Polaris

by Michael Northrop

  “Here it is,” said Henry. “ ‘Chapter Thirty: Fungal Spores.’ ”

  “Sounds fascinating,” said Thacher sarcastically.

  “I assure you,” said Henry, flipping to a page of illustrations, “it is very compelling.”

  “Well,” admitted Owen, “you certainly have our attention now.”

  “Good,” said Henry. “Then we’ll begin. Owen, could you turn the lamp up, please.”

  “How high?” said Owen, reaching out for the lamp as it swung lightly from its perch above the table.

  “As high as it will go,” said Henry, rising once more.

  Emma eyed the contraption next to the book. It was about a foot tall and looked a bit like a piece of navigation equipment. She noticed that there was a glass lens to look through at the top. “What is that device?” she asked.

  “It is a microscope,” said Henry.

  “What is it for?” she asked.

  Henry considered the question as he returned from his trunk with a stack of small objects. “It is a bit like Owen’s spyglass,” he said, “but for objects that are exceedingly near.”

  “Why would you need a spyglass for objects that are nearby?” asked Owen.

  “Because those objects are exceedingly small,” said Henry, handing each of the others a small object. “Careful, they are fragile,” he said. “Glass.”

  Emma took hers carefully and looked at it. It was a small rectangle made of thin glass. “What are we to do with these?” she asked.

  “Just a bit of spit, right in the center, please,” said Henry.

  He wants me to spit on it? thought Emma. This all seemed so strange. For a moment she thought she might be too nervous to work up any spit. Her mouth felt like cotton. She managed by thinking of her favorite food: a good duff pudding.

  The others managed as well, though some with more accuracy than others.

  “All right,” said Henry. “Who’s first?”

  No one volunteered. Emma looked around and saw the others holding their little squares of spit as if they were made of gold. Maybe I should just get it over with, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak up. What if it’s me? Inhaling deeply, she knew that she certainly didn’t smell like perfume, but she had felt a bit clumsier than usual lately. She’d chalked it up to soreness and fatigue, but what if …

  “Fine,” said Henry. “I’ll go first.”

  He held up one of the glass rectangles. “A slide,” he said, then promptly spit on it. He wiped the edge with a bit of cloth and then placed another slide over the top of the first, sealing the gob in place in a sort of slide sandwich.

  Emma watched with equal parts fascination and fear as he slid the slides onto the little platform near the base of the microscope. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  Henry had begun to bend down over the scope, but now he looked up, seemingly grateful for the delay. “I’m looking for any sign of fungal growth,” he said. “The spores, of course, or perhaps some sort of fibrous growth.”

  Fibrous growth … The phrase both confused and scared Emma. In her mind, she pictured a poisonous bush.

  Henry ignored her sour expression and continued. “I got the idea from the creatures themselves. The tongues of both were, well, fuzzy. The mouth seems to be a focal point for the infection—a good, moist breeding ground—as I am sure those white fibers are fungal in nature. I have seen their like before, growing upon the sides of fish.”

  Emma considered vomiting. Fortunately, Henry stopped talking and bent down over his microscope. The group seemed to hold its collective breath as Henry put his eye up to the lens. He was silent for a few long seconds. The seconds grew. Henry adjusted something on the scope.

  “Well?” said Owen at last.

  Henry looked up and blinked a few times. Then he broke into a smile. “Well, I am definitely in need of a good dental cleaning, but I see no signs of the organism.”

  This seemed to embolden the others, and suddenly everyone was holding out their slide for inspection. Everyone except Emma.

  Henry reached out and plucked Owen’s slide from his hand, bypassing both Thacher and Maria, who were closer. Something had changed between Henry and Owen, Emma realized. The two were more or less complete opposites and had instantly distrusted each other at the start of the voyage. But now? They seemed to share a sort of mutual respect. She would almost venture to call it friendship.

  Trust, though, was in short supply. Henry had slipped a black glove onto his right hand to handle the saliva-strewn slides.

  He carefully covered Owen’s slide and placed it under the microscope.

