Yoedian Arl

Chapter 7: The Pact

Theo helped me to the babe’s book but I could not lay myself down, despite knowing how it would aid me to get some rest for my weary body. I was consumed with the leavings of that restless energy to fly, to flee from my insurmountable prison. There was always death, of course. I think I still felt it was just another path, another walk way from this ship of horrors to my homelands. Some manner of instability was upon me at that time and I could not make my mind relinquish the idea of the door opening onto a simple road rather than swaying planks and creaking rigging.

But I knew in some sane portion of my brain, that I was neither one to take my life now, nor would I try again. My one chance had come and had been stolen from me by the very man who made my time upon that ship something of increasing torture.

Instead of returning to my room, I stalked the richly clad main of the babe’s book. My hands clasped behind me, I might have been in a salon at home, waiting for information from the latest harvest or perhaps attending a friend or a lover. The blisters I could feel under my roughened thumb were testament to the falsity of such a claim, as was the scratching rough texture of the ill woven garments I wore. Yet for a time, I let myself imagine that it was the earthen sweet scent of wheat fields and fresh water upon the breeze which drifted through the window. The sunlight streaming through was that which burned hot and bright on my familial lands, deep forests and the golden hills of farmland which comprised much of our holdings. Perhaps the singing I could dimly hear still, seeping through the deck boards overhead, was that of the field hands just past the stand of oak and beech, singing to the swish of the scythe and the soft whirring of crop plants falling to the earth before being gathered by the women behind.

Having been left unattended by Theo who had work to do, I muttered slow and inexorable curses made out of words I did not know, and laughed at how asinine my situation was turning out to be. These dreams. We had not water to make it to shore. I knew that, the crew knew that. They had begun to mutter amongst themselves while we sat in the still waters. Now that the breeze was here, they were busy again and while they were not hopeful, the sense of impending mutiny no longer lingered. A man with nothing to set himself to, is a man with a building rage inside of him. But give the dying man a tool and a task and he can work himself into the grave happily.

All the captain had done, in saving me, was lose an extra daily ration’s worth of water for each day. I was trying to die, and the inevitable held us in its chilly clutches. I would have only come to that place a tad earlier. But even as he had saved me, I knew that he wished to see me die before him. He wanted to be certain his secrets were breathed out into nothingness before his will let his own body succumb. And if I continued in the vein I seemed to be, he would get his wish sooner than later.

Finally, finding that rest would not take me, I slipped out and to the galley. There, Cook only grunted at me and gave me the floor to clean, though we both knew it was clean enough. I could not be seen above decks, and I needed something to find profit in my coming death, even if it helped none.

Yet, despite my greatest attempts, I fell to slumber some time shortly after. I know only that I had sat myself down upon the floor to wipe my face. The lulling rock of the boat under sail once more and the dim clanks and harsh cursing of Cook conspired together with the heat of the stove. The world faded without my knowing and somehow I managed to remain somewhat upright, leant against a table leg with my hand clutching a wet washing brush against my stomach, the reaching damp tendrils of dirty water on my belly doing nothing to waken me.

I did not awaken until the clatter of a plate dropped before me tore me from dreams. I stared at it blearily. It wasn’t much, really, only the scraps left from the dinner he was making. But it was something of greater sustenance than the gruel and it was beyond my daily ration. Lifting my eyes I stared at the cook who gave me a scowl and flashed a wood spoon at me along with a curse in a foreign language I did not recognize completely but had become somewhat familiar with hearing.

\"Na goot ter go ettin’ grue-ell wif work ta do. Nixt toim, Oi’ll fix ‘im ‘is own plet.\" And with that he was turned again to his stove whilst I stared at the leftovers a long moment. I did know who ‘him\" was. And my attempt to be clever in feeding Wufei was made childish before the knowledge of Cook. Like a mother who does not divulge she understands the lie, he had told me of my foolishness and his thoughts about them in one fell swoop.

I ran a finger along the edge of the fork set alongside the plate with wonder. Then I set to digging into the food like a starving man, all decorum gone from me. I was turning into a heathen, much like the New Hartlins thought of my people as. Yet the full day’s work of before and into the night, Cook was right. Gruel did nothing to keep up strength and I was surpassingly hungry.

It was not much, I was still starving after having eaten. But true to his word, Cook made up two plates that evening. One for myself and one for Wufei. I had slept some after eating that morning and afternoon. When I was nudged by Cook’s foot and handed the pair of bowls, both with a serving of gruel but a greater serving of the food I noted instantly that it was more than I would have gotten had I split my own serving.

