The Mariner

by Ade Grant

  “Yes, but not this! Not.. that!” McConnell waved a hand in the direction of Diane who was reclining in her throne and eating a mango.

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Then we stay, at least until we have a better idea of what’s going on.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe that mumbo jumbo?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.” In this the Mariner spoke with complete honesty, and once again his thoughts returned to his dream and the warning of the Wasp. “My head, as ever, is empty.”

  27

  FIDDLE-DE-DEE

  AFTER BEING SHOWN THEIR LODGINGS, each were assigned a set of chores; McConnell instructed to patrol fruit trees, a bounty demanding constant supervision to keep pilfering monkeys at bay, whilst Grace and the Mariner were put to work watering several large vegetables plots. The scale of production was impressive given the limited space and local primates.

  Before they’d settled into their daily tasks, the Mariner had returned to the Neptune with the four devils and a selection of dried meats. Grace had complained at her pets’ removal from the zoo, but the Mariner was adamant that they needed them to remain on the ship to keep it secure. This was mostly true, though his main concern was the damage they could wreak upon the zoo if left unchecked. The devils didn’t seem to mind much. Their disappointment at being separated from Grace was eclipsed by their greed, loyalty forgotten as meat was dropped before their snouts.

  “If anyone else comes aboard,” the Mariner said as they munched furiously and clamoured about the deck, “eat the bastards.”

  Returning to the zoo, he found Grace already at work, using a watering-can to sprinkle rows of cabbages.

  “Heya,” she said, turning to look at him and shielding her eyes from the sun. “Are they happy?”

  For a moment he was perplexed by the question, the notion of the animals’ happiness being alien to his way of thinking. “Oh, sure. You bet.”

  “Good. I hope we can find them a nice home here. They’d like to chase the monkeys.”

  And kill them, thought the Mariner, though he kept this charming addition to himself.

  “How’s the work going?”

  “Alright,” she said. “A bit boring. Water this, water that. Are we going to have to do this for long?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Isn’t this better than Sighisoara?”

  “Oh yes, there weren’t any monkeys in Sighisoara.”

  “What do you think of Diane?”

  “She’s nice. A little kooky, but nice.”

  “A little... kooky,” he repeated, contemplating the analysis. “Grace, do you like it here?”

  She thought about it for a second, before nodding, her hair bouncing with enthusiasm. To his surprise, this pleased the Mariner immensely; bringing comfort to the girl relaxed him somehow. A peculiar sensation, being concerned for the well-being of another.

  They worked together in silence, walking through the crops, sprinkling water as they went and taking regular breaks to refill at the well. Despite the monotony of the work, the Mariner found it strangely compelling; he was encouraging life, what was better than that? The afternoon passed swiftly, and when Grace spoke again, the Mariner was surprised to find the sun low in the sky.

  “I don’t like what he calls me.”

  “Who?”

  “The reverend. He calls me Miss. Tetrazzini. But that’s not my name.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s not my name! It’s the one he gave me, but it wasn’t my real one.” She spat the reference to her former guardian with venom, though melancholy rushed up behind. “I don’t know what my real name is.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “You really don’t have a name?”

  “Really.”

  Grace forced a slight smile, though her head still hung low.

  “I’ll tell you what,” the Mariner said, desperate to please the child, though for the life of him didn’t know why he should care. “We’ll come up with names for each other. You’ll take on one and so will I. How’s that?”

  The suggestion didn’t go down as well as he’d hoped. “You can’t just make up a name! Your name is whatever your daddy gives you... your real dad at least.”

  “Well I don’t know about that, but if I call you by your new name, and you call me by mine, who’s to say different? Let’s give it a go. You can keep Grace, that’s a lovely name, but how about we change it to something more suitable? Grace Devil-Tamer?”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Oh.” The put-down made him feel oddly dejected; this was going to be tougher than first anticipated. “Ok, let’s start with me instead; what do you think a man like me should be called?”

