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As it happened, the yacht had been swept down the waterways and finally wrecked completely on the other end of the isle. As far as I could tell, we’d ended up on one of the larger islands in the bayou, and the thing was shaped with a whole lot of inlets and peninsulas that twisted the routes a boat could take across the water this way and that.
Did y’all know it ain’t just one bayou? Technically, all the little waterways is their own one. We always just say “the bayou,” so I weren’t aware of that til much later. Oh, but I digress.
As for the Salamastis, my wave’d carried it into one of the inlets and crashed it against an old and huge weeping willow. The wheels and the wooden planks that had made up the vessel were all twisted and splintered, and the sails were draped over the tree branches like they was the hanging leaves of the willow itself. Somewhere under the water, driven deep into the mud, the steam engine had sputtered out and died.
Lady Lugh’d remained clinging to her yacht the whole way through, only getting thrown from the boat once it crashed. The fact she hadn’t broken anything was a minor miracle. She’d remained at the shipwreck til Syl found her, and she’d followed the cat inland to the grove and the spring.
“She’s a strange cat,” the Lady told me. “I don’t really know where she came from. She just arrived one day and made herself at home. I think she was drawn to the mask, somehow.”
“You reckon she was trying to seek out Ferengris?” I asked. We were in the reeds again, making our way out to the wreck.
“My family always said that cats see things humans can’t, and they know things we refuse to see,” she replied. “I always assumed it was just an old story, until Syl showed up.”
When we reached the shipwreck, my heart sank a bit. I was hoping to pull some supplies from it, but the debris I was faced with were so mangled you could hardly even tell that it’d been a boat at some point. Truth be told, it didn’t look like a wrecked ship so much as it looked like a pile of cast-off parts.
I was about to turn back round and declare it a lost cause when I felt something tickling at the edge of my awareness. It was some instinct, telling me that there was tools and supplies worth salvaging in there, and I even had a pretty good idea of how to get to them too.
It was similar to that sense of beauty that’d come over me with Syl in the reeds; one of those feelings that felt more like something Ferengris would experience than myself. Well, I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it one bit. But there was nothing to be done about it, and if Ferengris was gonna give me what I needed to survive out here—and to make sure that Lady Lugh could do the same—then I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.
“Lady Lugh,” I said. “You may want to turn around.”
“Imogen,” she told me. “There’s not much point in standing on formality out here.”
“Alright then, Imogen,” I said, and I smiled, because a pretty noblewoman was letting me call her by her first name. “I recommend you turn yourself around and not peek.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And why would I do that?” she asked.
“Because I’m about to strip out of my clothes and hop into that water.”
D’raian complexions don’t show off blushes too well, but I could see she was flustered all the same. “Oh,” she said. “Right, I’ll look away then.” And she turned her whole body round and fixed her attention on the plants behind us.
I peeled off my shirt. It was heavy with water, and the half-dried mud tried its best to glue it to my skin, but I managed to peel it off anyhow. There was a low-hanging branch extending out over the miniature bay, and I tossed my shirt over it to hang. Then I kicked off my boots and repeated the process with my britches, before standing there debating with myself on whether I should remove my underclothes as well.
In the end, I opted to keep them on, even though I knew I’d regret that decision once I was trekking back across the island in soggy drawers. But the broken wood and metal of that wreck looked mighty sharp, and there was certain dangling and sensitive parts to my body that I could all-too-easily picture getting caught in them splinters. Best to keep a bit of protection.
With my preparations complete, I stepped forward and let the water come up over the top of my foot. It was cool—cooler than I was prepared for, given the heat of the day. I felt the mud squishing between my toes, and I took a few more steps and shivered a bit as the water quickly reached up to my thighs.
This weren’t the clear water of that pond I’d found Imogen at. The bayou water was murky and dark, and I couldn’t see a thing beyond maybe the first inch or so beneath the surface. I had to rely on the rest of my senses to guide me.
Another step, and I almost panicked when my bare foot made contact with something slippery. For a moment, I thought I’d just stomped on some fish or snake, but then I realized it was just another tree root, the bark covered in algae and slime. I calmed myself down, told myself I literally had the senses of a god on my side, and continued my journey into the water.
Part of me was convinced that at any moment I’d feel one of them tentacle-tongues wrapping its way round my limbs and pulling me into the waiting maw of a monster below. I knew damn well that the water was too shallow for one of them beasts to fit, and that even if it could squeeze into there, I’d sense it long before it grabbed me, but still the fear remained.
Once it was up to my neck, I dove under the water and swam through the wreckage. Sorting through the flotsam, I found some pots and pans, a knife, and even a few unbroken bottles of wine. Whatever was salvageable got hauled up out of the water and back onto land, and then I was back down there once more, seeking out more of what I could.
