February 17
Something will have to be done about Lemuel Beesley. Tall, muscular, balding, with a pocked complexion and waxed mustachios, the man is as determined to adhere to me as Talisa does to Lidenbrock. I could not have been out of his sight for five minutes when he found me taking refuge on the quarterdeck.
“Sir, I realize you have been charged by our superior to keep an eye on me. But we are miles out to sea. The scenery here is monotonous enough; must it include your face everywhere I look?”
“But the sight of you is all that makes these endless miles of sea bearable, Miss Sharp,” he rejoined with a smile, twisting by turn each tip of his mustache as though snuffing a wick between thumb and forefinger.
“I assure you, you will be as sick of me as I am you once we are shut inside by the frozen climes and no longer have the use of the deck.”
“You haven’t realized, then.”
“Realized what?”
“We’re no longer sailing for the South Pole. We haven’t been for days.”
I was taken aback by this revelation. “Well, where then?”
“I am not a prophet, Miss Sharp. As of the moment, we are veering in a Southeastern direction, but as for tomorrow? I suspect we will not know our destination until young Lidenbrock tells us we have arrived. Though, perhaps a face prettier than mine might persuade him otherwise. Until then, I shall trace our course so that you and I might find our way back, should we part ways with the good Professor.”
“I suggest, then, that you spend less time following me, and more tossing bread crumbs on the water in our ship’s wake. Good day, sir.”
Remarkably, he did not follow, nor have I seen him since. He is giving me space so that I might have latitude to approach Lidenbrock and gain with feminine wiles that knowledge which cannot be discerned from the stars.
I must thus circumnavigate Talisa.
February 18
At last I have had the long desired interview with the good Professor Lidenbrock.
Wagering that Talisa would surely not accompany him to the ship’s water closet, I caught him as he exited, pretending I was about to enter.
“Oh, Professor, I am mortified that you have found me dealing with nature’s... necessary business,” I said demurely.
Although visibly chagrined, he strove to be chivalrous. “Miss Sharp, do not be embarrassed. Our quarters are close after all.”
As he started to pass, I took his elbow and gently drew him back. “Pardon me, Professor, but I need to speak to you alone. And you and Miss Talisa are usually all but joined at the hip.”
“I... I...,” he stuttered.
“I do not mean to exacerbate your humiliation, Professor. But it is clear to me that she is a harsh mistress. Let us cast aside all social niceties, and tell me frankly all your woes.”
He immediately drew away. “I must say that if you believe Miss Talisa to be a source of woe to me, you are quite mistaken. I owe all to her.”
“Certainly not ‘all.’ ”
“She did not grant me my genius, no, but she gave me focus. ’twas she who introduced me to the notion of a Hollow Earth, the theories of Symme. More than once, when I have been wearied by this endeavor, she has taken my head in her lap and sung of the heart of the Earth as though she has been there already, assuring me that where one would expect, at best, to find all opaque, one discovers a most brilliant, most pellucid world.”
Initially, I was taken back at the revelation of this touch of tenderness. But, of course, I understood very well the technique of “punish then stroke.” And so I responded thus to his rhapsodizing:
“And you believe her fancies?”
Lidenbrock blinked rapidly, as though incredulous that I could not. “You would have to hear her, I suppose...”
“And is it to Miss Talisa’s singing that we owe our change of course?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know well what I mean: we are no longer headed for the South Pole. And if we are following only your siren’s voice, then I feel I justly fear this vessel’s fate!”
“But how did you know? The captain and crew have been paid well for their silence...”
“Come, Professor Lidenbrock! To achieve your goal, you have sought sponsorship from certain powerful personages. Did you really think they would be so trusting that they would have let you out to sea without a system of checks in place? Now, explain yourself, or I assure you, this vessel will be turned back to England so quickly your head will reel!”
“Miss Sharp, please. It is not mere fancy that guides us. Miss Talisa and I discovered a journal with a map in the Royal Society’s secret archives. That map charts our destination.”
