by Paul Collins
I went over to the man to have a look but he seemed to be asleep under water so I nudged him into the shallows. Then I peered down at his red face and the white hair under his chin, and I wondered how that man had got the name for me from the blackened children. Maybe these peoples became whiter as they grew older?
Then the man bubbled and snored at me. His breath was redolent of concentrated wheat and other strange smells from plants and ashes. And that brought back the memory of the ancient woman near the ruin with her bubbling cauldron full of strange pickled things. I had sniffed in that cauldron apples, turnips, fish, frogs and birds – that ancient woman would pickle almost anything.
And this red-faced man was pickled.
His eyes opened, he looked at me, screamed, galloped away over the rocks and crashed through the forest. I looked after him and wondered why anyone would pickle a man. Then I saw drops of blood from the red-faced man. I sniffed at a drop and picked up salt, rust and wheat. I licked at it and the taste was delicious!
I spent the rest of the night sitting at the bottom of the river wondering about pickled men and I realised that I would have to investigate them tomorrow.
Next night I came out of the river and sniffed the air around where I first saw the pickled man and I picked up a very strong scent of concentrated wheat and different types of sweetness and bitterness from a small track. I followed the track and soon I could see a glimmer of light through the trees.
I tried to creep through the forest but it was hard. I was too big in this brittle forest; I was better in water. But I managed to furtively move closer to see that the light was glowing from something like a giant seagull's broken wing. I was about to shuffle away in fright but then I heard several men moaning their song under the broken wing. I saw the men's shadows in the glow of the wing and smelt the concentrated wheat and different types of sweetness so strongly that my belly rumbled.
Men were pickling themselves under that broken wing! I became so excited I accidentally knocked over a tree.
That terrible noise stopped the pickled men's moaning song. And then the man who had fallen in the water the previous night put his head out of the white wing. He shouted ‘Bunyip!' and ran, throwing his arms about. The other men shoved their heads out and shouted a lot of things and tumbled over each other. The broken wing dipped and suddenly flared into a fire.
I charged toward the pickled men but they untangled themselves and scattered like a panicked school of fish. I was a little hurt and I thought of catching a couple of them for a sniff, but they were too quick and the trees got in my way. So I settled for a look at the broken wing.
It didn't look like a part of a giant seagull any more. It didn't look like anything. Little flames were nibbling at the grass and leaves and black ash floated down on the flattened area. The ground reeked of pickling. There were funny big shells lying around, black shells, brown shells, white shells and each different shell had a special smell.
I poked at a white shell – ten times as big as one of the rock shells – and I saw that it was leaking from one end. When I sniffed at it my nose sneezed three times and I staggered until I sat on a tree. But the white shell had a lovely scent, like berries all munched together. I picked up the shell and carefully tasted it. More berries and wheat but then it was warm in my throat. I gulped all of it and licked the sides of the white shell and there was a gentle burning in my belly.
I picked up a brown shell but this time it wasn't leaking. But really that didn't matter. I had learned how to get the food from the shells on the rocks, hadn't I? I cracked the brown shell with my teeth and the concentrated wheat blasted down my throat and my eyes bulged. As I spat out the pieces of the shell they seemed to lose their brownness. I opened my mouth to cool my throat for a while, and after a time the scorching became a glowing warmth. I liked it, so I opened another.
I opened every shell around there. The taste of them became blurred and I forgot to spit some of the shells. My head began to hammer as if little men were trying to break out. Suddenly I realised that I had pickled myself!
Grabbing a tree for support I pulled away from the clearing and the broken wing, but it was too late. I stumbled down the little track and I knew that I was dying. My head was about to drop off from my body, my belly was carrying a wild thunderstorm and everything was swinging before my eyes.
I lurched to the cliff, toppled to the river and swam very slowly to the bottom. I covered myself with mud and waited for the end.
Many, many moons later, I rolled over and drank the muddy river until my parched throat wasn't feeling like a gravel track. Slowly I surfaced and saw several huts, bigger than before, and a long bridge across the river. I was not dead. I had only just taken a sleep but I would not touch the pickling shells ever again.
