Yoedian Arl

((We all live in a world of continual improvement. I hope this chapter does just that.))

Chapter 8: The Approach of Madness

A hand on my arm startled me from the nightmare in which I was screaming and could not stop. I shot up, grabbing for him, reaching for him; the one who would quiet my fears. Instead of coming closer however, he hissed and pulled away, pushing me back into my bedclothes. A whimper tossed from my mouth. The metallic clink of the key on the lantern gave me warning before the light slowly flooded the room.

Heero stood, pale even in the golden flare of the lantern light. His deeply blue eyes glittered black in the shadows.

"I - I apologize," I was hasty to assure him. "I thought you were… someone else." How weak my voice sounded then!

It was then I recognized he was out of bed. "Oh! Here, you must lay back down." I stood, quickly dragging a blanket from the mess upon my own. "You’ve not been well," I protested as he pushed my hands away and glared at me.

We stood for I am not sure how long, staring at one another. Myself, at a loss as to what to say and he, with no desire to speak to me. Then, perhaps content that he’d made some wordless point, he grunted and turned, walking out of my room; leaving me confused as to why he had been there in the first place.

Weariness hung upon my limbs that morning when I walked out onto the deck. The sun had just begun to rise like some golden globe, sickeningly orange, at the horizon. A light haze darkened it’s rays and I could look directly at it then; smaller than one would ever have thought, a burning disk the size of my thumbnail, hanging low over the ocean’s surface. It did little to light up the deck of the ship and the cool sea mist clung to my skin as I wandered toward the kitchen.

I felt beaten from within, walking the roiling floor of the wooden world upon which I had been trapped. I had not understood how badly I had come to need those almost nightly visits to cleanse my mind and soul. Without them, my nightmares and ghosts rolled about in my head, turning the world into something resembling the weather; grey and damp, filled with fey lights and disturbing motion.

Breakfast ran normally, but we were down to hard biscuits and Cook busied himself for the morning hour in attempting to rig up a water distiller with copper kettles and hosing. I wonder at how well it might have worked if he had not finally lost temper with the contraption and began to beat it with his spoon, screaming curses in his strange tongue. Such experiments were beneath he and his patience. In the end, the metal pots and hosing put up little resistance and the entire thing was thrown out the port window before the haze had been burned off the surface of the sea.

We were, it was muttered, running swiftly out of water. And the resultant unrest from this fact was at times, of a great fear to me. I clung to my duties that day in the rigging, all too aware of the glances men sent up to my perch. I could sense how their whispers consisted of luck being ill this time, rather than favorable. It was much of the same they felt toward the sea, but they had come to see her as a mistress much driven by whimsy. I, on the other hand, personified a certain child like belief that they were disappointed finding it held no truth. Watching them from above their heads, not far enough to block out their malcontent, I felt angry. How had I, in innocence of my coloring alone, bearing the favor of their captain, come to lug their burden of luck on my shoulders? It was an unfair treatment of my humanity; being relegated to nothing more than a luck charm.

Theo and the captain paced the deck, with spy glasses in hands and pensive expressions. Water rations were cut in half once more and it was rumored we had enough to last three more days at that rate. But we remained ten days from the nearest shore at the least. And that, only if we chanced upon a strong wind in the right direction. While we had wind enough to keep the sails full, they still fluttered at times along their edges, not completely forced wide and drawn taut with what would have been a far more powerful breeze.

Still, no matter the good or ill of breeze, we were doomed by those seven days and all knew it.

The captain, sensing this, set the men to rough work; forcing them into swabbing decks, cleaning brass, and even rearranging the goods in the storeholds below. More men were in the rigging, tackling sails and ropes and checking everything, until their brows shone with sweat in the noonday sun. Yet as busy as they were kept, still a sense of upset was beginning to fester and discontent would show its face.

Despite this, I found in myself a momentary respite from the discouragement running through us all. For let it be said here and now, no man goes to his death so willingly at first. Not while he has strength. Even if it means turning upon one another like rats in a cage.

After my last run in the rigging, I went to go help Cook and stopped at the hen’s coop, watching the birds peck disinterestedly at the deck under them. Here, the planks was bled white by the acid of their droppings. The surface was washed off with sea water every day, yet still the fecal matter impacted the wood. And my hen, as I’d come to think of her, gazed placidly at me with her black eye, sitting upon a perch half way up the height of the coop, calmly speaking to the others in quiet clucks and rolling murmurs of peaceable gossip.

I had somehow lost keep of them I realized then. For in arriving, I’d had the task of them for a good many of those first days, finding it easy enough work for a man without blisters on his hands. But somehow, between caring for Heero and Wufei, doing the rigging and following Cook’s directions, the chickens had gone to another’s care and I found I missed them.

