Today has but a very slim chance of happening. Don't hold your breath for tomorrow, either.
No explanations. Assume my puppy died or something.
Tuesday 17 June 2008
Monday 16 June 2008
Locution blog post (Day 9)
Having exhausted myself somewhat yesterday, I gave myself a breather and wrote a Locution blog post about the challenge.
Charlie and the Ship is due to continue tomorrow.
Charlie and the Ship is due to continue tomorrow.
Sunday 15 June 2008
Charlie and the Ship V (Day 8)
Continued from Day 7.
* * *
It was past noon when Charlie woke up.
After a few seconds of groping, his hands found the bulwark and he pulled himself upright. He'd been too tired to notice the hardness of the deck before, but was now discovering that sleeping on a hard wooden surface for two consecutive nights was a reliable way to ensure being sore as a broken promise in the morning.
The deck was looking just as deserted as it had when he first saw it. Maybe more deserted, now that he had seen it bustling with people. Or had he? Ghosts and pirates and sailing into the sky. It all seemed so gloriously absurd, so surreal, so very much like a dream.
Charlie saw the tiller spin one turn to the port. On some accounts, though, the dream hypothesis just did not fit in. He didn't think even the most magnificent of dreams would be physically capable of easing the sails. A topsail's tack retied itself as the ship turned to a run. Charlie silently accepted that he had either been rescued by a crew of ex-pirate ghosts who sailed around with a little girl, or gone stark raving insane.
He walked to the door of the captain's quarters, bidding a good morning to the autonomously rotating tiller as it vanished from his line of sight, sinking below the stern deck's railing.
"And a good morning to you, Charles Dobson. Although to say good afternoon would be more accurate," said the Captain's disembodied voice. Just as Charlie was about to knock on the door, it added, "The young lady is below the deck, presumably still engaged in a game of checkers with Cindy. You are free to enter the quarters. I recommend the philosophical works by the thirteenth abbot at Jinlin; they can be found on the third shelf down, in the bookcase to the right of the bed. There are maps of the Old Continent you may find worth familiarizing yourself with in the compartment under the bed."
"Thank you, Captain."
In the captain's quarters, the lanterns were unlit and the sun filtered in through the windows. The globe on the desk bathed in daylight. On its surface, the world as Charlie knew it had vanished, replaced by one huge continent, covering half of one hemisphere. The other hemisphere was almost completely blank. Charlie supposed even whatever magic hid within the carefully sanded shell of the globe didn't know all things.
According to Melissa, they were sailing north, and in the direction of the continent, so it was prudent to assume they were somewhere in the southern seas. He recognized the Bay of Folk from the maps, and Chamille, which Abraham had said to be the place of origin of the strange herbal tea Melissa had given him.
Charlie sought out the shelf the Captain had mentioned. Well, he thought, nothing to it other than to start digging. He expected to rummage through the books forever, but the first one he pulled out had, under the gilded impression of a forest in the spring, the words "The Snake and the Hare" and, in slightly smaller print, "Fa Men, thirteenth father of the Golden Forest" written on it.
He sat at the desk and began reading. The book began at the very first page, simply marked "one". It opened with what read like a beast fable. There were talking animals, like in the Uncle Remus stories he'd read as a child, only these animals didn't have houses or clothes. It went on for a few pages. A new one began.
Charlie leafed through a few pages, then through the entire book. There was page after page of animal stories, some only half a page long, some spanning dozens of them. Perhaps the abbot wrote stories for children in his spare time?
Charlie got up and exchanged the book for another. The bookcase supplied him with "The Blind Monkey", but a quick look inside showed it to be the same. He was then offered "The Beggar's Dog", "The Crocodile and the Mouse" and a handful of other books, until he came back to "The Snake and the Hare" again. Was the Captain playing some sort of joke on him? Heavens knew what he found amusing.
Nevertheless, feeling a bit guilty about just discarding the books, Charlie took "The Snake and the Hare" back to the table. He read all the way to "twenty-one", but found himself utterly unable to decipher any sort of deeper meaning from them, so he gave up and deposited it back into the bookshelf. He then left the captain's quarters.
The stairs leading to the crew's quarters were at the front of the forecastle. Charlie opened the door with a creak.
"Good morning, Mister Charlie! Didja just waked up?" Melissa was sitting on a bunk to the portside wall. It was one of three beds still left; the rest had presumably been thrown away with the need to sleep. There was a table in the middle of the room, with Cindy sitting behind it, fingers idly assembling and disassembling one of those puzzles where you tried to separate bits of metal or link them together again.
"No, I've been awake for a while. I was reading."
"Aye, the Duke, he's got a wealth in lit'rature, true enough," said a wiry, short man, sitting on the bunk opposite to Melissa. "What'd you read?"
"I, uh. It was Fa Men. The Captain suggested it to me. But it looked like just animal tales." The man chortled. Charlie'd known it. It was just a prank, then.
"I, well, I s'pect the Captain overestimated you just a mite there. Y'see - you're not from the Old Continent so I s'pose it stands to reason you don't know - but the thirteenth abbot of the Golden Forest was one of the wisest men to ever live.
He was born the son of a fisherman, y'see. That was twelve or thirteen hundred years ago. Her mother was ill and died giving birth to him, her fourth child. Her sickness had left him weak. He was always brittle as a twig, he was, so he wasn't much good for fishing, now was he? It was 'orrid for him hisself, too, to watch his already badly-off family need tend to him as well as themselves.
So one day - he was eight years old - he left, to live his life with the monks of the Order; that's the Order of Jinlin, the Order of the Golden Forest. The monks took him in, and he practiced their teachings and spent his days meditating.
Now, Fa Men's Heart was an oak, at the edge of a glade in the Forest. Means it was as much a part of him as an arm or a leg. For a monk of the Order, you are your Heart and your Heart is you. (Y'know what they say about the eighth abbot? They say no one never got to find out what his Heart was. You asked him, 'Abbot, what is your Heart?' and he would say he didn't understand the question.) When Fa Men first came to the Golden Forest he started his meditations under that tree. He would sit there in the shade of the oak for days without food or water. And though he didn't eat, he got stronger than he had ever been. Y'see, he was truly becoming one with the tree; his body was weak and he despised it, so it was easier for him to let go, and the tree had such vitality to lend to him, it was easy for him to merge with it.
When Fa Men had been in the Golden Forest for sixty-seven years, the then-abbot died. Fa Men succeeded him. Now he was spending months at a time in deep contemplation below the branches of the oak, without eating or drinking or sleeping. He didn't need to eat or drink or sleep. The tree drew on the water in the soil for sustenance, and it shared it with him, and Fa Men partook in its deep slumber.
Between his meditations, Fa Men wrote. One of the monks who lived in the Forest at that time said that every few months, he would get up from below the tree, take a quill and a piece of paper and write, without pause or uncertainty, for several pages. He'd never once return to read what he'd written; he'd just gone back to his meditation. He wrote one full 'story', as you called them, every time he left the oak, and when he thought there were enough, he told a monk to get the pages bound and published as a book.
To this day, he is the oldest man to ever live. At the age of three hundred and twenty-seven, Fa Men wrote his last story. It was one page long. He then gave it, with the other pages of his last book, to a monk that was passing by.
'Would you be so kind as to bind these pages into a book?' Those were the words Fa Men had used for all the other books, so they were what the monk expected to hear this time.
But Fa Men only said, 'Goodbye.'
And the monk said, 'Where are you going?'
And Fa Men said, smiling, 'To sit down for a while.'
And he sat down by the oak, and he never rose from that place again. He had died together with the tree, with the fit body of a healthy young man.
His books were the ones you saw in the Captain's library. They are the most revered spiritual and philosophical works of any man or woman who ever lived on the Old Continent. Fa Men wrapped his thoughts in parables and fables, but they are not puzzles; you don't try to figure them out. After you study the teachings of the order for long enough, they just become apparent to you. When you understand them, it comes from inside you."
"Do you understand them?" Charlie asked.
"All of them? Hell, no. I've read them all, many times. I can damn near recites them to you. But that don't mean I understand."
"And the Captain?"
"Why don't you ask him?" the man said. "Nobody knows for sure what the Duke understands. 's 'cause he don't tell. But I'm pretty he gets the two first books, and I think he's starting to understand The Beggar's Dog, too."
"How much do you understand?"
"After two years of studying Fa Men's texts, I'm beginning understand some of the fables in The Snake and the Hare." The man sighed. "Y'know what it's like? It's like leaving the darkness to go stand inside the sun."
"Are you from the Order?"
"Me? No." The man chuckled. "I'm a talespinner."
* * *
Nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be, but I'm not going to do any more editing at this point. Deal with it. :/
* * *
It was past noon when Charlie woke up.
After a few seconds of groping, his hands found the bulwark and he pulled himself upright. He'd been too tired to notice the hardness of the deck before, but was now discovering that sleeping on a hard wooden surface for two consecutive nights was a reliable way to ensure being sore as a broken promise in the morning.
The deck was looking just as deserted as it had when he first saw it. Maybe more deserted, now that he had seen it bustling with people. Or had he? Ghosts and pirates and sailing into the sky. It all seemed so gloriously absurd, so surreal, so very much like a dream.
Charlie saw the tiller spin one turn to the port. On some accounts, though, the dream hypothesis just did not fit in. He didn't think even the most magnificent of dreams would be physically capable of easing the sails. A topsail's tack retied itself as the ship turned to a run. Charlie silently accepted that he had either been rescued by a crew of ex-pirate ghosts who sailed around with a little girl, or gone stark raving insane.
He walked to the door of the captain's quarters, bidding a good morning to the autonomously rotating tiller as it vanished from his line of sight, sinking below the stern deck's railing.
"And a good morning to you, Charles Dobson. Although to say good afternoon would be more accurate," said the Captain's disembodied voice. Just as Charlie was about to knock on the door, it added, "The young lady is below the deck, presumably still engaged in a game of checkers with Cindy. You are free to enter the quarters. I recommend the philosophical works by the thirteenth abbot at Jinlin; they can be found on the third shelf down, in the bookcase to the right of the bed. There are maps of the Old Continent you may find worth familiarizing yourself with in the compartment under the bed."
"Thank you, Captain."
In the captain's quarters, the lanterns were unlit and the sun filtered in through the windows. The globe on the desk bathed in daylight. On its surface, the world as Charlie knew it had vanished, replaced by one huge continent, covering half of one hemisphere. The other hemisphere was almost completely blank. Charlie supposed even whatever magic hid within the carefully sanded shell of the globe didn't know all things.
According to Melissa, they were sailing north, and in the direction of the continent, so it was prudent to assume they were somewhere in the southern seas. He recognized the Bay of Folk from the maps, and Chamille, which Abraham had said to be the place of origin of the strange herbal tea Melissa had given him.