  Grace studied the Mariner’s face: stubble cheeks patch-worked by scars, grey eyes made even paler by the dark rings that surrounded them, long dark hair knotted and unkempt. No nice name sprung to mind.

  She giggled, scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “I don’t know, I can’t think of any.”

  “Keep trying. You named all those devils, I should be easy.”

  “Ummm.”

  He patiently waited while the girl screwed her face into different bizarre masks as she struggled for inspiration.

  “Well, you’re a sailor...”

  “A Mariner. I prefer the term, ‘Mariner’,” said the Sailor.

  “So, as you go about in a boat a lot, you need an appropriately seafaring name... Ahab?”

  “A- Hab?”

  “Yeah, er... you not heard of him?”

  The Mariner shook his head, baffled. “Does it sound like me?”

  “Not really..”

  “Oh.”

  Frowning, Grace tried to pick the Mariner’s sparse mind. “Close your eyes and concentrate. What name feels right to you?”

  The Mariner thought hard. What had at first been a distracting game, now seemed something he should see through. One name floated out of the mists.

  “Donald. Donald Traill.”

  Grace shivered. “I don’t like that one.”

  “No,” the Mariner slowly agreed, wondering just how that name had arrived in his consciousness. There indeed was something grim about it, though why a name should carry anything other than syllables was beyond him. “I don’t either.”

  And then a second name arrived, less filthy than the one before.

  “Arthur Philip?”

  “Arthur. Arthur. Art.” Grace grinned. “Yeah!”

  Art Philip, seafarer, bold adventurer! Still a bit baffled by his own inspiration, the Mariner now turned the attention back to Grace. “Your turn.”

  “Oww I don’t know...”

  She began to complain, but the Mariner interjected. “If I can do it, so can you.”

  “Well, I read this book and there was a character inside that I really liked.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yeah, she was called Scarlett O’Hara. I would like that name.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think you should hang onto ‘Grace’ though, it’s very nice.”

  “Hmm.” She thought about it, mulling over the pros and cons. “Ok, I’ll hang onto ‘Grace’. Grace O’Hara! Hey! Perhaps my middle name could be Scarlett? Oh fiddle-de-dee!”

  Beaming with joy, Grace returned to her duties, humming and happily muttering gibberish. “Tomorrow is another day! Oh fiddle-de-dee!”

  The Mariner watched her for a moment, enjoying himself for the first time in his memorable life. His chest felt lighter, the ache in his arms less oppressive. Eventually he got back to watering the plants, and found he rather enjoyed that too.

  Later, as the sun fell below the tree-line, dropping the zoo into a hastily fading twilight, the Mariner made his way back to the small hut promised to function as his new home. It wasn’t much, a roof over an old salvaged mattress, a small makeshift table and several candles. He’d only looked at it br
iefly, and at the time had found it Spartan to say the least. Now, however, it had a new addition: McConnell, sitting at the desk waiting for his return.

  “How did the monkey-guarding go?” he asked as he collapsed on the bed. It squealed harshly under his weight and a loose spring jabbed him vengefully in the lower-back, but it was a bed nonetheless.

  “With difficulty,” McConnell grumbled mournfully. “They showed a surprising degree of cooperation. One would distract me whilst another grabbed as much as it could lay its dirty paws on. I can only presume there’s a chief monkey somewhere on this island masterminding the whole operation.”

  “Possibly, possibly.” The Mariner closed his eyes and stretched his weary legs.

  “You must have impressed them somehow – you’ve got a desk. I didn’t get a desk. A mattress and a door, that’s it.”

  “Is that why you’re here? If you want your own desk you can take the damn thing.”

  His sarcasm was followed by silence and it made the Mariner reopen his eyes. McConnell watched him intently, candlelight illuminating his serious features.

  Unnerved, the Mariner tried to keep the conversation on safe grounds. “I was speaking with Grace today, we’ve chosen new names for ourselves. The doctor wasn’t her father, she’d been abducted when very small, so her real name is unknown. She’s chosen O’Hara. It’s from some book she likes. It took some working out, but we got there, Would you like to know my new name?”

