The Bounty

Theo leaned against the bucking bow of the ferry to shield himself from the sea spray, as to their direct front a vaguely helmet-shaped lump against the gloomy horizon announced that they were close to their destination. 

The looming shape was Utarijima, a small island just off the coast of Hokishi, host to around three-hundred inhabitants and a sandy coastline of just under three miles. Even more than the city close-by, that already miniscule population was dominated by the old. 

In recent years, it had come to be known as one of Japan’s “cat islands”, so-called wherever the island was given over to more cats than people. That gap was only widening these days; a few decades ago, the island had fourteen-hundred people living there. 

The issue of depopulation was serious enough to call its future into question, exemplified by similar islands that were growing even more bereft of people until they were practically abandoned. And where there were no people, there could hardly be such a large population of cats. 

Despite the dwindling human presence, the feline population of Utarijima was showing itself to be robust, and the island would retain its main claim to fame for the meantime. Fame was somewhat stretching it; the other cat islands were far easier of access to the average tourist, but there was at least enough demand for a small ferry service. 

It therefore was business as usual when a modest boatload of tourists landed on the island’s modest pier on the southern side early in a Saturday morning, fanning out to follow after guides or to pursue their own itineraries. He and Maho naturally belonged to the second group. Dressed as they were like a pair of backpackers, they were here for business. 

The primary order, Maho had been apprised of by their police contact: a missing persons case from this very island. 

The two missing were a married couple, of some repute in the island despite their avowed dislike of cats. It had come to their neighbors’ attention that nobody had seen the well-liked pair for a few days, and it was decided that someone should check on their health. All they found inside their cottage was a squatting cat. 

The disappearance turned into something of a sensation for the inhabitants, and there was no shortage of theory-crafters in the island’s close-knit circles for a while. Of useful witnesses, there were none. For all the speculation, foul play was not even on the table, and so there was no incentive for the local deputies to make more than a token sweep of the island. Fast forward a week and no one was any closer to figuring out where the two had evaporated to.

That case by itself wasn’t something that warranted their attention, if it weren’t for a concurrent event on the island that had also reached Maho’s ears, this time through the school’s rumor mill. 

It took place on the first week of the month; residents were turning in for the night only to find that every single cat that they knew of was party to their own disappearing act. Panic would have no doubt ensued if it wasn’t for the fact that all the missing cats turned up the very next morning.

It would’ve ended there if not for the testimony of one witness: a young boy who swore that he saw a whole horde of cats gather up on a beach under the moonlight, and what seemed to be an old woman at the center of the congregation. 

As it happened, this was during the same week that was the last time anybody had seen the old couple, and the house that was nearest to that beach belonged to the very same. 

A missing couple, and missing cats. Taken as two discrete events, it merely meant that the month had been an exciting one full of happenings for the insular residents of Utarijima. Taken together, it could be more; perhaps there was even something unnatural afoot. 

At least, that was the way Maho pitched the op. But it wasn’t like she made a secret of their scraping the bottom of the barrel. In her words, it was actionable intel, as opposed to none. And so they sortied to this cat island, not entirely sure what it was to expect, looking for clues that neither really believed were there. 

With only one week left to wrap things up, it was an effort that smacked of desperation. Then again, he had been the one to get this operation rolling to begin with. It might just be his turn to be dragged around by somebody else. 

If there was trouble, then he wasn’t going to be caught underequipped again, at least. He adjusted the guitar bag he had brought on his person over his shoulder, and followed Maho down the gangway.

 

The place certainly lived up to the moniker. Large and small, black, grey, striped, yellow and white; once they stepped foot on the island, there was scarcely a moment where you could look this way or that and not have at least three cats in your view. 

The actual tourists who came with them were immediately waylaid in answering the cats’ pleas for attention. Theo indulged a little in it himself, but Maho was unamused and insisted that they had no time for such things. 

At first, he took that as being very on-brand, but as they made their way inland the majority inhabitants took it upon themselves to poke holes in Theo’s verdict. He was coming back from a piss break when he saw that there was close contact; a whole bunch of kittens coming out of the grass to besiege Maho’s legs.

Far from brushing them aside as she had the others, his counterpart started trembling as though from a tremendous effort. So far unnoticed, Theo’s expectation as he looked on was that the cats were about to get it; instead she gingerly picked her way out of the pile of felines to forge on ahead, but not before throwing a longing look back. 

She quickly averted her eyes when she realized he was there, and that was the last of that. But the damage was done. From then on, Theo enjoyed wondering if her choice of island was influenced by something other than operational considerations. 