Charlie sought out the shelf the Captain had mentioned. Well, he thought, nothing to it other than to start digging. He expected to rummage through the books forever, but the first one he pulled out had, under the gilded impression of a forest in the spring, the words "The Snake and the Hare" and, in slightly smaller print, "Fa Men, thirteenth father of the Golden Forest" written on it.
He sat at the desk and began reading. The book began at the very first page, simply marked "one". It opened with what read like a beast fable. There were talking animals, like in the Uncle Remus stories he'd read as a child, only these animals didn't have houses or clothes. It went on for a few pages. A new one began.
Charlie leafed through a few pages, then through the entire book. There was page after page of animal stories, some only half a page long, some spanning dozens of them. Perhaps the abbot wrote stories for children in his spare time?
Charlie got up and exchanged the book for another. The bookcase supplied him with "The Blind Monkey", but a quick look inside showed it to be the same. He was then offered "The Beggar's Dog", "The Crocodile and the Mouse" and a handful of other books, until he came back to "The Snake and the Hare" again. Was the Captain playing some sort of joke on him? Heavens knew what he found amusing.
Nevertheless, feeling a bit guilty about just discarding the books, Charlie took "The Snake and the Hare" back to the table. He read all the way to "twenty-one", but found himself utterly unable to decipher any sort of deeper meaning from them, so he gave up and deposited it back into the bookshelf. He then left the captain's quarters.
The stairs leading to the crew's quarters were at the front of the forecastle. Charlie opened the door with a creak.
"Good morning, Mister Charlie! Didja just waked up?" Melissa was sitting on a bunk to the portside wall. It was one of three beds still left; the rest had presumably been thrown away with the need to sleep. There was a table in the middle of the room, with Cindy sitting behind it, fingers idly assembling and disassembling one of those puzzles where you tried to separate bits of metal or link them together again.
"No, I've been awake for a while. I was reading."
"Aye, the Duke, he's got a wealth in lit'rature, true enough," said a wiry, short man, sitting on the bunk opposite to Melissa. "What'd you read?"
"I, uh. It was Fa Men. The Captain suggested it to me. But it looked like just animal tales." The man chortled. Charlie'd known it. It was just a prank, then.
"I, well, I s'pect the Captain overestimated you just a mite there. Y'see - you're not from the Old Continent so I s'pose it stands to reason you don't know - but the thirteenth abbot of the Golden Forest was one of the wisest men to ever live.
He was born the son of a fisherman, y'see. That was twelve or thirteen hundred years ago. Her mother was ill and died giving birth to him, her fourth child. Her sickness had left him weak. He was always brittle as a twig, he was, so he wasn't much good for fishing, now was he? It was 'orrid for him hisself, too, to watch his already badly-off family need tend to him as well as themselves.
So one day - he was eight years old - he left, to live his life with the monks of the Order; that's the Order of Jinlin, the Order of the Golden Forest. The monks took him in, and he practiced their teachings and spent his days meditating.
Now, Fa Men's Heart was an oak, at the edge of a glade in the Forest. Means it was as much a part of him as an arm or a leg. For a monk of the Order, you are your Heart and your Heart is you. (Y'know what they say about the eighth abbot? They say no one never got to find out what his Heart was. You asked him, 'Abbot, what is your Heart?' and he would say he didn't understand the question.) When Fa Men first came to the Golden Forest he started his meditations under that tree. He would sit there in the shade of the oak for days without food or water. And though he didn't eat, he got stronger than he had ever been. Y'see, he was truly becoming one with the tree; his body was weak and he despised it, so it was easier for him to let go, and the tree had such vitality to lend to him, it was easy for him to merge with it.
When Fa Men had been in the Golden Forest for sixty-seven years, the then-abbot died. Fa Men succeeded him. Now he was spending months at a time in deep contemplation below the branches of the oak, without eating or drinking or sleeping. He didn't need to eat or drink or sleep. The tree drew on the water in the soil for sustenance, and it shared it with him, and Fa Men partook in its deep slumber.
Between his meditations, Fa Men wrote. One of the monks who lived in the Forest at that time said that every few months, he would get up from below the tree, take a quill and a piece of paper and write, without pause or uncertainty, for several pages. He'd never once return to read what he'd written; he'd just gone back to his meditation. He wrote one full 'story', as you called them, every time he left the oak, and when he thought there were enough, he told a monk to get the pages bound and published as a book.
To this day, he is the oldest man to ever live. At the age of three hundred and twenty-seven, Fa Men wrote his last story. It was one page long. He then gave it, with the other pages of his last book, to a monk that was passing by.
'Would you be so kind as to bind these pages into a book?' Those were the words Fa Men had used for all the other books, so they were what the monk expected to hear this time.
But Fa Men only said, 'Goodbye.'
And the monk said, 'Where are you going?'
And Fa Men said, smiling, 'To sit down for a while.'
And he sat down by the oak, and he never rose from that place again. He had died together with the tree, with the fit body of a healthy young man.
His books were the ones you saw in the Captain's library. They are the most revered spiritual and philosophical works of any man or woman who ever lived on the Old Continent. Fa Men wrapped his thoughts in parables and fables, but they are not puzzles; you don't try to figure them out. After you study the teachings of the order for long enough, they just become apparent to you. When you understand them, it comes from inside you."
"Do you understand them?" Charlie asked.
"All of them? Hell, no. I've read them all, many times. I can damn near recites them to you. But that don't mean I understand."
"And the Captain?"
"Why don't you ask him?" the man said. "Nobody knows for sure what the Duke understands. 's 'cause he don't tell. But I'm pretty he gets the two first books, and I think he's starting to understand The Beggar's Dog, too."
"How much do you understand?"
"After two years of studying Fa Men's texts, I'm beginning understand some of the fables in The Snake and the Hare." The man sighed. "Y'know what it's like? It's like leaving the darkness to go stand inside the sun."
"Are you from the Order?"
"Me? No." The man chuckled. "I'm a talespinner."
* * *
Nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be, but I'm not going to do any more editing at this point. Deal with it. :/
Saturday 14 June 2008
Charlie and the Ship IV (Day 7)
Continued from Day 6.
* * *
When Charlie had turned fifteen, he'd received a book on astronomy as a present from his grandfather. He'd never been all that interested in space and planets, so his grandfather's attempts to initiate a conversation on the topic had lost to a new video game console, which allowed Charlie to guide a plumber in red overalls through various worlds and was altogether very captivating.
The book would in all likelihood have been left to gather dust on the top shelf of some out-of-the-way bookcase, if it weren't for the fact that Charlie's grandfather died of a heart attack one week later. He read it cover to cover then, feeling that he owed him that much, since it was the last thing he had ever given him; it was some primitive form of closure, apology or maybe absolution.
Though most of the book focused on planets, black holes, nebulae and such things, there was also a section dedicated to constellations and their use in navigation. Charlie had a vague recollection that the night sky was different depending on the time of year and location on the globe, but now, sitting in the crow's nest with his back against the mast and his eyes turned up at this foreign sky, he could find neither Big Dipper nor Southern Cross; even Orion, which the book had said to be visible from almost any part of the world, was nowhere to be seen. It was as if all the stars had been scooped up by the hand of some drunken god and thrown back across the ceiling of the world at random. Melissa, on the other hand, had even been able to more or less accurately forecast the direction the ship would take. She'd climbed down from the crow's nest since, leaving Charlie alone with his thoughts.
He looked at the cluster of stars the girl had pointed out to him. "The Hunter points his arrow north," she'd said.
Charlie didn't notice Abraham climbing up until the stingy aroma of his tobacco wafted to his nostrils. He couldn't help starting a little; the crewmen's light feet took some getting used to. Abraham chuckled. He sat down facing Charlie, leaning against the railing. Wisps of grayish-white hair danced around his wrinkled brow. He had to have at least twenty years on the next oldest crewmember, Charlie thought. He was thin, and his skin had started to sag, but he didn't move with the shy carefulness that usually came with age. His face was creased, his pipe resting between thin lips.
"Can you actually taste that?" said Charlie.
"Same way as I can see your face and hear your voice, the same way I can feel the deck under my feet and smell the salt in the air. Yeah, I can taste it." His voice was deep and full, seasoned with the rasp of the decades. (Charlie was reminded distantly of Tom Waits.) "Though it don't do to me what it used to. This is force of habit more than anything else. You puff away for five hundred years, it becomes like breathing. Very good crop, though." He offered the pipe to Charlie. "Want some?"
"No thanks, I don't smoke."
"Pity. It really is a good crop." He stuck the pipe back between his teeth. "They grow things in the western parts of the Old Continent such as you wouldn't believe. The finest tobaccos, teas, poppy, everything."
"Tea? I think I might have had some before."
"Really? Which one?"
"I don't know exactly. It had this strange taste, like mint mixed with berries."
"Oh, that. That's just regular Chamille tea. It's what the little strumpet drinks." He drew on his pipe and, forming a circle with his lips, produced a perfect smoke ring. "Not that it's not a good sort, mind you. The tea, the spice, everything we have on the ship is top notch. You prowl around for as long as we have, you're bound to collect quite a bit of coin in your coffer."
Charlie looked up again. He couldn't have told the difference, but...
"I'm worried about my sis. And mum and dad too, I guess. But mostly it's sis. All they know is that I was lost at sea after the accident. She probably thinks I'm dead."
"I take it the lass is dear to you. I..." Abraham bit his lip. "Look, it's like..."
He didn't finish. Charlie rubbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. It was still moist from the cloud. There was a long moment where both men sat silently, Charlie looking at his feet and wondering if they were having a funeral for him back in New York, Abraham studying the glowing contents of his pipe contemplatively.
"You want to know what death's like for me?" said Abraham.
Charlie didn't say anything.
"It's release. I mean, you don't get it. You're young. But me..." He trailed off, then drew on the pipe again. "Obviously, I was made of some pretty tough stuff, 'cause I lasted so long on the seas. But you can't fight off aging forever; your drinking catches up with you, your smoking catches up with you, you feel your bones getting steadily more and more brittle, until the day comes when they fail you and you collapse in a heap and turn to dust." He sighed. "You know how we went? Sailed into black fog in the evening. It hadn't cleared by midnight, so we went to sleep. Next morning we woke up, we were all dead. We'd been lucky to go in our sleep -- we found the night watch up on the deck, he'd gouged out his own eyes and strangled himself with a cannon restraint rope."
"That's terrible."
"Aye, it was. But what could we do? We couldn't leave our bodies in the ship to rot, so we threw them overboard. It was no harder than throwing any corpse into the ocean - and mind you, I've thrown a lot of corpses into the ocean in my time - but there was something mighty disconcerting about it when the carcass had your face on it." He afforded a coarse, mirthless laugh. "But the point is, when Johnny tossed his body overboard, it broke him so much he tried to drown it with half a gallon of rum. But me? I was relieved. I didn't feel like I was throwing away myself. My self was, and still is, here and here" - he pointed at his see-through head and chest respectively - "and all I was throwing away was aching joints, back pains and having trouble getting up in the morning. I couldn't have been happier if I'd gone to heaven."