I felt almost triumphant as I went to see the first mate. And I must have shown my joy and renewed strength for I sensed relief flooding the small, stale brig.

\"Yes, I am better,\" I chattered to him. \"I was not, but I have been discovered, you see, despite my designs to the contrary. Cook has realized how I’m trying to keep your strength up and he’s chosen to help me. And the rest of the crew is still aiding me with Heero’s water ration. You know each of them surrenders an ounce or two of their daily rations for him? Then he can have a full ration. It is not much, but with all of us, we are able to make it fair.\" The words bubbled out of me while I set the bowls to one side and went about cleansing him with buckets of salt water and a rag I’d set aside just for the purpose. The refuse on the flooring was easily washed away and if I did it every day, I could keep the small room from smelling too terribly. It was not as if he had much to relieve his body of, being given so little both of water and food.

The relief extended itself from me to him and while Wufei did not smile, his being felt lighter to me for a brief moment. He was always so deeply imbedded in the despair within himself. The shame and anger toward himself was only pushed away, and then but momentarily, when I succeeded in angering him now and then and in that way, placed his attention elsewhere. But he saw it as a justifiable shame and anger, and as such, he bore it with patience and it did little to harm my inner senses even though it was a constant state for him.

\"Heero is better then,\" he murmured more to himself than to me.

I took the words as if they were part of our often one sided conversation and laughed. \"Yes, much better. I think he should be walking around soon. Maybe by tonight or tomorrow. He is still weak, and I wonder at his ribs - that they might be bruised or broken, but he won’t speak to me and tell me otherwise. I can only go by his actions when I attempt to ascertain what is wrong with him. You know, he is a very silent person.\" I looked at the bound man then and contained my laughter. It was like two of the same creature, he and Heero. They kept their own council.

\"Do you know?\" I asked then with a sense of morbid humor, \"That the captain is related to a monkey?\"

Wufei gasped in indignation at how I dared speak so about the master of the ship. I enjoyed this part of the day, finding ways to drag him from his own ponderous thoughts about Heero and his wrongs.

\"Aye, a monkey. You see, I all but fell from the rigging earlier this morn. He was up the ropes like a monkey and back down.\" Then, as I put the bucket to the side and gathered up his food, I mused, \"I think he hates me. He does not know what I sense, but he knows enough to hate me, perhaps. I know the pain he’s in an-\"

\"You know nothing,\" his harsh words broke harsh and raw through mine, like a razor saw. It could have been that he all but shouted it at me.

I stared at him, suddenly shamed. He was right, of course. I did not know anything but what little I gleaned from the ghostly clues that were hinted at now and again by crew members or by Duo himself. I truly knew nothing of why the state of affairs on the ship was so dire, and by that, I do not mean the physical state of the voyage.

I was kneeling before him in a grotesque mockery of a lover’s crouch as I wiped down his torso, legs, and nether regions to cleanse him and keep him from infection. The days here were warm as were the nights. Below decks, it was hotter than normal, with only a slight breeze playing over the planking around us. I did not fear for his health in catching cold, but rather I concerned myself with his catching some illness from the filth he had no control in cleaning off of himself. With a hand on his thigh as I cleaned his skin, I stilled and bent back my head and gaped at him. His chest rose and fell in agitation over some great emotion which assailed him, yet as often it was with he, his hold upon his own thoughts was strong and I was not overcome. Though I could sense the anger at me in there, the hopelessness of his situation. What must it be like, I wondered, to be unable to right what wrongs you saw yourself guilty of having chosen?

\"No,\" I admitted and let my hands fall to my lap, knees wet in the salt water that had washed across the floor. \"But I want to know. I am only trying to make it all come to some sense in my head.\"

He would not look at me, turning his face as far into the wall as he was able, his neck strained, cords of tendon rising out of his thin body. Looking up at him from this angle I realized just how must the voyage had cost his body. He was a powerful man. I could see the remnants of that power in his limbs. But dehydration and lack of food had emaciated his frame and his bones stuck out against his skin in some places like slender visitations of memory; wings at his neck, rounded knobs at his shoulders, his pelvis bones darting up against the sallow skin that thinly covered them like two slender peaks on opposite sides of a broad, flat valley.

In silence I completed the task of cleaning him, then rose and put the buckets away as well as the rag. I found his bowl and as was my custom, fed him before myself. He did not fight me any longer, becoming well accustomed to the infant like status this act put him into, but he did not appreciate my presence.

