by Rhys Hughes
“He still wants to build a raft,” confided Henrietta.
“Out of bodies?” gasped Pedro.
“Why not?” blurted Jason. “It’s our only hope!”
“All of us?” asked Elena.
“I like the concept,” said Carlos.
“Won’t it feel like an orgy?” wondered Isabel.
“This is scarcely a time for prudishness! You must understand that we’re in a terrible situation,” said Jason.
“So that’s your solution!” smirked Sergio.
“Only firm leadership can possibly save us now. I was the captain of the boat when it was intact, so it’s obvious I’m the best qualified to take charge again. Will you obey my orders?”
“Why should we listen to anything you say?” hissed Henrietta. “After all, you were the one stupid enough to buy a useless yacht. How can we elect as captain a man who does that?”
“It was a bargain,” cried Jason, “and with so many people hidden inside, I’m surprised it floated at all!”
“Why did it break so rapidly?” asked Isabel.
“Rotten timbers,” said Carlos.
“It has always seemed weird to me,” mused Luana, “that sailors stand on wooden boats but never take into account the feelings of the trees that were killed to make the planks.”
“That’s not weird,” objected Fábio.
“The opposite is unthinkable!” laughed Pedro. “Would you prefer trees to stand on boats made out of people?”
“Bones are strong enough to suit admirably as a construction material, as a matter of fact,” said Roberto.
“What a grotesque idea!” chided Elena.
“Please stop squabbling!” shouted Jason. “This banter won’t help us! Will you accept me as your captain?”
“Depends on where you will take us.”
“To São Tomé. Where else? I want to have severe words with the rascal who sold me that floating coffin, that deathtrap! The island is the only solid ground remotely attainable.”
“Can we paddle so far? With bare hands!”
Jason licked his lips. “I’m certain Henrietta will be willing to donate her satin dress for use as a sail. And if we ruin it on the way, she’ll be free to buy a replacement in the market.”
“I didn’t buy it there,” repeated Henrietta.
“So where did you buy it?”
“Nowhere. I didn’t buy it at all,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what the words say. I didn’t purchase the dress in the market. I bought a loom instead. The dress was made during the voyage. That’s why you didn’t see me wear it before we set off. I was astonished when the loom produced such a fine garment.”
“You actually wove the dress yourself?”
“Of course not! I don’t know how to make satin clothes. I’m aware of the theory behind the process, for instance that it’s a warp dominated weaving technique and that when the warp yarn lies on top of the weft yarn, with as many missed interlacings as possible, the fabric looks much glossier. But now I’m just repeating what I was told. I didn’t operate the loom. I left all that to the funny little puppets.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Jason quietly.
“Dolls really, not puppets. The man who sold me the loom included them for free. Wooden men just a few inches high. As soon as we left São Tomé they started weaving my dress.”
Jason rubbed his face, the salt stinging his eyes. A sensation of immense weight filled him. He cast his mind back to Amelia again, her father, and he understood how that incident had occurred simply to give him a respect for magic. A demoralising revelation.
He reviewed the facts. They were awful.
The Portuguese who discovered the island had filled it with slaves from the mainland. They had imported men, women and children from all along the east coast of the mighty African continent to work and suffer in the vast plantations. Within a century São Tomé was producing more cocoa than any other colony in the world. But the slaves didn’t allow their own traditions to die out. They had brought magic from Ngoyo, from Loango, from Kakongo and especially from Dahomey. There were fetish dolls in abundance hidden in the forest, in caves, in markets…
Henrietta had stumbled on the mysteries.
She had bought one of them.
“Are you quite positive that a set of small wooden dolls made the satin dress for you?” whispered Jason.
Henrietta nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“Living voodoo dolls?”
“They moved and seemed intelligent. I guess that means they were alive. What’s the definition of alive? I don’t know. If it means moving, breathing, devouring, then fire is alive…”
“Fire isn’t alive,” he croaked.
