Horror crept across Dow’s skin. No, that couldn’t be.
‘Stop it,’ said Boiler flatly. ‘Whatever else the boy deserves, he does not deserve this. He has no control over the storm.’
‘Deserves, Boiler? You’re one to speak about what the boy deserves. Who brought him here in the first place? As for the storm, I say this to you; control it he may not – nevertheless, it is his storm.’
Dow wrenched his arm free of the old woman’s grip. His storm? It was obscene to suggest such a thing.
‘Old woman . . .’ Boiler rumbled in warning.
Mother Gale ignored him. ‘Go to your homes, people of Stromner. Flee! Save what you can. For this storm will blow for many days, and the waters of the Claw will rise and rise as the south wind piles the ocean inwards. There will be flooding here far worse than any we have ever seen.’
‘Old woman!’ Boiler repeated.
But Mother Gale had one last pronouncement to make. She rounded on Dow and pointed a finger. ‘Heed me, Dow Amber. There can be no home for you here in Stromner, no matter how this ends. The ocean is your true home, and you are called to it now, by your heritage, and by your heart, and by the webs that others have woven, all unwitting, about you. Though you may dread it, when the maelstrom rises, I foretell, you will go to it willingly.’
‘Enough!’ Boiler roared.
But it was already too much for Dow. He rose, revulsion filling him like panic. He could not stay in the bar a moment longer, he had to get away from the horrid old woman, and worse, from all the frightened, staring faces. Boiler had emerged from behind the counter, a calming hand raised, but Dow shoved past him. He paused in the vestibule only to pull on his boots and his jacket, then pushed blindly out into the storm.
Mad – he thought as the wind whipped at him and rain drenched him once more – they were all mad. Tempests did not rise in response to drops of blood in the water, there was no evil fate written in a gale. This storm was a chance event of the weather, no more. As for what the old woman had said about himself and the whirlpool, it was preposterous, unthinkable . . .
Nevertheless, he steered a path for the beach, then stood at the end of the pier and gazed out through the rain. The Claw was black in the night and there was no telling its state; but from beneath his feet he could hear the waves as they slapped at the underside of the boards – boards that were normally three feet clear of the water, even at high tide. That much was real then.
The rising of the Claw had begun.
Dow returned to his room in Nathaniel’s hut. He dressed in dry clothes and huddled under a blanket, but nothing seemed to warm him. Through the thin walls he could hear Nathaniel moaning, and occasionally the mutter of the nurses – Ingrid at first, and later her daughter – but mostly there was just the shudder and thrum of the wind and rain. He slept, then at dawn rose and went back to the pier. Its boards were now awash under a foot of water. The swollen bay beyond was murky and foam-wracked, its waves bobbing with flotsam; tree trunks and other refuse from the flooded shorelines.
On Stromner’s own beach the water had reached the base of the dunes. Men were labouring there already in the grey light, dragging the fishing boats to higher ground. Others were launching their boats – hurriedly packed with their belongings and their families – and setting off under shortened sail into the churning bay, making for Stone Port, or even for Lonsmouth.
Dow felt the chill in him deepen further. Mother Gale had told them to flee, and so they were, abandoning their village and their friends, afraid of the flooding to come, and of even worse things – perhaps afraid even of Dow himself, for none of the men would speak to him, or meet his gaze.
He returned to the shack. All throughout that long day he sat with Nathaniel, ignoring Inga’s frowns. The old man did not improve. The stench of infection grew, no matter what was done to clean his wounds, and the fever would not break. Outside, the south gale howled on, driving the ocean ceaselessly through the Rip, and periodically Dow went back to the beach to look. By midday the pier was more than two feet under, and by the evening it was difficult to even locate the pier, so completely had the rising waters swallowed it.
At nightfall – the third evening of the storm – Dow went again to the inn. It had taken hunger to overcome his unwillingness to repeat the encounter of the night before, but he needn’t have worried. Between those who had fled Stromner, and those who were watching over their homes as the waters rose, the bar was almost empty. Nor did Mother Gale accost him again, she only sat silent in her corner, grinning blindly at no one when she lifted her head to drink.
