Beneath Ceaseless Skies #159

by Gemma Files

  Issue #159 • Oct. 30, 2014

  “Drawn Up From Deep Places,” by Gemma Files

  “The Burned Man,” by Hannah Strom-Martin

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  DRAWN UP FROM DEEP PLACES

  by Gemma Files

  Ofttimes Jerusalem Parry dreamed of the noise—that one snap, so small yet final—which his mother’s neck had made giving way, or the creak of her body swaying from a Cornish gallows-tree; other times he dreamed that Solomon Rusk lay beside him in the bed that’d once been his, long rogue’s body pressed so close that he near to crushed the breath from Parry’s lungs and slipped a thigh ‘tween his knees to force them open, so their weapons might joust for precedence. From the former visions Parry woke with cheeks wet and throat restricted, while from the latter he woke with teeth all a-grind and trousers shamefully tight, for he well-knew that that great bastard’s ghost still lingered somewhere nearby, smirking invisibly at how easy his murderer was to discomfit.

  Less often yet, however, he dreamed of the storm whose fury had first disclosed him, both to others and to himself—seen him bloom up a wizard under its tumult, little though that black apotheosis had seemed to benefit him, at the time. This night, it seemed, had been such a night, borne back on a rush of wind and thunder: a downpour alternately salt and sweet, great swells and breakers tipping the Navy ship he’d signed onto at Portsmouth like a child’s bath-toy while cold rain dashed straight in the crew’s faces, stinging their all eyes half-blind.

  Parry found himself handing his way up the deck, clinging to the guide-rope while those around him reeled and shrieked like Bacchantes, busy as any half-drowned ant-hill. Wherever he tried to help they scurried from him, averted their gaze and threw out signs to ward him off as though he were Satan or the plague; called out as soon as they recognized his face, bawling the same idiot warning from stem to stern, no matter their more pressing distractions—

  “‘Tis him, the Jonah... Ensign Parry’s a Jonah sure, cursed by God, so’s any ship carries him will flounder! It’s he our Savior hates, and we who suffer for it!”

  “You rave, sir,” he recalled telling the bo’sun’s mate, whom he’d seized by the collar—pulling him close as circumstance would allow for and channeling every jot of cold authority the Church had taught him into it, as he did. “Superstitious rot. There’s no such thing, you fool!”

  “So you’d say!” the man had thrown back, not quite brave enough to strike at him with aught but words. “Now give me room, you curst damned creature—let me to my work, that real men not perish on your sins’ account!”

  It cut him, enough to make him let go with a shove, feeling a cruel jolt of pleasure to see his accuser slip to bruise both knees and tear his palms in the scuppers’ white backwash. Hearing himself roar, at the same time: “Then go, you scum, and good riddance! May the Sea take your bones and Hell itself tear your black heart in half, likewise!”

  (That mate had died later on, Parry only now remembered, for which they’d blamed him too. But then, he had never held as short a bridle on his own tongue as he might have wished, under pressure; it was a fault his masters had tried to cure him of, and his back still bore the scars of their tutelage now, ‘neath his current captain’s coat.)

  Aye, so I recall, Solomon Rusk’s hated voice told him, here. For I saw those many a time, when you and I were in our sin. But then, ye’d’ve made a terrible parson, my Jerusha, no matter had they managed to beat every last scrap of pride from you, having no great talent for forgiveness—as ye must surely know, if you’re any sort of honest.

  But there was no point in answering, for conversation with Rusk was the most blatant of traps, now more than ever. So Parry only shrugged to himself instead, thinking in reply: Well, we’ll never have proof of it now, will we? And whose fault is that, pray tell?

  (God’s surely. His, or the bloody Devil’s.)

  Then, in the way of dreams, he found himself standing several feet above-deck, as those who’d taken his name in vain stared upwards, faces blank and gaping: a moment of purest ecstasy, surer than any proof of the Divine love he’d chased after all his life—so immediate, so real. Ablaze from top to toe with blue-green Saint Elmo’s fire, Parry watched the storm peel back ‘round his presence as his will plunged upwards, parting the weather’s knot, and felt himself lit so bright that all his store of gall was burnt away at once.