Charlie thought about his grandfather, who had needed a walking-cane, who sometimes woke up in the middle of the night in fits of coughing.
The melodious notes of a harmonica drifted up through the hatchway, a slow, sweet tune, like a lullaby. It was produced by Johnny, who was sitting on the portside bulwark, playing for Melissa. The light of a nearby lantern turned the top half of his body into transparent, misty white; from a distance, it looked like he'd fallen headfirst into a vat of flour.
"At least have a glass of wine with me before you nod off." Abraham gave a lopsided grin as Charlie shook himself. He got up and lowered himself out of the crow's nest. Charlie followed him down the rope ladder (still a bit gingerly) and the six wooden steps leading to the galley door.
At first sight the small room looked nothing short of claustrophobic. The roof was low; pots and pans hung on the wall between cupboards and shelves full of different spices, with a table and a sink underneath. The cook would have three or four measly feet of space between them and the range on the other side, which thankfully wasn't lit. Metal pipes traveled from its back to the wall and outside. Abraham opened a small trapdoor in the back of the galley and climbed down, taking a lantern from the wall with him.
The pantry was even more cramped, but at least there wasn't a threat of burning yourself. Most of the shelves were empty, but there was the occasional tin of rice or salted meat, a loaf of stale bread or a sack of flour. At the far end of the room there was a bottle rack, nearly full of wine and rum and spirits. Abraham took out one of the bottles.
"Wonderful Pinot Noir from Burgundy. If you like wines, you'll appreciate this," he said.
"I'm afraid I don't know much about them, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it," Charlie said diplomatically. He followed Abraham back up, then opened one of the cupboards.
"You'll only find pewter cups and tin plates here. There's proper glasses in the mate's quarters."
Up the staircase and down another. The first thing Charlie did was shoulder the jacket he'd been given from the bedside. Abraham rummaged through some drawers, then produced a wooden box sheltering, in straw padding, clear wine glasses. He took out two of them, handed one to Charlie and redeposited the box into the recesses of the drawer.
"I used to be mate myself, you know," Abraham said as they left the quarters. "Still am, technic'ly, but the chain of command has been blurred for a while now. There's hardly any orders given any more, we just work. The Captain's the only one who's kept his rank -- a ship needs a captain, after all." He sat down on the forecastle, corked the bottle with a pocket knife, and poured the wine. The scent was warm and inviting.
A little ways off, Johnny had put away the harmonica and was now singing, with Melissa chiming in for one half of the words and forgetting the other:
Lay me down below the mainsail,
My eyes turned to the skies.
The deck is beneath my fingers,
I'm saying my last goodbyes.
It's dark and I'm afraid of falling
When the world turns upside-down.
There's a bottomless maw above me,
The Old Beast waits for me now.
Remember when we were younger?
The night was not so old.
The moon was made of silver,
The skies were strewn with gold.
"That song's from Folk," said Abraham. "Their seafarers sing it at maritime burial. They have this tradition where they lay the deceased on his back under the mainsail of the vessel where he served. The crew stands around him and waits for the sun to set. They say that's when the ship bids him farewell and sends his soul on its way to paradise. It's supposed to save it from getting consumed by the devil. Then, the dead bugger gets heaved overboard. The little strumpet loves this tune; I don't know why."
"I see." Charlie hesitated. "Did you sing it when you -- well, when you buried your own bodies?"
"No. Folk is part of the Old Continent; we'd never been here back then."
Charlie nodded. He closed his eyes and sipped the wine, letting the smoothness and texture excite his senses. He could hear, faintly, Melissa's voice in the final refrain:
Remember when we were younger?
The sea was not so cold.
The waves they shone with silver,
The sun painted the ocean in gold.
* * *
Continued on Day 8.
* * *
When Charlie had turned fifteen, he'd received a book on astronomy as a present from his grandfather. He'd never been all that interested in space and planets, so his grandfather's attempts to initiate a conversation on the topic had lost to a new video game console, which allowed Charlie to guide a plumber in red overalls through various worlds and was altogether very captivating.
The book would in all likelihood have been left to gather dust on the top shelf of some out-of-the-way bookcase, if it weren't for the fact that Charlie's grandfather died of a heart attack one week later. He read it cover to cover then, feeling that he owed him that much, since it was the last thing he had ever given him; it was some primitive form of closure, apology or maybe absolution.
Though most of the book focused on planets, black holes, nebulae and such things, there was also a section dedicated to constellations and their use in navigation. Charlie had a vague recollection that the night sky was different depending on the time of year and location on the globe, but now, sitting in the crow's nest with his back against the mast and his eyes turned up at this foreign sky, he could find neither Big Dipper nor Southern Cross; even Orion, which the book had said to be visible from almost any part of the world, was nowhere to be seen. It was as if all the stars had been scooped up by the hand of some drunken god and thrown back across the ceiling of the world at random. Melissa, on the other hand, had even been able to more or less accurately forecast the direction the ship would take. She'd climbed down from the crow's nest since, leaving Charlie alone with his thoughts.
He looked at the cluster of stars the girl had pointed out to him. "The Hunter points his arrow north," she'd said.
Charlie didn't notice Abraham climbing up until the stingy aroma of his tobacco wafted to his nostrils. He couldn't help starting a little; the crewmen's light feet took some getting used to. Abraham chuckled. He sat down facing Charlie, leaning against the railing. Wisps of grayish-white hair danced around his wrinkled brow. He had to have at least twenty years on the next oldest crewmember, Charlie thought. He was thin, and his skin had started to sag, but he didn't move with the shy carefulness that usually came with age. His face was creased, his pipe resting between thin lips.
"Can you actually taste that?" said Charlie.
"Same way as I can see your face and hear your voice, the same way I can feel the deck under my feet and smell the salt in the air. Yeah, I can taste it." His voice was deep and full, seasoned with the rasp of the decades. (Charlie was reminded distantly of Tom Waits.) "Though it don't do to me what it used to. This is force of habit more than anything else. You puff away for five hundred years, it becomes like breathing. Very good crop, though." He offered the pipe to Charlie. "Want some?"
"No thanks, I don't smoke."
"Pity. It really is a good crop." He stuck the pipe back between his teeth. "They grow things in the western parts of the Old Continent such as you wouldn't believe. The finest tobaccos, teas, poppy, everything."
"Tea? I think I might have had some before."
"Really? Which one?"
"I don't know exactly. It had this strange taste, like mint mixed with berries."
"Oh, that. That's just regular Chamille tea. It's what the little strumpet drinks." He drew on his pipe and, forming a circle with his lips, produced a perfect smoke ring. "Not that it's not a good sort, mind you. The tea, the spice, everything we have on the ship is top notch. You prowl around for as long as we have, you're bound to collect quite a bit of coin in your coffer."
Charlie looked up again. He couldn't have told the difference, but...
"I'm worried about my sis. And mum and dad too, I guess. But mostly it's sis. All they know is that I was lost at sea after the accident. She probably thinks I'm dead."
"I take it the lass is dear to you. I..." Abraham bit his lip. "Look, it's like..."
He didn't finish. Charlie rubbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. It was still moist from the cloud. There was a long moment where both men sat silently, Charlie looking at his feet and wondering if they were having a funeral for him back in New York, Abraham studying the glowing contents of his pipe contemplatively.
"You want to know what death's like for me?" said Abraham.
Charlie didn't say anything.
"It's release. I mean, you don't get it. You're young. But me..." He trailed off, then drew on the pipe again. "Obviously, I was made of some pretty tough stuff, 'cause I lasted so long on the seas. But you can't fight off aging forever; your drinking catches up with you, your smoking catches up with you, you feel your bones getting steadily more and more brittle, until the day comes when they fail you and you collapse in a heap and turn to dust." He sighed. "You know how we went? Sailed into black fog in the evening. It hadn't cleared by midnight, so we went to sleep. Next morning we woke up, we were all dead. We'd been lucky to go in our sleep -- we found the night watch up on the deck, he'd gouged out his own eyes and strangled himself with a cannon restraint rope."
"That's terrible."
"Aye, it was. But what could we do? We couldn't leave our bodies in the ship to rot, so we threw them overboard. It was no harder than throwing any corpse into the ocean - and mind you, I've thrown a lot of corpses into the ocean in my time - but there was something mighty disconcerting about it when the carcass had your face on it." He afforded a coarse, mirthless laugh. "But the point is, when Johnny tossed his body overboard, it broke him so much he tried to drown it with half a gallon of rum. But me? I was relieved. I didn't feel like I was throwing away myself. My self was, and still is, here and here" - he pointed at his see-through head and chest respectively - "and all I was throwing away was aching joints, back pains and having trouble getting up in the morning. I couldn't have been happier if I'd gone to heaven."
Charlie thought about his grandfather, who had needed a walking-cane, who sometimes woke up in the middle of the night in fits of coughing.
The melodious notes of a harmonica drifted up through the hatchway, a slow, sweet tune, like a lullaby. It was produced by Johnny, who was sitting on the portside bulwark, playing for Melissa. The light of a nearby lantern turned the top half of his body into transparent, misty white; from a distance, it looked like he'd fallen headfirst into a vat of flour.
"At least have a glass of wine with me before you nod off." Abraham gave a lopsided grin as Charlie shook himself. He got up and lowered himself out of the crow's nest. Charlie followed him down the rope ladder (still a bit gingerly) and the six wooden steps leading to the galley door.
At first sight the small room looked nothing short of claustrophobic. The roof was low; pots and pans hung on the wall between cupboards and shelves full of different spices, with a table and a sink underneath. The cook would have three or four measly feet of space between them and the range on the other side, which thankfully wasn't lit. Metal pipes traveled from its back to the wall and outside. Abraham opened a small trapdoor in the back of the galley and climbed down, taking a lantern from the wall with him.
The pantry was even more cramped, but at least there wasn't a threat of burning yourself. Most of the shelves were empty, but there was the occasional tin of rice or salted meat, a loaf of stale bread or a sack of flour. At the far end of the room there was a bottle rack, nearly full of wine and rum and spirits. Abraham took out one of the bottles.
"Wonderful Pinot Noir from Burgundy. If you like wines, you'll appreciate this," he said.
"I'm afraid I don't know much about them, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it," Charlie said diplomatically. He followed Abraham back up, then opened one of the cupboards.
"You'll only find pewter cups and tin plates here. There's proper glasses in the mate's quarters."
Up the staircase and down another. The first thing Charlie did was shoulder the jacket he'd been given from the bedside. Abraham rummaged through some drawers, then produced a wooden box sheltering, in straw padding, clear wine glasses. He took out two of them, handed one to Charlie and redeposited the box into the recesses of the drawer.