Dow ate alone at his table. What little news he could overhear from the half dozen drinkers present was bad. Tales had come in from all around the bay of flooded beaches and lost homes. Already the Claw was as high as it had been in the storm ten years previous. And yet the current gale showed no sign of abating. What – asked the drinkers anxiously – if it blew for another day? Or another two? How high would the waters rise, and what would happen when they were set free?
Dow, listening on, suddenly felt their eyes upon his back, and heard the echo of Mother Gale’s foretelling. When the maelstrom rises, you will go to it willingly. He finished his meal and left.
By the following dawn the water was creeping through the dunes to inundate low-lying sections of the village. The rain had in fact eased a little, but the clouds still pressed darkly overhead, and the south gale blew without let. More folk departed throughout the day, so that Dow wondered if there would be anyone left at all in Stromner, come the storm’s end. Those remaining strove to protect their shacks with sandbags, but the water rose remorselessly. By the fall of the fourth night of the storm, almost a dozen homes were flooded. A day later, as the rain held off but the gale blew on, fully half the houses of the village were drowned; the only consolation, as far as Dow was concerned, was that Nathaniel’s shack was not among them.
On the fifth evening the gale gathered itself anew and the rain came lashing down once more. At the inn, Dow could see that despair had possessed the few villagers who had not fled. The storm now surpassed all previous experience. There were reports of flooding even in the major towns of Stone Port and Lonsmouth. The Claw, some said, had risen by twenty feet. It defied comprehension that mere wind could hold back such a weight. Even Boiler was sunk in apprehensive gloom and only Mother Gale displayed any life, rocking on her bench and listening, rapt, it seemed, to the storm.
When Dow rose to leave, the tension proved too much for one drinker hunched by the fire – it was the fisherman, Morris. ‘Do something,’ he hissed at Dow, his gaze maddened. ‘Do something before it’s the end for us all.’ But then the man only turned away, sick faced, as Boiler glared at him in anger, and Mother Gale chuckled dementedly. Dow fled once more, splashing back through the floodwaters, past all the empty homes. The wind shrieked and wailed, louder than ever, and he could feel it beating at his sanity.
Nor was there was any relief to be found in Nathaniel’s shack, there was only Nathaniel himself. His groans were a torment to the ear, and the stink of his gangrene was nauseating. Dow sat up all night at the old man’s side, but it was a vigil without hope, for Nathaniel had not eaten in days now, nor taken any water, nor woken from his fever. His breath came in tortured rattles, and his back was blackened with putrefied flesh. Ingrid and Inga nursed him as attentively as ever, but there was no longer any pretence. The old man was dying.
And it was Dow who had killed him.
So dawned the sixth day of the storm. Dow, despite the shame and grief that filled him, had dozed finally as he sat at the bedside. Now he found himself shaken awake by Inga, her face taut with her dislike of him.
‘Hurry,’ she said, ‘go and fetch my mother. She will be needed here soon. Nathaniel’s time is upon him.’
Dow stared. The old man’s fever, with all its shuddering and trembling, seemed to have broken at last, but not as a sign of recovery, rather as a sign of the end, his body exhausted even bey
ond sickness. Inga had unbound his feet and hands, for he could do no harm to himself now, and he’d rolled to one side, curled up small as a child, his breathing undetectable. Only his eyes showed that he yet lived. They were wide dark pools, turned to the ceiling, as if Nathaniel, in his final moments, searched for some message in the shrieking of the wind outside.
‘Go,’ Inga ordered. ‘And do not come back. This is not your home. You are no family or friend of his, and have no place at his passing.’
Dow went, heartsick, making his way through the rain and the half-light of dawn to the inn, where he hammered on the door until Ingrid came, still in her nightclothes, and he could deliver his grim news. Then, in surrender it felt to him, he turned his back on Stromner – deserted now, beaten down and flooded deep – and set his feet on the path that led south over the dunes.
He was going to the ocean. For had not another of Mother Gale’s pronouncements proved itself to be true? Inga had cast him out from Nathaniel’s house, and he had no home now in Stromner, no place he could go, no fire to sit by, no family to comfort him, no last refuge. So he would go to the sea.
