Chapter 14 – encounter with a Unicorn – not all Heroes are heroes – the singing bridge

I knew where to find her, where she always went when she was feeling tired and stressed. Down by the Unicorn.

Not an actual unicorn, though there was that time Kannyman had a herd of them running about Camperdown Park. This Unicorn is a ship, a massive great nineteenth century warship tucked away on Dundee’s waterfront. You may well ask how it’s possible to tuck away a warship but believe me, Dundee City Council managed it.

They’d attempted to make the Tay waterfront visitor-friendly by sticking in some business units and shops and random bits of public art until, voila! they’d created a space with the deadening atmosphere of the most soulless stretches of London docklands. You’d be down there, wandering past an empty gym wondering if anyone ever visited that Indian restaurant, without a glimpse of water to remind you you’re anywhere near the Tay, turn a corner and boom! there it is. The Unicorn, a floating fortress in its own dock, the Victoria, the corporate dreariness you’ve drifted through making it all the more fantastic and because it’s so unexpected it makes it yours.

Ish loved going down there when we were together, the peace and strangeness of it. She’d even let me hold her hand which she was shy of in the centre of town, worried one of her pupils would see. Maybe something else drew her down there to the water, some inkling of what she was going to become. The Silver Selkie already feeling safe close to her element.

One of the problems of her getting all famous was it wasn’t just me who knew how special the place was to her. Heading towards the ship, seeing the group of fans by the railings, I was tempted to head home. But I had the poster crumpled in my hand, felt I had to prove what I was up against, how her Superhero chums could be nasty pieces of work. And it might not be Ish those Hero groupies were after. Places like that, bits of the city with some magic to them, seemed to attract Heroes. If the stalkers didn’t catch the Selkie, the Flaming Kelpie might turn up instead, causing the dock to ripple with flame or the Loch Ness Leviathan to bob into view, waving a few tentacles, signing eight autograph books in one go.

But that night was a quiet one. No obvious Hero activity going on and I wondered if I gave Ish a call and she bothered to answer I’d discover she was back home on her couch with a glass of red wine. We hadn’t been together for a while. I couldn’t assume I knew what she’d get up to. She had her life, I had mine. As Boos had proved, it was best to keep the two separate.

I stood a few feet away from the hangers on. Even if Ish didn’t turn up it was a nice enough night, still some light in the sky, navy but getting darker, stars starting to peep through the orange sodium of the city and the water was calm, a sweet saltiness to the air that had me licking my lips, tasting the freshness. Then out the corner of my eye I saw the shimmering. As if the stars were not only appearing up there but were bubbling up from below, streaming up from under the Unicorn. I didn’t turn for a proper look, let a slow grin spread because I knew it was her, Ish making her appearance and I whispered ‘That’s my girl’ before I could help it. Then the singing started.

You might’ve seen the YouTube videos but unless you’ve been there and heard the Silver Selkie sing you’ve only experienced a very poor copy. It wasn’t something you just listened to, it was a sound that worked its way through your skin, into your bones, set you shivering. It sounds twee but if you could imagine an angel, an actual angel singing, it would sound like Ish, beautiful and terrifying both.

Sometimes it sounded like pure joy, like injecting ecstasy into your sinuses but not that night. Instead it sounded more like a recording she’d played me once of an unaccompanied Gaelic church choir. Spooky it was, voices rising and falling until it didn’t sound so much like people singing but the wind in a forest or the sea in a storm.

Looking along the railing I saw the effect it had. Some wiping tears from their eyes, hands over their mouths and I took a step back, fought the urge to leave, to rip up the poster and stick scraps of it in my ears, block out the sound of the saddest woman in the world. She’d taken all the anger, all the frustration she’d felt in the pub about her fellow Heroes, about me, about the way the world was going and turned it into sound, transforming it, sending it echoing round the dock.

