Half Discovered Wings (20 page)

‘
Good!’ Caeles said. ‘Again!’

And again, Gabel breathed in, pushed it out. Caeles felt
Rowan’s neck with his fingers, moved away to push again, and felt
the beat at the last moment. He checked once more, just under the
angle of the jaw, and detected a strained heartbeat emerge
suddenly, thankfully.

‘
Wait,’ he told Gabel. His voice was calmer.

‘
What’s going on?’ The hunter’s words had anger in them –
Caeles missed the red flash of his eyes, looking up too late to see
– and his brow was furrowed, his hair running with sweat, hat
knocked away. ‘What happened to her?’

‘
Something stung her, a wasp. Over there.’

Gabel went,
saw the huge crushed carcass of the insect. He reached down with
his hand to touch it, felt the lash of static electricity that
jumped up to him. He saw the spark in the air and smelled
burning.

‘
Oh god,’ he muttered.

He ran past
Rowan and Caeles, past the magus and outside. The storm was like
nothing he had ever seen, crashing down upon them like waves
against a cliff. The usually still waters of the Lual were spinning
with foam. Water crashed over his head and shoulders, and to his
surprise lightning rippled under the clouds in a vast purplish-blue
sheet—

rain stinging
his eyes, he smashes through the doors of the inn and the weather
hits him in the face. He senses the power in the air, and the look
on Bethany’s face as William Teague feeds on her, gripping her
arms, whilst her lank hair hangs limply down, her blood trickling
over her white skin

—
and he staggered backward for a
second, feeling the force of the recollection in his mind. His eyes
streamed with tears as well as rain.

The chief, Timothy, ran into him, soaked to the skin.
‘Storm’s hit us all of a sudden, didn’t see it coming! Better get
down below, look’s rough.’ Thunder punctuated his
speech.

Gabel pushed
past him, running onto the deck.

‘
Samuel
!
’ he yelled. He could barely hear
himself over the thunder. ‘
Samuel
!
’

‘
What is it?’

The voice was
quiet, but he heard every phoneme of it clearly.

‘
Samuel, help me! Rowan’s been hurt.’

‘
I don’t care!’ the young man screamed. His pale body seemed
unaffected by the rain, sheet after wind-blown sheet lashing not
over him but through him, crashing against the deck. ‘It’s not my
problem, Joseph! None of this is!’

‘
Do something! Please!’

‘
What can I
do
?
I can’t do
anything! Do you know how far out you are from the shores? What use
am I to you or anybody like this? I couldn’t get involved even if I
wanted to – and I’ve no reason to help you, Joseph, none at
all!’

‘
She could
die
!’ Gabel bellowed.

Rain washed over him, changing direction between he and the
boy. Strong winds, unhindered by mountains or valleys, simply
crashed over the vast expanse of water from all sides. For the
first time on the journey, Gabel heard the beat of waves against
the hull. A mist of saltwater fell against his lips, a bitter
contrast to the tasteless rainwater.

‘
She’s not my problem!’ the boy snapped. Hair fell over the
young man’s eyes, as perfectly dry as though he were standing in a
desert, and he pushed it back. ‘None of this is! I may as well be
inhabiting another world, another time. I can’t help you and
I
won’t
. Just …
Just stop calling me!’

‘
Samuel
!
Help me,
please
!
’

He faded suddenly, and
he heard the voice in his head:

‘
No! Not after what you’ve
done!
’

~

They laid her on the bed in the cabin where she’d been stung,
hair smoothed and laid neatly over her shoulders, arms crossed over
her stomach. They’d removed her boots, and a blanket had been put
over her up to the waist.

Her face was as blank as a mourner’s. No expressions stirred
her features – even one of pain might have been preferable to none
– and there were no twitches in her fingers, no movement under her
eyelids. Her lips were dry, and they had to sit her up to tip water
down her throat. No muscles eased the passage of food; they had to
be stroked into involuntary convulsions until the motor reactions
carried the moistened bread to her stomach.

She was alone in the berth. No-one watched her that hour, but
it was all right. She never knew.

~

‘
We have to change course,’ Caeles said. His hands were flat on
the bridge console. ‘She could die.’

‘
We all could die,’ said the captain. ‘The rusalki could rise
up, snatch us from the deck an’ carry us under for all I know. We
all could die here, Mister Caeles.’

‘
You just call me Caeles.’

‘
Whatever. Listen, I’ll do my best,’ snapped the captain, ‘but
I do the orderin’. You do as
I
say. We’re not goin’ through the graveyard. We’re
goin’ around it, as planned. I’ll do as tight a circumference as I
can, but we’re not goin’ through it. Not in my vessel.’

‘
But it isn’t dangerous. There’s no such things as
ghosts.’

Others on the
boat might have disagreed, but no-one else was on the bridge.

‘
It’s not gheists I’m worried about. It’s the sharp
rocks and reefs
I don’t
want passin’ through my boat, not spirits. That area is dangerous.
We’d risk all our lives by going through the graveyard.’

Caeles wasn’t
in the mood to argue anymore. He was barely in the mood to be
aggressive, though it came easily enough. His fists clenched and
unclenched. His ears picked up the hammering of the rain outside,
and the ceaseless patter of the drops on the water around the
vessel.

‘
Make as direct a route as you can. That’s all I’m
asking.’

‘
It’s all you’re gettin’.’

The captain
stared obdurately out the bridge window, but then turned halfway,
his arms keeping the wheel steady as if working by themselves.

‘
Sorry I can’t do more,’ he added, in a calmer
voice.

Caeles found Gabel in his cabin, still soaked from the rain.
He was dripping onto the hammock where he would sleep that night,
not concerned with how uncomfortable he might be or how the strings
might warp.

