Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  “Mister Feferl, put Jootle aloft,” Nil said. “Let him yell if a beast comes our way tonight.”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Feferl said, running downstairs to wake the dozing monkey and, giving it a blanket and a small bag of coffee beans, he sent it up to the crow’s nest.

  “Ooeeaarr, Yaaa—ugh!” Lanning said, staggering up the stairs and looking down at the other aching members of watch two, who lay in ruins on the forecastle. “A python’s wrapped around the small of my back.”

  “Shut yer blubberin’, ya—ooogh!” Bultin winced as his back seized like a bear trap.

  Rollum was too tired to strum his mandolin as the beaming Senthellzia, her fiery hair let down over her shoulders, kneaded the prince’s grateful shoulders. All knew what had transpired there, and marveled at how game the fair Norlanian was to have fire left for Senthellzia who, for that matter, must have shot a thousand arrows that day.

  Rawley perched his left foot on the wedge built into his inner shin and pogoed smartly up the companion ladder to the fo’c’sle where his watch mates rolled in agony. His back was erect and he clenched his pipe in his teeth. He leaned against the starboard rail near the others and surveyed them lying on the deck, whistling a spritely tune. Shaking his head, the bald carpenter lit a punk off a lantern and fired up his pipe, puffing away as he hummed.

  The men hefted their heads off the deck and twisted their necks to look in his direction, annoyed to see the slave master who had driven them to this sorry state.

  Rawley flashed a grin at Bultin, who was slumped against the balusters. He blew a snake of blue smoke. “Look,” the carpenter exclaimed. “Blue Niveron!” He pointed north and smiled.

  “Of course it’s Niveron, you idiot,” Lanning snapped.

  Sowernut scowled. “How can you stand there stargazing?”

  “No reason to get snippy about it, Sowernut,” Rawley said, eyeing the young sailor, who was wadded up into a ball of pain.

  Lanning cranked his head around and saw Rawley wink before his neck gave out and his head banged on the deck.

  Rawley whistled a medley of cheery tunes as his mates moaned a miserable chorus.

  “You are not being weary?” Rollum asked.

  “Weary? Not with healing rocks in such plentiful supply.” Rawley smiled genially at the Norlanian prince and went back to whistling with gusto, giving it time to sink in.

  Bultin twitched. “What rock?”

  Rawley brushed a little sawdust off his elbow. “They work every time!” He blew a puff from his pipe.

  “What er you jawin’ about?” Lanning whined.

  “What rock?” Bultin repeated.

  “Why, the Cirilen-Stone, of course. Nothing shoos a man’s aches and pains away faster.” Rawley’s smile of appreciation spread across his face. “Why, I feel ten years younger!”

  Watching Rawley through the window of Lince’s cabin, Nil snickered. The others started wagering what the ship’s carpenter was up to, but Lince was less jovial as he screwed his eyes on the wily fellow.

  “A bit of larking might be good fer ’em, Mister Mate,” Nil said.

  Lince gritted his teeth as the Creature jumped from the table and climbed down the ladder. The first mate nodded in pride as his cat ran across the main deck and up the companionway to the foredeck.

  “The cat smells a rat.” Zee giggled.

  “That it did.” Lince toasted the Creature with a thimble of Zee’s medicine.

  “I wonder if this should be the Captain’s cabin,” Nil mused.

  “It pitches a bit,” said Lince, jealously. “Compared to alow.”

  “Yes, like a horse, I’ve noticed. Suits me fine. I wonder why I ever wanted the lower cabin. Check out yonder carpenter, Mister!” Nil laughed and elbowed Lince in his sore ribs.

  “What’s a Cirilen-Stone?” Lanning asked.

  “Give me the rock!” Bultin pounded the deck with his giant fist.

  Rawley shuddered to think of Bultin all lathered up at the end of this. “You mean to say you fellows don’t already use ’em?” The redheaded carpenter snorted. “By gosh, they’re everywhere, and you don’t even use ’em? Wait till I tell Grand-pappy Gilbobble back in the Blackberry Mountains of Hoddleferb, where my kin are from. He’ll have the hardiest belly laugh you ever saw!”

  “What are they?” Overly asked.

  “Gentlemen, Cirilen-Stones come from the Blackberry Mountains. Everyone there knows they cure a man’s complaints!”

  “Where?” snarled Bultin.

