Kingfisher by Patricia A. McKillip
PART ONE
CHIMERA 1
Pierce Oliver was pulling crab rings out of the water off the end of the dock
at Desolation Point when he saw the knights.
They were throwing doors open, clambering out of a black touring car half as
long as the dock, it looked, and inset with strange devices depicting animals
so rarely seen most were presumed extinct. Three young men, sleek and
muscular, adjusting their black leathers and quilted silks, heads turning this
way and that as they surveyed the tiny harbor, caused Pierce to forget what he
was doing. The line went slack in his hands. The tiered, circular frames of
the net he had hauled up, dripping and writhing with crabs, slumped into one
another. A fourth door opened; another head rose out of the driver’s side,
black-capped and masked with sunglasses. His voice queried something lost in a
sudden squall of screeching gulls. The three shook their heads, turning from
him toward the dock.
They were all, Pierce realized abruptly, staring back at him.
A crab hit his shoe, skittered over it. He glanced down hastily, pulled the
rings taut again, knelt to shake crabs back into the net and bat the smaller
escapees back into the sea. He felt the tremor of footsteps along the dock.
Boots, black, supple, and glistening like nacre, came to a halt under his
nose.
“Sorry to interrupt your work there, but could you tell us where in Severen’
s name we are?”
Pierce, the crab net rope in one hand, a lime-green plastic measure in the
other, opened his mouth. Nothing came out. The shadow stretching out from the
boots on the dock seemed to have grown wings. They expanded darkly across the
wood, rising to catch the wind. The boots under Pierce’s transfixed gaze
refused to levitate, ignoring the wings.
Then the broad, shadowy wings were gone, and he could lift his head finally,
look helplessly up at the speaker, who had hair like cropped lamb’s wool and
eyes like a balmy afternoon sky in some other part of the world. The eyes were
beginning to look more bemused than tranquil at Pierce’s silence.
“He doesn’t know either,” the dark-haired man with a green jewel in one ear
the color of his eyes guessed with a laugh. The third, a golden-haired giant
as solidly massive as a slab of oak, flared suddenly, flames licking out all
around him. Pierce jumped, dropping the crab measure.
“Cape Mistbegotten,” he gabbled hastily, not wanting to rile them into
further displays of weirdness.
“Mistbegotten?”
“Des—Desolation Point.”
“Des— Seriously?”
A gull landed on the dock beside him with a sudden, fierce cry. After the
crabs, he thought, but it stayed very still then, raking the strangers with
its yellow-eyed glare. He retrieved the crab measure, stood up shakily, and
realized that he had forgotten to take his apron off. It hung limply around
his neck, untied and grubby from the kitchen, the trellis of green beans on it
like some stained mimicry of a heraldic device. Another crab was snarled in
his shoelace, trying to untie his ancient, cracked trainer.
“Desolation Point,” he repeated more clearly, though his mouth was still
dry. The dark-haired man’s shadow seemed to have grown a barbed tail; it
lashed sinuously, soundlessly, as though to sweep the crabs off the dock. It
stilled finally. Pierce closed his eyes tightly, opened them and his mouth
again. “It’s the only town on the cape. The sign got blown into the ocean
during a winter storm. It’s still a little early in the season for tourists;
we haven’t bothered to replace it yet.”
They were gazing at him with varying degrees of incredulity. “People come
here?” the fire-giant said dubiously. “On purpose?”
Pierce shook the crab off his shoe; it landed on its back, legs waving at him
furiously. “Like I said, it’s the only town on Cape Mistbegotten.”
“Then why isn’t it on the map?” the blond with the temperate eyes asked
reasonably. “Our driver couldn’t even find it on paper.”
Pierce grunted, puzzled. Something in the gull’s grim eye, its oddly
motionless stance, enlightened him. “Oh, that was probably my mother.
Sometimes she hides things and forgets.”
“Your mother.” The burly giant’s face flattened suddenly, all expression
gone. “Hides. An entire cape.” He had shifted suddenly very close to Pierce,
forcing Pierce’s head to angle upward. “Are you mocking us? Do you have any
idea who we are?”
Pierce, caught helplessly in the hazel-eyed smolder, finally registered the
odd crunch in the giant’s wake. “Not a clue,” he said breathlessly. “But
you just squashed a perfectly good dinner crab.”