The Reverend set down his meat, uneaten.
Ghost looked around the cabin at them all, then chuckled softly and sat down. "You've all got me wrong," he said. He tapped his chest. "There's a change here in this man. I'll not claim it's extreme. I'll not say I'm weaker because of it. But I had a long time to think while I was swimming. Many days, through good weather and foul. A few times I nearly drowned, but never once did I consider letting myself sink. And in all that time, I realized two things: that I have had my revenge; and that life goes on. For years I believed that once I had killed my brother, I would die as well. Without my hatred to focus me, what point would there be to living? But I was not content to stay on that island where you left me. And had I wanted to die, I could simply have stopped swimming at any time and allowed myself to drown. But I did not. I swam. And as I did, I realized that I must be swimming because there is a beyond, an after, and that's where I am now. Beyond and after Death Nilsson."
"A monster built for revenge wishes none against us?" Maurilio asked. But Ghost displayed some of his older self, and ignored his ex-crewman.
"Jack," Ghost said. "I tracked down your family, and visited. Merely two days after you had left them, it was. I told your mother what a good friend I was to you, and how keen I was that we meet again. And then your sister came in, and I met her too, and she seemed pleased that you have such a strong friend. They told me where they thought you were heading. Your mother had doubts, but Eliza . . . she seemed quite sure. Even though you left without telling them." He shook his head, mock stern. "Your own family? Leaving without letting them know where you were going? But Eliza knows you better than you think."
"And you did not harm them," Jack said, heart hammering.
"I did not." Ghost stared at him as he spoke, and Jack believed him. Ghost had no use for lies, and no need for them now. If he had killed Jack's family, he would have simply told him.
"You say you've changed," Sabine spoke up. Her voice was low, almost hesitant. But as she went on, Jack heard a strength growing there, and he knew this was what Sabine had come here to say. "You say you've had your revenge and moved on."
"I have."
"But you can't move on from what you were. You cannot wipe out a whole history of murder and abuse and violence, both physical and psychological. Nobody changes that much, Ghost Nilsson, brother of Death. And you, a man arrogant in his own god-like self-importance, least of all."
Louis chuckled. Maurilio tensed, drawing the long blade from his trouser pocket. The Reverend and Vukovich moved apart, away from the table so that the men were spread about the cabin. If Ghost did choose to attack, he would have to decide which man to take down first.
But Ghost exuded a strange calmness, as if he had barely heard the words.
"I have changed for you, Sabine," he said. "You are . . . my desire. My after."
Jack's thundering heart thumped at his chest. He felt a flash of rage. Ghost had eyes only for Sabine, though he knew that she and Jack were in love. He cannot simply pretend I am not here.
Before he could speak, Sabine addressed the former captain. "Nobody can own me, you least of all," she said. "I never wanted anything to do with you, Ghost. Not when I saw the first flickering of desire in your eyes, and not when I knew that you had begun to hate yourself because you could not scour such feelings from your heart. I could never feel anything but disdain for you. Leave us now. Take a boat, row back to shore. Save yourself the embarrassment of acting like a love-struck pup."
Anger flashed in Ghost's eyes, and then he looked only sad. He shook his head and looked down at his feet. "I have nowhere else to go."
"You want our sympathy?" Jack asked, aghast.
Ghost looked up again. This time, he was grinning. "No, boy. I want to go wherever you're going, and see whatever you're going to see. You'll need me. Trust in that. You will need me, Jack London. And Sabine, you, my dear, will want me."
They left him like that, sitting close to a table covered in raw meat, hunched over, a big man grinning past the rejection he had received, not only from Sabine, but from all of them. In that room that stank of blood, the meat remained untouched on the table. None of the men had eaten.
"You went there only to say that?" Jack asked Sabine.
"Why else would I have wanted to go to his cabin? To share food with him? No. I've seen him eat often enough. I wanted . . . to tell him what I thought, without fear of reprisal." She seemed so much calmer now, more at peace with herself than she had since they had left San Francisco. There was still much ahead of them, and perhaps Sabine would discover more about herself from the wood spirit Lesya. But for now she seemed content, and almost happy.
