Riverkeep

by Martin Stewart

  “I’m the Riverkeep!” shouted Wull, his pulse throbbing in his ears. He slashed and stabbed at Murdagh, who parried and ducked, his balance momentarily failing him. “This isn’t the sea—it’s the Danék and it’s mine! It’s mine! I am not nothing—I’m the Riverkeep! I keep the river! I keep it!”

  As he raised the harpoon to drive at Murdagh, the sword appeared from nowhere and knocked it aside, clattering the metal from his hands and into the waves. Murdagh stepped forward smartly and placed the sword’s point on Wull’s chest, just above his pounding heart.

  Wull felt his skin break on it, felt the hot trickle of blood on his frozen skin.

  “An’ so into history,” said Murdagh, smiling. “Good-bye, cut-squirt.”

  Wull met his eyes as the blade was drawn back, and reached out his hand to take hold of Pappa’s shoulder. Murdagh drove the sword forward.

  It sank into Tillinghast’s body, the loose bundle of straw and skin appearing in front of Wull, taking the blade and drawing Murdagh toward him with arms that were little more than loose shapes.

  “No!” shouted Murdagh. “No, get off me! Get back!”

  Tillinghast, eyes closed in concentration, stretched his body around Murdagh’s wiry frame, the bunches of straw wrapping wriggling arms and legs in a tight grip, pulling him so close that they seemed to be one man.

  The great homunculus toppled slowly, exhaustedly, into the lashing waves, taking Murdagh with him in a howling scream.

  “Till!” cried Wull.

  “No! My sea!” shouted Murdagh before they vanished into silence.

  “Tillinghast!” said Wull, running to the edge and pushing his face into the water. Through the freezing sting he saw their wriggling mass sinking slowly, saw the moment Murdagh’s body emptied, his mouth left shouting at the surface in mute protest, watched as Tillinghast’s last fragments of energy gave out and he burst apart, his limbs and muscles and straw drifting from Murdagh’s corpse like a blossom from a tree, heading to the bottom in a slow, graceful spiral.

  “Untie the arms, it that speaks,” said Pappa softly. He was piled on the floor of the bäta, spent and empty.

  “Pappa,” said Wull, kneeling with him in a tight hug, face pressed to the greasy, wet hair, tears at the corners of his eyes. “I can’t do it, Pappa. That was the last harpoon. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I can’t do it.”

  “Untie the arms,” said Pappa again.

  “I can’t,” said Wull.

  He half stood, saw the waters around them filled with the frantic splashing of the Hellsong’s surviving crew.

  “We need to save these people,” he said. “There’ll be room in the bäta. . . .”

  Then he saw the mormorach, white razors slicing from its dorsal fins as it bore down on him with impossible speed, its silver bulk rising through the waves like the spear of a god.

  “Oh, Pappa,” he said, his strength giving out and his knees buckling. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—it’s coming and I can’t stop it! I couldn’t save you! I’m sorry!”

  He looked into Pappa’s clouded eyes and sensed the bohdan inside looking back at him, felt his eyes connecting with the creature—then felt it look away.

  “Wulliam,” said Pappa, brown eyed again and with the faintest whisper of his old voice. “Untie my arms, my boy.”

  Wull felt his eyes fill, water tumbling down his cheeks, his chest crushed by the memories of the brown eyes’ patience as they watched him learn his knots, cast his line after breamcod, the voice that told him stories, taught him to read—told him he was loved.

  “Pappa,” he said, “you are still with me.”

  “Just enough,” whispered Pappa.

  Wull loosed the bonds at Pappa’s wrists and held the thin body to him, the mormorach’s wash tilting the bäta as it drew closer. The mormorach roared.

  And Wull knew then what it was. It was death; it was the power of the earth and the sky and the sea, the power of everything he couldn’t control or fight. He hugged Pappa closer and shut his eyes.

  Pappa’s body emptied in his arms, what bulk remained vanishing under his hands like a cut sack as the mormorach broke the surface, crying out with a screech that split the sky. Wull drew back, watching helplessly as Pappa’s empty skin fell into the waves’ hissing white, and turned to find the mormorach stopped as it had jumped, its gigantic head lashing in pain as the bohdan took it from within. It fell back, gnashing, its mouth wider than Wull could have imagined; then its milky, clouded eyes opened, looked right into his before they snapped shut, and the enormous beast vanished with a thunderclap, drenching him and knocking the bäta on its beams.

  Wull dived overboard, following Pappa, kicking down through water that was busy with the frantic legs of the Hellsong’s survivors scrambling to the little boat. He glimpsed Pappa’s head and sank farther, his adrenaline already making a breathless panic inside him.

  He swam down into void and the huge silence of deeper water, Pappa twirling away into the beyond.

  Wull reached out his hand, brushing Pappa’s fingertips before they were whipped away by the currents. He watched until his lungs were bursting as Pappa flowed downward, welcomed into the Danék’s embrace, his body light and free, his expression finally one of comfort and peace, his eyes and mouth closed.

