Yet I did not wish my daughter to become a Wanderer. Wanderers fancy themselves travelers and explorers, visiting a hundred ports a year, citizens of the world. In truth, they seldom stray more than a few hundred feet from their boats, and never set foot on land. Casting anchor in Commonground is a pale experience compared to exploring the jungles of the Isle of Fire. The view from a crow’s-nest is not the same as the view from atop a mountain. For all their vaunted freedom, the Wanderers were curiously self-imprisoned.
I wanted my daughter to be boundless. I wanted her to stride the world with the knowledge she was equal to anyone, able to freely look into the eyes of kings or paupers, without looking down upon either. Infidel had spent much of her adult life reacting to the fears drilled into her as a child. I made my life choices haunted by the shame I’d experienced as a boy abandoned by both of his still-living parents. I look at Sorrow and I see her childhood bitterly seeping out of every pore. Could a human be raised free of fear, shame, or bitterness? Free of greed, pride, or privilege? Was I already dooming my daughter to failure by wishing such a utopian upbringing upon her?
My musings were shattered as a scream tore from the hatch.
“Hurry,” a woman’s voice said beside me. I looked up and once more found myself staring at the imposing naked breasts of the ghost of Jasmine Romer. “My daughter isn’t in her right mind. She’ll hurt herself, or others, if you don’t stop her.”
I closed the book mid-sentence without waiting for the ink to dry. I stood, just as Mako leapt up the stairs onto the deck, blood streaming from his nose.
He bent backward to avoid a dagger that flew by his head, then did a handspring back to the railing before bouncing into the rigging. His mother climbed to the deck half a second later, with Sage locked in a stranglehold beneath her right arm. Gale was wearing a modest cotton nightgown, white but blood-spattered, and her hair, normally woven in a tight braid, hung loose around her face, showing the gray streaks within it. Sage was a little taller than her mother, with an athletic build, but she was either holding back out of fear of hurting her mother, or Gale simply had more experience as a brawler. No matter how Sage twisted to escape, Gale kept her forearm tight across the girl’s throat. I moved toward the fight, hoping I could keep Gale from killing her daughter.
Before I reached her, Gale let go of Sage, throwing her roughly against the mast. Sage sank to the deck, looking dazed. Gale cried, “I gave life to you all, and I can take it! The next hand that touches me I’ll cut off, I swear!”
Since she had no sword currently in hand, her words were probably bluff, but her half-strangled daughter and bloodied son looked hesitant to test her. I ran toward her, arms outstretched. She turned to face me. My wooden legs weren’t built for stealth, but I leapt from fifteen feet away with more than enough strength to fly the distance. Her reflexes well-honed, she leapt from my path, but I clipped her legs with my outstretched arms and we both fell to the deck. My wooden fingers clamped onto her ankle. She pummeled me with her fists and scratched at my wooden face with her nails as she screamed, “It’s hopeless! All hopeless! Let me die!”
I shifted my bulk to pin her legs. Tears streamed down her cheeks as her limbs lost strength, her frantic motions devolving into spastic tremors. “By the seven stars, it’s over!
All over.
Can’t you see the dread doom that pursues us? Better to drown in the wine than to be chewed in the maw of such a beast!”
“What beast?” I asked, startling both her and myself with my squeaky, buzzing voice.
She sobbed. “It’s no use. Oh, my vanity! I thought I could steer this ship between the teeth of destruction. I thought mine was the hand upon the wheel of destiny. But there is no wheel!” She choked as snot and mucus bubbled from her lips. “There is no wheel!”
Her face was drenched with sweat and mottled by dark red patches, as if stained by wine.
“She’s completely mad,” Sage said, rising on wobbly legs.
“It’s delirium tremens,” I said. “She’s been poisoned by alcohol. She’s hallucinating!”
“What can we do?”
Sadly, I knew. While I’d never been so far gone that I’d been unable to tell reality from dreams, I’d lived the last ten years of my life with a subtle tremor that seized my hands on those rare moments when I’d been completely sober. There was only one treatment.