“Well, maybe the dolls weren’t alive either.”
“But they moved? They communicated with you? They did whatever you asked them to? Served you?”
“I believe her,” said Carlos.
“Me too. I’ve seen things like that.”
“Why don’t we dive down and look for them? Maybe we can get them to weave a brand new boat for us.”
“A satin ship? Brilliant idea! So sleek!”
“Will it sail more smoothly than a normal boat?”
“Who can swim the deepest?”
“You are all mad,” said Jason. “I’m no longer sure I want to be captain of a company of doomed lunatics!”
“What’s the alternative?” snorted Henrietta.
Her necklace shone abnormally bright, catching the low implacable sun. In a sudden confusion Jason imagined the pearls were tiny buoyancy tanks and he plunged forward to snatch them. His fingers jerked between her neck and the loop, his hand pulled back and the cord snapped. The individual pearls returned to the deeps. The woman who had worn them was now the irritant around which he would build his own pearl until he was safe from her and valuable in his own right.
“What the hell did you do that for? You badly scratched my throat, you savage buffoon! Are you nuts?”
He fell back, sweating, frowning at her question. And he recalled that he didn’t care for nuts, other than almonds, which don’t split easily. Then a rich ferocity enveloped him again.
“It’s your dress I want. Your dress!”
He began pulling it over her head, forcing himself on her, wrenching the glossy garment free, then attacking her underclothes, tearing them to shreds. His lips fixed on her neck, on her breasts, and his hands roamed all over her body. At first she resisted fiercely, then his wild spirit infected her and she responded and pulled off his shorts. This madness spread like a fever to all floating bodies. Men and women assaulted each other, half playful and half furious, and conjoined couples continually meshed with other pairs, forming larger units that finally came together into one organism, a writhing mass of naked forms, a frantic melodrama mimicking the origin of multicellular life, an orgiastic travesty of evolution.
Jason shouted above the moaning, “We’ve done it! We have made a new boat out of our bodies! We’re all joined together without ropes, nails or glue! Simple lust showed us the way.”
He laughed ecstatically. His laughter was contagious.
The others all laughed with him.
Then he suddenly stopped.
His face twisted into a mask of anticipated disgust.
“What’s wrong?” cried Henrietta.
“Something new has just broken the surface,” he said.
“Where? I can’t see it!”
“All the way over there. Where we originally sank.”
“Who’s inside? Can you tell?”
“Nobody. It’s too small to serve as a hiding place.”
“Is it drifting away from us?”
“No, it’s coming closer. Rapidly. It’s a loom.”
“Mine!” squeaked Henrietta.
“Little wooden men are balanced on it. They are paddling towards us. I assume they are your friends?”
“I never said they were my friends, Jason. In fact
they were insolent and sarcastic. Fast workers, though.”
Jason licked his lips. “Not your friends?”
“No, I’m afraid not. No.”
“But you said they obeyed your orders!”
“No I didn’t. They made my dress because it gave them pleasure. I never had any real control over them.”
He touched the stubble above his upper lip, brought his fingers back, saw how they glistened but not with brine. He licked them once, grimaced at the taste. “My nose has started dripping again. Do you know what that means? The old curse has vanished!”
“Why would it do such a thing?”
“To make room for a new one,” trembled Jason.
“They have arrived now.”
“What are they doing? What do they intend?”
“They are boarding us…”
The sensation of tiny wooden feet on bare skin is uniquely horrible but in a slightly different context it could be pleasant, soothing, therapeutic. For Jason the sense of violation was the most unbearable part. He felt the victim of an act of occult piracy. Not that he was required to do anything other than remain still. Twitches and other small movements were permitted, but sharp wooden fingers would jab if the bodies tried to disengage, or varnished fangs might nip at exposed flesh.
“Ouch, the little devil pinched me!”
“Don’t struggle then!”
“But I don’t want to be sailed on!”
