Dreams of the Compass Rose
Page 5
Varian glanced at the great eye, and often vertigo came upon him, a sense of spinning. . . . They had been many weeks upon the ocean. The wind had remained steady, pulling them along the surface of the waters like a flying lily.
Captain Lero was everywhere, moving silently along with the crew, calling out directions in a loud voice, sometimes steering the ship, sometimes up in the clouds swinging agile upon the high mast. When evening came and the winds stilled, she’d sit in warm camaraderie with the others, and eat the same dry supplies. Often he caught her grins, and the ivory flash of her teeth. Then he’d hear the laughter of the men at her witty casual comments. Varian, on the other hand, was given a spacious guest cabin, much roomier than the captain’s own, and richly furnished. The meals he ate alone each night were served on fine plates, and his cutlery was silver.
His bed was soft and piled high with silken pillows. And yet he tossed sleepless every night, among the sounds of gentle creaking wood, the splash of waves, the humming air, and the thought of her lying so nearby, on a poor hard bunk, her body stilled in sleep, her pale lashes resting against her hollow tanned cheeks. . . .
“M’Lord, are ye ill?” said the husky voice of an old sailor, anchoring Varian back in the present reality.
Varian turned, a slim dark-haired youth of slight build—pretty as a maiden, probably thought the old sailor. “I am fine,” he said haughtily, his eyes narrowing with irritation that someone would notice how he floated, how disembodied he was. . . .
“Ye don’t look it, m’Lord. The wind is cold today, and it bites. Ye’d best go inside. . . .”
Varian reached out with his mind and sent a finger of anger to prick the old man just behind the ear. The sailor reacted by stiffening sharply and, scratching his neck in that spot, instantly forgetting whatever else was on his mind. He turned and went back to his shipboard task nearby. The ship lurched with a sudden ocean swell, and Varian felt it necessary to grab the railing, so as not to go plummeting overboard. Immediately, from a few feet away the captain approached.
“Careful, Varian,” she said, pausing at his side. Her face bore the shadow of a smile. “The deck is newly scrubbed and slippery.”
Varian blushed angrily. “No need for your concern, captain, I can stand on my own.”
“On land maybe. But it takes quite some time to find the balance of the sea. It took me months, when I first started, before I could run upon the deck with disregard to the swaying.”
Unable to avoid it, he stared into her eyes. With a pang of vertigo he surely saw laughter there, a mockery.
“I am different,” he said. “And it would do you good to remember that.”
“And so I see.” With that, she turned away lightly, was once again on her way. He stared at her back, seeing in it the shape of an insult.
The Lord’s son has turned out to be more of a nuisance than I originally thought. He hides in his cabin all day, or else comes out and sulks, standing at the railing, staring off into the distance. I am constantly distracted with worry that the next swell and lunge will send him overboard, for the stubborn pup refuses to take any reasonable precaution. I’ve informed the crew to watch him closely, to care for him as though he were the child I never had.
For in some ways, he is. Not quite a man yet, scowling with pride, trembling with secret fear of the waters all around us, when no one is looking. And yet no longer a child, for he watches me in a certain way. . . .
He watches me in a way that I do not like. Maybe because I understand it so well, see what beginning thing it portends, see his eyes intense and deep upon me when he thinks I’m not looking.
Only another week upon the open sea. And then we come to the Southern shores, and we are rid of him once and for all. Already the men are whispering, looking at him and then making signs of warding if his shadow falls in a place where it may cross their path. Indeed, there is something heavy, a burdensome dark presence that has been with this ship ever since he stepped on board.
As though we carry an invisible cargo of a giant with us.
Even now, I can feel the ship straining under his weight. It pains me, for as always I feel everything. As the breeze stirs the sails, I can feel with my very mind the canvas unfurl heavily, just as I inexplicably feel the pressing of ocean upon the very fibers of the wooden panels that form the ship, its arching convex spine of antique cedar straining beyond all limit underneath a strange presence.