  As he began to fade into the sightless depths, Wull was overwhelmed by a desire to follow, to wrap himself in Pappa’s strong arms and sleep alongside him forever, away from everything, away from the pain that ripped at his body and his soul.

  And then he remembered the people above, struggling and dying.

  He let Pappa go, watched him vanish.

  Then, with a huge effort, he kicked himself upward into the chaos of the port and the wails of the injured as they threw themselves across his bäta.

  He swam over, climbed in, lifted someone gently from the center thwart onto the bottom boards, and took up the oars. They slotted neatly into the wounds worn by his journey, and he pulled them to his chest.

  “Is everyone all right?” he said.

  “We’re fine, Wull,” said Samjon, nursing a cut forehead. “But there’s some folk left near the wreckage.”

  “Then let’s help them,” said Wull, heaving on the oars and turning the bäta toward the waving hands of the stranded and the helpless.

  22

  The Bäta

  But, having said that, there really is nothing quite like spring’s bloom along the Danék. No sooner have the first shoots wriggled through the moss than the dead, colorless world is born anew: wildflowers splash riots of crimson and lilac like painters’ daubs; bony trees are suddenly rich with leaf and blossom. The world is restored by the Danék’s spring, and we, the weary travelers, with it.

  —Wheeldon Garfill, A Path Trod Well: Journeys of My Life

  The water’s chill was a wall of pain on his open eyes, but Wull swam deeper, easing his wind out in calm bubbles as he sank, gathering the loose floating things in his fists. His hands scattered crabs on the high rocks of the seabed and sent a wave along the massed ranks of anemones, their little red fingers vanishing in a slurp of panic.

  He found a gray, heavy lump lodged in a little groove of stone and snatched it, shooing away a claw-picking pincrab before kicking to the surface again for a huge grateful breath and edging over to the bäta.

  It sat patiently on the still water, the battered, bitten pieces of its ribs and frame still open and exposed, spotted by little tufts from the wood’s fiber like growing grass.

  One of its eyes, cracked by the mormorach’s tail, hung out from the exposed ribs as though swollen. Wull pushed it back gently so that it looked forward again, easing the wood into place so it would hold together, at least until he could fix it properly.

  He dropped his gatherings onto the bottom boards and pulled himself in, dragging his body over the transom and onto the center thwart, h
is eyes closed, more exhausted than he’d realized, colder in the coastal wind than he’d been below the waves.

  He stood, looked around, his shirt freezing where it touched his skin. The first light of dawn was rhythmically pierced by the flare of the lighthouse, and the port was filled with fish craft of all sizes: little one-person dinghies; twin-sailed pot-boats hemmed with lobster buckets; wide deep-sea trawlers, many-sailed and many-crewed, all with teeming nets on their pulleys and voices raised in happy labor. The breakwater had caught the early-morning glow, framing the statue of the Mother, the fish tails in her basket visible all across Canna Bay.

  Above the port, the village’s white houses climbed toward the forest and the mountain. Wull stared through the mist at the dark, slow-swaying treetops.

  “I wonder how Remedie an’ Mix are gettin’ on,” he said.

  “Oh, they’ll be fine,” said Tillinghast’s head, propped on his neck like a rivermelon on a market stall. “There won’t be many’d cross Miss Cantwell when she’s got a face on.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Wull, thinking back to what Mix had said before she’d run into the woods, and what they’d felt together.

  “I am,” said Tillinghast. “You’s wastin’ your time, by the way.”

  “An’ how’s that?” said Wull, stuffing the scraps of muscle and straw he’d recovered into a hessian sack.

  “You’s never goin’ to find all my bits, that’s how. I must be mostly halfway across the world by now. Which is nice, I s’pose. I’s always wanted to travel a bit, so I’s glad I is, even if it’s jus’ my bahookie that gets to do it.”

  “I found that,” said Wull, shuddering. “It’s already in here.”

  “I know. I was bein’ funny. An’ you’s got all my arms an’ legs an’ everythin’. Mighty impressive. An’ you got . . . y’know . . .”

  “Yup,” said Wull. “Gave me a right start.”

  Tillinghast grinned.

  “I’ve found all o’ you, I reckon,” said Wull, stretching his muscles. “’S taken me two days.”

  “An’ I appreciates it,” said Tillinghast. He squinted out the corner of his eye at the sacks filled by his body, feet and hands sticking in a jumble from the tops. “But you’s never goin’ to be able to put me back together, that’s what I mean.”

  “I stitched your hand pretty well.”

  “But most o’ my herbs is gone ’cept the ones in my head, an’ they’s a big part of it.”

  Wull shook his head. “They’re only a small part, an’ we can learn ’em in books. There’s no takin’ away what you’ve got inside—even gettin’ smashed apart din’t take it away.”

  “That’s true,” said Tillinghast.

