It does not take long for land to recede, and an endless hypnotic lapping is introduced to us. Benjamin has taken his role seriously, as the “Captain” of sorts, even in his ragged state. His men are mainly Frenchmen, but there are colored men as well, which I assume have been recruited from the many places his father has trekked throughout his life. They answer to Benjamin dutifully, listening with quiet respect and an iron regard for their work in managing the ship’s mechanisms.
When we had arrived in Marseille everything had already been prepared. The men were at the ready, giant crates of items prepped for trade, vats of wine, dried meats and spices, kegs of ale and fresh water, sacks of other imperishable foods, all prepared for us. It is shocking to me still, and I fear a flash of confusion when I think about why his father is going to such great lengths to assist us. But what can I do? This is what we have, the path is set.
Our cargo was put below deck, aside from our personal belongings, which were deposited safely in our cabin above. The men stay in a bundling of hammocks and crudely built bunks with the rest of the goods.
The first night we departed, heads foggy from weariness and having a strong desire for the comfort of a bed, we laid out the small chart that his father had given us and Benjamin set course for the island.
I’ve lain in my bed, conflicted in everything. Losing Claire, gaining Benjamin…I am like a juggler in a theatre. All of my life is one giant juggling act, rising and falling, being caught then released. Will I fall? What threads will not be bound? Inside of me aches with anguish for Claire, and not knowing leaves its mark upon me in the furrows of my solemn brow. Alphonse have better kept her safe.
It is far more rustic than I’d presumed, living on the ship. Benjamin and I are cozily kept in our cabin together, with heavy blankets and savory moments alone. There is a small cloudy mirror to see my reflection and the basic chamber pot and basin for hand washing. Waxy candlesticks give light. Despite the grievances and filial problems, I do not avoid the intense demand my body has for his. The floodgates have been opened.
The night is the finest time to watch the ocean pass us by. We slow our course and hoist the sails as the peaceful slate of water crushes against the obscurity of the sky, sending shivers through my insides. It is a masterful depiction of what I long for. The formless, shapeless, emirate of willpower. It tantalizes me, and I lean over the front of the ship so that my feet lift and my skirts rustle around my ankles. I hold tight to the wood rail and let my hair fall forward to whack around my face and chest, battering me as I let myself dangle.
Benjamin pushes and then pulls me when he finds me like this, wrapping his arms tight around me as he pretends I was going to fall. I can feel the aching grin spread on my face, and I lurch back against him, sighing because it is all a profound delicacy.
“You could fall,” he states, his words prickling my ear.
We are alone, with ocean lulling us and the rest of the crew asleep. The decks are ours at midnight.
“I won’t.” I laugh. “Don’t look so concerned.”
“You don’t want me to rescue you from yourself?” he utters, words jovial.
“You have already saved me. From the life I was destined to have.” I turn around and reach out my hand, fingers trickling across his jaw.
“Ah, but this.” He motions his arms about, “This is the life you were always destined to have. Be it with me or not, you would have discovered a way to pry yourself out of your mother’s jaws. Whether it was this ship or a ballet theater. You would have found something alternative for your life.”
“And what is this life?” I muse.
He grins bright, eyes sparkling and shrugs. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
I make a soft noise of acquiescence.
“Lie down,” he says.
“What?”
“Lie down. I want to take you here. So that all of the moon and stars can see us.”
We make love on the deck that night. Many nights, we’ve spend the hours exploring one another’s bodies, tumbling and sweating for more. It is sweet and chaotic all at once, a glorious plunge into the secret world of marriage. We are a scramble of pieces, of odds and ends that somehow fit perfectly in all our mental candor, together as snug as the smooth edges of a puzzle.
The days bleed on slowly and ooze past in a haze. We follow the route that Monsieur Alexandre had given us, and it takes roughly eight weeks for us to each our destination.
