The Kraken Sea Read online

  Gussie was all smiles, even as she gestured to the far island in the bay and its military prison. She loved to watch it, she said, because sometimes clusters of birds rose in huge clouds. They would wheel and soar and she wondered what it was like to fly. Lacking anything to say then, Jackson found a fried crab claw in his sack and offered it to her. She took it with a shy smile and looked away. She stopped walking then, freezing in her tracks.

  Jackson followed her gaze to a group of three boys who approached. They were roughly the same age as Gussie and Jackson, and reminded him of the young men he’d fought in Chinatown. Jackson drew himself up, closer to Gussie’s side, and when the other boys saw he was taller than them, their steps stuttered a bit.

  “Got a new dog there, Gussie?” one of them asked.

  Another picked the idea up with a laugh. “He’s got you out for a walk, then. Be sure to clean up after her, aye mate? She’s German. Don’t know no better herself.”

  There came a shift inside him, the beast wanting to devour the threat. Jackson swallowed the monster, shoved it behind a door, and locked it in. If this came to an argument or brawl, he would take it the way a normal boy would. He would give the same way; there would be only fists, only feet.

  “Not sure what your argument with her is, but leave off,” Jackson said. He folded his sack of seafood closed and handed it to Gussie, taking a single step forward to place himself more between her and them.

  The trio took a step back. Jackson was sure of his abilities even if he knew nothing of theirs. Fist to jaw, foot to gut, always mindful he had two hands, two legs, and could use both at once. But the young men continued to back up, shaking their heads now.

  “Didn’t mean nothing by it, did we?” one said.

  Jackson cocked a brow. He started to shove his coat sleeves up his arms. Plain skin, no scale, and the idea he was holding that side of him away as the rage coursed was astounding. “Just thought you’d randomly insult the both of us, then?”

  Jackson nodded and kept narrowing the distance between him and them. They continued to back up, shoes slipping in the wet muck.

  “Reckon I’ll just randomly bury my fist into three faces then. Fortunately, there are three right here.”

  The monster inside snapped, pressing against skin, but Jackson held it back, even as the boys turned and ran. He wanted to chase them, drag them down onto the dock and press them into the wood until they were the scum underfoot people slipped in.

  Normal boys didn’t do that. Normal boys blew themselves up to twice their size with chests out thrust and fists balled, and somehow it was enough. The trio didn’t look back and when Jackson looked at Gussie. Her jaw was clenched hard. She handed the sack of fish back, still somewhat warm, then tore into the crab claw he had given her.

  “I don’t go to school,” Gussie said around the bite of crab as if to explain. “My family needs me at the bakery, and that’s more important than class. But they think … Those boys think it means I’m ignorant.” She threw the claw shell into the water and licked her fingers, not looking at Jackson as she reached into the bag for squid. “I study, just not with other kids.”

  Jackson didn’t understand the fuss or the shame. He had never set foot inside a school, knew only the classes the sisters had run at the foundling hospital.

  “And if you had been alone?” He looked again, to be sure they weren’t coming back. It was too easy to picture those boys taking advantage of this place. Perhaps it was good she didn’t have the time to come here. He wondered if she knew how to throw a punch, settle a foot hard into a groin.

  “Suppose it would have been me running away.” She looked around, then suddenly smiled. “Of course, I am a good swimmer, too.”

  Jackson smiled back at her and they walked in companionable silence. He took her back to the bakery; her family lived upstairs, in rooms too small and always warm, smelling like sugar or bread. She was certain her mother watched out the window to be sure she came home safe. Jackson glanced up and indeed saw a small face peering from the pane.

  What was that like, to have someone worried about his return? When he returned to Macquarie’s, everyone was wrapped in their own concerns. Cressida didn’t care he had been gone without explanation. Jackson went to his room and locked the door. He leaned there, wondering if he imagined the small figure leaving his fire escape, someone having waited for him after all.

