by Clive Barker
Mischief and the brothers were standing watching all of this, not knowing whether to hide or fling themselves over the side.
“I’m not going near that thing,” John Serpent warned.
“You of all people, Serpent,” said John Pluckitt, “should be happy in its company.”
The exchange had drawn Geneva’s attention.
“Mischief!” she yelled. “Distract it!”
“Do what?”
“You heard me: distract it!”
“How?”
“Use your imagination!”
So saying, Geneva went down on her knees in the stinking filth that had been expelled from the worm and searched for her missing sword.
“The grappling hook!” said John Moot. “Mischief! Listen to me! Get the grappling hook.”
“Where is it?”
“Behind us!” said John Drowze.
“I don’t see it!”
“On the cabin wall, Mischief!” John Moot yelled. “Are you blind?”
There was indeed a hook hanging in place against the wall of the cabin. Unfortunately, it was directly beneath the dragon, which had reared up to better assess the dispersal of its enemies.
“Don’t worry,” Drowze said. “It’s not interested in us! We’re beneath its notice.”
“Famous last words,” said John Serpent.
But Drowze was right. For the moment at least the dragon was uninterested in the John brothers. It was watching Geneva on her hands and knees, smiling with satisfaction at the sight of her humiliation.
Mischief ducked beneath the snaking neck of the beast and snatched the grappling hook out of its cradle. It was about six feet long, and it had an iron hook at its end, but it didn’t feel like the most potent of weapons.
“It’s going to break!” Mischief said.
“You’ve no choice!” John Drowze yelled to Mischief.
“I know,” Mischief said. Then he hollered up at the great worm. “Hey you!”
The dragon glanced down at the brothers for a moment with a supercilious look, then it casually knocked them aside with its snout, as though they were a piece of bad meat that had somehow found its way onto its plate. With Mischief floored, it slid its huge spiked head past him to get to the cabin door. “Girl-child!” it said. “You can come out now.”
It pushed at the door, which flew open, its hinges wrenched from the frame.
Giddily, Mischief got to his feet. He heard Tom yelling to the beast to stay out. The creature drew a breath and expelled it. As it did so, all the windows in the cabin blew outwards, and a wave of smoky heat erupted from the interior. Coughing and blinded by tears, Two-Toed Tom and Tria stumbled out of the cabin, driven from their refuge by the heat.
Then the dragon opened its mouth, sliding its scaly chin over the ship’s creaking boards to scoop up the child.
Before it could do so, Kiss Curl Carlotti came at it with a short sword and stabbed the tender flesh around its nostril.
Dark blood sprang from the wound and hissed as it hit the Belbelo’s boards. The dragon’s lip curled with anger and it opened its mouth horrendously wide, dislocating its bottom jaw so that its mouth gaped like a tunnel.
“Watch out, Carlotti!” Mischief yelled, scrambling over the wet deck to draw the dragon’s attack away from the child.
He went straight for its eye, driving the grappling hook at the narrowed orb. The hook caught under the dragon’s eyelid, more by chance than design.
“Pull!” John Serpent yelled.
Mischief did exactly that. The delicate membrane of the dragon’s eyelid tore and a second spray of blood came from the beast. Some of it spattered on Mischief’s bare arms. It stung ferociously.
The dragon shook its head, forcing Mischief to let go of his weapon. It reared up, letting out a bellow of narcissistic fury.
“My face!” it cried, its din making the vessel reverberate from end to end. “My perfect face! My beautiful face.”
It shook its head, loosing the hook from its lid. More blood spouted from the wound, filling the dragon’s eye.
“I think you did it!” John Moot said.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” said Mischief, backing away over the blood-slickened boards.
Half-blinded, the dragon lowered its head to the deck again, opening its tunnel mouth and sliding its lower jaw over the boards to scoop Mischief up.
Weaponless now, all the brothers could do was retreat before the creature’s vast maw, yelling for help as they did so.
“Geneva! Somebody! Please God, it’s going to eat us alive!”
