Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

– Popular Aurelian quote, falsely credited to Christopher Columbus

+++

The water was frigid as it pooled around the boy’s bed. He pulled his legs up until they were at his chin, hoping that maybe this way it wouldn’t reach him. If it did, the things inside the water would eat him a second time.

The first had been when he was little, when the ship his parents had been on broke apart. He’d been stuck on a floating door for a long time, starved and so, so thirsty. That was years ago, and he was eleven now. Eleven-year-olds weren’t supposed to be afraid of the water, but here it was, come back to get him for real.

He knew that a tide came every four to seven years. The old bandicoot on his favorite show Rats and Rapids said so. ‘When three moons align nigh, avast! Gather ‘round — legs in hand — and seek safety, to stand up on high.’ It was something about these moons and the deep water that made everything want to come onto land, fish and eels, crabs and clams, mermen and monsters.

He’d rather they stay where they were. Though, he supposed, if they were polite about it and were more comfortable on land, then he could spare some space in his room. Just not all of it.

Wind howled where the living room was supposed to be, and every now and again he could hear distant spells being slung, explosions, splashes, rolling boulders. The wooden house groaned as the tide ate at the sand beneath. The cold wet had already found his stash of plushies, mister and misses snake, the rainbow trout, and the hat turtle he had bought with his own money, like all his things. Uncle and Uncle and Aunt Tuttle said buying things for kids was no good, and that he’d treasure his belongings more if he had to work for them.

Something skittered, scratching at his door. Then, the handle rattled, and that something began thump-thump-thumping against it.

The boy hid under his blanket as the water rippled, soaking his mattress, then receded, and took his plushies with them, his treasures. He closed his eyes and tried not to think how lonely they were, how the water was pulling them away from comfort and down so deep where there was no light and only cold darkness.

Give them back, he thought, pleading to the god of the ocean, if one existed. Please, give them back.

The only answer that came was sloshing and splashing. There was a hole in his room where the wall was sagging down, and the gurgling swish-swash sound of the coast was coming from right beneath. If that was how the ocean god talked, then he was too afraid to listen. He had always been afraid of the ocean, because day or night it never left him alone.

Never.

The rattling at the door threw up waves. His covers were pressed so hard against his face that he could see shapes through them.

Wood splintered, and the door broke.

A thing came slithering inside. It was dark and glossy, and moved like ten worms. It was standing in the door frame. It was inside his room. It was moving forward, and now it was at the foot of his bed. Three circular mouths gaped straight at him.

There was a surge of light, the sound of glass shattering, followed by a wave of heat. It happened so fast the boy only registered it after he had flinched from the shower of glass and wood splinters from the new hole in his room’s wall. The thing in his room was gone and parts of his face were now covered in goo.

It smelled rank. Like ten-days dead fish.

He didn’t wipe it away, because where the monster was supposed to be there was a person.

She was bright blue, not a hair on her head, but with six pinkish slits along her neck, and six more poking out under her shirt. Other than that, she looked just like him. Two arms, two legs, two slightly oversized black eyes. At first, the boy thought she was hurt, but then he saw the slits on her neck open and close, like the thingies on a fish. He remembered what his mother had once said — his real mother.

“The empire is full of different people. They look different, and sometimes act in odd ways. But beneath the surface, I’m sure they want the same as you do.”

He wasn’t sure the blue woman wanted to get his plushies back as much as he did. But maybe that was why she was here. Maybe his aunt and uncle really did get help.

“Hammond you blithering idiot, you blasted me straight through the wall! I—”

Their eyes met through the covers. Her neck slits — gills, that was what they were called! — went stock still.

“Hello?” She slowly crept up to him and poked him, before jerking back as if she hadn’t expected him to be there. He was wearing a blanket. Though, maybe she wasn’t here to save him after all? She looked more afraid of the water than he did, balancing on an overturned drawer. The thought of falling in made shivers run down his back.

“Gods, you’re cold.” He stared with wide eyes as a chestnut-sized orb of fire appeared in her palm. It felt warm to the touch, and he let her push it through his chest, where it made him dry and comfy. “What’s your name, little human?”

“Isaac.”