And today, of all days, as this pressure mounts in my mind, the wind too is rising, cold and serpentine. It is a bad sign for us. For today my wooden love is swaying far too precariously upon the growing waves.
High noon filled the upturned cloudless bowl of the sky. All around the Eye of Sun, the ocean blazed cerulean, with razor fragments of sun sprinkled upon the waters, their surface stirred by the cool wind. The ship drove forward powerfully, and the sails swelled full, with the almost living dilated eye bulging on the main sail, surrounded by the sun corona of gold.
“Ah . . . Strong wind and not a cloud in the sky,” the First Mate said, raising his ruddy hand to shield his eyes.
Captain Lero neared him as he stood at the wheel. She was silent, and did not want to put into words the sense of unease, the wrongness, that plagued her on this perfect day.
“Captain!”
Behind her she heard the young Lord’s son. He stood watching her like a hawk, while the wind swelled and gathered about him, sudden and possibly contrary to the wind billowing the sails.
“Captain, I would speak to you!”
“What is it, Varian?”
She spoke flatly, and did not turn to him, continuing to observe the approaching horizon. Varian stared at her through a haze, a lightness, floating high above deck, on par with the topmost sail, watching each fiber of the canvas and the highest point of the mast, watching—
But no, he was here, standing on deck before her—she an emotionless post, a thing of wood, an extension of the timbers, a weathered silent entity—
He reached out with his mind and became the sea spray, the microscopic droplets that hung all around them in the violent air and clung to the hollows of her cheek, or sunk into the fine escaped tendrils of her pale hair.
He did not expect it, but Captain Lero shuddered, somehow impossibly feeling the mind touch, and turned directly to him.
“What are you doing?” she said. And then she moved away from the wheel. She came forward, taking him by the shoulder, and with a firm pressure (at which he felt tongues of flame strike him) led him away to the far side of the deck, past staring sailors.
“Now,” she said, when they were out of reach of anyone’s hearing, “I would like to know what it is you’ve done. You’ve touched me somehow, I know.”
Varian stared up into her cool condescending eyes, and then sneered. “It is true what they say about you, you are insane. I’ve done nothing.”
And suddenly Captain Lero laughed. “Good,” she said. “It’s good you have a brave tongue. I’ll let it go this time. But the next time you ‘do’ such a nothing, I’ll have you put below deck for the rest of the trip. Your father warned me about the untamed powers you wield. Have you forgotten your promise to him not to attempt anything?”
Before he even understood what he was doing, Varian struck her on the cheek. Some madness had prompted him, a violent impulse, a reflex. Maybe because she’d laughed. Maybe because she reminded him of that one thing. . . .
The next thing he knew, he felt an excruciating force against the side of his head, felt pain crack him asunder, and was down, falling under the force of her blow. No longer was she laughing but towered above him, her face stark like the cold wind. He, meanwhile, scrambled on all fours, feeling the coarse wood of the deck, and hearing from all around the harsh guffaws of the sailors.
He heard Lero give orders to the men, orders to mind their own business—while the world spun around him with shame and incredulity, while below him, the deck rolled with the strong motion of the waves.
Dissolving, he was the wood itself, the old weathered deck. And then, he was the ship. Finally, seeping through, past the wood, he entered the cold moistness, the great expanse below, reaching out to fill himself with water, with the steady homogeneity, the cool flowing force. . . . The endless force rebounded in him, filling him like a sail with air, filling him to the brim with urgent energy that must have an outlet. He stood up slowly, and there was a crackling at the tips of his fingers. Sparks landed on the floor of the deck, hissing. The sailors’ laughter died as they watched him, watched the electricity transform his outline with a faint bluish edge.
Only Lero remained impassive, standing before him, looking directly at him with her unblinking eyes.
“You’ll regret this, Captain,” he said softly in a different voice, one so unlike his childish earlier outbursts.
“Oh, I regret this already, insolent whelp,” Lero said. “Allowing you on this ship. But I coveted your father’s gold. Not for myself, but for my ship. And I had given my word.”