“Produce it, then. I want to see it. Now.”
“First, I must confer with Miss Talisa–”
“And then you will confer with myself and Mr. Beesley tout d’suite! We will meet in the mess hall in one hour. You have this one opportunity to make your case, so bring more than Talisa and her repertoire of sea shanties!”
Our interview had taken a turn I did not foresee: I ended up being most stringent with him, but if it means having all his cards face up on the table, then so be it.
February 18, later
I have spent the balance of the day with Beesley, Lidenbrock, Talisa and Captain Marsh in closed quarters. Talisa stood against the far wall, apart from the rest of us. Several times I found her eyes riveted upon me. Clearly, she knew I had forced Lidenbrock’s hand.
Her expression made it clear that when she retaliated, I could expect no pity. The sphinx Talisa had spoken.
“We were never journeying to the South Pole,” Lidenbrock said. “Forgive my deception, but I could not risk another learning of our true destination before we were well underway. I assure you that we have secretly stored attire appropriate to warmer climes. You see, we sail to an island described only in the journal of one Bishop Brom Cromwell, a 16th century missionary to Malaysia.
“When he heard of a forgotten civilization far west of Sumatra, he set out to preach to these souls as well. He named their island ‘Golgotha,’ because of the skull-like appearance of its most prominent mountain.
“Upon landing, he observed ‘ancient serpents that did walk upright as did Satan before the Fall, dragons filling the land, sea, and sky.’ Further, among abandoned ruins he discovered a temple built round a bottomless pit from which, he learned from the island’s human inhabitants, the isle’s creatures had issued.”
“There are people there, then?”
“It is unlikely they’ve survived. In Brom Cromwell’s day, they were already dwindling in the shadow of a great wall their ancestors built against the rising tide of claw and fang. And they were already in the decadent state of a pagan civilization, as described by the Apostle Paul, which ‘worshipped the creature more than the creator.’ ”
“But why should you regard so seriously this religious fanatic’s account of ‘dragons’?” I asked.
“Because, Miss Sharp,” he answered, “skeletal remains of ‘ancient serpents that did walk upright’ have been excavated since ancient Greece. Fatima–Miss Talisa–suggested to me that, should one dig even deeper, one might discover living specimens. And, indeed, it is from the depths of the Earth that Brom Cromwell says these beasts emerged.”
Lidenbrock paused, surveyed our small group, and then announced: “Gentlemen and Miss Sharp, I mean to find this island with its bottomless pit, and from there journey to the center of the Earth!”
(The above entries are all that remain of Becky Sharp’s account of the failed Lidenbrock expedition of 1843.)
Seething in tropical steam, rivulets running from its twin, upper apertures, like tears streaming from empty sockets, the mountain’s death’s head veiled then unveiled, veiled then unveiled its skeletal visage from within the shifting folds of an ephemeral shroud.
Is the giant skull breathing out the vapor through which we sail? Becky Sharp mused as heavy droplets materialized on t
he railing under her hands.
“Miss Sharp!”
Becky looked about for the source of the disembodied summoning. Its note was urgent. Who sought her out under cover of the fog?
“Professor Lidenbrock?” she asked, proceeding cautiously.
Then a horrific shape divided the mist and lunged toward her. Becky screamed, narrowly avoiding the slicing of the creature’s claw. It caught instead in her sleeve, rending it.
Becky turned and fled, vainly hoping the fog would be enough to shield her from her attacker. But even were she hidden to its yellow, reptilian eyes, the nostrils on either side of its saw-like beak had already taken in her scent. Now the creature spread scaly, leathery wings, lifted, and flew after her.
Becky stumbled and fell. As she attempted to rise, the gargoyle descended upon her, flattening her to the deck. Becky screamed again, covering her head with her arms as the creature’s beak just missed clipping off an ear.
And then the voice again: “Miss Sharp, I am much disappointed. I thought you to possess more grit than you are displaying.”