“It doesn’t really hurt.”
“I feel just like a toy, a plaything.”
“You selfish brute, Jason! It’s for our own good, to maintain the integrity of our formation. It was your idea to improvise a vessel, remember! Now it’s being done our on behalf.”
“A raft is what I wanted to build. Not another yacht!”
“You ungrateful egotist!”
“I’m a man, a free man, not a spare part!”
“Be silent! You have the easy job. Be glad you’re not the rudder. Sergio back there can hardly breathe.”
“I know that. I’m sorry but…”
He fell silent. Apologies were useless.
Where were they headed? South! Surely they wouldn’t be forced to push through the pack ice on the fringes of the frozen southern continent? No, that couldn’t be what the busy little dolls had in mind. There was nothing at that latitude for them. They must have another destination in mind. Maybe they would divert the vessel before Africa ran out, perhaps land on the Skeleton Coast, where so many vessels had come to grief before them. Jason sighed. He would be a skeleton himself by the time they arrived on that dismal fog shrouded shore. As would all his fellows. A beached boat of bleached bones, like an extinct communal monster.
Too many bodies and too many failed dreams.
The sun was setting now.
In the blood of sunset, the ship of fools sailed on. South, always south. A flesh boat crewed by wooden men, the exact opposite of what is expected on the high seas. A voodoo reversal.
The sail was hoisted up the improvised mast.
Pedro was the mast, the tallest amongst them, and the marvellous satin dress was the sail. It billowed dramatically. The sun finished setting and on the opposite horizon the moon rose.
Henrietta turned her head to look at her dress.
Then she hummed dreamily.
The other men and women were mostly silent, conserving their strength, groaning only as frequently as the planks of a true galleon, but Jason roared and ranted, giving orders that were ignored. Maybe he still regarded himself as the rightful captain of the vessel.
And perhaps the little wooden sailors were tolerant of his delusion, even amused by it. Possibly they weren’t really malevolent. After all, they hadn’t thrown anyone over the side yet…
Jason realised how paradoxical that thought was.
For he was the ship, as were his colleagues, every single one of them. A ship can’t be thrown overboard!
But he had to do something. A cool head was required, the ability to exert calm authority. He inhaled deeply.
“Turn this vessel around! Take it north again. North I say! Or if not north then east or even west. Any direction but south! There’s nothing south of São Tomé, no inhabitable land at all!”
His voice was rich, resonant, persuasive.
But he had no real power now.
He was just a figurehead.
Pyramid and Thisbe
Thisbe was an anti-vampire who looked and acted like a normal vampire, but her wings carried a positive charge. The undead are mostly negative in outlook and aura, so physical contact between Thisbe and a cousin would result in annihilation for both. Thus was she doubly cursed, forced to shun the company of other bloodsuckers as well as humans. A smoking crater does not make a fitting memorial for her kind of beauty. She was lonely and dreadful and lithe.
I watched over her, having caught her one hilarious night in a net. She rested in a cage that swung from a hook in the attic. She did not require much feeding. Contrary to popular belief, these creatures have modest habits. Blood is essential, yes; but they supplement their diet with conventional food. Thisbe had developed a taste for chocolates. I brought her the richest examples, in a coffin-shaped box, and the strawberry creams made her laugh.
The attic was not a real attic, but my house was not a real house. A shimmering pyramid, it rose out of the crimson desert. Tall dunes and ignorance protected it from prying eyes. There were no windows and only one door. Thisbe’s room was at the apex of the structure. I chose the chamber at the base. Mine was larger, and stuffed with forbidden books, but hers was more pleasant. Two ventilation shafts connected our rooms. Along these conduits we communicated our dreams.