But Varian smiled. And for the first time there was something terrifying in that smile. An end to childhood.
“Ah, Lero,” he said. “I would have you call me by another name. And I would have you covet something else. . . .” And he reached out with crackling fingers, and boldly drew them down her cheek.
At his touch, Lero froze. She was immobilized; not a muscle could she move, only a low grunt escaped her as she attempted to speak. At the same time the First Mate and three other men lunged in her direction, coming to her aid.
And were frozen also.
With the barest flicker of his mind he had reached out, not needing to turn his head to see them coming, knowing all along that they were there, that two had drawn long curving scimitars of steel.
A bluish faint crackle came from his fingers, came to fill the whole ship with stillness—
with wax figures of men, living and breathing, yet frozen like puppets. Some were still swinging high up on the mast, marionettes, balanced precariously many feet above. Several were bent from the waist, tying knots, or climbing the stairs down below. Three more were straining under the pull of rope. And another was stuck like an old comical albatross up in the crow’s nest. The bluish force enveloped all of them, all of it, permeating with angry unreleased fury the Eye of Sun.
Varian continued to smile, sensing them—their heartbeats, their straining lungs, their diaphragms rising, the pump of their blood—feeling through his pores the whole ship like one being, and at his fingertips, feeling her skin, her. . . .
Somehow, unbelievably, she managed to speak, croaked in a bare whisper, “Varian. . . . You must not . . . do this . . . stop. . . .”
And then, with a mere thought he brought her frozen stiff form to its knees. She did not crumple like he had done at her feet only moments ago. Rather, she sank on her knees slowly, with odd grace. Her head remained upright, unyielding, in an invisible stranglehold, while her wise defiant eyes continued to follow him. He stood with a ringing silence in his mind. Looking down into her eyes. Watching her upturned face, the wind dancing in the cobweb tendrils of her pale sun-washed hair. And then he came to lean closer, and his mouth touched her dry motionless lips. They were frozen, those lips, frozen like all the rest under his touch. And he felt an irrational stab of anger at that, forgetting that it was himself who was holding her immobile thus, unable to resist him or to respond. . . .
“I’ve wanted you so, Lero,” he whispered then, kissing her lips again clumsily, “I—”
But he was kissing a wax doll with dry windblown lips.
And when he released her mouth, there was a fury in her steady eyes. Seeing it, he knew suddenly she could never be his. Because she had given herself already, was taken by a thing of old cedar wood and cypress, was swallowed, and had relinquished her very soul to this ship. And within him the cold blue lightning suddenly exploded.
Varian was no longer one entity, but the whole cerulean expanse for leagues around, and he swelled below the puny wooden husk, thrust angrily against it from below with his homogeneous liquid mass.
A sudden swell of ocean came to rock the Eye of Sun. The frozen immobilized figures of the crew strained with silent cries, the wild expressions on their weatherbeaten faces clamoring for outlet, eyes brimming with emotion, with terror, striving against the force that held them. Lero was frozen with anguish as she felt the ship and its crew tossed upon sudden unnatural gusts of power, while the cold wind had risen into a gale, and ripped their hair, tore into their skin.
“Varian!” she managed to utter with alien strength. “Release me . . . no one to guide . . . the ship. . . .”
“The ship! That is all you care about, is it?” roared Varian, holding her against his chest as waves rose from all around, starting to crest the rails of the upper deck. He had to cry to be heard now, for the gale had become a storm, and overhead the sky, only moments ago sun-filled, was now black.
Ocean water poured upon the deck, drenching the frozen figures. Suddenly one of the crewmen, still doubled over in the same pose, was tossed overboard with a last stifled scream. Lero’s eyes were bulging with effort. She fought against the force holding her, fought against the stiffness of her own muscles, the miraculously petrified bones. . . . Varian staggered away, releasing her, and stretched his hands, glorying in the gale wind, while lightning crackled all around and another two sailors were washed overboard as the Eye of Sun rode a succession of impossible cresting waves, each over fifty feet high. And yet somehow, miraculously, the ship remained afloat. Water went glancing off of it, as though it were oiled. And the great sail, instead of tearing, collapsed of its own accord as the sailors that held it taut were thrown off like ants into the angry black waters.
