We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

by Andrew Kelly Stewart

  This is confirmed later, after supper. When the rumors begin to spread among the tables in the mess. Tonight, there will be a raid.

  Of course, any real information must be paid for.

  We trade and buy in teeth.

  Things that have been lost but are still our own. Pieces of us.

  Not all teeth are of equal value. Molars are worth more than incisors, but the quality of the tooth matters as well. Blackened ones are worth less than browned. Browned worth less than yellowed. Rare white ones—normally baby teeth—are worth the most.

  I have managed to have kept most of mine which have fallen out—seven white baby teeth and five that have loosened since—and five others from trade. Takes more teeth to make a deal these days. That’s because, since the worst of the scurvy has set in, there are more teeth to be traded. But also, it takes more teeth to make a trade, because goods worth trading for have become scarce.

  Lazlo and Ephraim and I each sacrifice one of the best of our individual collection—two ochre incisors and a molar marred by only one blackened pip—and pass them along to Brother Leighton—one of the youngest brothers. Upon examining his payment and finding it suitable, he leans in and speaks conspiratorially.

  “Brother Augustine an’ me been asked to sharpen the blades, right? Readyin’ flame jars and the like.”

  Brother Silas, seated at the adjoining table, listening in all the while, confirms the rumor with his silence.

  “Praise God,” St. John says, who had been sullenly scooping at the remainder of his watery broth with the back of his spoon. “We have not had any fruits or meat in . . .”

  He cannot properly remember.

  Neither can I.

  “Will it be an island?” I ask. “Coconuts, perhaps.”

  “Mangosteen.”

  “Bananas.”

  A litany of words that conjure sharp memories.

  I remember a time when, from the gleaming hatch of the conning tower—the halo of light—they brought down from their gathering a bushel of limes. They were still warm from the sun. They tasted like the light. Sweet and sour. My mouth wanted to collapse on itself.

  Remembering those limes, my tongue tingles.

  Normally, this would be a topic of some excitement, particularly for us Choristers, who never get to step foot Topside, but Brother Silas, brow already shelved and heavy, appears positively downtrodden.

  “What troubles you, Silas?” Ephraim asks.

  “No—no island,” he says.

  The jubilant mood is doused.

  So, a ship raid, then. A raid on Topsiders.

  No getting around it.

  We have enough fish to last us a week, if we stretch, but we are low on all the other goods. Medical supplies, pantry items for the kitchen, fresh cloth and soap—whale blubber and ash is harsh, burns the skin—twine to repair the nets, oil for the engines, and other rarer but essential parts like gaskets and seals, and, if at all possible to locate, batteries. All of which have become more dangerous to acquire, since they can only be collected from Topsider ships, which are fiercely protected.

  “We should launch the Last Judgment now,” St. John says in his usual dictatorial tone, as though he, himself, might be the caplain. “End their miserable lives.”

  “They are wretched and should have our sympathy,” Lazlo says.

  “That’s what old Caplain Amita thought,” St. John says. “No, the Topsiders are sinners. Marauders. Caplain Marston has reminded us of that, yeah?”

  “We were once Topsiders,” I interject.

  “And we were blessed. Purified. Thus, we should be careful to remain loyal and faithful, for our place in heaven is not fixed,” St. John says, definitive, leaving no room for response. I look up and see him staring at me, an impish delight in his eye. A look that says, Not even for you, Remy.

  I had only just come on board when St. John received his cutting.

  The newly devoted are given two weeks to recover—the minimal amount of bedrest necessary, it was deemed, in order to have the best chance of surviving the procedure.

  But that often wasn’t enough time.

  Many died from blood loss.

  Some from ague. Infection.

  St. John was stoic, even then. Would not let on the amount of pain he was in.

  I found him one day, stumbled upon him in the storage compartment. Found him doubled over, heaving great, shuddering tears, blood pooling between his feet.

  I had to help him then to his bunk, for he could not walk, and called for Brother Dumas.

  He was muttering nonsense, I remember. His skin, burning hot. Brother Dumas feared that the ague would take him, as it had taken so many of the newly devoted.

