Tong Lashing

by Peter David

  I pulled my feet up to make sure they were clear of the water, and checked that my sword and staff were still with me. I also had a skin of water attached to my belt. After my experience in the Tragic Waste, it had just become force of habit. Out of curiosity, I cupped my hand and dipped it into the ocean, then tried to drink it. It tasted salty, as one might have expected, and not especially palatable. So I took a judicious sip from my water skin, even though my impulse was to suck it dry.

  Then I waited.

  What I was waiting for, I hadn’t the faintest idea. I had no reason to expect a ship to come along and rescue me. I had no real means of paddling. I could use my sheathed sword as a makeshift oar, I supposed, but what direction would I head? The ship had been going east….

  I looked up at the sun. It was still low to the horizon, so I knew the approximate direction that east was. But so what? Miles upon miles of empty ocean stretched before me, and even if I did manage to gain a little ground with my sword as an oar, so what? Better, I reasoned, to save my strength and dedicate it to a useful pursuit such as not falling off.

  I prayed no storms would arise, because if they did, I was a goner. I had no protection from the elements, and any truly fierce waves would likely sweep me off the wood and away to the aforementioned watery grave.

  And so I lay there.

  And lay there.

  And lay there.

  I watched the sun track across the sky and wondered if the old stories about it being pulled through the air by a vast being on a great chariot had any basis in fact. I somehow doubted it. If I were a creature with as much power as that, I’d certainly find some pursuit more worthwhile and interesting than doing the exact same thing day in, day out. I reasoned that one of the benefits of omnipotence was the right to be spared mind-numbing boredom and repetition. Otherwise what was the point of infinite power in the first place?

  The sun finished its arc and night fell once more. The silence was deafening. Just the steady lapping of water against the table and my labored breathing, that was it. I fell asleep and dreamt of Sharee, and of Mordant. I dreamt of the Princess Entipy, and the court of King Runcible. They were pleasant dreams, which was surprising considering I didn’t usually have pleasant dreams. In the taunting night vision, I was back at Runcible’s court, except this time everything had worked out. I was respected, loved, admired. I was dancing with Entipy, and people were bowing and smiling whene’er I passed.

  And my mother was alive. She was standing to one side, grinning at how much her great and glorious son Apropos had accomplished. “Your destiny,” she mouthed, and Mordant was on her shoulder.

  I woke up. It was night, but I could sense that the sun would soon be rising.

  It did.

  It crossed the sky. More tedium. More of the same. I supposed I should be grateful as there was still no sign of anything to break the tedium, such as a storm. I remained judicious about the water, even though my lips and throat were begging for more. My stomach was thick with pain from lack of food. It had been a day and a half since I’d had anything to eat, and I had no clue how much longer it would be, if ever. Why, oh why hadn’t I thought to keep some sort of nonperishable food items upon me? Wouldn’t that have made some degree of sense?

  I castigated myself for that, and soon I was chiding myself for everything else in my life that I had done wrong or foolishly. It was a considerable list. What was interesting was that in virtually every instance, I found someone else to blame. This person or that person had done me wrong, had ill-used me, had found some way to exploit me. Poor, poor Apropos, never to blame for any foul deeds or unfortunate happenstance that befell him, for they were always the fault of someone else.

  This was certainly not a new mind-set. Nevertheless, for the first time, with no one else around to voice my frustrations to or commiserate with, it seemed rather… I don’t know… hollow.

  The problem with any boring situation is that sooner or later you tend to become bored with yourself. With only yourself to talk to, it’s easy to realize just how little you have to offer for intelligent conversation.

  It wasn’t as if I had always been my own greatest enthusiast. My loathing for the world was generally superseded only by my self-loathing. But when you’re adrift on a piece of wood, even self-loathing will take you only so far. Sooner or later, you begin to wonder… why?

  Why?

  If life is so terrible, why not do something about it? Find options, look for new ways to approach it. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I was a rather ingenious individual for searching out alternatives to dealing with assorted predicaments. It had gotten me this far, hadn’t it? Granted, where it had gotten me was a piece of wood in an ocean in the middle of nowhere, but still, the point was that less inventive people would have been dead long before this.

  Most of my approach to life was filled with a desire to be left alone. Beyond a steady appetite for vengeance on those who had made my existence a living hell, I really didn’t aspire to anything other than to let others get on with the business of adventuring, fighting, and killing each other. Leave me be. Don’t drag me into it. Don’t look at me.

  But was that reasonable?

  I had become the physical embodiment, the epitome of that philosophy. I had achieved the perfect state of isolation. There was certainly the downside of having no food and a very limited water supply. But let us say that I had both in abundance, through whatever means—mystical or natural—you could devise. Let us say that the constant concern over inclement weather and the resultant speedy death were not a consideration. Let us say, in short, that pure survival was not a concern.

  It left me looking upon an endless vista and saying, Is this all there is?

  I was an island unto myself. I was my own best friend, my own beginning and my own end. I was the ultimate in isolation, and the humanity for which I held such contempt was a distant and irrelevant consideration to my life.