It took a few trips, and eventually Imogen started pitching in. While I continued to dig through the remains of her boat, she carried whatever I found back to the grove. By the time it was getting dark, she’d made at least five hauls.
“How do you hold your breath for so long?” Imogen asked me as I dressed. We would really need to find a way to dry and clean ourselves before we caught something.
“What do you mean?” I’d just pulled my britches up, and Imogen was still staring at the trees with her back to me.
“Mr. Balor,” she started.
“Jackson,” I told her. “Like you said, no need to stand on formalities out here.”
“Of course. Jackson.” I could hear the smile in her voice, though I couldn’t see her face. I pulled my shirt over myself. “When you dove underwater for the first time, I thought you’d drowned. You were down there too long. But then you came back up, and you were none the worse for wear.”
“You was watching me?” I grinned.
“I was worried,” she insisted.
A frown formed on my lips, and I really considered what she’d said. I hadn’t thought I’d stayed underwater for very long. I’d come back up once my lungs started burning, and I’d figured that’d taken a normal amount of time.
But I was more than aware that my idea of what was normal and what was abnormal was shifting. It weren’t matching up too well with other folks’ idea of normal these days.
“Ferengris,” I said. I looked down at the water, and in my reflection I saw the Wild God looking back at me.
Imogen was quiet for a moment. Then she asked: “How much longer?”
“Can’t say,” I replied. “But not long. I’m starting to not even notice the changes anymore. It’s like there’ve been no changes at all, and everything new has always been a part of me.” I put my hand on my chest, and I thought back to how quickly I’d recovered from my injuries at the watchtower. And now there I was again, perfectly fine even after all the horrors I’d endured that day.
“I’m sorry,” said Imogen. “You don’t deserve this.”
I laughed. “I’m the fool who stole the mask,” I pointed out. “Besides, I know you never intended for any of this to happen.” I turned around and walked up toward her.
She was still looking away from me. Her arms were up across her chest, and she shivered. Imogen sensed my approach, and she turned her gaze to me. Her eyes were big and watery, her face a mess of sorrow and confusion.
“My father always insisted I needed to protect the mask,” she said. “That it was a family duty, that our ancestors made a vow. I can hardly remember D’rai—I was so young when we left. Rumors of our Ferengrite activities had grown too big and too wild, and it was no longer safe there. I grew up in Rotan, alone.
“I have distant memories of parties, of big galas. But those became rarer after we left D’rai. The Rotan nobles were fascinated by us at first, but the novelty of the dark-skinned Westerly family wore off. D’raians take a lot of pride in the fact that Cerenis started the First Ministry in our lands, but as far as most Easterlies are concerned, the important part is that he settled down in the east. I’m one of the wealthiest people in New Alms, and I’ve always been outcast. Rotan nobles don’t invite their lessers to the banquet. For all I have, for all that I am, I’m still beneath their notice.”
A sad smile danced on her lips. “I suppose I’m no different in that regard. All that time, I never once considered that my household guards had lives outside their work for me, or that they might notice my little blasphemies.”
“It’s not exactly the same thing,” I told her. I didn’t mention that Westerly folk are similarly outcast in the lower classes, that many of us white Rotans don’t interact with them much except to put them down. I certainly can’t claim innocence; I’ve ignored them, and I’ve ignored folks harassing them. It simply seemed the way of things, and I never thought about it too much. Guess it’s another in the list of sins our society trains us into. But even if it was a rare thing for a Rotan to strike gold in New Alms, it was an impossible thing for any D’raian or Belothi.
Nah, I reckoned they wasn’t the same thing, but they was connected regardless.
Imogen’s eyes were fixed on her own feet, like she couldn’t bring herself to face me. “I convinced myself it was for the best; the way people shunned me, I mean. It meant I could keep honoring my parents’ wishes. And it wasn’t like there weren’t bored and discontent socialites looking for some... exotic thrill to keep me company. I resented them, and I resented the mask, but I don’t know what I would I would’ve done without them.
“I never thought the mask was real. When I realized it was stolen, I was relieved. But Penelope and the others—they insisted we get it back. Syl showed us the way to you and...” She shook her head. Tears fell from her face. “Suddenly it was all true. Suddenly it turned out that stupid old mask really was the vessel of the Wild God, and then, everything that’s happened...”
“Yeah,” I said. I tried to laugh, tried to reassure her. “I didn’t really think I’d end up possessed by Ferengris either. I just thought I was stealing contraband from some kooky cultists.”
She also tried to laugh, but her heart weren’t in it.
