Authors: Timothy J. Jarvis
She and I communicate solely through gestures. Not since our first encounter has she addressed me in her own tongue, and she doesn’t try to convey anything by means of expressive noises, which I find strange, as it’s something that it’s natural to do; I’d think she’d been struck mute by her beating at the hands of the natives, but that I’ve heard her cry out in her sleep, and that she sometimes lilts quietly to herself.
Those peaceful days were marred only by the pricks of my conscience, by my remorse over the tribal leader slain. I won’t claim it was the first death at my hand; in a life as long as mine has been, well…But I don’t believe I’d ever snuffed a simple, innocent life before; till then, my killings had been, more or less, just. I cursed myself for not being shrewd enough to hit on some way of putting her and her minions to flight without bloodshed. I often dreamt of her final throes, was wakened.
But, otherwise, that period was calm, happy. The tribeswoman and I grew close.
On the afternoon of the tenth or eleventh day, while trying to
recall the exact words of the bewigged drunk’s weird curse, I heard the tribeswoman scream. Dashing to the gunwale, I looked downriver, to the swathe of estuary mud laid bare by the low tide, where she’d gone seeking razor clams for our supper. She was stood atop a rock jutting from the flats, fending off, with the stick she’d taken with her to help her walk in the quag silt, a pair of swine, boar and sow. They’d yellowed teeth, wild rolling eyes, the boar larger and with a ruff of coarse bristles and reddish tufts ridging its spine. The beasts grunted, snorted, shook their heads, circled the outcrop, churned up mud. As I watched, the boar backed off a little way, then rushed at the tribeswoman and up the steep sides of the rock. Its hooves clattered, scrabbled, and it fell back, but, as it flailed, it thrust forward its head, gored her thigh with a tusk. She yowled, staggered, almost fell. I ran down the gangplank, ran towards her.
But she’d no need of a shining knight; as I made for her, feet sinking with each stride, she feinted at the sow with her stick, then lunged at the boar, put out one of its eyes. Squealing, it turned, fled. The sow stood its ground a moment, snarling, but then the tribeswoman whacked it on the snout, and it too bolted.
After clambering down from the rock, the tribeswoman hobbled towards me, grimacing. Nearing, she stopped, hiked up the hem of her shift, showed me where the boar had gashed her. It was high on her thigh, and I felt a tremble of longing, such as I’d not had in a long, long time, and I looked away, shamed.
The wound was fairly deep, and we went back to the Ark to swab and bandage it.
Much of the rest of the afternoon we spent together, collecting our evening meal, wandering the flats, eyes open for tell-tale dints, delving gingerly in the mud if we sighted one, hoping to grab the clam, without disturbing it, before it could dig deeper, and haul it out. Then we’d heft our catch, and either place it in the sack we toted, or chuck it back if it seemed scanty of flesh. When we’d gathered plenty, we returned to the Ark, and I continued
marking up draft pages, while the tribeswoman went off again. Just after sunset, she came back with a bundle of samphire to go with the clams. I put down my pen, and we cooked up the shellfish in the raked ashes of a fire. Then feasted till juices ran down our chins.
That evening, after eating, we were both strangely elated; I wonder if it was the rich clamflesh made us so. We sat together in the prow of the Ark and I taught the tribeswoman to pick out some simple tunes on the banjo. Afterwards, I played and sang for her. At first, she sat quiet, just listening, then she began singing wordlessly along, harmonizing with my melody lines. Once I’d tired, the pads of my fingers were sore, we lay back on the deck, looked up at the sky. It was cloudless, dark, dark blue, daubed with a bright, full moon, spattered with stars. I thought to point out to the tribeswoman the constellations I’d learnt as a child, but found I couldn’t recall any, if indeed they could still be seen in the sky, if the stellar clutter hadn’t shifted too much over the long ages. I’d not picked up any of the intervening epoch’s sidereal ragtags, either. So, I made up fit-seeming names for shapes I saw instead. There was the courtesan, shielding her face with her fan; her suitor, the beggar boy, cap in hand; the snail; the sail-fin shark; the death’s head hawkmoth; and the spider monkey. I was hushed, not afraid of my voice betraying us, but awed by the beauty in the welkin, sleepy, and content. Finally, we retired, the tribeswoman to the pallet in the cabin, me to blankets spread out under my lean-to. I felt really happy. However, something happened that night to dispel my good mood. I wrote an account of it the following morning, perhaps it’s best I give you that version, composed when it was still raw.
