The wind had been blowing them west, and he set the course farther east for two days, then zigzagged, heading north and south.
After a week, he imagined they had missed it again, and they sailed east-west courses, then sailing north a little at a time.
Steadily, Tull’s health improved, so that he could get out of bed for an hour at a time. Fava nursed him, and found him to be pliant, undemanding.
Though she had never thought of him as trying before, she now saw his behavior as something unnatural. So one day while Phylomon slept in the hold and Darrissea sat in the cabin, driving the ship while watching through the glass windows, Fava asked Tull about the change.
“Okanjara,” Tull said, I Am Free. “Every slave who has escaped Craal or Bashevgo has said those words, but I feel it. I am free.”
“Of course you are free,” Fava said. “We’ve all escaped.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Tull answered. “When Mahkawn stabbed me, I saw you on the far side of the room, and I had been thinking of all the things I want in life, and suddenly I saw everything—my family, my friends, my dreams—all ripped away, and something strange happened.
“I realized suddenly that for all my life, I’d been carrying a weight on my shoulders, all these little burdens. I had all these dreams of happiness, and I’d always thought that if I worked hard enough, they would all come true.
“I would get married and father a child and build my house and make my fortune and I would somehow reach this moment when it would all be mine—everything that I had ever wanted or dreamed of would be mine, and happiness would be like an apple plucked fresh from the tree, and I would finally grasp it.
“Instead, when Mahkawn tried to kill me, in that moment when all my hopes were crushed, nothing mattered anymore. I didn’t need the apple. I could already taste perfect freedom. I still taste it.”
Tull stopped talking, took a deep breath. Fava looked at him, puzzled. “What are you saying? That hope is evil, or that it doesn’t matter? In a world like ours, what more can we have than hope?”
Tull studied the horizon. “You hope for peace. I have peace. I think that if you were destroyed, perhaps you would find it, too. That is all I can say.”
“But not everyone can have peace, not when there are Slave Lords and Blade Kin,” Fava said, “all trying to take it from us.”
“Yes, you can have peace,” Tull said. “Inside you. The Blade Kin and Slave Lords cannot steal it away. They search for it too. The Slave Lords consume—wealth, land, people—heaping riches upon themselves. They think that if they can gratify themselves enough, then they will attain it. I guess, in my heart, I was a Slave Lord.
“Then there are the Blade Kin—Pwi who imagine that if they can free themselves of kwea, they will find peace. You think that the Blade Kin are purposely cruel, but they do not see themselves so. They have so trained out their own compassion, and then fear that they cannot be touched. They see themselves as tools, like iron blades, that exist only to bend others to their wills. Perhaps if they were not misled, many of them would also find peace, but they have been fooled by the Slave Lords into believing that they, too, will find happiness through gratification.”
“Does this mean that you won’t build me that big house you promised?” Fava joked.
Tull laughed. “I wish you would come live naked with me in the forest until you learn that houses do not matter.”
“I think you say that only because you want to see me naked,” Fava said, and she kissed him.
Tull held her for a long moment, kissing her tenderly. “I mean it. Sometimes, when I am sitting still, I feel inside myself, and I am flying without strain. It’s like I am diving through clouds, the wind ripping at me, tasting the snow and rain on my tongue, and I am all alone.
“Other times, I feel as if I were in a forest, when all the trees around me close others out, and in that place, I feel perfect contentment. I want to share it with others, but I don’t know how.
“Should I burn their houses and chop off their limbs, then threaten them with death hoping that when their dreams are destroyed, they will find peace inside? Could such a plan even work? I can’t even imagine words to tell you what I feel. And I wonder, if you were destroyed, would you feel it too?
“Every moment I feel as if I am a redwood, with my branches touching the naked sky, and the sun is rising and I want to sing anthems to all the small creatures on the shadowed ground below me, ‘Listen, listen, let us taste the light.’ All I can hope is that you can find it.
