.

  Finally, he collected the dagger with the scrimshawed handle and the pistol, shot and gunpowder he had taken to keeping beside the bed for emergencies. These too he wrapped in waterproof cloth and placed at the top of the rucksack. Then he went back to Nina’s room, to the window and the boat.

  He searched for days, and as he did so the city became more and more an uncharted territory. The unforgiving sea quickly obliterated familiar areas. On the day after Nina left, he lost his bearings and rowed for hours through the flotsam and debris that swirled through the streets. He eventually recognised the alley where he and Ana had opened their first business, and where Ana had nearly lost Vitaly before he was even born. The doctor’s office that had saved both lives was long since gone, but the building it had occupied still stood forlornly in the water, half-collapsed and leaning.

  Other people also persisted in living in the town despite the rising waters, and Yuri was as likely to be met by weapons as a friendly “hello” when he approached to ask if anyone had seen a girl in a coracle. Criminals roamed the new canals. Most were not water people, though, and as more and more streets became submerged the thieves and burglars moved up to the camps to try their hands at pickpocketry.

  The heat of their last day as a family had been no fluke; the deluge changed the climate of the town, making it easily ten degrees warmer. Each day he searched, the hazy humidity quickly brought on a sweat, and with the droplets trickling down his forehead Yuri felt inadequate to his task.

  He cur
sed himself for his passivity. In the face of tragedy, he had pushed the children away and retreated to his home as if waiting to die. Whatever their problems, Ana wouldn’t have wanted that.

  On the fifth day of his search, he circled back to the submerged house and was hailed at the end of his block by a cracked and ancient voice. The old woman, Marissa, was sitting on the flat roof of her house in a wooden garden chair. She smiled a toothless grin and invited him to join her for a cup of tea. Her house was submerged to the top of the highest windows, so he tied the boat to the guttering and stepped onto the roof.

  She had a portable stove with several large flasks spread around it. He nodded at her. “You seem well prepared for the end of the world.”

  She laughed. “My King has come for me at last. There’s no reason to flee.” Her grin was impish, and he wondered if the cataclysm had brought madness.

  “You’re happy that the King Under the Sea wants to kill us all?”

  He didn’t mean to goad her, and immediately regretted his tone, but she took no offence. “My boy, all of this once belonged to him. The dry people only held it in trust for as long as he was satisfied. Now he’s had enough!”

  She raised the cup of tea, gesturing for Yuri to pour himself some, which he did. “Some say we took too many of his fish, others blame the army because they went for his treasures with their bathyspheres and submersibles. I say he just wants it back!”

  The tea was good and Yuri savoured it for a moment before responding. “And you think that justifies all this? How do we know where the water will stop?”

  “I don’t think it will. The King has been searching for his daughter for a long time. If she’s not in the sea, she must be on land—and how can he forgive that? His anger is ancient and terrible and he will have his vengeance. Would you stop at anything for that little girl of yours?”

  Yuri had no response, so he refilled their cups instead. “It needs milk. Where are all the cows, Marissa?”

  With a giggle she responded, “Well, I saw one float past yesterday, but I don’t think she was giving milk any more.” She smiled. “He was always kind to me, you know? When I fished, I made the proper obeisances and my catch was always good. When my poor Nept passed on, we committed him to the sea, and thanked the King for the time we’d had and the children he’d allowed us. Do you think the modern folk do that? Did you remember your obligations, Yuri?”

  He contemplated her words. “We paid our dues and made the sacrifices when the children were born. Ana was… Ana was a free spirit, and submitted to none. Not even her husband,” he added wryly.

  Marissa chuckled and though she continued to smile her tone became serious. “The navy has come overland from the farthest shore. Did you hear them, last night? Those lads and lasses who came past yesterday with their guns and their big boat? They want to turn him back, but it will be futile. Nothing stops the sea, in the end.”

  “A reckoning. Do you not think there’s a chance?”

  “None,” she said. “The King’s coming. He’ll take me down when he’s good and ready, and then I’ll see Nept, and be young again forever. Now, where are you off to in your silly little craft?”

  “Nina is still out there, looking for her mother.” The old body finally stopped smiling, showing a concern for the child that she hadn’t for the rest of the people. “Have you seen her? Since the evacuation, I mean?”

  She nodded, and replied quite matter of factly. “I have.”

  Yuri’s heart leapt. “Why didn’t you tell me? How did she look? Was she well? Had anyone hurt her?”

  “She swept along here two days past. Didn’t stop to say hello or anything. Quite rude, if you ask me. Looked like she’d come into her maturity. I was surprised to see her above the water.”

  He shook his head and sighed. “No, Marissa, I meant my daughter, not… not whatever you saw.”

  They were interrupted by the distant wail of a siren blowing from landward, and the sound of distant engines. Yuri made his apologies, explaining that he had to find her before the marines came and the real war began. As he rowed away, she shouted after him. He thought she said to mind the King, but her words were carried away on the ocean breeze and he didn’t catch them.

