Unruly Souls: Three Tales of Portland

By Kate Samuels

In this Portland, hipsters share the sidewalk with sasquatches; a hungry sturgeon god haunts the Willamette; tree octopi chitter in the branches of the Douglas firs; and locally roasted cold brew isn't the only thing worth selling your soul for.

 

In "Water Ways," a delinquent with a magical link to the Benson Bubblers expends her last chance on a lost cause.

 

In "The Masked Market," a small-town dreamer visits Saturday Market's sinister nocturnal sister to buy a wish.

 

And in "Unruly Souls," a shanghaied sailor seeks revenge just as the flood of 1894 flushes Old Portland's shadier elements out of the tunnels—and some interesting aquatic life into the streets…

 

This is a Portland you won't find on the magnets at Powell's.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harkraven Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777542511

Kate Samuels

Kate Samuels is a true Portlander—meaning her other car is a bike, her spirit animal is a food cart, and she’d like her home address to be a treehouse atop a bookcase in Powell’s. When she’s not copyediting for pocket money or taking long, rambling architecture walks around the Alphabet District, she can generally be found writing in an indie coffeeshop.

Book preview

Water Ways

Showing up late for a blackmailing spoils some of the effect, I say without looking up from the vase on the side table, where a ragged betta flutters around the twisted roots of a water bamboo. He wouldn’t be so ragged if somebody would change his water, my Knack told me when I dipped my finger earlier.

Sorry, Fiona Moonflower Stewart murmurs, spoiling the rest of the effect. I hear her perch on the arm of the couch across from mine. A blender grinds behind the counter, drowning out the soft Sara Bareilles on the radio: You and me, always between the lines... It’s that off hour between lunch and dinner when local basement bubble tea places with musty couches thrive, and Fat Straw’s about as packed as I’ve ever seen it—which means we’re sharing the place with two baristas, a trio of middle schoolers, a yuppie, and four betta fish. The baristas keep glancing at me. When I walked in, one of them elbowed the other and whispered.

I jiggle my knee and suck the last pearl up my straw. That’s it for the Nutella milk tea I really couldn’t afford. I set the empty cup next to the betta’s vase and leave the silence-breaking up to Fiona Moonflower. The Secret dangles between us like something that’ll explode if we look at it straight on.

No more blue hair? she inserts tentatively, after a long pause. It’s a feeble opening and she knows it, but how else do you bridge everything cluttering the five years since we last talked?

She hasn’t changed much since we were thirteen—same drifting hands, same freckles, same hair down to here. Now that she’s got her own money, I’m not surprised she’s into harem pants and yoga wraps. She smells like the Burnside potions boutique where she works. You’re not too good at this blackmailing thing, are you? I ask.

I’m not blackmailing you. Her hands drift to her quartz tree-of-life pendant, then to her dangly earrings, then to a loose thread on the couch. We’re friends, Nix. I just—

This is the part where you tell me how it’s going to go down, I supply. Throw in some cryptic allusions to The Secret, twirl the figurative waxed mustache, look over your shoulder to make sure the kiddies over there aren’t eavesdropping. Lean in, murmur. Being you, maybe you’ll start by reminding me that we were close once. When it comes to blackmail, you might say I know the script.

She looks at me like a drop-kicked puppy. I pretend I don’t care. It’s not like she doesn’t already know how I made my way after I lit out from The Home, unless she was living under Haystack Rock when the Mercury broke the story last year.

We need your help, she says.

We?

She glances up at the ceiling, and her hand drifts to her pendant again. The Daughters of the Hollow.

Great. Thirteen vegan tree-huggers with Knacks like hers—potions, birdsong, green thumb, stuff that stays nicely and tamely tied to its own neighborhood. Stuff that doesn’t earn you your very own parole officer. What do you need me for? Finding a leak in your garden hose? Seeing what’s poisoning your lupines?

Sabotage, she says. And now that she’s acknowledged The Secret, we’re done dancing around. There’s this firm, she plunges on in a fervent whisper, some kind of developer, and they’ve just bought up a bunch of Washington Park. They’re starting deforestation the day after tomorrow. God only knows how many sasquatches and raccoons are going to lose their homes, not to mention the endangered northwestern spotted tree octopi that just built a nest—I talked to them, you know, and they’re quite frightened. My coven can deal with the little bit that overlaps Goose Hollow, and the Sasquatch Rights Committee’s already on the Arlington Heights bit, but most of it’s in the park. Your Knack can cross neighborhood lines. All you have to do is mess up the machinery.

I realize I’m biting my lip where the ring used to be, and stop. I wish she could’ve chosen a more private spot to wave the I-can-ruin-your-life-with-one-email-to-the-cops-about-what-you-can-really-do flag in my face. When I force myself to look at her, she won’t meet my eyes. She’s watching the betta flutter in its vase like it’s the most fascinating thing west of the Willamette.

I can’t, I tell her.

Nix, she pleads, which isn’t at all how you go about blackmailing someone. It’s not evil, your Knack. It’s—please. You can see part of the site from Chiming Fountain. Just go look. Then you can decide.

"I mean, I can’t." Impatiently, I fold down the top of my combat boot to show her my anklet. I’ve collaged it with ripped-up bumper stickers and vintage lace, mostly to thumb my nose at Officer Stark, but that doesn’t hide what it is. The processor buzzes angrily against my finger when I brush it. Stark will know the second I use my Knack. If all I had to use was the half he knows about, I’d consider it. He’d probably let me off