An old doctor wrapped a strip of cloth around the sprained wrist of the young farm worker sitting across from him. Three outlaws with black travel cloaks and covered faces came up to his bench. All three were armed, and one carried a large pumice rock as well as a sword.

The farm worker yelped and scrambled away, half-wrapped strips of cloth trailing from his arm.

“You the one they call Sage Doctor?” the fellow with the rock asked.

“Indeed I am,” the old doctor sighed, folding the scattered bandages. “How can I help you, good sirs?”

Two outlaws grabbed the doctor’s arms. One coshed him over the head with a rock.

Far to the east, an old fisherman developed a splitting headache, and twenty tons of seawater turned to steam. His sun hat also turned to smoke. The rim of the fisherman’s rowboat became rather warm as well, but fortunately not quite warm enough for the painted wood to combust. Even more fortunately, his fishing companion did not turn to steam along with the water.

“What is it? What happened?” a voice cried. The fisherman opened his eyes to see the concerned frown of Minnow, his friend of over fifty years and fishing companion for the past thirty-seven. One of her hands grabbed at the side of the rowboat, while the other clutched at her necklace. Even through two layers of cloth and her hand, the carved stone pendant glowed red. The necklace had been a gift from Minnow’s mother, and her mother’s mother before then.

“Grand-uncle Snapper!” Minnow’s stern voice cut through the air like a rusty knife. Unfortunately, the well-intentioned cry only intensified the fisherman’s migraine.

Snapper pressed both palms to his temples, but the pressure behind his eyes sharpened until it felt like a spike driving through his head. He doubled over with a gasp. Reddish curls fell in front of his face, no longer bound by the burnt weave of his favorite hat, and he vaguely noted that he was overdue for a haircut. However, the pain soon erased that line of thought.

Minnow’s hands dropped onto Snapper’s shoulders, steadying him before his lurches could tip the rowboat. The pendant, no longer clutched within Minnow’s fingers, flooded the area with brilliant white light. “Are you alright? Should we return to shore?”

“No need. Just… slight headache. Only… temporary,” Snapper gritted out. When the shivers faded enough for Snapper to uncurl, he took Minnow’s hand between his own and gave it a reassuring pat. “Happens from time to time. Nothing to worry about, child.”

The invisible knife carving through Snapper’s head shrank into a milder pressure. Meanwhile, the light of Minnow’s pendant faded from sunshine to glowworm-bright. As Snapper’s thoughts cleared, he received the vague impression that someone was digging through his belongings. Snapper glanced at the fish buckets, but fortunately none of the fish had escaped during his episode. Nor had the basket of bait worms spilled again. The problem clearly wasn’t in the boat.

“Did I… lock the house door before leaving? The root cellar? Tool shed?” Snapper muttered to himself, counting off each item on his fingers.

Minnow picked up her fishing pole again. “Don’t worry. Even if you didn’t, I pity the thief who tries to get past my boys.”

“The boys—that must be it.” Snapper gave a fond smile of his own. Minnow’s young daughter wasn’t likely to poke through Snapper’s belongings, if only out of sheer disinterest in the fine art of fishing pole manufacturing, but Minnow’s two older sons had no such inhibition. They were probably searching for a tool in Snapper’s workroom at this very moment.

Across the vast blue expanse of the sea, hundreds of dead fish floated to the surface. A sad tangle of straws also floated on the surface: the last remnants of Snapper’s hat. Minnow reached out of the boat and snagged a fish by the tail, inspecting the gills and fins to determine its health. It smelled like well-done fish stew.

“Nice catch.” Minnow looked just as impressed as she had been at a tenth of her present age. Her pendant stopped glowing entirely.

Snapper shook his head. He reached under his own seat and unfolded the net that they reserved for accidents. Though it had not seen use for over eight years, the ropes were still as sturdy as the day Snapper had woven this net.