“Whoever you are,” Becky cried, “please! Drive this creature away!”
“But I am the creature. I, Talisa.”
Becky started, incredulous: this revelation alone was stunning, but she realized now that the voice was inside her head!
“It’s too fantastic,” she gasped out. Now she could hear the rapid patter of feet, men calling, but the fog! They were drifting into a thick patch, and it would hinder the speed with which they could come to her aid. She must purchase the necessary time.
“Talisa?! How can that be?”
“The woman you have all seen among you these past weeks was only an illusion. The Mahars–all of my kind, in the world from which I came, possess supreme powers of mesmerism.”
“Your world? You mean the world below? Then, your plan all along has been to return there. You’ve mesmerized Lidenbrock–you’ve mesmerized the entire Meonia to serve your ends!”
“Astute girl. Have you also grasped my plan for you?”
The cries and footfalls of the others seemed yet, in the fog, impossibly far away. In a small, childlike voice she asked, “Why kill me?”
“True, the pressure you exerted on Lidenbrock to tip his hand did not abort my scheme. But your will is formidable, Miss Sharp. I cannot risk your further interference.”
“I shan’t interfere! I understand now: you only wish to return home.”
The creature’s screeching laughter drilled through Becky’s head so that she winced. “No, no, Miss Sharp. It is not as simple as that. There is to be more, much more, which you would most strenuously oppose should I allow you to live!”
A talon lashed out, ripping away Becky’s frock from collar to shoulder. Becky screamed, wild and shrill, as the serrated beak began to cut painfully into her exposed flesh.
A flash suddenly lit the fog and a musket ball struck the Mahar’s arm. It shrieked, and Becky looked up to see a startled crewman, still holding his musket out and staring wildly.
Now the other men’s footsteps were closer, coming from both sides. The monster that was Talisa hissed in rage–
–then, shrieking again from the pain the effort cost her, she grabbed up Becky and leapt over the ship’s railing, vanishing immediately into the mist.
Lost in the cloud, borne along on the wings of the Mahar, Becky had no sense of up or down, a sickeningly disorienting experience. The screeching of the creature was terrible to hear, for each labored beat of her right wing exacerbated her pain.
Finally, she was forced to release her hold, and Becky was suddenly plummeting. She twisted and turned her body in the air as she slipped through a parting of the mist into the lunging, tumbling breakers beneath her. A wave immediately lifted her again, as though to toss her back into the sky –
–then thrust her ashore instead. She clawed into the sand, dragging her body forward over rough, scraping shells.
No sooner had she gained dry earth than she saw, just a pace apart, the fallen form of her captor. Becky rose cagily, looking about for a stone she could use to smash the gargoyle’s skull...
Finding none, she still crept cautiously forward until she stood over the Mahar. Suddenly, its yellow, reptilian eyes flew open and quickly filled Becky’s mind...
She fought losing control and felt Talisa’s surprise at her strength. In her head, she saw Talisa in her reptilian form, expelled to the surface world by others of her kind through a dormant volcano. Becky gleaned from her mind the surprising fact that Talisa had been a political revolutionary...
The creature tightened her psychic grasp, but not before Becky saw Talisa’s attempted return through the same opening after much time in exile, only to find the volcano alive again, rivers of incinerating lava blocking her passage...
...and then Becky’s will was gone. There followed only impressions of being shepherded by Talisa, pushing through jungle foliage filled with fluttering, feathered lizards that cawed; of large, rough fronds, licking out, catching; bramble sticking her as she tore through scrim after endless scrim of vines and branches; sweat stinging eyes that always seemed to blink too late to flick the drops from her lashes...
Becky came to on her stomach, her face pressed down into soft, rotting vegetation. Her muscles ached and her skin was scratched. She slowly peeled her face from the jungle floor, and rolled onto her back. Just inches from her, the Mahar hunched.
She felt again the hateful voice in her mind: “Up, stupid cow! How can I herd you if you do not walk?”