Crouching there, finding the minds of birds to be far superior to that of humans at the moment, I grinned through the wire at her. There were many things one might have hoped for at that moment. Rain would have been nice, and should we have had some, rigging up sails over the hatches with a hole in the center and setting up barrels beneath, we could replenish our water supply. Rain would be a nice change. A strong wind also, for we constantly were checking the clouds, even those of us who did not know what to look for. And if I were to be in the company of chickens, that too. So thus, I found a moment where minds were not chaos and while it brought me some measure of relief, it could not completely protect me.

His arrival was preceded by a faint dusky scent of amusement. Yet the sense of it refreshed rather than took from me. I inadvertently leaned into it, as I had sought refuge in the silence of the minds of the chickens, as I sought refuge in the distance the ropes gave me from the rest of the crew. Looking upwards, I found that I was again in the choice position of being able to see under the screen of hair and have full view of two eyes, rather than the one, and both looked down on me in a quiet reckoning.

"Oh!" I stood suddenly and brushed my hands on my knees, a silly wasted effort for there was dirt all upon me. "I was… saying hello.." I ended lamely and gave that one emerald eye a smile.

He did not smile back, but merely nodded and without any regard for me, went about the task of feeding the birds.

I remained, standing near him, simply breathing in the same space as he. It felt intoxicating, staring at the smooth water-like flow of muscle under his skin while he bent and scattered seed into the bottom of the cage. The sudden eruption and flutter of wings could not steal my attention.

"It is strange," I began and then hesitated as he straightened and looked down upon me. I felt pierced and remade by that one eyed gaze. All around me, there was a tantalizing breath of peace, just a few steps out of my reach. "I-I mean, about the chickens," I stammered. "They’re still alive. I would have thought that without much water and with food stores dear, we would have begun to eat them? And yet they’re unharmed. I think they even get some of the water rations."

He stiffened and arched that one brow into a fine bow above his eye. I could see the lines of disapproval in every curve and angle of his body and I wanted again, to fall to my knees before him, assure him that I was but human, not an Adonis, and therefore knew not what I was speaking of; to beg forgiveness for my callous words about his charges. They were naught but chickens and yet I felt I had done wrong in speaking so glibly about death. What good would the death of the birds do? We still had eggs, they still lived. To kill even the smallest rat hidden in the stores would have seemed a sacrilege under the weight of that one eye’s glance.

I remained standing, frozen for some time, after he left me. My vision turned to watch the green I had memorized in that singular moment.

It was during the remainder of the day, that I found myself concocting excuses just to leave the galley so that I might catch a glimpse of him again. Something about the simple sight of him seemed to ease the tenseness of my muscles and to put my mind at ease, if but slightly. In a matter of a few short hours, I was grounded in a deep obsession. Cook, finally disgusted with my inability to respond even to the harshest of his blows, sent me back to the ropes.

From there, I was happiest. I could watch Trowa without fail and the echo of men’s hearts seemed more dully edged when one was farther from the source. I hung from ropes, keeping an eye glued to his form until a cuff from one of the other sailors to remind me of my responsibilities almost sent me flying from them. From then on, I worked at seeming to work, while in actual fact, keeping myself turned to some particular direction so that I might keep him within sight.

He had always been a fascinating subject for me. But until then, I had been too busy just learning the ways of the ship and keeping my sanity to have watched him long. Now, with the end of sanity and life just around the corner, I did not begrudge myself one free moment to seek him out and drink in the sight of him. He, like some far off seabird, flashed sunlight, his nut-brown body nothing like dull earth but rather golden as the setting sun over the waves.

That day, I took up the task of working with four other hands on restoring ballast to the mast arms. Trowa was busy with working on rails which had been washed away in the last gale. Many of the men reworked netting to go over the bow and others were set to fixing rigging that had been torn or frayed. The ship buzzed with action within the slim winds of the day. But my task allowed me a time and more to settle myself on the yard arms and look out over them all while waiting for another bag to be passed up.

Thus, the day passed quickly and when the time for water rations to be passed out at the evening’s end, I took a full double ration to split between myself, Wufei and Heero.

Wufei spoke to me that evening; his eyes following me and his concern sliding around on the ground after my heels. I could not understand what he feared. He refused more than half of his water, even after my threats to drop it to the floor. Instead, he insisted upon my drinking it or giving it to Heero. Knowing Heero needed anything he could get as he was gaining in strength, I put all into a bowl and gave it to the other man later on that evening while taking him his hard tack and fish.

I was not overly surprised to find Heero pacing in his quarters. He sat when I gave him his bowl. But he also, followed me with eyes that had messages in them. Unable to read him fully, my brain holding too much what with my own fears and those of all of the others onboard, I merely smiled, waited until he was finished, and refused to ask or speculate.

A cry rose from above while I was waiting and leaving Heero, I rushed to the upper deck. A feeling of anger, panic, fear intermixed, hit me the moment I came to air. Above us, the sky had become black, a storm head moving in upon a rushing wind. Already I could feel the winds hit my face and push my hair upon my head. The storm roved across the sea like a great predator, stalking the ship. But still, the panic confused me. A storm was dangerous, yes. But storms brought a grim acceptance, not fear. We might have even run under sail if the wind proved to stable enough, some of the sails drawn up, yet at a faster pace than we had been going. Why then the rising fright I felt from them?

