Marinus

⥈ 1 ⥈

The only ice in all of Marinus County floats and cracks in a tin cup on a wooden table belonging to Mr. Fenwick, in his half-shack half-cave on the coast near Sub Francisco. Soon the ice begins to melt, as a flotilla of villagers from the town nearby sets the home on fire. The people throwing torches from their boats believe Mr. Fenwick is responsible for the disappearance of a woman who had visited their town a week earlier, and they had come to chase the old fisherman out of their county.

By the time his home collapses and sizzles into the water, Mr. Fenwick is a half mile out to sea, piloting his small electric dinghy into the cove. The stars are out, and a light breeze carries the sharp smell of sycamore smoke and the chants from the villagers. He crosses the Sunken Gate Bridge, where his gaze shifts from a pod of dolphins jumping its stay cables, to the distant silhouettes of seascrapers. He navigates his boat around a bridge truss, and heads for the city.

⥈ 2 ⥈

Janna waited on Mr. Fenwick’s dock, dangling her feet in the water, listening to the shush of waves. She stood when she saw him returning home, his aluminum boat teeming with crabs.

“Hi there. Mr. Fenwick?”

The man squinted as he looked at her. His boat bumped against the dock.

“Aye.”

“I’m Janna.”

She offered a hand. Mr. Fenwick looked at his own, covered in bits of muck from his crab traps.

“I’m no cleaner,” she said. “ It’s been a long trip.”

He accepted her handshake and she helped him onto the dock. The taxi boat captain who had dropped her off had said Mr. Fenwick knew the city’s canals better than anyone, but had been reluctant to leave her outside his home. She knew people in small towns were often suspicious of hermits.

“I’d like to charter a ride to San Francisco.”

“What for?”

“Do you know Solar Tower? My great-grandmother was the architect. I’d like to see it," Janna said. "I have money.”

“Keep it,” the fisherman replied as he tied his boat to the dock's mooring post. “Have y’ever harvested mussels?”

⥈ 3 ⥈

As Mr. Fenwick enters Sub Francisco he listens to his boat's wake sloshing against buildings and the sea lions snoring on rooftops. He sticks to the streetwaters, aware that many sailors who attempted shortcuts ended up roof marooned after hitting submerged antennae.

He turns onto a street leading to Solar Tower. The sweeping structure reminds him of a giant crab claw mid-pinch. Mussels cling to the tower near the waterline, and he passes the spot where he harvested them with Janna. She had pointed out the tower’s architecture - its bellcasts and bargeboards, finials and raincaps - and he had thought they sounded like parts of a ship.

Muffled shouts and churning motors reach him across the water; the villagers had pursued him into the city. He steers his boat through one of the tower's windows, slipping out of the moonlight.

⥈ 4 ⥈

"Can I show you something?"

Janna unloaded the last bucket of mussels onto Mr. Fenwick’s dock. She took a small black notebook from her pocket.

“This was my great-grandmother’s.”

She handed the frayed notebook to Mr. Fenwick. He thumbed through timeworn pages filled with shapes and sketches - the first inklings of Solar Tower.

“She spent years imagining the design, but never saw it built.”

The last page of the notebook was inscribed,

For my family, to discover and share.

“My mother said our family never lived there,” Janna recalled. “I was hoping to be able to see inside.”

Mr. Fenwick thought for a moment.

“Y’ever been scuba diving?”

⥈ 5 ⥈

Shouts from the searching villagers echo around the algae-covered apartment Mr. Fenwick floats in. He ties his boat to a rusty faucet in the kitchen, then dons his scuba gear, slides into the water, and swims out the front door.

As he swims, Mr. Fenwick’s flashlight illuminates the tower's spaces transformed by kelp, coral, and sea life. Multicolored schools of fish flit through halls; an octopus scurries away into a vent; a sudden bump on his shoulder from a leopard shark makes him recoil, but it swims into a stairwell and doesn’t come back.

Halfway down a corridor he finds a chasm that makes his stomach drop. He shines his light down through the elevator shaft, into the dark stories of the building, and swims below.

⥈ 6 ⥈

Janna spent three days learning to scuba dive in the warm shallow water outside Mr. Fenwick’s cave. She listened as he explained how he used the scuba gear to retrieve his crab traps, instead of ropes that might snare the whales migrating through the boulevards. He said she was welcome to the boathouse, and she spent the nights listening to the whales singing.

When Janna was comfortable diving, they travelled back into the city. They circled Solar Tower and found a broken apartment window big enough to float through. As she pulled on a pair of flippers, Janna considered asking Mr. Fenwick to join her.

“I’ve really appreciated your help Mr. Fenwick,” she said.

“Just remember your way back,” he replied. “I’ll wait here.”

Janna slipped into the water, and swam into the tower. She knew that when she didn’t return, Mr. Fenwick would eventually go home, where he would see the envelope she had left with his name written on it. Inside he would find twenty-thousand dollars - payment for the trip and the scuba gear - along with her great-grandmother’s notebook, and he would understand she had planned not to come back.

---

Four days after Janna disappeared, Mr. Fenwick motored into town. He bought new scuba gear and a luxury item no one in the village owned - an ice maker. A few villagers whispered that the fisherman had stolen the money he was spending from the woman who had not returned from his home.

That night Mr. Fenwick sat at his kitchen table with a cold cup of ice water. He had been avoiding the notebook Janna had left him, but now he picked it up and flipped through it. He reached the last page, and discovered Janna had made an addition.

For my family, to discover and share.

Come and stay as long as you’d like.

Dive to Eleven.

The fisherman looked up from the little black notebook, and saw a flotilla of boats approaching across the bay.

⥈ 7 ⥈

The water grows numbingly cold as Mr. Fenwick swims through the murky water, counting the floors as he descends. Nearly one hundred feet down, he arrives at floor eleven. A blue glow emanates from a hallway branching off the shaft. He follows the hall and soon sees the light rippling and shimmering above him - the surface. He swims up to it, and his feet touch a ramp below him. He stands up out of the water. The light comes from bioluminescent plankton floating on the water around him, casting a blue glow down the hall. He takes off his mask and inhales. The air is brackish and stale, but a light breeze comes from further in the tower. He shrugs off his tank and peels off his flippers, and walks toward the current of fresh air. The algae on the walls becomes entwined with ivy, the slippery ground turns to damp moss, and he emerges into a forest.

Mr. Fenwick stands on the edge of a colossal atrium rising up through the tower. Ivy grows up glass walls and along a staircase that winds up the column. The sun is rising, and it shines down through the atrium on an orchard of fruit trees around him. A sea breeze blows and a light rain falls. Mr. Fenwick looks up, where hundreds of feet above the rain, it appears to be snowing. White particles drift within the column, and birds fly through the swirling cloud. He spots purple finches, pine siskins, blue jays, woodpeckers, nuthatches, and crows, and realizes it isn’t snow, but salt, and he knows what the tower is. A solar still. Ocean water was being channeled in near the top and heated by the sun reflecting off the glass as it fell. The salt was separating from the fresh water, which fell to the ground, leaving behind a floating salt lick for the birds. Mr. Fenwick watches as one of the nuthatches drops a seed to the ground.

He climbs the stairs spiraling up the tower, through the rain and the salt cloud and the ocean spray coming in near the top. Sunlight shines through the glass walls and he looks into the busy aquarium life of sea creatures inhabiting the tower.

He emerges onto the roof, where Janna is standing near the edge, fishing off the side of the tower.

“Mr. Fenwick!” she says when she sees him. “Welcome.”