‘Pietru,’ he said sternly, trying to hide the fear, ‘you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to go to sleep.’
Pietru was undaunted. ‘Everyone sleeps one day.’
‘But that day can be years off yet,’ urged Roland, still striving for calm, even though the enormity was overwhelming his thoughts. If Pietru died, he would be alone. It was not that he had ever sought the scapegoat’s company, or had even really noticed him in these last years – but to be alone on the ship, alone in all the ocean, alone in all the years to come …
‘No,’ admonished Pietru, as if it was Roland who was the simpleton of the two. ‘Not later. I’m tired now. Sleep soon.’
‘But … but how will I get fish if you—’ For Roland had just realised this as well; without Pietru, there would be no food.
The scapegoat wasn’t listening. His eyes were roving about the deck uneasily, seeing things Roland could not see. ‘Don’t want to be here anymore, don’t like this ship anymore. Too many ghosts, everywhere, all the time. Don’t talk about them, you said. But I don’t like them.’
Roland stared about wildly. ‘No, you can tell me about them, if that will help. You don’t have to be scared of them.’
‘Not scared anymore, ghosts can’t do anything … but they are so angry, so unhappy, they hurt my head. Tired of ghosts. Tired of old man and his children, all drowned, tired of women who cries, tired of king with red lips, tired of frozen man, tired of cross soldier with knife in his heart, tired of family that is all burned, tired of silent captain so stern … there’s too many, too many, everywhere I look, waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting forever.’
‘Waiting for what?’ Roland begged helplessly, as if the answer might somehow change Pietru’s mind. ‘Waiting for who?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t care. I say goodbye to them all. They can’t follow me now. I’ll be asleep soon. Very soon.’
And from that resolve, no matter how Roland argued against it in the weeks that followed, Pietru could not be shaken. He would not eat, and would not take sustenance from the Fish. His great fleshy body began to sag, his innocent face turning gaunt and hollow, his movements becoming ever slower. Roland could only watch in dread. There was a time when he had wanted to kill Pietru to be free of him. But not anymore. Now he would have given anything to keep the scapegoat alive. He did not want to be alone.
He tried to delay Pietru with guilt, reminding him over and over again. ‘But how will I get fish without you? I’ll starve if you go to sleep. I’ll die. You don’t want that to happen to me, do you?’
But Pietru never seemed to hear these pleas – except at the last, as he entered his final hours. By then the scapegoat was bedridden, too weak to go down to the gun deck any longer, and Roland had not eaten anything for two days. So his hunger was an actual thing as he reasoned one more time that Pietru must live on, so that Roland himself could live on.
The scapegoat sighed suddenly, and turned his head on the pillow, his eyes large in a face that had gone bony and alien. ‘Silly Rowand. You don’t need fish and horrible seaweed. You never did. Just talk to Fish, like me. You don’t need to eat when you do that, Fish fills you up.’
Roland recoiled. ‘You mean – but I thought only you could—’
‘Anyone can do it. Even silly Rowand.’
These were almost the last coherent words Pietru uttered. He lingered for another day, asleep, or wandering in delirium. But at the very end, as a grey pallor stole across his skin, and as a calmness descended upon his labouring chest, the scapegoat’s eyes opened and seemed to regard the room with clarity. For a long moment he stared at the foot of the bed.
Then, ‘Another ghost is here, Rowand. Nice man. Wise man. He is kind, he has a glass of water. I think he was the last.’
And with that, Pietru sighed, a long exhalation of weariness that went on and on, and when it stopped, no other breath came.
Roland glanced bleakly to the foot of the bed. There was no one there. He returned his gaze to the lifeless scapegoat, who had faced death so fearlessly when Roland himself was still so afraid of it.
And he wept with loneliness.
For a week afterwards, he forestalled the inevitable. Hunger gnawed in his belly, an old and unwelcome acquaintance, every bit as awful as before. But he would not go to the Third Gun deck, or kneel there to extend his hand into the white caul to commune with the monster in the deeps.
