John Langan - The Fisherman

And then the ground levels, and he’s running towards Andrea. He tries to bring himself to a stop, but it’s as if there’s a weight hung from his neck, pulling him on. On legs at their very limit, legs like taffy, he stumbles past Andrea, one, two, three steps, when the weight around his neck pulls him to his knees. Hand still on his axe, Jacob leans forward. Andrea — he has to see to Andrea. If only his heart wouldn’t beat so fast. It seems to be taking all his strength into itself. Muscles trembling, he tries to stand, cannot. There is a noise in front of him, a sound his brain is telling him he should know. He raises his head and what he beholds chases all thought of his discomfort — all thought — from his mind.

Maybe fifty yards away, an ocean crashes its waves against a rocky shore. Jacob has seen the ocean, before — he had to cross one to travel to America — but that in no way prepared him for this one. This is an ocean whose water is dark, as if Jacob is seeing it at night, as if it’s made of night. It’s an ocean in storm. Even though the sky above is clear, the dark water lifts itself in frothing waves large as houses. Some of these burst on the jagged boulders that constitute the beach, shooting spray high into the air. Others smash into one another, larger waves sweeping over smaller ones, consuming them, rows of smaller waves angling into larger ones, collapsing them. It’s as if this is a spot where a host of opposing currents converge. A few hundred yards from the stony beach — it’s hard to estimate distances with any accuracy in this tumult, but much too close for comfort, let alone sanity — something enormous raises itself amidst the waves. For a moment, Jacob’s mind insists that what arcs out of the water is an island, because there is no living creature that big in all of creation. Then it moves, first rising even higher, into a more severe arch, then subsiding, lifting itself from the waves at both ends while relaxing its middle into a gradual curve, the whole of its dull surface traversed by the ripples of what Jacob understands are great muscles flexing and releasing, and there’s no doubt this is alive. Before now, if you had asked Jacob to name the largest thing he’s ever seen, he might have answered with St. Stephen’s cathedral, in Vienna. But the beast against whose scaly side the black water batters itself dwarfs that structure. There is so much of it that its very presence presses on Jacob, as if mere proximity to it might be sufficient to snuff him out, like a candle in a hurricane.

Because of the creature, Jacob fails to notice any of what’s closer to him until Angelo comes huffing behind him. His “Mother of God!” jolts Jacob out of the fog that’s enveloped him. It requires a vigorous shaking to bring Andrea out of his reverie, but by the time Italo and Rainer have joined the three of them, Jacob has risen to his feet and is surveying the ground between the beach and himself. He sees the blood first. The soil bordering the beach is soaked in it. It collects in bright red puddles, winds its red way to the rocky shore. Its source is a trio of carcasses, two to the right, and one to the left. They’re cattle — bulls, Jacob thinks — but of such a breed as might inhabit a child’s fairy tale. Each animal is large as a small elephant, its hide a rich, sunset gold. Were it not for the beast filling the ocean, Jacob would be awed by the cattle’s size; as it is, he is impressed by them. The bull to the left, and one of those to the right, have been decapitated, the heavy heads set between them, beside what seems to be an anchor; albeit, an anchor that might have held fast the ship that brought him across the Atlantic. Instead of splitting into a pair of arms, the thick shank divides into three upward-curving lengths of metal, all of them tipped with a barb longer than Jacob is tall. It’s a hook, he understands, the bulls’ heads the bait to be impaled on the points. There’s no line tied to the eye, though there are plenty to choose from. The ground this side of the slaughtered cattle is full of rope, coils of it, stacks of it, heaps of it. There is coarse rope wide as a strong man’s arm. There is smooth rope slender as a shoelace. There’s rope smeared with what might be pitch. There’s rope white as milk.

Some of the rope has already been put to use. Between where it’s piled and Jacob and his fellows stand are what appear to be a half-dozen round, wooden tables, each of such a dimension as to suggest it’s for the herders who raise the giant cattle. They’re stumps, Jacob realizes, the stumps of trees that must have towered overhead like skyscrapers. None of them is higher than his chest, now. At varying distances from the ground, holes have been bored through the stumps. Rope has been threaded through the holes and out around the remnants of the trees, tied at irregular intervals into elaborate knots, secured to the wood at other spots with large metal staples. From the wrap around each abbreviated trunk, a length of rope runs out to the left of the dead bulls, into the ocean. Most of the ropes stretch taut into and under the waves. Jacob can see them thrumming, like guitar strings being tightened to the point of snapping. These lines are joined by a dozen or so from the left, on the far side of the stream that raced Jacob down the hill and surges to the ocean. These ropes, too, are held fast by a group of enormous tree stumps. Beyond them, the headless remains of more of the great cattle lie under a buzzing cloud of greenish flies.

“What?” a voice calls. “What is it you want?” The words are uttered in German, but it is a version of the tongue that is crusted with age. The man who asked the question is standing behind the one bull whose head has not been removed. The animal’s bulk must have concealed him. He is wearing a rugged apron that appears to have been stitched together from a number of mismatched pieces of material, and that is spattered and caked with gore, as is the sizable knife in his right hand. Beneath the patchwork apron, he is dressed in a white shirt and black pants whose best days are long behind them. His hair is lank, greasy, his chin fringed by a stringy beard, the face between young, almost boyish. He must be Rainer’s Fisherman, but if you told Jacob he was a junior butcher, he’d believe you.

“The ropes,” Rainer says. “Go.”

Italo advances to the closest of the stumps, circles the spot where the rope reaches to the ocean, and swings his axe at it. The rope isn’t especially thick, but the axe rebounds from it with a crack and a shower of sparks. Italo steps back as if pulled by his axe’s rebound. The rope has been cut only a little. Italo frowns, and strikes again.

“Hurry!” Rainer shouts at the others, who are still standing, watching Italo’s efforts. Angelo runs to the next closest tree stump and commences chopping at its rope. His cheeks burning, Jacob follows suit. Rainer shoves Andrea forward, and he stumbles to the nearest stump.

The rope Jacob is faced with is stout, its rough surface shining with the fishhooks whose eyes have been braided into it. The majority of them are the size you would employ to lever a trout or bass out of a stream, but there are a few clearly fashioned for larger sport, including a hook as large as Jacob’s hand that swings wildly from side to side when he strikes the rope. From its width, Jacob expects the rope will not be easily cut. What he does not expect is the sensation that runs up the axe when its blade bites the fibers. The shaft twists in his hands, as if the axe has connected to a source of tremendous power. Jacob has a vision of himself trying to sever a lightning bolt. There’s a flat crack and the axe is flung back with such force it’s almost torn form his grip. The scorch of burnt hair stings his nostrils. He’s cut the rope, but just barely.