  §

  It was with great caution that Jackson suggested to Foster they split their daily duties, to accomplish twice as much in half the time. If Jackson were allowed to take half the list and Foster the other, they could cover more territory and be done sooner. Foster, whose only affinity with numbers involved money and not time, was agreeable. Jackson knew the streets, and its people knew him. He was well respected where he needed to be, even if some elements wanted to try their luck against him, just to see what he could do.

  Jackson didn’t appreciate the reminder, because when they were out on errands it was easy to pretend he was normal. When they returned to Macquarie’s, it became less easy. There were too many magical creatures, reminding Jackson of where and who he was. But he reveled in being alone, in going mostly where he wanted to, and when Foster agreed, Jackson took over the bakery runs.

  Gussie soon grew accustomed to his arrivals and even began to slip him a free pastries. There were always leftovers, she reasoned, and if he didn’t eat them, the birds would. Surely his belly would prefer them. Jackson never denied this and over the weeks, even the other clerks — her family, he had come to know — came to enjoy his presence. He supposed it was a doubly good thing for them: they had one of the Widow’s boys on site if anything untoward reared its head.

  The untoward thing was Mae and she didn’t so much rear as she did outright leave. Jackson sprawled at what had become his usual place, the corner table by the window where the sun slanted in after eight. There was coffee and palmiers and today, Gussie was able to sit down after she had brought the order of bread for Macquarie’s, because her cousin was also on the counter and they were not short-handed.

  Gussie smiled a lot, took pleasure in simple things, and it was this Jackson tried learn. He told her about trying to buy a newspaper and how the newsboy hadn’t understood him. It turned out the newsboy was deaf, which Gussie found amusing instead of amazing as Jackson did. He tried to imagine going through the world without hearing a sound and could not. Could a deaf person hear their own heart?

  As he wondered, Mae entered the bakery. She was clad in a red dress, a bright drape of flame ignited by the sunlight behind her. Her hair was loose, her eyes strangely bright until they settled on Jackson and the laughing Gussie, the palmiers between them. The clerks called a welcome to Mae and looked anxiously at Jackson. He could have her thrown out; this was not her territory. But that wasn’t why Mae stilled. She was above such things.

  Perhaps she should have been above envy, too. Her lips parted, as if she meant to tell the clerks good morning, but then she stopped. Her skirts whispered against her knees. She pressed her lips together and the muscle in her jaw flinched. Her skirts hadn’t settled by the time she turned back to the door. An older woman and her son were entering, but Mae easily bypassed them with all the grace of the lion tamer she was. Without a hitch in her step she was gone and Jackson was left with Gussie, who was laughing and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

  Jackson curled his hands around his coffee cup then slurped at the black liquid. It was perfectly bitter, the surface rippled to hide his reflection.

  He had not been to Bell’s in twelve days. He was keenly aware of that lack in his life, even as he purposefully avoided it. Being normal meant not going to Bell’s to see Mae or the shows. Not because of the pageant, but because he saw beyond all of it to the lie just below. Could see the women who were men, could see the costumes were actually skin and bone, could see the hollow understage where countless bodies were pulled.

  Going to Bell’s didn’t make him feel normal. What he
felt around Mae couldn’t be normal. When he looked at Gussie he knew nothing beyond a curiosity to know what it was to be human. He thought if he studied her, he could be like her. He could cup his coffee like any man would and suck down the bitter black and not think of the wonders he had seen with Mae and Beth and even Cressida. Would not be forced to remember those creatures in cages at the sideshow; to acknowledge that surely there were other such places of misery for his own kind. His own kind was here. He was human, nothing more. Nothing more. Nothing. More.

  It was a good and comforting lie to tell himself. Each night in bed, with the windows firmly latched against the intrusion he longed for (paper lions, coiled whip, the smell of her) he repeated it to himself. He was only what the mirror showed, a normal boy in a coat beginning to fill itself in from the hours of hard work. A normal boy who liked to read when he could and explore the city and … and.