"I used to be mate myself, you know," Abraham said as they left the quarters. "Still am, technic'ly, but the chain of command has been blurred for a while now. There's hardly any orders given any more, we just work. The Captain's the only one who's kept his rank -- a ship needs a captain, after all." He sat down on the forecastle, corked the bottle with a pocket knife, and poured the wine. The scent was warm and inviting.
A little ways off, Johnny had put away the harmonica and was now singing, with Melissa chiming in for one half of the words and forgetting the other:
My eyes turned to the skies.
The deck is beneath my fingers,
I'm saying my last goodbyes.
It's dark and I'm afraid of falling
When the world turns upside-down.
There's a bottomless maw above me,
The Old Beast waits for me now.
Remember when we were younger?
The night was not so old.
The moon was made of silver,
The skies were strewn with gold.
"That song's from Folk," said Abraham. "Their seafarers sing it at maritime burial. They have this tradition where they lay the deceased on his back under the mainsail of the vessel where he served. The crew stands around him and waits for the sun to set. They say that's when the ship bids him farewell and sends his soul on its way to paradise. It's supposed to save it from getting consumed by the devil. Then, the dead bugger gets heaved overboard. The little strumpet loves this tune; I don't know why."
"I see." Charlie hesitated. "Did you sing it when you -- well, when you buried your own bodies?"
"No. Folk is part of the Old Continent; we'd never been here back then."
Charlie nodded. He closed his eyes and sipped the wine, letting the smoothness and texture excite his senses. He could hear, faintly, Melissa's voice in the final refrain:
The sea was not so cold.
The waves they shone with silver,
The sun painted the ocean in gold.
* * *
Continued on Day 8.
Friday 13 June 2008
Charlie and the Ship III (Day 6)
Continued from Day 5.
* * *
Charlie took the liberty to gape at the inside of the captain's quarters.
The walls and ceiling were covered in intricately carved, lacquered wood. There were different varieties, and they all looked expensive, although Charlie only recognized mahogany. Illumination was provided by brass wall lanterns, emerging from the woodwork.
A heavy desk sat in the middle of the room, with a chair behind it. On the desk there were candles, an old-looking globe, an inkwell and some gold-tipped quills. (Charlie had wondered how all these items stayed in place if there was a storm, until he discovered that they were glued to the desk; except for the quills, which were held in place by a stand which was glued to the desk.) Any free space on the walls was covered in bookcases, stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling, so that in order to reach the books on the highest shelves Charlie had to climb onto the stool that was there for the purpose. The captain's bed - which was colossal - occupied a space in the stern end of the cabin, and was currently unmade, as he supposed Melissa must have left it. The floor was strewn with carpets, laying across and on top of each other haphazardly, leaving the impression that if you lifted them up, you would find another layer underneath. All of them looked exotic and achingly expensive. The stretch between the door and the bed was stained; it would seem that the girl didn't have much respect for fine rugs.
In the low drawer under the bed Charlie had found a heap of maps. He'd spent a good hour studying them. There were numerous versions of familiar places like the Caribbean sea, Corsica and Sardinia, and the Indian Ocean, mingled with names he'd never even heard of before, such as the Silent Isles or the Bay of Folk. There were many instances of more detailed maps for shorelines, shallows and straits, all meticulously scribed by different captains in different times. In one corner of the room there were cardboard tubes with paintings inside, some of which had signatures that would have raised some highly esteemed eyebrows. There were also some cabinets under the windows, where the space didn't permit for a full-height bookcase, but they were locked, so Charlie didn't know what they held inside.
The maps and the paintings were entertaining, but it was the books that interested Charlie the most. By the looks of it, being dead left you with plenty of time to read, or at least to amass vast amounts of literature. It seemed like you could find anything that was ever written on those shelves. Behind cords preventing them from falling out were volumes of everything from leather-bound Homer and Dickens to paperback Stephen King. There were books in Arabic and Chinese, and in a handful of other, stranger languages. It seemed impossible for the Captain to have read even one tenth of them. Charlie had spent fifteen minutes or so just looking at the titles and gotten halfway through the first shelf of the first bookcase.
The Captain had said Charlie could sleep in the mate's quarters, but was free to peruse the contents of the captain's quarters whenever Melissa wasn't sleeping, assuming of course that the young lady had no objections. She didn't, so Charlie took full advantage of the offer. Presently, he was sitting at the Captain's desk, examining the globe. It had to be hundreds of years old, judging by both its appearance and the maps, which still showed the North American colonies as part of the British Empire. It was hand-painted in astonishing detail. The surface felt wooden, and it was flawless; only the stand had a little chip in it. He gave the thing an experimental spin. It moved smoothly, making nearly no noise at all.
The gilded handle on the door turned, and Melissa's head peeked in through the doorway.
"We're going up now. Wanna come watch?" she said.
"We're going where?" Charlie laid his fingers against the surface of the globe and it glided to a halt.
"Up. To the other sea."
"Which sea is that?"
"I don't know. The sea that's up. The one around the Old Continent. I don't think it's got a name."
Charlie looked at the globe. According to the Captain, they were currently in the Atlantic, somewhere between Africa and South America. He supposed 'up' meant north; in that case, it would be logical if the Old Continent referred to Europe. It would have been called the Old World in the Captain's time. But what was so special about that?
"I think I'll pass."
"Are you sure? It's really pretty."
"Uhm." On the other hand, it wasn't as if the globe was going anywhere. It was, after all, glued to the desk.
"Pleeease?" The girl held that 'e' for an obscene duration, and made the face little children make so well when they want to get their way. Puppy-dog eyes, lower lip stuck out at you.
"I -- ah, all right. I'm coming."
Melissa grinned and disappeared from the doorway. Charlie got up and followed.
If anything, the night had deepened. The ship was an island of light encased in black velvet, gliding through the waves. The boy Melissa had identified as Johnny - he looked somewhere in his early twenties, though in actuality the ages of all the crewmen could be measured in centuries - was sitting on a boom; Abraham was in the forecastle, leaning on the bowsprit; Cindy stood on the stern deck with the Captain, and the Captain was still at the helm.
In the yellow lantern-light, Charlie saw Melissa run to the mast and grab a rope ladder.
"Hold it," he said. She didn't hear him. She was climbing the ladder like a little monkey, despite each rung being more than knee-height compared to the first to her. "Hold it! Where are you going?"
The girl stopped and turned her head. "Crow's nest."
"You didn't say anything about going to the crow's nest! I can't come up there, I'll fall down!"
"Aww, but you promised!" She let go with one hand, hanging on with the other and letting herself dangle limply to the side of the ladder.
"Don't do that!" Charlie could barely watch. She had to be ten feet up by now, what if she broke her neck?
"Do what?"
"That! Otherwise you are going to fall!"
"Am not! And you isn't gonna fall neither! Come on!" Melissa swung herself back to the ladder. At first Charlie thought she was going to climb down, but instead she hooked her legs over one of the rungs, let go with her hands and hung there, upside-down. "Look, it's totally safe!"
"Stop it! You're going to break your neck!"
"Am not!"
"Stop that!"
"I'm not gonna stop unless you come up."
Charlie hesitated. Melissa looked at him for a moment. Then she began to swing back and forth on the ladder, pushing off of the mast with one foot for momentum.
"Okay, you win! I'm coming." Charlie walked to the ladder. The upside-down Melissa looked at her expectantly.
"No chance, young lady. You first."
She pulled herself up and back onto the ladder, but didn't start climbing until Charlie had set a foot on the bottom rung.
Charlie hadn't done any climbing whatsoever since he was five. He'd been on his great-grandfather's farm in Minnesota, climbed six feet into an oak and fallen out of it, spraining his ankle. He was quite sure the mast was higher than six feet. He clambered up unsteadily, rung after rung. The ladder was out of control; it bent when he moved and jittered when he stopped and generally refused to stay in place.
About halfway up, he looked down. This was not one of the wiser things to do.
In New York, Charlie had his cubicle on the nineteenth floor, right next to a window overlooking the metropolis. He saw it from that height several times a day, when he was coming to or going from work, when he was getting coffee, when he was going to use the photocopier. The ground did not look at all frightening from behind panes of thick glass. Swinging freely above the deck of a ship was another matter entirely. On a jittery rope ladder. In the middle of the night. Looking at the abyss of the ocean.
"Why'd you stop?" inquired Melissa from above. She'd been sitting in the crow's nest for ages.
"Just having a breather," he said.
Steady breaths. Charlie felt his pulse throb on the side of his neck. Lift one foot. Place it on the next rung. Pull yourself up. Good. Now repeat. Johnny was oblivious to the drama that was taking place above him, or perhaps disinterested. Abraham was absorbed with stuffing his pipe. Charlie looked back up. Rung after rung, he managed to get himself to the top of the mast.
"Don't step on Mister Roger when you come up, Mister Charlie." Melissa gestured at a black heap of cotton on the floor. Charlie opened it to reveal the skull-and-crossbones flag of a pirate ship. "Mister John says it's been more than a hundred years since he last flied Mister Roger. Oh, look, you're just in time. We're going up now." She lay her forearms flat on the railing of the crow's nest and rested her chin on her hands.
There was no lantern in the crow's nest. Charlie supposed the idea was to maximize the line of sight. The ones below gave enough illumination to make the surface of the ocean somehow visible as the crests of waves glinted in the lantern-light.
The first sign of something happening was the sound of the hull groaning silently. Then, gradually, the flickering of the waves started to grow more and more distant. There was no wind. There was no noise at all, except for the occasional creaking caused by the decreased pressure to the ship's sides as it rose out of the sea. When the ship broke contact with the ocean, at the edge of hearing there was the momentary sound of poured water -- leftover moisture was dripping off the keel and back into the sea. Charlie was getting goosebumps. There was something particularly eldritch about tons of ancient ship starting to levitate when it happened with such grace.
The ascent picked up speed when the ship had left the water. They were getting visibly closer to the cumulus clouds, hanging here and there, low in the sky. On the stern deck, Cindy had put her arms gently around the Captain, who was still steering, as if there was a precise route you were supposed to follow in order to be able to sail your ship to heaven. Maybe there was. Charlie wondered whether it, too, could be found on the Captain's maps.
They kept rising, on and on through the night. The waves were long out of sight. They were almost level with the clouds; and now, they sailed right into one them. It was like driving a car into thick fog without the lights on; you couldn't see a thing. The moisture condensed or Charlie's face and hands and in his clothes. He couldn't see the deck at all anymore. The lanterns appeared as stains of light in the uniform grayness of the cloud. Johnny, Abraham, Cindy and the Captain were all obscured by it.
For a long moment they were traveling inside the cloud. The condensed water was cold and Charlie was starting to regret leaving the jacket the Captain had lended to him on the mate's bed. Then, the mist above his head started thin. The mast, along with the crow's nest, was the first thing to surface. But it wasn't emerging from the cloud anymore.