After making their way to what passed for the local precinct, Maho left him outside with the cats and seabirds while she solicited the deputies inside. The building was built on top of a bluff, which commanded a good view of the shoreline. In the distance, he could just make out a long black line scarcely rising out of the water. He figured it must have been the other island offshore, Kuroshima.

Just then, a black cat approached him to nuzzle up to his leg. He bent down to give it a scratch behind the ears, but it slinked off before he could, in the direction of a wood of aged trees nestled in a nearby draw. The cat looked back at him with eyes that seemed strangely aware before going out of sight, as though inviting him to follow. 

Theo gave his next action little thought. It wasn’t too far off, and so he allowed himself to gratify his curiosity. A grass-grown track lined with beautifully stacked stones came into view where the ground began to dip, and a short walk led him to a cemetery, old and forgotten enough that the forest was reclaiming the graves. 

The weathered headstones crowded in the tiny clearing received his intrusion with indifference. Theo started. There was nothing here for him, and it wouldn’t do to leave his post for too long. As he turned to leave, a soft breeze sounded chimes that drew his eyes to its source, and a shape between the stone slabs arrested his notice. 

A current passed through him as he recognized that figure hunched over a grave.

It was an old woman, but not just any old woman. 

That granny, the damn hag that set him up for a welcoming committee of rampaging fisher-bastards in lieu of an actual welcome. 

A realization all too late flashed in his head, and he cursed himself for passing over something so obvious. He should have known that someone that age couldn’t possibly have been that agile, that fast, not unless–

He stood there in a moment of doubt as he second-guessed the spontaneity of the thought, but the final decision was taken out of his hands. As if to bear out his suspicions, the old lady stood up as if alerted to his presence, and cats began streaming from the forest to gather around her. 

The air suddenly took on a quality like burning tires in a chemical landfill; something Theo had last scented over the smoke and fire of a ruined town across the Pacific. It was the odor of the eldritch, of concentrated magic, and now there was no mistaking it. He had a sorcerer in his hands. 

Pulling the guitar bag hard over his shoulder and letting it drop to the ground sans its contents, he caught the Howa Type 89 in his hands and thumbed the safety off. 

No time to unfold the stock, he opted to steady it with the sling’s tension, training the sights on target–

And he saw that she was smiling.

***

What had started out as a normal weekend quickly became an impossibly hectic one for Ema, and it all started with a Saturday’s fishing. 

She was on the bridge of her father’s boat tidying up the paperwork, when they got the first warning of what was coming courtesy of the fish-finder. The fish school alarm rang, and as they maneuvered for a pass the screen showed an echo pattern so continuous that her father called her over to see if the thing was over-tuned. But no matter how much she played with the settings and display, it still showed a sardine school of absurd size. Ema hoped at the time that it wasn’t on the fritz; electronics didn’t come cheap.

Her father deemed that whether the gizmo was lying, there was probably enough there to be worth a try anyway. And so they cast their nets, and were in for the surprise of the year. 

What they were faced with was the single biggest catch any of them could remember seeing. Even the old man, the same one who always bragged of the abundance of the town’s heyday, could only gape at the sheer number of fish that came up in their nets. 

By the time they were finished, the reefers were filled to bursting, and when they brought out buckets, trays, and pots to bring aboard as much as they could, it still wasn’t enough. The sea below was still frothing with fish.

There was so much that they actually had to let the rest go, but her father didn’t need much at all persuading to make a return trip. They came back with an extra reefer boat from another captain they'd convinced to tag along, and hauled in even more than the first one. 

If the dockworkers were surprised when they landed their first haul, then they needed to pick their jaws off the ground when they came back with the second. The going was so good that their work ended up stretching to noon just to take full advantage of it, 

When first hearing about it over the radio, the other fishers reacted with varying degrees of disbelief and mockery; but they didn’t look any less astounded than the other guys at port when they saw for themselves the two-hundred tons the Kurose crew landed that day.

When her father finally decided to heave to and not make a third trip, it was only because they were on the verge of going over their one-month quota. Her father and the crew were fit to be tied with how giddy they were. They threw a seafood party right there on the decks as they came back from the second trip, more lavish than any Ema was ever part of. 

When they finally tied up on the quay for the second landing, the other skippers were there to congratulate her father and probe him for news of the miraculous new fishing grounds he'd found. 

He gave them the coordinates, and Ema tagged along with him. They were met with the same outstanding results again, and suddenly everybody started going along with her father’s silly claims about her being a lucky charm. 