  It was the perfect existence for one who disliked so much.

  I had to say… it wasn’t much fun.

  I stared down into the watery depths, hoping perhaps that some stray fish would pass by and I could snare it. Once I managed that feat, I had no clue what I would do with the damned thing. It wasn’t as if I could cook it. I could certainly eat it raw; I’d consumed raw or nearly raw animals before when making a fire wasn’t feasible. It didn’t sound particularly appetizing. Then again, the way my stomach was feeling, just about anything should have been appetizing.

  By the time of the third morning, I was ready to eat plankton.

  By the time of the fourth morning, I was ready to eat plank. Specifically, the board of wood I was floating on.

  I had never been so hungry in my life. The temptation to gulp down the entirety of the skin’s contents was becoming overwhelming. I was going to die. I had no doubts on that score. What purpose, then, to dying thirsty as well as hungry? How would I be served by it?

  I drifted in and out of sleep, regardless of time of day. The dream about the party at King Runcible’s court was becoming more and more expansive. By this point, everyone was there. Everyone who had ever tried to kill me—and that alone was enough to fill a fairly sizable hall. Everyone who hadn’t tried to kill me was there as well, although they took up a considerably smaller portion of the room.

  Even within the context of my dream, I was impressed by the staggering number of people who had, at some point or another, desired to see my life terminated. It was quite an accomplishment, in a depressing sort of way, to find the means of annoying so many people.

  This time around, however, they were all dressed in black. They were smiling, though. It seemed to be some sort of bizarre combination of funeral and banquet.

  I wandered through the crowded hall, drawing no looks or conversation. It was as if I wasn’t there. That figured somehow. To be a nonentity even in a figment of one’s own imagination.

  People were crowding in around a table and I pushed through to see w
hat they were looking at.

  I saw myself lying in the table, done up like a prize pig for the slaughter. I was on my stomach, my eyes dead and glazed. For that matter, the rest of me was glazed as well, cooked to perfection. I had an apple in my mouth. Sharee was standing there with a large fork and carving knife, preparing to slice me up. Others were leaning in with plates and eager expressions.

  I awoke into daylight and realized I no longer knew for a certainty how long I’d been floating out there.

  I wondered how long it took for the human body to turn on itself, to start devouring itself when there was no other means of sustenance around. I thought I’d heard somewhere that two weeks was the maximum.

  I brought the water skin to my lips, not without effort, to eke out my meager rationing.

  There was nothing in it.

  Delicacy gave way to franticness, and I shook the skin desperately, trying to obtain a few more drops of moisture. Nothing. Bone dry. I’d finished it. I was finished. However long one could survive without food, I knew that continued existence without water was an impossibility.

  Water, water everywhere, but none to quench the thirst of Apropos. More irony. I was getting well and truly sick of irony.

  I twisted around, bringing myself to a sitting position, ready to toss the water skin into the ocean and myself along with it.

  Then I saw it.

  I stared long and hard, thinking that perhaps this was an illusion of some sort. Then I rubbed my eyes and looked again.

  It was land. Far distant, and not directly to the east, but more to the northeast. It was large, whatever it was. Not a simple, small island, but something more substantial.

  With newfound strength invigorating my exhausted limbs, I grabbed my sheathed sword and started paddling with it. I held on to it with all the feeble strength that remained to me. The last thing I wanted was to lose my grip on the weapon and watch it slide away into the depths.

  I paddled and paddled until my muscles were so sore that I had to put the sword down upon the board lest I lose it.

  The land seemed no closer. I couldn’t even be sure if it wasn’t farther away.

  I choked in frustration. To be within sight of possible salvation and not be able to do anything about it other than stare at it from afar… it was almost more than I could bear.

  Then I heard some sort of curious splashing from behind me, as if something was moving through the water in a very direct manner. I shifted myself around on the table and looked behind me. At that moment, my thirst and hunger were forgotten, replaced by an overwhelming sense of blind panic.

  Something was definitely heading toward me at a significant speed. The only part of it that I could see was the exceedingly large, triangular curved gray dorsal fin bearing down upon me.

  I had never seen a shark in my life, but I certainly knew of the creatures. I’d heard stories of sea beasts bearing a dorsal fin that knifed through the water toward you, grabbed you in their powerful jaws, and bit you in half. If you were on a sailing vessel, you had a modicum of protection. If you were just swimming or adrift, you were more or less screwed.

  In my case, I was leaning closer to “more” than “less.”

  My limbs shook with terror as I envisioned that monstrous mouth sinking its teeth into me. Judging from the size of it, the meager defense the board would provide me wouldn’t even slow it down. It would simply slam into it, upend it, send me tumbling into the drink. And then devour me whole, or perhaps bite my head off. And those were the best case scenarios.

  Well, I was determined I wasn’t going to go that easily. I may not have had any great love of my life, but dammit, it was the only thing that I truly possessed, and I was not going to lay it down cheaply.