Men circled the center near the mainmast where one of the sailors, a man did not know a name for, shouted something about cursed. Theo pressed past me and I grasped his arm, looking at his pale face.

He gazed down at me, his mouth turned in a grim line. "Storm coming and one of the men has seen Sea Folk off the port side."

"Sea Folk?" I furrowed my brow in confusion.

Theo reached for me as well and gave my upper arm a comforting squeeze, yet the touch did not comfort and instead, transferred his growing panic and guilt. Was this, then, something we had brought upon ourselves with the trap we had set? I stared at him, my eyes wide. "Could it be that…" but I had not heart to say it aloud. His short, quick nod as he left weakened my knees and pressed me back toward the standing mast where I leaned against the shoring ropes wrapped around its girth.

The smell of sea and sweat surrounded me and the razor sharp will that cut through us all told me that the captain had come. Men quieted immediately upon his. He braced himself against the wind, the coming storm that was all but upon us, and grasped the wailing fellow by the back of the shirt, shaking him like a dog.

The sailor, not yet overcome, stared in horror and began to babble, "Over the bow! Port side, woman in the water! She came with the storm, ser! Saw’er clear as I’m seeing you! Shadows under her too, like more! Silver and catching sun. Gods have mercy, ser! We’re going down this hour!"

The captain let go of the man and he fell backwards onto the deck. Then, wind catching braid and whipping it into a living serpent that flew about head, the angered captain turned onto us all, his eyes fiery with some hellish fever.

"If the sea is wanting us," he roared, "she’ll come and take us. Until then, there will be no talk of going down! What says that she’s not coming just for him?" and his finger pointed at the rising sailor who, hearing the words, crumpled into a ball and keened.

The men were not given time to talk nor to protest. The captain’s orders bound them to action as he pointed upwards. "Third and second watch! Man rigging, shore up the foresails! First, onto the capstan!"

Like automatons, we followed his sharp commands, driven before the wind by his far stronger will, cutting sails up and swinging on rigging. I, not yet knowing fully more than how to bring up and down a sail, how to tie up rigging, and a few more somewhat useful actions, was distracted in watching the movements of the others so that I could know where I should go. I wasn’t aware of the storm until the very moment it pounced.

Wind first. A sudden rise of air shoved into the sails. I almost lost hold, yet learning from my experience of before, quickly threw arms around the plentiful ropes, scaling to the yard to get a stronger seat.

We worked for what felt close to an eternity, catching up sailing canvas, drawing on the halyard ropes and placing ties on the shortened sheets so that the canvas would not tear nor blow away. Then we fought our way to the foresails to help the other crew at furling the entire foremast but for the bottom two which were left unfurled and giving the ship propulsion. The same treatment was done for the mizzen mast by the remaining crew who finished that whilst we finished the fore. All the while, below, the shouted orders of men from captain to crew and recognition of orders back fought against the hungry wailing of the gale.

Hearing a sound that was not quite wind, nor water, I clung to the yardarm and stared out at the sea,. Thunder rolled upon us, a sound I’d heard many a season sitting in the quiet, dimly lit apartments at my home. Yet here, upon the water, sounds were heightened by the open spaces as well as our fear laden senses. Lightening flashed and the black was all about us now but for on the southern horizon where the edge of the storm could be seen still and blue sky mocked our state. No rain; yet I looked down and saw the men setting up a catchall for the barrels that were empty. They did not put them above the entry holes, but were actually rigging them up above the deck level. I could not understand the purpose of having the barrels so high. I was quick to see the reason however.

A shout, high and strained, broke from across deck. I swiveled upon my seat in the rigging and gasped in horror.

The wind we were battling against was but a sister, and a younger one at that, to the storm that came upon us then, Her bounty, a great wind pressing itself deep against the ship’s side and following it, just beyond, waves so high that the horizon was lost, even from my higher vantage point. The first one would easily overcome the ship’s sides. With a sense of terror, I looked down at the entire first watch clamoring to tie themselves to the side or grasp the handles of the turnstile they’d been struggling against, before the waves could break upon us. The captain, holding to a chain against a far rail, bawled out orders that I could not hear, yet guessed at as men turned to the rigging and began to strive at changing the direction our sails turned. And just beyond, Theo, anchored to the great helm wheel, braced himself.

Being on the lower yardarm, I could see them clearly at the moment the first wave hit. Washing over them, it transformed the entire ship into a roiling pool of white foam and black angles. Then it drained over the side and we slid into the trough left in its wake. The deck was clear once more and amazing, men still remained, pulling on the rigging. I did not count nor see if all were still aboard. Though I feared some were lost. There was no netting up along the fore and the rails were gone at the far side of the ship. Ballast had been placed yet what good would that do, other than keeping us from going down?