  Gussie was beautiful. Jackson leaned across the table and slid his hands over hers and wished with all his heart he might feel something for her. Her smile deepened as his coffee-warmed hands covered hers, but then she pulled back. Color flooded her cheeks as she tucked her hands into her lap. Perhaps it was too public, but he wondered at the idea of his mouth on hers. Wondered if she would taste pastry-sweet, even if he didn’t care.

  Beyond the golden fall of Gussie’s hair, he watched Mae stalk up the street, her hands curled into fists. He shouldn’t have cared, but he did. His stomach turned over and he wanted to go after her, but that meant not-normal, so he focused on his weight against the chair, on the hot coffee and the scent of Gussie beyond it. She smelled like yeast, normal and safe. When she returned to the kitchen, she briefly touched her hand to Jackson’s. He didn’t move, waiting for the shock of that touch to roll through him, waiting for something, anything.

  All was quiet.

  He stared into his coffee when she had gone, reflections layered one upon the other across its dark surface: the window, its panes of glass, its curtains, the edge of his own face. He tried to convince himself that Mae and Beth had done something to him, that in the understage, they transformed him into something that now possessed no hope of ever being wholly human, but every time he reached back into his memory, there was only that: no hope of humanity, because he had never been human. Would never be. Sister Jerome Grace understood, didn’t she?

  He left the bakery without a word to Gussie. The other clerks called a goodbye, and Jackson lifted his hand, but he was already moving beyond this space. Sister Jerome Grace. Sister Jerome would know.

  The problem , he came to realize as he stalked south toward Macquarie’s, was not knowing where the sister was. He slowed his steps, shoved his hands into his pockets, and glanced behind him. North, where Mae pulled at him as though he were a compass needle.

  “Shut it,” he whispered, but the feeling didn’t go. It was as though every hair on his body stood on end and leaned north.

  He walked away from her, going south when his body begged north, but when night inevitably came, he climbed to the roof. He gave in to north. He traced the path he knew well, over this catwalk and that drainpipe, until he could watch Bell’s without obstruction. The desire to go inside was a sharp needle pricking against his skin.

  He ground his teeth together, remembering what it was to master his different forms. This was no different, he told himself. It was learning to overcome and swallow the thing he always wanted to give in to.

  The first time he changed it had been evening, shadows crossing the yard in long stripes. A boy stood in the corner of the hospital yard; Jackson could see him from his window and the boy was there when Jackson climbed down all the stairs, feeling as though he fought his way through a forest, though it was only an empty stairwell echoing with his footsteps. It was well past dinner and everyone was in their rooms, tucked where they should be, but for Jackson and this boy. This boy who stood with his face to the corner of the fence, hands clasped low against his belly, like he was holding his guts in. There was a gray scarf at the boy’s feet, but everything had been gray in the evening light, heavy clouds having sucked the world of its color.

  The boy turned and Jackson didn’t know him. He wasn’t from the hospital, for Jackson knew each and every child inside, having marked them well each time they dared come close. This boy was small and pale, and his eyes were constantly squeezed half shut, as if he had been kept in a dark place all his life. Maybe he had, because when Jackson drew closer, the boy smelled of rot, wet leaves. He crouched at Jackson’s feet, as if he meant to pick up the scarf, but he never did. The boy seemed to dwindle, he was not a threat, and yet —

  Jackson let the beast inside him spill from fingers and toes, until it swallowed his cloak of humanity. He would tell himself again and again the boy had been a threat, that his hands curled around the scarf and he stood, meaning to choke Jackson with the length of wool. Jackson would tell himself this, but would never believe it. Under the lie was the beauty of the truth, that Jackson broke him and swallowed him because he could.

  There is no sin in being what you are, Sister Jerome Grace said. No sin in this, he told himself as he unhinged his jaw and chewed the boy to pulp. This boy who meant to attack him. This boy who had only wandered into the wrong yard, perhaps captivated by the rusting swings.