  “I know your name.”

  The Mariner tensed. Something within him sickened. “I don’t have a name.”

  Traill, the sickness whispered.

  “How could you possibly know something that doesn’t exist?”

  “I’ve known it for days.”

  “Rubbish.” Don’t say it, the Mariner thought, desperation beginning to show. Don’t say ‘Donald Traill’!

  “Deep down, both you and I know it.”

  I’m Arthur Phillip! Art Phillip! I’m not Donald Traill!

  McConnell’s eyes were as piercing as the revelation he was about to make, though when he finally delivered his declaration, it had not the toll of doom the Mariner had expected.

  “You’re Jesus Haych Christ. Our Saviour.”

  If the previous silences between them had been uncomfortable, this one was nigh unbearable.

  “What?”

  “You are the son of God, who was cast out into the eternal waves to pay for our sins. He who built a ship upon which to gather the saved.”

  “I built a ship?”

  “Yes, that ship!” McConnell pointed in the direction of the moored Neptune, though in the tight confines of the room the gesture merely managed to knock over a candle. He grasped for it whilst he spoke. “The vessel that is one with you! The ship that will find all those worthy of being saved!”

  “The Neptune?”

  “Yes!”

  “I didn’t build the Neptune. I just.. woke up on it.”

  “The Devil has deceived you,” McConnell said as a matter-of-fact. “He’s made you forget, just as he’s convinced you of all these terrible things you believe of yourself. They are lies, all of them, lies!”

  “McConnell,” the Mariner said calmly, trying to placate the over-excited reverend. “I don’t even know who this Jesus Haych is. I remember that display in your church, but not very well. I’m not Jesus. I’m a mariner, nothing more.”

  McConnell carried on regardless. “Our Saviour was followed by twelve disciples.”

  “Well, I can assure you, I don’t have anything close to a disciple!”

  “You do. And you have twelve.”

  When he finally caught up with what McConnell was getting at, the Mariner laughed. The sound made the reverend recoil, and the Mariner could almost have felt sorry for the man, had it not been such a preposterous suggestion.

  “They are not disciples! They are vicious overgrown rats who would devour both of us if they could get by without someone to shovel their shit into the sea! Beasts! Monsters!”

  “Of which number twelve.”

  “That means nothing!”

  “By itself, I agree. But I’ve seen all the proof there is. You sewed some of the world together. You undid a part of the Shattering. God punished us by splitting our world apart. Only Jesus can piece it back together. Only he.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Who else was it? I was there. I saw.”

  “If that’s the reason you got aboard, you’ve made a big mistake.”

  “We’ll see,” McConnell stood, eyes still aflame. “And the sooner you abandon this cult the better. You won’t find any answers with then, the answers are within you. They have been all along.”

  Once McConnell left, the Mariner lay awake for several hours. He felt bad for McConnell, the man was mistaken and the misconception had evolved into outright delusion. But was it any more crazy than what was being preached on this island? Jesus Haych Christ on one side, Déjà vu on the other. And somewhere between, still out of sight – the Wasp.

  Concentration began to wane as he felt his addictions creeping back. His inner demons had been kept at bay by the distractions of the day, but in the dark confines of his own mind they slithered into prominence, tempting, taunting, tormenting.

  Fortunately he’d kept the cat ‘o’ nine tails close, and he knew just what to do.

  28

  GETTING TO KNOW YOU

  SOMETHING OF A ROUTINE FORMED during the subsequent days. By sunlight the three would perform mundane tasks in exchange for food, shelter and guidance supplied by the cult, though when it came to guidance there was little, if none. For the time being they were told to observe the other monks and learn from their example. Not even Grace, who’d been the most believing, could see anything to learn from watching others randomly burst into song, gibberish, or dropping to the ground doing squat-thrusts. Indeed, at times it felt like they were living within an insane asylum, if not for how rational and calm the inmates acted between spells of déjà vu.

