| |
“Wake up. Food!” Wenna was shaking her. Ixxy really didn’t feel like eating. She took the dried fishcake that was being offered her and turned it over in her fingers. It felt crumbly.
Then she felt hands around hers and shook her head, she was totally not paying attention and Hydn had walked up to sit alongside her.
“You should eat,” he said, “keep your strength up.”
“How can anyone eat after... after what happened?”
“You get used to it,” said Hydn.
“You’re a terrible liar, your voice squeaks.”
“Alright, you cope with it. You kind of have to. If you’re a pirate...”
“Are you? A pirate I mean.”
“Man and pup.”
Ixxy laughed, “You’re hardly older than I am.”
“Huh.”
“What was that—thing?”
“I don’t know. I asked Pops, not even he knows.”
“Has he not been down here before?”
“Few have.”
“What did Pops get asked? I’ve brought something to wash those fishcakes down with.” A cork popped with a loud ‘bang’. A beautiful raisiny sweet scent followed the noise.
“Whoah,” said Hydn, “what is that?”
“Oh, something I found way back. It’s useful for shock. And fishcakes.”
Pops handed the bottle to Hydn who took a swig and made groaning noises. Ixxy took the bottle after him. It was large, teardrop shaped and made of glass. She nearly dropped it, “This is old. From... before?”
“Should think so,” said Pops cheerfully, “contents are fresh as a flower though, try it.”
Ixxy took a swig. It was sweet and rich and full of dark fruits. It didn’t burn like Bamboo Gin, but the alcohol was there. “Itʼs...”
“Yeah,” said Hydn, reaching for the bottle.
The Princess intercepted, “You’ve had your turn. Me next.”
The boat rocked gently as Wenna paced across the deck, muttering under her breath. The Princess was at the tiller humming to herself. Pops was in the bows knotting a rope.
“Hurry and eat young Ixxy, we’ve got work to do,” Wenna said on her way past.
Then once she’d passed them and paced off towards Pops, Ixxy lifted her head towards Hydn, “I’m not sure I can.... eat.”
“Here,” he said kindly, “I’ve got water. Take a bite and then a sip. You’ll thank me later.”
She did, but was fighting more to keep it down than thanking anyone for anything. She huffed, “Ok, what now?”
“To oars please Ixxy, you row better than Princess so she can stay on the tiller. We need to take it slow, but we’ll only have two oars. Pops, if you would?”
There was a splosh at the bows and the sound of Pops muttering over the noise Ixxy and Hydn made on the oars. She was finding the water dripping down her arms as she lifted after each stroke.
“By the line five!” said Pops.
“Steady as she goes,” said Wenna.
Ixxy pulled gently, trying to feel how much Hydn was pulling the other end by the motion of the boat. She had begun to like rowing. The pull and drift she found oddly meditative, but this time everyone was tense. With Pops calling the depth at the bows, they could easily find themselves high and dry down here with no way to get back. And were all the creatures beyond the Lychgate as deadly as whatever had just killed Skink?
“By the line four!”
“Steady!”
“By the line three!” They waited for the next ‘plop’ of the weight but it never came. “Something ahead,” Pops said instead, to Wenna.
“All stop.”
Ixxy and Hydn dug their oars and the boat drifted to a halt.
“Row back to keep position you two, there’s quite a current here,” Wenna called over her shoulder as she strode down the boat to stand at the bows. Ixxy was desperate to poke her head up and take a scan with her own Air-sense, but she knew better than to disobey. It took them a little while to adjust to how much force they needed to apply to keep a holding position, there was a much stronger pull here. Ixxy heard the clicking noises of Captain Wenna making obvious Air-sense soundings from the bows of the boat.
“Huh,” she said finally, “Drop anchor, Princess.”
When the weight of the anchor bit, Ixxy heard Hydn stowing his oar across from her and standing. “What’s down there Pops?”
“It feels like other boats,” he said.
When Ixxy joined them and leaned over the side of the boat to get a better Air-sense picture of what was ahead of them, she found the same. Large, hulking shapes in the distance, cluttering the waterway from side to side and seemingly higher— or larger— than the sleek prow-shape of the Razor. “I thought Folk hardly ever came down here?”
“Eons of ‘hardly ever’ can mount up,” said Wenna.
“All of those boats are abandoned?” The Princess sounded amazed.
“Aye, I reckon so,” said Pops.
Hydn sniffed the air, “Smells of mildew.”
“Gods only know how long those have been down here.”
“What do we do now?” said Ixxy.
“Let’s go and investigate and try to make sense of your map,” Wenna said. “Princess, Pops, guard the Razor and keep us ready for a quick exit if we need it. Hydn, Ixxy, with me.”
Although the Razor didn’t have a dingy of its own, it did have an emergency raft— in the form of the Razor’s case barrels roped together with a plank platform attached on top. All River-folk vessels had an emergency raft. The River-folk seemed to find themselves in emergencies more than most. Ixxy often wondered what her life would have been like if she’d been born into a nice peaceful Bridge-folk family. In the Razor’s case, the raft sat as a raised platform at the stern. If the boat sank, the raft would float, or that was the idea. The crew hauled it over the edge and Hydn hopped down and held the raft alongside while the other two climbed on.
The blockage in the pipe seemed so obvious now they were on top of it, but fractal details opened up as they approached that they couldn’t perceive from a distance: windows, decks, masts, cabins. Everything smelled of mildew and rotting wood. Ixxy needed to swap from paddling with her oar, to punting, then realised why all of these relics were here. The water ran out at this point really quickly. The raft bumped the graveyard of hulls, but only had a foot of water left underneath it. Ixxy figured that as far as the boats stretched into the distance, the far end from where she was would be dry underneath. This was the end of the line. The Great River, the artery of the Dark, ended here. It gave Ixxy an odd shudder as she climbed onto the first boat. She heard scuttling ahead, rats maybe? On that first boat feeling her balance on a madly inclined deck, she really was at the end of the world.
“Steady,” said Hydn, joining her on the deck, indicating with his foot that one plank to Ixxy’s left was just a hole where there should have been deck. As Wenna struggled up onto the deck, Hydn warned her too.
“Huh,” she said, then set about scratching at the hull with one claw. Some bits of the hull made scrapes, but most bits made no sound at all. Rotted right through. Wenna manoeuvred past them and towards the shell of what must have once been a cabin. “Spread out and search,” she said.
“What are we searching for?” said Ixxy.
“Anything.”
The wreck complained, creaking as they spread out. Hydn went up to— or to where would have been— the starboard rail. Ixxy went farther along, to the stern. The plank that was missing was not an aberration; it was treacherous underfoot. Ixxy jumped and nearly fell through into the hold. More scuttling, definitely rats, she sensed their fleet shapes as they left the trailing stench of fish that had been their dinner before she disturbed them. She toed the fish carefully. Flies buzzed out. Not that fresh then, at least a few spans old. And other than that down here, nothing. No ropes, no barrels or boxes—not even empty ones.
“We’re done here,” Wenna crashed out of the cabin, a piece of rotten wood held high.
“Should we go explore some of the others?” said Ixxy, still curious to know where the water went.
“No point. These wrecks have all been picked clean.”
“By rats?”
“No, silly girl, rats don’t take planks. This boat and all the others have been stripped. All good timber has been taken out. There’s nothing here for us.”
“Taken?” Hydn slid back down the deck to meet them. “Taken where?”
“That is a very good question,” Wenna said.