"You don't fear him?" Jack asked.
"I think I'll always fear him. Memories like that, of the things I have seen, are hard to shake. But with you and the others around, I feel safe. There is something changed about him. And I think without him even knowing, it's made him weaker."
I'm not sure about that, Jack thought. "You will need me, Jack London," Ghost had said. And Jack was struck with the awful fear that the captain might be right.
Chapter Three - The Void
The train labored up the mountain toward White Pass, hissing steam and clanking over narrow gauge tracks as it climbed the last of its three thousand foot ascent. Jack looked out the window at the wild terrain and the shadows amidst the trees, and he felt welcome. His visit to San Francisco had been brief and had not felt at all like a homecoming. That had troubled him a little, and made him wonder if his constant wanderlust had finally erased any sense of belonging that might have given him some contentment at returning to his mother's house. Now he knew that wasn't the case at all. It was not that he had come unmoored from the world, only that his mooring had changed.
This place was where he now belonged. He understood that for the rest of his life, no matter where he wandered, in his heart this would always be home. Here in the wild.
Yet still he felt unsettled, his thoughts filled with memories from the last time he had made the treacherous trek to Dawson. The ship had landed at Dyea then, and the climb — by foot or horseback — to the Chilkoot Pass had been so treacherous that many men turned back, surrendering their dreams of gold before they'd even made it beyond the mountain range. Packs and supplies had been abandoned beside the trail. Horses had died and men had collapsed alongside them. And after the horrors of the Chilkoot Pass there had been the rush to get up-river before the Yukon froze. The winter ice had come early that year, trapping Jack and his friends Merritt and Jim in a ramshackle traders' cabin until spring. Scurvy and starvation had threatened to extinguish their lives, but somehow they had survived. And when the river had melted that spring, they had made it to Dawson at last, many months after they had set out from Dyea.
Jack now knew that while he and his friends were struggling to survive that long, hungry winter in the great white silence, Sir Thomas Tancrede and Michael Heaney put men to work building the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad. In a miracle of determination, the railroad men had beaten the rugged terrain into submission with dynamite and sheer force of will, constructing bridges, blasting tunnels, and bolting down trestles that curved along the faces of mountain cliffs. One hundred and ten miles from Skagway to Whitehorse, and they had done it all in the space of two years.
Of course, even if the brand new rail line had been in operation two years earlier, when Jack had first come north, he wouldn't have been able to afford a ticket. Prospectors didn't travel to the Yukon Territory by rail — they trekked the Chilkoot Trail or went up through White Pass on foot. Or, if they had a little money, they traveled by ship all the way to the Yukon delta up north and sailed southward from there. Perhaps in the months to come the train would be more affordable and be seen by stampeders as an investment toward fulfilling their dreams, but at the moment — only weeks after its completion — it was still the province of the well-off.
Jack glanced around the carriage at the people travell
ing with them. These were not rich men. Rich men stayed at home and sent their minions into the frozen north to do their bidding. But by their dress and demeanor, it was clear they were men of some means, headed north not to put their blood, sweat, and tears into a hunt for gold, but to build and tend the businesses that would serve the prospectors. Why dig or pan for gold when, by building a hotel or a bar or a mercantile, these men could simply wait for the newly-discovered gold to come to them? There were a few women accompanying the men, and a trio of women at the front of the train car were clearly a madam and a pair of prostitutes in her employ. Jack knew this not only by their dress, but also how the other women on the train seemed to scorn their presence.
Jack wondered what the rest of the people in the car thought about him and his companions. Sabine wore a lovely dress of deep green that brought out the color in her eyes, but Jack and the four werewolves were dressed shabbily in comparison. Several people had openly surveyed them, clearly wondering how they had the means to afford passage on the train. Jack had given all the gold he'd managed to bring back from that first trip to the Yukon to his mother, but the others — the pack — had sailed the Pacific as pirates, with Ghost as their captain. They'd gathered plenty of plunder, and though they spent lavishly each time they returned to port, both Louis and Maurilio had been wise enough not to squander all of their money.