It emerged from another sea. Charlie shuddered with excitement. This was miles better than Copperfield.
* * *
Continued from Day 5.
Finally, the weather was good enough for me to cycle to the park and sit under a tree writing. As you can see, it's been productive. I got the first draft done in a bit over two hours. Hand-written in a notebook, no less.
Tomorrow should be good for a park writing day, but Sunday should bring heavy rain. Which, on the other hand, might be just fine, too, provided that it doesn't rain into the little alcove of our balcony where I like to write. Oh, well, if it's going to be rough weather, I hope we get thunder again~
* * *
Charlie took the liberty to gape at the inside of the captain's quarters.
The walls and ceiling were covered in intricately carved, lacquered wood. There were different varieties, and they all looked expensive, although Charlie only recognized mahogany. Illumination was provided by brass wall lanterns, emerging from the woodwork.
A heavy desk sat in the middle of the room, with a chair behind it. On the desk there were candles, an old-looking globe, an inkwell and some gold-tipped quills. (Charlie had wondered how all these items stayed in place if there was a storm, until he discovered that they were glued to the desk; except for the quills, which were held in place by a stand which was glued to the desk.) Any free space on the walls was covered in bookcases, stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling, so that in order to reach the books on the highest shelves Charlie had to climb onto the stool that was there for the purpose. The captain's bed - which was colossal - occupied a space in the stern end of the cabin, and was currently unmade, as he supposed Melissa must have left it. The floor was strewn with carpets, laying across and on top of each other haphazardly, leaving the impression that if you lifted them up, you would find another layer underneath. All of them looked exotic and achingly expensive. The stretch between the door and the bed was stained; it would seem that the girl didn't have much respect for fine rugs.
In the low drawer under the bed Charlie had found a heap of maps. He'd spent a good hour studying them. There were numerous versions of familiar places like the Caribbean sea, Corsica and Sardinia, and the Indian Ocean, mingled with names he'd never even heard of before, such as the Silent Isles or the Bay of Folk. There were many instances of more detailed maps for shorelines, shallows and straits, all meticulously scribed by different captains in different times. In one corner of the room there were cardboard tubes with paintings inside, some of which had signatures that would have raised some highly esteemed eyebrows. There were also some cabinets under the windows, where the space didn't permit for a full-height bookcase, but they were locked, so Charlie didn't know what they held inside.
The maps and the paintings were entertaining, but it was the books that interested Charlie the most. By the looks of it, being dead left you with plenty of time to read, or at least to amass vast amounts of literature. It seemed like you could find anything that was ever written on those shelves. Behind cords preventing them from falling out were volumes of everything from leather-bound Homer and Dickens to paperback Stephen King. There were books in Arabic and Chinese, and in a handful of other, stranger languages. It seemed impossible for the Captain to have read even one tenth of them. Charlie had spent fifteen minutes or so just looking at the titles and gotten halfway through the first shelf of the first bookcase.
The Captain had said Charlie could sleep in the mate's quarters, but was free to peruse the contents of the captain's quarters whenever Melissa wasn't sleeping, assuming of course that the young lady had no objections. She didn't, so Charlie took full advantage of the offer. Presently, he was sitting at the Captain's desk, examining the globe. It had to be hundreds of years old, judging by both its appearance and the maps, which still showed the North American colonies as part of the British Empire. It was hand-painted in astonishing detail. The surface felt wooden, and it was flawless; only the stand had a little chip in it. He gave the thing an experimental spin. It moved smoothly, making nearly no noise at all.
The gilded handle on the door turned, and Melissa's head peeked in through the doorway.
"We're going up now. Wanna come watch?" she said.
"We're going where?" Charlie laid his fingers against the surface of the globe and it glided to a halt.
"Up. To the other sea."
"Which sea is that?"
"I don't know. The sea that's up. The one around the Old Continent. I don't think it's got a name."
Charlie looked at the globe. According to the Captain, they were currently in the Atlantic, somewhere between Africa and South America. He supposed 'up' meant north; in that case, it would be logical if the Old Continent referred to Europe. It would have been called the Old World in the Captain's time. But what was so special about that?
"I think I'll pass."
"Are you sure? It's really pretty."
"Uhm." On the other hand, it wasn't as if the globe was going anywhere. It was, after all, glued to the desk.
"Pleeease?" The girl held that 'e' for an obscene duration, and made the face little children make so well when they want to get their way. Puppy-dog eyes, lower lip stuck out at you.
"I -- ah, all right. I'm coming."
Melissa grinned and disappeared from the doorway. Charlie got up and followed.
If anything, the night had deepened. The ship was an island of light encased in black velvet, gliding through the waves. The boy Melissa had identified as Johnny - he looked somewhere in his early twenties, though in actuality the ages of all the crewmen could be measured in centuries - was sitting on a boom; Abraham was in the forecastle, leaning on the bowsprit; Cindy stood on the stern deck with the Captain, and the Captain was still at the helm.
In the yellow lantern-light, Charlie saw Melissa run to the mast and grab a rope ladder.
"Hold it," he said. She didn't hear him. She was climbing the ladder like a little monkey, despite each rung being more than knee-height compared to the first to her. "Hold it! Where are you going?"
The girl stopped and turned her head. "Crow's nest."
"You didn't say anything about going to the crow's nest! I can't come up there, I'll fall down!"
"Aww, but you promised!" She let go with one hand, hanging on with the other and letting herself dangle limply to the side of the ladder.
"Don't do that!" Charlie could barely watch. She had to be ten feet up by now, what if she broke her neck?
"Do what?"
"That! Otherwise you are going to fall!"
"Am not! And you isn't gonna fall neither! Come on!" Melissa swung herself back to the ladder. At first Charlie thought she was going to climb down, but instead she hooked her legs over one of the rungs, let go with her hands and hung there, upside-down. "Look, it's totally safe!"
"Stop it! You're going to break your neck!"
"Am not!"
"Stop that!"
"I'm not gonna stop unless you come up."
Charlie hesitated. Melissa looked at him for a moment. Then she began to swing back and forth on the ladder, pushing off of the mast with one foot for momentum.
"Okay, you win! I'm coming." Charlie walked to the ladder. The upside-down Melissa looked at her expectantly.
"No chance, young lady. You first."
She pulled herself up and back onto the ladder, but didn't start climbing until Charlie had set a foot on the bottom rung.
Charlie hadn't done any climbing whatsoever since he was five. He'd been on his great-grandfather's farm in Minnesota, climbed six feet into an oak and fallen out of it, spraining his ankle. He was quite sure the mast was higher than six feet. He clambered up unsteadily, rung after rung. The ladder was out of control; it bent when he moved and jittered when he stopped and generally refused to stay in place.
About halfway up, he looked down. This was not one of the wiser things to do.
In New York, Charlie had his cubicle on the nineteenth floor, right next to a window overlooking the metropolis. He saw it from that height several times a day, when he was coming to or going from work, when he was getting coffee, when he was going to use the photocopier. The ground did not look at all frightening from behind panes of thick glass. Swinging freely above the deck of a ship was another matter entirely. On a jittery rope ladder. In the middle of the night. Looking at the abyss of the ocean.
"Why'd you stop?" inquired Melissa from above. She'd been sitting in the crow's nest for ages.
"Just having a breather," he said.
Steady breaths. Charlie felt his pulse throb on the side of his neck. Lift one foot. Place it on the next rung. Pull yourself up. Good. Now repeat. Johnny was oblivious to the drama that was taking place above him, or perhaps disinterested. Abraham was absorbed with stuffing his pipe. Charlie looked back up. Rung after rung, he managed to get himself to the top of the mast.
"Don't step on Mister Roger when you come up, Mister Charlie." Melissa gestured at a black heap of cotton on the floor. Charlie opened it to reveal the skull-and-crossbones flag of a pirate ship. "Mister John says it's been more than a hundred years since he last flied Mister Roger. Oh, look, you're just in time. We're going up now." She lay her forearms flat on the railing of the crow's nest and rested her chin on her hands.
There was no lantern in the crow's nest. Charlie supposed the idea was to maximize the line of sight. The ones below gave enough illumination to make the surface of the ocean somehow visible as the crests of waves glinted in the lantern-light.
The first sign of something happening was the sound of the hull groaning silently. Then, gradually, the flickering of the waves started to grow more and more distant. There was no wind. There was no noise at all, except for the occasional creaking caused by the decreased pressure to the ship's sides as it rose out of the sea. When the ship broke contact with the ocean, at the edge of hearing there was the momentary sound of poured water -- leftover moisture was dripping off the keel and back into the sea. Charlie was getting goosebumps. There was something particularly eldritch about tons of ancient ship starting to levitate when it happened with such grace.
The ascent picked up speed when the ship had left the water. They were getting visibly closer to the cumulus clouds, hanging here and there, low in the sky. On the stern deck, Cindy had put her arms gently around the Captain, who was still steering, as if there was a precise route you were supposed to follow in order to be able to sail your ship to heaven. Maybe there was. Charlie wondered whether it, too, could be found on the Captain's maps.
They kept rising, on and on through the night. The waves were long out of sight. They were almost level with the clouds; and now, they sailed right into one them. It was like driving a car into thick fog without the lights on; you couldn't see a thing. The moisture condensed or Charlie's face and hands and in his clothes. He couldn't see the deck at all anymore. The lanterns appeared as stains of light in the uniform grayness of the cloud. Johnny, Abraham, Cindy and the Captain were all obscured by it.
For a long moment they were traveling inside the cloud. The condensed water was cold and Charlie was starting to regret leaving the jacket the Captain had lended to him on the mate's bed. Then, the mist above his head started thin. The mast, along with the crow's nest, was the first thing to surface. But it wasn't emerging from the cloud anymore.
It emerged from another sea. Charlie shuddered with excitement. This was miles better than Copperfield.
* * *
Continued from Day 5.
Finally, the weather was good enough for me to cycle to the park and sit under a tree writing. As you can see, it's been productive. I got the first draft done in a bit over two hours. Hand-written in a notebook, no less.
Tomorrow should be good for a park writing day, but Sunday should bring heavy rain. Which, on the other hand, might be just fine, too, provided that it doesn't rain into the little alcove of our balcony where I like to write. Oh, well, if it's going to be rough weather, I hope we get thunder again~
Thursday 12 June 2008
Charlie and the Ship II (Day 5)
Continued from Day 4.
* * *
In the momentary flicker between sundown and twilight, the ship had come to life.
Its crewmen now walked the deck that had been empty a moment ago, and sat in the rigging where there'd just been only white sails. There was a man in the crow's nest, watching the sea. There was someone at the helm, his hands firm on the tiller and eyes set on some distant spot where the sea met the earth. Most of them were barefoot and wore cotton trousers, except for the helmsman, who had leather boots on his feet and a suit the colour of a murder of crows.