I know that I look different, my hair a constant disorder around my head, hardly kept back in the typical ornamented fashion of a Fontange. I’ve taken to knotting it messily. I wear a deep maroon traveling gown with a simple bodice and skirt. My skin, I’ve noticed, has lost its pallor from shading beneath ceilings after being introduced to the light so many heavily hot days. My cheeks, arms, and chest are feeling a constant burn that eventually turns brown. I look primitive, exotic even.
Benjamin is in his element. He rises each morning with the sun to man the huge wheel diligently and work amongst the crew. He has spent his whole life as a worker, not a captain, so he feels hard giving orders as is necessary, and by the time the slim outline of land comes to view we are forever changed.
“Giselle!” Benjamin calls me from where I’ve been organizing the cabin. One of my daily duties.
“Is that a ship?” I ask him as we scurry out to the main deck, seeing a large Brigantine with its anchor submerged near the Island we approach.
“There’s already someone there,” Benjamin tells me. “We don’t know who.”
I study his face. He is grim and looks off towards the unknown entity weighted and docked near what looks like cinder colored land. A beach, as Benjamin has called it. We had spoken of what the dangers were at sea. Privateers of neighboring countries without decency or diplomacy. Many have taken the route as pirates, doing as they please.
“What will we do?” I inquire, neck tense.
“We’ll sail round and see if we can catch sight of their flags. If they’re enemy, we’ll keep going. We can’t take the risk.”
We settle within range so that Benjamin can use his bronze spyglass to see what we are up against. He looks through the glass with unwavering bleakness. After a moment, his lips part.
“I’ll be damned,” his voice is dark.
“Captain?” one of the men questions.
“It’s,” he lowers the spyglass slowly, brows furrowed low over pinched eyes, “my father.”
Noises of recognition are emitted, and I wince in confusion. Why and how are only two of the questions festering on my tongue.
“We head for shore,” Benjamin instructs, and the men set about their directions, yelling and calling out the order to the rest of the men, moving like one defined beast in their contrivances.
Benjamin pulls me aside by the elbow. “We’re lucky it is not worse.”
He chuckles dryly, and I tilt my head. “Yet, you look worried.”
“I am hesitant,” he admits. “He may have changed his mind about helping us. Talked to your father and took gold in exchange for our whereabouts.”
I can’t speak for disappointment, and I slump against the rail, the clarity of the bright Atlantic sun piercing down on us. Benjamin goes to aid the men and I look on, subject to my own thoughts and web of unease.
We hunker down into a smaller rowboat and a few of the men attend to us as they heave through the blue, oars slapping the water. We drift ever nearer, and I see the flags of Monsieur Alexandre Chardones’s ship flapping like bird’s wings, the French official flag and that of his own business.
The bottomless ocean grows a floor, and we glide over clear shallows with beautiful bits of rock that Benjamin called coral. The men throw out their stake and rope, riled with the zeal for land to be under their boots. I see a putter of smoke rising from a small campsite that Monsieur Alexandre has set up, canvas tents pitched nearby on the gilded sands. I watch little fish swim in their gaggles as we greet the land. It is a happy place of sun
light and sand.
Great trees with fan-like leaves billow up the hills, and everything is verdant and bright with green; the air is humid, and the wind is like the hot breath of a giant.
Benjamin helps me out of the small boat and the slapping waves hit my hem and ankles as I trudge up the sands.
“Hello!” Monsieur Alexandre’s hands are slung on his belt, and he wears the full ensemble of a Captain over many sailors, a large brimmed hat with ostrich feather, dark coat and trousers with worn boots pulled up over his calves. Rapier at his side. His hair looks greasy, and his eyes seem brighter than they did in France, where he’d seemed clouded by a gray depression.
“You managed the voyage well, I see.” He walks towards us, perusing my overall appearance. “This new look is becoming, Mam’selle.”
“Father.” Benjamin stands at my side. “Why are you here?”
Sailors, burley and loyal to the death, stand behind their captain with folded arms. Their stature is unsettling as they stare at us as if we are opposition, not favorable guests. I feel a burst of anxiety, a trepidation pinching my skin now. The atmosphere is tense. It shouldn’t be this way.
