Wyvern

by A. A. Attanasio

  "What are they?" Jaki asked, and in answer an explosion leaped across the water. The lead Dutch ship nosed up in a blossom of flying timber and smoke. Another blast followed, ripping the echo of the first in a sundering roar. The Dutch leader bucked in a tormented shudder, and flames hopped to the sails. Fire-whipped men leaped into the sea. Several more explosions boomed as the second ship in the line met the deadly floating kegs. Timbers burst apart, and the warship’s armory ignited in a billowing cloud of fire.

  "Marksmen!" Pym shouted, seeing the third ship shifting sail and turning about to flee. "And the chase!" He howled with merriment.

  Wawa hugged Jaki in terror at the thunder and the noise of the battle-orchestra on the deck below. And Jaki hugged back, alarmed by Pym's mad intensity as he leaned against the quarterdeck rail, bellowing orders. Blasts spouted water in silver columns, and the pirate ship slashed through the strait in swift pursuit of the third Dutch warship.

  "They're in a panic," Pym told Jaki. "In a moment they'll make their fatal error and turn about to stave us with broadsides. And so the hunter feels the claw!" He snapped his fingers and bit his lower lip to behold his prophecy enacted. The Dutch warship dampened sails and began to swerve. "Now you'll see the advantage of a wheel over a whipstaff. Blackheart! Hard alee!" He bowed over the voice tube and shouted to the gunnery deck, "Declaw the cowards. We're taking this prize home."

  Silenos turned to her side swiftly and cleanly while the Dutch yet strained to bring their prow about, and the pirates fired the first volley. Each of the shots found its mark, smashing into the tiered Dutch gundecks. The second volley devastated the last of the Dutch cannon facing them, kicking in the gundecks and collapsing the gunwales of the main deck. The next volley would have clipped the masts, but the Dutch struck their colors. Silenos turned on Pym's command and swung to the side of the damaged vessel, bumping her hard. Grapnel hooks clunked onto the tall Dutch ship, and the pirates scurried aboard, blades in their teeth, flintlocks tucked in their waistbands.

  The Dutch captain appeared overhead on the tall ship's quarterdeck and gazed down at Pym, gesturing frantically that he surrendered. Pym drew his flintlock and shot the man in the throat, dropping him into the water between the ships.

  Jaki grabbed Pym's arm. "You killed a man pleading mercy!"

  Pym glanced at him with annoyance. "Were they stalking us to preach gospel? I'm not a gentleman, whelp. I'm a pirate, damn it. Stand back if you won't fight." Pym grabbed a powderhorn from the gun rack and reloaded. A rope ladder uncoiled to the quarterdeck from the big ship, and Pym clambered up.

  Jaki looked to Blackheart, who had tied off the wheel, and the quartermaster raised a fist in victory. The war music brattled louder pierced by screams of slaughter; soon, only shouts of triumph came from the taken ship.

  Jaki sat on deck, Wawa pressed to his side. A cloud threw a shadow over them, and he shivered to feel his life becoming smaller.

  *

  The tide ebbed. Silenos skimmed through the shallows of delta islands off the east coast of Borneo, bumping gently against the sandbars of Maratua. Giant kapok trees above high dunes shed their powders into the low wind, and the red air of the westering sun swirled in dusty eddies. Jaki stood at the forecastle rail, sensing the deepening silence. The crash of the anchor stilled the birdsong in the swamp grove, and the gulls wheeling above the ship lifted higher. He smelled no camp scent on the breeze and perceived no sign of people on the mud flats.

  In the day since Silenos had sunk the two Dutch warships and taken the third in tow, Jaki had tried to overcome his revulsion at the pirates' ruthless violence. The jungle is no different from the sea in its crux of talons and fangs, he told himself. The tribes with their headhunters and war parties differed only in scale, and now that they had acquired muskets and cannon, soon they too would do more killing, and most of it from afar. Life bred malice among her abundance.

  The pirates were life's creatures, and Jaki had resolved to learn from them. The captain and his mate looked as northern and avian as his fathers had been. Staring into the gritty light of the falling sun, he searched for signs of other people, ghosts, and the future.

  Pym climbed to the foredeck and appraised the white aborigine and his gibbon. The youth stood quite still, staring and listening. What did he perceive? What could he forecast from tree dust? The gibbon ignored him, too. It sat on the rail peeling bright red spines from a rambutan fruit and nibbling at the pulp.