Jack did not relish the idea of benefiting from riches the crew of the Larsen had stolen from their victims on the high seas. But the men had insisted, and Jack had acquiesced because he had no wish to put Sabine through the hell of making the inland trek on foot. She already seemed . . . changed, weaker. It was a growing concern.
The train groaned and clanked and began to slow. Jack frowned and looked out the window, worried there might be some malfunction, but then he realized that the car was leveling out. They had reached the highest point of their journey — the top of White Pass — and the train seemed to take pause, its smokestack sighing with relief, before beginning its long descent.
Beside him, Sabine shivered. Jack glanced at her and saw that her eyes were closed. She had slipped into a light doze, her arms wrapped around herself, steeled against the cold. Yet the pale hue of her coffee skin suggested that something more than temperature was affecting her. Sabine looked unwell, and Jack was worried that she might be falling ill.
"She'll be all right," Louis said quietly.
Jack glanced at him. Louis and the Reverend were seating opposite him and Sabine, the two benches facing one another. Vukovich and Maurilio were across the aisle, facing toward the front of the train.
"You know what's wrong with her?" Jack asked.
Louis narrowed his eyes. "You know as well as I do, mon ami."
Jack supposed he did, though it was a troubling thought — Sabine was not entirely human. Somehow, her spirit was tied to the sea, and they were moving further from the Pacific with every moment. He wondered if Sabine had been this far from the open water.
"Do you think she'll feel better when we're on the river?" Jack asked.
"If I must guess, I would think yes," Louis replied. "But who can say?"
Jack glanced at the Reverend, but the tall, lanky man continued to gaze out the window at the panorama of the wilderness. Louis grunted and shifted on his seat, drawing Jack's attention, and he saw that the wiry little man had caught sight of something that troubled him. Jack turned to glance back along the aisle of the carriage, his skin prickling with alarm.
Ghost had entered their car.
The big man stood just inside the car, the door propped open behind him. He swayed with the rocking of the train, but Jack knew he had spent years on the sea and would not be thrown off balance. Ghost lifted his chin and inhaled deeply, his sense of smell telling him more about the people in that car than his eyes ever would. Unshaven, his hair unruly, he ought to have looked like one of the hobos Jack had ridden the rails with in his early teens. Instead, Ghost cut the perfect figure of the pirate captain — a man in charge, and yet somehow out of place here, cast adrift.
Ghost met Jack's gaze. The animosity between them lived and breathed as if it were its own creature, but it had streaks of respect and even fondness that could not be denied. Ghost had kept Jack alive on a vessel full of monsters because he had liked the philosophical, moral, and intellectual challenge that their conversations presented. Though Jack had caged the savage nature within himself, that wildness remained, restrained but never fully tamed. Ghost had seen it from the beginning. He had used Jack as a kind of mirror, a yardstick by which to measure himself, to be sure he had scoured the last sentiment from his own heart. In the end he had failed at that, but no matter what Ghost believed, Jack knew they were still opposites. The former captain could never be trusted.
Once they had made port in Skagway, Ghost had dogged their steps. They had made it clear they did not welcome his company, so he kept a certain distance without ever letting them get too far ahead of him. Determined to join them on this expedition despite their protestations, he had somehow acquired a train ticket. They had all watched in troubled silence as he had boarded the car immediately behind their own. Vukovich had suggested dragging him off the train and killing him there and then, but the same argument that had prevented them from attempting such violence on board the Kraken stopped them once more. Jack was trying to make men out of these monsters again, and such a display of violence would not only give them away, but would negate all the progress they had achieved.
As Jack glared at Ghost, willing the beast to leave them be and return to his own carriage, the strangest thing happened. Ghost smiled — a sort of chagrined, sheepish expression that was entirely unlike him — and seemed almost to laugh. He gave a cheerful sort of wave, turned on his heel, and exited. As the door swung shut behind him, Jack could see him make a small leap, crossing the gap between train cars.