  I did this, he remembered thinking. This is my work.

  Such joy as he’d never known, before, or after. Yet it lasted only until the ship’s witch-finder withdrew a heavy iron cross from his belt and fling it, cracking Parry ‘cross the temple so hard that he hit the deck already unconscious.

  * * *

  Here he felt himself bolt awake once more, iron-made collar scar ‘round his neck puffed worse than usual, so choking-stiff he could hardly breathe. Whilst through the cabin door, his own bo’sun hammered hard and called to him, a cringing note of apology in his voice: “Cap’n, sorry t’ disturb ye, but you’re wanted on deck, soon as possible. Ye know we’d not rouse ye but ‘twas necessary, given your orders... Cap’n Parry, sir?”

  “I hear you, man,” he managed, at last, voice a bare rasp. “What is it?”

  “That creature of yours, Mister Dolomance—he’s found somethin’ as has an air of... supernature about it, such that we thought it best ye take a look.”

  “I’ll be up soon as modesty permits, then. Tell them to leave it be, ‘til I get there.”

  “Yes sir,” the bo’sun replied, gratefully. “There were no great plans otherwise, believe me.”

  Oh, I do, Parry thought, darkly. And levered himself upright, cracking his neck gingerly side to side, to loosen the scar’s hold on his wind.

  Ignoring Captain Rusk’s phantom gaze, he refused to be hurried in his customary toilet: gathered his hair back in a neat tail and took care to re-order his linen, wrapping his cravat doubly high, brushing his coat ‘til he was satisfied with the way it shone. At last, he pulled his boots on and strode forth, flicking the lock to behind him with a blue-green whip of sparks. For though the door would not keep his evil angel confined, it pleased him to keep it closed between them, nevertheless, as proof of their division.

  You are dead, sir, if not gone; stubborn as ever, and greedy of this bond you still claim we share, for all I never wished one. Yet much as I will one day break this curse you laid on me, I will see you learn, eventually, to leave me be.

  Rusk would have laughed at this last, and maybe did, since Parry couldn’t hear it outside of dream, or drunkenness—a state to which Parry had seldom been used to abandon himself, even before he knew doing so would put him once more within reach of his former slave-master’s growling voice and wandering hands. It was a different sort of skill to speak with the dead, one Parry was glad to know he did not share, unlike Rusk’s half-sister in Porte Macoute, the sorceress known as Tante Ankolee. God alone knew that if he could have somehow banished Rusk back to her side, he would have, without delay... but given the man had met his well-merited end aboard-ship—under it, any road—that did not seem an option.

  Bitch of Hell, Rusk had called her, then, this craft which became his grave, for he’d been a coarse man, loose of impulse and restricted in vocabulary. But Parry had put paid to that, overseeing her mast-head’s re-painting himself, which now read Salina Resurrecta: a salt-borne lady, cobbled from shipwrecks. Since the curse Rusk in dying had laid upon him rendered her both home and prison to him now, he shaped her to his likes, which varied by occasion; stiff as he outwardly seemed, he could be mercurial when the fit was on him, or whe
n the pain land’s touch now bred in him reached up through however many fathoms of ocean to curl ‘round every limb, setting his blood a-boil in its most infinitesimal vessels.

  A steep price to pay for his freedom, or so it sometimes seemed—yet they had always agreed on this, Captain Rusk and he, if little else: nothing came for nothing in this world; payment was always required, usually in whatever capital seemed most expensive.

  On deck, Parry found Mister Dolomance lurking by the anchor-line with head down-hung far as his lack of neck allowed for, flat black eyes kept fixed on the salt-swollen boards beneath his nailless grey feet. He looked barely human, and Parry had made him so intentionally, that his presence would disturb those around him, rather than smooth the way. The creature was a born weapon, after all, birthed to roam and kill and eat without rest; to render him otherwise would have been to betray his true nature and leave the spells which kept him above-water prone to unravel at the slightest mis-step.

