Chapter 8: The Unicorn

 

 

“BEST STAY CLOSE TO BOY AND ME,” the old man told Leonard that night. “Don’t go alone. Never.”

Munny and Leonard followed the old man down the hatch to wrap up in rough blankets, trying to drive away the chill of the water that had so nearly overwhelmed them. Once more Munny was painfully aware of the silent wall between him and the other sailors. He felt their gazes, felt the fear pulsing through the Kulap Kanya like the thud of his own heart.

He shivered in his blanket. The face of the woman in the water was clear in his memory: a beautiful face, a wild face. A face without mercy.

Risafeth. The Vengeful One.

Munny shivered uncontrollably. But it wasn’t fear for his own life that shook him to the bones. He looked sideways up at the brown foreigner, likewise shivering, his face full of ignorance, unaware of everything, unaware of his danger.

If he is not given over, I will never see Lunthea Maly. I will never give Mother the white peonies.

In the darkness of the sailors’ sleeping cabin, Munny sat on the rolling floor beneath his hammock, Leonard on one side, the old man on the other. And he felt as though Death himself surrounded him in suffocating embrace. There could be no good end to this. There could be no good choice, no right choice.

Risafeth the Vengeful ruled this ocean.

“Sleep now,” the old man said, helping Munny up into his hammock. “Our watch begins soon, and we will work, and we will guard that with which we have been entrusted.” He addressed himself to Leonard and spoke in Westerner. “Sleep, Fool.”

So they climbed into their beds and lay sleepless until the bell called them for their watch. When at last they rose and returned to the world above deck, they found the sea becalmed.

Until that day, the Kulap Kanya had enjoyed fair breezes and swift progress out of Chiara Bay, as if Risafeth were willing to overlook all disobedience and speed their journey onward. The goddess was no longer feeling so lenient.

Surrounding the ship was a dead sea. All was unnaturally still. The battened sails strained against empty sky to catch even the faintest breath of wind, but there was none to be caught. Munny, standing under the silent sky, felt sick to his stomach. It took him a moment to realize why: The ship did not roll on the waves.

Staggering uncertainly, as though he had returned to land, Munny made his way to the rails and looked over the side. He gasped at what he saw, and his knees buckled, nearly betraying him.

For the sea was completely still. Flat without the faintest ripple of tide or current, without even a hint of churning foam in the ship’s wake. It had all turned to mirror glass, a perfect reflection of the clouds above, so that the poor boy felt dizzy, unable to tell up from down.

He sank to his knees, his face pressed between the railing bars. “Light of the Lordly Sun!” he prayed, but without focus, without meaning, purely in fear.

The old man took him by the shoulder. “Come back, Munny. Don’t look at the sea. It will drive you mad if you gaze upon its face at this time.”

Munny allowed himself to be pulled away. He could meet neither the old man’s nor the stowaway’s eyes but stood with his head bowed, his heart hammering in his throat. All he could hear was his mother’s voice, lost and far away, whispering:

 

“Where did my good boy go?

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea . . . .”

For days on end, the world remained thus. The sky moved: the sun, the moon, the stars, and the few scattered clouds. But the world beneath the sky remained as though frozen. The sailors of the Kulap Kanya were like those lost out of their time, wandering in a slice of existence between realities. Madness lurked on the borders of each mind, waiting to devour any who wandered astray.

So they worked their daily tasks, they followed the routines tolled out by the ship’s bells. They watched their water supply lower, their food supply dwindle. But they did not complain.

Instead they looked to the quarterdeck where Captain Sunan stood every day from sunup to sundown. He alone of all the crew dared stare into the face of that impenetrable sea. And if he was mad, he had been so for so long that no one knew the difference.

“You will see,” the old man whispered to Munny again and again during those horrible days. “Captain will do the right thing. At the right time.”

The whispers among the crew grew daily more bitter, more insistent. “He’ll kill us all if he waits!” Chuo-tuk was heard saying. But Tu Bahurn cuffed him and told him to be silent.

The Captain had his reasons. The Captain must be trusted. Or all hope would be lost.

“You will see,” the old man said. “In time, you will see.”

But see what? Munny wondered. Would the Captain at long last go back on his word to the stowaway? Would he, when the last cask of fresh water ran dry, give in to the demands of the tithe and toss Leonard into that dead-calm sea? Did a promise matter if it was made to a devil-ridden foreigner?

“He can’t. He can’t do it!” Munny whispered to himself. He sat in the lookout on his hour of watch. This was the worst, the very worst place of all during that cursed time: up so close to the sun, with nothing but still, still ocean as far as his eyes could see. The haze of the Continent to the north was gone. It was all too easy for Munny to believe that there was no Continent anymore, no dry land, no home to which he would return.

It was all too easy to believe that Risafeth herself would break the surface of the endless water and swallow them whole.

“But he can’t do it,” Munny whispered, blinking against the hugeness and the glare in his eyes. Below him, the sails were still and the riggers sat idly beside their lines, waiting for a wind, waiting for a task.

Waiting for a death.

“If the Captain gives in,” Munny said to himself, clenching his small hands into fists, “I will fight. I will fight them all! We have come too far to give Lhe-nad up now.”

He felt the madness of silence laughing at his futile protestations. His head was light, and a wretched pain stabbed behind his eyes. He sat with his back to the mast, and he might as well have been in his own bed back home, so quiet was the world around him. He tilted his face to the sky, closing his eyes, and tried once more to offer a prayer. “Light of the Lordly Sun,” he whispered. “Light of the Lordly Sun.”

When he opened his eyes again, he beheld a sight not meant for mortals.