“I’m coming!” Geneva called back to him.
She was still digging through the vomitus, searching for her sword. Her endeavor was not helped by the violent rocking of the boat, which was escalating as the dragon’s motion turned the waters around the Belbelo to a seething frenzy.
The dragon’s maw was a foot or two from the brothers now.
Having nowhere else to run, Mischief fled into the smoky cabin.
“Meat!” the dragon yelled, determined to devour its mutilators. “You are all meat!”
The spikes on the dragon’s hood prevented it from getting through the door, but the maddened beast wasn’t going to let a little detail like that stop it. It shook its head back and forth with such violence that the doorframe cracked and broke. Then it pushed its head in through the opening it had made and into the cabin.
The brothers were trapped.
“Kick it!” yelled Fillet.
“Punch it!” yelled Drowze.
With no hope of escape to left or right of the monster, and only the prospect of its hot-breathed throat ahead, Mischief went into a flailing frenzy, punching its snout, its lips, even its gums. But it availed him nothing. The worm thrust its head into the cabin and closed its teeth around the brothers’ body. It did so with a curious gentility. No doubt it could have bitten Mischief in half if it had desired to do so, but it apparently wanted to torment him with a slow devouring, to which end it dragged the screaming brothers out through the smashed door.
On deck, everybody was yelling now, with the exception of Tria. Threats, demands, prayers: all were being offered up to keep Mischief from being eaten alive.
The dragon was unmoved. Slowly—almost majestically—it lifted its head, the brothers’ body hanging out of either side of its mouth, and began to sink back down into the frantic waters of the Izabella.
In one last act of desperation, Tom ran to the edge of the boat, reached out, and seized hold of Mischief’s hand.
Somehow the worm managed to speak, even though it had a choice piece of meat between its teeth.
“Two for the price of one,” it growled.
“Geneva!” Tom yelled. “For A’zo’s sake, help us!”
“I’m here!” Geneva yelled back to him.
She had finally located her sword. Not waiting to wipe the slime off it, she raced over the pitching deck to strike the enemy afresh.
Tom had caught hold of the rail of the Belbelo with one hand, but his grip on the slick rail was tenuous; and every time the dragon pulled to loosen Tom’s hold, its teeth sank more deeply into John Mischief’s body.
He and his brothers were not bearing all this in silence. They were letting it be known that this was an agony; eight voices, all howling or sobbing or shouting, demanding that something be done to free them before it was too late.
Geneva yelled out to the dragon now, as she came to the side of the boat.
“Put them down, worm!” she demanded. “Or I take jour life. Down, I said!”
The dragon looked at Geneva’s sword from the corner of its blood-blackened eye. Then—seeing that if it held on to its quarry for another moment, Geneva would slash its throat—it did three things in quick succession. It let go of John Mischief, who lost his grip on Tom and fell into the water; it lifted one of its taloned forefeet and brought it down on the side of the boat, crashing through the deck and all the boards beneath to a spot well below the waterl
ine. And finally it picked upTwo-Toed Tom and threw him as far as it could from the Belbelo.
As the creature turned back, Geneva’s sword slashed across the dragon’s upper chest. The worm unleashed an agonized din; the pitch of its vibrations such that all the nails in the deck shot up out of the boards, leaving only the pitch that the shipwrights had used to seal the vessel holding the boards together.
Then it dived after Geneva with terrifying speed, its pursuit driving her back across the boat, her weight enough to crack the pitch and separate the boards.
In that instant the Belbelo—which had endured much, and mightily—became a doomed vessel.
“Hemmett!” Geneva yelled. The Captain had been at the wheel throughout the dragon’s attack, attempting to keep his vessel from capsizing in the tumult the worm had created. “Get Tria off the boat!”
“But my ship—”
“There’s no help for it, Captain! Save the child!”
