Half Discovered Wings

by David Brookes

  Then they all sat and waited for the privateers to pass.

  Gabel placed himself beside Rowan, smoothing her hair and laying it out neatly for her.

  Caeles slid over. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s the same.’

  ‘I could watch her for a while.’

  A moment, then Gabel said, ‘Thank you. I’m tired.’

  He went to sleep further up the cabin, near the magus.

  ‘Worn out,’ said Caeles, voice nothing more than breath. He looked down at the woman. ‘He cares too much for you.’

  The hours passed. The captain stayed awake, behind the metal shelving, filled with tack and rubbish. The chief and his mate were probably awake as well, but seemed asleep. Their chests moved slowly up and down as they lay on their beds.

  Caeles backed up against the wall and pulled his knees to his chest. ‘You’re going to wake up,’ he said. ‘Then you can sing him your song again.’

  ~

  For many hours, Caeles sat with the wakizashi resting on his fingers, palms up, eyes closed. It was hot in the room now, after spending the entire night and most of the early hours trapped in the crew’s berth with no fresh oxygen to relieve them from the stuffiness. The air was stale, reused, and warm.

  Caeles stirred. One, then the other eye opened, and surveyed the room carefully. Nothing had changed. The sword went carefully back into its scabbard. He liked to hold the weapon, feel the coldness that never left it. Though he was reminded of fire and spectres, it ironed his nerves.

  People were tired. The captain talked quietly to the chief bosun. Lanark sat alone, eyes closed, on one of the hammocks that hung silent and still from the wooden ceiling. Across from him, hidden from view by a wall of cluttered bookshelves, lay the magus, hands on chest, but eyes open and alert. In the corner, at the opposite end near the door, lay the comatose Rowan, and sitting by her side her self-appointed guardian, Joseph Gabel.

  Caeles stood and stretched. He then walked to the captain and sat silently next to him, and asked his question.

  ‘Is it safe yet?’

  ‘Not for a while,’ the bearded man replied. ‘But there’s only minutes to go. Please be patient a little while longer.’

  Caeles had no problem with that.

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ he said, which earned him a wise nod.

  He walked to Rowan, whose hair was laid in braids on both sides. It was uneven in length, strands fraying out the ends of each plait, irregularly splayed in a dark tassel.

  ‘Did you do that to her hair?’ he asked Gabel solemnly. It reminded him too much of the way a dead woman’s hair might be done up for an open casket.

  Gabel nodded. ‘To keep it from her face.’

  ‘…It looks nice.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The captain said he would go on deck and check the instruments to see if the other ship was out of range. Caeles moved closer to the magus, leaning against the wall and watching him. The old man seemed to be in meditation. After more than half an hour, the magus’ lips moved. His eyes had a different quality now, brightly animated.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Caeles asked.

  The magus smiled. ‘Finally: room to breathe.’

  He said it just as the captain jogged down the stairs, a grin parting his knotted beard.

  ‘All clear,’ he announced. ‘The other ship has passed.’

  He spoke at normal volume, spreading relief.

  ~

  Another vessel sailed the great lake that night. Its presence had caused the crew and passengers of the Tractatus to go into silent hiding, yet their concern was unfounded. The boat they thought was inhabited by licensed pirates was empty; its only crew were dead.

  Some had jumped into the waters further toward the centre of the lake; some had fallen; some had been pulled, and some had been pushed. Seven new corpses now lifted the waters of the Lual. The rest of the crew, the remaining three privateers, were also dead.

  Their bloody bodies were spread over the deck and throughout the vessel’s innards; their own painted a gory mess over the rough oaken canvas of the boat’s floor. Limbs and other body parts still rolled about on the forecastle, but the majority had ended up over the gunwales.

  No waves existed on the Lual. All there was that night was the tender wake left behind by that carrier of corpses, the macabre ghost-ship that would never be found.