Better death than that, surely. After all, what was there to live for now? He was alone, the ship was rotting around him, every hour was a weariness. So why not let starvation end it? Indeed, why not end it himself, and quickly? He could use his pistol, if the powder would still burn after all these years. The pain itself would be fleeting, no more. So what was stopping him?
What was he afraid of?
Roland didn’t know. Except that he was afraid; that as lonely and cold and pointless as his existence seemed now, it paled before the great freezing, howling nothingness of not existing at all.
In the meantime, with great labour, he wrapped Pietru in a shroud and managed to drag his body out to the Captain’s Walk, and from there to the side and over the railing. The corpse splashed down into the white ropes and was quickly devoured, and Roland had to wonder in loathing fascination – did the Fish recognise the scapegoat as it dragged him down? Was the monster also lonely? Did it miss Pietru and their conversations?
Was it waiting to talk with Roland now?
No, no, no. He would not do it.
Except, of course, he knew he would.
On the four thousandth, one hundredth and seventh day of the Revenge’s captivity, his hunger pangs unbearable, Roland discarded the last tatters of pride left to him, and descended to the gun deck.
For maybe an hour he knelt at the same port that Pietru had always used, staring at the white caul. Around him the Revenge was silent, and would be so forever; no other footstep would ever fall, no one else would ever cough or laugh or snore, no one would ever speak to him. To live for years more, decades more, in such isolation seemed terrible beyond thought.
But to not live …
Roland extended his hand, lightly touched the ropes. Even to do this much, he had to fight every instinct. Through all these years he had rigorously avoided contact with the tendrils. But in fact they were merely smooth at first, and cool to the touch, giving slightly. Nothing else happened. There was no enfolding, no communion. He pushed harder, wondering how the process was supposed to begin. Was he meant to reach out with his mind in some way? Should he invite the monster to respond somehow? But no, it felt ridiculous. It must have been a thing unique to Pietru after all …
Then something changed in the texture of the caul. The smoothness gave way to a roughness that gripped and caught at his fingers, almost as a cat’s tongue might. It was an uncanny feeling, and yet not unpleasant, and now – as Roland watched as if from a great distance – the ropes were rippling, and enfolding his hand. Heat seemed to burn his skin, not fire, but the heat of energy, rising up his arm, flooding his chest, setting his head aglow. A wind roared alive in his mind, a lifting gale, tugging at him, insistent.
He let go and flew away …
Ah. So that’s how it was.
He was himself still, and yet not himself alone, for he sailed on the wind with an Other. The Fish. There was no sense of the creature physically, no impression of what it looked like down in the deeps, it was simply a presence at his shoulder, unseen but immensely potent, a mind beside his mind, alien in every way, and yet sharing the one essential sameness: it lived, and it was aware that it lived. How this merging was possible, what strange interaction between his skin and the Fish’s tendrils was occurring, Roland did not know. He could experience only the result: the exchange of thought.
First he knew surprise from the Other. For he was not Pietru, and the Fish had known only Pietru before now. But after the surprise came acceptance and then a slow curiosity, as the Fish explored his soul. Roland could sense a complex s
eries of observations and decisions being made within the Other’s mind, regarding himself, but could not grasp the meaning of it.
Meanwhile, strength flowed into him, given freely by the Fish – and it was wonderful, a bounty suffusing his blood from a supply infinitely vast. No wonder Pietru had ceased to have any interest in food, no wonder the scapegoat had always smiled and burbled to himself during communion, for this was like drawing the warmth of the sun directly into your heart.
And yet, in all the rush, Roland could imagine no way to talk to the Other, not the way Pietru apparently had. He was too swept away to shape coherent statements or questions, and the Fish’s mind was too incomprehensible. It would be like trying to make himself understood in a language he had never learned. The scapegoat, in his simpleness, must have managed it by instinct. Roland would have to learn it more laboriously.