  I ceased my vain attempts to use my sword as a paddle and instead pulled the blade from its sheath. The sword seemed to glitter in the sun, eager to be pressed into service. For all I knew, it was going to be the last time I endeavored to use it. The creature sporting that fin might loom out of the water with a maw wide enough to swallow me whole, or drag me down and just hold on to me as I thrashed about helplessly and my lungs exploded. But I was not going to go down without a fight.

  I watched carefully, my arm trembling from the strain of waiting, waiting, waiting for just the right moment. I sensed I would have only one shot at the beast. And I could only guess just how tough its hide might be. It was possible I’d have no chance at penetrating it. But if I was going to do it, it was going to require every ounce of my strength and every fragment of what I laughingly referred to as my luck.

  Closer it drew, and closer still. It seemed to be coming faster and faster, probably sensing its prey. If it was possible for the creature to do so, it might well have been licking its lips in anticipation. I started counting out loud, trying to time out my thrust based upon the speed of its approach.

  “One,” I said, “two, three,” and as I watched it draw toward me, I readied my sword, realizing that the velocity of the creature would bring it within range when I got to “ten.” I continued to count, and suddenly I decided to bring my sword back and try for a sweeping slash, rather than a thrust with the point. I figured I had more chance of striking something vital that way. I drew back my arm with such nervous force that I almost capsized my fragile craft, but I never lost count.

  “Seven,” I said, my parched voice becoming thick in my throat,

  “eight… nine…ten!” I shouted the number in order to focus my energy and power my attacking cut and I swung the sword around and down as hard as I could, anticipating the creature’s lunge.

  It came up out of the water, and its face was pale and gray and quite human-looking, as was its torso. And it had human arms as well. It most definitely was not human, however, but rather some bizarre kind of mer-creature presenting itself to me, its arms wide as if greeting a long-lost friend.

  All of that took a second to register on me. Unfortunately, in half a second less than that, my blade cut through him like kelp.

  He was looking at me in unbridled joy with eyes as black as the ocean depths and then, startled, he looked down. Whatever pain he must have felt didn’t dawn on him at first, because he appeared quite puzzled to see the gaping wound in his chest, and the black blood seeping out of it in copious amounts.

  He looked back up at me, and there was a rattling in his voice that sounded as if his lungs, if such he had, were already filling with blood. “I… I came… to worship you…” he managed to say.

  “All right, now, to be fair,” I said, desperately trying to sound reasonable when all I felt was sinking horror. “I thought you were attacking…”

  “I was swimming!”

  “Yes, but… you were swimming very menacingly,” I told him, not sounding convincing even to myself. “Look, I… I admit I might have been a bit hasty…”

  “You… you have no idea what I…” The water was getting thick with his blood. “I… I’ve been on a quest… through a hundred hundred tides, I have searched…”

  “Oh gods,” I moaned, flopping back on the board. “Not someone else’s damned adventure again.”

  He didn’t hear me. He seemed totally absorbed with the sound of his own voice. His eyes were starting to glaze over. “…through untold menaces, searching for… for the one who was foretold…”

  “Please, stop,” I begged, “you’re giving me a headache.” The mortification at my haste in slaughtering what was clearly not a predatory creature but, instead, my potential salvation was bad enough. But now he was prattling on about quests and menaces and such, and it was just making matters worse. As guilty as I felt, I was starting to regret I hadn’t decapitated him. Then again, the day was young.

  “The foretold one… the drifter with the pale skin,” he continued, “whom I would bring back to our island home… and we would worship and serve his every whim, provide him every luxury until the end of his days…”

  “Okay, well… we can still do that,” I told him. “There’s no ne
ed for this quest of yours to end on a down note….”

  He fixed his fading gaze upon me. He was starting to sink, but with his last dregs of strength he held on to the edge of the board. “Now… now I realize. The prophecies played me… false… you are, in fact… evil incarnate…”

  “What, just because I accidentally killed you?” I protested. “As if that’s never happened to anyone?”

  “My people will know you… for the destroyer that you are… and they…” His voice was fading. “They will… attend to you….”

  “Look, I would really like to go back to the worshipping and island thing, if that’s okay with—”

  And then he let out a series of high-pitched whistles that near to liquefied my brain. I clamped my hands to my ears, rolled over, tried not to scream in pain, and failed miserably. “Shut up! You’ll deafen me!” I shouted, grabbed my staff, and rapped him soundly on the top of his skull with it.

  It didn’t take much more than that, since he seemed barely alive anyway. He lost his grip on the board and slipped beneath the surface. I watched him sink but lost sight of him almost immediately.

  “All right, this really wasn’t my fault,” I said to no one in particular. And indeed, I was reasonably sure that it was fair to say that. Yes, in my lifetime, I had stolen, and lied, and cheated. I had taken advantage of women, slaughtered men, behaved in a consistently cowardly manner. But for once, I felt I really had an excuse for the misfortune I had brought upon the poor bastard. He’d been on a quest and it ended badly. ‘Tis to weep. He should have done more to announce himself before drawing within range of my blade, that was all there was to it, and if anyone asked, that was exactly what I would say.