  Rawley relit his pipe carefully. “The Blackberry Mountains. Why, that’s where my kin have lived since—”

  “No!” yelled Bultin. “Where’s the rock?”

  Rawley pointed a finger as he puffed. The men’s eyes followed his finger to an overturned bucket on the deck. In a puddle next to the bucket sat a porous gray lump of rock.

  “’At’s a scrubstone,” Bultin growled.

  Sowernut sneered. “That’s just a holystone!”

  “Well now, Mister Know-It-All, why do ya think they call it a ‘holystone’, anyway?” said Rawley.

  Sowernut frowned.

  “It’s got holes!” said Bultin.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard in my whole life, Bultin,” Overly said.

  “Well,” Sowernut began to agree for once when he saw Bultin glare at him. “I’ve heard stupider.”

  “If ya take that yonder stone and rub it good and hard into your aching muscles and sinews and joints,” Rawley explained, spreading his hands in bliss, “all the pain melts away! Of course, you have to dig in deep and do it right. You have to get in there, where it counts, and really go at it.” Rawley flicked a speck of sawdust from his shirt and patted his chest. “A little pain and you’re right as rain, as the saying goes back home. Yes, sir!” Rawley smiled. “I feel fit as a Polwairn!”

  There was a pause as the men of the second watch eyeballed the carpenter and the scrubstone. Rawley started whistling light as a sparrow. His relief seemed as real as the men’s anguish.

  One of them made a lurch toward the bucket, and then they all converged, colliding over the holystone and landing in a pitiful pile. Bultin rose from the heap, holding the rock. “Git yer own!”

  The others scrambled in search of more holystones, to the amazement of the other watches.

  Undaunted, the men of watch two gathered back on the fo’c’sle before Rawley, each with a scrubstone clutched in their hands.

  “Now!” Rawley said, pausing to blow a row of smoke rings. “Commence rubbin’!” His gold tooth glinted as he grinned in the Second Moon’s light.

  Bultin wailed as he reached back one arm to grind the rock into the knotted small of his back.

  The others twisted the rocks into inflamed muscles, resolved to endure immediate pain for the relief Rawley guaranteed. Twisting, contorted, they screwed the rocks into sore hollows, crooks and tendons to get at that “one spot.” Even Sowernut gave it a vigorous go, and, as two men teetered and lost their balance, crashing onto the deck in agony, they all continued to dig the rocks deeper into their tortured flesh, squirming, whimpering and hollering out.

  The other watches observed with glee as the men of watch two performed their bizarre contortions, floundering in outlandish postures. The sailor’s faces burned as they noticed their guffawing shipmates, but ridicule was not their only worry now: a burning suspicion began giving to an ominous dread.

  “Harder, Mates,” Rawley encouraged them. “You’ve got to lose in order to win, remember!” The red-bearded carpenter lit another splint to spark his pipe. “Dig DEEP, lads! You’re not there yet!”

  The sailors gritted their teeth and buckled down, believing more in Rawley if only to save their pride now as they drilled the rough rocks deeper into backs and shoulders and necks, scraping their skin raw, determined to withstand short-term pain for long-lasting relief.

  Bultin groaned as he sprawled to gouge the rock into a knot in his calf and his back seized up. Like a mighty oak,
the sailor toppled over and crashed on the deck, bellowing in excruciating pain, and Rawley, suddenly, erupted in laughter.

  A volcano of sparks blasting from the bowl of his pipe over them.

  His grim watch mates froze—in unfortunate positions before the whole crew on the forecastle—as they looked at the chortling carpenter.

  Sowernut closed his eyes.

  “He be doing it to us, again,” Rollum said.

  “No,” Lanning said.

  Senthellzia, who had observed the outlandish proceedings with misgivings, clucked in pity now.

  Lanning lunged for Rawley, but Rawley was too quick.

  He was already sailing through the air off his spring-loaded leg and bouncing down the ladderway. The Creature hissed at him, having blended into the railing, giving Rawley a start even as the others stampeded behind.

  Rawley pivoted toward them on the mid-deck and faced them boldly. “Many of you are too afraid to admit the power of the Cirilen-Stone!” he declared. “And some are too timid to believe that even now its power courses through your veins repairing all the weary parts. Even though you can’t feel it, aye, it’s happening as I speak! Alas, many will always be blind to the healing powers of the Cirilen-Stone.”