Swinging to the deck, I leapt to aid with drawing back on shoring ropes. We had began to pull as another wave came over us. I say came over us, for I find few words to explain the sense of being surrounded by such a great violence. From the deck, there was only wave upon wave. One moment, the view of that false, fearful horizon moving far above one’s head, and at the next, nothing but a complete, encompassing sound, a cold kicking one’s breath from one’s lungs and chilling one’s limbs until they can do nothing but steadily go toward what task you’ve forgotten you had set them to, and a force more wild than any wind, knocking one’s feet out from under one and pummeling one’s body against any surface that happens to be near. Many of us struggled against the force of the wave and at some time, I cannot say what number of wave it was, pain lanced through me as something smashed into my knee. The hurt was of no importance at that moment and through the haze in my mind, I found I could still continue.

The storm was meaningless. Maybe the fact that one of the Oin Sa Marne had been seen made us all act so desperately. Perhaps it was the curse of the captain’s hatred for the one he’d loved and bound to him. Could it have been merely the sea coming to retrieve me? My sweet Therese, had she cried for revenge upon her and I had done nothing to spill blood. I had not even, in my grief, remembered to make mark upon my own arm in remembrance of her. And what a foolish time to recall my lack of action! Neither wind nor wave had any care if I had grief written upon my body.

During the squall, I saw no less than two men swept overboard, had sight of their doomed faces and the look of hopeless acceptance. To lose their fragile contact with the ship was a certainty of death this deeply into the heart of the storm. They knew that once lost, they could never be found again. I would weep for them later. Yet their faces were not alone. Men who worked with me to combat the sea had much the same expression. An Oin Sa Marne had been sighted. She meant to take us all.

I lost myself in the moments following the first wave that came upon us. Even now, they remain a blur of pain, cold, and sound. There was spray all around, water everywhere, and all the while, the constant smashing of thunder and blinding flashes of lightening. The very two alone would have been terrifying enough. The waves and wind added another side to it all which tore me from terror into a sheer terror and present mindedness in which I could move and breath and hold fast to rope or mast or chain to keep myself from being drawn into the black maw of ocean which opened at the apex of every wave we crashed through.

Yet, like all experiences that tear at one’s soul, the storm was finished come the proper time or another. The waves no longer tore across the deck, the wind remained swift but did not howl so, and the lightening and her thunderous sister no longer broke apart our eyes and ears. In the wake of the main of the storm, I did not hear commands, so much as know like many of the others, that we would take advantage of what wind we were afforded. We went about the task like men dead.

Climbing the rigging as a dead man is not so hard as one might think. I could reach for the next rope and never consider if my arms or legs were having to battle against lethargy. There is no feeling to them in that state and actions are automatic. I had no sense until I was well into the height of the mizzen mast and was shocked to find myself staring into black eyes I had never seen in the open air.

"W-Wu-" I choked and my voiced failed me, hoarse as if I too had been screaming all the while.

His face grim and his body as slim as the ropes he worked, he gave me a glance and that was all. Yet his determination wept warmth into me and with reserves I had not known myself to have, I found myself working with he and others over the hours as we checked rigging, dropped the battens on what sails had them, undid tyes to furl the chained sails, and set them all to capture the wind. Sails done, we kept to the those remaining of the first watch working on pulling down the two sails which were tore, putting up a new tye chain on one of the main sails, and other needed repairs. And all the while, the wind taunted us, giving us a great deal of speed but also having broken us upon her.

The men accepted Wufei’s presence with a calm I would not have expected. There was no questioning him about his being there, nor did they do more than give him a single look of surprise at the most, when he first appeared to each. Like a well oiled machine, they quickly fell under his guidance. His calls had not the herald quality of the captain’s, made rough and high by his earlier abuse in the brig. Yet men were trained to take heed of it and they did so.

It was quickly obvious that we had not the manpower to work the sails as well as work repairs. Yet Theo, the green eyed sailor, the captain, and Wufei’s instinctive guidance of the crew was to get us under sail and then to work us into repairs despite our exhaustion. More than once, I found myself almost falling to the deck, stars whirling through my sight. I was not alone in this weakness. Later that following day, after the storm was a distant nightmare, a quiet burial at sea carried a man the grave. He had been too injured to remain conscious in the sails and his fall to the deck, cracked his neck bones against a winch handle.

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Waking from a slumber that was too short, I drew myself out of the bed, unable to recall how I’d come to lie there in the first place. The sun was all but down as I stood out on the plankings and looked at the deceptively fair looking sea around us.

The setting sun cast shadows over the deck and I let myself be blinded by the red handed fire of it. Ahead of me at the stern, Theo held the helm, his arms looped over a handle coming from the main curve of the wheel. His face, darkened with some thunder of his own, stopped me just short of going to the galley and I paused to regard him.

Somehow, he noticed my attention and left the helm to come to the railing and look down upon me. His eyes asked me how to undo our wrongs and if we had been the cause of this. I could think of nothing to say to him, so in the stead of answers I tried to direct our conversation to other corners. "We have our wind. It should give us a cleaner chance at finding the islands."

