The Sun Is God (28 page)

Harry swings at you again. Bradtke's blade glints.

You can't remember any verse.

But you will fight.

“Put it down, woman,” Bradtke says.

“I will not,” you reply and smack the broken bamboo staff into his ribs. He attempts to slash it with the machete but he isn't fast enough and the blow hurts him. You hit him again and again in quick succession: in the ribs and jaw and smack in the middle of those rotten teeth.

Helena and Anna are advancing into the surf now and behind them on the sand Misha Denfer. These creatures are as resilient as the creations of Mr. Stoker.

Harry climbs into the canoe with his machete. Will is standing up, holding the obsidian knife. “There are no two ways about it Harry, get out of the canoe or I'll kill you,” Will says.

“Put down the knife, Will, my weapon outmatches yours,” Harry replies.

“Get out Harry or we will have to kill you, sir,” you tell him.

Will lunges at him and loses his balance and almost falls out of the canoe.

“Ha!” Harry laughs and jumps from the canoe and lands on you and knocks you down.

You go under the waves, swallow water, come up again.

The machete comes swinging through the air.

“Hold her, Harry!” Fräulein Schwab yells from the shore.

But you can tell that he means to kill you. You take a breath and dive deep down under the water and find his ankle and tug him off his feet. You hold him under until he is lost in panic.

As your surface a spear from the shore passes over your head.

You wait for Harry and when he surfaces you strike him in the face, hard, with the bamboo staff. Engelhardt is trying to get into the canoe. You bring the bamboo down hard on the top of his head.

Moonlight. Blood. Bradtke floating face down in the surf, Engelhardt and Harry on their backs.

The tide has lifted the dugout. You start shoving it off the sandbar.

“Bessie!” Schreckengost calls, from the top of the dune. “Come back!”

You heave with all your might while Will paddles.

“Come on, Klaus!” Will says, and despite their wounds and exhaustion the two men paddle for all they are worth.

The canoe lifts up and you push it farther, and when the water is at your neck you climb aboard, take the paddle from Kessler, and begin stroking like a woman possessed.

A fusillade of spears and stones.

A wave breaks over you. The going is rough.

“That is our property!” Engelhardt shouts. “We are coming after you!”

Will looks at you. “Do they have another canoe?” he asks.

“I do not know,” you tell him.

“I can't paddle anymore; I'm wrecked,” he says

“It's quite all right, Mr. Prior. I will take us.”

I will take us.

You sit in the rear of the canoe and paddle on both sides. It begins to rain.

“We must go back for my wireless telegraphy set!” Klaus moans.

“Do not excite yourself, sir,” you tell him firmly.

The rain is heavy, the sea black and violent.

A dozen more strokes.

And then another dozen.

No sign of pursuit but the tide will soon be setting against you.

Kessler is barely awake and Will is hunched over in a swoon.

“It's down to you, Bessie,” you say to yourself.

When you look back there is, as yet, no sign of a pursuit.

You paddle and put out your tongue to catch the rain water.

Minutes become an hour. The land seems no closer.

It is less than ten miles across the sound to Herbertshöhe but the northeast trades are blowing and the powerful current heads out, out into the South Pacific . . .

All you can do is paddle harder.

The wind blows, the sky clears, and there above you are the southern constellations.

The navigators cross, Gemini, Centaurus.

Your arms ache, but still you must paddle.

You are being carried east. To that place Queen Emma told you about in the ceremonies of the taboo: Tingenatabaran, where souls go at sunrise into the vast, empty, aquamarine ocean. Your hands blister. Blood pours down the wood.

The drift is increasing and you realize now that you must paddle across the current. You must head for Simpsonhafen at the western edge of the Gazelle Peninsula if you are not to be carried away from New Britain, into the vast Pacific.

You can only imagine what would happen under the tropical sun without food or water; and you paddle, ignoring the fire in your arms.

You close your eyes and count strokes. One left, one right.

Ten, a hundred, a hundred and fifty.

You open your eyes but the land seems just as far away as ever.