  On the catwalk now, Jackson did not move, yet the metal creaked. He felt the weight of her body and came to his feet in a smooth motion, stepping backward as Mae approached. She didn’t wear trousers, but the same red dress from the bakery. Crescent moon in the dark of night and she means to kill me now, and be done with it, be done —

  Her mouth was sweet and it was rotten; it was the brightness of wet fruit and the dark of soaked mulch. Her mouth was the thing he most desired and the thing he should not have. Yet when her hands closed into his coat lapels, he did not refuse. It was clumsy the kiss, like learning to tie his shoes, like riding a bike down a steep hill, like throwing himself into boiling ice water.

  When she pushed his coat from his shoulders, Jackson only stared. Mae pulled the coat so hard, the sleeves tangled, turning themselves inside out, bunching at his wrists. There was a little snarl from her, a sound that made Jackson laugh low. He took a step back and shook off her hands, if only to right the coat so it slipped from him to pool on the catwalk.

  She pushed him then, hands hard on his arms, and not expecting it, Jackson went down atop his coat. There wasn’t time to question her before she was on him again, straddling him, curling hands into his hair as she pulled his mouth back to hers. But mouths ceased to be mouths, became something Other Jackson could not discern, because it was too much.

  He was not himself — or, was more himself than he had ever been, turning inside out under her hands the way she did under his. These human forms were only that — adopted forms, stolen in order to safely pass through the day. Beyond them, there were places — bodies — Jackson had never known, but was strangely familiar with. Hers was an alien world of hills and valleys, of clefts and planes, and he did not see the sunrise in her eyes, only the truth of an endless night, where they could always be whatever they were, refusing to cloak themselves in ill-fitting skins.

  They had been here before — Jackson’s not-hand slid down the curve of Mae’s not-waist and he knew this place. The dip, the turn, the way she — Oh, the way she.

  There was a thread, a cord of fiber and flesh pounding with a heartbeat. Jackson slid his hand up the curve that was Mae in the twilight of this in between place and lifted the thread, to feel its weight. It shifted in his hold, becoming so large he could not wholly encompass it even when he flowed his entire self into his hand. Its mass was impossible, but he rested this thread against Mae’s mouth, surprised to taste the salt and heat of it against his own mouth. This thread had no immediate end. It stretched into the distance even as it hung against them both, moved with them, wrapped them.

  When the world intruded, pushing city lights and cool air onto the metal catwalk, Jackson shivered. He drew his
coat around them, a coat not oversized, but the perfect size, and perhaps it had been such all along, only waiting for her body to shelter alongside his own. Mae slid closer and Jackson wrapped around her, marveling at the way she had not flinched, had not only come to him but had wanted closer.

  He dragged his hand across her sweat-damp hair, nestling his fingers against the nape of her neck where her pulse hammered. Where the threads moved inside her, even as they found a momentary calm. What was calm like, he wondered, for he could feel the thing inside him and it stirred yet. Wanting.

  §

  The blue door occupied a wall in the bakery basement. Past shelves of bagged flour and wrapped chocolate, beyond broken appliances, the door was nothing out of the ordinary. Its paint was so perfect it was hard to imagine anyone used it. The door’s lock gave it away.

  Jackson grudgingly admitted the lock was a true piece of art rendered in gold metal and etched lines, worn to a smooth shine from all the people who had touched it. People were the key — human people, Jackson understood, as Foster smudged Gussie’s fingers over it. Gussie was light in his arms, even while trussed up, bound wrist and ankle and mouth. She made a grunt of protest. Jackson tightened his hold. According to Cressida, there wasn’t much time.

  It was surely the most disagreeable day in his history.

  The vines etched into the metal moved under Gussie’s fingers. The vines spiraled up and out, widening into flames before they burst through the top of the metal. The lock came unlatched and Foster reached for the knob, his hands carefully gloved. Even so, the metal caused his hands smoke, as though it burned him.

  “What is that?” Jackson hissed. Gussie bucked in his arms and he gently shook her. “Shut it. Just be quiet and this will all be over soon — you don’t even have to go with —”

  Foster turned from the lock and reached for Gussie, hauling her into his arms, then over his shoulder. Her shoulder jammed into the black metal box strapped to Foster’s back. Jackson stared and protested; Gussie was his last link to an ever dwindling world of humanity.