South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Read online

  This book and parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Visit us on the web at: www.solarclipper.com

  Copyright © 2007 by Nathan Lowell

  Cover Art Steven Cousins

  First Printing: November, 2014

  Books in the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series

  Trader Tales

  Quarter Share

  Half Share

  Full Share

  Double Share

  Captain’s Share

  Owner’s Share

  Shaman Tales

  South Coast

  Cape Grace**

  Fantasy Books by Nathan Lowell

  Ravenwood

  Zypheria’s Call

  The Hermit of Lammas Wood

  * Available in audio (itunes and podiobooks.com), print and ebooks coming soon

  **Forthcoming

  To Dr. Kay Persichitte

  Who believed when I didn't.

  Chapter One

  Callum’s Cove

  September 15, 2304

  All happy families resemble each other; all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Otto Krugg sat on a bollard picking at the paint with a grubby nail and thinking how unhappy he was with his particular family.

  “Otto.”

  He looked up in time to see the thrown line snaking through the pale green, autumn sky. He slipped from his seat on the heavy metal plug and caught it deftly, lashing it over and under in a neat figure-eight almost without thinking. He turned to wave at the smiling fisherman on the bridge of the boat alongside. The boat’s engines rumbled as the skipper backed down against the line to snug his vessel in against the dock. In two ticks, the heavy fishing boat lay moored securely and an overhead crane began lifting the fish boxes out of the hold.

  “Thanks, Otto.” Red Green hopped off the side of the boat and onto the dock, his face caught in a perpetual grin. Pale creases marked the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes where the sun seldom reached even while burnishing his face in a mahogany glow.

  Otto smiled back in spite of himself. It was impossible to not smile back at Red, no matter what your father had done to you earlier in the day. “You’re most welcome, of course, Red. Any chance I can go out with you next trip?”

  Red pushed his cap back and grinned even more while shaking his head. “Now, laddie-buck, you know your daddy would skin my hide...” he began with a chuckle. He lowered his voice and gave a fair approximation of Otto’s father’s intonation when he finished with, “Shaman’s son needs to tend to shaman’s business.”

  Otto grimaced. “Bad enough from him all the time.”

  Red’s face relaxed into a smile and he reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair. “Aye, laddie, but he does have the right of it. Shaman is too valuable to be riskin’ his skin on Old Briney, here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the harbor mouth.

  “It’s not that dangerous.” Otto knew the argument was futile, especially since the Esmerelda had been lost in August. Nobody died, but Frank Knowles still hobbled around the village on crutches.

  “Otto,” Red said, his face still creased with a smile. “You know better.”

  Otto sighed the belly deep sigh of frustrated youth and nodded. “Yeah, but I had to ask.”

  “Well, here,” Red said as he reached back aboard and pulled a fish tray from the gunwales of the boat. “Take this to your good mother and give her my regards. And be sure to thank your father for me. His guidance helped us find this batch and it’s the least I can do to repay him.”

  Otto’s eyes raked the tray of silvery shapes packed neatly in water ice. He smiled and took the tray from the larger man’s hands and, sighing once more, began the long trudge along the quay to where the shaman’s cottage nestled up against the headland.

  The seabirds creaked above his head and the smell of the rock weed exposed by the falling tide tickled the inside of his nose with an iodine and ammonia bite. Native stone paved the way, cut and smoothed by company crews decades before when they established the village. The walking was easy, but the flat tray of fish grew heavier as he walked. By the time he made it to the cottage, his funk had returned in full measure and even the king’s ransom of bellfish he carried home couldn’t cheer him up.

  “Stupid fish. Always fish.”

  He elbowed the kitchen door open and slipped the flat onto the counter beside the sink.

  His mother looked up from her terminal in the cozy corner of the kitchen. “Hey, hon.” She flashed him a quick smile. “What cha got?”

  “Whole tray of bellfish.” His thirteen stanyers weighed heavily on him at times, but the bright afternoon in his mother’s kitchen dispelled some of the gloom. “Red sent ’em over with his regards and thanks for Father’s guidance.”

  Rachel Krugg rose from her work and crossed to look in the tray. “Oh, very nice. We’ll have some fresh for dinner and I’ll put the rest in the larder. Winter’s coming, you know.”

  Otto stared at his mother for a moment, wondering if she knew how inane that sounded. “Yes, Mother, I’d heard we’d be having a winter this year. The news is all over the docks.” He laughed in spite of himself and his mother chuckled with him.

  “Don’t be a boor, Otto. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, Mother, I do. But why dwell on the obvious?”

  She reached out and tweaked the tip of his nose playfully. “Because, dear boy, when you get to be my age, you won’t think of clever things to say like you do now.”

  He sighed. “But more bellfish?”

  “It’s a sign of respect.”

  “Yes, but a nice bit of mutton would be nice, or a chicken.” Otto’s mouth filled with moisture at the thought of a savory chicken stew.

  “Not many sheep at sea, boy.” Richard closed the door behind him.