  Once again, Emma held her breath and stared. Suddenly, she felt something prodding into her side. She looked over to see Owen holding the pistol by its barrel and poking her with the handle.

  “What on earth?”

  “Just take it,” he said. “In case it’s me.”

  She nodded and took the gun from him, wrapping her hand around the smooth wood of its handle. If the fungus was in him—if it was in any of them—it was a death sentence. Who could say what desperate acts that might provoke? But could I possibly shoot this boy? She stole another glance. How could she put a lead ball between such perfect brown eyes?

  She could only hope she wouldn’t have to. Once again, they all turned to Henry, who was already bent over his work. “Hmmm,” he said, and just as everyone was parsing the sound of it—was that a good “hmmm” or a bad “hmmm”?—he looked up brightly.

  “You can give him his gun back, Emma.”

  There was a collective exhale. As she gave Owen his gun back, she realized the real reason Henry had chosen Owen first. He would be the enforcer. They had both been cleared. Now Henry could serve as the judge, with Owen, at least potentially, as the executioner.

  Maria was up next.

  Emma said a silent prayer. Please, dear Lord, not her.

  It wasn’t. As Emma crossed herself, Thacher was already handing over his slide.

  “And what if I fail?” he asked.

  Henry took the slide with his gloved hand and said flatly, “Then you are already dead.”

  The words went off like a cannon in Emma’s mind as Henry pressed his eye up to the lens. Emma watched with the others, but she already felt alone. She still clutched her slide tightly in one hand, the thin glass edges threatening to add blood to the little island of spit at its center.

  She looked over at Thacher. He was standing straight and still, his mouth pressed flat and his eyes shut, as if he were standing on the gallows about to be hanged. It occurred to her with a certain horror that Henry could say anything he wanted. No one else would know what to look for, or even how to look. She watched him fiddle with the top of the tube, adjusting some sensitive mechanism or other.

  The two boys had never gotten along, she thought, and now Thacher’s life was in Henry’s black-gloved hand …

  Henry looked up abruptly and stared at Thacher. Finding his eyes closed, he called his name: “Thacher!”

  Thacher flinched visibly but opened his eyes. “What did you see?” he whispered, and Emma was almost touched by the amount of faith he seemed to have in the strange device.

  “I’m a bit concerned,” Henry began, causing the others to take a step back from Thacher. “It looks like your gums are bleeding, and it could be a sign of scurvy.”

  Thacher snorted out a laugh and then said, “There’s plenty of fruit in Cuba.”

  “That was cruel,” said Maria.

  Henry hadn’t been able to resist a bit of revenge after all, but he pretended not to know what she was talking about. “Emma?” he said.

  Emma’s heart was pounding so hard that it seemed as if it was trying to escape her chest. Her hand shook visibly under the bright light as she extended her slide toward Henry. She was relieved when he took it quickly, but once he had it, she didn’t know what to do with herself. Should she stand as Thacher had, braced for the fatal words?

  A warm hand slipped sl
owly around hers. She looked over. It was her sister. The two would end this voyage as they had started it, shoulder to shoulder. Maria gave Emma’s hand a quick squeeze and Emma squeezed back.

  Suddenly, Henry looked up. He turned his head toward Emma, and she was the first to see the look in his eyes. Is it astonishment or …

  “You are fine,” he said, before widening his gaze to take in the rest of the crew. “We are all fine.”

  No, not astonishment, Emma realized. Relief.

  Thacher started laughing out of pure joy and gratitude, and the others joined in, acknowledging for the first time just how scared they’d truly been.

  “Still one more crew mate to test,” said Owen, who had corralled Daffy and now lifted the ship’s cat onto the table. The laughter increased.

  “How are we going to get any spit out of her?” said Thacher.

  “Just wait a moment,” said Owen, still holding her in place. “She’ll hiss.”

  Instead, Henry rubbed a slide against Daffy’s raspy cat tongue and cleared her too.