After I caught a few fish to keep my rumbling belly happy I drifted along the river to see what had happened while I'd been asleep. The river was down, the taste was bitter and suddenly the water hummed. Something thrashed through the water toward me so I scudded to the bottom, but there wasn't much room between the surface and the bottom. The noisy thing passed overhead but I felt the surge in the water above me and I could see the wake surging to the edges of the river.
For a moment I thought that it was one of the giant seagulls taking off but when I surfaced I saw that it was a boat – a boat that galloped across the water and roared angrily at the hills. I wanted to get away from this terrible river but now night was falling and I was still hungry.
I gently drifted up a quiet stretch of the river looking for fish or food. Happily I saw some of the small black shells I had eaten with the black people. But these were not on rocks, they were dangling above the water in odd wooden frames and there were thousands of them. All I had to do was swim over and eat.
So I did. I would have finished the shells on that night but I thought that it would be nice to save some for the next evening. So I swam away and burped in the bottom of the river.
The following night I arrived at the place of the black shells, my mouth dripping with anticipation. I leaned over the shells and opened my jaws …
And everything went berserk. Several bright lights blazed at me, a lot of boats roared and raced at me. Men shouted at me, ‘King seal?' ‘Elephant seal!' ‘Bunyip!' ‘Giant squid!'
I raced away from the bright lights and the roaring boats and the shouting men. They chased me under the bridge, down the river, past the grim island – and then I saw the fog rolling in from the sea.
I skimmed across the water and dived into the fog.
I knew I was home when I tasted the cold sweet water of the long lake. I dived down, down to the black darkness, shaking the mud from my body, and then surfaced to see the ruin and the grey beach. Now I would not hear funny names like ‘bunyip'. Here they call me a special name, and here I can have trout today, or a goat, or a deer …
Then there was a terrible sound, a moaning song floating from the shore and I sniffed the deep scent of concentrated wheat. The ancient woman had gone from the shadow of the ruined castle, but she had taught me something. She pickled apples, turnips, fish – everything that she wanted to eat.
I slid softly to the dark shore.
I would never crack another pickle shell, but for some reason several men had been pickling themselves – for me. They even sang their terrible songs to attract me. I was not about to complain.
The pickled man sang: ‘I'll take the low road …'
I nibbled a thistle and waited. Waited for my meal to come closer …
Billy was having nightmares about his life on the London streets. He hadn't picked enough pockets, and the brute who claimed to be his father – but probably wasn't – was kicking the daylights out of him. Again. He lashed out with both fists and yelled.
‘Let me be, Crusher! Or I'll punch yer lights out!'
A thoroughly empty threat. Crusher Borley was huge, while Billy was only ten years old. He never could control his red-headed temper when mistreated,
though. Some cringed in that situation. Billy's nature was to fight, even if he hadn't a chance.
‘Blast yer eyes, Crusher!'
Then he awoke, confused, with someone shaking him by the shoulders.
‘Lord above, cully! It's the bad dreams you're having again. Come on. Time to rise.'
Billy's nose recognised the below-deck smells before his brain caught up. Ship's timbers made their constant creaking and popping all around him, and he lay in a swaying hammock – his hammock, painted with his ship's book number. He'd been awakened by Dermot O'Byrne from Cork, a ship's boy third-class like him, and the day was beginning.
All of which came as a mighty relief after the nightmare.
Breakfast, as always, was cold; the coarse porridge called burgoo, a ship's biscuit, and cocoa. Billy didn't mind though. Food aboard the sixty-gun ship of the line Eagle came regularly, and there was enough of it. Another improvement over the London gutters.
‘The grub ain't as bad as I always heard navy tack was,' Billy commented. ‘Is that usual?'
‘Better than on some ships,' Dermot answered, tucking in. ‘The purser's a thief, and a crimson thief, like all of them, but he's good at a contract. “If I get cut amounts or cut quality”, he says, “I cut the feller's throat that sold it to me”.'