  “I feel better,” Bultin said, blinking his beady eyes and touching the small of his back.

  Rawley winked. “See? Ask Bultin!”

  Overly touched his back. “Why… it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt in my whole life.”

  “In a way,” said Sowernut.

  “Wait a minute, you slimy-tongued hagfish!” Lanning said. “You’re not getting away with this!”

  Rawley turned and sprang off his leg with a cackle and saw Lince, standing square in his way.

  Lince helped him stop with a hand on his shoulder. “How are repairs farin’ alow, Mister Carpenter?”

  Rawley never thought he’d be relieved to see the first mate. “Well apace, Mister Neery-Atten! I was just headed back down there.”

  “In that case, Mister Skarmillion, the Captain requests your company, sir, for a libation.”

  Rawley grinned. “Why, thank you, Mister Neery-Atten! I believe I’ll oblige.” He turned with a salute to the men and walked in a springing limp beside Lince to the captain’s cabin.

  The other watches applauded as he passed and the men of watch two glowered after him, vowing revenge.

  “Can ya climb a ladder, Mister Skarmillion,” Lince asked.

  “Faster than most, Mister Neery-Atten. Thanks to my leg.” Rawley skillfully propelled himself up the ladder to the first mate’s cabin where the Captain, second mate, and ship’s surgeon toasted him. “Thank you, most kindly, gentlemen.” Rawley blushed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been so mean tired as I am this moment.” The carpenter pulled off his cap and fell into a seat.

  The others laughed, heartily.

  “A fine job today and a fair lark just now, sir,” Nil congratulated him. “You do this ship proud.”

  “Cheers,” Karlok winked, tipping his glass.

  Lince put a drink in Rawley’s hand. “You’re made of hard stuff, Mister Carpenter, I’ll grant. And you’ve done a fine job today. But I swear I’ll personally saw off your other leg if I catch you pullin’ another trick on this vessel, by the Gairanor.”

  Zee had been chuckling ever since Rawley came into the room. “They looked a fine rafter of turkeys!”

  They all had a raucous laugh and Rawley took a refill of medicine from the Sarkish doctor, letting down his guard a little. “I guarantee you that half of them still believe me, and the other half half-believe me!” Rawley laughed a devilish laugh.

  At last, his wounded watch mates hobbled off to their beds and only then did he dare leave the bridge to go below and relieve the shift, bringing on another to effect repairs, which were still far from complete.

  After everyone but the night watch had gone below, Nil, Lince and Karlok studied the chart unrolled on the table in Lince’s cabin.

  Nil shook his head. “Time, Lince.”

  “Aye.”

  “Two days out, and we’re not halfway! Eight dead, five injured—we’re down to 57 able bodies, and the Sea Mare’s lucky to be afloat.”

  “As long as Trevin’s statue lights up when we’re in danger, he’s still alive, I reckon,” Karlok said.

  Nil sighed. “Let’s hope. We leave before dawn, and bless Rawley, he better have the hull mended. I’ll wake you.” Nil stepped onto the ladder to climb down to his cabin.

  “I’ll wake you,” Lince said.

  After Nil blew out the lantern by his bed, he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. But his sleep was filled with dreams of frantic action inside a trap of his own design made of endless battles and labors that required ever more skill and concentration to escape, even as Lelinair fell ever farther from his sight over the waves, until his eyes cracked open at Lince’s stout knock overhead.

  Chapter 25

  Damsel in Distress

  The dawning sun lit arms of cloud orange as if the Gyre’s ghost grasped the sky over the horizon behind them. To the northwest, the isle of the Crystal Dragon was still swathed in fog.

  They weighed anchor before repairs were finished and shifted the ballast in the hold while shifting sail as they sliced due east to keep her heeled with the wind. Nil was determined to pass north of the island ahead, though he could not take her further north while the Sea Mare’s wounds were being repaired.

  Rawley crawled onto the new bowsprit and tied a thick line around it that was fastened to a harness. He swung under the spar and took the battered figurehead, now repaired, from Bultin. With his wooden knee planted against the bow, he pegged the neighing mare to the knighthead. The men on the foredeck sent up hoorays as Rawley climbed back aboard.

  “Mister Skarmillion, how long till the hull is repaired?” Nil asked from the bridge.