  Emma laughed along with the others and gave Daffy a nice scratch behind the ears. There was still danger on board the Polaris, she knew, but that danger was lurking somewhere outside this cabin. It was danger from without and not from within.

  That was the kind of danger they could fight. And looking around at this strange community they had built—this strange group that had fractured and somehow formed again—she knew they would do that fighting together.

  Owen looked out over the bow one more time and saw the massive island of Cuba spreading across the horizon. It was long but still little more than a fuzzy green line in the distance. Now that they had finally decided to head for shore, the heavy, waterlogged ship was being maddeningly slow about getting there. Owen could practically hear its innards slosh back and forth as it rolled over the small coastal swells. Making matters worse, the current wanted to push them to the west and what wind there was seemed to agree.

  I used to want that too, he thought.

  “We’ll have to come in at an angle!” he called back to Maria at the wheel.

  She eyed him suspiciously.

  “Yes, do it,” called Emma from across the deck. “We’ll cover more sea but still get there faster. Just a few points to the west.”

  Owen thanked Emma with a lift of his chin as Maria began to turn the ship. The others went about their tasks. During a lull in the wind, Owen heard a crash from within the cabin and winced. Thacher was ransacking it for anything valuable enough to sell and light enough to get through the waves to shore. They would sell the family silver after all …

  The task should have been Owen’s, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he’d drawn the short straw and landed the job that should have belonged to the former powder monkey. He knelt back down and finished wrestling the barrel of gunpowder out of the shadowy interior of the low forecastle. He lugged it free and then began rolling it carefully across the unstable deck. The mutineers had tried to blow up the ship once, and they had failed. Owen himself had helped see to that. The idea of completing their work cast a shadow over his thoughts.

  He rolled the barrel up against the mainmast and lashed it in place. Then he took out his knife and began carving a small hole in the top for the fuse. Once he’d finished, he looked up at the sawed-off end of the port-side mainsail yard. It felt like a lifetime ago that the thing had cracked. He felt a sudden, almost crushing tenderness for the Polaris.

  Any sailor will tell you that a ship has a soul. The give of the wood, the creak of the metal, the whistling of the ropes, and the snap of the canvas—even the way it rides across the waves … At times it can seem more alive than any single member of the crew.

  And now, he thought, dropping his eyes, we are going to blow it to smithereens.

  He pressed his palm against the warm wood of the mast for just a moment. Then he straightened up and went to get a length of fuse from the gun locker. As he did, he crossed paths with Emma, who was on her way to the toolshed.

  “Time for the saw,” she said.

  Owen nodded solemnly. Before they could blow up the ship, they still had to subject her to a few last indignities.

  Next, he passed Henry, who was cutting up old sailcloth to make a sturdy sack to hold their valuables and necessities in the water. In addition to attempting to blow her up, the mutineers had also robbed the Polaris of her last boat. Now the young crew would have to improvise to get to shore. It would not be a dry journey.

  He crossed the quarterdeck and braced himself for what he was about to see as he pushed open the door to the cabin. Sure enough, Thacher had turned the place upside down in his quest for loot. Owen shook his head sadly as Thacher dropped another handful of trinkets onto a growing pile in the center of the table.

  “Don’t forget the navigation equipment,” Owen said glumly. “Valuable and easy to sell.”

  “Oh, yes! Thanks!” said Thacher with a bit of greedy glee in his voice.

  Owen searched through the gun locker. The guns themselves had been lost to the mutiny, and the cannonballs, powder, and such were mostly kept below deck. But he knew that some spare cordage was always kept in the locker—it was, after all, the single driest place on board the ship. He found a coil of thick black fuse slumbering like a serpent on the bottom shelf and began unspooling some.

  “A goodly length, please,” said Thacher. “We will want some time.”

  Owen shrugged. “How much time will it take to jump overboard?”

  Thacher released a small, surprising chuckle.

  “I brought the sack,” said Henry, appearing at the door.