  He didn’t find Nina that day either.

  The next day he let a tidal current take him down towards the harbour.

  He couldn’t recognise the streets from their rooftops any more. An eerie calm had taken hold and a low mist blocked his view landwards, where he presumed armies were massing. The humidity was cloying, and every stroke of his paddle brought more perspiration to his forehead.

  He heard the distant, ululating cries of the undines, and thanked the gods that none of the King Under the Sea’s creatures were roaming nearby. He did not see a single human, or rather, none living. Every now and then a corpse floated past. He thought he had been hardened to suffering and death during his time as a soldier, before he married, but the first body of a child disabused him of this notion. Bloated and face down, he could not tell its age or sex, only that it was too small to be Nina.

  He used the paddle to fend off debris and bodies, but occasionally the currents allowed him some choice in the route he was taking, to keep away from the torrents and whirlpools. He was as terrified of moving too fast and being swept beyond her as he was of seeing her from afar but being unable to catch up.

  From time to time he called out a cautious “hello” in the hope that, if his daughter were nearby, she’d hear him, and that if she were not, a straggler or attic-survivalist might reply instead, and he could ask them for any news or sightings.

  He found no one.

  The current eased on a street with many of its upper storeys still above the water line, and he paddled from side to side, peering through windows into the flooded remains of people’s lives. He saw floating furniture, particularly beds but also desks and papers, and once a wardrobe floating on its side which he briefly contemplated checking for dry clothing.

  He was startled twice by a great serpent that weaved from house to house, above and below the water, finding its own way through doors and windows, before rejoining the main waterway just as Yuri arrived to make his own inspection. It seemed uninterested in him but kept pace with his movements, and when he explored the left side of the street, it occupied the right.

  The flood had opened up a new territory for the King. Even the sea creatures that were not directly under his dominion must be exploring, he mused. Were there any that owed him no allegiance? The common belief was that he commanded all life in the water, but as the child of a fisherwoman and a stevedore, Yuri knew that the truth was much more complicated. The schools of fish that had already reclaimed this street owed the King nothing , and to him, they were just snacks or bait.

  Yuri peered through a veranda window, taking in the sodden finery that now dressed an aquarium. How quickly the borders shift. He recognised the ornate green and red embroidery of the robes once worn by one of his old clients and realised that he had visited this house before. He wondered if Rylana and her husband had made it out of the city, but stopped himself there. If he thought about each of his friends he would lose focus—his only concern was retrieving Nina and returning her to land to join her brothers.

  At the end of the block, the current resumed its drive, taking him toward the harbour. His companion serpent moved off in a different direction.

  Splashing and shouting broke the stillness of the morning, the first human voices he’d heard since Marissa. But there were other voices too—indistinct, but definitely inhuman.

  He began to row towards the sounds, the water pulling him on as if impatient with his meandering search pattern. If the current wanted to help him towards the noises, then he would let it.

  In the distance, Yuri saw what he had been searching for: Nina’s little dinghy, heading for the Mariners’ Temple. Its tall steeple still towered above the waters, and next to it stood a six-storey harbour-front building whose upper floors stil
l rose proudly above the flood. Nina must have been checking the tallest buildings and, as he rowed, he cursed his stupidity. She had no reason to expect her mother to stay at sea level. He had been looking in the wrong places!

  Three monstrous undines surrounded the tiny boat, towering over the gunwales, their bladderwrack-hair spread down to the water around. They flipped their huge and muscular tails to create a wave that would capsize the boat, and their taunting cackles and hoots suggested they were enjoying it. Yuri rowed as fast as he could, but the current tried to veer him off course.

  Nina shouted and cursed at the undines, and he felt a twinge of pride that they had raised a girl who would fight with the children of the sea. Battling onwards, he saw her leap from her coracle just as two of the creatures grabbed the edge of the little craft and held it down so that it took on water. She landed with a splash and his heart sank, but she waded along the top of an unseen surface, then leapt again onto the barely submerged roof of the temple.

  She ran along the wooden roof as though walking on water, chased by one of the undines towards the steeple. She stumbled, slowing for just half a second to wipe spray from her face, and the undine was on top of her.

  Yuri could do nothing except paddle his hardest, but he knew he was going to be too late. The undines were ferocious and unrelenting.

  Closer now, but not close enough. The undine was standing upon her tail, her hands wrapped round Nina’s throat, water glistening on her scales. He wouldn’t make it in time. She was pressed up against the wall of the steeple and was desperately batting at the creature’s face.

  “The eyes, Nina, the eyes!” he screamed.

  He didn’t know whether she had heard him, but if not then the same idea had occurred to her. With one hand she pulled on a long string of the black, pustular hair and with the other she began to gouge at one of its eyes until, with the most hideous screech, it let her go. She kicked it as it dropped backwards into the water.