  I had seen these deaths. Heard them. Loud, mad passings, as I lay in my bunk, when I turned eight years old, faking my own recovery.

  So, I attended St. John, held his hand, when time and opportunity permitted, remaining by his bedside.

  And he did not die.

  The ague passed, and the bleeding stopped, at least for a time.

  But the boy that was left was a cruel one. Particularly with me . . . perhaps because I saw him weakened, as no one else had.

  And he hated me all the more for it.

  Nothing to do about that, I figured long ago. And the sting of his rebuke has long since faded.

  I almost don’t see Ex-Oh Goines step down into the mess—dour with the slight constant wink in his left eye, and the thick collar of tumular swelling about his neck. “Brother Lazlo,” he says sharply. “A word.”

  Lazlo blinks. He looks at me as he slowly stands.

  * * *

  “He’s part of the raiding party?” I ask Ephraim, unbelieving. “Lazlo?”

  The older Chorister is shocked as well. “That’s what I just heard Brother Augustine say when they were making preparations.”

  I was curious as to why Lazlo had not returned to attend his afternoon duties.

  “Why him, do you think?” I ask.

  No Chorister this young has ever been sent Topside.

  “Surely, there must be some mistake.”

  “Something to do with his knowledge of the electrics. Circuits and the like,” Ephraim whispers. “Remember, Brother Calvert trained him up on fixing such things.”

  “Why not send Brother Ernesto?” I ask.

  Ephraim only shrugs, disheartened as myself. “Come, we have to prepare.”

  To raid a Topsider ship, the Leviathan dives and then comes up from beneath the enemy on blown tanks, cutting engines so that it rises silently from the depths.

  Leighton, Callum, Augustine, Silas—the strongest and youngest of the brothers—and now Lazlo, and Ex-Oh Goines himself, all comprise the raiding party. They have changed from their robes into trousers and tunics and hoods, all dyed a squid-ink black. Once the bulbs affixed to the bulkhead above the main hatchways begin flashing, they make their way forward, ready to exit up through the forward trunk hatch, at the top of the balneary, as soon as we’ve surfaced. They’re armed with the few remaining firearms the boat can claim but mostly with knives—rust-spotted machetes and lengths of chain and jars filled with used oil with rags stuck into them. Grapples and hooks and coils of rope. Lazlo is given no weapon at all. His garb hangs about his lean body like loose skin.

  I fight the urge to step forward, to speak to him as he passes. To send God with him. But now is a time for silence. Each in the line receive the cross in oil upon their foreheads, are given communion. Lazlo’s face is wan, flat as he receives Caplain Marston’s anointment.

  Silas’s face is tight and troubled as I’ve ever seen, and he has been on several boarding parties in the past.

  It puts a sourness in my tummy.

  When at last we are surfaced and the trunk hatch opened, I watch as they disappear in a line up the ladder.

  When the hatch is closed, we each attend our stations, ready to dive, ready to respond, waiting in the dimness. In the control room, Caplain Marston keeps an eye on the sur
face through the periscope, while Brother Marcus monitors the radar, and Brother Philip scans the sonar, with its radial arm raking the round, green screen, ready to ping any new enemy contact.

  Myself, I straddle the hatch to the chapel, ready to check the bilge pumps in both compartments should we take on water.

  We wait in what should be silent prayer, in meditation. But my mind swims in other, deeper, darker pools.

  Lazlo. He is not short, not weak, but younger by far, and nowhere near so strong and able as the rest of the brothers in the party.

  I once asked Brother Silas what it was like up there, on the surface.

  Many of us had already posed this question—to him, because we knew him to be the most likely of any of the older brothers to answer—but he only answered when it was just he and myself, on kitchen duty.

  “Topsiders, though—the marked—they deceptive, like. Trick you into feeling guilt for them. But you cannot have guilt for them if you wish to survive—they vicious. More vicious now than when I come aboard. I was your age, about. The war had happened, yeah. I lived on an island. A small set of islands called the Maldives.

