Authors: George Bryan Polivka
And then the two men dove into the water and swam away. Delaney took one last look at Conch's gold, worthless gold, and he followed.
The torches were burning down when he surfaced. Jenta's voice was ragged, as though she was tired, sleepy.
A true lang time and we shall meet
On the silver path to the rushing seaâ¦
The silver path. The river, what the locals called the Path. What the Vast called Lambent, another word for silver. She didn't keep the map because she didn't need it. She had the lullabye.
“Come,” the translator said, after the chieftain had whispered something. “Your time is up.”
Delaney treaded water near the boat, looking up at Jenta. The lines on her face and hands were fading. He wondered if they were cut deep, deep like the cuts into the priest's face and hands.
Jenta quit singing.
The chieftain looked across the pond. “
Onka Din Botlay
, hoon ah roo.”
“They return!” the old man said. And the Hants in the boat reached out for Delaney and snatched him up from the water.
Delaney sat dripping, heard the hiss and turned his head, saw the mermonkeys, three of them, glowing softly golden, glowing with Conch's gold, he now knew, and clinging to the post. His post. They were angry now, or terrified, eyes wide, watching Jenta. Only Jenta.
“The widow's song,” the old man said. “They cannot bear it.”
“Why don't they go back in the water?” Delaney asked.
“The tears of the wronged are there. The ashes of the innocent. The bones of the faithful.”
And now Delaney saw the vial, the jar, and the cloth at the chieftain's feet.
The Hants picked up paddles and propelled the boat to the shoreline, back to the reeds. “They will return soon,” the old man said.
When they reached the edge of the water, Jenta stopped singing, and collapsed into the boat, caught gently by the Hants. She lay quiet. And then Delaney heard her sob.
They carried her out of the boat, and through the reeds, through the forest, and back to their camp. They laid her down on a bed of cut reeds. Delaney knelt beside her and took her hand. In the light from their campfires he could see that every inch of her hands and arms was carved, just like her face. The lines, the patterns still glowed golden, though now the glow was fading fast. Her eyes were closed, but tears streamed from them. She was crying.
He lay down beside her, holding her hand, patting it, not knowing what to say or do. The Hants watched, and talked low. He was wary, keeping his eye on their movements. But he had the feeling they were protecting Jenta. And him. After a while, Jenta's breathing became smooth.
Delaney was on dry land. He had been rescued. She had saved him. God had picked him up and put him on dry land. He had saved her, too. Yet he felt nothing but deep, unending sorrow.
Soon he fell into a black, dreamless sleep.
“Come. The chieftain wants you.”
Delaney struggled up to the light. His body felt like it was weighed down, like every muscle was made of lead. But he sat up and blinked around him. It was daylight.
Jenta was gone.
He leaped to his feet, suddenly alert and awake. He felt for his sword, or a pistol, or a knife, but he had no weapons. The old man looked up at him calmly, still kneeling.
“Where's Jenta?” Delaney demanded.
“Come. Speak to the chieftain.”
The events of the previous night came roaring back to him. “Where's the Captain?”
The old man stood. “Follow me.”
Heart racing, cursing himself for falling asleep, Delaney followed. He
found the chieftain, still painted, seated in the same spot he had been sitting the day before, where he smoked and spoke and made his devilish deal with Belisar the Whale. He looked up as Delaney approached, and gestured for him to sit.
Delaney stood with hands on hips. “Where's Jenta? What'd ye do with her?”
“Boom.”
Delaney felt outrage. “Boom? I'll give ye boom, if ye've harmed that woman again!”
“Boom,” the translator said gently, “means âsit.' He'll tell you all.”
“Oh.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose, then sat cross-legged facing the elder.
“Your chieftain,” the Hant leader said through the translator, “said the woman kept secrets known only to the dead. What the dead tell the living must not be hidden.”
Delaney withheld comment.
“The Hants found many secrets inside her.”
“Tortured her, ye mean,” Delaney said.
“Shall I speak these words to the chieftain?” the translator asked.
“Aye. You can tell 'im I don't appreciate it, what he done to her, and he'll pay if I can get my weapons back.”
The old man hesitated, then translated. The chieftain looked at Delaney grimly, and replied.
“Your chieftain, the fat captain, is dishonorable. We gave him one secret, and then he dishonored us.”
“How?”
“He gave us gold.” The old chieftain shook his head grimly.
Delaney made a knowing face. He wasn't sure where the dishonor was in that, but he didn't want to say it.
But the chieftain explained through the translator. “Hants care for the dead. We learn their secrets, and pass knowledge to them. We do not exchange such for shiny trifles. When your chieftain left, we continued to find her secrets.” He paused. “She is a great soul.”
He looked into Delaney's eyes for so long, he felt compelled to say, “I ain't arguin' the point.”
“We learned much about her. About her husband. About your Captain. About you.”
“Me? Uh-oh.”
“You saved her daughter.”
“She couldn't a' knowed that.”
“But we know. For we heard, and we watched. These forests are ours. It is because of this deed that we rescued you from
Onka Din Botlay
.”
So he had saved the girl. But it felt like the other way around. “Jenta, is she all right?”
“She is in the healing.”
“What's that mean? She goin' to live?”
“She will not die at our hands.”
Delaney relaxed. “So what was all that, with her singin' and whatnot, and them critters lettin' me go and climbin' up the pole like that?”
“They are not people, the
Onka Din Botlay
. But they are not animals. They have spirits. Their spirits roam freely among the dead. Twisted, bent, and ancient they are. They flee from light. They flee from heart.” He put a fist to his chest. “The song of a woman in mourningâ¦this they cannot bear.”