  “You’re a real man, Till, an’ I can fix you,” said Wull.

  “Right you are,” said Tillinghast. He scrunched his face. “My nose is itchy again.”

  Wull leaned over and scratched it.

  “No, right inside it,” said Tillinghast. “There’s nothin’ in there—don’t worry. You’ve no idea what the tide does for your sinuses.”

  “One thing, though,” said Wull, scratching harder. “If I hadn’t come for you, you’d have been lyin’ down there for a long time, awake an’ waitin’, right?”

  “Sure,” said Tillinghast. “I’d’ve been bobbin’ around on the seabed forever, I reckon.”

  “That would’ve been terrible,” said Wull, holding Tillinghast’s gaze.

  “But you came an’ got me. An’ when I was lyin’ down there in the dark, I knew you would. It’s almost borin’ how predictable you are, young Master Keep.”

  “Glad to disappoint,” said Wull. He stood and gathered the oars to him, sat on the center thwart and took a deep breath.

  “How you feelin’ now? ’Bout your pappa, I mean,” said Tillinghast.

  “That he’s at peace,” said Wull. He put his hand on his healing cut, felt the little pulse within. “I knew, really, what was happ’nin’ once I read about that thing, the bohdan. But I knew too there was the tiniest bit o’ him left in there beside it. An’ there was. He can sleep in the river now, an’ he saved me. That was all he ever wanted, really—me bein’ safe.”

  He looked over the bäta’s edge. The wind-pulled surface was oily with the discarded scraps of the trawlers and skiffs, and a hurtle of seulas was slipping among them—alternately fed and chased off by the shouting fishfolk. As the ripples of the bäta’s frame spread out into the bay, Wull saw himself reflected: brown-skinned, tired, bruised, and scarred. But older, too, more like Pappa, and more like himself. “That reminds me,” he said, reaching into the prow. “I found this washed up this mornin’.”

  He reached over and placed Tillinghast’s hat on his head, tipping out sand on the way.

  “You got it!” said Tillinghast, trying to look up at the brim. “Thanks, Wull.” He sniffed. “It does half smell like fish though—you could’ve gave it a quick rinse.”

  “Next time, I promise.”

  “How’s the mandrake?” asked Tillinghast.

  Wull leaned over and peered into the sack.

  “Big,” he said.

  “How big?”

  “I don’t know. Like a cat?”

  “How big of a cat?”

  “Quite big.”

  “Tha’s good,” said Tillinghast.

  “Why d’you want it so badly? For money?”

  “Gods, no!” said Tillinghast. “I’s stolen so many things for money, but not her.”

  “Then what? What you goin’ to do with it?”

  “With her,” said Tillinghast. “I’s goin’ to plant her. She’ll be fine an’ strong an’ alive an’ safe. An’ she’ll be mine.”

  Wull put the mandrake gently back in the prow. It was heavier than before, he realized—heavier than its size. “You ready to be goin’?” he said.

  “Oh, sure, jus’ let me get comfortable,” said Tillinghast, stretching his face and batting his eyelids. “All right . . . go.”

  “You fancy givin’ me a hand with the rowin’?” said Wull.

  Tillinghast grinned. “You cheeky little blaggard. When you’ve put me back together I’ll kick your backside.”

  “I might stitch you up back to front,” said Wull. “You’ll have to kick your own backside then.” He smiled and started the oars, Tillinghast yielding to his deep, hearty guffaw.

  As they laughed together, Wull sculled them out beyond the breakwater toward the mouth of the Danék, working a slow, easy rhythm that was so natural as to be barely felt, the strength of Pappa’s hands on his guiding him toward the boathouse and his own safe corner of the world.

  “Come on, little boat,” he whispered to the bäta. “Let’s go home.”

  Each stroke of the oars filled him with the river’s slow strength, its eternal song moving through his arms and into his heart. He closed his eyes, feeling its currents rush through his veins, listening ever closer to its delicate voice; and there, on the very edge of it, he heard the split-glass whisper of winter’s end, and the chattering buds of an early spring.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my wonderful parents, Ellice and Chris, whose support has been constant and inspiring. To my immediate family—Viv, Trev, Graeme, Kirsty, and Amelia—for all their love and tolerance of my scribbling through the years. To Julie, for reading every word and showing me how to lead my stories into the light and the warmth. To my brilliant friends, for being everything that they are (“Emile Heskey?”). To George Parsonage, who keeps the Clyde, for welcoming me into his home and telling me stories about life on the river (www.glasgowhumanesociety.com). To my agent, Molly Ker Hawn, who saw something in my early work to take me on, and whose vision sent me on the most unlikely path to publication. To the staff of Penguin and Viking: Amy Alward for first reading those four pages, the brilliant editorial teams, and especially my editor
s, Shannon Cullen and Sharyn November, for their guidance. To these great people, and everyone else whose contributions to my writing and my life have allowed me to realize this long-held dream—thank you.

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