“Isaac. Greetings. I am Claar’Rhileigh… I am Claire. I am an adventurer. You know what that is, right?”

He nodded and someone else entered through the hole she’d made with her body. It was a big man with floppy dog ears and a mean face. His feet crunched on the glass. Isaac watched as he cleaned his shoes on the flooded doorstep, then made a few hand gestures. The sand beneath his house shifted, pushing the water out, then clogging any holes,

Magic. Real magic.

Claire shot the man a glare and cleared her throat. “Are you alright? Are you by yourself?”

He burst out, crying. His plushies were gone. The sun was rising and he hadn’t heard a peep from anyone since midnight.

“Aunt Tuttle said I should wait for help. In my room. All alone,” he blubbered.

“Right. Carpshit. I, uh… do you want to come with us? Me and my friends?”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

He nodded and was picked up by Claire in short order. He clung to her like she was a big Misses Snake. The big man — Hammond — seemed more fascinated by the broken door than him. He formed up to her side and slightly behind, whispering in that way adults did when they thought kids like him weren’t listening.

“The door was locked.”

“Locked? Did the boy do it himself?”

“It was locked from the outside. The key was still sticking out.”

“Ah.” Claire took a few more steps. “Humans do not leave their spawn behind during tides, do they?”

“No. No they do not. Let’s find his guardians, if they’re even on this island, or alive. Depending on their defense, this might get ugly.”

The boy sniffed. “Aunt Tuttle is ugly. She always smokes inside and drinks and when she tries to kiss me, her mouth looks like a butthole.” The pair blinked at the boy staring at him with curious eyes.

Hammond snorted and ruffled his hair. “You’ve got a mouth on you for sure. You’re a weird kid.”

“Is weird bad?”

He shook his head. “Not the good kind of weird. Now go to sleep, you’re tired.”

“Yes sir.”

The boy had barely closed his eyes and Claire could already tell he was fast asleep. Was Hammond always this good with children? But before that, one more important question.

“Ugly how, Hammond?”

Hammond sighed. “Claire, you’re kind, and I know you’re blind to these things, but if feeding the kid was getting too much for them, they might have done it on purpose.”

“They would not,” she said, then quieter to herself, “They would not.”

He shook his head. “Depending on their defense, this might be ruled as an attempted murder.”

+++

The island Claar’Rhileigh had found the little human on was called Kanker island. It was a normal, low habitation level island on a Tier 4 planet, with an abundance of mundane wood, sand, and seashells. The people were all fishermen in a world where industry and corporations were finally throwing an eye onto unexploited, low value economic zones.

So that is why so many of the fishermen were spending more of their time in the local bar than out at sea, Claire thought. Though, that is going to change, now that the bar has been swallowed by the ocean’s water.

Dawn had come quick and hard, making Claar’Rhileigh squint at all the light. The air was still crisp as she bickered with her other teammates. Her feathered friend Quatsi didn’t seem to care about anything or anyone, while Otto the catman was annoyed that they didn’t get the entire night to hunt monsters, though Hammond pointed out that he was just annoyed at the samey, low quality essence they had bagged.

‘It won’t sell for much,’ he had said, and she could honestly not believe how he was worried about money right now. People were giving them looks as they were clearly from offworld and she was clearly cradling a human child.

At least he could find some sleep.

“NumaNet is still calculating our rewards, as well as recommended further steps.” Quatsi huffed. “So, are we leaving before we get swamped by reporters again? And what’s with the boy? Are we leaving him for his parents to find?”

“His parents died in a shipwreck when he was five,” Hammond pointed out. “He is currently living with a pair of relatives, who…” He paused, staring at blue lines projecting into the air out of his eye implant. “Oh. They bought a ticket on a cruise liner headed for the mainland ten hours ago. A quick ticket, big money changing hands. That cruise cannot be legal. Where did they get the money from?”

“Is it too much to hope that they’ll sink too?”

“Quatsi!” Claar’Rhileigh gave the bird woman a kick. “You cannot say that about people. It is rude.”

“What? It’ll make the paperwork less complicated.”

“If they are dead, he will be all alone. And besides, it will not help solve our main problem: What do we do with little Isaac?”

