15.
I am with him, my narboy, in the throat.
It’s all black. I see nothing, though I can hear the ill-face screaming for me. I heave him up, my boy the fish: Look! Look, there, the mouth, the teeth. Do you see? The shark is at the surface.
There’s a sudden rush of light. TRUE LIGHT! But the water comes pouring down, pushing us back into the dark. Still, I hold on while I may.
Out, my boy! You must get out. Look—there is light beyond the teeth. Look, the light. Now! Fast! The light is going. Go, my boy, swim!
A root has me by the foot. It is tugging.
Go, life! Swim!
I kiss it.
I LET HIM GO.
Let him go, and I come tumbling back down into the belly.
I am alone again. The wooden fish is gone. He swam free. And I tumbled down again. But faster it seemed, this time—pulled over and over, I was. And I landed, yes, upon it. Right on the ill-face.
ON ITS HEAD.
Smashed its skull in. I did, I did. What a loud crack, of a stick broken, or bones cracking. I smashed him. Broke him into pieces. It’s done now, ill-face is. I have small bits of him in my hands. Crumbling, rotten wood. Ash. Nothing to see but the last of the Maria dying in her decay.
I have rescued some small pieces of the captain: The little chest. The journal that I may set this down, full of scraps and images.
Just two candles left.
No shiphome no more. I’ll sit here. It shall be dark before long.
Last.
I am at the final candle, hovering over it, staring into the light. It is time I let go. The darkness is coming. It is nearly here.
Quite suddenly, as I write, there is some new plashing in the distance, some noise of life. Come, I’ll look at it—I’ll view the thrashing with my last candlelight. Poor thing, I do hear it, no doubt some fish desperate to find water and panicking. I’m sorry for thee, small beast, and for all thy brothers and sisters who took this path before. The splashing continues, it gets louder, it comes closer. Surely not the narvalo back? Not eaten, my wooden fishboy?
No, no, thank the lord. It is not a fish like I have seen before—yet there is something familiar in it, this new thing. A ghost? Perhaps; prepare yourself, I think, to be haunted. Yes, do get along with it, what shade of dread shall you be?
And on it does come, this vision, like nothing I have seen, yet so familiar. It is something bipedal, I can see, and fish—this is documented—have no call for legs. Who comes then? What is this? Closer and closer yet. No shade of bleached white like I, nor like other ghosts, no, no. A new haunting this is, like something fresh living. Come to blow out my light, are you, to kill my last candle?
It is here beside me now, even here as I write these words upon this page, staring at me, putting out its hands as I tremble. It feels familiar, yes, so old, known and lost, something from before, but what is its name? And then the thing speaks: a new sound, not my sound, not me doing voices, but some sound of which I am not capable, and it says, this unexpected being, this creature within a creature—I shall break, I shall surely break—it says, this effigy, this child:
“Babbo!”
And I see—
Pinocchio PINOCCHIO PINOCCHIO
Pinocchio, oh, no.
Go back. Go back.
PINOCCHIO
little pinocchio, my child
he is come home to me
Pinocchio
Tunnite me and Babbo we will escayp.
He will clime onto my back.
I’ll be his bowt.
He is so tyred.
We will get out tunnite.
By. By. Going now.
Outwerds.