  “The poison. You hear about the poison, from the great war, you know. How it kills. Slow, like. But wan’t poison got my people. Our island kept being raided by pirates—strangers from somewhere else. Evil Topsiders you hear about now. Accents I couldn’t understand. Nothing we could do to stop them after a time. Did not know God then, as I do now. That’s why I spared, yeah. They keep coming back, pirates. Finally, they took me one night. My family. Won’t tell you what all they do to them, what they going to do to me, yeah. But then their boat was raided by the caplain, an’ he showed no mercy. Took me aboard, though. Showed me God, yeah. Truth.”

  “What about the sun?” I asked him.

  He squinted. “Don’t remember much of that—only the elders can see the sun. But the moon, yes. Seen that. Plenty of that, on raids. Bright and round and blue-white. And the air. Rushes past your skin. Gives you chills,” he said, hacking off the head of a skipjack in one heavy swing of a cleaver.

  “What was your name?” I asked him. “Before you took the vow of the order?”

  After all he had just confessed, this request gave him pause.

  “I gave that name up.”

  “It’s just . . . I don’t remember mine,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, swiping a large knife across the skin of the skipjack, scales flying every which way.

  “I only remember an image. An image on a banner, I guess.”

  And I told him of the emblem that for some reason has remained rooted in my mind. Of the palm tree and the sea and the blue sky.

  “Silas is a better name than my real one,” he says. “Silas was a prophet. And you . . . you are named after a saint.”

  “Yes, St. Remy.”

  “Short for Remigius,” he said.

  “An ugly name,” I told him. “In Latin, means oarsman.”

  “Ah, perhaps someday you shall row us to some safe shore, yes?”

  “But what safe shore is available to us?” I asked him.

  His smile faded.

  Lazlo remembers his name. He was older than me, even though he was rescued from Topside shortly after I was.

  Alden.

  Alden Tomas.

  He had two names. And he came from somewhere green, he remembered. And he had a mother who sang to him when it rained.

  I think I must have come from an island too.

  Though I remember so little.

  Nothing but an image of a tree, and a sea, and a yellow-orange beach.

  * * *

  A wrenching sound brings me to. Metal on metal screech. A shudder. We’ve struck something. At the very least, we’ve sideswiped another vessel.

  The klaxon blares shrilly, but we’re given no order to abandon our current posts.

  Another shudder, shouting from the deck above.

  And then commotion forward, from the balneary. The raiding party has returned.

  I abandon my post momentarily—just long enough to peek in through the hatchway.

  The trunk hatch is opened, dripping water, and a prisoner, hands bound behind his back, a sack over his head, struggles, grunts as he is being dropped down through the narrow opening. Brothers Callum and Leighton struggle to contain his flailing legs. Once inside, the figure is led roughly aft by the two of them. I jump out of the way to let them pass. He is wearing a white uniform, this interloper from Topside, the short sleeve of his arm decorated with a colorful array of patches and symbols.

  He wails, shrieks as he struggles against the men holding him. But no words. His mouth must be bound shut beneath the hood.

  Never in my memory have we brought an adult prisoner on board. A Topsider.

  Behind him, Brothers Ernesto and Augustine step down, and then I see Lazlo’s short form among them. Alive. All of them are sweating—Ernesto’s face bloodied. They fling several duffels full of goods to the deck. Supplies from the Topside ship. Coils of new, unfrayed rope. Jugs of water. A square package labeled INFLATABLE RAFT. Now they struggle to leverage in a heavier, more awkward package. Long, rigid.

  When they release it, the sack crashes to the deck with a heavy thump, like it is filled with meat.

  I look to the hatch opening, expecting Brother Silas to climb down at any moment, but Augustine is already closing up behind him, turning the hatch wheel.

  “Sealed. Ready for dive!” Brother Callum cries out into the squawk box mounted on the bulkhead.

  “What about Silas?” I say to Lazlo, whose chest is heaving from effort. “We can’t leave without him.”

  And, yet, the dive bells are already ringing. I feel the hum of the Leviathan’s turbine in my toes. And Lazlo will not meet my gaze.

