The root of my infame, as I sail, as I sail,
My faults I will display,
Committed day by day—
Damnation be my lot, as I sail . . .
For every legend, good or bad, warrants a song made from his exploits. But sailors are fatalists all, drowned men kept upright sheerly by luck’s vagaries—and thus unlikely to stay long impressed by anything, or anyone, who claims to be able to cheat destiny forever.
. . . So we’ll be taken at last, and then die, and then die,
Though we have reigned awhile, we will die—
Though we have reigned awhile,
While fortune seemed to smile,
We must have our due deserts, and still die . . .
If Parry found the implication insulting, however, he gave no sign of it; his fine-cut face stayed closed and stony, indifferent as always. And his thoughts, now he was done discoursing with Captain Rusk’s ghost, remained his own.
The next day, we finally reached that place Mister Dolomance had described to me—a great knot of weed flowering up from the ocean’s bottom, roots sunk two hundred feet or more, down to the darkness where blue-clear water becomes mulch-black sand. For even at its very deepest places, the sea too gives way to land, eventually.
(And might this have been the worst part of old Captain Rusk’s curse, made all the more potent by his extremity—for if there were truly no place without land, how could the ocean ever be anything but a stop-gap, a salve between bleedings against pain that never fully died? Which, in turn, perhaps explained so much about Parry’s manner, his stiff coldness, his constant distraction; things become clearest in hindsight, always, after the fact. Long after, most often.
(But since I am now coming near my own story’s end, as you can no doubt tell, I judge I too may well be falling into a distraction. So I will take care to try and tell the rest of it through without embellishment, from here on.)
We nosed in slowly, seeking not to entangle ourselves, ‘til the weed-forest’s thickness made it impossible and we dropped anchor as best we might, hooking it in the crook where three branches grew together at the holdfast like ivy. Parry and a small party took to the boats, following Mister Dolomance, who merely gave that creaky laugh of his when Parry vented his doubts as to where, exactly, he might be leading them. For once, I felt I could tell exactly what he was saying:
If you believe me capable of deception, wizard, even when still so ensorcelled I keep this shape you’ve laid on me, then it is yoursel
f you make look bad, not I.
At this, Captain Parry merely sniffed yet once more, forbearing response—haughty as the Devil himself, if with far less reason—and waved the oarsmen to their task, bidding them into the weeds’ heart ‘til all of them were eventually lost from sight. The remaining crew stayed on deck, watching after with weapons ready, lest their master send up some sort of signal for aid. But since I knew exactly what they would find if they only went far enough, I slipped down below and performed a few small tasks, while no one else was looking.
One boat came back, the quartermaster at its helm. “Captain wants ye, Ciaran-boy, and quick-smart,” he called up to me. “To ‘bear witness to his triumph,’ or some-such nonsense.”
“Coming,” I said, and was over the side a second after, not waiting on a ladder or rope; I hit the water with a splash and let the man haul me bodily aboard, all uncaring of how wet I got these ill-fitting clothes I soon expected to no longer have to wear.
The captain’s boat had moored, again by tethering itself to whatever was handy, right by a weed-clump so thoroughly knotted it had grown a sort of skin, fleshy-rough as any mushroom. A veritable floating island, such as crews tell tales of from one end of the sea to the other, never for a moment thinking to set foot upon its like in real life. And it was here that Jerusalem Parry already stood, boot-heels sunk just a bare quarter-inch into the spongey mass below; stood and swayed slightly, braced against pain, ‘til he was sure no blood would come. Whereupon his bitter mouth finally stretched wide and he threw back his head to laugh, delighted as any child with the way his magic had brought him at last to that place he’d so long sought for.
“See?” he called to me, triumphant. “I stand victorious. Though Rusk stole the land from me, yet have I conquered; the sea itself delivers whatever I demand, no matter how impossible!”
“Mister Dolomance and myself, rather, to whom you now owe a debt of thanks.”
Parry raised a brow. “Mister Dolomance has proved a treasured investment, undoubtedly,” he admitted with surprising grace, “so much so I may even free him for it, one day. But you’ve given me little enough during your stay with my crew, aside from sullen looks and poor labour. Or am I mistaken?”
He thought to toy with me in his customary style, all aristocrat’s drawl and fine vocabulary—as he’d done with Rusk, perhaps, who’d seemingly found it more attractive than I. But because I knew something the captain did not, for once, I met his insults with a similar grin.
“As it ensues, yes,” I replied. “For instead of giving, I have in fact taken something, without your notice.”
“Explain yourself, sir.”
I shrugged. “Wait and see.”
Out where weed gave way again to ocean, the Bitch floated low, lapped at by some gentle tidal gyre; we caught yet more music off its thronged deck, playing counterpoint to light laughter, scuffle and jesting. But all this changed a moment later, when—with a flash and muffled roar, like some cracked cannon’s back-fire—its magazine, which I’d carefully set fire to before disembarking, went off, blowing her hull so far open her guts were laid bare. The mainmast went one way, the mizzenmast another, tearing wood like splintery paper; screams rose, as did smoke, and flames.
Had he been still on board, Captain Parry’s magic might have turned the trick, but from here, there was no help for it; those careful bonds suturing wreck to wreck dissolved, leaving the ship itself to slide apart in chunks and sink, taking the bulk of his crew down as well.