“The age-old vendetta calls me here, a type of crusade, as it stands,” he growls, his hands stuck at his waist as he assesses us with wild amusement.
“That is?” Benjamin counters.
“Take them,” Alexandre’s voice is grisly, a hair above a whisper, and his smile is lost to a poignant severity.
The men surround us in a swarm. They grab my arms and twist them behind me. I protest, feeling the physical pressure of being muscled about. Benjamin calls for me, but it is a frenzied mess of people, and we are parted. I see his sabre flashing and one of his father’s men tumbles to the sand with a spray of blood, but he is easily disarmed by the many men. I watch Benjamin struggling and straining as curses at the men.
“Benjamin!” I shriek.
“You bastard!” Benjamin roars. “What is this?”
We are offered no reaction, no words to couple with his actions. Only the brutal handling and the tying of our hands. The ropes blister my skin. I stop fighting, knowing that I will not be able to free myself no matter how much I writhe against them. Benjamin continues to thrash and swear as they drag him.
Alexandre pompously leads the procession, giving a hooded flick of his eyes then saunters ahead, boots leaving imprints in the shifting sands beneath us.
“Unhand us!” Benjamin fumes. “Father!”
His voice echoes through the jungle.
Are they taking us to my father? Has he changed his opinion and now working with my mother? Worries surge through me, a fiery liquid loosed in my veins, and my heart storms in my chest. I conjure the most horrifying of possibilities.
We struggle through the jungle, and it is sweltering. I have never felt such a heat before. My thighs are slick with moisture and my hairline is wet. It seems that we are walking for miles. After a time, Benjamin walks without prompting. They’ve taken his sabre away, and he looks as if he will kill someone with his bare hands. Finally, we reach a hillside with long sweet grasses that slopes down to reveal a gash in the earth. It is an opening: a cave.
He leads us down into the gaping hole in the earth, down makeshift stone steps mottled by moss. I see a bulbous spider perched in its web, watching us pass below. I shiver with horror, my entire body shaking like a fish out of water, twitching for lack of air.
Nothing, not the worst of my wildest fears could have prepared me for what we see. We stop at the center of an open space with flat rock for ground. The men light their torches and, in the corner, I see her. A demon to my mind. She is hunched, a skeleton, sitting in a crouched position. The being is mere bones. The aura around it a pale blue, almost as if the bones of its makeup glow with the inherent spectral color. Little bits of flesh cling to the bones, a decaying corpse. The stench is overwhelming, and when its knobby neck bone rotates so that its skull looks toward us, I scream.
My scream echoes through the caves like a violent, soul shattering stab. I cannot shut my mouth. Cold sweat and sickness engulf me as I watch the abomination jerkily uncurl from its crouching position, standing like a bent-backed old crone. There are stars before my eyes, and my stomach purges itself, the vomit splattering along the cave wall.
The air is thick with an electric sensation. Benjamin utters a string of obscenities.
“Alexandre…” The voice, distinctly female, thrums from its hollow throat is guttural and archaic like she’s eaten a meal of sand and rock.
The eyes remain intact, yellowed. The vessels bulge as if bearing a day more of life might exacerbate them. She staggers in jutting little steps to Alexandre, a flap of shriveled gray skin resting on her cheekbone.
“Sidra…” Alexandre’s voice is grave as he ponders her.
“I had no knowledge of when you would come to me,” she wheezes. “I feared you had forgotten me.”
Alexandre stumbles forth, a mere boy as he falls to his knees before her.
“Never,” he whispers desperately. “Never.”
She remains standing, staring at him for a moment, her skull cocking to the side, waiting for something.
“Marc,” Alexandre calls back to one of his men, almost drunkenly as he flails his arm about.
His man steps out of the collective to stand dutifully by his side, “Captain?”
Alexandre wrenches his arm back and catches the man by the throat, and without hesitation thrusts him forth into the waiting arms of the bone creature. I can vaguely make out the impression of open mouthed glee.
