Beneath Ceaseless Skies #159

by Gemma Files

  (How so, man?)

  How not, you great ape? You gave me your word, then broke it. You forced me—

  (But how could I, Jerusha, beyond that first time? You, wi’ all your powers? You could’ve burnt my parts away, if you’d a mind to—and why not, if I so offended you? Unless they were giving you too much joy, entirely....)

  Your “parts” are gone now, sir, along with the rest of you. Put them by.

  (My point stands: You could’ve unmanned me, with a second’s thought. Yet ye did not.)

  You... distracted me.

  (As she does now, I’ll warrant.)

  Cease your prattle! She is speaking again, and I want to hear her.

  “Was there no peace to be made between you, then?” Clione asked. “Not ever?”

  “No. He was a man of odd humors, and took pleasure in being hated. We had both had our fill of the other, I think, by the end.”

  “I would think it would not be so easy to have one’s fill of you, Captain,” she said, seriously. And cupped his chin in both her hands, studying his sharp-planed face closely, before sealing his half-open mouth with a kiss that tasted, as only befitted, of the deepest, darkest parts of the sea.

  * * *

  So different, this sport, from any he’d experienced thus far: Clione Attesee was God’s own gift, a lady born, all-observing, passionate and discreet, whose hungers and interests matched his own. Though surely innocent as he’d once been, she had no modesty, and no seeming need of any. Parry felt himself swept away, fast and sure as he’d ever been while pinned in Rusk’s arms, but without the sour accompanying tang of defeat, the total ruinous overthrow. Instead, he was allowed to set his pace in tidal fashion, their joining never quite complete and never entirely over. Great waves crashed then split apart, gathering themselves for a fresh crescendo, with everything in between rendered hot and salt and sweet, so all-encompassing he could never be entirely sure whether he had actually spent at any point, or no. Though neither did it truly seem to matter, overmuch....

  “So many books, Captain Parry,” she observed, leaning in from above, so that her hair fell to curtain them both. “Have you really read them all?”

  “Many times. For there is always far too much gold and jewelry on these ships we take, and never enough new literary matter.”

  “Ah, is your hold quite stuffed with treasure, then?”

  “Like as much. I do not concern myself with its reckoning—that job goes to my ship’s purser, with the bo’sun watching over. But I somewhat doubt these bastards would resign themselves to my command if they were not paid for it, and plentifully.”

  “I do not see how anyone could hate you, Captain, for all your prickliness, or the terror of your reputation. Though I can well see now why Captain Rusk wanted you kept chained to him, beyond mere utility.”

  This was a note he’d not heard in her voice, before—coolly assessing, older than she seemed—and Parry stiffened at the sound of it, eyes skittering to where Rusk’s ghost leant against the wall, alternately watchful and sulking, but increasingly frustrated by his own inability to join in.

  “You... know? What passed between us?”

  “Yes, of course.” She touched his scar, lightly stroking balm into the contorted tissues. “I can see it, the closer we draw together. What you feel, when you think on him—and what he feels, too, thinking on you.”

  “But how?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot tell. A voice seems to whisper it from the walls, or the planks below.”

  At that very moment, the Salina juddered under them, for all the world like some great creature twitching in its sleep, a dog whose back legs kick when it senses its name being uttered. Parry looked at her, a bit wonderingly, and asked: “Are you a witch too, then? Like my mother, or myself?”

  “They called you wizard whenever I was told your tale, previously.”

  “‘Tis all the same, or almost so. ‘Man-witch’, Rusk called me, whenever he wished to tweak my pride—but there is no insult in truth. Cold iron burns me, and I bear the scars to prove it.”

  “Yes,” she said, gently touching his collar’s print once more—then leant in, impulsively, to lay a small kiss upon it also, so sweet it set his sore head ringing. “Did she have such eyes as yours, your mother?”

  “Aye, these I get from her, along with my craft. Of the rest, I know not exactly who to credit—only that the man I should, by rights, call father was some ‘man of parts’ who could not think of paying for my upkeep, or saving her the noose.”

  “To see your mother hanged... oh, Captain. I am sorry.”

  “Most witches end so, madam, at least where England reigns. Had she been Scots instead of Cornish, ‘twould have been the fire before, not after.”