‘Listen to you talk,' said someone else. ‘Two months in the navy, that's all. Spend a year away from land and see what the grub's like.'
‘Suits me so far,' Billy retorted, scoffing the remainder to prove it.
Afterwards, he and Dermot were ordered to the ship's powder magazine. It lay deep in the hold for safety, below the waterline, at the end of a narrow passage. The only light came from another room, through a glazed window. Men – and the boys, the powder monkeys – entered in bare feet or slippers, so as to make no sparks.
‘Right, then,' the powder-room yeoman said briskly. ‘This is practice, lads, the gun-crews won't fire live this morning. The charges are dummies. But I want you to rush ’em to the guns just as fast as if it was real. You all know which guns you're to serve, eh?'
They knew. Aboard a navy ship, you learned quickly.
All morning Billy raced between the magazine and the upper gun-deck, carrying the dummy powder charges to his designated guns, where the crews sweated non-stop to run out the cannon, point them, pretend to fire, then worm, sponge, load, and go through the routine again. Over an acre of wind-filled canvas spread above them. Black clouds tumbled through the October sky. Lightning forked on the skyline.
Gun drill stopped at last. Billy, panting hard, paused by the number four gun and discontentedly asked the gun-captain, ‘When do you fire her, sir?'
‘Stone me! I ain't no sir, lad. Nor we don't often fire live at practice. Powder and shot cost guineas. Ain't you heard?'
‘Only been two months in the navy.'
‘Don't you worry. We're hunting a French convoy. These guns'll talk soon enough.'
Then lightning struck the foremast.
Thunder boomed in the same second. A red bloom of fire surrounded the mast's tip. Billy, staring upward, saw something appear at the heart of the blaze, something hot and yellow-white like a tiny star. It flashed through empty air to the nearest sail – and the sail caught fire.
Billy heard whistle signals blown and orders barked. The fore-topmen scrambled to work, casting the blazing sail loose and manhandling it over the side with muscle-cracking effort. Watching intently while they handled the job, Billy saw a shape spring away from the sail as it fell, and scurry down the mast like a squirrel. Glowing like a furnace, it trailed yellow-orange streamers behind it.
Reaching the deck, it raced for cover from the rain, and crouched near the gun Billy had been serving. Pitch bubbled under its claws, and wood started to smoulder. It seemed about the size of a spaniel dog, though it hurt Billy's eyes to look at it directly.
‘What are you?' he asked wildly.
He spoke on impulse. It never occurred to him that the thing could speak. Yet it did. Its voice crackled and hissed.
Firedrake, born of the lightning! I obey no one. I do as I please – and what I please is to burn!
The railing and the deck smoked at its touch; little flames began moving. Green as he was in the navy, Billy knew that fire aboard ship was a disaster. Yes, and this thing was fire, a living, moving blaze.
The gun-captain realised it too. Seizing a bucket of water, he hurled it at the firedrake. It flashed ten feet away before a drop touched it. The movement dazzled. Then it kept moving, to start a dozen fires on the gun-deck, with every man who tried to stop it left gasping behind. Having displayed its capabilities for arson, it came back to the number four gun.
Do not attack me with water again, you slow ugly beings! I will burn this wooden castle to ash!
Billy looked about him. Luckily none of the fires had really taken hold; they were all on the upper deck, it was still raining, and the crew had been quick to extinguish them. But if the firedrake went below and started fire-raising in earnest, the king's ship Eagle would be a memory.
He said fiercely, ‘It ain't a castle, you talking Roman candle! It's a ship! And you can't burn it, see? Because it'll sink, and you'd be in the ocean. That'd be the end of you, wouldn't it?'
The firedrake made a sound like a snort of contempt, but it didn't answer, and that meant Billy had made a point – or so he inferred.
‘Are you crazy, lad?' the gun-captain demanded. ‘Why are you talking to it?'
‘Blimey, mister, it talks itself! You didn't hear it? Said it likes to burn things, and it'll burn this ship!'