One evening, studying a papyrus of spells, I came across a curious footnote. The text was concerned with how to master the elements. There were spells to flood rivers, raise tempests and ignite volcanoes. Under a passage on electrical storms there was a description of Thisbe. “You are a daednu,” I called up, placing my mouth to one of the shafts. “You do the usual vampiric things, but won’t be put off by stakes or garlic. It’s shoelaces and chillies you must avoid.” The next time we met, she knelt and traced the delicate bones of my foot with her icy lips. “You prefer nipping heels to necks,” I added.
Our mutual affection soon putrefied into lust. I was studying stars outside when she crept up and placed a hand between my legs. I lost no time tearing off her clothes, leaving untouched only her high boots and veil. The finer details, as meteors licked the sky, can be imagined. I shall content myself with offering a handful of key words: tongue, ache, blossom, sticky, decay.
The region was prone to earthquakes. As we thrust into each other, a tremor assisted our coitus. So violent was my climax, I was sure my soul had followed my seed into her sweet tomb. But I felt alive, pierced by a fang dipped not in poison but some stimulating drug. We laughed at the constellations and I pointed out Algol, most baleful of suns, as many light-years distant as the number of ways to torment an astrologer. We raided my store for wine and relished the antique stuff in the gloom of the internal passages, bloated on peculiar feelings like drunken worms in a rotten cheese.
This was perhaps the happiest period of my existence. For centuries I knew no company save that of the occasional nomad. I maintained my links with the outside world through these billowing folk, purchasing my modern lifestyle from them with silver measured from my sarcophagus. They came at irregular intervals, camels laden with tinned vegetables, fuel for my generator, newspapers and cutlery. We discussed the weather and politics. But Thisbe was a dearer friend, sharing my pleasures, alternately inspiring and terrifying me.
“Where are you from, Thisbe?” I asked, and she cried, “Old Vienna, wet and vain, where dark families eat sausage with their blood. The city has changed, the people no longer care. I was born in a cellar near the river. I heard the suicides knocking against my walls at night. Father was a respectable vampire, he worked in the graveyard. Always brought home some giblets for the ch
ildren.”
I was uncomfortable with her nostalgia, it cloyed like burnt honey. “How did you lose your innocence?” I demanded, and she said, “One night, as a treat, he took me to the big Ferris wheel. Up alone I went, higher than his gaze. At the top I was struck by lightning. When I came down, I had changed. My father would not touch me. My polarity had reversed, he said. So I was exiled. I grew up wandering the world. When I flew into your net you took me in.”
I was cheered by her gratitude. She asked about my own life and I shrugged my shoulders. There was little to tell. I was a minor Pharaoh, I was embalmed alive. My priests were too impatient. I still do not know whether to be grateful or angry. Becoming immortal was sore. Since that ancient time, my nomads had kept me up to date with trends. Three weeks before Thisbe moved in, they delivered a washing machine. But my coffers were almost empty, the silver nearly exhausted.
The following month, standing in front of the huge brass mirror in my room, I prodded my stomach with worried fingers. There was a bulge. It had been hiding from my consciousness for some time, but now it was too large to ignore. I called for Thisbe and she placed her ear to my abdomen. Her eyes widened and she exposed her teeth. “Congratulations are in order. You’re pregnant.”
“Nonsense!” I was stunned.
“Why? Because you are a man? Yet that is not strictly true. You are so withered the distinction is meaningless. What did you expect when you ruptured my hymen and filled me with powdery seed? That I would brush off the experience as casually as dandruff? That I would suffer alone? But I’m a daednu, so these things work backwards. Our child grows inside you. There will be at least one.”
“I have no placenta,” I responded miserably. “My organs were taken out and placed in canopic jars. The child will have to be aborted. How will my waters break? I am completely desiccated.”
Touching my stomach, Thisbe smiled languidly. “But vampires do not give birth to live young. They lay eggs, spherical and black as cracked leather. You will have to cut them out, sit on them in the cool dark. I will help you. When they hatch, they will follow you around. You’ll be their mother. You will suckle them on shadows and teach them to ferment the blood of jackals.”