  “And yet she named you for the City of God.”

  Parry paused, breath shortening. “She was... not an educated woman, by any means,” he said, finally. And counted himself grateful when Clione pulled him down with her, rolling them both so that he could take the upper hand, drowning himself in her again.

  They were sweating hard by the time they pulled apart once more, panting, and Parry saw her eyes travel back to where Rusk lurked. “How he scowls at us, now!” she exclaimed, with a sort of triumph. “Yet it only serves him right, and he knows it; he lost whatever chance he might have had to turn your hate to something softer long before you used him to scrape the ship clean. What an infamous fellow! He burns to have you still, were it only possible. But we shall confound him of that base desire, you and I—shall we not, Captain Parry?”

  “Yes, with the world’s best will. And you may make free to call me Jerusalem, Miss Attesee—Clione—if it please you.”

  “Oh, it does, Jerusalem... yes, there, please! It does, very much, indeed.”

  Fireworks came and went behind his eyes, then, a shower of red-tinged silver bright as his own gaze’s reflection when briefly glimpsed in hers. Midst-caught, Parry thought he saw those eyes change—their pupils slide sidelong, opening like a cuttlefish’s, even as her hips slipped, knees gone triple-jointed, twining ‘round his legs like two fishtail tentacles. While the inside of her grew scaled and stringent, scraping him tip to root, leaving her mark forever.

  Mine, he thought, incoherently. All blissful-unaware, at the time, how he’d traded ownership of one kind for one of another.

  What followed in this maelstrom’s spindrift, however, was pleasure piled on pleasure: laxity, satiation, a deep and pleasant slumber, and for once blessedly dreamless....

  ...but only to a point.

  * * *

  As the ship’s bells rang mid-night, Parry came to, opening his mind’s eyes only to find himself already meshed tight in memory’s toils: later in that first bout of “sport” after his initial defilement, with Rusk still at him like a rat with cheese. Tugging at the man’s mane hard enough to rip scalp and hoping it hurt, as he complained: “Christ, leave off—leave off, did you hear me? What possible pleasure could you get from—”

  Rusk laughed then, dark and growling as ever, be he man or ghost. “The pleasure of your pleasure, fool. To watch you work yourself up ‘til you’re fair panting for it, ‘til you beg and weep for an end....”

  “Sir! You go too far, entirely!”

  “Aye, and would go further still, as I damn well know ye’d love t’allow me, much though you prate th’ opposite. Come now, Jerusha, must I really bend the knee? What gestures must I play out, t’ bring us both what we seek?”

  “Ask—ask my permission, for once. Not that I dream you would.”

  “Like some puling schoolboy, some mother-may-I? Nay, doesn’t sound much like me at all... and yet, very well: Jerusalem Parry, will ye grant me the honor of you? Might I be let to breach that strait-laced gate, and make us both the happier for it?”

  Settling back onto him before Parry could object, ‘til Parry fell limp at the feel, unable to do more than punch the air and gasp. Then heard himself answer, much against his better judgment—

>   “...you may.”

  At this, Rusk gave a satisfied sort of snarl, a hungry lion’s half-cough, and heaved himself up, re-settling in. Smiling in triumph, as he crowed: “Ah, my Jerusha, you marvel, my poor sweet-heart! My nice divine, pretty little parson-to-be, aspirant soul-saver: you, who hate everybody and everything, yourself included...”

  “Do not mistake me for some—Navy slug, sir! I know my sins, at least, instead of... reveling in them....”

  Yet here he lost the thread, every part of him buzzing, raked and itching from the inside-out. Rusk laughed again to see it, dropping his face in the crook of Parry’s neck and keeping unmercifully on, voice flesh-muffled—

  “Aye, as I do mine, ‘reveling’ aside. Which makes you no better than me, for all your airs! Or perhaps ‘tis that we’re neither of us so good, let alone so bad....”

  “The one thing we’re alike in’s damnation!” Parry made to snarl, but groaned instead, knowing it far too late to stop his own disgrace. While the coda to this stew came, as ever, in a rush of heat and mess and awfulness, a dreadful coring joy. Parry tried to turn from it, but Rusk seized him fast and forced his gaze forward again.”Nay, none o’ that,” he growled. “Stay wi’ me ‘til the throes are done at least, if no further.”