“More wine,” I said. “Or something stronger. It’s her only hope.”
“You want to cure her drunkenness with more drink?”
“It’s the only thing that can help once you start seeing hallucinations!”
“But what if she’s not hallucinating?” asked Brand, who practically made me jump out of my wooden skin as he spoke only inches from my ear. His head had popped up from the hatch leading to the hold. “Can’t you smell it? The air has shifted. The wine is being replaced by vinegar.”
Mako growled as he glared at Brand, “Who freed you? You were in manacles just moments ago!”
“Please,” said Brand, rubbing his wrists. “If you know about my circus past, you also know I did escape work. Plus, your mother likes to, um, play games. This wasn’t the first time I’ve worn those shackles. Once you’ve seen the key, picking a lock is child’s play.”
Mako snatched the dagger his mother had thrown at him from the mast. “You insolent bastard! I’ll kill you!”
But as he raised his arm to strike, a thick rope snaked down from above and caught his wrist. “Calm yourself, Mako,” shouted Rigger, who’d been watching from the poop deck this whole time. “We lost Levi because he couldn’t control his temper.”
“I would say that was more due to mother’s temper,” said Sage, brushing her hair from her eyes, stuffing the stray strands back beneath her red cap.
“You can talk about your family history some other time,” said Brand, kneeling beside Gale and stroking her sweating brow. “Your mother is trapped deep in a thicket of despair. I can help her find her way back.”
“She just needs wine,” I said.
“There are things better than wine for curing a damaged soul,” said Brand, he picked up Gale. For a woman in her forties, she looked small and girlish cradled in his muscular arms. “Leave her to me.”
Mako let loose an inhuman growl as he watched Brand carry Gale toward the hold. Mako bit the rope that held his arm, but another caught him just as swiftly. He cried, “Rigger, I’m going to kick your ass once I’m done killing this fool!”
“Grow up!” Sage said, stepping directly underneath Mako. “You’re always trying to solve problems by making threats.”
“Because the rest of you idiots don’t listen!” Mako thrashed as more ropes wrapped around him. “Have you all lost your senses? Mother’s not in her right mind. She’s seeing things! And you’re going to let this bastard take advantage of her?”
Brand didn’t react to his words as he carried Gale down the stairs.
Sage put her hands on her hips. “I haven’t gone crazy, and neither has mother. She’s not hallucinating. Look behind the ship!”
Rigger swung Mako back to the stern and dropped him. Mako stared at the water in silence, his lips pressed tightly together. I moved to the back to see what he was staring at. Mere feet below the water was what appeared to be an oily black stain stretching out behind the
Freewind
for a mile or more. This dark shape was serpentine, a hundred yards across at its thickest point, and here and there small islands of tar broke above the waves along what would have been the serpent’s spine.
Only, as the waves continued to wash in ever-lightening shades of amber foam, the beast rose higher still and I could see I wasn’t looking at the spine of an enormous serpent, but at the belly. The thing was obviously dead, but that didn’t make it any less menacing. Its lifeless head was twisted sideways in the water, its toothy jaws opened in a giant V aimed straight at the
Freewind
. The gaping maw was more than wide enough to swallow the ship whole; any individual fang of the beast was as thick and long as our foremast. The waves pushed the jaws open and shut in a lazy, listless chew.
Sage pointed her spyglass at the thing, which I found odd given that the monster was pretty hard to miss with plain old eyesight. But, after a moment’s study she said, “This thing is drifting faster than we are. We’ve only got about ten minutes before it hits.”
We all glanced up at what sails were set. Every canvas hung limp. There wasn’t enough of a breeze to push a feather, let alone a ship. I looked down from the sails to see the whole Romer family now above deck, along with Bigsby, once more wearing his wig. Sorrow, wrapped in her cloak, was coming up the stairs followed by Infidel, still in her armor, her bed-head hair a fright.
“Somebody want to fill me in on what’s going on?” Infidel asked, sounding groggy. “The last thing I remember was trying to help Gale.”
