He was at least half dressed, but what she was wearing amounted to nothing as far as the wind, or modesty, was concerned. He continued to the hatch and closed it, locking Doozer outside. The boat rocked as a wave passed below. Both he and the woman grabbed onto the hull to catch their balance.
She looked at the walls, alarmed.
Max said, in his clearest English, "We're at sea," and pointed to the windscreen behind her.
She narrowed her eyes at him with suspicion. But she turned to look quickly out the front window. Just as quickly she turned back to him, her eyes wide in surprise. They narrowed again.
"You!" Her voice cracked as she spoke and she shook the axe at him. "What are you…" she scanned the interior of the boat, "What's going on?" She looked back at him, her eyes wild. "What are you up to?"
Max had not been expecting to find a human woman under the ice of the True North. So he couldn't say he expected her to speak English. But she did. And with a clear British accent that Max recognized from the theater.
"I can explain everything," Max said, spreading his hands wide.
He looked up and smiled. The smile faltered when he realized the total inaccuracy of his statement.
"Well… not everything," he said, "Some…"
She said nothing.
He couldn't help himself but to look down at her body suit, which really did take form fitting to extremes. The white garment revealed a shapely muscular physique as well as clear, cliched evidence of low temperature.
"I still think you might be a bit… cold?" he said.
With conscious effort he brought his eyes back up to hers and then around the room to avoid gawking. He located the rolls of blankets, still tucked into their netting on the wall, halfway between himself and the agitated woman with the axe.
"I remember you," she said, eyes wide in realization, "You're the axe murderer from the cabin."
"I'm not a murderer," Max said and then realized that was exactly what a murderer would say.
"Oh, I am sure you have a special word for it, 'spiritual emancipator' or…"
"I'm the murderee, not the murderer."
"That's right. Don't forget who's holding the axe," she said, pointing a thumb towards herself.
“Okay. Alright. This is…” Max said, shaking his head, “We are both stuck on this boat. You’re right, you have the axe. If you’re going to kill me, then just do it. It would be fair enough I suppose, after all you did just save my life.” He started to get up. “And now… I am going to give you the perfect opportunity to get all your murdering done upfront and out of the way… As I reach over here to grab a blanket, you can just chop me right in the back of the head.”
He patted the proposed impact site with his hand.
Taking one step to the right and leaning forward slightly allowed him to unhook one end of a net which held a number of brightly colored blankets against the wall. Three of them fell to the floor. He picked one up and tossed it towards the hatch. Then he unrolled the other two and draped them over the star.
The woman did not chop him in the head. Instead she lowered the axe and stepped aside, looking at the dead crab which she’d seemed to have forgotten about till now. She lifted her foot to nudge the mangled murder crab but stopped when she noticed her lack of footwear. Her eyes moved up to her leg until she became aware that shoes were the least of her clothing concerns.
She lowered the axe and grabbed the blankets. “You’re right. I’m freezing my balls off here.”
She wrapped a puffy green blanket around herself, and then a knitted red one around that. She pointed at the crab with her double blanket wrapped hand.
“Th… that is s… s… s… seriously scary. If I wasn’t on a boat in the mid… dle of the ocean, I would be running right now. Fa… fast,” she said, suddenly stuttering from the cold.
“You can’t outrun a crab. Not for long anyway,” Max said. He looked at the crab corpse. “But crabs don’t eat people. Normally…”
“Only the frea… kishly tall ones then?”
Max didn’t understand the comment. At six foot nine, he was tall sure. But not freakishly so. He guessed her height to be about six feet. A bit shorter than average, but again, not freakishly so. He let it go. “Someone has been trying to kill me,” he said and cranked up the heat from the oil stove. “Someone else. Not just you.”
Chapter 10
Max, the tall bearded man, continued to tell his story. He spoke English with a strange throaty but clear accent. Occasionally he slipped into a thicker, more opaque dialect, mostly, she suspected, to curse. He was telling her of the events that led to them being there on the boat whilst he dismantled the hairy attack crab, tossing its parts into the ‘digester’. Barf.
Though he looked a bit dodgy, with his shaggy head of hair and beard, and the numerous red scabs on his otherwise handsome face, she felt like she could trust him, for now. He was either a very good liar, or as she suspected, not much of one at all. He clearly wasn’t trying to kill her as he hadn’t even tried to get the axe back.
When he’d asked her name, she was forced to admit she didn’t know. He accepted the answer without questioning it and said he would call her Snow White. Presumably because she was dressed neck to toe in white and had been found in the snow.
But her name wasn’t the only thing she was unsure of. All in all, she wasn’t sure about much of anything. She knew only the here and now. And while things could be worse—she could be locked in a boat at sea with an actual axe murderer—things could be better too. It would be nice for instance, if she could remember anything at all from her past. Like her birthday. Or her birth parents. How unfair to those two who’d given her life and, she assumed, raised her to healthy adulthood, only to be so easily forgotten. Poor theoretical parents. Perhaps they were trapped in the ice as well?