His mouth set in a grim line, he shook his head. "We lost two water barrels o’er her side." I noticed then that the wheel was chained to the course, the result of a good, solid wind until we tacked.

"But what about the sheeting? We were catching rain…" I felt my heart sink.

"There were no rain. Salt spray. Aye, we caught that a’plenty, we did," his tone was bitter.

Blinking back a different kind of star, I looked up to see our sails so full that they looked ready to burst from the various ropes which held them to the wooden arms crossing the masts. A wind. Surely this would be good news. Some good luck to counteract the bad? For bad luck we had in spades.

It was a moment of delusion. We had no water. Or so little it no longer mattered. But I so desperately wished for our safe return, for the hope of those water barrels and the rain that had not come, for the slender chance of survival. The wind proved a diversion against the matter of our deaths, never more close than now.

Had I but known that death was far closer. No diversion could tear me from the reality of what happened next.

Leaving Theo with no words of comfort to give, I turned towards the galley and paused at the door, frowning. Within, not quite masked by the wind’s moan, a man’s broke through the wooden surface.

I needn’t have concerned myself with the door, for a hair’s breadth after, it crashed open, shoving me backwards and into a rail. I sat up at the sound of shouting and stared in surprise.

Cook barreled through the open door, beset. A large man, his words tumbled from him in foreign taste harsh and coarse with his shouting, and I am certain little of what he said was appropriate for polite company. Upon him two men clung, one with a face pale as the moon and the other dark as the waters. They struggled to tear him down, trying as well as they could to quiet him. From behind, another man, smaller than the first two but with a face pinched with bestial anger leapt through the doorway, his form back lit by the galley lights, and his hand flashed silver.

I had time to gasp, to reach out as if to stop them, then there was the brief and sickening sound of … Ah, but even that sound is not worth the time it takes to speak of it. It wounds sensibilities that have not heard it and those who have, I pity your dreams as I pity my own. All that is of consequence is what happened next.

A guttural cry from Cook ended in a soft moan as he crashed to his knees. The two men holding him bore him to the ship’s decking and the third dropped what I now realized was a dagger, his face pale. "Too late!" he cried in a tone of desperate horror, then he turned and ran.

But where is there to run? The lower decks had been roused by the shouts. I stared in shock, noting the darker gentleman, if gentleman is such a name to give a creature, stand shakily from the inert form under him and stumble to the side of the vessel. He grabbed for a railing that was not yet replaced in order to, I would suppose, relieve his stomach of its contents. Finding air under his hand, flailed grotesquely against the dim, his face one of surprise as he spun in the empty space and fell backwards, into the sea.

"Man overboard!" a routine call at the sound of such a distinct splash.

The deck was suddenly swarming. Slow in rousing myself from my stupor at what I’d just witnessed, I moved to stand, staring about me in a hazy recognition of what was going on, yet uncertain of what was to happen next. I was unaccustomed to murder and our world was so very small upon this ship. Voices shouted, I could not discern one from the other but that there was some discontent about water.

What water, though? I could have laughed over it. Two barrels gone and that which was left would not last the coming day out.

"What goes on here?" a powerful voice broke through the men and I, from my vantage, could just see the top of the captain part through them all. I looked around me and sighting an empty cask, clambered upon it, looking down into the gathering of men. The draining blood of the sky covered the drained blood upon the decking where the body of Cook lay as it had fallen, face down. The two remaining murderers stood held near it by their shipmates. Upon their faces, terror and grim hatred shone. Theo had appeared and kept guard near them, his mouth set to what was an even grimmer line than before. He had to have seen as well as I, his vantage being from the helm.

"Ser!" Theo called, quick witted enough, "They two, wi’Sparks, seem ta have took ta partakin’ more’n their share o’water. Cook looks ta hev protested."

"I see only two, where is Sparks?" the captain’s back was to me, tense with anger. Above the entire crowd a haze of anger and fear rose. But from he, there was a much sharper tang of madness, so close to the surface, I feared it. He had to know of the loss of water, the way we were riding death’s waves, and I felt that he desired it. He wanted to die, wanted us all to die.

"Overboard, ser," Theo nodded toward the aft of the ship. The wind had carried us so far, had Sparks been a man we’d have wished to keep, we still were without the power to turn and save him in time. With the darkened waters and the winds, it would take a miracle to find him.

"There let him lie. May the sea leave his bones and curse him to remain for eternity," the captain stated angrily and then waving an arm at the other two, cursed. "Hang these from the mizzen," and turning he made as if to return to his quarters.

"Ser! I protest!" Theo reached for the captain’s shoulder. "We hev need o’men, ser! We’ll ne’er sail with so few!"