  “Everyone to their stations,” Brother Augustine says, wiping the sweat and blood and water spray from his forehead, rushing past me.

  Lazlo follows, but I hook on to his arm, staying him, making him look at me.

  Eyes wide, he glances toward the largest sack resting on the deck.

  3

  THE DEAD NORMALLY COME to the balneary, the forwardmost compartment, for burial, carried on gurneys. If the body arrives already sewn up in a hammock, then they have come from aft, from engineering.

  The Forgotten.

  Young, limp bodies.

  You can feel their bones through the canvas. Better when we cannot guess, when they could be anyone, or no one. We wear gloves when we handle these remains, for the poison which killed them—the reactor—can also poison you if you’re in contact with it too long. That’s what Brother Silas used to say. He would sometimes come to help us if the body was especially big and needed to be folded in order to be expelled through the torpedo tube.

  Now it’s Silas we must relinquish to the deep.

  His round face somehow still wearing the faintest smile, even in the rictus of death.

  Unlike the Forgotten, he is given a proper benediction. The elders, a few of the Brothers that knew him better, and the Choristers have crammed themselves inside the balneary, circling his big, stout body as much as the space will permit.

  We Choristers—we slightly more holy, slightly more damned, are made to bathe the dried blood from Silas’s wounds—three perfectly round holes clustered left of his sternum. Bullet holes.

  Upon Silas’s anointed body, Caplain Marston reads the rites as we draw the stitch through his nose. A sailor’s custom of old. Make sure you’re dead.

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.”

  After, when the elders and the caplain have taken their leave, we must dispose of the remains. They must be folded in order to fit inside the tube.

  “Go on, Caleb,” I say. He is already standing at a distance, just before the hatchway. He is too weak to be much use, anyway.

  St. John is also of little help when it comes to folding, though he is the second oldest. In the end, he always turns away, and so it is Ephraim, Lazlo, and myself, accompanied by
brothers Callum and Augustine, left to complete the task. They help us to turn Silas on his side, and lay the planks atop him, and then wrap chains about the planks and the torso, and then work the pulleys, closing the cinch tight until the clavicle cracks.

  Next are the hips.

  This is not him, I tell myself.

  But, if our souls aren’t freed from the sea until the day of resurrection, then isn’t it? Are we not all trapped in our flesh until that day?

  “Who killed him?” Ephraim asks Brother Callum when the deed is done and Silas’s earthly remains ejected with pneumatic hiss and swish into the dark.

  A question I have already asked Lazlo numerous times today. A question he would not answer.

  In fact, he would not divulge anything about the raid at all. He is discreet when it comes to Ephraim and St. John and Caleb, but never with me.

  “Topsiders,” the older brother who wears a patch across his left eye says, with the hint of the same accent you sometimes hear in Ephraim’s voice. “Wretched bastards,” he mutters, wiping his good eye. “Got ’em. Praise be,” he says. “Got ’em, yeah.”

  “They got us, though,” Brother Augustine says, round, red-faced, and portly, but perhaps the strongest of anyone on the Leviathan, especially now that Silas is gone. He wipes sweat and what must be dried blood from his roughly shaved pate with a grease rag that he then tosses to the deck. “And to make it worse, their helmsman steered right into the ship, tried to ram us.”

  “That’s what that sound was,” Ephraim says.

  “We didn’t take on water,” I say.

  “No, but the dive plane is jarred good. Got to help fix that now,” Brother Augustine says, eyes red with salt. Exhaustion.

  “Who is the interloper?” St. John asks, rather boldly, especially for him, who rarely suggests the slightest hint of impertinence, particularly in front of the older brothers. Augustine stops and shares a look with Callum, with Lazlo, who has remained silent all the while. The question all of us have been wondering. All of us gathered, curious as to why a grown man has been brought on board. A Topsider.

  This, Brother Augustine is reluctant to answer. I offer a molar and two incisors from my stash, but he only waves his hand, not one to be easily tempted. “Someone Caplain says we needed. Said they was essential.”