Fish for the customers, children for the old fisherman. It was simple in theory but not so idyllic for the fisherman himself. If the suitcases contained living children every time or just their cut meat, he would be rich. Would by a new boat or have enough money to repair the current one. He would afford new clothes, could bathe every day and maybe could go to a doctor for removal of additional and unnecessary limbs and tumors. But the gloomy sea on this bleak day wasn't so generous to him. He caught a few fish, that's good, that gets him at least some cash. Despite the popularity of children-meat among people, there was still a solid demand for fish, crabs and other fruits of the sea.
The sun was slowly setting, although he couldn't see it outright because of the sullen clouds; there was the change in color above the horizon — cold but still that golden gaze of the eternal lamp shining through coarse blanket the sky took on itself. And this was his third luggage, still wet and glossy from the salty waters, and inside: a child, but again dead. It reminded him a broken doll, packed in one box with accessories, in this case rags and small clothes for the little person inside, which it has no use for now. But also a really small — child-size small — matchbox, and a small bottle of water made of cheap plastic. Of course the children who came this way to land had to be somehow provided with at least a little survival help in order to get them growing and maybe some day becoming adults, altough the old fisherman wasn't sure how that happened. He remembers nothing prior his thirties; he doesn't remember if he was a child too. And he wondered how much food the children had to eat so that they become as big as him and other adults.
He put the little corpse aside into a frail crate and decided he will pull out just one last today and then cook a goulash of the four poor cadavers. At least this makes the dead meat a bit more edible. So far none of them had a prosthetic; that equals more food to eat. He tossed a rope with a hook on its end into the uninviting waves, precisely hitting the handle on a yellowish suitcase. With a few dull bumps on the ship's hull, fisherman held in his knaggy hands the object of his interest. He had to check twice after he opened the wooden lid, because the small boy in this one was breathing.
Like a precious artefact he proceeded to touch the child with ridge of his three fingers. The small creature was cold; that shouldn't be. In order to preserve it alive all the way back to his house, he needed to keep it warm. The old fisherman quickly dug up dry clothes, wrapped the precious meal in them and then put it in a basket; a bit moldy but the best he could find on his ship.
And the seagulls were laughing and the sea hummed a new song.
The front door of the fisherman's hut was diagonally-set and uneven, and it creaked when the owner climbed in from the two steep stone steps. He hung the old grayish coat up on the rusty hook near the entrance with his third arm, the shortest one, and shouted: "Mike, I am back! I bought you something." His voice was even more torn than his look.
Soft quiet steps could be heard from above the wooden ceiling, almost imperceptible, like a mouse, and then, two big brown eyes were looking from the high end of the ladder. Those eyes had that indescribable sparkle in them that children have. Perhaps that was what saved him from the fisherman's butcher knife three years ago. The old man remembered: as he came home with his catch that evening, he unwrapped the precious meal onto the kitchen table, prepared a pot, a fork, a knife, seasoning (it was pretty expensive so he used it only on special occasions) and was just about to slaught— but as his gaze met the little one's curious brown eyes, he stopped. This had never happened before. The child would either be still unconscious or awake but crying. Not this one, however. There was a moment of silence staring onto each other. The boy's calm sight was charming. Did he know he was meant to be cooked but still so curious about the process? Or was it just an innocent but sincere look? Old fisherman never got that answer, but he decided to spare his delicious dinner and satisfy himself with the not so good goulash that evening. And the evening after. And after.
Since then the fisherman's life changed, getting more colourful, more lifeful. Taking care of the boy, teaching him how to sew fish nets, how to butch fish and other sea animals. After a short while the man found out that calling him just a boy wasn't appropriate and enough, so he gave him a name, one very simple name: Mike. The fisherman's mind was to some extent simple, so it sufficed. And as Mike grew, the elder also taught him how to repair and maintain a boat, how to sail. And he taught him the language of the sea.
Actually, today it has been exactly three years since he found Mike in the yellowish suitcase. So the fisherman decided to buy a gift for the boy — as a memoriam.
"Look 'ere, look." Old man unwrapped an old rug on a dining table. The boy descended from the attic ladder. He was so small he hid out of fisherman's sight behind the table, as all children would. As expected, Mike's head emerged above a shabby wooden edge, resting on his hands and examining the object on the rug.
"It's a book?" he asked.
"Correct. Found it at the markets downtown. You're still asking me about nonsense, so, those are fairytales."
"What's that?" the boy wondered.