  Wizardry was intuitive, in the main—none had tutored Parry at his craft, not since Tante Ankolee had so briefly quizzed him before sending him on his way, with a beginner’s hex-bag and a borrowed fetish to grow it on from. The same hung at his belt even now, dangling with all sorts of fresh ammunition; the witch he glimpsed now and then in dreams, like Rusk himself, seldom telling him anything useful. And he remained alone, as he always had been.

  Still, better to it, without delay. Parry drew himself full height, staring down this monstrosity he’d wrought as scornfully as possible. “They say you’ve a gift for me, sir,” he said. “Well, bring it out—I must have some recompense, to pay fee on my interrupted slumber.”

  Sheer rhetoric, of course, for the crew’s benefit—Dolomance did not “speak” save for the occasional squeal and grumble, though if Parry cared to press him he could conjure a crude alignment of their thoughts, picking squeamishly through the nasty rush of hatred and hunger which resulted. Such proved unnecessary, however; instead, Dolomance flapped one four-fingered hand over the side, inviting the Captain’s gaze to follow after. On the waves below, a longboat floated—debris from some wreck or another brig’s overthrow, since its sides bore the smudged marks of fire from swift passage through lit oil. Its sole occupant, wrapped to the eyes ‘gainst the sun’s depredations, raised the portion Parry took to be its head and blinked at him incuriously, offering no greeting.

  “Towed it ‘ere, ‘e did, with its rope in ‘is teeth,” offered a nearby salt Parry vaguely recalled having sworn the Articles after their last prize was taken, some verminous sot claiming skill in carpentry but yet to give much proof of it. “We was just waitin’ on you to bring it closer, Cap’n... or not.”

  Great bunch of milksops. “Do so, then.”

  A haul and heave-ho commenced, and Parry stood frowning, arms crossed, as the boat drew near. The figure did not stir; he might almost believe it asleep save it sat upright, swaying slightly. When the boat’s prow struck the Salina’s, however, its passenger seemed to rouse, looking up again, sharply—its cerements fell away, disclosing a face that made all men present gasp, seeing it proved both female and of an undeniable attractiveness.

  Pale skin, a red mouth, long black hair in ringlets to the waist. And blue-grey eyes almost light as Parry’s own, with their odd silver cast, yet stormier—more mutable and opaque as well, unreadable, even for him. Mercury, caught beneath a glaze of stone.

  “Where am I?” this lady demanded. “It has been days... are you men, or dreams, only?”

  “Surely, madam,” said Parry, “most dreams smell far less ill than my crew; only sniff the wind to find yourself assured of our existence.”

  She shook her head. “Nay, but there was a thing that seized me, brought me here. Like a shark, if sharks had legs.”

  Parry shrugged, waving Dolomance forward, and watched her start again as the shark-were grimaced down, fixed teeth a smile’s bare parody. “My servant, madam. And you?”

  “I am... they call me Clione, sir. My father was Haelam Attesee, who doctored on the Nymph.”

  “And I am Jerusalem Parry—once of Cornwall, and the Navy. Pirate now, though not entirely by choice.”

  She obviously recognized the name. “A magician too, as your servant proves. And a cursed man, if other rumors be believed.”

  “Yes, though not so long as I stand on water. Still, ‘tis true enough we are about no good business, by merest definition—so if you’d prefer to wait for less outlaw transport, I’m sure we can accommodate your scruples....”

  The woman—Miss Attesee, he should call her—furled her lip out prettily, thinking the matter over: elegant in every way, with her black-winged brows and a high spot of color on each smooth cheek, lush as any Spanish grandee’s. “Clione” was one of Poseidon’s conquests, if Parry recalled a’right, ocean-swept and transformed for his pleasure, which did seem to fit. At closer quarters, her viperous mane took on the shade of black shared by grapes grown on Veritay Island, seat of Captain’s Rusk’s familial holdings; her soft hands were two doves, and that mouth a bitten pomegranate. And though his experience in such matters was woefully narrow, he had seldom seen anyone who pulled at him so, thus far... aside from one, and him only intermittently.

  “I’ll come up,” she said, at last, so surlily Parry might almost believe he’d forced her to it. As though there might really be some other choice to make.