\"I am sorry,\" I whispered as I spooned gruel off of his chin where it had fallen. His silence answered me and I sighed. \"I do not know, do not understand all of what is happening here.. but I wish I could help. I wish I could aid you all, even more so if we’re going to die.\"

\"You’re not going to die,\" he croaked, the shout of before having crushed his voice and made it ill used. \"The captain will not let you.\"

\"Then you hope for us?\" I asked him, stepping back as I gazed at the bowl and scraped the last of the food into a small spoonful.

\"Hope?\" bitterness lacing his tongue, making it poison. \"Us?\" he asked as well. Then his lips twisted into a fine, grim line and he gazed intently at me, black eyes sharply obsidian and dangerous as a naked sword. \"You can save him. You can save he and Heero. If you’d like, that is. And you can save me. But I’m not sure if you’re brave enough.\"

It was a goading prospect, a lure he placed before me and knowing he might take it away at any time, I raised a brow, meaning to act as if I did not know what he meant. \"I’ve never had any complaints over my lack of bravery before. And if you never ask, how can you know if I’ll be able to do it or not?\" I tempted him back, the two of us playing a game of catch with an unspoken request.

I had the spoon before his mouth and was pressing it forward when he parted his lips to speak, his eyes boring holes into mine with an intensity that made my spine coil in dread.

\"Kill me.\"

Fingers made suddenly lax, I fumbled with the spoon and the last of the food sprayed over his face. He flinched as some hit him near the eye and stuck there, a white glob of some gruel, a food I’ve refused to ever touch again after that journey ended. I suppose my eyes were wider than wide as I stared at him because he sneered at me and my shock. \"Free Duo from his pain, free Heero from his curse, free me from my guilt… three for the price of one. And none will mourn me, Yoedian Arl. None will cry over my death. It will relieve them. Do you not hear it at night? Do you not know the pain that this ship feels? I can feel it, I know it. My bones reverberate with it, made into pipes of her awful voice. Don’t you see? If I were dead, all would be well.\"

His voice rose slowly, more for each step I took backwards, my horror plain upon me I have no doubt. \"What? Are you not man enough to see? Do you not know how judgment sets free those victims who have been wronged? If I had killed a man, I would have died. Yet the captain keeps me alive when he would have killed me. He kept me alive because he wanted to never forget the wrongs I did him, because he never wanted to heal. And now that he wishes for peace, I am a living reminder and it is too late for him. He is honorable and he cannot go against his word, no matter how much he wishes it so. You know what he’ll do when we reach port?\" his face a cruel mask, I could feel the triumph over how he, this slender, wasted creature, held his power over everyone. His madness, like that of the others, was insidious, a slender and fine webbing thrown over all.

\"No.. I.. I don’t..\" I whispered, clutching the bowl to me and blindly reaching for my own. I wanted to flee. \"Sell you at market? Won’t he do that?\"

Wufei laughed then, and it might have been a beautiful sound except for two things. His voice was as cold as his thoughts and the ruin of his vocal chords lent a broken edge under which his words writhed; hacked unfairly from his breast.

\"Sell me? Yes, that would be almost as good. To let me live on, to let me find my way again to life if I could. He’d never know when I died then. He would have to live with the thought that somewhere I was living free of him and his hatred of me. But no,\" he smirked and his head fell. His hair, long and lank, dirty with lack of wash and wet from sweat, covered his down turned face. \"No, he won’t sell me. He’ll leave me here. He will feed me just enough to keep me alive. And he’ll wait until the day his honor can no longer stand up to my sins, his word can no longer live within my shame and his own. And then, he’ll slay me. I’ll be wasted then, of course. I’ll be a shell, but I’ll stare at him when I die.. and he’ll have to turn his blade on himself. He has lost all else. He’ll lose his very honor then and he’ll go mad with it. Then, little golden hair, no matter how high he climbs the rigging, no matter how fast he is in the ropes or how loud he might scream to the wind, he’ll be able to do nothing to hide from me, from his - \" a horrible cough rose then in him and he bent his body as far as the chains would allow him as it wracked through his bony, failing body.

I had been spellbound by his words, caught and ensnared in the words he threw about me. And now, when he looked up again, the spasm passing, his whisper released me. \"Kill me, Yoedian Arl. If you dare…\"

I fled.

- - - - - -

The sea air washed cool into my face as I stumbled from that black hole. Strains of rasping laughter in my head which I could not have feasibly heard, yet it echoed again and again and I was half blind exiting and the wind did nothing to quiet my soul. Half blinded by my terror, a collision with a hefty form did not come as a surprise. I think I half expected to either run into one of the men or to tumble over the railing and over the sea folk’s wave borne stoop.

\"Here now..\" Theo’s voice soothed me. I looked up at him and clutched his arm for a moment, trying to find the quiet he seemed to have in his being so often. I wanted to escape the piercing darkness of Wufei’s thoughts.