  *

  Thirteen

  WISHES AND WHISPERS

  Gabel was preoccupied. As soon as the captain reported the all clear, he lifted Rowan up over his shoulder and carried her to her berth, resting her on the bed. After calling twice to her in a hushed voice and receiving no reply, he went to stand by the bow.

  Caeles stood by him a few minutes later, both men silent as they looked out over the dark surface of the lake. No land could be seen yet, only a light mist that hung in arched twists like the strokes of an enthusiastic painter.

  They were nearing the centre of the lake, that which the captain called the “graveyard”. There lurked the semi-submerged carcasses of once great ships, or the skeletal remains of some smaller boat that had scuffed the coral reefs around the centre and broken apart.

  ‘When I’m out here,’ Gabel said suddenly, surprising Caeles in the silence, ‘I can sometimes hear what sounds like snatches of music, coming in from out there. Not quite music … Maybe it’s a voice. Just a few notes.’

  Caeles knew what he was talking about, and as the hunter carried on, almost to himself, Caeles remembered that song he had heard on the shore. He had assumed it had been Rowan, but … had there been a second tune there? The more he thought about it, the more he recalled a dark shadow to Rowan’s melody that had left a misty residue on his mind. But—

  He could hardly remember. Confused, he only gave a noncommittal reply, a low grunt. They watched the mist whorl around the ship as it passed through, leaving only the faintest of wakes.

  Then Caeles said something without even thinking about it. ‘Rowan sang for you the night before we departed.’

  He had no idea why he blurted out such a thing. A guilty part of his mind – guilty at being the one to have heard it, when it was meant for another – triggered his lips and tongue into moving. Afterwards he was glad he had spoken, but the moment he did he could barely stand the look on Gabel’s face. It was the look of an injured man.

  ~

  The day seemed shorter than all the rest. As the boat proceeded in a more direct route to the other side of the Lual, closer and closer to the ship-wrecking reefs, Gabel became increasingly restless.

  It was taking just too long to get Rowan to a doctor, and while it was easy to forget why they were rushing, and concentrate on fear for safety, the full truth always hit him after enough time: Rowan was slowly dying.

  Gabel was constantly checking her pulse, memorising the beats per minute. Slowly but surely her heart was failing in her chest. Every day brought her two or three beats less a minute. It was, at the moment, a steady sixty-one, but tomorrow it would be fifty-eight, then fifty-five … By the time they reached Goya it might not be beating often enough to keep her body alive.

  First to go would be the toes, then the fingers, and they would freeze and drop of as if with frostbite. Then slowly her limbs would be starved of the blood as well, and begin to decompose, and maybe at this stage her hair would whiten and fall out. It may become necessary to stand her on her head to keep her brain alive.

  No-one was qualified enough to say whether it was a coma or not. Gabel thought of her as sleeping to settle his concerns, but his self-delusion didn’t always help. Delusions needed to disguise themselves in order to work, and Gabel was all too aware that he was creating falsities to make things easier for himself.

  That evening the mist around the Tractatus once more turned to fog, and visibility was reduced to only fifty or so metres. It was on this day that they passed by the first of the wrecks.

  The ruined ship was a large one, at least a few hu
ndred metres in length. Made of half-rotted wood gilded with ribs of rusted iron, the massive vessel was nothing but a skeleton. Some of the decking was still there, visible due to the ship’s angle. In places huge segments of the wood had fallen into the water, giving a cross-section of its innards. A large silver boiler that had once helped power the thing lurched out of the water, still attached to the walls of the ship. It swung sadly – perhaps one of its struts had recently broken and it still moved from momentum – and creaked as it did so.

  After almost a minute of passing it by, Gabel could make out the name on its front bow, which was still free of rust but covered with lichen. It read: Madame Chaste. There was a picture of a haloed figure, carved into the keel at the very front of the vessel, her holy figurehead.

  A moment of mourning silenced the crew of the Tractatus as they left the collapsed giant to rest. It quickly became just another murky shadow in the swirling fog.