“No!” Lero howled in anguish, seeing another old friend, a sailor who had been on this ship forever it seemed, ripped from his place near the bow and thrown far out into the churning waters like a still puppet.
“So, you’re invincible?” Varian raged, screaming insanely at the mast, at the deck, the timbers themselves, but never at her. “You think that you will stay afloat forever? Watch this!”
A wave began, greater than the others, and as the floor below them gave way—for the deck was now vertical—the Eye of Sun began to fall straight down. Lero felt herself tumbling, her stiff body receiving any number of bruises as she rolled toward the railing, knowing that she was about to be removed from this ship forever. At the last moment, something allowed her fingers to grab stiffly onto the wood, the very dear wood of her ship—it was what saved her, the only thing that saved her.
Or maybe Varian’s spell upon them all was waning. And no wonder. It took so much power to hold them thus and simultaneously wreak the storm all around.
Even now, he himself was holding onto some roping precariously, mad in his unconcern for his own safety.
“Damn you!” she cried, feeling her lips, the muscles of her jaws freed at last, holding on for dear life, while all around she heard the screams for help of the dying crew. “Damn you, hellspawn, who’ve come to destroy my ship and drown my men! I wish I’ve never seen your father, nor his accursed gold, never made this mad promise. I hope you drown in these waves now! I hope to all the gods that you fall like a dead weight and go straight to the bottom! I will not take you any farther on this ship, gods help me, but I would throw you overboard myself! Oh gods, take me! Take all my crew, only let nothing befall my ship!”
And then, with a great pause of silence, someone heard her. The wind screamed, and the waves arose suddenly all around them like a great mountain. And the one that was Ocean came forth from the abyss. And as the maddened form of Varian paused in his own moment of surprise and silence, looking up at the wall of water all around them, Ocean leaned forward with a breath of inner deep, of utter silence, and swallowed him, took him and all
of them into itself with a flick of one wave, a finger. . . . Lero was left alone on the ship, spinning now at the bottom of a well, an abyss of waves and silence.
As the spell came suddenly away, releasing me, releasing my lungs, I cried. Lying face down on the deck, I held onto the railing, and howled, and wept, as though Ocean itself had been in my lungs, in my heart, in my solar plexus.
They are gone, all of them. My men. And he is gone too, the mad one who has brought us all to this end.
Around me, the wall of Ocean stands, obscuring the sun. And as salty boundless tears run down my cheeks, my guts are wrenched by the howling sobs of a madwoman who has nearly lost her love by betraying another.
Lines of choice are blurred. Pride and weakness are intermingled. The madwoman betrays her own self.
My wooden beloved remains afloat. And yet—
My men are all overboard. They sink now, like sorrowful children of the land below, to mingle with the underworld of blue and azure, to dissolve into the boundless place of liquidity. To what depth will they fall, before their strong weathered hands are gnawed by schools of hungry fish? When will their bones separate from flesh and muscle, and when will water dissolve the innards, the lungs of those whose loud living voices I heard only this dawn, raised in laughter and camaraderie?
The First Mate, Jiand. The one with the loud voice that couldn’t carry a tune, and yet was singing daily with boundless laughter. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known old Hareve. Hareve. The one who used to tie the knots, and spit overboard, and grin at me, and show me how it’s done, one by one, when I was still scrubbing the lower decks. I’ve called Hareve
“father” once, not to his face, but that one time when we fought the pirates, and he stood before me, shielding me from three cutthroats, and got that slash on his neck. Verig and Bear. Two brothers, who once challenged me to draw steel, and who would’ve surely trounced me if it hadn’t been for sheer luck on my part. They’ve served under me for years now, and I cannot imagine not seeing their brotherly grins, full of poor missing teeth, and not knowing their unwavering loyalty.