When Marcus finally makes it to the market with his meager catch, it has begun to rain and he takes a moment to let the drops run over his face. For a few seconds, he thinks himself crazy, like maybe he made the whole thing up in some sort of feverish state and perhaps the cold water will wake him from the dream, just like it does in the movies. But when he lets his head drop back from the clouds, and blinks the droplets from his eyes, he is still standing in the streets, several people staring at him and a few whispering behind their hands. With a put-upon sigh he crosses to the back of a sea-smelling building and goes in through the delivery bay.
Inside, Placidus is waiting for him with a clipboard and weary look upon his face. The young man had the local fish market left to him by his father and while it isn't exactly the most glamorous job, it is the biggest business in town, so he has it in his mind that he is somewhat of a big shot here. He is a skinny length of a man, with droopy brown hair and a thin face, but a quick tongue and a taste for others' humiliation. The cross that dangles from his neck is simple and seems at odds with his character, but the clashing combination is not an unusual one here.
If there were any other place Marcus could take his catch, he would, but as it stands he is forced to put up with Placidus on a daily basis. "Where the hell've you been Circus? Been waiting around for you all morning." Marcus grits his teeth as he places his catch up on a shiny, metal table and Placidus snickers at the collection of fish arranged in ice. "I see the fishing has been much of the same."
"Well, it was ordinary sort of day…" Marcus hedged but when Placidus just sucked at his teeth and shook his head, he couldn't keep himself from going on. "But when I was pulling in my nets, a strange sort of thing happened," though he knew that he should be stopping before he revealed anything, the stubborn pride in his chest pushed him forward. "I caught a boy in my nets, and breathed the life back into him."
"And?" Placidus fakes an uninterested stare at him from beneath his lashes, but there's a challenge in his voice, and his grip tightens on the clipboard before his foot starts tapping in impatience.
"A-and what?" Marcus felt his ears begin to burn and he briefly berated himself for his stupidity. No wonder they called him Circus.
"What was he?" Placidus stepped towards him with a subtly threatening grin and continued on. "A mermaid perhaps, or a selkie then! Oh yes, a seal man you saw singing on the rocks that shed his coat and came ashore to be with you until the sea calls him back." For a few moments Marcus is stunned into silence before Placidus lets out an ugly laugh and tears out the form for him to get paid, forcefully shoving it into his chest.
Marcus rips it from his hand and shoves it into his pockets, flustered and angry. "Well perhaps he is! He didn't have a coat but he sure as hell seemed to remember drowning," and with that he turned and fled from the ever curious, always judging stares.
When you find yourself alone, and finally begin to feel somewhat less like an alien in the creaky wooden shack, you begin to sing to yourself as you explore the foreign place, the words flowing across your tongue feel more natural than breathing and it fills you with a sense of belonging. In a trunk at the foot of the bed there's some old clothes, much too large for you since they once belonged to Marcus, but for now they will do. You pull out a red, knit sweater that is frayed at the ends and a ratty pair of jeans. You have to roll the bottoms several times to make a cuff, and the sleeves of the sweater are constantly sliding down around your hands, but they are comfortable and warm. Next you fish underneath the bed frame for a pair of boots that you noticed below and set about cleaning off the grime that covers them. They clunk about wildly on your feet, and for the moment you've forgotten just exactly how tying a shoe works, but you think it'll probably come back. Eventually.
Content with your clothing you begin to take stock of all the little things that are making this place feel like it could be your own, the trusty tea kettle that rests on the stove, looking well-used but still up for a decade or two more. The curtain of beads that has been tied back from the front door, the three different sets of wind chimes that tinkle on the porch, the lantern that hangs by the bed, the writing desk placed just beneath the kitchen window all make it feel as though a life is just waiting to be lived here.
And so you page through the yellowed books while you lounge on the couch. You find firewood put away in a chest out back and go about making a fire for the first time. At least you think it's the first. You grab a ceramic mug with a chip from the cupboards above the sink, white paint peeling back to reveal the warped wood beneath, and make yourself some tea, bravely swallowing down half the cup before admitting the leaves you found were bad and tossing the rest out the door.