“So I ask you, will you come live naked with me in the forest?”
Fava shook her head. “It wouldn’t work. Zhofwa has blown her kisses on us. When I am with you, I think I too have found happiness. How could I keep searching for something I already possess?”
Tull looked her in the eyes. “I love you. I’ve known the taste of that happiness in your arms,” he said. “It is the closest thing that comes to what I am talking about. But your peace is not lasting. When you watched Mahkawn stab me, I saw you. You lost all the happiness you thought you had.
“I wanted to share this feeling with you. I wanted you to relish it as I do. That is why I came back from the Land of Shapes. To tell you. But now I find that there are no words.”
The wind blew Tull’s dark-red hair in wisps across his face, and Fava thought momentarily of braiding it. She looked down into the cold blue water, felt the salt spray bite her tongue. The wind, the water felt good, but all were colored by kwea, by her fears of the Blade Kin and of the Creators. She touched his hand.
“Don’t give up on me,” she said seriously. “I want to feel what you feel. I wish I were a Spirit Walker, and could touch you, and taste that freedom. In Bashevgo, they say that when the Okansharai comes, he will free us all. So perhaps it can be done.”
Tull glanced up at the sky to the north, at dark gray clouds. “Perhaps we should go inside,” he said, shivering. “It looks as if we are heading into another storm, and I’m getting tired.”
Fava looked up, thought it odd that the storm was not heralded by any stronger winds. Then she saw the island on the horizon, beneath the clouds. “Those are not clouds,” she said after a moment, “those are birds!”
***
Chapter 24: A Storm of Birds
Phylomon studied the sky on the rolling deck of the ship, studying clouds of birds. For a hundred miles across the island, the skies were dark gray, as if the storm of the century were on the rise.
In his head he quickly calculated—estimated that there were not merely millions of the strange gray birds, but hundreds of millions, more than mankind on Anee could ever hope to fight or evade.
“Have Darrissea idle the engines,” Phylomon told Fava. “I want all of you to stay inside the cabin, in case the birds attack.”
Fava rushed below deck into the cabin, but Tull remained beside Phylomon for the moment.
“Maybe we should shut off the engines,” Tull said.
“Why?” Phylomon gave him a sidelong look.
“I hear serpents speaking in the water,” Tull answered, “strange serpents. They will be looking for our boat.”
Phylomon knew that the sea serpent was Tull’s animal guide, but the big Tcho-Pwi looked worried. “Why should we fear these serpents?”
Tull shook his head. “These are not like the serpents at Smilodon Bay. These are … strangers, new ones. Cruel.” Tull thought for a long moment and concluded. “They will hunt the boat.”
Phylomon exhaled a long sigh. He knew that the Creators had wiped out all of the serpents last year, but hadn’t imagined that they might supplant the creatures. Of course, that had been their plan. They’d upgraded the serpents, created a breed that saw humans as prey, boats as a threat.
“Can you guide us past them, get me to the island?”
Tull nodded, “Perhaps,” then he went down into the cabin.
Phylomon watched him leave. Tull hung his head, and his shoulders were rounded by fatigue. The boy was still
weak and had been up for hours. Phylomon worried for him.
Darrissea came topside, took Phylomon’s hand, just held it, and asked, “What are you going to do?”
Tull reversed the engines, turned the boat away, and headed east of the island, back farther out to sea.
“We’ll see if we can reach the island, and then decide,” Phylomon answered. The young girl looked up at him from dark eyes.
“Can I come with you?”
“I don’t believe that will be possible,” Phylomon answered, but he did not move his hand away. “It’s too dangerous.”
Tull kept the boat on course for several hours, then circled up north of the island and cut the engines. By then, he was sweating and breathing shallowly, and Phylomon had to urge him to go to bed.
“Just let the wind blow us toward the island in the dark,” Tull whispered in pain. “Don’t move around or speak. I’ve tried to commune with the serpents, and they’ve begun to accept me, but I can’t vouch for your safety. I think that they won’t attack if we remain silent.”