She circled the boat, her head appearing occasionally and when she dove the volume dipped but not so much, the water giving it a lower resonance, turning it ghostly. Then her silvery underwater trail, flashing like shoals of fish caught in the moonlight, moved towards a metal ladder close to where the fans were standing. Rather than rushing forward to clamour around her, they backed off, made space for her and when she appeared at the top, there was a gasp from the small crowd and my breath shortened too. A Dundonian Venus, uncanny, blazing the white silver of the moon when it’s too bright to look at directly. Her silver suit which should have made her look like an extra from Blake’s 7 made her magnificent instead. That mask which I always slagged her off about emphasised her eyes, blazing like blue searchlights at sea.

She was still Ish, the Ish I used to sleep with, cuddle up on the couch with. Still that but more. More Ish than I could bear to look at.

Then she gave herself an actual shake and smiled, almost embarrassed, opening out her hands to the folk staring at her as the light around her dimmed and she became more human. Soon they were smiling and laughing in disbelief at this goddess being friendly with them, even giving her a wee round of applause before asking for photos.

I held back, let her have her moment of glory while I opened up the poster to see my brother, fat numpty Colin with ‘TWAT’ written over his forehead. A different pen had scrawled ‘DIE ABILITY SCUM!’ across his chest and arching over his head, ‘BENEFIT TAKERS NOT WELCOME HERE,’ and when my blood started pounding in my ears, I walked towards her then stopped a couple of feet away, seeing her relaxed, having a laugh with the geeks. When she glanced up and saw me the light surrounding her faded some more.

‘Sorry guys, I’ve got to get off. Hopefully see you next time when my singing’s a bit cheerier!’ she said, her voice with a tinkly chime to it and as her fans shuffled off I couldn’t help get a kick at some of them glancing over at me, wondering who this scruff was taking up the Silver Selkie’s interest.

‘What d’you want,’ she asked, fan-related chirpiness gone. She still wasn’t fully Ish, staying in Selkie mode, cold and strange and letting me know how pissed off she was.

‘Look, Ish…’ and she glanced anxiously after the fans, making sure none of them had heard. I kept on forgetting the whole secret identity thing seeing as how daft it was. I mean, folk sort of knew who she was but Ish usually made a big deal about keeping the two parts of her life separate. ‘Aww, come on, there’s no one around and what am I going to call you? Miss Silver or the Selkie or whatever -’

‘Have you just come down here to start another row? To wind me up? Because I really don’t need this. I’m tired and I’m fed up and I want to get to my bed and I am sorry about what happened to your dad, to Davey, I am sorry about what’s happening to your mum, but that is not the fault of any Superhero and you have to stop blaming them, blaming us for – what? What’s this?’ as I handed over the poster.

‘It was in the doorway of the pub. I’m sure none of that crap was written over it when we went in, I’d have noticed. So someone, a few of them, did it when we were in there. When you left your chums made it very clear I wasn’t welcome there. This kinda underlines the point.’

Ish was staring, shaking her head slowly as the light started up again around her. Not her usual silver but a dull grey, the shade of an old blunt knife. She sighed and the noise of it was like a cold wind brushing the back of your neck. Handing the poster back she didn’t look at me but down to the water instead and I knew how tempted she was by the thought of slipping back into it, swimming away from all of this.

‘Cath…I’m sorry. I didn’t…’ She reached up, took off her mask, looked at me, those blue eyes bright and not because of any superpower nonsense but because of her tears.

‘It’s fine. It’s fine. Well, it’s not but…come on, let’s go for a walk.’ I held out my hand and she didn’t take it. When I walked off I was determined not to look back but gave in after about thirty seconds. It was a relief to see her following.

She knew where we were going, where I was taking her and soon her footsteps were closer, then beside me, brushing my shoulder. We were right by the Tay, could hear it slapping against the sea wall but then it was drowned out by the sound from the Road Bridge, the rush and hush of car engines a strange sort of comfort as we walked under it, the concrete and metal thrumming above us.

I tried to remember the last time I was down there then wished that I hadn’t. It was when I told her it wasn’t working, that we should end it. That things were too different, there were times when I didn’t recognise her, that she scared me. And I’d forgotten this was the place where we’d first kissed. Classy of me, bringing it full circle.