When the rain comes you sit on the porch and sing with the pitter patter rhythm of it, watching interestedly at the patterns it makes in the water far down the rocky shore laid out before you.
The next day Marcus starts just like the one before, heading out to the cove with his gear in tow and something less than a smile, but more than a frown on his face. Trudging along the dirt paths and wondering how many dismal fishing days in a row a man can have before he finally gives up the ghost, he almost forgets about what had happened.
Until he hears the singing.
As he makes his way across the small stone bridge that crosses a river which flows down the hill and into the sea, he spies the boy crouching near one of its narrower mouths, a bundle of wet fabrics by his side and one in his hands. As he scrubs and squeegees the dense garments he sings, the foreign words floating along the breeze, so ethereal in their sound it feels as though the ghost of them is sliding over Marcus' shoulder. Marcus pauses, only briefly to watch and listen before he clears his throat and calls down to him, "Still here?"
The boy looks up at him, grey-blue eyes shining in the morning light and there is something of a smile threatening to play over his lips. "You'd have thought me gone by now? A wandering gypsy perhaps?"
Marcus smirks before continuing on his way down, drawing closer as he shouts back in answer, "No. I thought I'd dreamt it. Dreamt you."
"You dreamed you saved me from the waters?" The boy hurriedly throws his clothes out flat over the ground and scurries to meet him as the paths to the different outlets meet.
Instead of answering Marcus looks him over as they continue to walk, the oversized clothes, untied boots, and greasy jacket certainly taking a bit of the wonderment out of him. "Those- those are my clothes." He receives a semi-panicked, apologetic glance and quickly tries to elaborate, "They don't really suit the dream… I'm kind of large. And awkward, not like you."
The boy snorts at that and makes a show of holding his arms out to keep his balance as the too-large boots wobble more and more as the path gets rockier and rockier. "I can be awkward." They finally make it down to the dock and Marcus begins to pull the boat in as the boy stands just behind him and watches intently. "Are you going fishing again?"
"Yes," Marcus grunts as the rope pulls taught and it takes a few hard tugs to get the boat floating in the right direction, "thought I might catch another…" The boy looks at him inquisitively and he uses The Eagle as an excuse to delay his response, a truly idiotic idea forming in his head at the prompting of his own sarcastic quip. "Yes, thought I might catch another one of you. Maybe there's tons of them down there in the water…. I can get you a pretty girl to keep you company."
He waits in the pregnant silence for some kind of response, mouth drying with the thought that he might have overplayed his hand. The boy spends a few long moments studying the knots in the wood of the dock, kicking his feet at them with a pensive frown on his face. "I don't want a pretty girl… Can't I just come fishing with you?"
Marcus lets his head hang to allow himself a few seconds to compose himself, and not wanting to sound strangely eager he fishes for a response. "I thought you didn't want to be seen." When he turns back the boy at least has the decency to look sheepish at being caught in this, but while swinging his feet he can only come up with a shrug. "Okay then, get in."
As the boat pulls out of the cove and into the deeper waters, allowing Marcus to let it coast and focus on bringing up the cages with his potential catch, he finds that the boy has a fondness for leaning out over the sides, as though he would to throw himself over the edge at any moment. Though it makes him feel sad and a little worried, he can't deny that it's a strangely poetic relationship that boy has with the sea, and he remembers Placidus teasing about him having caught a mermaid. "So- that song you were singing. Did you remember that?"
The boy turns to him and offers only another shrug as his hair whips around his face in the wind. "I suppose I must have." The way that he says it makes it seem as though his memory, his past life is the furthest thing from his mind. It makes Marcus pause for a moment as he is bringing up the line.
"What about your name? I really must call you something," he tries to make it sound as nonchalant as possible, but he's never exactly been the type for furtiveness.
There's only a small amount of hesitance before the boy looks out to the sea and answers him. "You can call me Esca."
"That's… nice." Marcus hopes he sounds genuine, because while he's never really had a way with words, he truly thinks it fits- Esca. It is unusual and mysterious and maybe even a little bit wild. "What does it mean?"