"Remember how y'asked me if people built a city on a whale or if there are flying fish so big you could tame them? Here. Read this, you'll find out."
That really caught Mike's fascination. He climbed on the desk and took the gift. He had to hold it in both hands, , three quarters of his size, like it was some sort of furniture. Holding it above his head, he looked at his tutor for a moment, quiet, but then thanked him briefly, turned back on his feet and hopped off table, leaped off the chair and dashed to his hideout above the ceiling and then he realized he couldn't take the fastest way up the ladder, as he had full hands, so he disappeared somewhere in a shady niche of the room.
This old hut had to be filled with passageways and small tunnels that the boy hollowed out or repaired. The fisherman wasn't concerned about the boy's absence and wandering — he was actually glad that Mike wasn't near him all the time. He was afraid that despite their relationship, something would snap in his old mind and he would kill and eat the child. What if he forgets that Mike is his apprentice? After all, he didn't remember if he was ever a small child too.
On a sandy shore, there rested a cubical wooden crate. Sea waves released it just an hour or two ago, so surely it came from a cargo ship. Mike observed strange giant shadows moving between the sea-horizon and tall stormy clouds. Who knows what happened to the vessel that carried this box and other goods, but its fate was probably terrible.
The sea washing up man-made objects had been a norm since people learned how to sail, and this wooden crate normally wouldn't have caught Mike's attention, but there was a crowd of seagulls hammering its surface with their bright yellow beaks. That must be a sign that something edible was inside.
To open the box here and now meant to expose its content to the insatiable birds' stomachs, so Mike tied the box to a rope and proceeded to pull it to a safer place. Ahead of him a sharp cliff rocks towered and at their black feet a shipwreck. The accident had to happen years before Mike's adpoptive parent would find him in the suitcase. The fisherman told that the crew probably managed to save themselves, as he had found this wreck abandoned in that time. For Mike's fortune, the hull was almost intact. If the wind and waves had casted it only a few meters further, it would have shattered on the rocky edges.
The boy was a chronic daydreamer, imagining that he would repair the ship one day and sail to the distant wondrous lands. For now it served him as a hideaway, and since the fisherman's hut was farther, Mike chose to open the crate safely inside the shipwrecks bowels.
The dark wooden body provided a solid safe spot. The gulls, although even noisier, couldn't get inside. Mike went for a well-hidden crowbar and with it he opened the birch crate. The material creaked and the top side fell off with a thud. Cotton wool with an oily scent filled the container to the brim, there has to be more. And truly, beneath it, Mike found a black velvet sack, by a first glimpse containing something round. It was like unwrapping a Christmas present, and although he didn't know what a Christmas is, he was excited the same way. And disproportionately more when he found that the box contains an egg. A very big yellow egg.
To just describe it as yellow would be inappropriate. What little light that shone through gaps between aged deck planks accented a beautiful seemingly chaotic intertwining white circles all around the object, flickering like gold.
"A dragon egg." Mike let out a whisper.
And remembered the day he crawled up to his hiding place in the fisherman's hut under the roof, where he opened the fairytale book for a first time. Fragrant yellowed pages in a blue fabric cover, an ancient and majestic letter font, and illustrations. Those have been in the center of his interest since. He knew how to read — the old man taught him so — but only for him to read a few simple words like "fish", "sea" and "sell". And so, Mike didn't bother to study what the book text held and focused on visual elements. Gorgeous meticulously painted pictures of epochal tall castles and strongholds, ancient forests of sacred trees, wide windy plains, magic aerial ships that sailed to the stars and huge slick and scaly dragons who stole princesses, guarded treasures and helped mighty warlocks. Mike himself spent days and days imagining himself older, stronger and taller, wearing a shiny black armour, exploring unknown lands and riding his own dragon. Finding this egg, this miracle, was his dream coming true.
The fisherman came home weary. He approached a crooked divan and unwrapped a fabric package on it. The content clinked and tinkled: little dark-glass bottles, pharmaceutical vials and a small metal box — a good choice to not open it on a table, as it would probably roll down and shatter.
"Mike! Mike!" He called the boy and, when he didn’t come out, looked around for him. He couldn't find him near the stove, in bed, nor in the firewood shed.
"Mike, boy, I've bought you a medicine. … Mike, please, respond!" The man shouted in his old house. "Or at least make a noise!"
But only silence answered.
The man sat tiredly in his chair and leaned back, looking at the dark wooden ceiling.
