by James Maxey
I said to Jasmine, “You seem to know more about being dead than I do. It caught me by surprise that there was something after life. What happens once I throw myself down Rott’s throat? What follows death after death?”
“I’ve never had the courage to find out,” said Jasmine, turning her face away, hugging herself.
I slowly walked to the back of the boat. Was I doing the right thing? If my life had ever caught the attention of a biographer, it’s a sure bet he could have written my story without checking a thesaurus to find a synonym for ‘self-sacrifice.’ Maybe I could wait a little while longer, until the dragon was actually chewing on the timbers, just to make sure what I was about to do was really necessary.
Infidel’s boots were a good two feet off the deck as she studied the approaching monster. Curiously, in life, whenever I dreamed of Infidel, I nearly always dreamed we were flying. It was natural to see her in this element. And in her white armor trimmed with silver, it was a simple thing to imagine her in a wedding gown. She deserved a more regal ceremony than our shared vows in the midst of that shadowy jungle. Yet those vows had been made, and I held them to be sacred. This was my bride, she wore my ring, she carried my child, and for her I would throw myself into the teeth of any monster.
And such a monster! Rott was fully at the surface now, a bloated corpse crawling with flies, riding so high upon the waves that its dead, flapping jaws opened to reveal a cavern more than large enough to swallow the Freewind. The sky was no longer sunset red, but black as a million oil-black gulls, feathers falling from wings of bone, spiraled through the air in vast clouds to feast upon the corpse of their carrion master.
The Romers seemed paralyzed as they stared at the horrid thing less than a ship’s length off the stern.
“The waves smell like pure vinegar now,” said Cinnamon, wrinkling her nose.
“Should we... attack it? We have bows,” said Mako. It was the first time I’d ever heard him sound doubtful.
“Even it wasn’t already dead, that thing’s the size of an island,” said Rigger. “It wouldn’t even notice.”
“How can it notice anything? It has no eyes! Nothing but empty sockets!” said Jetsam.
“Something’s drawing it to us,” said Sorrow. “Something...” She turned toward me, her eyes full of understanding.
“Is there nothing we can do to... to discourage it?” asked Mako.
Rigger shook his head. “How do you discourage the dead?”
Taking this as my motto, I embraced my final moment with gusto. I walked to Infidel, whose head was conveniently at the level of my own thanks to her defiance of gravity. I spun her and gave her a powerful hug, taking care not to crush her. I pressed my coconut jaw against her cheek and tried to whisper, “I love you no matter what,” though my kazoo voice bleated the words in such a graceless tone that the Divine Author alone knows what she might have heard. Then I thrust the folded letter into her grasp, leapt to the railing, and with a roguish tip of my tri-corn hat announced, “As I stand in the vestibule of self-abnegation, I wish to say that I have no regrets. Unfortunately, that would be the foulest lie. I fiercely regret my impending absence.” I fixed my pecan eyes squarely on Infidel, who looked utterly confused by the erratic behavior of Sorrow’s driftwood construct. I directed my final words to her alone: “If I had a thousand lives to give, I’d give them for you. My life was nothing but an empty glass until you filled it with the wine of your company. May the Divine Author guide his sacred quill to write the happy ending you deserve.”
All the Romers were staring at me with mouths agape. I gave them a crisp salute, then turned and leapt toward the decaying beast. The jaws surged forward upon the waves as if driven by hunger. The tip of one of his teeth tore through my shirt as I fell into the chasm of his mouth. As Rott’s wicked fangs closed behind me, it occurred to me that my farewell speech might have been more effective if I’d remembered to mention my name.
CHAPTER TEN
BODIES IN MOTION
THE BLACK, BLOATED tongue was covered with a wriggling carpet of worms that oozed pale puss as I tried to gain my balance. The tongue was a mass of muscular knots, stiff with rigor mortis, but my boots had trouble finding traction in the slime. The rotting skin covering the dead muscle peeled away as I slipped down to my hands and knees. The brown putrescence that bubbled up and soaked into my gloves would certainly have cost me the contents of my stomach, if I’d had a stomach. I shook my hands to cleanse them, but succeeded only in splattering the awful ick across my face. I prayed to the divine author that my paper tongue was useful only for speech, and completely insensate to taste should a drop find its way past my ragged lips.