‘
You should take your jacket off,’ Caeles said. ‘We don’t want
another sick person aboard.’

The hunter
took off his jacket and rested it on the hook just to his right, by
the hammock.

‘
Why did you run onto the deck like that?’

‘
I wanted to get help from the crew,’ said Gabel, not looking
up.

‘
The chief said you nearly knocked him overboard.’

‘
I was looking for Lanark.’

‘
Why?’

‘
They both needed to know.’

Caeles left it. Over the next few minutes, he watched the
dampness in the hunter’s shirt spread a few centimetres more, then
stop. The factotum still had on his fedora, pooled with water. It
would probably warp if he didn’t empty the rim and let it
dry.

After a long
while, Gabel twisted and lay down in the hammock, leaving his hat
and boots on. He sighed deeply, then turned over, away from
Caeles.

The rain was louder outside. In a daze he entered Rowan’s
quarters and shut the wet coldness and the sound of the storm
behind him. She lay on the other side of the room, silent and
unresponsive.

She looked almost mummified, the way she was laid. Hands over
her stomach, chin up, feet together. Caeles had seen real mummies –
behind glass of course – and they had been preserved in a similar
fashion, arranged in the same formal manner.

The way bodies
are arranged in coffins.

The hornet still lay trampled on the floor. That too looked
almost mummified, shrunken now and black, as if burnt. He could
smell its acrid reek even as he stood looking down. Kneeling, he
picked it up by the wings, then moved it to the small desk in the
corner and put it down. He sat and stared at it for a few
minutes.

The creased
and battered wings had since unfolded a little, retaking their
shape, but he guessed that was normal. The horrible black face, big
as a golf ball, was half collapsed, and now only one smooth
ceramic-white eye was still intact. It had a tiny black pupil in
the centre facet, which looked away from him.

Caeles reached out with an unafraid finger and touched the
granite-coloured head. It was slightly furry. He fought the impulse
to flatten it. He wanted to crush it between his fist and the desk,
just to make sure it was dead. But it was undeniably so.

He looked over
at Rowan. No change.

Back to the hornet. The body was deflated. Lava-coloured
blood spilled out from one side, caked over the downy abdomen. The
patterns, which had once shifted over the surface of its lower
body, were now set like murals, lightning-coloured oil on a sunset
red.

He reached
over, wishing suddenly for the surgical equipment he once possessed
many, many years ago, and broke off the sting. He let it roll in
his palm for a while. It was almost as long as one of his fingers,
and was a curious diaphanous hue of amber that had become
completely solid, once full of searing poison. Picking it up
between two fingers he examined it closely, looked at the ring of
flesh near the base end where it had once been attached.

Then he put the entire insect in his left palm, shielded it
from the wind outside the cabin, and dropped it into the Lual. He
hoped a hundred little fish would feast on its remains, but he
doubted it. Maybe two or three, if they were small and
desperate.

There was a tiny stain on the wall of the cabin where he had
punched it. He tried to wipe it away, but it had already been
absorbed into the wood. There were little spots of lava on the
floor where it had been stamped on.

‘
Rowan,’ he said quietly, listening to the wind howling
outside. The small half-rotten cabin seemed suddenly darker. ‘Can
you hear me?’

Only the wind
gave an answer. He sat in the wooden chair by the desk and watched
her. After a few uninterrupted hours, he said again:

‘
Can you hear me, Rowan?’

The wind had
stopped, but his ears were full of the rush of his heartbeat
anyway, so he hadn’t noticed the silence.

~

The captain
had left the ship in the capable hands of the chief, and sat on the
small bridge watching the naked bulb swing above him, shifting the
shadows.

‘
I’ve
not heard of any beast like that before. Sorry.’

‘
Gabel says he’s seen one before. It’s called a
bolt-hornet.’

Caeles looked at the chief, who turned and shook his head.
Caeles’ eyes dropped to the table, his hands feeling the splinters.
Pulling them out would keep him busy during the night. Not that
they hurt; his skin was almost entirely prosthetic, an amalgam of
plastic, rubber and fine layers of organic dermis. There were nerve
endings sensitive to touch and pressure, but not to
pain.

The rain and
wind had subsided considerably, but the storm had not entirely
blown out. The main cabin creaked, contracting in the cold. The
bulb moved in a tiny circle, suspended by a few inches of protected
wiring.

The
chief bosun’s mate was the only mate on board, but he retained the
title not out of pride but simple stubbornness. Lanark was lithe,
strong and able enough to do his job, and his serious face bristled
with rough red hair. Faded tattoos decorated his arms.

He was a naturalist, and was friendly with a man in Goya
known as Fenn. Fenn was a respected doctor and veterinarian, whose
only “children” were furred and quadrupedal; he collected rare
animal species from various parts of the world. He was also a
mentor, and one of his pupils was Lanark, who made many notes and
sketches. Lanark knew of the bolt-hornet.

‘
Where does it come from?’ Caeles asked

‘
Not around here.’ Lanark’s hands were busy with rope, which he
was fastening to a metal cleat in the cabin’s outer wall. The winds
gave him a chill that Caeles didn’t feel. ‘From the European
continent, I think. I doubt you’d find any native to around
here.’

‘
But how dangerous are they?’

‘
Can cause death in animals. Paralysis in people, I’ve heard.
Rowan seems to have reacted adversely to its static poison, from
what I can tell.’

‘
She’s comatose.’

‘
Aye.’ He pulled the rope, testing its security, then ran his
hands along the length of it, lifting it over a few wooden boxes
about waist high.

‘
But is there an antidote?’ Caeles asked
impatiently.

‘
Doc
Fenn has an extensive collection of anti-venoms,’ he replied, ‘must
be one for the bolt-hornet. Only there’s a difference between our
hornet and the common ones.’