Across the dunes he climbed, and now at last, on the southern side of the peninsula, he was exposed to the full fury of the storm. Wind ripped at his hair, rain lashed his skin and plastered his clothes, but his resolve did not falter. He pushed on, a mile and more over the sand, until finally the sea stretched before him.
It was a murderous prospect, unrecognisable from the visit Dow had made during the summer. The long white beach had vanished, drowned by the storm-driven swells. Surf beat directly upon exposed bedrock, and a dirty wrack and spindrift, whipped from the wave-tops, coated the coastline in an ugly yellowish foam. The waves themselves were flattened and broken by the gale, and a muddy backwash extended far out from the shore. Beyond that was the heaving green mass of the open ocean, but through the spray and rain there was no horizon for Dow’s eye to seek, and no escape.
So what was he doing here? Why had he come? To commune with this monstrous thing that was the storm? To command it to stop? Or to give himself to it? To throw himself into the ocean and be done? All of it seemed possible, there in that moment. And none of it. Dow did not know what he wanted. His future looked as dark to him as the tumbling southern sky.
Except, it wasn’t so dark there now.
And the rain had stopped . . .
Dow’s senses, battered into numbness, came slowly alert again. Something was new. He studied the tumult – the wind, the spray, the clouds, the sea. And the conviction grew in him. A change was coming.
There!
Sunlight blazed far out upon the ocean, a bright shaft falling between banks of cloud to illuminate a great patch of water, silver and blue. The vision lasted only an instant before it was swallowed up again, but even when it was gone the gloom of the morning seemed to have dissipated. A spatter of rain fell across the shore, and the wind rose with it, whistling over the rocks, but then just as quickly the rain ceased, and the wind faded away.
Dow stood stiff. It was here. The turn in the weather. After six days, the southern gale had done its utmost; it could maintain its hold no longer. Another gust rose and fell, but it was even weaker than the last.
Dread clutched at Dow’s heart. The wind was dying, and now – now the vast waters trapped in the Claw would be free to flow. Now the mighty currents would meet, clashing in the Rip. Now the great whirlpool would rise. And it had been foretold that he would go to it – willingly.
Dow shook his head. No. He would not do so, not ever, no matter what fate or Mother Gale decreed.
And yet he must not miss the chance to behold it, either. He must climb to the heights of East Head, quickly, so that he might have a view of the Rip, just as Boiler and the other men had done ten years before.
Dow whirled away from the sea and hastened back across the dunes. How much time did he have? How long would it be before the maelstrom roared into existence? It wouldn’t happen instantly, of that he was sure; it would take some while for the floodwaters to marshal their immense weight.
Nevertheless he hurried on, sweating as he ran, for the air felt stuffy and warm in the absence of the southerly gale. But in fact the wind had not failed completely. Weak gusts rose intermittently even now, blowing first from one quarter and then from another, as if the storm had life in it yet, only no certainty as to its purpose. Dow studied the broken clouds as he went, sensing some clash in the upper atmosphere, but not knowing what it might mean for good or ill.
At last he broached a final rise and saw Stromner spread out below him, flooded and wretched, not a person in sight. Off to the left of the village ran a path that climbed away to the brooding flank of East Head. That was where he must go. But as he angled down the slope to join the path, a cry came from the village, hailing him by name. He turned, and with a pang of alarm saw that it was Inga, hurrying up from near the inn, her thin face distressed.
‘He’s gone,’ she gasped as she reached him. ‘Nathaniel. My mother and I left him a moment to heat some water, and when we came back he’d vanished, raised up from his sick bed. I would not have thought it possible.’
‘Gone?’ Dow demanded. ‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know. My mother is searching for him now, down along beach. I’ve come to fetch my father to help.’
‘The beach—?’
And suddenly Dow saw it all in a terrible flash; the old man, unwatched in his bed, his restraints removed, staring up as the southern gale faltered; then a light of insane resolve awakening in those dark, dying eyes; and then the old man rising up corpse-like, determined even beyond his own approaching death to grab this chance. For hadn’t Nathaniel been waiting, these ten years, for just such a moment as this? Hadn’t he been longing all that time for the whirlpool to return?