\"W-wufei,\" I gasped at his questioning glance.

\"Ah,\" he made an understanding sound and plucked the bowls from my fingers. \"He can be sommat of a beast now’n agi’n, I should think.\" Nesting my bowl into the now empty one, he helped me to my feet, murmuring something about getting a good night’s sleep and summarily aided me in entering into the galley where he set me to a table and placed the food before me.

He sat down next to me as I ate, the food as dry as my mouth and sticking to the walls of my throat until I thought I might gag. Then his arms came up to the surface of the table, crossed and considering, and he sighed. I found myself whispering to him all of what had transpired below; the tale fighting against the food in my gullet.

\"Best be thinking ‘bout how t’keep him from doing sommat like thet again,\" he finally stated after I was done.

I seemed to have moved myself to an level of existence where I could think of nothing better to say than an affirmative grunt. How disappointed my father would have been in me at that time.

\"Told yer the story, didn’t I?\" his keenly and gently lit gaze met mine and I looked away. \"Maybe you’d like to hear it,\" he finally broke into my silence.

I nodded, dumbly, remembering back to when he had told me of the captain and Heero, finding out the beginnings of what had created this tragic triad. \"Yes, you told me. But… but what does that have to do with -?\" I couldn’t say it then.

\"Ah,\" Theo only said and looked at his big hands. I glanced over at them as well. My food was finished and I was to be doing the dishes, but Cook merely took my bowl and ignored my mute protest. He went to using the rope at the porthole and pulling up water to use for cleansing the bowls and pots while Theo kept a heavy and reassuring presence at my side.

Theo’s hands were those of a sailor. He was missing, I noticed finally, a final knuckle of the last finger on his left hand. The tip of the finger was severed and ended in a pink stub. He rubbed this end with the cupped palm of his other hand as if it ached. Then I looked down at my own hands. It had been only a few weeks since that day I’d been drug from the water. And my hands had not come to have calluses on them to the extent that his did. A rough stone and some hot water would take the few that were forming right off. That is, if I ever managed to return home and not be sold in some slave market or be drowned or killed or starved or die of lack of water. Home was far, far from me at that point of time.

\"Well now,\" he finally seemed to decide on something and his presence lifted from its silence. He let his finger alone and looked askance at me. \"Wufei Chang. In’tresting man, t’be sure. What with how he came on an’all. It were bout a six month into th’voyage he were.\"

Cook made a sound and then after a great cough which interrupted us both, muttered ‘sivin’ and Theo grimaced.

\"Shows yer how much a date man I be,\" he said and seemed to accept Cook’s memory in lieu of his own. I thought back to the first story I had heard at Heero’s bedside, realizing that these two men were with the original crew. I knew little of who was left over from that beginning time.

\"Aye, most of our ship were crewed by men what the Cap’n had got hisself from markets. He were settin’ up th’ol girl with supplies when we bump into a fellow at the Ox Tail in port, on Ulica. Th’ Cap’n had got hisself a few new men at Lesser Market an’he was making a deal about money to a man over sommat what didn’t mean nothing in the end. Maybe it was ale or some other nonsense. Then up comes this man in silk duds an with some skinny shining swords at his side, all dressed like a southern nobleman. Wants to know if the Cap’n has a ship and if he can board or not.

\"Well, Cap’n sez we’re not takin’ passengers, an’ haven’t room for one. But there’s plenty of ships leavin’ Ulica come that week’s ending with boarding for them. But no, says the man. He needs to book passage now so if the Cap’n ain’t takin’ passengers, maybe he’s takin’ on crew?\" Theo shook his head then and I could see how it might have been a story to tell with drink running and laughter. But somehow, in the light of those whispers still rattling in my head it only seemed more tragic, for I knew the ending to the story already.

\"So, on he takes him. Says that we can use another, but he ain’t paying much, if any a’tall. And the man’d have t’change his getup. No way was he gonna take on a man dressed like a woman’s frock pillow.

\"Course, Change took him up on’t. An’whatever he was goin’ fer, never did disembark but kept on, port after port.

\"T’were over two years those two sailed t’gether. They was best friends, even though not many of us warmed up to him. Strange one, Chang was. But a truer man y’never knew. He didn’t give yer anything t’like him for, but didn’t give yer anything t’dislike him for neither. Just was honest and hard working and a good counter t’the Cap’n and his reckless nature at times. If it weren’t for Heero’s coming on, things woulda remained that way for time forever, yer think.\"

\"What happ-\" I began to ask but was interrupted by Theo’s standing sharply.