I didn’t really mean to hug her. It wasn’t something that I contemplated before deciding on. It just felt like it was the thing to do. One minute we were standing there, not quite facing each other, and then the next my arms were around her, and I was holding tight onto Lady Imogen Lugh as she sobbed into my shoulder, all the loneliness and doubt and terror she’d been keeping bottled up all this time let loose at long last.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and stroked the back of her head.
“It’s real,” she moaned. “It’s all real. And now I’m going to die out in the wilderness, and you’re going to die because the god inside you is eating you up, and it’s all real.”
Imogen kept on sobbing, and I kept on holding her until she’d cried herself out. How long that took, I can’t rightly say, but the thing about crying is that eventually you run out of tears, and then all that’s left is to pick yourself up and carry on, and that’s exactly what we did.
I took the last of the supplies I’d salvaged and hefted them over my shoulder, and Imogen took what I couldn’t fit and hefted it over hers, and together we walked back to the grove, where Syl was waiting for us with probably the best news I’d gotten since leaving New Alms.
The cat was wet—much wetter than she should’ve been if she was drying in the sun all that time like I’d assumed. She was sitting by the pond, tail flicking back and forth with irritated impatience, like she’d been waiting for us to hurry up and haul our asses back over to her.
And at her feet was a pile of five fish, each covered in silver and gray scales and each one nearly as long as my forearm. Turns out while I’d been fishing for supplies, Syl’d been engaged in a much more literal sort of fishing activity.
“Well,” said Imogen, setting down her haul with the rest of the salvaged supplies, “at least we won’t go hungry.”
Syl stretched, then looked at me as if to say “you’re welcome.” I crouched down beside her and scratched under her chin. The cat closed her eyes and enjoyed that for a bit, then picked up one of the fish and trotted off a few feet to enjoy her share of the bounty.
I picked up one of the other fish. It felt cold and slimy in my hand. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to cook one of these, would you?”
The look Imogen—who I remind y’all was the scion of a noble house, possessed of riches the likes of which I’d never dreamed—gave me said everything that needed to be said. I felt silly for even asking.
“Alright then,” I said. “Well, how hard could it be?”
It took me some time to gather up the wood needed for the fire. The first few sticks I found seemed wrong to me in some hard-to-describe way, and it wasn’t until I found a properly dead and dry bit of wood that I realized what the issue’d been—the others were too wet and too alive to make good fire. All the knowledge and instincts about the Wild that Ferengris was imparting to me was working away in my head, directing me toward the wood that’d burn well.
Once I started listening to those instincts, things progressed much faster. I assembled the firewood into a proper little pile, the kind that’d make even an experienced woodsman proud. Imogen watched me with a look of bemusement upon her face, but she never vocalized any of the questions that must’ve been rattling around in her brain, and for that I was grateful.
With the wood gathered and assembled, I now had to tackle the conundrum of actually getting a decent fire going. As I stared at what I’d made, a number of ideas started creeping their way into my head, which is how I figured out that I suddenly had an understanding of how fires get started—the chemical and physical reactions that produce it, how it grows, how it spreads, what it even is. All of it’d become intuitive to me, for it was the knowledge of the Wild, and the Wild was what I was becoming.
I took one of the driest sticks I had and set it against the driest part of the firewood pile. Then I started rolling it between my palms as fast as I could. The friction produced heat, and the heat would, if I kept at it, eventually blossom into a nice little fire.
Already I could sense the heat building up, and as I sensed it, I contemplated my fate. Maybe becoming a part of Ferengris wouldn’t be so bad. Sure, I didn’t know how much of me would remain myself once the transformation was complete, and it might be that I’d be gone completely. It was a frightening thought, but it’s not like I’d be in any position to mourn myself if that happened. A dead man can’t exactly object to his circumstances.
Bit by bit, I was starting to accept what was happening to me, and I hated that. Every thought or feeling I experienced had become suspect, because how could I be sure what was coming from myself and what was coming from Ferengris? This sense of acceptance might not’ve even been me at all, but instead another expression of the god’s growing influence over me.
But the worst part was that, on some deep and fundamental level, the difference didn’t matter. Not really. It didn’t matter because we were becoming one and the same, and so every thought that came from me must also come from Ferengris, and the opposite was true as well.
There was a spark, a flare. Smoke billowed up from the stack, followed by a flickering orange glow. The fire had started.
I sat back and watched as the hungry flames spread, and then I fished through the supplies I’d salvaged and found a knife.
The thing about fish is that dressing them for cooking is a lot more complicated than you might think it is. Gutting and deboning is the sort of process that’s easy to screw up, and when you do screw it up, you end up losing a good chunk of edible meat. What happened over the span of the next few minutes was a strange and frustrating exercise, because I had the knowledge necessary to do what I was attempting, but my hands lacked the skill and practice to actually do it.