  And as he did, a chill shot through Owen. He had a bad feeling about all of this. It wasn’t a feeling of sadness this time but of danger. At first, he didn’t understand it, and then he did. They were standing around, chatting amiably, not moving with any real urgency, not watching their backs. And with three of them in the cabin, they had left only two on deck.

  The next sound he heard was the splintering crack of wood.

  “Oh no!” he breathed.

  With four feet of curling fuse in one hand and his pistol in the other, he rushed toward the deck, praying he was not already too late.

  Emma was standing on the bulwark, trying to figure out how to swing herself up into the rigging with a heavy saw in one hand, when she heard the wood begin to shatter. The sound was coming from the forecastle this time, and she swung her head that way.

  The forward hatch, she realized. The one without the spikes and nails.

  She watched as it was obliterated by a brutal assault from below. There were two quick blows, and with each, the boards bent and broke and pulled free of their moorings. Then a third, stronger blow, and the boards all but exploded outward. A black gap appeared at the center of the hatch, and the creature’s gruesome head pushed upward into the sunlight. Obed’s face in its dark red helmet peered out from under two bobbing antennas.

  She gasped as his eyes—blood-red where they had once been white—locked onto hers. Suddenly, a scream. Maria, no! thought Emma, but it was too late. Obed’s eyes swung around and stared down the deck at the hobbled sister at the helm.

  “Get out of there!” Emma yelled as the creature launched itself up out of its hole and across the deck. All six legs, fully grown and formed now, tore across the wooden deck in a skittering, off-balance run. It was a fast but rhythmless gallop that made Emma queasy.

  “Maria, please!” she called back. Finally tearing her eyes free from the mesmerizing horror she turned to look for her sister. Instead, she heard the cabin door slam open and saw Owen rush out onto the deck. He was running at full speed toward the racing creature. The giant insectoid adjusted its course, away from the wheel and toward the boy. They would collide in seconds. Emma held her breath. The monster rose up, lifting its front legs like battle-axes as it raced forward on the other four.

  Owen fired. A sharp crack and a cloud of smoke.

  Emma watched
the beast, hoping to see it crumple to the deck. Instead—ping!—the lead ball ricocheted off the thick armor plating of its thorax. She heard the deflected projectile whistle past her, just a few feet from her head, and smelled its burn in the salty air.

  The creature brought its forelimbs down, splintering the wood where Owen had just been. Through the clearing smoke, Emma saw him tumble toward the rail in a heavy, thumping somersault. He rose as the creature pivoted toward him, bending from its strangely thin waist and rising onto its hind legs, towering above him. Owen responded by flinging the empty pistol at it like a tomahawk.

  Surprisingly, his aim was much better with the weapon empty. The butt of the pistol smacked heavily into what had once been Obed’s forehead. The creature staggered backward, and Owen made the most of the opportunity. He vaulted onto the top rope of the railing and from there scrambled easily into the ratlines.

  The creature recovered quickly, but Owen was already well out of reach. It released an angry hiss, showing its fuzzy white tongue to the sky. The creature wheeled back toward the helm, but Maria, mercifully, had already managed to drag herself up into the rigging on the other side.

  Emma took a long overdue breath and, having looped the saw handle through her rope belt, began to climb herself. She was sure the armor-plated creature was too heavy to climb these ropes, and that its barbed feet would cut through them regardless.

  The creature seemed to realize this too. Rising to its full height, it raged at them all. Its hideous hissing was an utterly inhuman sound, and yet somehow it issued forth from the chapped lips of a boyish face.

  And then, with profoundly awful timing, Henry and Thacher poked their heads out of the cabin to see what was going on. “No, go back!” called Owen, but it was too late. The creature swung around instantly and began charging toward the door. From her place alongside the mainmast, Emma heard Henry say something like “EEEEP!”

  She watched as the two boys retreated, slamming the cabin door behind them. But one look at the charging creature told her the door wasn’t nearly thick enough. She watched in horror until a voice broke the spell. “Saw it down!” called Owen. “We can’t help them from up here, and it won’t take the thing long to realize it can bring down these masts!”