He had heard tell of such creatures before, within the first few days of his service. The Lauté Dara, the Water Stars, they were called. The children of the moon who long ages ago had shot from the heavens and landed in the deeps of the sea. There they mistook the welcome warmth of the vast ocean for their heavenly home and lived and sang as small reflections of their celestial brethren above. They were beautiful; they were magical; they were a gift and blessing to any man who saw them.

Munny saw one now. He saw it because of the wake it caused, the first ripple upon that still ocean in days. At first he did not know what it was, for it was too far away. But it drifted closer, as though propelled to meet the Kulap Kanya where she was stranded beneath the sky.

Munny stood up and leaned over the lookout rail. He opened his mouth to cry out, but he had no voice. How could he speak when he looked upon that which should never be seen in the mortal world? Perhaps the ship was no longer in the mortal world but had been transported to some horrible Between, where the Dara themselves could live alongside mortals.

Live . . . and die.

For Munny now saw, as the form upon the water drew near, that its throat had been torn out.

What a thing of grace! What a thing of exquisite beauty! White, but more than white, with a hide like mother-of-pearl, catching and refracting a million colors. A long mane and a longer tail, spinning and twirling like silken scarves of softest, wildest foam. The neck, once so elegantly arched, now ripped and shredded. And the proud horn which had protruded from its brow, now broken.

Sailors gathered below. Munny did not need to call out to them, to tell them of what drifted past. They gathered of their own accord, as if summoned, and looked down in solemn horror to watch the sea unicorn float by and away. All of them knew what it was without being told. Had they not dreamed of it every night they had stood watch beneath the vast arch of heaven? Had they not all believed they heard the stars of the water singing back to the stars in the sky, and had the song not buoyed the spirits of even the most desperate, the most jaded man?

Even so did the sight of the dead unicorn cripple the hearts of those who looked upon it. After it passed the Kulap Kanya, they turned to watch it disappear over the horizon into a wall of brewing storm clouds.

The sight of those clouds brought Munny out of the trance into which he had fallen. A storm! A storm was coming! That meant wind and release from this chain-like calm. He should ring the bell, he should shout the alert.

But he could not bring himself to interrupt the heartbroken silence below. So instead, he swung himself over the rail and climbed down the mast, nimble as a squirrel. He could feel the tension of brewing anger in the sailors as he neared the deck, as a lobster must feel the nearing heat of boiling water.

Just as Munny’s feet touched the wooden boards, the thread of the thin spell that had held the Kulap Kanya entranced suddenly snapped. And the first voice spoke:

“It’s a curse! It’s a curse upon us all!”

Others followed, bubbling up in a roiling tumult of fear and agitation.

“Risafeth’s fury! Risafeth’s wrath! Risafeth’s vengeance!”

“We must give her what she asks!”

“The tithe!”

“The tithe!”

“The tithe!”

Munny elbowed and jostled his way through the throng, searching for the old man, searching for Leonard. He told himself he heard Leonard’s strange voice rising up from among the others, and he made for that. Then suddenly he did hear Leonard, and he was shouting like a mad animal.

“Oi! What do you think you’re doing? Put me down! I say, put me down!”

Chuo-tuk and another brawny sailor had caught the foreigner by his arms and hauled him from his feet. Munny had a fleeting glimpse of the stowaway being carried through the crowd toward the stern rail. Munny screamed ineffectually, his voice lost in the continued shouts of:

“The tithe!”

“The tithe!”

“The tithe!”

This was it then. This was the end of the clown, the devil-man. Even as the storm clouds built upon the horizon, the crew would cast him overboard and pray that Risafeth would be appeased.

“Stop!” Munny shouted.

At the same time a much louder voice seemed to fill the very sails themselves with its power.

“Stop.”

The Captain stood above them on the quarterdeck, looking down upon the scene. He lifted one hand, its long finger pointed at Chuo-tuk and the other sailor, who had Leonard halfway over the rail. “Put him down,” the Captain said.

Neither sailor dared to protest. They set their captive on his feet and backed away, blending into the crowd.

The Captain’s silence weighed upon the Kulap Kanya with as much iron force as his gaze. He beckoned to Leonard, speaking then in Westerner, “Come to me, Leonard the Fool. Come to me while you still can.”

Leonard wasted no time. The sailors parted to let him through, and he met the Captain on the quarterdeck stairs. “Go to my cabin,” the Captain said. Even as he spoke, the first of the storm winds touched his face, blew strands of his long black hair out behind him. “Wait inside.”

The stowaway obeyed, and the Captain turned to face his crew.

“I gave my word,” he said. “When I gave my word, it was the word of the Kulap Kanya. You are all part of the Kulap Kanya. You are all part of my word.”

“But the tithe!” cried out someone in the crowd, thinking himself safely anonymous.

The Captain, however, stepped through, pushing aside those who were not swift enough to leap from his path. He made straight for the voice of he who had spoken, none other than Sur Agung, the quartermaster.

“Do you doubt my word, Agung?” the Captain asked. “After all these years?”

“Please—” Sur Agung began.

The Captain put up one hand. “Come to my cabin. You will have your say, my old friend, but you will have it in private, and under the eyes of him you would condemn to death. Come, Agung, if you are willing.”

Sur Agung hesitated. His face looked quite old in that moment, as old as Tu Pich’s. But then he nodded and preceded his master to the cabin, under the silent, pleading gazes of the crew. All of them begged him with their eyes, “Convince him! Convince him and save us! Only you can convince him, Sur Agung!”

Munny felt another gust of wind on the back of his head. He turned and saw the wall of the oncoming storm.