  The captain strode across the deck with loud claps of his brown seaboots. "We leave when the tide turns again," he said gustily, expansive with well-being. "At the odd-even hour in the midst of the night, we'll leave Maratua quiet as we came." He swung his gaze over the sour swamp of the coast. "We're alone here. The wilderness and her children."

  Jaki nodded, his attention sliding on rivulets of fog pure as milk slipping through the culverts among the mangrove tussocks. Absently, he took another rambutan from the pouch hung from his hip and handed it to Wawa without diverting his gaze from the mist folding over the sills of the trees. He searched for Mala or Jabalwan. He knew he was departing the jungle for the sea, his mother's world for his father's, perhaps forever.

  "You can go back now if you want," Pym said, exhilarated by his own good intentions. After eleven years of barbed pain, his body existed as a cloud again and his mind its hushed exhalation. Prepared to make even exchange, one release for another, he added, "You can have our best tender. Steer her west and the current will carry you home. Leave now and you'll sight Borneo by tomorrow nightfall."

  Jaki tilted his face to look at Pym, and the red rays made the boy’s eyes flash like smashed tourmalines. "I have no home."

  "The jungle," Pym said, pointing toward the shrugging trees. "The story you've told me of your teacher and the Rain Wanderers says your home is there."

  Jaki shook his head and looked again to where day spun its last threads in the forest. "That is just a story." Tall darkness stood up slowly in the grass. "It is done with me."

  Pym grunted, considering this, then abruptly slapped Jaki's back. Wawa hissed, and the pirate edged a half step back. "Let a new story begin here then. Why do you think we've landed, boy?"

  Jaki turned full about. The raised scar on Pym's brow flared crimson in the long light, and his ravaged face shone like a lantern. "You came ashore for water, food."

  "At night? Washed in with the tide? Any armed ship that comes over the horizon now and finds us beached can batter Silenos to tinder while we weep in the jungle." He hooked his thumbs in his doublet and shook his head in amazement. "You know nothing of the sea, child. Indeed, you belong in the jungle."

  Jaki cocked his head. "I healed you."

  "Aye," Pym said, with a satisfied squint, "and that's why we're here now. The highest honor I can grant you is to jeopardize my ship and crew to return you to your home."

  "I've told you. I have no home. You know my story."

  "Aye. Your blood's a mere quarter aborigine. You speak passable Spanish. You read Bible Latin. And you know your way in there." He nodded to the forest, where the sun had melted among the trees. "Out here, life is different. You cannot wander alone on the sea. This crew and I are brethren deeper than blood. We are a clan of exiles, brothers in suffering. We thrive because at sea we are sworn to die together."

  "You are a tribe of the sea. I understand that," Jaki, vibrant with alertness, read the captain’s face. "I want to go with you."

  Pym arched an eyebrow, impressed by the boy's zeal. "You've proved your usefulness by me, sorcerer. I know Silenos would benefit to have you aboard. Are you certain you belong here?" He jerked a thumb at the captured Dutch vessel anchored farther out. "You saw our business yesterday. We roam the seas and plunder ships — Spanish, Portuguese, English. Your daddy's ships, too. It doesn't matter whose ships. If they fly the flags of empire, they're prey. We kill those who fight us and maroon those who yield. Usually. If we fail, we die, for crowns show no mercy to pirates."

  "And no me
rcy to tribes," Jaki said. "I have seen entire tribes dying in the shadow of empire. The best I can do for them is fight the hawk-faced men with you."

  "Bravely put, sorcerer." Pym stepped closer. "But first — if you are certain you belong with us — you must become one of us and take the oath before Wyvern."

  "Initiation."

  "Aye, that's it." His eye blinked warily. "Will you do it?"

  "I have been to the center of the world," Jaki answered in a tone of candor that chilled Pym's blood. "I have met this creature you call Wyvern. She is a frightful mother, Captain Pym."

  "Mother of nightmare," Pym agreed, waiting for the youth's meaning.

  "The most terrible nightmare of all," the sorcerer said. "Life."

  Pym barked, and Wawa jumped. "Life! Mother of rats, wolves, and pirates! You lived under her skirts in the jungle. Out here on her heaving bosom, she is no kinder. Be sure. Wyvern is our mother as no country, church, or monarch could ever be, for we are life's bastards, we are, orphaned by the God that made us. Will you swear by that?" The captain clasped Jaki's shoulder with a hand big as a bucket. "Will you swear before Wyvern to be one of us?"

