The Hunter's Mark Pt. 02

Four hundred years before Sally Atkins left the Isle of Song, a colony ship sailed along its shore. It was the dead of night, calm and sweltering, and the crew had become accustomed to smooth sailing.

With a jerk and a hideous scraping noise, the ship struck a reef. The hull was smashed in, and water rushed into the hold. Awareness rippled through the crew of one hundred and forty-four men and twenty women that something was very wrong. After that came urgency, then panic. Even when they could see that their ship was sinking, the crew did not rush for the lifeboats. They dithered, because for three months, this ship had been home to them, and they could not accept that it had been doomed in one stroke.

But they would not have the choice. The water began to swallow the vast ship, and the first few survivors piled onto lifeboats. The idea spread, and there was a stampede for the boats. Of those who did not reach them, those who could swim did, and those who couldn't drowned unless some hero threw them a rope or a barrel. Someone spotted land, and with much yelling and pointing, word of it traveled through the milling, languishing, sinking mass, and the lifeboats forged at it, leading a wedge of struggling bodies.

Then the singing began. It was a warbling, ringing, otherworldly sound, and it flooded the senses as if with sunshine, milk and honey. Oarsmen went catatonic. Swimmers floundered and sank. One man was pulled by the ankles and vanished screaming beneath the waves. When, finally, the survivors washed up on an empty, benighted beach, loved ones searched madly for each other, then called out to the sea. A few more fought their way ashore, and the sounds of panic quieted as the last of the ship dipped below the water. Then there was nothing left but a lilting hint of that strange song.

The survivors numbered fifty-three men and twenty women.

Theirs was the first ship to wreck on that island. It would not be the last.

* * *

Fifteen years before Sally Atkins left the Isle of Song, she wondered something. "Ma?" she said. "Why aren't boys allowed near the shore?" It had never before occurred to her to wonder that. The ocean was a girl place. It just was. But now she was turning that around in her mind, and it seemed wrong, incomplete. And she could not stand a mystery.

Sally's mother surprised her by not sighing and rolling her eyes or saying something about her asking too many questions. Instead, she paused, touched her chin and said, "It's time you learned. Come with me."

Sally followed her mother down the beaten dirt path from the hillside overlooking the bay, down to the beach. It was the same beach, it was said, where the first castaways washed ashore ages ago. Sally thrilled, remembering that story.

Tall, thin rocks rose from the shallow water, breaking up the waves as they washed in. In a gap between them, a dozen huntresses piled into a handmade longboat, their long, ornate harpoons pointing in every direction. They were rehearsing their next hunt, and there was still a great impression in the sand where they had lain their last kill.

Sally's mother, being a grownup, did not see the beauty and wonder in this. She ignored it as she seated them both on a rocky shelf beside the bay and pointed at the waters beyond, where a few thin, slick red shapes flitted in and out of the water. They sang a soft, whining song that Sally could barely hear.

"Those," her mother told her, "are sirens. Do you know what they do?"

Sally was disappointed. This was not new! "Yeah, Ma, I know. They make ships wreck on the shore. That's why we're here on this island."

"They bewitch men. When they sing, men forget themselves and follow them into the water, where they are eaten alive. That's why your father never comes near the shore. It's why we leave the menfolk behind when we go sailing. And it's why we, as a family, can never leave the island."

To Sally's mind, it seemed like a simple problem. They could hunt down and kill the sirens, clear the ocean of them. Then the boys would be free. It struck her for the first time as an outrage that boys could not come on the water, that they couldn't even sit where she sat now and see this pretty view. It wasn't an immutable fact of life. It was something the sirens did to them. An insult. She decided that, when she grew up, she would fix that.

* * *

Five years before Sally Atkins left the Isle of Song, she boarded the longboat with the huntresses-- with the other huntresses-- as they prepared to set out.

Sally had long ago abandoned her girlhood dream of exterminating the sirens. As it turned out, other women had already thought of that and found that sirens could disappear into the water too quickly to catch. So Sally had done the next best thing and told the chieftain that she wanted to be a huntress. Now a sea monster had been sighted, and today would be her test. If she kept her composure through this hunt, she would become one of them.