The vinegar swells pushed Rott’s jaws to chewing lazily, slamming me against the boney mouth roof. Despite the unpleasantness of my surroundings, I felt strangely unthreatened. The beast was too dead to even swallow. Would I have to crawl down its gullet to meet my final end?
I was toppled by a sudden jolt. As I rolled over, I saw that the beast’s snout had collided with the rudder of the Freewind. If I was to save the ship, it was apparently up to me to march into Rott’s stomach. The dragon of entropy was also the dragon of indolence.
My gloves found purchase in the crack of a massive tooth. I pulled myself up and struggled to advance, inch by precious inch, through the cavernous mouth. In the dim shadows at the back of the gullet I saw shapes, vaguely human. I drew closer and found that the undulation of the waves had caused the beast to regurgitate the corpses of sailors. The dead men surged toward me as the body rode on a particularly energetic swell. The walking dead I could have faced bravely, but these were the half-digested dead, as listless and lifeless as their master. I let loose a buzzing scream. Even without brains to give the dead sailors purpose or muscles to drive their limbs, their advance was effective. I was knocked over by their collective weight, struggling helplessly as they dragged me down beneath their slimy, acid-dripping forms. My left leg slipped deep beneath the tongue and with a sudden jolt I was limbless from the knee down, my wooden foot sliced free by the beast’s closing teeth.
I had no time to dwell upon my own dissolution, however, for behind me was a far louder crunch. I strained to look backward and found half the rudder of the Freewind splintered. Was my sacrifice in vain? Was the beast not to be satisfied until all the ship was in its bowels?
“I’m the one you want,” I shouted, as the jaws clamped shut, plunging me into utter darkness. “I’m the lost soul you seek!”
There was a loud crash behind me. Light suddenly filled the mouth, bright as dawn. I pushed aside the liquefying décolletage of a decaying woman to see the source of the illumination. The teeth at the front of the mouth had been shattered. Standing in the gap was a goddess in pristine white armor, her hammer ablaze. She had a red bandana tied tightly over her mouth and nose to protect her from the stench as she swung her weapon in wide arcs, shattering columns of ivory thick as tree trunks to rid the beast of fangs. Yet her eyes weren’t focused on the demolition. They searched the cavernous mouth, narrowing as she spotted the mound of corpses that even now dragged me down the gullet.
In a flash she reached me, planting her feet on either side of my shoulders as she pulverized the half-gelatinized bodies with roundhouse swings of the Gloryhammer.
“Infidel!” I cried, as I grabbed her pristine white boot.
“Stagger!” she answered. “Is it truly you?”
“I’m the lost soul you seek,” I said, in what would have been a sob if my tongue had been up to the task. “How did you know it was me? You haven’t had time to read the letter!”
“‘The vestibule of self-abnegation’? Please. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“Sorrow didn’t build me with a tongue. She just gave me the power of speech a few hours ago.”
Satisfied that she’d cleared away the corpses, she grabbed my outstretched hand and pulled me, freeing my lower half from beneath the rotten tongue.
“Your le
g,” she said, looking pale.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I said. “Sorrow can make another.”
“Not if I kill her first,” she growled. “How could she do this to you?”
“I don’t believe it was personal,” I said, as Infidel helped me stand.
“Why did you jump into this damn thing’s mouth?” she asked.
“Rott knows I should be dead. Sacrificing myself is the ship’s only hope. You have to let me finish this.”
“This thing can’t chew without teeth,” said Infidel, swinging her hammer to pulverize the fang nearest us.
“Look at the size of the jaws!” I protested. “It can swallow the ship whole!”