Even after Ghost had gone, it was several moments before Jack realized he was hanging halfway into the aisle, twisted round in his seat and still staring. He righted himself, only to find Louis and the Reverend watching him curiously. Across the aisle, Vukovich and Maurilio were still facing forward; they'd not even noticed that Ghost had entered the car.
"What do you suppose he's up to?" the Reverend asked, pulling up his coat's dark collar.
"Nothing good," Louis replied. "Eh, Jack?"
Jack didn't answer. Ghost's behavior had stumped him at first. Cunning as he was, the captain had never been one for games. ''Only when Jack had allowed himself to imagine for a moment that the monster might be telling them the truth, that he might be seeking his own answers, did Ghost's actions begin to make any sense. Jack found that far more unsettling than the belief that Ghost wanted them all dead.
"What if it's all true?" Jack said at last.
The Reverend scoffed. "If he's anything like his brother — "
"But he's not," Jack said thoughtfully, glancing at Sabine's slumbering form beside him before looking back at the two werewolves. "He spent years trying to be more of a bastard, more of an animal, than Death, but he never quite succeeded. Now . . . well, you saw him. He doesn't know how to act. He's adrift. It's like he's tasting life for the first time, and trying to decide if he likes the flavor."
Louis and the Reverend were both staring at him.
"Can you really believe that?" Louis asked. "The man I met in New Orleans — the pirate who bit me, blooded me, turned me into a monster to serve him — you're saying you believe that man is having . . . what, a change of heart?"
Jack glanced out the window at the rugged terrain, certain they must long since have passed from the Alaskan territory and into Canada. Such boundaries meant very little here in the north. Despite the relative comfort of the train car, Jack knew that they had left true civilization behind when the S.S. Kraken had left port in Seattle.
"Jack?" the Reverend prodded.
Jack focused on him. Somehow he had persuaded these grizzled men, these weary, vicious beasts, to follow him.
Though he had the wild in him, in the end Jack was only human, and one with a mere nineteen years upon this Earth. But Louis and the Reverend, and Maurilio and Vukovich, had been plucked away from their human lives and taught how to be monsters by the werewolf Nilsson brothers. They'd been made to believe they had no alternative other than monstrosity and savagery. Jack was striving to show them that there were other options, and that they could define themselves if they worked at it, and suddenly he was the human leader of a pack of werewolves who'd pledged loyalty to him and to Sabine.
His strange world kept spinning.
"I've learned that anything is possible," Jack said, glancing from one to the other. "And I'd like to think that Ghost can change. If I believe that's possible for all of you — and you know I do — then I must believe it for him. But does he want it? Ghost forged himself into a creature of evil and brutality as an act of will. To transform himself away from that, he must crave it."
Jack looked from Louis to the Reverend, but the answer came, instead, from beside him.
"Does it matter?" Sabine asked, her voice a quiet, sleepy rasp.
"Sabine?" Louis said.
The sea witch looked up at them, then focused on Jack, pushing the veil of hair away from her lovely eyes.
"Unless we're willing to kill Ghost, we can only ignore him," she said softly. "That does not mean we trust him. His true nature will show itself in time." She smiled, tired. "Now, shush. I'm sleepy. We should all rest while we can."
The three of them looked at her a moment, but Sabine ignored them, settling deeper into her seat and leaning against the window of the train. The rattling did not seem to bother her.
Jack glanced at the Reverend, whose brows were knitted in worry and consternation.
Louis exhaled, sinking down into his seat as though to follow Sabine's example. "I just hope that when his true nature does emerge, we see it coming."
Jostled awake by the motion of the train, Jack reached up to rub sleep from his eyes. Sabine had snuggled up tight against him and he had an arm around her. He wondered if he ought to have argued against her sitting beside the window, where the cold night air snuck in around the frame. In her years on the sea, Sabine had surely been much colder than this, but being away from the water was having a detrimental enough effect on her without the chilly fingers of the Yukon night wrapping themselves around her throat. He gazed at her sleeping profile, then kissed the top of her head. She would be all right, he decided. Sabine had lived uncountable years without Jack London to watch over her. A little chill would do her no harm.
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