Weird Tales #358 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, weird tales, new weird, strange, fantasy
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2011-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SANDCASTLE ALCHEMY, by Nik Houser

I remember the weight of the lightning rod in my hand. How light it was. How it balanced with the plastic shovel and pail gripped tight in my other fist as we marched down the beach, singing through the fog:

“The Queen of Mermaids fine and fair,

Felt no pain and knew no strife,

Only joy year after year,

Till whalers snared her husband. . .”

It was our reveille song at St. Ahab’s Home for Boys. Our cleaning the dishes song. Our tending the garden song. Our scrubbing the floors and hanging the laundry and chasing mice from the pantry song. It was our national anthem.

Six boys went down to the shore that morning. Five due back at sundown. No different from the year before, or a hundred years before.

“Her true love dead upon the keel,

The Queen looked on as through the night,

With fishing nets and hooks of steel,

The mongers caught her children. . .”

I remember the smell of the water on the air, coming not from the ocean, but from the sky, that clean scent of approaching rain as dawn struggled to rise above a pursuing phalanx of dark grey clouds on the horizon. The tide was out. Cool, dry sand ran off our feet like dunes of sugar as we walked.

“Left thus alone she turned toward home,

No lover and no offspring,

To take her kingdom and her throne,

When Death should come to claim her. . .”

“Here we are, lads.” Old Pete dropped his equipment in the sand. “Remember not to build too close to the water. Look at the water now, but mind where the tide’ll be when you finish.”

“Like building your house by a river, innit?” offered Handsome George. “Can’t build too close, or floods will steal it away when you ain’t looking.”

“Right you are,” said Old Pete. “Same goes for us today.”

“So once a year she walks on land,

To spy our royal off’ring,

And lift an heir up from the sand,

To rule the waves beside her.”

Old Pete wasn’t the oldest kid at the Home. In fact, being eleven made me six months his elder. But he talked old, so that made him old.

“How long you figure we have till that storm hits?” I said, shovel held tight in both hands to keep them from shaking.

Old Pete looked off to where bruise-colored clouds massed along the horizon. “I’d say we’ve got a good five, six hours. You lads think we can be done by then?”

“Aye!”

We worked in a line down the shore. Handsome George staked his camp farthest out, at the north end of our small enclave. Next came Slow Alfie (who wasn’t so much slow as deliberate in his methods, but Methodical Alfie just doesn’t ring right to an adolescent ear), then the twins Felix and Helix working independently, then myself and Old Pete.

“I heard the Mermaid Queen’s so beautiful that she puts the loveliest two-legged woman on land to shame,” said Felix, digging out a foundation with his trowel.

“Says who?” asked his kin, also putting shovel to earth, as were we all.

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