‘Indeed it will not.'
Billy turned around and saw the captain. Not the gun-captain, but Captain Rodney himself, master of the Eagle, whose word was law and whom Billy had only seen before as a remote presence on the quarter-deck. He was a man of thirty with windburned skin and a big jaw. The duty lieutenant stood behind him.
‘You, powder monkey. You say this – creature – speaks and you can understand it?'
‘Aye, sir.'
‘It threatened to burn the ship?'
‘Aye, sir.'
Captain Rodney made a brusque attempt to talk to the firedrake. It understood, and answered as though it was the haughty prince of the universe. But Billy saw that to the captain it was only noise such as any blazing fire might make.
‘It doesn't talk.'
‘No,' Billy said desperately. ‘Begging yer pardon, sir, but I hear it!'
‘Then why don't I? Or others?'
‘Don't know, sir. But I'm fiery-natured meself, they said in London. They didn't have to ask me twice as a rule if it was a fight they wanted. Maybe –'
‘There's a sort of affinity?' The captain studied the wiry, homely redhead before him. ‘Maybe. But I cannot just take your word.'
Billy lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Sir, begging your pardon, if that there firedrake burns the Eagle as it says it wants, it'll get bigger same as any fire, and it might burn the fleet next! Lion, Windsor, Defiance – the lot!'
Navy men did not frighten easily. Still, the captain cast one look across the sea at the line of the king's ships cruising south, fourteen ships and several frigates strong, and muttered, ‘Blazes!'
Behind them, the lieutenant had bent close to the firedrake. He had a liking for science, and his curiosity got the better of him.
‘Extraordinary,' he muttered. ‘A salamander? Fire elemental. I've heard about them. My uncle dabbled in alchemy. I doubted – but it's true.'
The firedrake voiced crackling laughter and sprang over the lieutenant's head, trailing fire like a comet. It left his uniform smouldering and his cocked hat ablaze. Sweeping the ruined lid furiously from his head, the lieutenant stood there humiliated and swearing while Billy tried not to snicker.
Blimey, he thought, it's not only right conceited, it's got a sense of humour, too!
Glancing at Captain Rodney, Billy thought he even saw his mouth twitch; but if so it set grimly in the next second.
Then he turned to Billy. ‘Lad, suggest to your – friend – that it had better go below since we're headed for dirty weather. Make a hearth where it can be contained in some sort of safety. Remind it always that it's far at sea, and needs this ship as much as we do, so it had better control its urges.'
‘Aye, sir.'
The firedrake listened. Rocks and sand from the ballast made a reasonably fireproof place on the orlop deck, and there was fuel to sustain it while it remained spaniel-sized. Anything that would burn suited its needs.
Billy crouched by the makeshift hearth for hours, talking to it, trying to form some idea of how to deal with it. One truth emerged clearly; the firedrake was short on self-control. Curbing its urge to grow huge by consuming everything around it went against its nature. The single thing it seemed to fear was the immense waste of water.
Dermot, in his time off, came down to keep Billy company. He didn't share Billy's fascination with the firedrake at all. He was afraid of it, and said so; believed it was a minor devil, and said that, too.
‘I don't think so,' Billy argued. ‘Look, Irish, if it was a devil, it'd cringe away from yer crucifix, wouldn't it?'
‘Whatever it is, I can't see us carrying gunpowder and primers in action while it's around,' Dermot said. ‘Suppose it gets curious and comes near us – me, for instance? It'd rain Dermot O'Byrne for days.'
Billy thought that over. He was still thinking about it when the thunder, rain and squalls had passed and a clear morning showed the Eagle to be alone on the sea, out of sight of the British fleet. The captain sent for him.
‘We have to get rid of it, lad. We cannot have a king's fighting ship at its mercy – and that, in essence, we are. I've a notion that might work. The ship's carpenter says he can do it – but the firedrake must not notice him at work. Can you hold its attention for a couple of days? Above all, keep it away from the forecastle?'