  “Leave me my shame, man, for Christ’s own love!”

  “Ah, but ‘tis a foolish habit of yours, my Jerusha, that same shame. I aim t’ cure ye of it, if it takes me ‘til Doomsday.”

  Parry cursed him roundly, to the very limits of his knowledge and invention, before invective at last turned silent. Then, exhausted, he lay awhile in Rusk’s arms, too tired to fight on, and was forced to accept the unhappy benefit of his ravisher’s cold comfort.

  Yes, ‘twas a brave bloody night, by Christ, Rusk’s ghost said from somewhere nearby, a trifle sadly. I think on’t often, who have little enough left to distract me, for all I’m sure you don’t do the same. But then again, the pleasures of the dead are few, as you’ll eventually discover.

  It was another of those contortionate dream-moments, twisting Parry free and fading the past in a single wink, so he sat once more upright next to Clione in their nest of sheets, staring Rusk’s full-dressed specter down with all his hairs upright and his frame rage-rigid.

  Why would you? Parry demanded, insult of it burning in the nose, like blood. Bad enough in life, but to come to me thus in dream! You amaze me, sir.

  Oh, I doubt that. Rusk gave a sigh. Yet how else am I to gain your attention, Jerusha, with you so enmeshed?

  Parry huffed. Aye, on your advice, as I recall—and why not, since it ensues she does indeed find me pleasant, after all? I have little enough to make me happy in my waking life, forever confined by this curse you worked on me....

  Yes, well: about that. Might be I was... inaccurate in my estimation, when first I pushed you t’wards her arms. For there are things in her I glimpse that I can only assume you don’t, still bein’ locked in your fleshly state—

  Oh, do tell—or don’t, rather, for I have no patience for it! Might be you shouldn’t’ve played through my life’s most humiliating night as preface, if you truly wished my attention on the matter!

  Ye damned contrary creature! Are you a sailor born, now, to know the ocean’s store of uncanniness better than myself? For if ‘twas me, I’d’ve thrown her back in the sea to sink or swim as she pleased, days agone. As there were many said I should have done with you, by Christ!

  Indeed, sir? I confess myself unsurprised.

  I did not mean—Jerusha, only listen t’me, for your own profit! She is not what ye think her—

  Nor you, I warrant, when you seemed to mean me well, ‘til you showed your true colors! When you broke your oath and treated me as no host would an honored guest, unless perhaps that host be Satan himself, welcoming damned souls into Hell—

  But: Be still, a third voice intruded, cutting through their wrangle like Alexander’s blade. Enough o’ this muddle. We must put yah house in order, Cap’n Parry, ‘fore ya sink yourself through foolishness, and all else along wi’ you.

  Parry did not even have to turn to know who it was who spoke, though he had not had the pleasure since his first attack. Merely inclined his head her way, all at once on best behavior, and acknowledged, with as great a courtesy as he might muster—

  ...Miss Rusk, the inestimable Tante Ankolee. What is’t brings you here, madam?

  As this fool says, an’ in support o’ his arguments: because that yah done brung trouble on yaself, Jerusalem Parry—terrible trouble indeed, drawn up from deep places, for all it treat ya sweet and look on you wi’ love. More than she herself know, even, poor creature... not that ignorance ever any excuse for ill-doin’, as we all three o’ us well-know.

  Doctor Attesee’s corpse swum into view once more, mouthing its curious warning fragments: Oh, my poor girl... not her fault. Clione, my poor creature. And Parry found it easier by far to read between the lines of that palimpsest now, with the fit of love no longer immediately upon him. Staring down upon the too-fluid curve of his sleeping lover’s spine, vertebrae sharp-raised as if poised to tear free and form a sea-trench eel’s dorsal fin, and knowing in his heart how it would have had to have been this way, all along. For who could ever feel pulled to him, in all his Cain-marked glory, who did not themselves bear such a taint in turn?

  Clione, taming Dolomance without intent and tracing the lines of power linked between Parry and his ship, all ignorant of their import, before laying a cooling hand on Parry’s sorest spots and folding him in, giving him so much delight he thought himself healed. Just like Rusk, in his way—so Devil-sure he could bend Parry to where he’d accept this bond he saw between ‘em, without even a pennyworth of proof to that premise. Dying still so unconvinced, in fact, that the grim manner of his execution freed the power he didn’t know he owned in one great burst of ill-wishing, a reel of spellwork which proved both first and last.