"Put simply? It comes from an old Gaelic word for river or water, but is used to describe those with an affinity for nature." Esca looks wistful as he turns back to the water and lets Marcus dwell on it. Marcus thinks to himself that now the image has come full circle, the boy from the water seems so surreally to be born of it, a citizen of its depths. The idea seems truly absurd, but Marcus can't shake the feeling that there is something about Esca, something that's different and… magical.
He can't help but smile at the thought of something so miraculous happening to him of all people. Boring old Circus the clown with his empty nets, empty head, and emptier home. Esca begins to sing again at the lull in conversation and Marcus finds the sound of it instantly soothing. Every time it is the same song, and though Marcus cannot understand the words, the pull of Esca's voice, the lilt of the tune is enough for him to know what it must be about. It seems sad, but beautiful, like watching a maiden dressed in the purest of whites dive from up on high into the thrashing grey waters. It suits Esca and just as Marcus is about to shut his eyes, succumb to the draw of it, the last of his cages comes out of the water and over the side of the boat- with a lobster in it. "My God… You've got to be playing games with me, what did you just do?"
Esca stops abruptly and wanders over to him, confusion clear on his face and defensiveness to his stance. "I didn't do anything! I- I just sang." Esca's brow knits and he jams his hands in the pockets of the greasy jacket he's still struggling to keep on.
"I know. I just-" Marcus chews the inside of his cheek and moves on to another line further down, pulling up more empty pots and feeling his frustration growing. "Come over here would ya? A-and… sing for me again." Esca doesn't seem as put-off by his irrational behavior as Marcus thinks that he should, but then he supposes that that can only be good for him. Esca comes to stand by his side and leans over the edge of the boat, looking down deep into the waters, as though he can read the ebb and flow of them in a way that no one else can, and starts up again. The next cage that emerges has a lobster crawling about the bottom, the next- two, the next- three, and then Marcus stops pulling them in. "You- you bring me luck."
"Luck?" Esca looks as though he is about ready to bounce up and down at the way that Marcus is marveling at him, and the boy flashes a grin before moving to examine the lobsters pinching at their newfound confinement, crouching so that he can poke at them with only a small bit of trepidation. "Everybody needs luck!" and though it isn't spoken as a question, Marcus can hear all that is implied in the sentence.
"I know everybody needs luck, but not everybody gets it." Esca looks up at him then and there is a sort of understanding that passes between them. They share in the quiet of the moment before Marcus remembers what it was he was doing and goes to get the lobsters ready to sell at the market. He teaches Esca how to hold them between your legs so that you can tie their pincers closed and shows him which ones to keep and which ones to throw back in the pots for a rainy day. The boy spends the day eagerly flitting about him as he works, asking questions and helping whenever Marcus will let him and for the first time in a long time Marcus is enjoying the day and going about his work with an enthusiasm that has been absent for far too long.
"Y'know, we'll get something awful nice for these." Marcus comments when they are back on land and he has a bin full of shellfish tucked underneath his arm.
"We?"
"Ya, you'll get a share of the profits. After all you did do some singing and such." Marcus smirks as Esca bats at his shoulder and runs up ahead of him to put the gate of Marcus' rickety blue truck down. Marcus gratefully hauls the bin up onto the bed and rubs his hands together as he contemplates all the things he could get with this extra bit of cash he hasn't seen in quite some time. "Come sell them at the market with me and we can pick you up some things in town." His heart leaps at the thought of walking around town with Esca, pointing out all the local shops and finally having someone else for them to direct their stares towards. He even crosses over to the passenger side of the car and opens up the door, standing aside to let Esca climb in.
But the second the words slip out of his mouth, the boy freezes up and the light behind his eyes dims a little as he begins to back down the hill, towards the shack. "I don't want to meet anyone…." He shakes his head and holds his hands up in the air as he begins to turn around.
Marcus can't help the flare of frustration that rises up in him and he slams the door closed with a scowl. "Well you've met me! What am I exactly? A nobody?"
"You're the only one…" Esca calls behind him, but doesn't make to turn around, just continuing on his way down. Marcus feels as though there was something left unsaid there- a piece that was missing, but even without it, the words sink in deep and soothe the hurt inside him. Just like the song seemed to bring him clarity before, these words, though almost meaningless, bring a sense of acceptance to him and he watches Esca until the boy reaches the house before turning to get into the car.