\"Now then, best be getting yer t’yer cabin, I think.\" His hearty voice rang flat in the space behind what treachery would have led to Wufei’s imprisonment. It was coming clear, but so much remained a mystery. I wasn’t sure, even then, if half of my questions would even be answered. For each answer and glimpse into the history, a myriad of new questions arose.

I was dimly aware of some undercurrent of feeling passing between Cook and Theo as the large man helped me out of the galley and across the deck. Light had begun to dim and the setting sun set the long sails, pregnant with breeze and dangling from the main mast above, into a russet fire which reflected off the canvas onto everything else.

I’d always loved that time of day, with the lights warming the rest of the world, drenching everything in a gilt like rouge. But this time, it made the sea encompassed prison we rode seem as if it were drenched in distant blood and I shuddered. Feeling chilled, I hurried along in Theo’s footsteps until we reached the babe’s book and entered.

Theo promised to check on Heero and instead of allowing me the privelage, sent me to my room. I had slept much that day, yet I was still exhausted and he received little argument from me. I settled instantly into my bed and turned my back to the reddened skyline outside the small window in my room. But I did not sleep. Instead, I waited, listening to the creaking movements of Theo nearby and the sound of murmured conversation from somewhere overhead.

I may have drifted, for the room’s outlines were more dim than before, but I had not gone too deeply into sleep when my door opened. I froze, fearful of my mid-night visitor. But it was only Theo, come to check on me as well. He carried a bucket of water which he tied to a hook in the wall and then I watched as he rummaged about in the small confines of my room, looking faintly puzzled. He had something else he wished to say but was obviously unwilling to begin.

\"Yes?\" I finally asked, sounding far more cold in demeanor than I felt. My tired senses were not as able to control the sound of my voice. Yet he did not notice. His head twisted and he glanced at my dresser. \"Yes, I was left something else, but I threw it back into the ocean,\" I answered his unspoken question, knowing finally what it was he was concerning himself with. \"I’ve only kept the shell.\"

\"Don’t yer wonder?\" he asked finally, reaching out for the white, disk like shell which I kept upon the board.

\"Wonder?\"

\"What yer Oien Sa Marne wants from yer, I mean.\"

I blinked. Was that how it was to be? That the sea folk would want something in return? A shiver struck my bones and what I’d been refusing to think of the entire voyage came to the fore of my brain. \"What… what kinds of things do they take?\" I spoke far more steadily than I felt. \"What would they want from us?\"

\"Dunno, really,\" he stated, hefting the shell in his broad palm. It flashed like a tooth in the faint light and I felt cold once more. \"Maybe nothing a’tall? Some sez that they take some of yer insides. And replace’em with their own. Some sez that they want yer seed ter make new folk. Some sez … oh, all sorts of things some sez. Not all of it bad, mind,\" he added, staring past the shell at me. \"Just wonderin’ if yer wonder what this one wants from yer.\"

\"I… I’ve tried not to,\" I told him truthfully. Then bitterness rose, a fair sized wall against the fear I could have felt otherwise. \"Not that I’d be able to stop him if I wanted.\"

He seemed surprised by this. \"Why not?\"

I shook my head and slowly sat up. \"Why not? Because. Because he comes and takes what he wills, doesn’t he? I am kept safe from the men aboard, but I’m slave to the magic of some creature, nay - some monster from the depths below us. I suppose it does not matter much either way? Soul eaten by something below or the death that is waiting for us?\" I could not keep the disgust out of my voice.

Shocked at my tone, he quickly came to sit down beside me. \"Is that what yer think? That it’s over? Sure things seem grim, what with our water an’all. But we’ve got you aboard! An’there’s the sea folk wandering aboard as well, despite how yer feel bout it, ‘tis a good omen. Certainly things have to go well for us. But if yer worried, all yer have ter do is ask.\"

\"Ask?\" I almost laughed again. \"Ask whom? Ask the one who comes to me in deepest night? I think I’ve tried, but I don’t remember any of the answers.\" I felt as if there were some words whispered, something I might have made sense of, if I could only draw them from the dreams I had.

\"Well,\" Theo seemed bemused by my reaction, \"first yer have ter catch’im, course. That’s the normal run o’things, yer understand. Why even th’children know sich a simple thing.\"

I blushed in shame. I had not known. Nor did I know how to catch something so elusive. It seemed too simple a solution. Catch the monster with some magical net or fantastical trick, and then one need only ask for what one needed, a wish in a way. The creature would give it all to you. I could ask to be taken home, perhaps. Or we could ask for the right winds. Perhaps it was just that I would then know the manner monster I was enspelled by and be able to banish it from my presence. For wasn’t it, like everything else, just another jailer? I had no control over its comings and goings. It controlled me with its touch and I was a thrall again. Either by magic or by force, I was always the slave.

