Kaleidotrope, Spring, 2025
Twelve-year-old Emilio lives in a tiny fishing village on the Ligurian coast with his mother, a sex worker who refuses to identify his father. Emilio stands out dramatically—he has orange hair, pale skin covered in sunspots, and a mysterious rash that appears whenever he touches saltwater. Despite being able to swim instinctively since age five, the sea makes his skin burn and glow faintly blue. He dreams nightly of being both boy and something else, with scales instead of a rash, swimming toward great bodies in dark water.
An old fishwife tells Emilio his father couldn’t be from their village—someone with his coloring must have come from far away. Shortly after, Emilio encounters a dark-skinned man with dyed orange hair playing a cornamusa (bagpipes). The man reveals he has a message from Emilio’s father: Emilio must find the holiest water in the land to save the world from the Drinkers of Blood—terrible creatures that have conquered Rome. His father waits at Lake Como in the north, playing music for mysterious beings in its depths.
The messenger directs Emilio to the Child Pope Bonifacio, hiding on the island of Elba, who possesses blessed water holy enough for the task. That night, grotesque creatures with hooved feet stalk Emilio, but he escapes by surrounding himself with candlelight. The next morning, his entire village has vanished, including his mother.
Emilio sets out with a pouch of coins and a mysterious tooth necklace the messenger gave him. He’s joined by Ciccio, a massive vineyard dog who becomes devoted to him after smelling the tooth. They travel south through several towns, with Emilio lighting candles each night to ward off the pursuing Drinkers. He hears the voice of the Bleeding Child, an immortal being trapped in a well whose blood the Drinkers consume, begging for rescue.
On a boat to Elba, the sea boils around them. A massive woman with wine-red hair—the Woman of the Sea—rises from the depths. The terrified brothers throw Emilio overboard, but the Sea Woman doesn’t harm him. Instead, she carries him and Ciccio safely to shore, leaving him strands of her hair and a prophetic dream.
The dream reveals Emilio’s destiny: he will transform into something not quite human, leading dragon-like creatures from Lake Como in a march to battle the Drinkers. He’ll be joined by companions including Caterina (a girl disguised as a boy), the Child Pope carrying the rescued Bleeding Child, his reunited mother, and his father with other cornamusa players who can summon the lake creatures with their music.
On the beach, the Child Pope Bonifacio finds Emilio, already knowing his name from his own dream. The story ends as they begin planning their journey together—the start of an epic quest to save the world, though Emilio has glimpsed only its ending, not the trials that lie between.
Bruce McAllister‘s short fiction has appeared over the years in science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazines and in”year’s best” volumes; and won or been short-listed for awards like the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hugo, the Nebula, Locus, and the Shirley Jackson. His most recent novel is The Village Sang to the Sea: A Memoir of Magic; his most recent collection, Stealing God and Other Stories. After a peripatetic childhood spent in a Navy family on one ocean after another (including Emilio’s fishing village, though five hundred years later), he lives happily now not far from the sea in southern California.