Otto snorted. “Technically, it isn’t our problem.”

Claire shot him a glare, then the rest of them. “Is this the party consensus?”

There was a silence that may have been awkward, or maybe not, difficult as it was for Claire to understand these things. But she hoped it was as awkward as an eel up your ass for everyone else.

Eventually, Otto sighed. “Alright, I’ll be the asshole. Claire, this is a job for child protective services, not for interplanetary, uh… what are we called again? Mercenaries? Handymen?”

“Heroes?” Claire said.

“Hammers.”

“Right, thank you Hammond. We’re tools, Claire, and we’re very well sharpened for what we do. Go to one fire, put it out, go to the next, high efficiency, high throughput, always gunning for first place. It would be a waste to get bogged down in the aftercare, for us, and for the many more people we could be helping. We’re hammers, Claire, not nail-therapists.”

“You are a tool.” Claire gave him a merman smile, all teeth and frowns. “You know oh so many fancy words for abandoning a child.”

“This conversation isn’t going to look good in court,” Hammond, her best friend and helper, commented unhelpfully.

“Yes, I am aware.” Claire paused. “Oh gods, are we going to court after this?”

Hammond shrugged. “We would have either way to give testimony. If I had to wager a guess, with the tide approaching they took the chance to take out some form of life insurance on the boy.”

“Nope,” Otto said, “none marked down on any official register. No credibility, no insurance, not for them, not for the eleven-year-old.”

Hammond blinked. He was rarely wrong about these things. “Then… the boy was getting too expensive to keep?”

“For a tier two and a tier three?” Quatsi asked, puffing up feathers. “With child benefits? They were even dipping into his parents’ pension fund, both of them… shit, does he even have other relatives?”

“None in the register. He came from off planet, and there’s no way we can afford to get him to his home planet to check. He’s all on his own, which means we’ll have to stuff him in an orphanage.”

Otto trilled a high laugh, like catmen tended to do. “Are you high? The planet has hundreds of years of civilization, and they still don’t have above thirty percent PlanetNet coverage. This place is downright primitive, and you’ve no doubt heard the rumors of this world. Illegal trafficking, delver grooming, secret contracts leading to friends of the countess… this backwater is poor as shit, and a black hole of corruption. Who knows where he’ll end up or what they’ll do with him.”

“So, you agree we cannot go that route?”

Quatsi laughed. “Played yourself there, whiskers.”

The two had a brief spat, snipping pebbles at each other and blocking them at speeds that would have made their arms seem to blur to most people on this planet. Claire meanwhile was looking around, finding no one who would even take more than a passing interest in their situation. People looked at them, then walked past, or stared from afar like they were a curious monster zoo. Busy with their own lives, busy taking their mind off the strain of life on a fringe world that was flooded by monsters every couple years.

She couldn’t even approach the merpeople enclave for help. Water burned her skin like acid, and she was inclined to believe that they would not help her when she was a stranger from so far away.

“I will take him.” All eyes went to Claire. She stood up with a sniff. “You heard me. Or are your earholes still wet? Go on, tell me this is a terrible idea.”

“Claar’Rhileigh, you can’t bring kids from planetside to the ship,” Hammond said, sounding ever so reasonable. “The association has rules against it.”

“Then I will stop being an adventurer. Oh, do not look at me like that, I have been falling off for a while. Sink or swim, was it? I am tired, and I would like some dry land, please.”

“It’s still not a good idea.”

“Do you even know how to raise a human?” Otto chimed in. “Merfolk raise their spawn communally, don’t they?”

“In pods of fifty, yes. Why?”

“That might not be the best sort of environment for a human child.”

“That is besides the point if I raise him as a human. I can cook fish seventeen different ways. Humans eat fish, no? I am not desperate for money, and in the right shade, I could even pass for a human.” She blinked, her third eyelid flicking down and up in a slow, instinctual motion. “If that has not convinced you, consider this: He has no one. And now he has me.”

“This flood’s gonna make more than just one orphan,” Hammond warned.

“Then I will take them too. All of them. Here, hold him,” she said, deftly passing off the dozing kid to a bewildered Hammond. “I am going to search his home for any important belongings.”