“How did mother hurt you?” Sage asked as she studied Infidel’s brow. “I saw a cutlass break over your head at Half-Moon Bay without even leaving a scratch!”
Infidel sighed. “I need you to keep this a secret. Right now, I’m not invulnerable. My strength is gone, too.”
“You were knocking those ice-maidens half a mile out to sea,” said Jetsam, scratching his head.
“All in the hammer,” said Infidel.
“You should have told us,” said Mako, sounding angry. He shoved his face inches from Infidel and said, “You assured us you wouldn’t need protection! We trusted you!”
“The only injury I’ve suffered has been because your mother fights dirty, not because of our attackers,” said Infidel. “Between my armor and my hammer, I can handle myself.”
“Your armor might be a little more effective if you wore a helmet,” said Jetsam.
Infidel nodded. “I hate helmets. Who wants to wear a steel bucket on their head when you live in the tropics? But, yeah, maybe it’s time I learned to like them.”
“If we’d known you didn’t have your powers, we could have taken extra steps to protect you,” said Mako.
“I don’t want anyone putting themselves in danger because of me.”
Sorrow joined the conversation. “Aren’t others in greater danger if they’re depending on physical skills you no longer possess?” She punctuated her sentence by spitting. At first, I thought it was an act of contempt, but then she swatted the air before her face and said, “Excuse me, but a fly just flew into my mouth.”
She hardly need have said it. Flies were everywhere now.
I buzzed in with my paper voice. “Sorrow, there’s a sea serpent following the boat. It looks dead. But I think it might be –”
“Rott?” said Sorrow, half in surprise, half in excitement. She sprinted to the rail.
Jetsam was already at the back of the boat, floating in the air, kicking his legs slowly to hold his position above the rudder. He let out a long, low, whistle, which was interrupted by gagging. “By the southern stars, what a stench!”
I was about to join with the others at the back of the ship when I caught a motion from the corner of my eye. I turned and found the ghost of Jasmine Romer once more hovering above the bowsprit. She motioned me towards her, and I obeyed.
“It’s a pretty big coincidence that a primal dragon would show up just at the same time we’re attacked by Purity,” I said.
“It is no coincidence for Rott to appear anywhere,” said Jasmine. “The entropic force he represents is omnipresent.”
“Maybe entropy is everywhere, but mile-long dead snakes sure aren’t. Something’s causing him to show up here. Is Purity summoning him?”
“That’s doubtful. Rott isn’t like Hush or Abyss or even Greatshadow, who all maintain their intellect and personalities. The elemental force Rott commanded long ago consumed his very sense of self. He’s essentially mindless, incapable of ordered thought. Only the barest flicker of animalistic hunger compels him to manifest. Bluntly, if he’s here, he’s come to feast.”
“If he keeps turning the Sea of Wine into vinegar, we’ll be in a real pickle,” I said.
Jasmine wagged a ghostly finger in my face. “Don’t make light of this! Though Rott isn’t conscious of his actions, he can sense that the cosmic balance is off. Lives have been lost without their life force returning to the source. He hungers for the missing energy.”
“What are you saying?”
“My body died, but my soul never left the world. The same is true of you.”
“And your point is?”
“When Avaris helped prepare this boat to house my soul, she took precautions to hide my spirit from Rott’s notice. I suspect that Sorrow, being inexperienced in her craft, has taken no such precautions. Just as a dead body emits a stench that draws vultures, the scent of your decaying soul has drawn the ultimate scavenger. Rott will consume this ship to feed his hunger.”
“Oh,” I said, raising my hand and running it along the back of my coconut scalp, as if I still had hair. “That’s unfortunate. Why hasn’t he bothered me before now?”
“Until now, your spirit dwelled on the material realm. Your soul is just one of thousands of lost spirits existing at any time. Rott feasts in the material world at his leisure. Here on the Sea of Wine, you’re his sole focus.”
“Then get out of here,” I said. “Shift us back to the real world. Problem solved.”
“Only my daughter can trigger the magic,” said Jasmine. “Complicating matters further, it’s now daylight in our home seas. We can only make the transit in the dead of night.”