Delaney nodded. He understood that. Who could bear it? “Can I get her? Can we go? Her daughter's way downstream and I know she'd like to catch her up.”
“It is done.”
“What's done?”
“We have caught up the little girl. She awaits at the mouth of the Silver Path, where it rushes to the sea.”
“Well, that's kind of ye. So where's the captain, Belisar, and the rest of the crew?”
“Your chieftain is raised up. The rest have gone.”
“Raised up?” No explanation seemed to be forthcoming. “Raised up where?”
“High above, where he belongs.”
“What, in heaven?”
“I do not understand heaven.”
“Where the good dead go.”
“No. He is not where the good dead go. But he is high up.”
“I don't take yer meanin'.”
And the chieftain pointed upward, behind Delaney.
When he turned and craned his neck, he saw the body of Belisar the Whale, stripped and painted with bones, hanging by his ankles from the treetops.
“Well,” Delaney said after a long pause. “That must a' took some doin'.”
Then after another pause, he asked, “What happened to the gold? In the cave, I mean?”
“The trifles? Rippers of the Bone protect it, as promised to the great captain of the dark world.”
He meant the Conch. “Well, I reckon that works. No one's going to cart it away like that. Can it be changed back?”
“Kanha roo boh,” the chieftain said. “Day ho noss.”
The translator intoned the answer. “He says, the creatures have the power to turn worthless trinkets into sunlight, and it will shine like this forever more.”
Delaney sighed. “I guess that's a good power to have. Though folks out there in the dark world ain't likely to see it quite that way.”
J
ENTA
'
S SCARS FADED
. By the time she was reunited with Autumn at the mud huts of Sule City, they were lines barely traceable by the little girl's finger. The healing, whatever that treatment was, had been remarkable.
They found to their relief that the
Shalamon
had sailed. She had pulled anchor not long after Lemmer Harps returned, waving the bare bones at the end of his arm where once a hand had been. With him was Blue Garvey, paddling for all he was worth. Lefty, as he was forever called after, muttered incoherently about ghosts and Hants and Belisar being spirited away before their eyes, raised up into the darkness of the forest above. Blue reported that Sleeve had been caught up too, but in a different way. Late that night the Hants had taken to admiring his boney limbs, and he tried to fight them off. But they carried him away, him cursing and them saying over and over,
Onka Din Botlay.
And in their own tongues, “the Ripper of the Bone must be satisfied.” When it became clear to all that Blue was just as spooked as Lemmer, nothing was going to keep that crew from fleeing the Hants and Sule City.
The
Flying Ringby
had long since sailed as well, so Jenta and Autumn and Delaney waited for the next ship, spending their time swimming and fishing and relaxing. Soon enough a ship pulled in. Her captain was known to Delaney, and though he had a cruel reputation, he claimed to have set pirating behind him since his days under Conch Imbry. He was after a greater prize than what could be found in the holds of merchant
ships. He needed hands at the moment and after a brief negotiation, he agreed to take Jenta and the girl to the next port, where they could catch a ship out of the Warm Climes, back to Nearing Vast. Delaney signed on, grateful to serve a man who was not a pirate, but who would not hold a man's pirate past against him.
Delaney's new captain was true to his word, and at the next port, Jenta and Autumn were placed in the care of a kindly merchant captain headed north. Before she left him, though, she said her goodbyes to Smith Delaney, on the docks of a port unfamiliar to them both.
“Where will ye go?” Delaney asked, standing at the foot of the gangway. She had been called to board, she and Autumn, but Delaney wasn't quite ready to see her depart, somehow.
“To the farm in Nearing Vast, I suppose,” Jenta answered. But her look was distant, as it had been since that night. Her thoughts seemed to be somewhere elseânot distracted, precisely, for she was always present, and never missed a turn in a conversation or even a shade of meaning. But more like she was in two places at once, and the other place, wherever it was, was calm and serene and inviting and she wanted to be there fully. “Though I don't know. A cabin up in the woods, perhaps.” She looked down at Autumn's sweet face, and placed a hand on her daughter's cheek.
“Well, I guess it's goodbye then,” he said slowly. “My ship's sailin', too.” He hooked a thumb behind him, toward the great, sleek ship he'd signed on to sail.
“I'm glad you've found your friends,” she told him.
“They ain't exactly friends.” The crew of the
Shalamon,
captainless again, had fought like badgers during the voyage from Sule City. When they had made port here, half of them had looked for a different ship to sail, figuring the
Shalamon
was cursed. Blue and Mutter and a few others had found the same opportunity Delaney had. They were now aboard the same ship under the same captain, and would be on crew with Delaney once again. “But I thank ye.” He put out his hand.
Jenta ignored it, and embraced him. He smelled her hair, his face buried into her shoulder. It was not just honeysuckle, as Ham had described it, but some other sweetness, too. Like mown grass on a summer morning, or the breeze off the ocean right before a rain. He didn't hug her back, but stood straight up, like a board, waiting for it to end. But when it did, he wished it didn't.
“Goodbye, Mr. Delaney,” Autumn said, and took her turn hugging him. He picked her up so she could do it more easily, and she planted a kiss on his cheek.
“It's scratchy, Mama,” she said, still in his arms, her hand on his cheek.
“Need a shave,” he informed Jenta, running his free hand over the stubble of his face. He never did get his knife back, though he would think about it for a long time, wishing he'd been clear enough in his mind to scout along the floor of the pond while he was swimming around down there. But he hadn't been, and nothing could be done about it now. He had to let it go. Sometimes things just had to be let go, he knew, no matter how bad you wanted them to stay. He set the little girl down.