Ten, a hundred, two hundred, three . . .

When you dare to look, New Britain does seems a little closer! Perhaps the current has eased, or your plan is working.

You continue along the diagonal.

And close your eyes again. Ten, a hundred, another hundred, another.

Yes, it is closer.

Ten, a hundred, two hundred, three . . .

And a furtive light in the east.

Lemon sea. Golden sea.

Ten, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred, a thousand . . .

You can see Herbertshöhe and Queen Emma's massive warehouses around the docks.

Ten, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred.

The lamps on the pier. The windows of the Governor's mansion.

Ten, a hundred, two hundred, three—

“Where are your running lights?” someone shouts.

A young German naval rating yelling at you from a little steam launch.

“We are in need of your assistance, sir,” you tell him and drop your paddle and swoon backward, utterly utterly spent.

A rope.

A tow.

Questions.

Astonished faces.

“Wasser . . . wasser. Bitte!”

“Wasser, schnell!”

Movement. Someone lifting you.

You are on dry land, on a stretcher.

“Take them to the hospital!”

Faces.

Female faces.

A fan turning above your head.

“Sleep now,” a voice says.

Sleep.

Daylight.

White sheets.

Overhead fans.

Voices in French. Nuns who feed you and give you tea.

Doctor Bremmer takes your pulse and seems satisfied. “Try to rest,” he says.

Rest.

Yes.

By the evening you are sitting up reading a newspaper from Australia when you see Governor Hahl walking toward your bed. He is alone. Dressed rather formally.

“My dear Miss Pullen-Burry, how do you do?” he begins.

“I am feeling much better, I find.”

“I am so glad! Doctor Bremmer says that you are making excellent progress.”

“Yes. I am quite on the mend. And Will? And Hauptman Kessler?”

“Hauptman Kessler discharged himself from the hospital and is recovering in his own home.”

“That is excellent news.”

“And Will?”

“I'm afraid Herr Prior has the malarial fever, but he is in good hands with Doctor Bremmer.”

“I hope so.”

“Miss Pullen-Burry?”

“Yes?”

“This is a delicate matter.”

“Proceed, sir.”

“In light of what Hauptman Kessler tells me of the extraordinary events on Kabakon, I wanted to ask you if you still feel that you are able to keep your promise not to write about what you have seen and heard there?”

You raise your hand. “Allow me to put your mind at ease. Rest assured that I will not write about this. I have given my word and my word is sacred, sir.”

“Miss Pullen-Burry, I knew that we could rely upon your discretion,” Governor Hahl says. “Of course when you are quite recovered you shall stay at my residence.”

“I shall be leaving here, as soon as I am able,” you tell him.

“Then I shall place the servants of his Imperial Majesty at your disposal; wherever you wish to go, the Kaiserliche Marine will take you.”

“A most generous offer.”

“I will bid you good day, madam,” Governor Hahl says with a bow.

“Good day, sir.”

When he has gone you ask for your journal.

“No, I will not write about this,” you tell yourself. “I will spare my friends embarrassment and I will spare myself indignity and I will trust Governor Hahl to deal with the wretches on Kabakon.”

You tear out the pages of notes you have made on the Cocovores. You hold the pencil in your bandaged fist, planning maps, gypsy routes, and sea lanes to strange new lands that should provide the local color which Mr. John Murray requires to make into a book.

22

THE NIGHT WITCHES

O
n the day of Gan, the kingfisher, Siwa learned that a navy steamer had towed a canoe onto the beach of Herbertshöhe. There had been consternation on the Strand, with men yelling in native languages and in German.

“Your man is alive but not well. He coughs blood. His eyes are caked with salt,” a boy told her.

She went to the hospital but the nuns would not admit her. She returned in her church dress and carried a Bible and still they would not admit her because she was no blood relative. She went to the new doctor and told him that if she was not admitted to the ward then some night while he was sleeping she would steal into his house by the ground floor window and cut his throat with an obsidian blade.

She was admitted.

