The Moorings of Mackerel Sky by MZ

Author:MZ [Zack, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hyperion Avenue
Published: 2024-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Book Burner

The morning of the Book Burner the sunrise spread across the sky as smoldering wildfire; the black silhouettes of boats cut into the morning’s canvas like claw marks.

Derrick turned his pillow over to the cool side and saw nothing of that morning’s sunrise. His father Blade did, though, and viewed it with thin lips and furrowed brow.

That morning Manon was surprised the see the Sisters already awake and wrapped in their quilts on their rocking chairs watching the sky bloom pink. They weren’t stitching but sat looking at the sky, all wrapped in the same huge quilt that once was black but had been so faded by years and sun it was pale blue in places, like a robin’s egg. Embroidered across the quilt like capillaries or netting or spiderwebs were thin golden lines of thread, filaments that the Three Bats were each tracing with a finger. They seemed to be mumbling something, but when Manon came closer they stopped.

“Red sky at morning,” said Beatrix, her finger still following the thread.

“Sailors better take fucking warning,” spat Gladys, two hands on the quilt, eyes staring down the sunrise.

“Including that handsome husband of yours, though he is a Mackerel Sky fisherman, so odds are doubtful.” Agathe-Alice smiled over her immobile legs. “They are some twitchy today.”

The fog rolled in then, separate strands of steam furling and unfurling and stretching across the land in slow tongues. The ocean became part of the land, enveloping it in wet white, unlikely to burn off, blurring the boundary between land and sea.

The Book Burner was a bonfire that took place the night of the last day of school in June on Crescent Beach near Mermaid’s Mouth. Dark to dawn the high school students drank warm light beer and thick, sweet coffee brandy with soda and cream, trading cigarettes and memories and saliva. The last party of the school year, the first party of the summer, students lit their school assignments ablaze. Legend said mermaids were terrified of fire, and beaches safer when bonfires were lit.

Every generation had a cautionary tale about how a student nearing graduation had died at this event—drowned drunk in the ocean, fell down the stairway from High Cliffs, got caught in Mermaid’s Mouth at high tide.

This year’s Book Burner would be known as the night Derrick Stowe died.

Due to his pitching popularity, Derrick had been attending the Book Burner since he was in eighth grade. He tried a cigarette stolen from his friend’s mother that year and got drunk-sick for the first time the next year. He usually brought his dog Duke with him, but this year he decided not to because he wanted to be able to sneak away at any moment—Ricky would be meeting him there, his secret date.

No one knew about his clandestine, perfect, adorable boyfriend save for his dog and dead mother and the ink in his journals. Sometimes Derrick thought his father knew something was different, that something was changed; Stéphane would stare at his son searchingly, and Derrick would reward him with silence.

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