The captain’s face suddenly in plain view, I found my knees sagging and was forced to grab onto netting draped over the pile of casks looming behind me. There was no distinction between sane and insane any longer upon that pale visage. The captain had fallen fully through and the result was a mad gleam to his eye as he caught sight of me. The unstable sense of self pained me and I gasped, not finding relief even he turned and threw off Theo’s arm. "Will you mutiny too, man?" he cried.

"No ser!" Theo’s voice, counterpoint to the crazy lilt of the captain’s seemed off kilter somehow, as if it could not fully match itself with the tone of the voyage. "No, but we be needin’ men, ser! Yeh cannat hang th’men! Throw’m in th’brig ser! We’ll draw’m out when we ‘ave need of ‘em!"

"I am captain!" the captain’s voice thundered. "I make decisions of life and death upon these waters! I say they hang, now will ye hang’m or no, mate?" Oh and he meant every word. He was a god here, grander than the Lady or the Weaver, with our lives held in the palms of his hands.

I begged silently, knowing our days to be shortened, certain that there was easily not water enough to guide us even into eternity. I wished for Theo to deny his own core for once. I desired him to silently follow orders for I knew the mad creature he was before and murder stood foremost in the captain’s mind.

My silent warnings went unheeded and Theo’s jaw clenched. He stood straight as a noble led to the executioner. I realized then that he knew what he faced and would do right no matter the consequences. "No, ser. I’ll not do sich a thing."

There was silence where only the wind spoke, then the captain lunged at his first mate. I cried out but my cry lost itself in those of the men. Theo, stepping back swiftly, was not swift enough. Perhaps it was from his knowledge that inciting the captain to further wrath would cause greater harm. Perhaps it was a result of the altercation from the unsuccessful trap he and I had tried to spring. Nevertheless, the captain’s fist caught him a blow across the jaw and threw him backwards. He stumbled over the body of Cook, falling heavily to the deck. The captain, standing spread legged over him as a conqueror, pointed his finger at the other men in direction. "Rope. Lash him to the mainmast" That said, he turned and stalked toward his cabin.

Pausing, he turned. "And hang the mutineers," he snarled, gesturing to the other two.

I sat myself heavily upon the cask and watched the proceedings with a dazed consciousness. Men hauled Theo to the mast and gathered rope for the binding of him. The two sailors were dragged backwards, toward the brig where I am sure Wufei was chained once more. Watching it all, I wondered at how Wufei had become free in the first place and thought that mayhaps Theo did far more behind the back of the captain than I had previously thought. Theo was aware of the tortured soul of his captain and there are some decisions one cannot always depend upon to be made in the best interest of the crew when one has the disposition of our long haired leader.

Theo, roped tightly, his face pressed to the mast, closed his eyes in pain and I, uncertain of it all, stood and began to approach him. He was my friend, perhaps the only friend I had upon this voyage. But an arm came before me, stopping me. Darkened as the sun had set, I looked past the slender coil of muscle upon that arm and up at the face above me, catching the gleam of one green eye. As always before, I found myself instantly yearning toward him despite the plight of my friend and the insanity of the present. I was exhausted by the commotion upon the deck and the spike of fear in the two doomed men made me almost mad myself. I reached for his arm where it met with his shoulder and he, wary of my touch, dissipated under it like sea foam before I could make contact.

"Take the watch," his velveted voice scraped me raw and I nodded like a dumb beast. Then he was gone from me and I watched him until all I could see was the top of his head among the remaining crew.

Had I not felt obedient before, the command coming from him would have been enough to push me to do as he bid if only to be allowed to please him. Without consideration, I climbed; ignoring the sound of ropes being thrown to the lowest yardarm on the mizzen behind. Above them all, I found the small platform at the upper arm and gripping the rigging, looked out to the deceitful sea. She stretched around us like a great blanket, rolling under us with the wind, yet further out of sight, black as ink in the growing darkness. To the east, stars began ferreting their way out through the firmament to gleam down upon us and I ignored the panicked sense of impending death that drifted up to me from below. I had felt death many a time by that moment. I had felt the despair of it in those men swept overboard. I had felt the surprise of it in Cook’s murder. Now I felt the unfairness of it in the hanging of two men whose only fault was their overwhelming need to survive just a day longer; whose wish to make it home had overridden their honor and forced upon them the desire for the water left to us all.

When it came twice again, it did not shake me. And I did not weep. Instead, I kept my eyes upon that place on the horizon where darkness and blackness met and where the stars began to wink into being, one after the other, displacing the now absent sun.

Thus, I kept with the night until dawn. My watch extended long due to lack of man power, I found that as the moon rose I could see the helm. And it was there he stood. The object of my mirrored obsession. For as the captain tried to ignore his need for Heero, so had I attempted to ignore my desire for the ship’s mystery, for that green eyed sea man. But no longer. That night I came to an acceptance and instead of watching the horizon dutifully, found myself watching his form. He stood, silver, clad in moonlight, a wraith born from the ocean’s depths, rolling with the grace of the waves as he turned the helm and then chained it, looking now and again seaward with compass.