Yes. Dow knew it as certainty. There was only one place Nathaniel could’ve gone – to the boats. He meant to set sail for the Rip, and to descend into the maelstrom in search of his lost son and grandson.
Dow took Inga by the shoulders. ‘Listen! I’m going to the boats. Tell your father to follow me. Nathaniel will be there.’
He sprang away at a run, passing down through the village and splashing through floodwaters along his way. Already those waters were receding – Dow could see it on the walls of the submerged houses, where the muddy stain of the high floodmark was now several inches above the waterline. The draining of the Claw had begun. Only by inches so far perhaps, but when multiplied across the wide surface of the bay, those inches represented a staggering flow, all of it rushing through the Rip. And there was vastly more yet to come.
Twenty feet of it.
He came to the beach. The wind gusted sharply in his face, blowing from the north now, and Dow shielded his eyes to stare up and down the drowned shoreline, searching for Nathaniel. There was no sign of him, or of Ingrid. Dow looked to the boats. The were few enough of them left after so many had sailed away, but those remaining were drawn up high and safe. The Maelstrom was sitting untouched in its place. So had the old man not come here after all?
Then at last Dow saw him. Not on the beach, but already far out upon the bay. Nathaniel had ignored the fishing boats and taken a skiff – just as Dow had done, only six nights earlier; and indeed, just as the old man himself had done, ten years before, when setting out upon his doomed attempt at rescue.
Despairing, Dow stared after the distant craft. The tiny figure within was toiling with febrile intensity at the oars. From where had the old man summoned this last strength? Dow could not imagine. But Nathaniel was level now with the inner headland, and near to entering the channel. Even from afar Dow could discern the awful power of the flood that raged there, surging southwards. He was too late. Nathaniel would be swept to destruction.
But then Dow felt the wind lift again from the north. It blew stronger now, and sustained, as if the storm, having debated with itself, had finally settled upon a new course, the opposite of the old. A sudden hope revive
d in Dow, and quickly he gauged the sea and the sky. It could be done! If he took the Maelstrom, with the wind behind him, he could catch the old man.
He ran and set his shoulder to the fishing boat, and in his fervour slid it unaided across the sand. It slipped into the water and canted back against the shallows, caught there by the wind. He went to leap in.
‘Dow!’ came a hoarse shout. ‘Wait!’ It was Boiler, lumbering down to the shore. ‘What in the name of idiocy do you think you’re doing?’
Dow pointed to the skiff. ‘I’m going after him!’
‘Why?’ Boiler came splashing into the shallows, panting furiously. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’
Dow stared. Couldn’t Boiler see? ‘He goes to seek the maelstrom. He’ll be killed if he isn’t stopped.’
‘Then let him be killed!’
Dow reared back dumbly. Let him?
‘Let him,’ Boiler repeated, as the wind gusted strong again. ‘It’s what he’s wanted all these long years. To join his son and grandson. And if my daughter speaks truly, he’s dying anyway. Why risk your life, going after one who is tired of his own?’
Risk his life? Until that moment, Dow had not even considered it – he’d thought only of catching Nathaniel before disaster struck. But now he gazed out to the waters of the channel, and beheld again the great flood rushing south towards the Rip. And the full weight of his actions finally hit him. He had been about to launch forth into the realm of the maelstrom, just as Mother Gale had predicted he would.
Boiler, seeing Dow’s hesitation, heaved a sigh of relief. He took hold of the boat and began to pull it back onto the sand. ‘It’s the right choice, lad, to let him go. You’ll see. Strange to say, it may be the most fitting end that poor Nathaniel could hope for. At least it might bring him peace.’
But Dow only stood there, knee deep in the water, his thoughts a whirl of doubt. He studied the distant shape of Nathaniel, still labouring maniacally at the oars. A fitting end? Was it? Was it truly? It was fitting for Boiler maybe, and for the other folk of Stromner. Nathaniel and his curse had haunted them for ten long years, and if now he sacrificed himself to the maelstrom, then they would be free of their burden at last . . . but did that make it right?
The Coming of the Whirlpool Page 17