Will was shivering under the sheets. He had been beaten. He was very sick. “It is malaria, of course,” Doctor Bremmer said. “Rather an advanced case, I'm afraid. It is in his liver.”

She took his hand, dismissed the doctor, and hissed at the nuns.

He was cold. “Am I on the block of ice?” he asked.

“No, Will, you are with me.”

“If this is death? Where is the box and the earth?”

“You're with me. You're safe.”

“Siwa. Oh God!”

Under the bandages he wept.

An hour passed.

Siwa knew this because the ward had a loud grandfather clock that marked out the fever hours.

Will's forehead was burning up.

Another hour. Another unwelcome visitor. “How does he do?” a woman asked.

“He is doing very well,” Siwa told this English lady who was also bandaged and a patient here.

She knew that Siwa was lying. There was a croak in her voice that carried no conviction.

“Miss Pullen-Burry!” Will groaned. “Thank you!”

“That's quite all right,” the lady replied “You are in good hands now, Mr. Prior, I can see that, you must do your best to get well.”

The nuns helped the lady back to her wing of the hospital.

“She saved me, Siwa,” Will said.

The saving, Will, has not even begun.

She squeezed his hand and leaned forward to kiss his brow. She saw that his blue eyes were bleached almost white. His breath reeked of death.

The sun advanced slowly across the sky.

He gazed at her like a man overboard looking back at the ship. She was a shade to him. The whole world was like this. A shadow play with shadow puppets.

“Who are you?”

“Oh, Will.”

Doctor Bremmer came to administer a purgative.

Siwa seized his wrist and squeezed. “He is too weak.”

“We must clear his lungs with cigar smoke.”

“You will do no such thing.”

“This is my patient.”

“This is my man.”

Their eyes met and again Siwa did not waver.

She took Will's hand. She watched him breathe. She watched the blue in the ship-filled sea. She watched the yellow in the hospital garden.

“Where are we? I need to know where I am.”

“We are in the hospital, in Herbertshöhe.”

“We are in the canoe. They are after us. There are sharks!”

“There are no sharks. You are safe. You are in the hospital.”

“They're going to kill us. They're mad! A conspiracy.”

“No, Will, you are safe.”

“Where's Bremmer!” Will screamed. “Bremmer!”

Doctor Bremmer came. “Tell them about the water in his lungs. Tell them!” Will said.

“Do not agitate yourself, Mr. Prior. You must rest.”

“Tell them about the water!”

Siwa bathed his head.

The late afternoon heat. Ice from Queen Emma's machine. The whirring of a mechanical fan . . .

Bremmer was about to retire for the day. Siwa sought him out. “Tell me.”

“I'm afraid he has reached the final crisis. He will either recover or die in the next day. Of course no one ever truly recovers from malaria, but this will be the apex.”

“What must I do?”

“Stay with him. Talk to him. Keep him from the coma if you are able.”

“I shall.”

Dusk. Her hand on Will's forehead.

The domain of the other. The world of the Dreaming.

She bathed his temple and observed carefully as the sun dipped below the pelagic rock.

Red sky.

Blue sky.

Black sky.

Moths banged against the screens. The last of the nuns went to their convent in Simpsonhafen.

Will opened his eyes. It was night, when the witches took to the air . . .

He could hear them coming across the Bismarck Sea. Over the wave and swell. To this world of machines and concrete and oil. A world they hated. Along the Wilhelm II Strasse and through the graveyard. Sniffing at the Lutheran headstones and the Celtic crosses. Past the Forsayth warehouse. Up Bismarck Strasse and Hanover Strasse. And finally:

The hospital steps.

The brass lock on the front door.

The entrance hall, the fever ward.

“The witches!” Will said.

“You are safe, Will,” Siwa replied.

Safe within the circle of salt and orchid petals with which she had surrounded the bed.

She held the coral at her neck. She spoke the old words. Not Welsh hymns, but an older wisdom by far, a string of words that were as old as man's first march from the West, when the Dreaming willed her people across the sea and along the coasts and into these wild, remote lands.