The moon set hours before. The sun rose and I gazed out to it, blinding myself with it’s rays, yet too exhausted and resigned to my coming doom to attempt to fall into it again. The rigging shuddered under me and I looked down as my relief reached me.

"Heero?"

He grunted his reply and indicated the ropes below us. Again obedient, I climbed down. Upon reaching the deck, I stood, fingers tangled in the rat netting, gazing up at where he was with his one leg dangling over the edge. Bemused by how everything was changing, I made my way to the galley, stopped at the realization that Cook was not there. I paused, looking around myself, lost.

Theo remained against the mast, his eyes closed and his face pale. Above us, not far enough that peripheral vision could ignore, two pair of feet dangled and the crew was unusually quiet as they worked. The sound of a chicken cackling after she’d laid her egg broke some of the stillness yet as soon as she’d ended her exultant cry, the silence fell more heavily than before upon us all.

I was startled by a sound to my side of chains hitting boards, muffled, coming from the brig. Surprised out of the haze of shock and exhaustion that had settled upon me, I went to the open hatchway and gazed down the ladder.

"Wufei!" I watched, amazed further as the ex-first mate crawled up the hatchway ladder and stood in the new sunshine, rubbing at his wrists. "But.. how.."

Another shape emerged, until now unrecognized, and I stared into one quiet, undisturbed eye of sea green. My… sailor. The one whom I had found my gaze returning to over and over again. He watched me for what seemed an eternity and I felt my entire body, every cell, screaming to touch him. Almost. Almost I took a step forward to do just that. But Wufei moved and jostled me.

At first I was foolish enough to think he could see my intentions and was angry at my actions toward Trowa. But I came to realize a moment later that he had swayed and almost fallen. Reaching out, I steadied him against my side where he leaned, breathing heavily, his head down. Then in a rasping voice, much ill-used, he stated, "I… can cook…"

What good would that do? One more day’s worth of cooking? How inane had we become? I looked up for Trowa’s face, hoping to ascertain his reasoning, yet he had already gone, melted back into the ranks of men moving around upon the upper deck.

"We… we have almost no water," I hesitantly offered, "But there might be something you can do. Come." I helped him to the galley. There I fed him some hard tack and a tiny sip of the water. We had, as I had suspected, enough to last for this day and that was all. And when he’d eaten and drunk he seemed much revived. The work within the storm after having been so long interned below decks had made him weak. Yet his fortitude amazed me.

He did not speak to me and I must admit to not having had much in the way of polite conversation. But our situation did not call for such niceties. Instead he stood and began work within Cook’s kitchen, stoking a fire and setting the oven to work. And within the cradling of those now familiar sounds, I fell to sleeping, folding my arms upon the table and pillowing my head on them.

[] [] [] [] [] []

It was the mid-afternoon mark when I woke to the sound of the galley door closing. Jerking upright, I found myself alone, yet there was a congealed bowl of porridge, the fat now cold at its top, beside my elbow. I ate, not caring for the concerns of my palette but rather needing to fill my stomach. It was hard, cooked with only enough water to make it edible, but it was food and I had missed the breaking of my fast in the morning. Besides, with the storm and all of the effects of it after, mealtimes no longer fell under the regulations of any particular hour of the day. Rather, when it was put before me, I suspect I ate.

Rising from my place at the table, I stepped out of the galley and almost ran into Wufei. He stood, legs splayed, arms across his chest, facing the deck with his face a stone mask. In hand and across his chest he held a slender blade, something I think many would have laughed at. I have since learned it was a formidable weapon, well capable of slicing a full grown man’s body into two. Still, it may not have been so much the blade but the look of cold regard upon the man’s face that put off the rest. I did not delude myself into thinking they kept away from him for sake of some love borne. We had moved past all things related to such human characteristics and were now, fully entrenched in animalistic need for survival.

He closed the door behind after I had left the galley. I nodded an acknowledgment towards him and made my way out upon the decking, watching the movement round about. What Wufei was doing there, I now could guess. The water was at short supply and now and again I felt the rising fear and anger at his presenting himself as stopper to any who might have wished to take more than their share. He was guarding our most precious of commodities, for what little gain, I cannot say. We were not in any hopes of reaching land for another week or more, depending on the winds. Man cannot live without his water.

"Now then," a soft, dangerous purr slid around me and I moved back without thinking into a row of goods barrels in time to watch the captain slink out of the shadows along the stern. Transfixed by his insanity, I found I could only watch the scene which had begun to take place. "We begin, do we?"

Many of the men had other things to do, there was no lack of tasks. The ship was in disrepair, her sails full with wind, her rigging groaning at the pressure upon it. There were ropes to replace, boards to add, sides to shore up. The men, however, remained lingering about right then. A preternatural silence fenced us in, making us captive to the captain’s horrifying play. Outside, the crash of wave, the sough of wind. Within, the slither of leather cord over the planking, the soft labored breathing of a man tied to the mast, and the almost intimate brush of cloth as before me, the captain drew his body taut.