Everybody who came to the patch of ocean where they hit the mother lode: seiners, trawlers, and longliners found incredible fishing, and even caught out-of-season fare like skipjack and saury. The weekend wouldn’t have a chance to come to a close before many of the guys had almost filled out their one-month, even three-month quotas.

After that, her father was the talk of the whole fisheries community. Ema felt that he was always reasonably well regarded, but all of a sudden he had throngs of his colleagues talking him up, and all kinds of people besides, when on Sunday some suits from the Fisheries Agency came by the house. 

There was talk that people were setting him up for a bigshot position– or at least it seemed like one for Ema– as chairman for the local Association. He had been part of the managing board for a while, so it didn’t sound all that ridiculous to her. Ema suspected that her father was even starting to give a serious ear to all that talk, as she observed his reactions to the various overtures over the next two days. 

It was Sunday evening when Ema happened upon a topic to give a very serious ear of her own to, when she overheard another snatch of conversation between her father and his first mate while she was putting away the week’s laundry.

“…that’ll be the first I ever heard of Utarijima being exciting. Hell, first I heard of it in a while, period.” The two shared a chuckle before the first mate spoke. 

“And how about that meeting earlier? The suits are real quick to be screaming their mouths off about how we’re depleting the fish stocks, but did they lift a finger when those energy boys locked down on the fishing grounds?”

“You know how it is.” her father said half-jokingly. His second grunted. 

“Yeah. But I get a feeling it’d be different with you, boss.” 

“This again?” returned her father, sounding a bit tired. 

“This time’s different. I’m not the only one who’s serious about this now. Now that the rest of them can see that you bring results, this is the best shot you’ll ever get to knock that bastard off that spot.” the mate huffed, keeping on with his proposal. “You make a play for it, and I’ll back you up, boss. With you the good times will roll, I’m sure.”

She heard her father make a hearty laugh at the mate’s remark.

“What’s up with that, boss?” 

“Nah, I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m just thinking back to something the old sea dog said.” her father answered, but it was some time before he spoke again. “Alright, I’ll give it a shot. If that’s what’s for the best.” 

Ema was too busy with chores to see the first mate off, but she could hear his enthusiastic departure through the walls. From the looks of things, her father was moving up in their world. As the daughter she had every reason to be as ecstatic to see her father's hard work pay off, and she was, for the most part. 

But why was it that some part of her wished for all this commotion to come to a close soon?

***

By the time the commotion was over, Theo had expended just over a third of his combat load: seventy-seven shots fired in a seven-minute running battle that had him hot on the heels of the old woman, who was quick to return the favor once Theo brandished his weapon.

He shot first, but there was no hesitation from her side. The hag unleashed her magics, twisting the forest around her and throwing illusions his way to disrupt his pursuit. 

The chase brought Theo all the way to the other end of the wood, where despite his efforts to close with his opponent she was able to break away from him. Right in front of his eyes, the old woman bled into the sharp angles on a wall. 

Theo locked down the immediate area for any traces of the hag, while Maho stomped down the track to see for herself just what the hell was happening. She caught up to him seething at his failure. The hag was well gone.

His liaison was clearly holding it in as she grilled him for the details, swearing that he better have a damn good reason for the ruckus that had forced her to flash her badge at the local deputies to get them to stay put. The anger on her face vanished the instant the Japanese word for sorceress left Theo’s lips.

To have encountered one wasn’t a claim to make lightly. If there really was one here, and after he’d botched that lucky chance, it was likely the two of them wouldn’t be enough.

“Show me proof.” demanded Maho, skipping her usual skepticism. 

“I know what I saw.” Theo said irritably, lining up some choice snark before thinking better of it. 

He had seen all of it with his own eyes, but he wasn’t the one with the direct line to the support they were going to need pronto. 

Doubling back to the cemetery, his efforts were initially frustrated by finding only his prints and a carpet of brass to mark his own trail, until he had the idea to look around where he had seen the old woman standing. 

He found it easy. Right there, laid at the base of a headstone whose face was grown over and chipped as to be unreadable, was a statuette. Theo thought he knew exactly what it was. 

The weathered thing was wrought like a parody of a man. A man with wings squatting on a throne, hanging its bloated octopoid head as though in contemplation, seeming for all the world like the product of a twisted imagination.

For those in the know, the figure’s likeness harkened back to the Program’s very first days. This was Theo’s first time seeing one in person, and briefly he thought it strange that the object didn’t seem to be all that the stories made it out to be; wasn’t it supposed to be a different color, have pictograms inscribed along its base? 

But Theo's heart was already racing from the chase, and the find quickened his blood some more, crowding out all other thoughts from his head but the hunt. 

“That’s your proof right there.” he said with a wide smile.