He felt no concern, however. He would surely master the trick of it, given time. This was only his first communion, there would be others, he had no doubt of that now. So for the present he did not try to communicate, he merely bathed in the radiance, savouring his life renewed, until it seemed that he was too full of energy, too close to being burned rather than warmed, and he knew he must end the encounter. Reluctantly, he withdrew his hand.
The world spun for a while, as slowly his mind settled back to itself. He found that he was kneeling unharmed in front of the gunport. By the changing of the shadows he saw that half a day had passed: so long had he fed from the Fish’s bounty, so starved had he been. But the hunger was gone now. Health and vigour pulsed in him as if he had just finished a dozen great feasts. And yet he was also strangely exhausted. Roland rose, stumbled dazedly up to his cabin and his bed, then slept the deepest sleep he had known in an age.
And for once, he remembered his dreams. He was outside of his body, and studying it with a preternatural awareness, able to see every organ and bone and blood vessel within himself, and to understand their functions. And everywhere he looked he could see the corruption of age – even though he was only thirty-four years old – and see how it was that time was slowly breaking down and degrading every piece of him, guaranteeing death.
But even as he watched, all that damage was being repaired: the infusion of energy from the Fish was doing more than just sating his hunger, it was moving through all the cells of his being and renewing them. His heart, his lungs, his bones, his muscles, his every sinew, they were all being made pure, as healthy as if both fully matured and yet newly born.
In the dream, exultation filled Roland. Why, he had only to commune like this with the monster every day, and every day the ravages of age and injury would be repaired. With the Fish’s help, he need never weaken, never sicken. Never die. He savoured the elation. Had Pietru realised this? Surely not: in his innocence the scapegoat must never have understood, otherwise why would he have ceased communion and let himself perish?
Pietru could have lived forever.
Roland would live forever.
He woke to the first hints of dawn, and to a profound sense of peace. Carefully, not daring to believe it was real, he rose and went to the Great Cabin to study himself in the mirror. At first glance, there was little sign of any transformation. He was still too thin, his beard still a tangled mess, his clothes still rags, his skin still scarred from a dozen minor injuries of old. The Fish had not transfigured him externally. But his eyes told the tale. They were a young man’s eyes again, bright and clear, the deadness that had clouded them in the years of despair now banished. It was true then, it must be. He had been rejuvenated from within, just as it had seemed in his dreams.
Filled with hope, with wonder, with joy, Roland strode out to the Captain’s Walk to await the sunrise. The chill embraced him, the sky overcast but glowing red, the air still, the sea calm and black, the silence complete. He turned from horizon to horizon, east and west, north and south, breathing in life, knowing he could have a thousand more such mornings, ten thousand more mornings, an infinity of mornings, if he wanted.
For he was immortal now.
Then he saw the old man.
The figure stood on the foredeck, a gaunt shape in the half light. Roland’s heart caught – had another miracle occurred? Had rescuers come during the night, and already boarded the Revenge?
He almost called out, but then the catch in his heart turned to ice. The figure was not looking at him, gave no sign it was even aware of him. It was only staring out to sea. And Roland remembered then. It was exactly there, on that very place on the foredeck, that Pietru had seen his first ghost. Later, the apparitions had filled the ship. But the first, the very first, had been an old man, standing and staring from the foredeck.
Dread clutched Roland. He had seen nothing that first time, convinced that the scapegoat was victim to hallucination, a trick of the mind. But this old man was no figment of imagination, no half-glimpsed shadow that might be confused for something else. He was solid flesh and blood.
But he couldn’t be. He couldn’t really be there. Could he? And if so, why had Roland not been able to see him before?
The Rope Fish. That was it. It had to be something to do with the Fish and its communion. It must have opened some sensitivity within Roland, to make him see things like this, things that weren’t real.
Or was it to see real things that were otherwise hidden?
The old man ignored Roland still, gazing out to sea with a patience that seemed somehow bitter and terrible.
What was he then?
A ghost? Truly?