Last night, the tribeswoman came to me in my shelter as I slumbered, woke me, traced, with her finger, the healing scar slashing across my brow. Opening my eyes, I saw her, by the moon’s light, crouched on haunches beside me. Naked. She
gazed at me hard, with her soft brown eyes, her dark hair, hanging straight down, framing her face. I felt lust for the first time in many ages, sat up, throwing off my blanket, lapped at her breasts, thrust my hand between her thighs, groping in the warm dark cleft. Closing her eyes, biting her lower lip, she seized me by the nape, pulled me to her, then straddled me, took hold my cock, sought to stick herself with it. But I was limp, have been chaste too long. Grimacing, shamed, I pushed the woman aside. She looked at me, bewildered, hurt. I noticed she’d removed the bandage from her wound, that it was healing very well. I was about to mention it, to cover my embarrassment, but she padded away. For some time, I lay awake, staring up at the thatched roof of the lean-to.
This morning, when I roused the tribeswoman, she acted as if nothing had happened; I doubt anything will happen between us now, and that saddens me, if in a muted way; I’ve grown to find her enthralling.
I was wrong about this, we’ve fucked since, though in delirium, not desire, a frenzied, bane-freaked rutting that’s soured all lust now. But our mute friendship has continued to grow, and I’m glad of that.
Our tempers are well matched, and hardship has also tempered our bond, for, since the night of my chagrin, we’ve known no peace.
The following morning, I woke early, brain throbbing. The sky was cloudless, still blue-black impasto, though there was a faint scumble out over the sea. Leaning over the bowrail, looking down on my reflection in the river, a long way below, I saw it clear; the air was still, there wasn’t even the faintest of breezes to rumple the image. It was chill, my breath ghosted in the air, but all augured the day would turn warm and that it would be another of sane shades in the sky, there were no sick tints in the dawn haze, only rose. I roused the tribeswoman. She also seemed
a bit blear and sore-headed; she winced, clutched her skull. I supposed the odd, if pleasant, fuddlement we’d felt after eating the shellfish to have been the result of some mild toxin, and that we were now feeling its after-effects. Once we’d eaten breakfast, the tribeswoman returned to the cabin, went back to sleep. I sat down at my typewriter to briefly set down the previous day’s and night’s events before they faded.
I’d only been working a short time, when, looking upriver, I saw charcoal smudges on the flats in the faint, if waxing, light. I crossed to the bowrail, peered; seals, as many as a hundred, and a few larger beasts, walruses and seacows, hitching themselves across the ooze, making for the water. Just then, rising clear of the horizon, the sun set the sloblands blazing. Squinching my eyes against the glare, I watched the animals cross a lake of fire, slip into the river, swim out to sea.
I knuckled my eyes, grinned, stood stunned a short while. But my reverie was soon disturbed by shouts and the beating of drums from upstream. I went to the stern. A mob came our way, crossing the mud: the tribe, come to avenge the death of its leader, come for a reckoning.
Horrored, I looked on the throng. They were many, almost the entire tribe, I guessed, men, women, and children, all who could walk, even some who couldn’t, infants in slings across mothers’ chests, a crone with withered legs who rode on the back of a burly man, all armed, save the babies and the very youngest children, wielding slings, clubs, knives, blowpipes. It seemed they’d picked a new leader, for a young man wearing purple robes walked alone, slightly ahead of the pack, bearing haughty then hunched by turns, looking over his shoulder often, as if he feared some prank, the tribe, sniggering, running off, abandoning him. Not far behind him came the drummers, thickset men with animal-hide tabors on which they thumped out a driving rhythm. Amid the throng was a frame lashed from pine trunks, which the tribe crowded, clamoured, fought to tote.
It bore some large thing. It was cloth draped, and I couldn’t tell what it was, only that it was heavy, going by the stoutness of the frame and the many hands needed to carry it.
I called out to the tribeswoman, my voice shaking. She came out of the cabin, blinking in the now bright light, came to the taffrail, saw the rabble, turned to me, biting her lip. It was too late to take flight, we’d be seen and run down. I crossed to the foredeck, winched up the gangplank. Then I went back to stand by the tribeswoman. We watched the tribe approach.
The mob stopped a little way from the ship. The drums fell silent, and the strange burden was set down. Several of the tribe began to untie the thongs holding down the cloth that covered it. I clambered onto one of the shipping containers, boosted up by the tribeswoman, and yowled, loud, drawn out. But the rabble were not cowed, just loosed a few slingstones at me. I jumped back down off the container and took shelter behind the bulwarks with the tribeswoman. A few moments passed, then the clatter of slingstones petered out, and I raised my head, peered over the gunwale, gasped.