‘I’m not…I mean,’ and I took a deep breath, wanting to be careful, not to hurt her again, ‘yeah, I know I go on about superheroes and everything but this,’ and I held the poster up, ‘and what’s happened to Davey and others -’

‘Others? What do you mean? God…other people dying?’ Ish tugged at my jacket sleeve, making me stop as a truck roared over our heads and I wondered if it was really that loud or if her worry had done something to the acoustics. ‘Listen, if you’re getting caught up in something, something dangerous, you need to tell me. Don’t you dare be bloody stubborn because I can help.’

I should have told her then, about the pen drive, about the risk I was taking. Maybe she would have stopped me, made me see sense. But I didn’t know what was going to happen and I didn’t want her getting worried. Idiot. Instead I said, ‘I want you to help. That’s why I met up with you, to get some info on the Knoxians, some background on this Gathering business. You have been a help, told me stuff, got me thinking. And if anything does happen to me -’

The panic in her face. ‘Cath, for God’s sake, you should go to the police, if you think -’

‘Can’t, too early for that and there are…complications. Look, I’m not caught up in anything serious but bad things are definitely going on. Things involving the Police, the Government maybe. And the Knoxians, they’re starting to get people listening to them, getting some power behind them. This proves it,’ and as I tried to stuff it into my jacket pocket Ish stopped me and took it, looking at it with this angry half-smile. When she spoke it was softly but with an edge that cut through the traffic noise.

‘Yes. Proves what I was saying in the pub. Heroes…we’re nothing big or special. Just the same useless human beings we were beforehand but with laser eyes and killer breath,’ and when she looked up she was determined. ‘You gonna go?’

‘…to what? Where?’

‘To this,’ and she waved Colin at me, pointing at the date, a few weeks away at an old church. ‘You should. I will. And I’ll get some friends to come too. And we’ll show them. Show them that Normals and people with Abilities and Heroes can get on fine. Just fine,’ and she had a fierceness that wasn’t there before she became the Selkie.

‘Yeah…s’pose. Hadn’t really thought about it. Not really my sort of thing.’ I went to take the poster back but she pulled it away, teasing. ‘Not your sort of thing? But you were always out clubbing, coming back the next evening, making it back at 4am if it was an early night. I can’t believe you haven’t been to one of Colin’s gigs, he’s amazing. Honestly, your little brother’s really talented, he had me up by the turntables, doing my thing, sort of mixing -’

‘You’ve been to one of his shows?’ and I hated how petty that sounded although that wasn’t enough to stop me. ‘You encourage him with this superhero shite, making him think he’s got powers? Ish, he’s not one of them, of you, he’s not even Abled, he’s a nutjob. Sooner he realises that and gets himself sorted,’ and I hadn’t realised I’d been ripping that poster up until I was throwing it over the railing, watching it flutter down over into the black of the Tay. And then felt a right tit, not helped by Ish going ‘….feel better now?’

‘Not specially. Sorry. Polluting your next swim.’

‘Och, I’ve seen much worse floating in the Tay, believe me,’ and I told her off for being disgusting, hugging ourselves against the cold because it was bloody freezing down there in the dark, the cold of the water reaching up to us, looking at each other and laughing and it felt like it used to. Relaxed. Before conversations became trap-filled.

Ish narrowed her eyes, ‘Promise me. Promise me, Cath, you’re going to be careful. Because if anything, anything happened to you…’

‘Right, I may be a puny human but I’m not an idiot, OK? Now…you going to get this bridge singing again or not? Why else d’you think I got you down here? Wasn’t to freeze my nips off.’

‘You really are a cheeky -’

‘No, but come on. We’re down here, might as well. Remember. When you were turning Selkie-like and we didn’t know what was happening and we were scared, and then you’d come down here and start singing and it was….fantastic.’

And the glow around her brightened and as it grew stronger, hurting my eyes, the metal and the concrete begin to ring, vibrate, the Tay Bridge turning into one giant tuning fork, the air charged against my skin. Ish’s eyes were burning and I had to look over to the ordinary, safe lights of Tayport, trying not to be scared of the woman I used to be normal with.