As she spoke, the dragon’s jaws snapped closed, three inches from Geneva’s face. Its stinging, rancid blood, along with a wave of heat from its pierced lung, erupted from the wound she’d made in its chest, spattering her arms and neck, but she refused to let the pain drive her back. She held her ground, even though the wounded dragon snapped again and again, almost taking off her face. Luckily, with only one eye its spatial judgment was spoiled so that it repeatedly missed its target. But the sound when the teeth met was terrifyingly solid: like the din of an iron door slamming closed over and over.
Geneva took a deep breath and lifted her sword. She knew she would not have a second chance at the blow she was about to deliver. She would have to drive down, behind the solid breastbone, in order to pierce its heart. It would either find its way into the dragon’s vitals and kill the damned thing, or she would miss and the worm would swallow her.
Making a silent prayer to the ninety-one goddesses of her homeland, she raised her sword.
The creature was preparing to snap at her again. She could hear the muscles of its jaws creaking like an immense spring as they opened.
Trusting to the goddesses and her instinct to guide her, she ducked down beneath the dragon’s jaw and put the tip of her sword against its scaly throat. She met resistance immediately, as though she was pressing against bone. Cursing, she tried another place.
The dragon opened its mouth, expelling the stench of its stomachs.
This was it! She had to strike. It was now or never.
She pushed; and yes, the sword broke the armor of hard, gray-green scales and pierced its flesh.
She threw all her body weight against the sword. It was enough. The blade slid down behind the creature’s breastbone.
She felt the worm’s serpentine body shudder as the blade ran down into the cavity of its breast and pierced its vast heart. Its mouth, already gaping, opened a little wider still. And from deep, deep within the vile convolutions of the thing there came a noise like the growling of a thousand rabid dogs.
“Die,” she said to it, just loud enough that it would hear.
Then she twisted her blade in its heart. The rabid din got louder, and the stench from its stomachs became foul beyond measure: the smell of death released from the entrails of the beast.
Slowly, the dragon’s good eye slid to the left, so as to fix on Geneva one last time. It curled back its upper lip, baring its formidable array of teeth. But this was all an empty show. Its din was dying away. There was no real fury left in its wounded body.
The dragon trembled down to its stinking core. Then, putting both its front legs on the side of the sinking vessel, it pushed off.
Geneva let her sword slip out of her hands rather than risk being pulled into the sea as the dragon made its departure. She stumbled back onto the disintegrating deck, which was now six inches deep in water, scarcely believing that she’d bested the beast.
“Are you alive?” McBean yelled to her.
“Just,” she said.
While Geneva had been fighting with the dragon, McBean had broken out the little red lifeboat and had launched it over the opposite side of the Belbelo. Now he was hurriedly depositing Tria—for whom the dragon had forfeited its life—in the boat.
Kiss Curl Carlotti was meanwhile attempting to salvage as much as he could from the sinking vessel. The precious map which Tom and Geneva had been consulting went into the Captain’s hands for safekeeping. The rest—some food, some kegs of water, a few more weapons—were quickly stored at the bottom of the lifeboat.
Geneva drew a deep breath, thanked the goddesses for her survival, and started across the sinking vessel to the lifeboat. She scanned the waters as she did so, hoping against hope that the Izabella would give up the pair that she had claimed. The dragon had not yet sunk beneath the waves, she saw. Though weakened by blood loss—indeed barely able to lift its head above the waters—it continued to stay in the vicinity of the Belbelo, as though it hoped it might still claim its wounder. The Izabella was dark with its blood, and there was a yellowish steam rising off the waves, as if the mixture of salt water and the dragon’s fluids were causing some kind of alchemical reaction.
“Do you see any sign of Tom or Mischief?” the Captain asked Geneva.
“No,” she said grimly. “Nothing.”
“Here…” said a frail voice from the railing.
Geneva looked over the side of the ship. There, barely keeping their heads above the churning waters, were John Mischief and his siblings. Some of the brothers looked to have slipped into unconsciousness. Two had their eyes rolled back in their sockets, as if they were dead.
“Oh, Lord,” said McBean. “Let’s get them in the lifeboat.”