  “I know, Father,” Otto said, unwilling to give up on a good whine. “But why fish all the time? Can’t you help some of the shepherds once in a while?”

  Richard Krugg smiled, and shook his head. “We do what we can, Otto. You know that.”

  Otto did know. Thirteen stanyers were enough to teach him how land and sea shaped the life of a South Coast shaman. The miracle was that the company let them stay. While technically not an employee of the company, his father was a shaman. Folk along the South Coast took that title very seriously.

  Otto sighed and started to say something more, but his father cut him off.

  “Come, Otto. We need to continue your lessons.” He turned and stepped out into the late afternoon light.

  “You better scoot, Otto,” his mother said. “I’ll have a nice granapple pie for dessert tonight. Study well.”

  Otto trudged to the door and walked alongside the tall man who the village shaman and tried to “listen to the world.”

  Chapter Two

  Callum’s Cove

  September 15, 2304

  Richard Krugg strode along the wet-packed sand as Otto slouched alongside. Otto periodically glanced up at his father, but his father never looked back. Lessons were never Otto’s favorite time of the day, even when it involved walking along the beach
.

  In a matter of moments, they’d crossed over the headland separating the main harbor of Callum’s Cove from the narrow, native beach that the locals called Sandy Long. The vagaries of wind and wave had created the arching length of coastline, stretching westward along the shore from Callum’s Cove for about ten kilometers. The beach ran neither straight, nor deeply curved, but carried a delicate bow-shaped arch upon which the sea deposited a bounty of wood, shell, weed, and wrack. Casual strollers from the village kept the near end picked clear of the more interesting bits, but Otto knew from long experience they’d be seeing much more than the near end of the beach.

  The sea gleamed to the left as the sun slid down the sky in front of them. To the right, the hummocks of gorse rode up the slope to the wind scoured heath above. For hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers a flat plate of low grasses, sedges, and brush ran north until the Farnsworth Range soared to three thousand meters.

  “Otto,” his father said after some ticks of sauntering along the beach. “What do you feel?”

  Otto dutifully tried to find something to say that would be proper and fitting for a shaman-in-training, but when he didn’t answer right away, his father gave a short laugh. “You feel sand.”

  Otto grinned and nodded in agreement. “I’m sorry, Father, but I feel sand.”

  His father looked down at him with a crooked grin of his own. “It will come, Otto. It will come.”

  Otto sighed and felt sorry, knowing his father would hear it and assume–quite rightly–that his heart just wasn’t in the lesson.

  If he heard, his father didn’t respond, but merely continued his stroll along the beach. Man and boy picked their way along the washed up debris on the sand. Father stooped to pick up small bits of shell and stone, and the occasional bit of weathered wood. Often he’d hold it up to the light and sometimes place the bit carefully in his pocket. Usually he’d just toss it aside.

  Otto watched and brooded. He kicked at the piles of sticks and scuffed his feet, leaving a snaking trail behind him in the sand. Their well established pattern continued for nearly a stan before Otto sighed once more. “Father? What are we doing out here?”

  “What do you mean, Otto?”

  Otto waved his arms and raised his voice a bit against the sound of surf and wind. “All this? We come out here day after day. You pick up stuff, toss most of it away. Ask me what I feel? What am I doing here? You call this my lesson, but what am I supposed to learn?” In the end he shouted his frustration into the wind.

  His father just nodded and pursed his lips in thought before continuing his meandering path down the beach. Recognizing the posture, Otto fell silent and followed along beside.

  Finally, the man squinted up at the sun and out at the sea before speaking. “The title of shaman is passed from father to son. You’ve known that since you were old enough to hear the words. In part, it’s because you need to be trained in the lore. A shaman is the only one who can pass on the lore. Mostly you need to be removed from the world.”

  Otto almost stopped dead in his tracks. In the all stanyers he’d followed his father up and down the beach, his father had never spoken so directly about being a shaman. About being the shaman. What he’d said made Otto’s brain stutter a moment. “Removed?”

  “Yes,” his father said, his gaze turning inward. “The shaman’s road is not a simple one. It’s part religion, part magic, and part psychology.” He turned his head to look at Otto while they walked. “For some shaman, it’s more religion and for others more magic. I’m never sure myself where the boundary lies. I’m not even sure I have the shaman’s gift.”

  Otto gaped like a beached abo-abo. “But–”

  His father snorted. “Don’t be so shocked, Otto. You’re sure you have no gift, but what if you’re wrong. The gift is as much training as anything, and it’s passed from father to son in just the way we are proceeding now. I walked the beach with your grandfather not so terribly long ago and asked many of the same questions.”

  Otto forced his mouth closed and let the knowledge sink in.

  “The shaman isn’t in touch with the same world that–say–Red Green is,” his father said.

  Otto shot a quick glance at his father who appeared not to notice.

  “Your gift will link you to the world spirit and give you insight that you won’t be able to trace back to a source. You’ll know without knowing how you know. Sometimes you’re right,” he continued. With an apologetic grimace, he glanced at his son. “Sometimes you’re not.”