Perhaps she’d done a survey of her own, like those Max was telling her about. But she doubted it. When he described the tradition of ‘The Survey’, Snow wasn’t sure if it was an unconscionably dangerous coming of age ritual, or the greatest thing of which she’d ever heard. Certainly, it was the greatest thing she’d ever heard and still remembered. The system of a coming of age survey struck her as very open and free, but compared to what? She was sure things were less open for her growing up.
“I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that the first thing you do as an adult is go off on a dangerous journey,” Snow said, “That’s wacky.”
“It’s more like the last thing you do before becoming an adult.”
“How’s that better?”
“Well… most surveys aren’t all that dangerous. I mean Otho ‘surveyed’ a stretch of seashore five miles from the farm.”
“So, you’re saying that you’re special. More special than big Otho anyway.”
Max tilted his head in a way that said, “I didn’t want to say so. But yes.”
“I wish I could help,” Snow said. “I would spill the beans right now. Not just some of the beans… all of the beans. I would spill all of them.” She shook her head. “But I don’t have any beans.”
Max looked at her blankly.
“The beans in this case are memories. Of which I have none,” she said.
He lifted his chin to nod in a nonverbal, “Ah.”
He’d been hoping she would have some answers to his origin riddle. She did not. He looked disappointed, but not surprised.
“So, where do you think you… we… come from?” Snow asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Really? no one has any ideas about it?”
“There are plenty of ideas.”
“Oh? Like what?”
He thought about it for a moment, “Like the Dolamins,” he said, “They believe we arose from a race of turtle-like creatures, the Dolamins, that declined and disappeared shortly before we ‘arose’. There is a very superficial similarity between us and the extinct creatures.”
“They look human?”
“
Oh no. Like I said, they look like turtles. Sort of. But their bone structure has some vague similarities to us.”
“Oh?”
“Very vague.”
“Ah.”
“The Dolamins are split into two very different origin stories. The story of the more spiritual group begins with the Dolamins in a time of great suffering. Their eggs are thinning both in thickness and number. One of the Dolamins, smaller but cleverer than others of her kind, seeks out the wisdom of the great spirit. The young Dolamin travels to the largest tree in the forest, where the great spirit lives. The great spirit knows why the young Dolamin has come and speaks to her, ‘You must quest to find the Creek of Renewal, if you are to save your people.’ The spirit then tells of a far-off land wherein the creek resides. Past Garounk the defender, and in a place of which none of her people have either seen or heard tale. ‘But be warned,’ said the spirit, ‘Beyond Garounk are great dangers. You may be changed upon your return, if indeed you return at all.’ Despite the warning, the young Dolamin accepts this quest with zeal, eager to do all she can to save her people.
Her first challenge is to pass through Garounk, the barrier wall that has protected but also restricted her people since before time began. Garounk has but one narrow gap in all of its infinite length. A stream flows through the gap, so she makes her way up the stream to it. As she swims, she is fearful, but reminds herself to be brave, that her people are relying upon her. She is wrong, they are not relying on her. They would think her foolish if they thought of her at all, but they don’t because they are turtle-like creatures and they don’t really think much. But she is also right, they do need her if they are to survive.”
“Maybe it’s not that they don’t think much, but that they think as turtle-like creatures,” Snow said, “With turtle-like creature lives. And turtle-like creature interests. Like tasty leaves and juicy grubs. They might be thinking all the time, but about leaves and grubs, not each other and certainly not about each other’s non-leaf, non-grub quests.”
“Maybe,” Max said.
“Okay, okay. Carry on with the story, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
He nodded and continued, “The young Dolamin reaches the gap and, clambering and crawling, pulls herself up the cliff edge to squeeze through. But try as she might, twisting and turning, she cannot squeeze through the gap. It is the only path through, and she knows that she must find a way, for the sake of her people. In the end she has no choice but to remove her shell, which she does.”
Snow opened her mouth to object but closed it again. It was rude to interrupt a story. Double rude to do it twice!
“How?” she said unable to stop herself. “Did she have straps? A hinge? Explosive bolts?”
Max shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”
Snow waved with her hand, gesturing for him to continue.
“Leaving her shell on the ground behind her, her home and shelter, she crawls forward to the gap. She doesn’t look back at her shell, too afraid that if she does, she won’t be able to make the sacrifice. Instead she looks only forward and crawls through the gap, through Garounk.
The other side of Garounk is at first much like her home, but before long she is forced to leave the safety of the stream and crawl, first up, then down the other side where Garounk levels out onto a great plain of shrubs. She knows that she must travel across the great plain, but she can see from her vantage point on the edge of Garounk that there are dangerous monsters in the plain. Monsters she will not see while crawling through the brush. Monsters that will catch her and without her protective shell they will eat her. She must be wary. She determines then that, in order to keep an eye on the monsters, she must stand on two legs. Her first attempts are clumsy, her feet and legs are not suited to such movement. But the great spirit blesses her then, her feet grow longer and wider as do her legs. Now she is able to walk easily on two legs. And so, she crosses the great plain, avoiding the monsters and also enjoying the view which has so rarely been available in her life before now.” Max looked at Snow and paused.