I could see Theo’s face where I stood. He was pale under the seaman’s tan. His hands gripped the rope by which he was bound so tightly that his knuckles stood out white.

Not far from where he was bound, the captain stood, half naked and bare soled. His toes spread out to grip the deck. He preparee himself for some further turn into darkness as he coiled the wicked looking leather into his hands, the ends of which were divided into nine sections of a more slender leather, corded at the ends of each serpent like tail.

I had heard of the cat of nine tails before this. It was a horrific vehicle of persuasion, more often used on one’s enemies than one’s crew. Men had died by its touch upon their back. Though to be fair, I must note that such stories also state that in such rare cases of death, it is when each of the nine ends is not so corded as this one was, but have bound to each a piece of metal shard or glass. And all are reported to have been in the hands of an unduly cruel and mad captain. I cannot say that our captain was cruel as easily as I can explain his madness. Cruelty is a far more ambiguous sensation and often those who seem most cruel, are most kind.

The first crack of the whip brought silence in its wake. Then a moment later, like a shocked echo, Theo’s ragged cry of pain. All too soon following, another crack of whip upon his back. This one corresponded with another ragged scream bit off midway. Theo was trying to control his reaction. He had succeeded in biting off this one half way finished and did not make another sound after. There was only the now far away sound of wind, wave, heartbeat, and a frightening recognizable grunt of human exertion as the captain put himself to his task

I have not mentioned in my account the fact that I was privy to more nights in the Babe’s Book where the captain came to his slave and took his pleasure. I have failed in this respect for the memory is not one for good company. So it pains me now to bring it up, that such sounds from the captain as he was lost to his desire to break Theo’s spirit, brought to mind other times where he’d attempted to break another’s spirit. Though of course, at the time I could not say if it were his own spirit or Heero’s he was attempting to crush those black nights.

I had found such moments troubling. But never so much so as I did at that particular moment. Until then, I had had my night visitor, the - and I could accept the facts without relief of my guilt - saving grace from the Oin Sa Marne. But without such protection, I found memory played havoc with my mind and I was split between the two, captured in the maelstrom of the captain’s internal torment coupled with the numbing and forgetful pain that clinched Theo’s mind.

Listening to the whip tearing across Theo’s unprotected back, overwhelmed by the sensations of mind that swept over my head with much the same lack of concern as the waves had rolled over the deck earlier, I found myself blindly reaching for support. My fingers brushed skin. Warmth trembled under my grasp as I gripped cloth and an arm. But my hand quickly let go for at the touch, brief as it was, blessed coolness trailed into my body and swept clear the worst of the haze I had begun to lose myself to. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from making more sound than the choked gasp I could hear in my mind. Was he here? Was he… Had he returned? Even now? When I needed him so desperately?

I was restored, not to my greater abilities but to a semblance of control over the instability of mind in which I’d discovered myself. I was again within reach of my self. My eyes cleared and I looked around.

I had apparently stumbled back from the cargo barrels, and was now returned to the door leading into the galley. I reached again, trying to find the stillness and my fingers found skin hot enough to burn, yet there was emptiness within instead of the healing waves of cool peace from before. My fingers tightened. The arm did not move. With a sigh, I turned to my rescuer and met with sloe dark eyes, a face faintly tinged with impending death, and a dragon quick slash of a mouth.

"You… you guard.. the water…" I croaked, staring at Wufei even as my heart fell in disappointment so keen it left an iron taste in my mouth.

His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. "There is no water." His voice ground out like stones pressed too close to one another. There was little room for his words.

"Then… why?" I asked, holding to his quiet. It was not the coolness of before, but it was a silence made by a self control that transcended all others. At that point of time, I could not know if the freeing from that brutal fog of before had been real or no. Neither did I attend to the continuation of the whipping. I could not. Yet something, deep within, was counting the number of falls. 12…13…14…

He did not meet my eyes much longer, but looked instead at the vision I was trying to escape. He said nothing of my grip being too tight on his skin though I was sure I was leaving bruises. "Because no one must know."

It made a twisted, confusing sense. While we still thought there to be water, men would continue to strive to be safe, to live. Without, we would have lost all hope, lost all reason to persevere. It…

Weaver, that whipping! I looked out beyond Wufei’s stoic profile to the sea, placid and uncaring, as if we were nothing more than bugs upon a platter. Waves broke here and there, but the wind was not harsh. Enough disruption of her surface to made for a grayish green color throughout and above the sky remained clear with a smatter of clouds above.

My mind thus occupied, I almost missed the holler from above. Heero, not a man of much voice, had nevertheless managed to put out a fair enough alarm.

"Ware!" he cried, the whip falling silent at his call. "Ware! Tis a black flag!"

~~~~~~~~

Chapter 9:
((Not all sharks are those with fins. The ship tries to find sanctuary and Quatre seeks to come to terms with his inner state without the aid of his sea borne lover))

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