They all seemed to be only half there somehow -- their feet made no noise on the wooden deck, and when you looked at them, you saw them but you also saw the ship through them; it was as if they existed and did not exist at the same time.
On the starboard horizon, the sun was now completely gone, with only the lukewarm imprint of twilight to remember it had ever been there. Soon that, too, would be gone. And then there would be darkness.
"Ghosts..." stammered Charlie. He wanted to run, but he couldn't make himself move. He settled with trying to grip the deck with his fingers, to the point where all the blood drained from his knuckles.
"Aye, I suppose they is," chirped Melissa. "Wanna go ask Mister John about how the ship works now?"
"No!" Charlie regained control of himself, though only barely. He tried to back into the bulwark, not really knowing why. Perhaps he wanted to sink into it and be lost forever.
Melissa studied him. "Are you scared of ghosts, Mister Charlie?"
"Yes!"
"Oh." She looked surprised, and a little taken aback. "Why is you scared of ghosts, Mister Charlie?"
He had no answer to this. Melissa tugged at the sleeve of his soggy shirt.
"Come on, Mister Charlie. Mister John is a nice man. You is gonna like him lots, I promise. Come on!" When Charlie didn't budge, she grimaced and tried to make her voice authoritative: "Mister Charles Dobson! It are most peculiar manners to not introduce yusself to the Captain of a ship such as has taken you aboard!"
Charlie gave in. He rose to his shaky feet.
The pall lifted from Melissa's face. "He's over here, Mister Charlie!" she beamed, dragging him to the stern deck by the cuffs.
The man at the helm looked every bit a pirate captain. He was tall and lean, garbed in a rather striking mixture of heavy fabrics and fine silk. It looked all black from a distance, but from close up you could see that it was really composed of a plethora of dark colours -- among them the exact yellow of tarnished gold and the red of dried blood; the green of Scandinavian pine and the brown of African soil after the rain; and, of course, the deep, penetrating blue of the night sea. The most prominent piece of blue was his captain's hat, which he raised in greeting.
His features, surprisingly, were soft.
There was no cutlass at the Captain's hip. He didn't have a talking parrot, or a wooden leg, or an eyepatch. He didn't need props.
When the Captain spoke, his voice was light and resonant. What he said was, "Greetings. I hope we didn't startle you too greatly. We are not used to visitors, I'm afraid. I'm called John Duke. I captain this vessel. Whom do I have the pleasure to meet?"
Charlie's mouth worked silently for a while, before he could produce any words. "My name is Charles Dobson. Pleased to meet you." He added the last part like someone who isn't entirely sure what he's saying is going to prove true.
"Delighted, sir. You were in luck to be found by us. You were drifting on the North Atlantic stream, and would have been swept all the way to the Arctic, had we not intervened."
"You'd have freezed by then," interjected Melissa.
The Captain tsk'ed, and Melissa lowered her eyes. "I'm afraid the young lady's observation is quite correct, though," he said. "The gods must have been watching over you."
"I'm afraid I'm an atheist, Captain," said Charlie automatically.
"I'm sure that doesn't bother them one bit, Charles Dobson." The Captain glanced at the deck. "The crew will be putting up the lanterns soon."
Only a thin strip of light remained at the edge of the horizon, glowing the dying red of cooled iron. Everything but the starred sky with its thin crescent of a moon and a small patch of stern deck was engulfed in darkness. Then, specks of light emerged from somewhere in the depths of the ship. They moved around on the deck for a moment, like fireflies under hypnosis, until one of them widened to the shape and illumination of a lantern.
One by one, they flickered to life, casting some pale light onto the deck. The crewmen made no sound on their feet, and they did not need or did not wish to speak, so the whole affair was conducted in complete silence.
The last lantern traveled across the ship and up the stairs to the helm. It was carried by a woman, dark and slender and tall (though not as tall as the Captain), and the light of the lantern played on the gold of her earrings.
"Thank you, Cindy." The Captain's voice was soft now, like the magnified sound of feathers whispering. She smiled. And then, noiselessly and swiftly as she had come, she was gone.
The Captain hung the lantern on a nail in a post that stood next to the tiller. When its light fell on him, it wasn't strong enough to make him disappear, but it turned him pale and faint, like morning mist.
"Look," he said. The ship was wreathed in lanterns - they hung at the bow, the bulwark, the riggings - and their light was like a veil on the ship. "Isn't it beautiful?"
They watched. The waves washed solemnly against the ship's hull, and it must have been in agreement.
It was Charlie who broke the silence. "Captain. I, um, thought that pirates were, well, nasty. Bloodthirsty and vile and... you know." He blushed, feeling foolish about making these accusations to the Captain, who never failed to keep his hands steady on the tiller, whose face was a mask of utter calm. "It's in all the stories," he defended, feeling that he ought to, somehow.
"Oh, I suppose most of them are nasty. Or were. But death, well, with death cease the hormones, ceases the anger, ceases the rush to live as much as possible as fast as possible. Death frees us from need. Death gives us tranquility." Pause. "And moreover, we are retired pirates."
Charlie nodded. "I suppose it has to be true. I mean, look at you. You're like Serenity himself."
"Herself," the Captain corrected. "And I do not fancy that I resemble her much. But I don't doubt your words were meant purely as a compliment, and I am grateful."
Charlie watched for a moment as the Captain guided the ship across the sea, like the groom guides his veiled bride to the altar.
"Captain?"
"Yes."
"Where are we headed?"
"To the Old Continent. To see the Golden Merchant."
* * *
Continued on Day 6.
Well, I'm early. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
I'll see when I get around to writing the entry for the sixth day. (I should be able to cook up more about the Ship, but I make no promises.) Maybe I'll do most of it today already. Maybe I'll do a bigger batch. Maybe I'll slack off and leave it to the last minute again. Maybe maybe maybe.
I guess we'll see.
* * *
In the momentary flicker between sundown and twilight, the ship had come to life.
Its crewmen now walked the deck that had been empty a moment ago, and sat in the rigging where there'd just been only white sails. There was a man in the crow's nest, watching the sea. There was someone at the helm, his hands firm on the tiller and eyes set on some distant spot where the sea met the earth. Most of them were barefoot and wore cotton trousers, except for the helmsman, who had leather boots on his feet and a suit the colour of a murder of crows.
They all seemed to be only half there somehow -- their feet made no noise on the wooden deck, and when you looked at them, you saw them but you also saw the ship through them; it was as if they existed and did not exist at the same time.
On the starboard horizon, the sun was now completely gone, with only the lukewarm imprint of twilight to remember it had ever been there. Soon that, too, would be gone. And then there would be darkness.
"Ghosts..." stammered Charlie. He wanted to run, but he couldn't make himself move. He settled with trying to grip the deck with his fingers, to the point where all the blood drained from his knuckles.
"Aye, I suppose they is," chirped Melissa. "Wanna go ask Mister John about how the ship works now?"
"No!" Charlie regained control of himself, though only barely. He tried to back into the bulwark, not really knowing why. Perhaps he wanted to sink into it and be lost forever.
Melissa studied him. "Are you scared of ghosts, Mister Charlie?"
"Yes!"
"Oh." She looked surprised, and a little taken aback. "Why is you scared of ghosts, Mister Charlie?"
He had no answer to this. Melissa tugged at the sleeve of his soggy shirt.
"Come on, Mister Charlie. Mister John is a nice man. You is gonna like him lots, I promise. Come on!" When Charlie didn't budge, she grimaced and tried to make her voice authoritative: "Mister Charles Dobson! It are most peculiar manners to not introduce yusself to the Captain of a ship such as has taken you aboard!"
Charlie gave in. He rose to his shaky feet.
The pall lifted from Melissa's face. "He's over here, Mister Charlie!" she beamed, dragging him to the stern deck by the cuffs.
The man at the helm looked every bit a pirate captain. He was tall and lean, garbed in a rather striking mixture of heavy fabrics and fine silk. It looked all black from a distance, but from close up you could see that it was really composed of a plethora of dark colours -- among them the exact yellow of tarnished gold and the red of dried blood; the green of Scandinavian pine and the brown of African soil after the rain; and, of course, the deep, penetrating blue of the night sea. The most prominent piece of blue was his captain's hat, which he raised in greeting.
His features, surprisingly, were soft.
There was no cutlass at the Captain's hip. He didn't have a talking parrot, or a wooden leg, or an eyepatch. He didn't need props.
When the Captain spoke, his voice was light and resonant. What he said was, "Greetings. I hope we didn't startle you too greatly. We are not used to visitors, I'm afraid. I'm called John Duke. I captain this vessel. Whom do I have the pleasure to meet?"
Charlie's mouth worked silently for a while, before he could produce any words. "My name is Charles Dobson. Pleased to meet you." He added the last part like someone who isn't entirely sure what he's saying is going to prove true.
"Delighted, sir. You were in luck to be found by us. You were drifting on the North Atlantic stream, and would have been swept all the way to the Arctic, had we not intervened."
"You'd have freezed by then," interjected Melissa.
The Captain tsk'ed, and Melissa lowered her eyes. "I'm afraid the young lady's observation is quite correct, though," he said. "The gods must have been watching over you."
"I'm afraid I'm an atheist, Captain," said Charlie automatically.
"I'm sure that doesn't bother them one bit, Charles Dobson." The Captain glanced at the deck. "The crew will be putting up the lanterns soon."
Only a thin strip of light remained at the edge of the horizon, glowing the dying red of cooled iron. Everything but the starred sky with its thin crescent of a moon and a small patch of stern deck was engulfed in darkness. Then, specks of light emerged from somewhere in the depths of the ship. They moved around on the deck for a moment, like fireflies under hypnosis, until one of them widened to the shape and illumination of a lantern.
One by one, they flickered to life, casting some pale light onto the deck. The crewmen made no sound on their feet, and they did not need or did not wish to speak, so the whole affair was conducted in complete silence.
The last lantern traveled across the ship and up the stairs to the helm. It was carried by a woman, dark and slender and tall (though not as tall as the Captain), and the light of the lantern played on the gold of her earrings.
"Thank you, Cindy." The Captain's voice was soft now, like the magnified sound of feathers whispering. She smiled. And then, noiselessly and swiftly as she had come, she was gone.
The Captain hung the lantern on a nail in a post that stood next to the tiller. When its light fell on him, it wasn't strong enough to make him disappear, but it turned him pale and faint, like morning mist.
"Look," he said. The ship was wreathed in lanterns - they hung at the bow, the bulwark, the riggings - and their light was like a veil on the ship. "Isn't it beautiful?"
They watched. The waves washed solemnly against the ship's hull, and it must have been in agreement.
It was Charlie who broke the silence. "Captain. I, um, thought that pirates were, well, nasty. Bloodthirsty and vile and... you know." He blushed, feeling foolish about making these accusations to the Captain, who never failed to keep his hands steady on the tiller, whose face was a mask of utter calm. "It's in all the stories," he defended, feeling that he ought to, somehow.