  "I will swear — but not for plunder. I am a sorcerer. My avarice is not for gold, Captain." Darkness clasped the soul-catcher's face in iron. "I want your magic."

  "Magic!" Pym hurled a joyful laugh. " How will you find magic among pirates, man-child?"

  "You will teach me," Jaki said earnestly. "You will teach me what you know about the stars and their directions. Teach me about the sea and her paths. There is magic."

  Pym clapped the boy's shoulder so hard that Jaki staggered. "You amaze me, lad. A mereling of sixteen and already you know true wealth. I will give you magic. If you've wit for it, as I think you do, I'll make you a master navigator whose map shall be the sky." His good eye wrinkled smaller. "Now will you swear?"

  Jaki allowed a slim smile that in the darkening air could have been the beginning of a snarl. "Take me to Wyvern."

  *

  In two tenders fitted with torches, the crew of Silenos rowed to Maratua. The tenders bogged to a stop on the black mud shoals, and the men waded ashore, sinking to their knees in silt. They carried drums, their furled flag, and kegs of wine, which they arranged on a dune trammeled with sea grape. The tightly rolled banner they placed between two gnarled trees and then began tossing uncorked kegs among themselves, streaming long ribbons of wine. They drank and jigged scraps of tribal dances and battle mimes. Within the cupola of torchlight, each remembered his own suffering that had brought him remorselessly to Wyvern.

  Pym placed Jaki under the dune's vine-woven scarp, and then he and Blackheart stood at either side of their rolled pirate flag. They raised their hands simultaneously, as if in a dream, and waved for Jaki to approach. Wawa cringed as Jaki advanced. He ordered the beast to wait for him in the jungle, and it swiftly bounded away. The wild dancers whirled about him, and flying kegs shuttled before and behind him, looping wine in the air.

  "Behold the sign of our suffering!" Pym shouted, and Blackheart unfurled the banner and tied off its lower corners, stretching the fearsome image into the swirling torchlight. The pirates stopped their dancing at once and glided into two files before Pym and Blackheart, caps and hats doffed.

  Jaki glanced to either side, and none of the enthralled men looked at him. Their attention fixed on the gloomy ensign. Jaki faced it and recognized the scowl of the nighthawk that defied the sun. The eagle's frown and its clawed wings vibrated in the torchglow, and twin serpent legs twisted with the fire's writhings. The monster's vivid eyes hooked Jaki's soul from a black distance, and he stepped toward it with weightless, otherworldly precision.

  Knives flashed in the hands of the pirates, and they pointed the blades at Jaki with trembling fervor. He winced, and crouched in sudden fear.

  "These are the knives that will own you if you betray us!" Pym bellowed in Spanish, his one eye bulging red. "No wound or scar marks this initiation, Jaki Gefjon. The pain that has led you to us is the only brand of our brotherhood. We are the world's exiles. We belong to no one but ourselves. And we have given ourselves to Wyvern."

  At the sound of that name, the knives returned to their sheaths, and the men faced forward again.

  "You will speak one word," Pym continued, softer, huge hands clasped before him. "You will say it in Malay so the crew will understand. Look on the sign of our exile." He raised a fist to the creature. "Is this the very shape of your suffering? Is this the design of all your loss? Do you swear by what has cast you off that you will die before you yield to our enemies? Do you forswear all other allegiances to every tribe, crown, or kingdom? Do you swear to take all empires as your enemy?" Pym's eye surveyed the group, seeking the affirmative look of every man in the crew and finally locked on Jaki. "Speak loudly the one word that will make you a pirate."

  Jaki raised his arms. He had arrived at the immense instant of beginning, the reckless surge into a new life. And destiny faced him in the screaming visage of Wyvern. With its flame-locked eyes, this guardian of unbeing who had owned him from the womb concluded all of Matu’s striving. In that incandescent moment, he became Jaki Gefjon. A shout jumped from him, a cry in Malay that threw the pirates back into their drunken frenzy and blessed the pirate that life had made him: "Yes!"

  *

  Silenos towed the Dutch warship north to Panay, where Pym had his haven. Jaki returned to his apprenticeship in the rigging and devoted himself with the vigilance of a sorcerer to the ship's routines — holystoning decks, mending canvas, braiding hemp. Pym, good to his word, continued teaching Jaki the rudiments of navigation. The pirates treated his silver gibbon as a favored pet, and Wawa adjusted to this new and smaller world in the vastness of wind and rolling emptiness.