“If it can catch us,” said Infidel, thrusting her hammer into the gap left by the missing tooth, then shooting skyward, dragging me to freedom. We arced back over the Freewind, my remaining boot clipping the crows nest as she dropped toward the bow. There was a giant cleat there that held a rope as thick as a woman’s arm. Infidel dropped me, then wrapped the rope over her shoulder and launched herself toward the sky once more. She grunted as the line went taut, having flown only a few feet beyond the tip of the jibboom. Her right arm, holding the Gloryhammer, was thrust straight before her. The rope was tight enough a man could have walked upon it.
With a squawking bark, Menagerie sank his teeth into the rope and began to flap his wings furiously.
The bow of the Freewind creaked as this single point of force created by the two aeronauts strained to move the ship through the undulating sea.
“It’s as good an idea as any,” shouted Jetsam, as he threw himself to hug the main mast then pushed his feet out behind him and began to vigorously kick against the air.
“That’s the spirit!” shouted Mako. He turned to his siblings and shouted, “Throw anything you can overboard! Lighten the load! We’ll outrun death itself!”
“You’re mad!” snorted Rigger. “These three can’t drag the ship no matter how hard they try. It’s a simple matter of mass!”
He ducked as a barrel shot past his head, courtesy of Poppy, though I don’t think she’d intentionally aimed for him.
“Given that you’re floating on an enchanted ocean being pursued by a fundamental force of nature manifesting itself as an enormous snake, I admire your devotion to logic,” Sorrow said to Rigger. “But if the Gloryhammer can move a person through the air, why can’t it move a ship?”
But any sense of optimism that Sorrow might have been trying to build was demolished as the Freewind shook violently, knocking everyone off their feet. Rott’s jaws had just flapped shut, trapping the entire rear of the boat.
“Rott’s momentum was greater than our own,” Rigger said, rising to his hands and knees. “You can’t just stop a mass like that! You can’t drag a ship forward on wishful thoughts!”
Despite Rigger’s pessimism, the lifeless, limp jaws washed open and the Freewind limped forward another yard. We were moments away from doom, but moments do matter.
“Get every sail up,” said Mako.
“There’s no damn wind without mother!” screamed Rigger.
“He’ll have a harder time washing us down his gullet if we’re fully rigged,” said Mako.
“Or if his jaws were frozen shut,” I whispered.
“You’re thinking of Purity’s sword?” asked Sorrow, kneeling beside me to examine my missing leg.
“I’m thinking of the Jagged Heart!”
“Do you know how to activate its powers?” she asked, as she grabbed a belaying pin from the deck. She began to fashion a peg leg from the wood to restore my mobility.
“Not a clue. But I watched Aurora summon a wall of ice thick enough to survive a direct blast of Greatshadow’s breath using the harpoon. It’s worth a try.”
“And if you succeed, we’ll simply be staved in by an iceberg rather than chewed to bits,” grumbled Rigger.
His words were almost drowned out by ropes dancing through every block and tackle on the ship, raising all the sails in great, noisy flaps. Despite his dour attitude, Rigger was doing what he could.
Sage stood nearby, watching the sails unfurl. I felt a stir of optimism as I saw her black curls flicker in a breeze. However, although the yards of canvas settled into position, they remained limp. The only breeze had been that caused by the sails unfurling.
Sage shook her head sadly as she stared into her spyglass. “Two minutes,” she said to Rigger. “If I’m calculating the undulations of the body on the currents correctly, we have two minutes before we get gnawed again. We have to gain some speed!”
“We’ve just enough time to puff our way out of this if we all take deep breaths,” said Rigger, with mock cheerfulness.
Sage chewed her fingernails as her gaze shifted from her spyglass to the sails to the bow, where Infidel and Menagerie strained against the rope. Her eyes widened as she watched Menagerie’s frantic flapping. Without warning, she bolted across the deck, toward my fallen notebook and the bottle of ink that lay nearby. She didn’t waste time locating a quill, but simply popped the stopper free and pressed the tip of her index finger to the bottle as she upended it. She smeared something quickly upon the page as she ran back to Rigger, still standing at the wheel.
“Wings!” she cried, holding the book open before him. “We need wings! You can make them!”
