Chapter 13: Goddess Fled
IF THE STORM WAS A NIGHTMARE, more terrible by far was the sudden event of calm. Not the calm of the glassy, unreal sea, but the calm of a brisk day under a cloud-scattered sky, with a crisp but gentle wind filling the torn sails of the Kulap Kanya.
The ship lurched once then settled with a great splash into the ocean it well knew. A mortal ocean, part of the mortal world, where the water ran liquid, and the salt waves were full of death and birth, and currents mapped by sailors of old carved the paths of the deep.
Risafeth was fled. In her flight, she had expelled the Kulap Kanya from her realm.
Captain Sunan, standing at the rail with his sword upraised, gazed out across his own sea. But it was another he saw in a distant place that was still all too near. More than once had he traveled to realms beyond his own; and he knew how close they always were, they and all the terrors they held.
He knew the laws of the fey folk, knew them better than many of the fey themselves.
Slowly Captain Sunan lowered his sword arm. His face sagged with sorrow, but his eyes remained bright. “So, Risafeth,” he whispered. “So you run in the face of true courage.”
Down below the main mast, Munny heard the voices of the riggers crying. Some wept in relief, but most babbled in dread, unable to believe their own eyes, convinced they must be dead or dreaming.
Munny clung to the mast. His face was still upward-tilted, gazing beyond the last few loose parrels to the empty lookout above. The empty lookout where, moments before, the old man had stood.
Where is he?
Munny tried to climb. At first he could not make his limbs obey. His leg ached where it had been struck by the batten. When at last his arms moved, they were so weak that he surely would have fallen to the deck below and met his end if not for the secure fastening of Pich’s Knot about his frame. He felt the thrill in his gut of a fall that did not happen. Then he took hold and pulled himself up, tying the next loose parrel with shaking, rain-dripping fingers. Water from the storm poured down his face like tears, but he wiped it away and climbed on to the next parrel.
Someone below was calling his name. He ignored it. He must tie the parrels. He must obey Tu Pich, for the old man would always check his work.
Where is he? Where is he?
“Munny, you have fulfilled your task. Come down.”
Munny clung to the mast, his forehead pressed against the Mother’s Arms knot he had just secured. The sail was full; wind whistled through its gaping tears, but it was secure once more. The tack line could control it. They were safe.
But Munny gazed up again to the empty lookout.
“Where is he?”
“Come down now.”
The Captain’s face was suddenly before him. In all the months of his first voyage, Munny had never before seen the Captain scale the mast. But of course the Captain could do anything. The Captain could even save them from the goddess.
Only he’d not saved them all.
Munny blinked, his vision strangely blurred. “Where is Tu Pich?” he said.
“He is gone, Munny,” the Captain said. “He gave himself to protect you. To protect the Kulap Kanya.”
“Risafeth . . . she took him?”
The Captain shook his head. “No. She could not take him. Not when he offered himself freely. She can only take a sacrifice of vengeance. The sacrifice Tu Pich offered was too dreadful to her, too awful for her understanding. He paid the tithe, but she did not take him. And she fled from his offering. Vengeance cannot abide the agony of grace.”
Even as he spoke, the Captain put his hand on Munny’s shoulder and gently urged the boy to descend. The babble of the sailors faded away into silence as they drew near. Munny’s feet found the deck, but his knees gave way, and he sank down hard, unable to rise.
“Good boy. Brave boy!”
At first Munny could not recognize the voice that spoke. He sat numb under the glare of the sun even as Tu Bahurn struggled to undo the securing line.
“You have proven yourself a braver sailor than any of us,” Tu Bahurn said, the words thick upon his tongue. “Munny Stout-heart. Dragons eat it. Can’t make my fingers obey.”
Indeed, though several tried, none could undo the old man’s work. Pich’s Knot would not give way until at last the Captain stepped forward and cut it loose.
Munny closed his eyes and felt the breath of sea air upon his cheeks and drying out the rain in his hair. Little pieces of glass fell and landed tinkling upon the deck, but these melted away, unable to hold onto existence here in the mortal world.
Neither could the memory of what had been seen so short a time ago. The dark image of Risafeth’s face, the white lightning in her eyes, the storm . . . these skulked away into the recesses of each man’s mind, there to lurk. There to wait for those darkest nights when a man must lie awake and face the truth of his heart alone. Then each one of them would recall with utter vividness that storm-tossed sea and his own sobbing cries.
But for now it faded. The riggers picked themselves up and secured the tack line. Others hastened to climb the masts and see to the damaged sails, while more hurried to check the soundness of the hull.
Still Munny remained kneeling, his hands limp in his lap. Captain Sunan stood over him, and they mourned together in silence even as the boatswain and the quartermaster shouted commands to the crew.
Then the Captain bent and touched Munny’s head. “Come,” he said, “let us fetch our Fool.”
Munny followed the Captain down the hatch. The Captain took a lantern with him as they descended ladders into the deepest reaches of the ship. There, in the storeroom where the last crumbs of Beauclair blue-crust were wrapped and packed in barrels, they heard a thin voice singing with forced merriment, as though to reassure itself:
“I am a hearty sailor-ho!
I sail the mighty seas.
I reef the sails, I swab and row,
I feast on withered peas.
Oh rum-tum-tiddle-dee ho, ho,
Rum-tum-tiddle-dee—Oh, no.”
This was followed by the familiar sound of retching.
The Captain opened the storeroom door and shined his lantern in upon the sickly green face of Leonard the clown. Leonard blinked at the sudden light and wiped his mouth unhappily before he offered something that was likely intended to be a grin.
“That was . . . some storm, eh? Did we all drown? Because if so, I never guessed that the afterlife would be so . . . so . . . Ugh, I can smell that blue-crust!”