\"How do I do that?\" I asked. Maybe if I could control this thing, this creature, then I could find it in myself to control everything else. Then who was to say that I’d not find my own sails and blow my own winds and make my own flight?

- - - - - - - - - -

Despite the concern and the thoughts running rampant through my mind that evening, I still found myself falling into an unsettled sleep. Waves were louder in my ear that night than ever they had been before. I became aware of each twist and turn of foam and in my mind’s eye, saw how the individual crests were kicked into white manes and humped backs of oceanic steeds, racing recklessly around my resting place. I dreamt, albeit in a manner much like being awake, of the sound of hooves and rock and the surf against a shore. And under the cover of the waves, I could hear folk songs of my people, but sung in a wilder tone with harmonies so complex that only the winds could sift them and make sense of them. In my dreams, I reached for them even as I simultaneously drew away in horror, fearing what the songs might steal from me. They would take from me payment for the simple act of having heard musics long dead and forgotten to we who tilled soil and trudged haphazardly across the troughs and mountains of wave upon wave.

The melody changed as I drew closer to it, crossing a heather strewn land. I found that myself dressed in the voluminous robes of court, with light but layered cottons and linens and a silk sheath under it all in the deepest scarlet, the hem darting out across my feet as I tried to walk the edge of those cliffs above the reaching tides below. With each crash of wave upon the blackened and bird spattered rock, the singers lifted their voices, joined anew by more and more, until the singings drowned out the sound of the ocean and swept over my head, pulling me gently into the air and tugging me downwards, the surface of the water coming toward me in a shadowed rush.

I opened my mouth to scream when a touch came to my brow, quieting my fear and I knew. He had arrived. Peace swelled in my breast. I opened my eyes, seeing only a broad black form with its tatters like sea weed outlined against the lighter rim of windowlight drifting in through the porthole.

The dream lifted from me and as he bent to gather me in his arms I remembered. My eyes flickered to the dark corner where Theo hid.

I had time to gasp, \"No! Wait!\" before the flash of moonlight slid over his half concealed form and Theo struck. I was thrown back against the bed. The shadows congealed and split apart. I could hear a curse and the sound of flesh upon flesh before someone fell backwards, falling heavily against me.

The weight of that body thrust me against the wall of the compartment and I struggled against arms and legs which did not fight me but remained dead weight. Fear rose in me that in our wrongful attempt to find answers Theo had been killed. We had no idea what it was, truly, that we were against. Yet, under that fear, was a stronger fear that somehow, Theo had managed to harm him. I gasped, reaching for the dark lantern next to my bed, knowing that flint would be there. But the body upon me held me down upon my mattress and I could not quite reach the lamp.

I heard nothing but my own panting breath and the soft groan from my own throat as I heaved at whomever it was that laid upon me with one hand while reaching for the lantern and tinder box with the other.

My fingers tangled with short hair and touched along the skin where something wet slicked it. Realizing that this was a scalp, and knowing it to be Theo, I half rose under him and used my legs to aid myself in shoving him as gently as I was able, onto the bedside. But I had not completed my task when I suddenly stilled as a certainty came over me that the creature was still present in my quarters. It stared at me from the shadows, hiding from my eyes and the light filtering in from without.

I heard nothing to indicate this, yet as I held my breath and stilled my sobs, I could feel the scalding touch of incrimination. I had known when those arms reached for me, how wrong we had been. This was no monster. It was my savior and the tenderness in the shadow’s outline every evening was as sweet and freeing as my mother coming to me in the midst of a nightmare. I had had only to trust it, trust what was offered, and not question.

\"I’m… I’m sorry..\" I whispered into that listening darkness and I could sense the acceptance. But acceptance does not forgiveness make. A grunt from my chest as I finally managed to heave Theo’s body from me, afraid yet to ascertain if he were alive or not. Perhaps there was death waiting me too as I stood, shakily, and reached out into the black depths of my small room. I would be able to meet with the creature’s side in a matter of a few strides into the center of the perimeter.

But death was better than knowing I had wronged it. A need for reassurance drove me toward danger and I flung my arms around in a large arc, trying to come in contact. All the while, babbling something that was a kissing cousin to the selfishness of a child’s apology. The full impact of what I had done was not yet known to me. But I stood on the cusp of true understanding, and in the deepest portion of my soul, I had an instinct to save myself by finding the elusive hand of broken trust.