What resulted in the end was four fish that were absolutely mangled but were, at the very least, cooked enough to be safely eaten. Me and Imogen ate quietly, and even though we were both clearly thinking it, neither of us complained about the lack of seasoning. Those wine bottles I’d pulled from the wreckage helped wash it all down.
There was nothing around us but growing darkness as the sun completed its journey below the horizon, and we were accompanied in that darkness by flickering flames, the crackling of the firewood, and the buzzing of unseen insects out in the trees and reeds.
Even surrounded by all that Wild, we still felt alone. In the stillness of the woods, it was easy to think that no one else in the whole world existed save for us. Our silence was companionable, and comfortable, and in its own weird way, it was almost something approaching cozy.
It was only after we’d finished our meal that things got a little awkward.
“The spring,” Imogen said, leaning back on the other side of the campfire. “Should we... should we bathe in it?”
“No,” I said. “We’ll need it clean for drinking water. No sense getting all this muck all in there.”
“Well, I can’t sleep like this,” she told me. “I’m filthy, and my clothes are wet and muddy, and...”
“We pulled some pots from the wreck,” I pointed out. “We can use those to wash ourselves. Hang our clothes up by the fire to dry them, but...” I trailed off. My face was suddenly burning, but whether that was from the wine or the thought of what I was suggesting, I couldn’t say.
Imogen contemplated this. “It would be improper,” she said.
“It would be.”
“It would be wild,” she went on, and she shuddered. “I never... I never thought it would all become this real. The Wild, I mean. Ferengris. All of this, I never...”
“You never seen a man naked before?”
She glared at me. The dancing flames cast shadows on her face that made the glare seem deeper and more fearsome than I reckon she intended for it to be. But there was something other than my juvenile teasing weighing on her mind, I could tell.
“Might as well talk plainly, Imogen,” I said. “We ain’t standing on formality, remember?”
I noticed her shoulders relax a bit. “You’re a thief,” she said. “That’s what you do. You break into the homes of... of people like me. People of means. And you take our things without us knowing.”
“That is indeed what a thief does,” I agreed.
“You’ve had to have... seen things, too,” she went one. “Private things, I mean. I’m sure you know that aristocrats are not as sheltered as we like to appear.”
Well, I’d been taking a sip of my wine as she spoke, and I damn near choked on it when she said that. “If you’re trying to tell me that you have actually seen a man naked before, just say so!” I laughed.
“Don’t be crude!” Imogen snapped. Then she stood up, grabbed the largest pot, and marched over to the pond. “I’m going to clean myself. I suggest you do the same.”
Now I’m sure some of y’all got some lurid ideas about what happened next. Maybe you’re sitting there imagining that we washed each other, or something equally scandalous. Well, I’m sorry to be so disappointing, but nothing of that sort occurred. Truth is, I felt so disgusting and filthy that I didn’t even look Imogen’s way the whole time I was bathing myself. All that muck from the bayou needed to come off, and there weren’t much room in my priorities for much else beyond that.
We hung up our clothes on a branch as close to the flames as we could safely get them, and then I laid down on a patch of moss near the fire. I figured Imogen would do the same, but maybe on the opposite side, so I was a mite surprised when she approached me instead.
That was when I saw her in all her unclothed glory. She was indeed a mighty fine woman. Some stray drops of water still ran down her skin, and it was difficult not to trace their path with my eyes as they dripped along the swell of her breasts or the curve of her hips. Her hair, damp and wet, was pulled back in as tight a bun as she could manage out there, and she stood above me seemingly without shame—though I can’t say she had quite as much confidence as some of the women I’ve known in my time.
“I don’t want to be cold,” she told me, and that was enough.
We lay together. Our arms were around one another, and we shared our bodies’ warmth. Our faces were just inches apart, and her eyes held mine as I felt a stirring in my lower regions.
“How much longer do you think you have?” she asked.
“Days at most,” I told her. “Probably less, given what happened on the boat.”
She was quiet, then she said: “I could die tomorrow. I could die in my sleep. There’s so many things out here that could kill me, and I don’t have a god inside me helping to keep me alive. All my life, I’ve tried to live up to the responsibilities my parents left me. I thought I’d keep doing that forever, in whatever mansion I found myself in. And now I’m here, and I might die, and it’s terrifying and awful and strange.”
I didn’t say anything. I just brought up a hand and cupped her cheek. We both leaned in our faces.
“So fuck it,” Imogen said, and she kissed me.
We didn’t know what the next day would bring. We didn’t know how much longer was left in our lives. So that night, before we finally fell asleep, we tangled ourselves in each other’s bodies, and we lived.
Like I said: we lay together.