  Pym, sucking on a lime, pointed through the glare of morning. "There" — he gestured loftily — "is Iduna." The jungle island loomed ahead, a netherworld of misty cliffs and strangled green valleys. Silenos sailed through the afternoon, up a broad, deep river to a cove hacked from the verdant chaos. Seven big ships sat moored, and a swarm of small boats skittered out on the river to greet them. "Here we are no longer pirates but men. Here I am Trevor Pym, legate of Iduna. Here we can talk of soul, my young soul-catcher. And here you can berate me for my evil ways."

  "Captain," Jaki said, holding the pirate's gaze, "you are no more evil than the panther that takes its prey."

  "Ah, spoken like a poet." Pym put his hands on Jaki's shoulders. "Perdita is going to like you."

  The magnitude of truth in that prophecy eluded Pym. As she walked toward the wharves to greet her husband and first laid eyes on the tall, hawk-faced youth, her knees trembled, and her maids rushed to support her. Thinking she had been weakened by the sight of him, Pym bounded from the longboat onto the wharf and swept her into his powerful arms. She locked her gaze onto his familiar face, afraid to look again at the virile youth who accompanied him.

  "Oh, Perdita, my love," he murmured, hefting her against his chest. "You wet the salt in my bones. Don't faint away on me now. I've prizes to astound you. A Dutch warship to be refitted for your argosy — a hold jammed with treasures from the Japans — and here —" He motioned for Jaki to disembark. "A blue-eyed sorcerer from the jungles of Borneo. An authentic sorcerer, too, who knows more about healing than any leech in Europe. My wound is not a hole of pain anymore, Perdita. He cured me of my suffering. And I'm looking upon you now for the first time unstricken by the wound that won you."

  Jaki approached on airy feet, flushed and astonished by Perdita's beauty. A copper-haired woman, she looked slender as a first-week moon. Her complexion shone with light from the end of day, smoky with clove dust. And when she looked at him, her eyes, the amber bright of tree resin, emptied him of days, and he was a child again with Mala.

  "His name is Jaki Gefjon," Pym said, lowering her to her feet. "And, my Perdita, he speaks Spanish. Show her I'm not a liar, Jaki."

  "My lady," Jaki mouthed with a numb tongue, "I am
blessed to meet you."

  "And I, you," she answered, offering her hand timorously, as if to a fire.

  Jaki looked to Pym, and the pirate nodded gruffly. "Go ahead and act the gentleman, jungle boy."

  Jaki took her hand, and her living cold thrilled him.

  "Welcome to Iduna," she said. Her hand glowed with his heat. She had never imagined that men could carry feral beauty as this youth did, sun-laved, strapped with long muscles, noble-boned, and with gentle eyes the color of tears. "We must honor you for delivering my husband from the claws of pain."

  "You may release her hand now," Pym said.

  Jaki let go, and the cool of her touch stayed in his fingers.

  The realm of Iduna comprised a great estate carved out of the jungle. Egrets, peacocks, herons, and parakeets decorated expansive blue swards within the jungle walls. Oleander and white frangipani trellised winding walkways of pastel flagstones that connected gazebos of caged parrots and monkeys. The main house combined architectural styles, flamboyantly fitting together the fluted pilasters of a Greek temple, rose windows of a Gothic cathedral, and mosaic tiles and daedal tapestries of a mosque.

  Here Pym worshiped life, and the goddess of the living was Perdita herself. She dressed in colorful silk sarongs and walked barefoot through the marbled chambers. Her body glinted with firepoints of gems. The rarest perfumes lifted from her hair and skin. And always from her delicate lobes dangled gold ball earrings impressed with Pym's initials.

  Dwarfs, African eunuchs, and sloe-eyed servant women attended Perdita, Pym, and their guests in large rooms hung with gently smoking censers and elaborate paper and ivory lanterns. All the treasures of Pym's twenty-five years under Wyvern gracefully appointed the great house, and an imperial aura pervaded the estate.

  Over elaborate meals at which all the pirates partook, Jaki learned that Iduna encompassed a kingdom, with its own flag and fleet. Beneath its banner of two interlinked bezants on a blue field, one gold, the other silver — representing the sun and the moon, pirate captain and his bride — Pym maintained a fleet of warships free from the harassment of the rival European powers in Asia. Since no pirate hunters who met him before the banner of Wyvern had survived to identify him, he freely visited all the major ports in Asia as a respected trader when he flew the Iduna flag.