The neighbors were amazed by the size of the catch that Snapper and Minnow brought to shore.

“How did you find so many?” they asked.

Snapper shrugged, faintly embarrassed by the attention as he hauled buckets of extremely dead fish from the boat. Minnow laughed and waggled a crooked finger at the onlookers.

“Magic,” the old fishwife whispered spookily.

Everyone laughed. Minnow’s family had toted around the tale of their magical Grand-uncle Snapper for as long as anyone could remember. These days, it was just another one of the old fisherman’s quirks, just like his uncanny ability to read the written word, his curling algae-red hair, or the fact that he hadn’t looked a day past seventy for the past seventy years.

At Minnow’s cottage, her three children were by the outdoor stove, preparing a hearty fish stew. As Snapper and Minnow approached, the one-year-old girl spotted them and released a high squeal. Her brothers looked up, and their faces brightened when they recognized the returning fishers. The middle child, a boy of seven, dropped his basket of vegetables and rushed over to help carry the latest catch.

“Mom, Great-grand-uncle Snapper! You’re back!” The boy took a bucket of fish from each of them, staggering slightly under the weight.

Long ago, the fisherman had been called just Snapper—or Northern Red Snapper, if the speaker was feeling particularly verbose. In any case, he rather preferred the nickname “Snapper” instead of “Northern Red,” since despite his foreign appearance, he did not recall ever visiting the northward reaches of the coastline. Later, his name became Uncle Snapper, then Grand-uncle Snapper, and now it was Great-grand-uncle Snapper. How quickly time passed; how quickly children grew and begat children of their own!

Snapper ruffled the boy’s hair with his newly free hand. “Indeed, little Marlin. It’s good to be back.”

At dinner, Minnow’s oldest son picked at his food while shooting furtive glances at Snapper. The fisherman noticed, of course, but he waited a good half an hour for the young lad to speak.

After the entirety of dinner passed and still no words seemed forthcoming, Snapper looked directly at the lad.

“What is it, Hal?”

Minnow’s oldest son jumped.

“N-nothing! I just...” Hal stirred his stew with the spoon. “Well, I was collecting mussels from the mud flats with Old Kelp. We saw a flash of light from the sea.”

Snapper glanced at Minnow, faintly alarmed. “That bright?”

“Old Kelp said it happened because you’re a Caster. Was he right? Were you Casting? How come I've never seen it before? Can you teach me?” Hal pressed on.

“Halibut Fisher! You know that we don’t talk about accidents, young man,” Minnow scolded. “Apologize to your great-grand-uncle at once.”

“It’s alright. No harm in being curious,” Snapper chuckled, waving off Minnow’s concern. “Teach you? Hmm. You remind me of someone I once knew. He would be… oh, about your grandfather’s age by now. Maybe more. Back when he was only a little older than you, he asked me to teach him to Cast.”

“And? Did you?” Hal asked hopefully.

“Well, I taught him how to cast a fishing rod.” Snapper shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t teach anyone that sort of Casting. I try to avoid accidents, but sometimes it just happens. I don’t know how to be a real Caster any more than you do.”

Hal seemed disheartened by this response, but he did not press further.

An hour before sunset, Snapper’s head began to throb again. Fortunately, there were no casualties aside from a wide patch of burnt grass and some fried crustaceans of the isopod variety.

Minnow sent him to bed early regardless.

“Get some rest,” she said, sounding extremely concerned as she deftly gathered the woven nets from the shallows. “I’ll handle the chores.”

That night, Snapper’s dreams were strange.

He was tied to a tree in a dark forest. Around him were several young fellows between the ages of thirty and fifty, each carrying a torch and various weapons with too many spikes and sharp bits to be practical.

On the tree stump across from Snapper, dressed all in finely embroidered black robes, sat an angry fellow with a metal wire wrapped around his forehead. The angry fellow held a fist-sized rock of grey pumice in his hand, and he glared at the rock as though it had committed a grave offense against him. The fellow was not just angry, then, but mad too. A madman through and through.