"I hope you're up there…"
The truth was very different. Mike was just on his way to the shipwreck. A few years had passed since he found the egg. He had already began repairing the stranded ship. It was a slow process since he was just a small child and the old man refused to help him. "There's just enough work to be done on the house and on my boat. Do whatever you want in your free time but leave me out of it." At least, Mike managed to recieve advice and could borrow tools. To procure the material was not easy at all, as he had to gather or stole it.
The boy's steps were heavy, sinking in the wet sand more than usual. He had a fever and wasn't sure if the strange moving shadows and ticking sounds that began to occur in the old house were real or not. Circa month ago, Mike got a headache that worsened every day. Soon the fisherman concluded that it's the Pestilence — some sort of mysterious global illness that everyone had. It was the source of mutations, growth of additional limbs, enlargement of certain body parts and more. The TV said that the best option is to eat children since their meat suppressed the symptoms. Or to take medicine made of children. Although the old fisherman didn't trust TV, he proclaimed that the benefits of eating children-meat are at least partially real, and naturally blamed Mike's aversion to cannibalism. Whatever was growing inside Mike's head now, was steadily killing him.
Mike gathered his last strength and climbed up the rope-ladder. The deck was repaired, it was one of the simple things to fix considering the masts, sails, and rigging generally. He descended into the compartment. He was heading towards his "dragon".
The egg that he hid there and looked after had hatched. Mike expected to see scales, spikes and fiery eyes, he was wishing for a black dragon, green or blue would be also nice. He was quite frightened when the magnificent egg cracked open and revealed an amorphous pink blob with tentacles and a big circular mouth with small sharp teeth. It made a babbly higher pitch sound and proceeded to examine its surroundings with its thin noodle-like limbs. Mike didn't run away nor harmed the strange creature. The fright quickly changed to a curiosity.
He gave it a name: Ómi; that described its look perfectly. Since then he would feed it fish, cherish it, talk to it. And it grew; Mike had no idea how it could get so big when he gave it only a few fish a day. Maybe the creature somehow killed and ate all the seagulls because soon after it hatched, they completely disappeared from the vicinity of the ship.
The boy stumbled and fell on the floor. Before him rested Ómi, its formless body stretching across the room. It moved its cephalic part and made a chatty sound. Mike was so weakened, he couldn't get up, he crawled slowly towards his alien pinkish pet. It sensed the boy's unease. The last thing that Mike saw before he fainted were Ómi's thin tentacles touching his temples. And he felt them penetrate his eardrums.
When he woke up, a few days after, at the same spot, his head did not hurt anymore. And above that he felt two bodies, his own, and Ómi's.
Nine years have passed since Mike was found in the yellow suitcase, five years since the Ómi hatched from the yellow egg. The repairs of the ship were near the end, the pinkish creature grew so big it became inseparable part of the hull. The boy grew stronger, more agile, but the fisherman was aging, growing more grey, getting humpy and even more knaggy like an old withering willow. The illness he caught was not a surprise. He was coughing and whimpering with a fever, covered in wooly blankets in his bended bed. Tired, calling Mike's name, telling him to go fishing instead of himself.
The boy knew that the fisherman was actively ignoring that it was not just a cold. Years healthy, years every day on the sea. No, Mike could not wait until the old man might get well again. He needed medicine. Mike decided to go to town and buy it.
The fisherman awoke from an unpleasant dream due to a sudden slam of the doors and fast steps.
"Grandpa!" Mike's voice. The old man opened his eyes slowly. He saw Mike hastily putting something on a table. "I took your coat and hat and went to town. I-I know that I shouldn't go there. I managed to buy you a medicine but the TV, it saw me." He cought a breath. "I will take you-"
"No, Mike, no. Don't take me anywhere. I'd be just a burden. Hurry and run. Run away or they'll catch you and eat you."
He heard heavy steps approaching the front door. When the door opened, he was already gone.
The people who chased him were no ordinary adults. They were tall and muscular, wearing tight black rubber suits and gas masks and were armed. The creepiest was a symbol printed on them. An eye with a five-pointed crown. Mike doubted that they want to eat him. He was getting away not so swiftly and rather carefully; sneaking between the rocks near the shore. His goal was to get to his ship.
The biggest problem was that it still rested on the sand. He climbed up on the deck and turned to Ómi through his thoughts: "Ómi, please, I know you can do it. I trust you, we have to get away, please." And luckily, Ómi heard him.
The last thing the two black soldiers saw was a boat with spider legs dissappearing into the foggy distance, moving away from the shore.