Rigger furrowed his brow as he tried to decipher his sister’s strange babblings. The crude thing she’d scrawled on the page wasn’t helping him understand her. I dragged myself up on my new leg, off-balance as it was a good two inches shorter than its more carefully-formed mate.
I limped toward the wheel, and saw that Sage had drawn what looked like a banana with two big ovals coming off it. Luckily, the fate of the ship didn’t rest on my understanding her gist. At the instant when I was most completely baffled, Rigger’s eyebrows raised up. “I’ve never tried anything like this!” he said, sounding excited. “It will destroy the sails and the rigging just to –”
“Try!” screamed Sage. “We don’t even have a minute before it hits us again!”
Rigger let go of the wheel and threw his hands toward the mainsail, as if he were grabbing it in his mind. He gave a violent sideways tug with his hands and suddenly the ropes rigging the mainsail shattered the thick block-and-tackle housings that held them. The ropes flew in opposing directions, jerking the mainsail completely taut. With a sickening sound no sailor ever wants to hear, the mainsail began to rip, splitting right down its center.
“Rigger!” Mako shouted, dropping the barrel he was throwing overboard and running toward his brother. “Have you lost your mind?”
Rigger didn’t answer. His face was contorted, turning red, his jaw clenched as if he were straining to lift an impossibly heavy weight. The ropes pulled the split mainsails toward opposite sides of the boat, the canvas taut as kites. The ropes stayed taut even as a wave rippled through them, unleashing a powerful flapping sound as Rigger threw his arms back.
The boat surged forward with enough momentum that I had to grab the wheel for balance.
The drawing suddenly made sense.
“Wings!” Sage shouted at Mako. “We’ve turned the mainsail into wings!”
Rigger brought his hands forward once more, the sails dancing like flags, until they caught air as Rigger spread his arms as if he were doing a breaststroke.
Behind us, the massive jaws were once more closing.
“Just one more yard!” screamed Sage
Rigger gave a third flap, then dropped to his knees. Behind us, Rott’s jaws closed on empty air.
The wing-sails suddenly went limp, dropping into the water.
“I can’t hold them any more,” Rigger groaned as he fell on his side. “Without the aid of the pulleys, the weight is too much! I feel as if I’ve torn every muscle in my body.”
“Cut those ropes and sails loose!” Sage shouted. “They’ll cost us our speed.”
Mako and Cinnamon drew swords and ran to the taut ropes hanging overboard
.
“You did good, Rigger,” said Sage, kneeling beside her trembling brother. “We’re moving faster than we were, and bodies in motion want to stay in motion.”
Indeed, we were moving forward, though barely at the speed of a good walk. Now that the ship had been given a nudge by the makeshift wings, the Gloryhammer’s magic proved sufficient to maintain our momentum. Rott remained too close for comfort, and flies still covered the ship, but even without waiting for Sage’s new calculations, I could see that we were putting precious inches between us and the dead thing at our tail.
“I command you to keep pulling!” a voice shouted from the front of the ship. “Know that the royal family salutes your courage!” It was Bigsby, posed heroically upon the bow, waving his fist at Infidel and Menagerie. “When I return home, my father will reward you handsomely for your heroism!”
But instead of finding encouragement in the dwarf’s words, Infidel shouted back, “My damn arm’s about to come out of its socket! I can’t do this much longer!”
Back at the mainmast, Jetsam suddenly dropped to the deck. Dark circles of sweat stained his black shirt under the arms. “I’m spent,” he whispered.
In truth, I doubted he’d added much to our speed.
Our gains were only temporary and I had the only plan that might maintain them. I headed for the hatch to retrieve the Jagged Heart. My idea was to weigh down Rott with so much ice that he couldn’t move. What could it hurt to try?
But before I could go down the hatch, I was met by a woman heading up the stairs. It was Gale Romer, her hair drenched in sweat and twisted back behind her ears in a crude bun held in place by a few pins. Stray strands were plastered to her neck, which sported a half dozen bite marks. Rather than the modest nightgown she’d worn when last I saw her, she was dressed in Brand’s white silk shirt, which was cinched around her waist by a braided leather whip. Her cheeks were flushed red, her lips swollen and dark.