The unwieldy thing the tribe had brought with them lay, uncovered, on the mud. A catapult, an arm with a sling dangling from the end, a rope skein. Several of the tribe bustled about it, twisting the skein, even at that distance the creaking of the ropes could be heard. A rough ball of some dark stuff was then loaded into the sling. The chieftain, who had before stood at a distance, crossed over, while the rest took a step back. A flaming brand was put into his hand, and he set light to the projectile. He waited till it was well aflame, sending up a thick rope of black smoke, then knelt down, released the trigger.
The flaring missile arced over the Ark, reeky tail a sooty daub on the blue. I turned, dashed to the prow. The missile came down on a sandbank, out in the middle of the estuary, burst apart in a storm of burning smuts.
Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the tribeswoman
waving frantically at me, ran back to the stern. The tribe swarmed round the catapult, readying it again, adjusting; I feared they now had their aim and distance.
I cudgelled my brains for a flight, frantic, fretting for the tribeswoman’s life, and for mine also, for, though the bombs couldn’t kill me, one might leave me sore burned, unable to flee or defend myself should the din and smoke draw my enemy, as I feared it would, for to him chaos is what carrion is to crows.
Then I recalled the grappling iron and rope. Beckoning the tribeswoman to follow, I ran to the cabin, and, rummaging around in our pile of things, laid hold of them, a bag of dried provisions, my knife, and my torch. The tribeswoman and I then crossed over to the river side of the hulk, away from the natives, hooked the grapnel to a ring fixed to the deck, and threw the rope over the bulwarks. I gestured to the tribeswoman to go, and she vaulted the rail, swarmed down, hand over hand. While I waited, I looked about, and my heart jolted as I caught sight of, on my makeshift desk, this typescript, and, on top, weighting its piled pages against gusts, my typewriter. I wanted to save these things, to at least try, I’d set down too much by then and had too much still to tell, to
purge
, of this
tale
, this
account
. So I leant over the gunwale, waved to the tribeswoman, signalled she should wait, then ran over to the table, cast about for twine, I didn’t want to leave the pages of my narrative loose, saw a skein on the deck a short way off, darted over, picked it up, then, returning, saw the spare ream I kept under my desk, so took it, tied it up with my tale, then gathered up, in my arms, the bundle of paper and the typewriter, took them over to one of the metal shipping containers, went inside, swept away, with my feet, the draff from a dingy corner, and left them there. A wrench.
I came forth, blinking, from the container, turned to look at the natives of the flats, saw the catapult kick like an ass, fling a missile into the air, slew, break a tribesman’s forearm in a lash of blood. The flaring lump of pitch groaned out of the sky, struck
the corner of one of the containers, rained fire down on the foredeck. Our stack of firewood and some bundles of reeds the tribeswoman was planning to work into twine for fishing lines were soon alight. Burning smuts gyred in the air, spread the flames to the lean-to’s thatched roof, a pile of laundry we’d left out, and meal from oats I’d ground, which I kept in an old metal barrel the tribeswoman had found, buried in mud, a little way down the estuary. From the blazing lean-to, I heard twanging, the strings of my banjo, and was sorry. Some embers, falling on me, kindled my clothes, and throwing myself down, I rolled on the boards to put out the flames. Then I got to my feet, darted to the prow, hurdled the rail, grabbed hold the rope, and slid down it, flaying the skin from my palms. As I dropped, I heard a blast, the oatmeal, saw the barrel spin through the air overhead, splash down in the river, float downstream, trailing steam billows. I splattered down, sank, to my knees, into the sludge. The tribeswoman, who crouched a little distance off, waiting for me, crossed over, took my hand, hauled me out. A noise like a toad’s croak. I lay gasping. Then another report rolled on our ears, a third projectile had struck the Ark.
The tribeswoman and I loped across the mud toward the river, waded in, began swimming for the far bank. We strove to keep the freighter’s bulk between us and the rabble, but the current was backing with the rising tide and we drifted upstream into plain view. Still, we were not sighted till, midstream, we were forced to clamber over a sandbank. Then one of the tribe hollered, pointed us out. But the catapult needed to be turned to aim at us, and by the time the tribe had done so, and reloaded, we’d gained the far bank and begun running, bent, to stay hid, through the reeds there. The shot was loosed, but struck the bank at the place where we’d clambered from the river, by then far behind us.