  Gabel joined Caeles on the bridge, where he was carefully watching the captain steer the vessel. A sensor told them they had just passed over a large coral bank, the same one on which Madame Chaste now perched.

  It was a clear warning to them all.

  They had entered the graveyard of the Lual.

  ~

  When nighttime came, Gabel and the rest of the passengers had seen enough rotting hulks to satisfy their curiosity. After each one, Gabel knelt in prayer, saying that it was what Rowan would have done, though each time he would stand afterwards and shake his head as if to rebuke himself. Caeles had seen him washing his hands in the mornings and at night, and often found him whispering quietly to himself whilst looking out from the bow.

  Night began to set in. Walking from the bridge around to the cabins, Caeles was almost knocked in the face by an opening door. Gabel stepped out. With a mumbled apology the hunter walked away, leaving Caeles standing by the closed door of the shrine.

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in Irenia,’ he said as he followed Gabel into the berth. Rowan lay on the bed, her hair still in the pleats.

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘You did once. I heard you talking to the magus: you said you could never make up your mind if you did or not.’

  ‘So perhaps now I have.’

  Caeles watched the man, bending over Rowan and adjusting her position slightly so that she rested more neatly on the fold-out bed. Caeles remembered Gabel’s defence of Rowan’s insistence to rest on the Sabbaths, before Caeles convinced him it was doing her more harm than good.

  Maybe now he wants to pray. For her. He’s got nothing else to do…

  Caeles nodded to himself and left the cabin, walking around to his own. The magus was there, resting with his wrinkled eyelids closed, and hands clasped together. He always looks so old, Caeles thought, until he moves. Then it’s like he’s a young man again.

  The eyelids rose as he entered. ‘Has the night set in?’

  ‘Yeah. No stars, as usual. I’ve never missed them before.’

  ‘Don’t let it worry you,’ the magus said. ‘They’re still there.’

  ~

  At nightfall it was usual for the bosun to take over the control of the boat, leaving the captain to sleep until morning. Halfway through the night, the mate would then take the bosun’s place, letting him rest, and the pattern would continue.

  The chief began to fall to sleep reasonably fast after a long day on the bridge. His mind dwelt on intangible subjects to help him drift off: thoughts, desires, dreams.

  Everybody dreamed, and soon enough the chief began to dream himself.

  The chief’s full name was Timothy Yarde. Although the mate Lanark worked on the waters of the Lual as a career, the chief worked for profit. The sailor’s life was a dangerous one in those risky times, and the captain gave him wages that were more than the average person made in such a run-down world. There was also a fair chance of plundering some dilapidated vessel when it ran ashore – and he regretted leaving behind so much loot aboard the decrepit ships that they were passing in the graveyard. In addition, he got paid for the odd delivery job he might acquire on the side that the captain didn’t know about.

  Timothy Yarde aspired for riches. In the crews’ berth he had a small sack of thin nickel coins that amounted to a fair bit in post-Conflict currency, and a jar full of coppers would be ready for exchange the next time they stopped in one of Lual’s neighbouring districts.

  When Timothy finally fell asleep, he dreamt of walking along the bed of the great lake. It was as if the water were air; he met no resistance as he walked, and had no trouble breathing, but there were bubbles and fish swimming before his eyes, and crustaceans around his feet.

  There were hills and mountains there, and he traversed them, in awe at the new world all around him.

  A stairway carved into the reef beckoned him. Walking fearlessly up and up, then breaking the surface, he arrived in what looked like a bowl ten metres each way cut into the coral. The clear waters lapped at its edge, and the skies, though misty, seemed brighter than usual.

  Standing in the centre he heard voices singing quietly, in whispers. Stars began to pierce the blanket of fog and shine down at him, one at a time, in tune to the singing. One gleaming star seemed to fall, but when it dropped to the ground by his feet he bent and realised that it was a silver coin, winking at him. It was thick and heavy – of high value.