My fingers in one pass, brushed warmth. Skin! I gasped, returning my hand swiftly to grab for it, hungry for something I knew not what. But no matter how quickly I moved, it moved quicker. I heard the soft whistle of air through tatters and the window was impossibly darkened. A half moon of darkness closed across it, then filled it, and like a great lid of some pale eye, it opened fully and silence met me.

I was alone.

Finding myself unable to stand there, even as my world dropped inexplicably from beneath my feet, I fumbled toward my side dresser, going the wrong way and meeting with the door first off, being disoriented as to where I was in relation to the rest of my quarters. Returning to the other end of the room, my hand skittered across the wooden surface of the dresser, slapped clumsily against something hard which moved over the edge and away, then a tin-like smack sounded on the floor. I fell to my knees and searched blindly for what I was certain had been the tinder box, finding it under the bottom edge of the dresser, tipped against the claw like foot of the bureau. I fumbled with its lid and then the subsequent contents before striking a spark to a rush. Flame flickered in the cabin and wavered as my shaking hands struggled to keep hold of it. Just a few inches from my face, poorly illumined by the small light, was a dark line of stilled leg.

Theo! The flame flickered and almost went out as I came in a hasty rush to my feet. Again my hand numbly met metal and grabbed at it, distantly recognizing it as the lantern. A moment later, the portions of the cabin nearest me were lit with the soft light of the wick raised high in its bed.

I caught at Theo’s ankle and followed his leg into the darker corner of the cabin, discovering his head, the sticky wetness congealing already. Fear gripped me as I licked a finger, distantly tasting his blood on the tip, and held it before his mouth in concern. With my heart beating as fast as it was, my skin thrumming with worry, it took ages for me to recognize the cooling pulse of breath upon the wet of my skin.

He came aware with a groan as I pulled back and reached for the lantern. Bringing the light nearer, I hung it upon a hook against the wall and knelt alongside, watching the slow opening of his eyes. In the lamplight, I could see the weeping cut across his brow, blood sliding over his temple and into his hair, against the corner of his eye. The heavy red stained the surface of my bed. Still it was a trifle. Theo was alive.

He helped me some, muttering curses at various sea gods and goddesses and other creatures he’d not have dared spoken against had he been in his right mind. Together we managed to get him onto the couch in the main compartment of the babe’s book where I might see more clearly to clean his wound.

The injury was not deep nor half so debilitating as I’d first thought it to be. Theo agreed with me in his own way, laughingly mentioning before leaving, how he had done the unthinkable and survived. That was either a good thing or a terribly unlucky one. I could tell by the pinched white around his mouth that he feared what our mistaken venture meant to the voyage. But neither of us spoke of that. Instead Theo stumbled like a mildly drunken man from the babe’s book and I took to my bed, burying my head into the covers and losing myself to a restless and lonely night without rest. I did not dare dream, but instead I kept my eyes on the distant purpled bruise of the porthole through which my nightly visitor had escaped.

Sometime later, I do not know how long though the purple had turned to an almost velvety violet, a short sequence of distant screams tore the night from its moorings and set me free from my morbid thoughts. The screams were hoarse, lost, muffled. I sat up in horror and listened to the darkness. Hearing nothing then, I stood, padding into the darkened babe’s book, then to the door. There I lingered, head canted to one side, listening intently. More than likely it was my haggard imagination. When I opened the door and took to the deck, the sound of the wind soughing through the rigging had a feeling of dream to it. Had I fallen into sleep? But no, there, the predawn light was giving the night sky to the east the color of dark blue.

The next day passed in a blur. I went through it silently fulfilling my duties yet so tired from my sleepless night that often times I would find reality turning into a sea borne haze. I received more blows from Cook than was his wont and Theo refused to allow me to take. I went silently about the feeding of Wufei and cleaning his area, his eyes watching me the entire while, hungry for my answer, yet his tongue remained quiet, thankfully. I am not sure how I might have reacted that day, had he asked me again.

The night came and with the lack of sleep the night before, I feel into dreams quickly, violently. Nightmares woke me all throughout the night, half remembered and dark, until finally I gave up all hope of sleep and lay in my bed, listening to a soft tune sung above the ship’s planking where the watch was located.

And that night, the screams came again. Perhaps it is because I had had the protection of those nightly arms that I had not woken to them before. But no, thinking back on it, I realized that during night watches I’d heard nothing. This sound, though far less strong, reminded me of that first night, the first night on the ship, and the wailing of what I’d then come think of as the wind or one of my strange dreamings I had been afflicted with at the first.

Afraid when they did not stop this time, I rose from my bed and emerged out onto the deck. The darkness of the evening was upon all and the singing I’d been half comforted by had stilled. Rigging creaked under the weight of a body and the screams trembled the boat, still muffled, but nigh.