"Oh, I suppose most of them are nasty. Or were. But death, well, with death cease the hormones, ceases the anger, ceases the rush to live as much as possible as fast as possible. Death frees us from need. Death gives us tranquility." Pause. "And moreover, we are retired pirates."
Charlie nodded. "I suppose it has to be true. I mean, look at you. You're like Serenity himself."
"Herself," the Captain corrected. "And I do not fancy that I resemble her much. But I don't doubt your words were meant purely as a compliment, and I am grateful."
Charlie watched for a moment as the Captain guided the ship across the sea, like the groom guides his veiled bride to the altar.
"Captain?"
"Yes."
"Where are we headed?"
"To the Old Continent. To see the Golden Merchant."
* * *
Continued on Day 6.
Well, I'm early. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
I'll see when I get around to writing the entry for the sixth day. (I should be able to cook up more about the Ship, but I make no promises.) Maybe I'll do most of it today already. Maybe I'll do a bigger batch. Maybe I'll slack off and leave it to the last minute again. Maybe maybe maybe.
I guess we'll see.
Wednesday 11 June 2008
Charlie and the Ship I (Day 4)
Charlie Dobson's world rocked gently from side to side under his back.
"Mister?"
The world was coming back to him through a fog -- first the rocking; then the sound of washing waves rising and falling from below, and a faint, rhythmical creaking from overhead; then, the feeling of a hard, even surface under him.
"Mister? Are you awake?" A girl's voice. A small one.
"Mmh," Charlie grunted. "Somewhat." He felt around with his fingers. Wooden boards.
"Aye then. What's your name, Mister?"
Charlie opened his eyes. He was greeted by the round, concerned face of a little girl, couldn't have been older than six or seven, big eyes staring back at him and long hair hanging down around her face, tickling his nose.
"Charlie. Charlie Dobson. Well, Charles. But they call me Charlie."
Satisfied with the answer, the girl withdrew, revealing what Charlie accurately judged to be an evening sky, and a ship's rigging. Wooden masts and spars, with white canvas sails, bloated in the wind. He tried to sit up, but the moment he lifted his head from the deck it started pounding, and he decided to leave it where it was for the time being. He took a few steady breaths, and the headache began to clear with the fog. With the increasing lucidity came questions. Why was he on a ship? And a wooden ship, of all things - did they even make them out of wood any more?
Memories started drifting to him. Last he remembered, he'd been in New York. No, he'd been on a ship, then he'd been in a lifeboat. No, he'd been in the cold, wet darkness of the ocean, drifting to nowhere in the middle of the night...
"Want a pillow, Mister Charlie? Or a blanket?"
"Um. A pillow would be nice. Thanks."
Little feet pattered in the direction of, judging by the sails, the back of the ship - what was it called? - the stern, and returned after a while. Charlie's head was lifted carefully by two hands, and a pillow tucked underneath. He could see the girl now, sitting on a cast-iron cannon, dangling her feet in the air. She reminded him distantly of Alice, though this one had a pink dress, with frilly edges. And she had brown hair. She was looking at him quizzically. Charlie felt like he was expected to say something, but he didn't know what it was.
After a moment, the girl said, "I had tea a moment ago and I reckon there's still some left in the galley if you fancies it, Mister Charlie."
Charlie nodded. The girl jumped down onto the deck and ran off again. She returned with a big pewter mug in her hand. She offered it to Charlie. The steam had an odd scent, like black currants and peppermint.
He tried to lift his head, then let it fall back to the pillow with a grunt. The girl put down the mug and Charlie felt her hook her arms under his and drag him to the left side (port, Charlie remembered distantly) and lay him against the bulwark, the pillow at his back. She then handed him his tea.
"Thank you. For the pillow, too."
The girl just smiled. Charlie took a sip. It was a strange flavor, berries and mint and a hint of coconut, but then again, he didn't drink much tea. He was more of a coffee person. It wasn't regular tea, that was for certain. Maybe it was green tea, he mused. His sister drank green tea. Whatever tea this was, Charlie concluded, it was actually quite pleasant. Odd, but pleasant.
"Why do you look like that, Mister Charlie?"
"Like what?"
"Like, like funny like that."
"I don't understand."
"Like, when I look at you, I don't sees the ship."
Charlie didn't know what to say to this, so he bought himself some time by peering into his tea and looking thoughtful. "Um. Maybe you don't see the ship because, well, I'm in the way? Aha. Ha. Um."
The girl cocked her head to the side.
"I don't see the ship when I look at you, either."
She looked at him. Then she looked at her hand, the ship, then at nothing in particular that Charlie could see towards the bow, the at him again. "I s'pose that's it." She watched him sip his tea. "But the others don't look like that. Just me. Oh, and Mister Roger. But he's a flag, so that's different."
"Who?"
"Mister J. Roger."
"No, who are the others?"
"Mister Tom and Miss Cindy and Mister Harry and everybody. They're the crew. You know. They used to be pirates but now they is sorry."
"Are they inside?"
"Some of them. Some of them is on the deck. You can't see them, 'cause they is invisible."
Charlie had heard of this. Lonely children made up imaginary friends to play with. He felt kind of sorry for her.
Off to the starboard side, the sun was touching the water already. Must've been getting late.
"What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't, 'cause you didn't asked me."
"Sorry. I'm asking now. What's your name?"
"Melissa."
"So, Melissa, how'd you get on the ship?"
"I was first on this other ship, but it got broken, and I was lost in the sea for a long time. And Mister Harry sawed me and jumped into the sea and rescued me, and Mister John hauled him back up with a rope. Just like they did with you, Mister Charlie."
That's what he would have asked next - 'How did I get on the ship?' - but Melissa had answered both questions now. Not that either the answers made sense.
"Mister Johnny says it's a miracle you isn't ended up in the locker of Mister Jones."
"Who's he?"
"I don't really know. He's not on our ship so maybe he's on a different ship. Anyway, I don't think the crew really likes him. They sounds angry when they talks about him."
Charlie watched the rigging, watched the sails catch the wind. He looked at the tiller, turning back and forth anemically. "How does this ship, you know, work?"
"Oh, I don't knows about that."
What did that mean, then? That the ship was magic and somehow steered and sailed itself?
"It's the crew that sails the ship. I can't do it meself, I just watches. Sometimes they lets me hold ropes for them, but I think they is just being nice to me."
Ah. That explained everything. It was sailed by her invisible friends.
"It's gonna be dark soon. You can see the crew when the sun goes down, 'cause they is only visible in shadow. If you wanna to know how the ship works, you can asks Mister John. He's the captain, you know. But he lets me live in the captain's cabin and sleep in the captain's bed. Isn't he nice?"
Charlie nodded, befuddled. This girl had an imagination. He looked at his mug. It was empty; he had nowhere to hide his confusion. A moment passed in silence.
"You hungry?" Melissa inquired suddenly. "There's soup in the galley. I made it meself. You want soup, Mister Charlie?"
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
Melissa disappeared into the galley again. Soup? Made from what? Charlie doubted there were many kinds of food that kept without refrigeration, which this ship was unlikely to have. But if that was so, what did the girl eat?
She reemerged from the staircase leading to the galley, a bowl in her hands. She offered it to him. There were potatoes in it, and carrots, and fish. He understood where the fish was from well enough.
"I had to do something with the veggies before they rotted, and I asked Mister Jimmy so he teaches me to makes soup."
"How long have you been on the ship?" Charlie asked. He gave a piece of potato an experimental nibble. It tasted fresh.
"I don't know. I is had two birthdays though."
"Oh." That would mean more than two years, but the girl could have been having herself a birthday every other day for all he knew. "Where is, I mean, where are the vegetables from?"
"The Golden Merchant gives them to us for delivering things. He's nice. He's really tall. He's kinda green and he says some people call him frog, but I think that's really mean and I think he's really handsome. I never call him frog and the crew don't, either. You know, I bet you'd like to meets him."
"I'm sure I would."
Charlie looked at the sun again. You weren't supposed to look directly at the sun, but it was nearly below the horizon now and he didn't care that much anyway. It was like the zebra crossings in London, optional.
It was already much darker than when he'd come to. Couldn't have been more than half an hour ago. Could it? He'd heard darkness comes quickly when you're near the equator. It sure was coming faster than it ever did in New York. In New York, it never really came at all. Charlie turned his eyes up at the sky and watched the sky blacken and the stars come to life. You never properly saw the stars in New York.
"Mister Charlie!" Melissa sounded excited.
"Hmm?"
"You can see the crew now."
Charlie looked.
Charlie almost had a heart attack.
* * *
Continued on Day 5.
Okay, that's enough for today, but I'm intending to continue this storyline further. I'm pretty pleased with today's work, actually. It's not horridly late and I've got a decent word count and everything. Three cheers for phalmy! Huzzah.
"Mister?"
The world was coming back to him through a fog -- first the rocking; then the sound of washing waves rising and falling from below, and a faint, rhythmical creaking from overhead; then, the feeling of a hard, even surface under him.
"Mister? Are you awake?" A girl's voice. A small one.
"Mmh," Charlie grunted. "Somewhat." He felt around with his fingers. Wooden boards.
"Aye then. What's your name, Mister?"
Charlie opened his eyes. He was greeted by the round, concerned face of a little girl, couldn't have been older than six or seven, big eyes staring back at him and long hair hanging down around her face, tickling his nose.
"Charlie. Charlie Dobson. Well, Charles. But they call me Charlie."
Satisfied with the answer, the girl withdrew, revealing what Charlie accurately judged to be an evening sky, and a ship's rigging. Wooden masts and spars, with white canvas sails, bloated in the wind. He tried to sit up, but the moment he lifted his head from the deck it started pounding, and he decided to leave it where it was for the time being. He took a few steady breaths, and the headache began to clear with the fog. With the increasing lucidity came questions. Why was he on a ship? And a wooden ship, of all things - did they even make them out of wood any more?
Memories started drifting to him. Last he remembered, he'd been in New York. No, he'd been on a ship, then he'd been in a lifeboat. No, he'd been in the cold, wet darkness of the ocean, drifting to nowhere in the middle of the night...
"Want a pillow, Mister Charlie? Or a blanket?"
"Um. A pillow would be nice. Thanks."
Little feet pattered in the direction of, judging by the sails, the back of the ship - what was it called? - the stern, and returned after a while. Charlie's head was lifted carefully by two hands, and a pillow tucked underneath. He could see the girl now, sitting on a cast-iron cannon, dangling her feet in the air. She reminded him distantly of Alice, though this one had a pink dress, with frilly edges. And she had brown hair. She was looking at him quizzically. Charlie felt like he was expected to say something, but he didn't know what it was.
After a moment, the girl said, "I had tea a moment ago and I reckon there's still some left in the galley if you fancies it, Mister Charlie."