  More stars gleamed in the sky but were not offered like the last. He held the one he had and called to them, but they only swam placidly in the sky above him, then, one by one, blinked out of existence.

  The coin in his hand tickled him, and he looked down to see it shine.

  The heavenly singing voices came closer, and he felt fingertips stroke his neck. Unafraid, yet unable to bring himself to turn and look, the voices by his ear made promises and suggestions.

  ~

  The next day brought them closer to the centre of the Lual, nearer to the locus of the dreaded graveyard. More dead ships, crumpled against banks of living coral, guided them toward the centre of the lake until they were so tightly packed that it became difficult to navigate between them.

  The names of the deceased called out to them from once-polished plaques or engravings in the sides of the vessels: Mitten; Ushio; Liberation Faction; Gold Band; Étoiles de Mer.

  The fog became constant, never lifting except for a few seconds at a time, when, if the winds were right, a mass of upturned ships could be seen, every few hundred feet. The captain had never once been through the graveyard, repeating over and over that it was too dangerous, has claimed too many vessels. He mentioned how he was pleased to see that all the ships they passed were much larger than the Tractatus.

  ‘Why is that important?’ Gabel asked.

  ‘Because bigger ships carry themselves further under water. A small vessel might sail right over the same banks of coral that took these great ships.’

  The sensors beeped constantly. Each half-submersed vessel that came within range constituted a proximity warning to the sensor, and simultaneously it scanned the reefs beneath them, warning the captain if they were too close to any particularly high bank. Everyone did his best to ignore its constant intonation.

  Caeles received permission to try to disable the useless, energy-consuming lights that illuminated the bridge. The captain had Lanark watch him constantly, but Caeles noticed how sometimes the mate wasn’t paying attention, letting his gaze drift to some place away from where they were, or closing his eyes for long periods of time as his breath quickened. After Caeles asked him if he was ill, the man shook his head and replied that he felt as if he hadn’t slept that night. From underneath the overhanging bridge controls, Caeles mumbled a weak expression of condolence and went back to work.

  ~

  In the twilight obscurity, dark clouds swarmed overhead, blown over from the rainforests further west, bringing the night-time early. The winds turned the clouds to interlocking paisley swirls. As they dissipated they let their remaining cargo spill
in one short downpour.

  The rain had been falling for fifteen or so minutes before the vessel suddenly let out a screeching roar, and shuddered to a halt.

  Raindrops pounded the motionless deck. From inside the cabins it sounded like an army of creatures knocking in staccato rhythm on the walls, calling them out.

  From the berth underneath the bridge they heard the captain swear violently and storm out onto the deck, drowning out the rain with his thunderous footsteps and vulgar language. He looked over the side. Caeles and Gabel moved out to see what the matter was, leaving the magus and Rowan below deck.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Caeles asked.

  ‘We’ve hit a bank,’ the captain said. ‘Damn and shit! Get back down there and check for leakages.’

  As Caeles went down into the lower berth through the bridge, Gabel stood at the bow. The water was moving in waves now, crested with white where the water hit the side of the vessel and turned to spray. He could see no damage.

  The two crewmen entered the bridge from outside, having lashed rigging together on the back deck. The captain muttered in an expletive-rich rage, hands gesticulating this way and that, mainly to the lake under his feet.

  ‘—the suit and see how bad it is, will you?’ Gabel heard the captain order, as he went to check below decks.

  Gabel cast a glance toward Rowan when he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. She was sound asleep, not disturbed in the slightest by the sounds of torture the boat had just issued. He rejoined Caeles.

  ‘Does it look as if there’s a lot of damage?’

  ‘None that I can see.’

  ‘No water on the inside. I guess that’s good.’

  Just then Lanark came down and said, ‘Chief’s going over the side to see what the damage is. Any leaks down here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone injured?’

  ‘How is he going over the side?’ Caeles asked.

  ‘We’ve got a diver’s bell. He can go under the surface and check if the boat’s hurt.’