  A fine-made baggage, he could almost hear Rusk’s ghost observe, as hands hauled her over the rail. And aren’t ye taken wi’ her, too, my cold young gentleman... should I be jealous?

  Of what? Parry might have snapped, had he found himself alone. But even as the words formed, he saw those eyes of hers widen, as though she’d suddenly glimpsed something—some very tall thing—just over his shoulder, where Rusk had been all too wont to loom, in life.

  I will not turn, he told himself. ‘Tis some ruse. Who is the wizard here, she or I?

  And before he could think better of it he’d already reached out, slipping his gaze inside her own through some maneuver he could barely parse, the better to see what she saw: a man rearing up behind Parry, blotting out the sun—Black Scots, dark-tanned and leonine, with his King Charles hair and his single eye, the other a scar-messed socket. Captain Solomon Rusk, larger than life even in the utter lack of such, regarding her with a crooked smile and growling, in a voice like self-satisfied thunder: So she can see me, eh? You as well, through her. What a to-do!

  Miss Attesee put one hand up, as though about to swoon; in anticipation, Parry withdrew himself perhaps quicker than was wise, for it made her give a hopeless little cry and all-over tremble, as though he’d felt up under her skirts. The crew exchanged glances, all equal-baffled. But Solomon Rusk’s ghost threw back his half-there head and guffawed, with so little sympathy it made Parry long to kill him all over again.

  Welcome aboard, Madame Seer, Rusk said, finally. This will be quite the long voyage for you, I’m thinkin’. Though you and Master Parry may comfort each other against my presence, I s’pose, if ye’ve a mind to.

  Then vanished, leaving she who termed herself Clione Attesee to roll her wave-colored eyes up and faint—and it was only Jerusalem Parry’s memory of what deck hitting skull felt like, along with the speed it leant him in catching her, that saved her from a similar fate.

  She hung in his arms, soft and limp, rounded in highly intriguing places; he stared down at her, baffled, wondering what came next.

  What am I to do with you? Parry thought. Whatever are we to do, with each other?

  No reply came, however. So he toted her back to his cabin and laid her in his bed, as Rusk had once done with him—then withdrew, unlike that rapine-inclined picaroon, so she might sleep her fear-trance off alone.

  * * *

  Parry walked the deck until morning, disturbing his crew, a fact he took pride in. Through a process of trial and error, he had found it best to allow them to make a fear-object of him, if only to prevent them destroying themselves in useless attempts to take h
is place. In the time since Rusk’s demise, he had put down three mutinies already, for though the memory of their former master’s passing was enough to dissuade most of the older generation from underestimating their new one’s power, the steady shifting of balance between those hands engaged under Rusk and those he’d signed on himself seemed doomed to eventually oblige Parry to prove himself once again whenever they began to see him an obstacle to their own upwards passage.

  What none of them understood was that although he had never coveted his current position, now that Rusk’s curse was in place, Parry would kill without a second thought to keep it—a man barred from shore must needs keep himself afloat, after all, and he had no compunctions over harshness where treason was involved. One early fool, idiot enough to fall upon him in his repose, he’d accidentally atomized with an undirected blast—the touch of a stranger’s hands on his neck-scar had been enough to catapult him back into unhappier days, and he’d struck out without thinking. Others he’d given to the shark-were’s kin or swung from the yard-arm in Navy style, as a tribute to past training.

  None had joined Rusk under-hull, however, for Parry did not care to risk populating his entire ship with dour phantoms, not when the company here was already so uncongenial. So things continued, with Parry knowing himself despised and avoided by all except Captain Rusk’s leering fragment, of whom he could well-stand not to be reminded on quite so regular a basis.

  (Miss Attesee, now: she did not fear him, not as yet. Though time might teach her otherwise.)

  At length, Parry sat down on the fo’c’sle cross-legged and laid a protective circle ‘round himself before sending out his spirit, that his body be left undisturbed. Then, reaching deep into the hex-bag, he ended up winding his dead witch-mother’s hair in its frail red braid ‘round one hand like a rosary, while at the same time rolling Rusk’s false ivory eye ‘tween two fingers of the other—victory’s spoils turned fetish, sweet as any battlefield prize.