“No!” I shriek.
Her bony arms and legs wrap around him, and they go brawling on the floor. The man yells for help but no one moves. He screams as she leeches onto him. His form withers into dust as she sucks his essence, the dust of him, up through her open teeth. The man’s body is gone and she drinks the last of the dust from the ground like an emaciated dog with its food.
That is when we realize that her body and bones are changing. A buildup of muscle begins then organs reproduce, becoming slick with moisture. Flesh layers over it. Skin plasters over the bones on her head, developing a mask of human face. Her epidermis forms, white like snow, and from her head sprouts tendrils that snake down to her waist, long and black. Her eyes whiten, and the irises become a common brown. Her lips, supple and fit with a neat angular upper lip, become an oval port for the last of the dust to be sucked in.
The bone-woman is gone, replaced by a woman of flesh and bones. She could be one of us, from somewhere I could have been. She has large eyes and narrow lips. She is on all fours, naked, and she arches her back with pleasure as she finishes transforming. Standing lazily, she retrieves a garment from the shadowy stones behind her. She ties it and then raises her arms, breathing in a human breath.
I look to Alexandre, and I am wrought with horror as he has transformed as well, into a younger, fitter looking version of himself in the wake of the woman’s regeneration.
“I am myself, at long last!” her voice has changed. It is melodious and tinged with youth.
Alexandre storms forth and embraces her, grinding his mouth against hers in a sloppy exchange.
I finally gain the courage to move my head and look at Benjamin, who gapes in staggering repulsion. Of all the unnatural, unholy things, this is by far the most unimaginable.
The men observe naturally, as if they’d seen it all before. They must have known that Alexandre would sacrifice one of them.
“I apologize for the lengthy time away, Madame,” Alexandre speaks guiltily. “But I think you will be pleased with what I have brought you.”
“This is she?” the woman, Sidra, glides past him straight for me, eying me as if I am a prize that she has longed for in a great charge of time. I watch her, my limbs groaning as I shake in fear. I turn cold all over, numbed by the way she looks at me.
“Indeed. The very one,” Alexandre boasts.
“Ah…” She sniffs, a long lingering sniff. �
��You have no idea how long I have waited for you my petulant little plum.”
“If you touch her!” Benjamin thrashes against the men holding him again, wrath slashing his face. The men work to contain him.
Sidra twists her face to look at him, and with the same little steps, comes to stand before him, her hands clasped at her front. She draws in his image with ardor.
“He is beautiful,” she speaks sleekly. “So unique. This is your son?”
She peers harmlessly back towards Alexandre, and he nods.
“Is he for me also?” she asks.
Alexandre breaths out chokingly. “No, Sidra,” he says quickly. “No, please. He is my son. You would not take him from me?”
She rolls the words around in her head and accepts the terms unwillingly. “I will not take him.”
“I am grateful.” Alexandre’s face flourishes as if he has been petted.
“Was she in France as predicted?” she asks him innocently.
“She’s lost her heritage,” he tells her methodically, drawing a crisp scroll from his pockets. “But the resemblance is uncanny. Your friend is able trace her soul to where she is quite well. In every life he has found her. Luckily, she was not able to die or flee before I could bring her to you.”
He holds the scroll out before her face in line with where I stand. She glances from the scroll to my face and a slow curl widens her mouth.
“There is no doubt that it is she,” she says. “I thank you.”
Their remarks are uncommonly odd. Whatever the scroll bears it must link back to me. I shake as if my body is spasming.
“Now we can be together. The sacrifice will be made, and I will enter my final transformation. We will suffer no longer,” she speaks intimately close with him.
Alexandre is lit with delight and excitedly leaps back towards me and hauls me out before her. My hands are tied at my back, and I wince, looking to the ground, not wanting to look at the Monster’s eyes. I shudder against the carnal savagery of it all.
The Blood of Caged Birds (Mortalsong Book 1) Page 17