Already, she looked like one of them. Tall, muscular and tanned by the sun, she did not think it was immodest to say she was the picture of a natural-born huntress, and with her sleeves cut short, her blouse tied tight around her chest and her light brown hair braided behind her, she had made sure nothing could snag as the surf threw her about.

Her harpoon, too, marked her as a huntress. She had carved it with her own hands, the wooden shaft etched with unique patterns. Wave designs were a popular decoration, but Sally had bucked the trend and cut jagged mountainscapes into hers. She had expected to be ridiculed for it, but so far no one had said anything. The other huntresses were all business as they set the oars and tied everything down to set out. A few of the older ones welcomed her aboard with cheers and hugs.

The weeks leading up to this had felt endless, but now that they were setting out, everything happened so quickly that she could barely keep up. The hushed, excited chatter of the others raised the tingle in her neck to a buzz. The beating of the oars in the water felt like a second heartbeat, as if the boat was as much a living thing as the beast they were out to hunt. Churned-up water soaked the air and made it smell of salt, of adventure. Even the burn of the sun on her face no longer annoyed her. Everything became an excuse to be excited.

"There she is!" came the cry, and the boat made for the telltale swelling of the water. The surface ahead parted, and a dark grey ridge of rubbery flesh rose from below.

The rowers redoubled their efforts. Sally crouched, knowing full well that it was too early to get in the stabbing stance but too excited not to. For a moment, it looked like the waves ahead were flowing backwards, then she realized what she was seeing. A vast plate of flesh knifed up out of the surface, a paddle big enough to live on, gliding over the heavy water, beady lines of sea spray falling from the leading and trailing edges.

The headwoman called out its name, though by now nobody needed to be told. "Mosasaur!"

Another giant flipper crested from the water and chopped back in with a tremendous splash, raising a salty-smelling pall of white. The beast knew danger was near, and it was trying to turn itself around so it could flee. Its muscles delivered power worthy of a demigod, but the beast had a body the size of a small island that it needed to drag through the water, whereas the huntresses glided over it on their small boat. Even though they were weaker, they gained on it fast.

Soon, they were beside it, and the beast took up most of Sally's vision as she beheld it. It raised its leading flipper, and the most dexterous two women at the fore of the boat stood up and thrust with their harpoons. They struck true, drawing blood from the big artery underneath its flipper, and its movements rippled with shock. It knew it was hit, and badly.

Now it was Sally's turn. She was one of the grippers, the women in the middle of the boat who would spear the prey from different angles and stop its escape. The hunt hinged on this, because if the prey got away, it might prove impossible to track, and it would submerge any minute now...

...except it didn't submerge. It didn't get lower in the water. It got higher, and the flipper above the wound started angling towards them in a way that looked dangerous.

Sally glanced at the other huntresses, afraid because she had no idea what was happening. She was relieved to see that the others were as shocked as she was-- she was not behind the story after all. Then her relief turned into terror as she realized that nobody knew what to do.

But it was unmistakable now. Against all reason and logic, the mosasaur was doing what no sea monster had ever done before. It was fighting back.

The flipper slapped down into the water in front of the boat, a gut-shaking crash that raised a white wave. Fist-sized drops of water pelted Sally, soaked her clothes, weighed down her hair and painted the bright red of the creature's blood across her face and neck.

But it did not crush her. It did not crush anyone, because the rowers had stopped the boat and held it back from where the beast had aimed.

Not everyone was so canny. One of the front women panicked and bailed off, and the bleeders, the women who would finish off the prey once the grippers had secured it, were panicking and yelling opposite demands at the rowers. Meanwhile, the beast's flipper thrashed madly. Its thrashing made waves, one of the waves got under the boat, and in a few heartbeats, Sally's world tilted sickeningly backwards, halfway to vertical. She pitched back into the woman behind her, felt coarse cloth, sweaty, sea-salted skin and the shaft of a harpoon pressing crosswise against her back.

The boat slapped back down, Sally was almost buried under the woman behind her, and those dauntless rowers were still trying to get them within striking distance of the front flipper that bled from their wound.