Phylomon agreed, and as the sun set behind the island, he stood on the fore deck and let the boat drift. Tull came out with him, and stood gazing down into the water.
A stiff breeze battered the boat so that waves slapped the hull with a ringing sound. Phylomon watched Tull.
“Let’s go back farther out,” Tull whispered once. Phylomon moved to go start the engine, but Tull said, “No, wait—they’re too close!”
He began muttering, looking to the south and repeating the mantra of, “We are brothers.…We are brothers.”
He clutched the rail and stared into the water, as if he were in a trance.
He carefully walked into the cabin, stood at the throttle, and closed his eyes, sweating.
For several minutes he stood, then shouted, “They’ve found us!”
He gunned the engines, spun the boat. Phylomon held on, looked back. A dozen young serpents surfaced at once, only yards from where they had waited—small serpents, in the fifty-foot range—but still longer than the boat.
Tull kept the boat at full throttle, leaping over the waves, and the serpents followed in their wake, gaining.
Suddenly, directly behind the boat, a great serpent rose, a huge male with a dorsal fin that was longer than the boat. He roared and flashed his head in the sunlight, displaying teeth longer than a man’s arm.
He came down and grasped a smaller serpent in his jaws, then disappeared underwater, trailing blood.
Phylomon glanced at Tull’s pale face. The big Tcho-Pwi kept his hands on the wheel, kept running. Behind them, a serpent roared again, and Phylomon saw the great one rolling in the water while the others attacked, biting him in several places.
The big male threw them off, killed four, but the water around him teemed with foes.
Tull held the boat on course for an hour, then headed south, shut off the engines, and slumped at the controls.
Evening was coming, and the wind had died. They sat quietly, and Tull looked far off.
“Is your serpent dead?” Darrissea asked.
Tull nodded, gazing out to sea. “He couldn’t have killed them all. There were too many to fight.”
Fava nodded, put her arm around Tull.
“The wind is calmer now,” Phylomon said. “We shouldn’t have that trouble again.”
He did not bother to say that if the serpents attacked again, they wouldn’t make it away from the island alive. “Once the boat gets close to shore, I may have to jump out and ask you to run for it.”
The others merely nodded, and he added, “If we can get ashore safely, I’m not sure it would be wise for you to stay. There may be more blood eaters on the island.”
Fava shivered, and Phylomon thought a bit, then said, “In fact, if you can make it out, I’d prefer if you leave. Give me two weeks, and then come back for me.”
Darrissea said, “What if there are more eels here, like the blue eel the Creators sent to attack you in Smilodon Bay?”
“Then I will have to deal with them,” Phylomon answered.
By midnight, the others had all fallen asleep down below. Phylomon sat with Darrissea above decks for awhile, holding her hand as the moons did their nightly waltz.
The girl was beautiful in her way, with that innocence and purity that could only be found in the young and naïve, and Phylomon realized he would miss her.
He suspected that he was going to his death. The fuel-air bomb he’d hidden in his arm was powerful—too powerful for Phylomon to use at close range, and on the island, it would most likely incinerate him.
Perhaps if he had a pyroderm for his symbiote, like the one Tantos had stolen from his brother, he might survive, but Phylomon’s symbiote wouldn’t be able to withstand such heat, and Phylomon knew he could not count on the harmonic resonators alone to kill the Creators.
He might shake down their mountains, bury them for awhile, but they would just dig their way out. No, he needed to use the incendiary bomb first. If he survived, he could try the rods after he’d done as much damage as possible.
Phylomon kissed Darrissea’s cheek as she slept. “Find someone good to love,” he whispered in her ear. He doubted that her subconscious mind would register the words, but he hoped. He stroked her face, then got up to leave.
He watched the boat washing ever close to shore. There were rocks on shore, rocks enough to tear apart the small boat. The waves battering them were white with foam that flashed in the moonlight.