Pietru had never wanted to know. But Roland wasn’t Pietru. His limbs gone stiff, he forced himself to descend the stairs and advance slowly across the main deck, eyes on the spectre all the while.
It was dressed in seafaring garb, a fisherman’s gear perhaps. I think he drowned, Pietru had said long ago. And at closer proximity Roland could see that the man’s clothes were damp, and that his lank hair hung wet across his bony face. If this truly was a ghost, a restless spirit returned from the dead, then yes, he may indeed have met his end by drowning.
Only, who was he, and why was he here? Roland, as had Pietru in his turn, did not recognise the man’s face. This was not one of the Revenge’s dead crew. He was a stranger. But there was an air of purpose about him all the same, the sense that he was here on the ship for a reason.
Roland was mounting the foredeck stairs now, and as he reached the top the figure stirred at last and turned its head slowly, to gaze directly at him. Roland froze, his faltering courage almost failing completely. The spectre spoke no word, but contempt radiated from the dead gaze as heavy as a physical blow. And yet Roland must know what the ghost wanted, or surely go mad, so he forced himself forward. A single step, two steps, then three …
At last he stood before the old man. He could smell mould now, stronger than the decaying air of the ship; the ripe, wet scent of flesh not long taken from the water and only now beginning to rot. All the while he had expected the ghost to challenge his approach, to utter some curse or warning – but the spectre held silent, only watched him with its eyes full of hate.
But hatred for what? For whom?
For Roland himself?
No, it wasn’t that. The spectre was aware of his presence, yes, but Roland could sense that he was of no true importance to it, that he was little more than an interruption, an insect that had come crawling across the deck. The unyielding enmity was meant for another.
He licked his lips, dared a question. ‘Who are you?’
The old man only stared balefully.
‘Tell me,’ Roland insisted, voice quavering. ‘Who are you?’
Upon the horizon the sun was rising between shreds of cloud, and the ghost’s eyes reflected red like fire. It frowned direly, but spoke at last, in a voice that rasped with leashed fury. ‘It is no business of yours, fool and coward and murderer. But my name is Nathaniel Shear.’
Roland shuddered. Fool and coward and murderer. Yes, he was all of those. But the name Nathaniel
Shear meant nothing to him, revealed nothing. ‘Why are you on this ship? What is it that you want?’
‘I wait,’ stated the ghost. ‘Until he comes.’
‘Until who comes?’
The spectre bared yellowed teeth. ‘The one for whom I was made to die. I, and all the others who are gathered here. All those of us sacrificed to make way for him – even you, coward – we wait.’ The old man turned to gaze again out to sea, a fierce satisfaction smouldering in his eyes. ‘Aye. Before the end, he will attend us, here on this cursed vessel. He and his scapegoat woman. And then, I promise by all the deeps, there shall be a reckoning.’
Roland swallowed. The others gathered here. Then there were more shades yet to reveal themselves, just as Pietru had said. A ship full of them. ‘But who do you mean?’ He was pleading now. ‘Who is coming?’
And with bitter glee, the ghost told him.
THE FISH
PART THREE
Evening was coming on, and rain threatening, by the time Lucy finally made it to Shallow Corner. The wind had begun to buffet from the west, and the sea, which she had glimpsed from afar throughout the day as she followed the winding track down from the hills, was now close, whitecaps whipping bright amid the deepening gloom. Salt was thick in the air.
She was hurrying to beat the coming night, even though she was very tired. It was the end of a two-day march. Her food was gone, her water too, and she had barely slept the night before, huddled under some bushes by the roadside. Occasionally, both today and yesterday, passing travellers with horses or carts had offered her a lift, but she had refused them all. No matter how friendly the travellers had each seemed, she was afraid that they might have been sent from the Home, to fetch her back.
To top it all off, for this last hour, as the clouds darkened, it had seemed she was about to be drenched. But the rain had held off, and now, at last, as she came to a final switchback in the path, there was the village below her, tucked into the narrow foreshore at the foot of the slope.
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