The watch approached, a sailor named Gordon whom I’d only spoken to a time or twice. \"Here that?\" he asked me as if looking for confirmation. I nodded, relieved that I was not alone in noting it, just as he seemed relieved for the same reason. Then he slipped away from me, toward the sleeping quarters for the crew.

I, however, did not follow him. Instead I walked the deck, trying to discover the source of the sound. It was broken, half wild with grief, and I thought back to when Wufei was telling me of the ship’s cries. Something mirrored that moment in my memory and I shuddered as I stopped above where the worst of it rose out of the deck.

But it was not the ship, I realized then. For my foot traced a seam in the deck’s boards and I recognized the trap door to the brig. The sound was not so muffled as it was hoarse and broken then. It was, in some unforgivable way, much as I’d have imagined his cries to sound.

Trap door heavy in my hand, I stooped into the gloom of below deck, and the darkness of the brig swallowed me. The screams halted, dying into a sobbing, before I reached half way down the ladder. Then the emotions, what I’d failed to consider, were unleashed against me and I fell the rest of the way, my head hitting the side of a wall, stunning me.

\"Kill me!\" a hiss, sinister and magic, bore itself out of the darkness round about us both. I could hear his breath, hitched and struggling for control over the next scream we both knew would be coming, we both could feel it within him. His triumph rang silently, knowing that I could sense it as well, that he could not be truly alone with my senses hearing what he could not, would not say.

\"No!\" I choked on bile and knelt there, not knowing how far from him I lay, my words a faint glimmer against the black pit of his soul. Oh he made me want to rush off of the side of the boat and fling myself into the waves, his desire for death was so strong.

\"Have pity,\" he sobbed and I clenched my hands against my eyes and cried for he would not. His sobs were not those born from tears, but from despair.

\"I … cannot! Why don’t you do it yourself?\" I asked then, \"Why not cease to eat, or cease your own heart? Why ask me to stain my hands with your blood?\"

\"There is.. no honor, no saving of them if I do it myself,\" he whispered back. And we both knew, somehow what the first mate knew alone. But it didn’t help me. It only became more clear that his need had basis. Save one, save two, and lose one. Or lose them all. But why me? Was I really to be responsible for what had occurred before I had even arrived? Was I responsible for what may occur after I would be gone? Did it matter in the end if we all died?

\"Yoedian Arl…\" his voice again, compelling me. I whimpered. \"You know I’m right. It has to be by you. You’re the luck of the voyage. You’re the one to break the wrong in this.\" He coughed again and could not continue as the cough choked his voice momentarily.

\"If…\" I said and he stilled, sensing my giving in. \"If… the captain does not sell you. If there is no other way.\"

\"No, now!\" he hissed.

I could not get up. His anger was more direct now, his desire stronger to bend me to his will. \"If… there is… no other way,\" I gasped.

Thankfully, he accepted it, but it did nothing to halt his pain. He, the voice of the ship, shouted out then, hoarse and shrill, that same scream of before and I clapped my hands to my ears. I recognized it at once.

There was no doubt now where doubt had lingered. It had been he who had been making the terrible sound. Trembling I shot backwards, sliding on wet boards and finding myself pressed against the side of the boat, staring at the darkness of him as he again strained, screaming again and again.

Was everyone mad? Or was it just me?

Dimly I heard a sound of a trap door opening and the clatter of feet on the ladder. Then the scream was cut off in mid shout with a sharp crack. The misery continued on, unabated. I could hear Wufei’s broken breathing over my own fluttering gasps for air.

Moments went by and then I came to the realization that Theo’s voice was speaking. It was some time after that before my mind could make the dull sounds into words I might recognize.

\"- see, ‘tis jes always been that way, ser. Y’can’t have it all those ways. But we can’t have yer making noise all up hell an’gone. Makes fer bad feelings in th’crew, ser. Y’got yer times, an’this not be it. Wot happened t’the quiet yer found? Thought y’were doin’ so well too.\"

I listened to the croonings of the replacement first mate and realized that none of it made sense. Nor did Theo expect it to make much sense. He was speaking as one man doomed, to another who was far more so. We delayed what came to us, and Theo was motivated yet again, to make the best of our situation. It was, I realized then, not the first time he’d quieted Wufei.


[Chapter 8] Things can only go from bad, to worse, of course. Unwanted company arrives and the crew finds itself on the brink of madness (if they weren’t there already).


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(Thank you all for reading still! And Haywire, dearest, you\'re ahead of everyone, but it\'s nice to come back here and find your presence again. Thank you always for your support!

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