  “That seems a bit haphazard.”

  “Yeah. So we walk the beach and look for materials, inspiration, and remove ourselves from the world of fishing, commerce, and the company.”

  “But what are we doing out here?” Otto asked.

  “Listening,” his father said. “Listening to the world.”

  The two lapsed into an easy silence. Otto felt as if something important had happened, but he wasn’t sure what. They picked their way through another kilometer of beach before Richard leaned over to pick up a gnarled and weathered bit of wood from the sand. He turned and held it up to show his son. “What do you think of this piece?”

  Otto’s glance danced over the bit of wood. He nearly cried out when some trick of light or angle showed him an otter in the wood—its eyes shining and paws folded over its chest as if floating–before it resumed being a gnarled bit of wood in his father’s weathered hand. He looked up and saw his father looking down at him with a small, sad smile.

  “Now you know,” his father said. Tucking the bit of wood into his pouch, he turned and continued the walk up the beach.

  Otto paused, stunned, for a few moments before moving up to take his place beside the older man once more. He had a lot of thinking to do and several kilometers of empty beach to do it on.

  Chapter Three

  Aram's Inlet

  September 30, 2304

  Jimmy Pirano stood in the executive suite of Pirano Fisheries, staring out over the docks into Aram’s Inlet. “Why me? Why me? Why me?” he murmured.

  “Jimmy, starin’ out that window all day isn’t going to help. We gotta do something.” Antonio Spinelli slouched in the visitor’s chair and eyed his boss over the rim of a steaming coffee cup.

  Jimmy sighed and ran a pudgy hand up his face, across his forehead, and back across his nearly bald skull. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But what?” His reply held no heat—no anger—just a resignation born of years in the field and fighting with his family solicitors back on Dunsany.

  Antonio sucked in a deep breath through his teeth and shrugged. “They got no idea what’s what out here. They’re nice and snug in their offices at corporate and they’re just dictatin’ terms. So? We got two choices. Tell ’em ̒no, it don’t work that way.’ Or tell ’em ̒ok, we’ll kill a few people for you, but we ain’t gonna take the fall.’ I don’t see any other options.”

  Jimmy spun sharply at the phrase “kill a few people.” He stared at Antonio.

  “What?” Tony asked. “You think this isn’t gonna get people killed? You think the families aren’t going to come back at us?”

  “We’re not murderers, Tony,” Jimmy said quietly. “We don’t kill people.”

  Antonio shrugged one shoulder in dismissal. “You know that and I know that, but the rest of the people? Come on, Jimmy. You’re a Pirano. I’m a Spinelli. What are they gonna think when we start telling people they gotta turn in more fish or we take their boats away?”

  “Takin’ their boats away isn’t gonna help anybody, Tony.” Jimmy stomped across the room and threw himself into the flimsy plastic chair behind the desk. “That’s just stupid.”

  “Yeah, but that’s what them bloodsuckers over in Dunsany want ya to do. You can read between the lines as easily as I can. What the hell you think, ‘Replace crews failing to make quota for more than three consecutive weeks’ means? Musical hulls?” Tony spat back.

  Jimmy snorted and crossed that idea off his mental check list. “N
o, I don’t suppose we can just trade the crews around. But we don’t have enough skippers. What if we do take the bottom ten boats? We’d have to tie ’em up. Who we gonna get to skipper them? Who’s available to crew?”

  There were more boats than people to use them already. The company had brought in the fabricators necessary to make an almost unlimited supply of vessels for the various tasks associated with Pirano Fisheries. From skiff to trawler to tug, every vessel on the deep green ocean got built in a Pirano Yard. Some of them right in Aram’s Inlet. Not just the hulls, but everything from keel to radar, from stern post to prow—engines, winches, nets, lines, even the screws.

  “You don’t have to tell me the problem, Jimmy,” Tony said, his voice barely audible over the wheezing in the ductwork. “We been fighting these bastards for almost five stanyers now. And all they say is, ‘Your production level is not up to quota.’ Like they got a clue. Setting the quota high and punishin’ us for not makin’ it isn’t going to make them any more money.”

  “That’s the problem,” Jimmy said. “They don’t really want more fish. They just want more profits. If they can get better return on a smaller investment, they’ll do it.”

  Antonio just shrugged and dipped his muzzle into his coffee cup.

  “Okay. We have to post the new quotas. That’s too easy to check up on and if we’re not careful the Ole Man will pull me back to Dunsany permanently.” Jimmy sighed.

  Antonio stared silently over the rim of his coffee cup, a sour smile curving his lips.

  Jimmy sighed. “I know. They’re not going to like it.”

  “They’re not going to like it,” Tony repeated. “And they’re going to try like hell to make it anyway which means they’re gonna take more chances and cut more corners and the ocean is going to kill them for their trouble.”

  “They won’t push it that far,” Jimmy argued. “These aren’t stupid people.”