But despite their efforts, the water underneath them rushed backwards faster than they could fight through it. Everyone had their eyes fixed forward, either at the wound or at their sister who had bailed out and now flailed in the surf.

But Sally had a different idea. She looked backwards at the rear flipper that still churned and smashed at the water behind them. It was getting closer, and in a minute, it would flatten them. But not before she had a chance to strike.

She swung her harpoon around, careful not to club the other women with the butt of her weapon, and she crouched for her strike. She assumed the position too early again, and some of the strength went out of her thighs. But there was enough left that when she lunged, the tip connected. It went in.

And because she was a gripper, she held it there. The flipper loomed over them, casting its shadow across the length of the boat, and it tried to crush them, but it stopped short. The beast no longer could move its flipper at the angle to hit them. The pain in its torn sinews stopped it. And with two bleeding wounds, its strength was leaving it. Their one remaining front woman did as Sally had done, and with better aim.

The beast halted. Then it bent in a wild paroxysm. It had lost the edge off its strength, and now the fight belonged to the huntresses. The bleeders sank in their harpoons, and the blood came out in torrents. The beast's movements calmed, the water calmed with it, and the fighting mosasaur became a carcass.

The huntresses raised a ragged, shrieking cheer, awed that they were still alive. Sally stood with her hands clenched around her harpoon shaft, her whole body crackling with the rush of the hunt. Of the battle. She jumped when someone threw her arms around her.

"You did it!" said the other huntress. "Sally, you did it! You made the first strike!"

Actually, Sally had made the second one, but she decided not to correct her. She only stared at the carcass, shocked that a handful of mortal women could have felled something so great and terrible. But the other women's excitement caught her up, and soon she was cheering with the rest. She had done it. She had completed her first successful hunt, and now her harpoon and her place on the hunting team were hers forever.

* * *

Two months before Sally Atkins left the Isle of Song, she sat in a tree, her back hunched, thinking. Her tree stood in a crook in the hillside. Head-sized leaves and dangling palm fronds and twisted red and purple flowers blocked her view in every direction except straight ahead, where a gully ran to the sea, inviting her out into the vastness. When first she found this place, the beauty had taken her breath away. Now it didn't touch her at all. Nothing seemed to, not anymore. She came here not for the view but for the solitude. Being alone did not make her feel better, but at least it didn't make her feel worse.

"Sally, if you wanted to rest, all you had to do was ask."

Sally recognized her cousin Cole, not just by his voice, but because he was one of the few people who knew to find her here.

"They missed you while they were lacquering the oars. You could have told them you wouldn't be there."

"I was going to, but..." Sally shrugged. "I just... couldn't."

His tone changed so that she could tell he was grinning. "Was it too hard? Too much for the huntress who killed the fighting mosasaur?"

"I just can't make myself do things anymore. I don't know why I do anything now."

"Oh, you poor dear. Is being the most famous huntress on the island not enough for you?"

"All anyone wants to talk about is my first hunt. I'll never do anything greater than that, never." She looked at Cole and saw he wasn't impressed. "Besides," she added lamely, "Cassandra keeps blaming me when the game gets away."

"Come on, Sally, that's not it. It can't be."

She tried again: "If I died today, what difference would it make? My brother is married, so I don't have to watch him anymore. Dad spends all his time with his friends at the pub." She could not bring herself to mention her mother. Ten months dead, and somehow it still shocked Sally to think she'd never see her again.

"You're upset because Drew doesn't talk to you, aren't you?"

He wasn't completely off the mark. It maddened her that, after all she'd accomplished, Drew would choose to marry an ordinary woman over her. "A little. I guess. But that's not really it. Not really."

"You miss being a little girl."

Now he was stabbing in the dark. Sally said what was on the front of her mind, even though she wasn't sure it was true. "Life is just too easy."

Cole said something else, but Sally did not listen. Now that she'd said it, it struck her. That was exactly it. There was nothing left on the island for her except everyday trial and everyday frustrations. She could see her future, and it was a bland copy of the present. She had nothing to look forward to and nothing to live for.

Not on the Isle of Song, anyway.