  Of Diane they saw almost nothing. Only once did the Mariner speak to her again, and only the briefest of exchanges. It was on a morning when he was asked to help prepare food, mostly chopping and de-seeding fruit and veg. Megan, a young lady who seemed to be in charge of the kitchen, carefully took him through the various dishes that could be easily prepared and in the quantities necessary. Cooking for such a large community required an astonishing amount of foresight, but fortunately Megan had all that in hand, and all the Mariner had to do was follow basic orders. Mostly the work was washing and chopping, though somehow he could never get the sizes quite right and was regularly admonished.

  “No, no, no!” Megan said, pulling the knife from his grasp. “You’re squashing them!”

  He looked down at the tomatoes. “I thought I was chopping them.”

  “Well that’s certainly what I asked you to do,” she snapped again, pushing him aside. “Take the Priestess her plate. I’ve prepared it, all you need do is deliver it. You can’t get that wrong.”

  The plate was a large silver disk, piled high with the choicest fruits. He carried it as carefully as he could, though clearly not careful enough from the concerned glances he received.

  He found Diane sitting on a small beach on the north side of the island. She was sitting with her feet stretched out, the incoming tide gently lapping across her toes.

  Diane looked up from a book she was reading. “Hello captain. How are you finding our little community?”

  “Very pleasant.” he replied, handing the plate to her. She took it, eyes feasting upon the fruits carefully arranged for sampling. Like a spider on a thread, her fingers dangled above the delicacies, wiggling in anticipation. The actions had a curious elation to them, despite the serious look on her face.

  “Your arrival heralds much, captain,” she began, drawing her eyes away from the plate and onto him. “Were you aware the stars vanished just before you came to our island? Literally dark times ahead, I fear.”

>   He was surprised. “You remember them?”

  “The stars? Of course I do, why wouldn’t I? I thought they might come back, but they haven’t. Did you scare them off perhaps?”

  “I’m as in the dark as you are.”

  “Ha! Pun for pun! Yes indeed.” The words were spat with little mirth and her eyes darted along the horizon, only lightly flicking higher, as if to gaze too long at the sky would bring its great weight tumbling down. “My people are strong; we are used to the strange tides of our world and know not to openly panic about such things. To panic is to declare yourself to predators, isn’t that so? But under the calm I can feel them thinking. Wondering. Just where have the stars all gone?”

  The Mariner had no answer, and he watched her pop a slice of apple into her mouth and chew. The dark mood upon Diane lifted, momentary joy passing across her lips. “Wonderful! I was just growing weary. Please take some yourself.”

  Despite the offer, Diane didn’t hold the plate any closer to her guest, instead keeping it firmly on her lap.

  “What were you growing weary of?”

  “It is tiresome, focusing all your energies to connect with the forces of Déjà vu; trying to shift the Cog, day in, day out.” Theatrically, Diane lifted a hand to her brow, leaning her head back as if her psychic strength was being tested. Somehow it seemed preposterous, given that she sat upon a calm beach eating fruit.

  “I see,” he said, traces of sarcasm peeking through as he noticed the well-thumbed romance novel tucked beneath her leg.

  Diane saw him looking and indignantly puffed herself up. “When you become as practised as I in dealing with the déjà vu, you start to sense situations in which you can confront it. Today I knew, I sensed, that I would connect to my previous lives through reading this book.” Defensively, she held the book aloft as if it were a shield, rather than a luxury item she’d deemed to hide. “Just as I knew that I would confront déjà vu when eating this fruit. Even now I am struggling against a déjà vu in this very conversation. It is most exhausting.”

  The glare he was subjected to told him to leave it, but the illogic couldn’t remain untested.“If you sensed that you would confront a déjà vu whilst reading that book, why didn’t you do something else instead? Wouldn’t that have the same effect as challenging it once it had started?”