Together, Carlotti and Geneva hauled the limp body of Mischief and his brothers out of the water and into the lifeboat. Then McBean pushed the little vessel off from the sinking ship then proceeded to row away from the Belbelo, so that they would not be caught in the vortex when the vessel went under.
Tria went quietly to the bow of the little boat and took up her usual position.
“Emergency supplies?” Geneva said, gently easing Mischief’s torn shirt out of his pants. The puncture wounds the dragon’s teeth had left in his stomach and sides were ragged and deep. Blood was still oozing from them.
Carlotti went to the stern of the lifeboat and brought out the emergency first aid kit. He opened it up and started to select some bandages and gauze, while Geneva kept her hands pressed on the worst of the wounds, to prevent any further blood loss.
They were now a safe distance from the Belbelo, and McBean stopped rowing and put up the oars.
“I can take care of Mischief now,” the Captain said to Geneva. “You look for Tom.”
He pointed to his telescope, which was lying on the floor of the lifeboat.
“Go on,” McBean said. Then, with a terrible sadness in his voice, “I may have lost the Belbelo, but I’m still Captain of this boat. Find Tom; please God, find him.”
Geneva let McBean take over care of Mischief, and she started to scan the waters in the general vicinity of the spot where Tom had been thrown by the worm.
Some distance from the little lifeboat the broken body of the Belbelo moaned eerily, as the waters of the Izabella rushed into her hold. The Captain didn’t look up from tending to Mischief. This was not a sight he wished to witness. The noise of the vessel’s demise grew louder. Its timbers burst; its mast cracked and fell into the water, throwing up a great wall of water. Then, just before the sea finally closed over her, the Belbelo stopped sinking for a long moment, and in the sudden eerie hush her bell could be heard tolling.
Six times it rang, and then the tolling ceased and the rushing of the water began one final time, louder than ever. There was one last, terrible crack from out of the depths, and Captain McBean’s noble little vessel went down to join the tens of thousands of ships the Sea of Izabella had claimed over the centuries.
Not once through all of this did the Captain raise his eyes from his patients.
&n
bsp; When the noise of the Belbelo’s sinking finally quieted, he said:
“Any sign of Tom?”
“Not so far,” Geneva replied, still searching the water.
“And the worm?” the Captain said.
“Gone,” Geneva replied. “Slipped out of sight when we weren’t looking. How are the brothers?”
“Some, I think, are doing better than others,” the Captain said grimly. “I’ve stopped the blood from flowing, but none of them are conscious.” He dropped his voice, as though Mischief and his brothers might hear some of what he was saying. “It doesn’t look good,” he said.
At that moment, Tria piped up, her voice as pale as her skin.
“The Nonce,” she said.
Geneva looked up from the melancholy sight of Mischief and his brothers to see that the girl was pointing off to the port side.
A quarter of a mile from them, the waters of the Izabella grew considerably calmer. The storm clouds thinned out, and shafts of sunlight breached them. They illuminated a golden shore, and beyond that shore, a rising landscape of tropical lushness.
Geneva had not been back to the Nonce since the tragic hour of Finnegan’s wedding to the Princess Boa; and though she’d surmised, along with Tom, that this was indeed where Tria was leading them, her flesh tingled at the prospect of returning there.
“If there’s any hope for Mischief and his brothers,” Geneva said, “it’s on the Nonce.”
“What happens if one of them dies and the rest are still alive?” McBean said.
“We’ll deal with that problem when we get to it,” Geneva replied. Then more quietly, “Let’s just hope we don’t have to.”
Suddenly there was a rapping on the side of the boat—for all the world like somebody knocking on a door, desiring entrance—and Geneva turned around to see a very welcome sight. Two-Toed Tom was hauling himself up over the side of the lifeboat. She went to help him. He clambered into the boat and collapsed, gasping, on the boards.
“I… was… afraid… you’d sail off and give me up for dead.”
“We would have never done that,” said Geneva.
“What about our digger?” Tom replied, looking over at Mischief.