Becky rose to her knees, a queasy sense of violation passing over her. “You took my mind,” she said accusingly. “How dare you...?”
“Your will is not so strong, it seems, when I have no need to appear human, and can focus my mesmerism entirely upon you.”
“Why did you drop your illusion when you attacked me on the ship?” Becky asked.
“So that your death, should it be seen, would be blamed on one of the aerial beasts of the island. Then that fool shot me. The pain was so intense, I knew I could no longer manage the illusion of humanity among so many. I took you then to discourage their firing after me; I take you with me now because...”
Here, the creature’s beak parted slightly, a serrated smile, “...because I must eat, Miss Sharp.”
Becky rose shakily, knees atremble. Her eyes darted wildly about: the jungle hemmed her in from every side. She had no idea of how many days they had been traveling, whether Lidenbrock and the others were searching for her or not. And that thing... she couldn’t outrun its influence, not once it brought all its attention to bear on her again.
She faced her captor, her eyes narrowing. “I am only one,” she said coolly. “And, as you said, your wound keeps you from reassuming human form. If you abandon your designs on me, I will help you procure the others for your... appetite.”
The Mahar laughed. “My wound is almost healed. And they are to feed my sisters and myself when I return with them–those we do not need to take us back to Europe.”
Becky’s jaw went slack. “Europe? What do you want with Europe?”
“My dynasty no longer rules the world beneath, so this world shall be our domain and our feeding ground!”
Becky’s lip curled with revulsion, and, drawing back her fist, she lunged forward to strike the monster–
–and then, once again, her will was gone.
She came to, standing upright, before an enormous amphitheater in the ruins of an abandoned city. The jungle had long ago, in a fecund green tide, swept up along the buildings of hewn stone. Branches erupted from their sides; plants burst through the fissures of the flagstones upon which she stood.
A horrible screech was emanating from within the amphitheater, and with that screech Becky’s full consciousness had returned. She realized it was Talisa, and, whatever that scream meant, it had caused Talisa to lose her hold on her.
She turned and ran.
For half-a-day, she put distance between
herself and Talisa without incident. Then the jungle trees parted to create a glade. Becky was halfway across when an upright lizard, eight feet from snout to tail, propelled itself over the glade in a series of hops that ended with its hind talons atop Becky’s shoulders, bearing her to the ground.
Becky screamed as its opening jaws rained saliva upon her. Then the air cracked and cracked again. A small hail of musket balls slammed into the lizard, one plowing a trench in the earth by Becky’s head. The monster sprang back, releasing her.
“Lidenbrock! Beesley!” she cried out. “I’m here!”
“Stay down, Miss Sharp,” Beesley shouted out as flashes of smoke heralded another round of fire. Staying where she was seemed to be a good way to be shot, so bending low, she scampered toward her rescuers. While the Englishman and some sailors moved in on their saurian quarry, Lidenbrock ran to meet her.
“Are you all right, Miss Sharp?” Lidenbrock asked.
Becky grabbed at him desperately. “How long?” she sobbed. “How long since that creature flew away with me?”
“Almost a fortnight. We had given you up as lost. Thank Providence your path crossed ours.”
More musket shots. Becky looked back: the twitching giant reptile lay supine on the ground.
“This is such a miracle–to lose you both in one day and then, find you both alive and well!” Lidenbrock was beaming.
“Wait–both of us?” Becky asked, placing her hand to his upper arm.
“Miss Talisa, Miss Sharp! She vanished from the ship, carried away, she tells us, same as you. We found her about a mile or two on the other side of this glade.”
Lidenbrock winced, and looking down, saw that Becky’s nails were biting into his bicep. “Miss Sharp... my arm...”
Becky released him, turned and began striding purposely across the glade. Yes, there she was, just emerging from the trees. The infernal harpy! Whatever made her scream in that temple, it hadn’t meant the end of her. And after two weeks, she was healed enough to cast her spell on them all again.
Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre Page 11