  She is not human at all, then. Parry said, sadly. Is she?

  Nah as such, no.

  There she sat, the shade of her anyhow, all decked out in her pagan finery—locked hair hung with bells, a bone through her blue-rimmed lip, and daring somehow to feel sorry for him, who’d once stood to take the pulpit, shepherd of every soul in the district! Who’d studied Greek and Latin, writ on holy things... by God, it was insupportable. Her with her green eyes and her tea-colored slave-girl’s skin, the set of her nose so much like Rusk’s own it made Parry want to break it with a single slap—

  (You are being ridiculous, Jerusalem, mabyn mine, his mother would have said, though, whenever some passion made him stamp and scream. Things are as they are; the world has its order, much as we may rue it. Not even magic can ever make it otherwise.)

  Prideful as always, therefore, he drew himself up, made himself cold and still. And put out a hand, demanding, that he might be the one ordering, rather than the reverse—

  So show me the truth of it, madam; I will believe it from you, if not from that “cousin” of yours. Show me it all.

  * * *

  That one time, Haelam Attesee, on th’ bounding main—surgeon o’ the Nymph, who study hard on nature for his own reward, an’ seek t’ steal the Sea’s own secrets from Her t’ gain him passin’ land-locked fame an’ fortune. That one time, he.

  Dredging the ocean wi’ a scoop-net of his own design, sent down along o’ the Nymph’s great anchor, in an uncharted corner of Her ever-changin’ waters. An’ one day, along wi’ all the usual muck an’ trash, he find something else entirely, drawn up from dark places: an egg made from jelly wi’ a skin, nah, a shell, which he raise up towards the light, feelin’ it warm in his hands. An’ as he do, he see something deep inside start t’ move, to change... to grow.

  One day more an’ that tiny thing a baby, whole an’ perfect-formed, hoverin’ inside the egg in its glass bottle, as it set on Doctor Attesee’s cabin desk. An’ the egg get bigger as the baby do, growing ‘til it fill the glass so full Doctor Attesee take an’ break th
e glass over an old hip-bath, pouring seawater in ‘til the egg float up unbroken yet an’ the baby open its eyes, blinking, making faces like it nah know whether it want to cry or nah—an’ smile at him, too, like it recognize his face.

  By the time a week gone, the egg split an’ a child come out, a little girl-baby. Two month later, that girl-baby a girl for true, tall up to Doctor Attesee’s waist. An’ so she keep on, growin’ and growin’, ‘til she as you see her now: a siren sure, made ta bend men to her will. Made ta tempt men to their death an’ take ‘em down with her, deep under, to that airless place from whence she born.

  The crew think her a sweet child when she still look like one, an’ treat her like they would have treated one of their own. But the minute she gain her maiden form an’ commence ta bleed, they perk up they heads, like sniffin’ dogs. First they start ta fight amongst ‘emselves, an’ then they turn on Doctor Attesee to get ta her, ta fill her full of their seed an’ see whah may grow of it—how can they help it, when she fillin’ th’ very air wi’ heat an’ botheration. An’ she, she know no better, bein’ lied to all her short life. For Doctor Attesee never want to tell her the truth, nah an’ risk him lose her love....

  An’ when the end come, how could he know where the Sea take her on to, once he commit her once more to Her own bosom? How Her currents would carry her on, ceaseless, ‘til that creature o’ yours recognize her an’ pledge her his fealty—pull her on through wrack an’ ruin ta where he know she best be welcomed—an’ lay her at last at your feet, Jerusalem Parry. You with your craft, powerful enough ta protect her ‘gainst all comers... not ta mention your ill-fatedness when it come ta such matters overall, forever doomed to be loved by those ya never can, or love them who never love you th’ exact same way in return....

  At these words, even in sleep’s tight grip, Parry gave his head one fierce rejecting shake, thinking: Who are you to say that, witch? Do you know my whole life, planned out before-hand? Perhaps I will never love at all, never having loved thus far, aside from she who bore me....