Tull, Fava and Darrissea apparently did not suspect that the boat was in danger. Being from the Rough, they’d never sailed in a metal boat, and they must have believed the metal shell gave their vehicle more protection than it did.
Let them sleep, Phylomon thought. Let them imagine themselves invincible.
Phylomon had a name for those without symbiotes; he called them “temporaries,” for their lives came and went like leaves passing in the wind. At times he found them amusing. Sleeping like babies when the boat was about to be dashed apart on the rocks.
He stayed at the wheel, ready to start the engines if necessary and back away from shore.
But he actually got lucky, and the wind drove them up on a steep but sandy beach.
Thor was up, and under the green and ginger light of the massive gas giant, Phylomon could see that the shore was black with sleeping birds.
The blue man packed his weapons into one sack, then slipped out the door of the boat, locked it behind him, and covered the windows with a tarpaulin. The birds would probably not recognize the boat as man-made, but he would not want them to be able to see into the cabin.
Phylomon tied the boat to a large boulder, and then slipped off through the darkness, walking softly among the birds.
They were larger than gulls, the size of large eagles with sharp beaks.
They often readjusted their wings and pecked at one another in their sleep, and Phylomon found them so numerous that he frequently had to move one aside with his toes so he could place his foot.
Yet the birds were unnaturally silent. Gulls or terns or nearly any other type of bird would have emitted cooing noises or an occasional cry, but these creatures were absolutely silent, and from time to time one would flip its neck in its sleep and try to slice Phylomon’s impenetrable hide.
He headed for a dark line of trees where the brush was thick, and took nearly an hour to cross three hundred yards of open beach and reach the trees.
The ground under the trees was littered with white bird guano and small animal bones piled many inches deep. It made squishy cracking noises as he walked through, and as he passed over the miles, he remained constantly amazed to find that it never got any thinner.
Always, above him, the birds sat thick in the trees, so that even under the light of an ample waning moon, he felt as if he were passing under the darkest jungle canopy.
He almost felt as if he had already entered the caves that would lead to the lair of the Creators.
***
Chapter 25: Dragons
At dawn, Darrissea woke to the sound of hundreds of clawed feet scrabbling atop the steel boat.
She rose and found the windows covered with leather tarps, and walked uneasily about the cabin. She relieved herself in the latrine, and then ate a small meal.
The fresh water was low, so she drank little. She sat in the shadows, munching thick moist rye crackers from Bashevgo. She tried not to think about the birds on the roof.
She recalled the eel that had come out of the gray bird back in Smilodon Bay, and in her mind’s eye she watched it wriggle in the fire, filled with bullets, yet unable to die. She could not help but wonder if the birds above her might carry such creatures in their stomachs, and if the cabin had any holes to the outside that would allow them access.
She tried to peer outside, hoping to see through a crack in the tarpaulin.
When Tull rose, Darrissea whispered, “Do you think any blood eaters are out there?”
“If they were close,” Tull answered, “I think Phylomon would have come back to warn us, or pulled the boat under cover to hide it.”
Darrissea nodded, little reassured.
For the rest of the morning they spoke seldom. Darrissea’s muscles began cramping, and she often stretched or rubbed herself. Her neck and head ached particularly, and by watching others, she saw that the stress was affecting them, too.
Several times during the day, they heard sea serpents roar out in the waters, a deep bellowing that had been familiar in Smilodon Bay. Back then, the sound had been comforting, but now it filled her with fear.
That evening, the whole boat rocked as some huge creature pounced on the deck.
Fava grabbed a handrail and righted herself. None of them moved for nearly twenty minutes as they listened to snuffling outside. The beast brushed past a window.
A hooked claw ripped the tarpaulin, and they saw a massive black shape, part of a wing.
“Dragon,” Tull whispered, but it was not like the little tyrant birds that protected the forests and hills from pterodactyls back home.
Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series Page 14