  “My men are working full tilt, Captain. A few hours yet.”

  Nil gritted his teeth. “Hurry it up if you please!”

  Tobbs ran up the companionway to the foredeck, sending a spontaneous wave of laughter over the men. He disregarded them as he approached Rawley. “Mister Skarmillion!”

  Rawley ducked and pretended not to see the young scientist as he coiled a leftover length of line to stow below.

  “Mister Skarmillion, sir!” Tobbs tapped Rawley on the back. “It’s been a full day!”

  “Why, the day’s just begun, young Tobbs!” This brought a fresh round of guffaws as Rawley swiveled around on his wooden foot.

  “No sir, I mean… Don’t you remember? The experiment!”

  The men within earshot gathered around.

  “You look a mite queasy, lad,” Rawley noted.

  Tobbs had endured 24 hours of mockery since shaving his eyebrows and sprinkling the shavings carefully into two cups of brine, just as Rawley instructed. “The three-headed fish, sir!”

  “Ah, yes! Of course. Surely you’ve spilled yer cups with the way things have been goin’ in the fo’c’sle, there, eh, lad? Such a pity.”

  “No, sir!” Tobbs said. “I devised a way to keep the cups from spilling by affixing them to a set of scales on a swiveling base of my own design.”

  “Mmm, yeah, you would do that,” Rawley said, pursing his lips. “Usin’ yer head, I see.”

  “Thank you, sir! It worked perfectly, I must say.”

  “Imagine. Clever lad!”

  “I assume from your instructions that it’s time to bring the specimens above deck for inspection. I can’t see anything, really, below deck…”

  “You’ve done everything right, Tobbs. Since I’ve got a moment, bring them up, and be careful not to spill a drop. Then we’ll get a rare glimpse of the notorious, astounding and dumbfounding three-headed fish!”

  Rawley’s spirited advertisement to the other men gave Tobbs a jolt of confidence, and he sprinted to his cabin to retrieve his specimens, along with some measure of his dignity.

  Since the ship wa
s profiting from a steady wind and neatly rigged and heeled, a number of the crew crowded forward to watch the show as Tobbs emerged from the fo’c’sle with his two cups of seawater and eyebrow shavings. The going had been rough up the companionway as the bow smote a set of swells, but Tobbs showed a remarkable sense of balance as he conveyed his precious cargo to Rawley, who puffed on his pipe as he approached.

  “Well, Mister Skarmillion, here they are,” Tobbs announced.

  “Congratulations.” Rawley leaned forward and squinted on the sloping deck. “Hold up the mugs side-by-side, lad, and peer down into them with your eyes real wide!”

  The crew fell silent as Tobbs held the mugs side-by-side and squinted.

  “Open yer eyes real wide, now! What do you see?”

  “I can’t see anything… wait! No. Just an eyebrow hair. Wait. Umm… I’m afraid I can’t see a thing…”

  “You’re lookin’ too deep. Pull back a bit. What do you see, looking back at you out of the water?”

  Tobbs looked intently, his face distressed. “I don’t see… anything!”

  “Hold the cups perfectly still, and when the water stops rippling, what do you see, eh?” Rawley coaxed.

  “Apart from my own reflection, nothing at all.”

  “And no eyebrows?”

  “Eh… ?”

  “Like a fish?”

  “Uh…”

  “And yer mouth’s wide open, too?”

  “Yes…”

  “And there’s two of ya, side-by-side?”

  “Right…”

  “Plus yer own head. Right?”

  “Um…”

  “Go like this.” Rawley pursed his lips like he was blowing smoke rings. Tobbs mimicked him, hopefully. “Eyes real wide! Now look in the water and do it,” said Rawley.

  Tobbs did, making O’s with his lips.

  No one could hold it in any longer.

  “Looks like a three-headed fish to me!” Rawley hooted, and red sparks spouted from his pipe.

  “Oh,” Tobbs said. “Fish have no eyebrows… Yes. So, I’m the fish.” As he realized it was all a sailor’s jest he turned seven shades of pink, red and purple, and yet, somehow, the pride his father instilled in him as a man of science allowed him to concede all mistakes in search of truth, and so, finally, he laughed—which won him more respect than any other thing he might have done. The gathered sailors patted him stoutly on the back in congratulation as he shared in the joke and learned more, perhaps, than he might have from the discovery of a new fish.