Snapper sighed in pity. Poor fellow. Didn’t even know how rocks worked.

“Empty again? Impossible. Why isn’t it working?” raged the madman to the rock.

“Good sir, that is a rock. It does not speak. Do you really expect it to answer you?” Snapper wanted to say. He opened his mouth, but different words tumbled out.

“Good sir, you will never find what you seek. It is not for the likes of you.”

The madman looked at Snapper, and rage flashed across his face. Perhaps he had been talking to Snapper all along, not the rock.

“You will not resist forever.” The madman held up the rock. It changed color from grey to black, blacker even than the madman’s robes, and a tugging sensation clawed at Snapper’s person. The entire world seemed to warp and twist around the abyss within the rock. The madman pressed it against Snapper’s forehead. “Give me your—”

The madman’s words were lost as the tug sharpened into a knife at the base of Snapper’s skull. He cried out, convulsing violently, and the world splintered like ripples on the surface of a pond.

Snapper woke in his bed with another headache, this one exacerbated by the brilliant sunlight streaming onto his face. He curled up for a moment, pressing both hands to the sides of his head. Staying still seemed to help, as did the horizontal position. He coughed, curling up even more. As the pain slowly abated, he registered the light.

Eyes screwed shut, Snapper crawled toward the window, reaching for the shades. His hand encountered flat cloth, and eyes popped open in confusion. If the shades were already drawn, sunlight should not enter his room.

Orange shadows fluttered across the inside of the shades. Oddly, the shades and attached window frame were horizontal on the floor. Snapper turned around, searching for the source of the light. To his dismay, half of the room had caught fire. Not a clean half, either—instead, it seemed as though someone had scattered a shovelful of embers across all of the walls and furniture, igniting dozens of independent fires around Snapper. The other half of the room was gone entirely.

Snapper peered over a large hole in the nearest wall. The upper half of the room had blasted into bits of wood and rubble that were now scattered across the surrounding land. Far above, where the roof should have been, the stars winked at Snapper like a million eyes in the distant black.

Well, that explained a lot. There was a reason Snapper slept in the toolshed while Minnow and her family lived at the cottage a quarter mile down the road. Granted, that reason was mainly because Minnow’s grandfather didn’t quite trust the old red-haired man whom he had dredged from the water while deep-sea fishing, but results generally mattered more than intentions. Snapper could manage fire in a toolshed, as he had a few times before, whereas fire in a cottage with sleeping children would be more dangerous to handle.

Snapper stripped the coarse woolen blanket from his bed and set about patting the fires into oblivion.

As he worked, a slight heat registered around his head. He reached up to stroke his beard thoughtfully, but his hand found concentrated warmth. A sudden suspicion struck him, and he buried his head among the folds of the blanket. The heat dissipated, leaving behind the lingering stench of burnt wool and hair.

Well, that was one way to get a haircut.

“Grand-uncle Snapper!” a voice shouted. A torchlight bobbing in the distance slowly grew into the worried figure of Minnow, hobbling over with a lantern in one hand and a heavy pail in the other. Water splashed out of the pail at every step. Minnow momentarily paused to douse a flaming shred of thatched roof that was embedded in the ground, but she soon resumed the frantic dash toward Snapper.

Snapper was glad for the night, as it masked the shame creeping over his face. This accident could easily have been lethal, had anyone been near the toolshed at the time of the explosion. If Minnow’s children had been caught in the blast, she would never have forgiven him. Fortunately, it was not so; only the possibility remained to haunt Snapper.

Crawling out from behind an overturned table, Snapper waved a coil of burning rope in the air.

“Over here.”

That which could be salvaged, they would. That which could not—well, for Snapper and Minnow, two individuals highly experienced at turning even the most worthless scraps into useful fishing tools, rare indeed was the item that could not be salvaged.