Snow kept her mouth shut and again gestured for him to continue.
“She approaches the forest, the last barrier to cross before reaching the Creek of Renewal. Her pink skin had darkened in the sun which shone so bright in the plain, another gift from the Great Spirit. The forest has a look that fills her with a sense of foreboding. She enters with care and observes. She soon comes to realize that her long legs, which had served her so well on the plain, will be of little use here where the land is pocked with hidden pits of death. The pits, which are spread across the forest floor, camouflaged from view by sticks and dirt, pop open when prey cross above. She looks to the trees above and there sees her salvation. She will climb the trees and pass above the pit monsters. But her short arms and claws, made for carrying a heavy shell are of no use for climbing trees. Then the Great Spirit gives yet another gift and the young Dolamin’s arms grow in length and her claws turn to fingers on hands, even as she reaches forward to grasp the branch of the nearest tree. And so she crosses through the forest, above the hungry pits, not in them.
At the edge of the forest is a small creek. Smaller even than the stream that passed through Garounk. It is so small a place after so large a journey. But she knows that this is the Creek of Renewal. The great Spirit visits her one last time. “You must make a decision. Will you return to the way you were? You would regain your thick protective shell and claws. Or will remain as you are now? All legs and arms and thinking mind.” If she is to remain as she is, she is told to drink from the Creek, and though her people will be saved, they will be changed forever. She decides quickly and drinks from the Creek of Renewal. As she swallows the clear sweet water, one last transformation occurs. Long black hair grows from her head and flows down across her shoulders… and other parts,” Max said, his cheeks blushing lightly. “These stories can be very specific at times.”
“Ya, like skipping all the action in the forest and the plains but making sure to get all the gritty details regarding position and curliness of new hair,” Snow said.
“Anyway,” Max said and continued with the story, “the Spirit tells her that her eggs and the eggs of her people will now be safely carried within them. She thanks the Great Spirit, turns to head back to her home and imagines how her people will think of her now that they can truly think.” Max stopped speaking.
“It doesn’t end there,” Snow said, when it seemed like he was not going to finish the story. “She doesn’t have to just imagine what they would think of her now, she makes it back and they can tell her to her face… Right?”
“Nope,” Max said, “She gets eaten on the way back.”
“What? Barf,” Snow said. “That is not how stories end.”
“Ya, it’s a bummer alright. But it’s supposed to be a lesson about change, I guess. The creature that does her in is one she is familiar with. She pays it no attention as its kind have always been around, but she gave her shell away and put herself on the menu.”
“Barf.” Snow shook her head. “Wait, what about the other story? Happier ending?”
“It’s not much of a story,” Max said. “The other story also says there was a great leap in which most or all the Dolamins transformed, in a few years, from turtle-like creatures into humans. But in a more faux-sciency, pseudo-evolutionary, nonsensical, and less interesting way.”
“Has anyone told them that evolution doesn’t work like that?”
“I think so. Ya.”
“So where are we going?” Snow asked, changing the topic from the grim-slash-lame endings of the two stories. “Back to the history society then?”
“HOSaS,” Max said then paused before continuing, “I’m not sure we can trust them. I mean… I’m pretty sure they are the ones that sent the man to… stop me.”
“You mean murder? That sent the man to murder you?” she said. “It’s okay to say ‘murder’ when it fits the situation. I mean he did try to kill you right?”
�
��Okay, murder—”
“Attempted. Attempted murder, I guess. But they are the reason you are here?” Snow said, “Why would they want to murder you?”
“I don’t know,” Max said, “probably because of you.”
“Harsh,” Snow said, taken aback. “What did I do?”
“I’m pretty sure they don’t know anything about you. But I think my parents found the star, your pod? When they were my age. And they disappeared just like I almost did. I always assumed they’d just gotten lost on the tundra. Now, obviously, I’ve changed my tune.”
“If they don’t know about me, why’d you think they want to stop me being found?”
“It doesn’t make sense to me either.”
“So… where are we going then?” she asked.
“SoChar. Duncan still lives and works at the university there. He might have some advice for us. I’m guessing he’ll only tell us to go to New York. That’s where I live now,” Max said.
“Oh! I feel like, I always wanted to go to New York…” Snow said and it was true. She did feel that way.
“Different New York,” Max said. “The one from the movies probably. I’d like to visit there one day too. But I’m sure it’s long gone. If it ever existed at all. You can’t believe anything you see in the movies, as they say.”
That didn’t seem right to Snow. New York was definitely a real place. She was sure about that. She couldn’t remember what it was like or even why it would be important. But it did exist, she was certain of it.
“We will be safe when we get to New York, they won’t be able to murder us there. Well… not as easily. Plus, it’s the only place I can access Icarus Core,” he said.
Snow’s eyes widened in realization and she said, “Wait, they want to murder me too?”
“Perhaps we’ll stop on the way and pick up some supplies,” Max said.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 5