Charlie nodded. The girl jumped down onto the deck and ran off again. She returned with a big pewter mug in her hand. She offered it to Charlie. The steam had an odd scent, like black currants and peppermint.
He tried to lift his head, then let it fall back to the pillow with a grunt. The girl put down the mug and Charlie felt her hook her arms under his and drag him to the left side (port, Charlie remembered distantly) and lay him against the bulwark, the pillow at his back. She then handed him his tea.
"Thank you. For the pillow, too."
The girl just smiled. Charlie took a sip. It was a strange flavor, berries and mint and a hint of coconut, but then again, he didn't drink much tea. He was more of a coffee person. It wasn't regular tea, that was for certain. Maybe it was green tea, he mused. His sister drank green tea. Whatever tea this was, Charlie concluded, it was actually quite pleasant. Odd, but pleasant.
"Why do you look like that, Mister Charlie?"
"Like what?"
"Like, like funny like that."
"I don't understand."
"Like, when I look at you, I don't sees the ship."
Charlie didn't know what to say to this, so he bought himself some time by peering into his tea and looking thoughtful. "Um. Maybe you don't see the ship because, well, I'm in the way? Aha. Ha. Um."
The girl cocked her head to the side.
"I don't see the ship when I look at you, either."
She looked at him. Then she looked at her hand, the ship, then at nothing in particular that Charlie could see towards the bow, the at him again. "I s'pose that's it." She watched him sip his tea. "But the others don't look like that. Just me. Oh, and Mister Roger. But he's a flag, so that's different."
"Who?"
"Mister J. Roger."
"No, who are the others?"
"Mister Tom and Miss Cindy and Mister Harry and everybody. They're the crew. You know. They used to be pirates but now they is sorry."
"Are they inside?"
"Some of them. Some of them is on the deck. You can't see them, 'cause they is invisible."
Charlie had heard of this. Lonely children made up imaginary friends to play with. He felt kind of sorry for her.
Off to the starboard side, the sun was touching the water already. Must've been getting late.
"What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't, 'cause you didn't asked me."
"Sorry. I'm asking now. What's your name?"
"Melissa."
"So, Melissa, how'd you get on the ship?"
"I was first on this other ship, but it got broken, and I was lost in the sea for a long time. And Mister Harry sawed me and jumped into the sea and rescued me, and Mister John hauled him back up with a rope. Just like they did with you, Mister Charlie."
That's what he would have asked next - 'How did I get on the ship?' - but Melissa had answered both questions now. Not that either the answers made sense.
"Mister Johnny says it's a miracle you isn't ended up in the locker of Mister Jones."
"Who's he?"
"I don't really know. He's not on our ship so maybe he's on a different ship. Anyway, I don't think the crew really likes him. They sounds angry when they talks about him."
Charlie watched the rigging, watched the sails catch the wind. He looked at the tiller, turning back and forth anemically. "How does this ship, you know, work?"
"Oh, I don't knows about that."
What did that mean, then? That the ship was magic and somehow steered and sailed itself?
"It's the crew that sails the ship. I can't do it meself, I just watches. Sometimes they lets me hold ropes for them, but I think they is just being nice to me."
Ah. That explained everything. It was sailed by her invisible friends.
"It's gonna be dark soon. You can see the crew when the sun goes down, 'cause they is only visible in shadow. If you wanna to know how the ship works, you can asks Mister John. He's the captain, you know. But he lets me live in the captain's cabin and sleep in the captain's bed. Isn't he nice?"
Charlie nodded, befuddled. This girl had an imagination. He looked at his mug. It was empty; he had nowhere to hide his confusion. A moment passed in silence.
"You hungry?" Melissa inquired suddenly. "There's soup in the galley. I made it meself. You want soup, Mister Charlie?"
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
Melissa disappeared into the galley again. Soup? Made from what? Charlie doubted there were many kinds of food that kept without refrigeration, which this ship was unlikely to have. But if that was so, what did the girl eat?
She reemerged from the staircase leading to the galley, a bowl in her hands. She offered it to him. There were potatoes in it, and carrots, and fish. He understood where the fish was from well enough.
"I had to do something with the veggies before they rotted, and I asked Mister Jimmy so he teaches me to makes soup."
"How long have you been on the ship?" Charlie asked. He gave a piece of potato an experimental nibble. It tasted fresh.
"I don't know. I is had two birthdays though."
"Oh." That would mean more than two years, but the girl could have been having herself a birthday every other day for all he knew. "Where is, I mean, where are the vegetables from?"
"The Golden Merchant gives them to us for delivering things. He's nice. He's really tall. He's kinda green and he says some people call him frog, but I think that's really mean and I think he's really handsome. I never call him frog and the crew don't, either. You know, I bet you'd like to meets him."
"I'm sure I would."
Charlie looked at the sun again. You weren't supposed to look directly at the sun, but it was nearly below the horizon now and he didn't care that much anyway. It was like the zebra crossings in London, optional.
It was already much darker than when he'd come to. Couldn't have been more than half an hour ago. Could it? He'd heard darkness comes quickly when you're near the equator. It sure was coming faster than it ever did in New York. In New York, it never really came at all. Charlie turned his eyes up at the sky and watched the sky blacken and the stars come to life. You never properly saw the stars in New York.
"Mister Charlie!" Melissa sounded excited.
"Hmm?"
"You can see the crew now."
Charlie looked.
Charlie almost had a heart attack.
* * *
Continued on Day 5.
Okay, that's enough for today, but I'm intending to continue this storyline further. I'm pretty pleased with today's work, actually. It's not horridly late and I've got a decent word count and everything. Three cheers for phalmy! Huzzah.
Tuesday 10 June 2008
The God of Thunder (Day 3)
When you're next on a ship, grip tight on to the railing and peer over the side and into the depths.
The sea is dark, but if you had eyes that could see far enough and could see clearly enough, you would see the ocean floor, covered in sand. You would see creatures -- depending on where you are, they could be just tuna, or they could be pretty fishes in the colors of the rainbow, swimming through the coral reefs, or they could be bloated, weird critters with sharp fangs and a lantern hanging over their head, bobbing side to side as they swim.
And if you had really, really special eyes, you could see beyond that. Because our ocean floor is the very farthest edge of another world. It's the world where Atlantis sunk to and from where R'lyeh will rise.
Just as our ocean is the far strand skirting the deep realm, our sky is the end of another world. Our sky is the southernmost edge of their sea.
The people in that world - and yes, there are people - live on a great continent (which they call simply the Old Continent) but it is far from our skies; even most of their seas are in places where we cannot see them, even if we could travel anywhere on the globe to look for them.
But there is one of that world we can still see.
You see, when the Creation of the Old Continent ended, the Gods left it one by one. The God of Light fled to the east, and circles their world as a sun. The God of Fire rose to their heavens (which could be seas in another, ever more distant realm -- but who knows?) in a whirl of smoke, and traveled to the north. He still shows himself in the cold of winter, in dancing lights against the dark night sky.
The God of Growth went walking to the West and was never seen again. And there were, of course, others.
The God of Thunder was the last of them to leave the Old Continent. He set sail from the southernmost peak of the land, the waves frothing against the side of his longboat as a final farewell. And on the shoreline stood the Ancients, the new wardens of the Continent, giving their silent respects to him and, through him, all of godkind. So the God of Thunder sailed south until he came to the edges of their world.
Next time there's a storm, watch the sky. Look for a great, round dark cloud - because it's not a cloud at all. It is the longboat of the Thunder-god, sailing so close to the earth the tallest trees tickle its humongous belly. And once you find that vessel, try to look above it, and you may see the god himself, his black eyes on the horizon and his beard flowing in the wind.
* * *
I feel immature. Everybody else is writing about, y'know, real people and real life. What I want the most is to tell tales about things you see in the weirdest of your dreams - or, you can guess me, make up for yourself as you sit on the balcony, admiring the thunderstorm. I guess I'll always be a brat like that.
But guess what? I'm not sorry. Not one bit. Nyah nyah.
The sea is dark, but if you had eyes that could see far enough and could see clearly enough, you would see the ocean floor, covered in sand. You would see creatures -- depending on where you are, they could be just tuna, or they could be pretty fishes in the colors of the rainbow, swimming through the coral reefs, or they could be bloated, weird critters with sharp fangs and a lantern hanging over their head, bobbing side to side as they swim.
And if you had really, really special eyes, you could see beyond that. Because our ocean floor is the very farthest edge of another world. It's the world where Atlantis sunk to and from where R'lyeh will rise.
Just as our ocean is the far strand skirting the deep realm, our sky is the end of another world. Our sky is the southernmost edge of their sea.
The people in that world - and yes, there are people - live on a great continent (which they call simply the Old Continent) but it is far from our skies; even most of their seas are in places where we cannot see them, even if we could travel anywhere on the globe to look for them.
But there is one of that world we can still see.
You see, when the Creation of the Old Continent ended, the Gods left it one by one. The God of Light fled to the east, and circles their world as a sun. The God of Fire rose to their heavens (which could be seas in another, ever more distant realm -- but who knows?) in a whirl of smoke, and traveled to the north. He still shows himself in the cold of winter, in dancing lights against the dark night sky.
The God of Growth went walking to the West and was never seen again. And there were, of course, others.
The God of Thunder was the last of them to leave the Old Continent. He set sail from the southernmost peak of the land, the waves frothing against the side of his longboat as a final farewell. And on the shoreline stood the Ancients, the new wardens of the Continent, giving their silent respects to him and, through him, all of godkind. So the God of Thunder sailed south until he came to the edges of their world.
Next time there's a storm, watch the sky. Look for a great, round dark cloud - because it's not a cloud at all. It is the longboat of the Thunder-god, sailing so close to the earth the tallest trees tickle its humongous belly. And once you find that vessel, try to look above it, and you may see the god himself, his black eyes on the horizon and his beard flowing in the wind.
* * *
I feel immature. Everybody else is writing about, y'know, real people and real life. What I want the most is to tell tales about things you see in the weirdest of your dreams - or, you can guess me, make up for yourself as you sit on the balcony, admiring the thunderstorm. I guess I'll always be a brat like that.
But guess what? I'm not sorry. Not one bit. Nyah nyah.
Monday 9 June 2008
The Investment (Day 2)
Contains strong language which may be offensive blah blah blah blah.
* * *
It's hot as fuck here.
It's got to be around noon by now. I know this because the shadow I've been occupying, thrown by the squat watchtower at the east end of this shitbrick bunker I'm sitting on, is rapidly shrinking into nothing. I can already feel the sweat starting to trickle down the side of my face. The bastard sun of the Middle Eastern warzone is grinning down at me smugly, like some kind of retarded white cymbal.
I discarded my shirt long ago. I have to keep the scarf, though, if I don't want the wind to give me a mouthful of sand. Bloody rag chafes horridly if I try to move my head, I'm going to look like a hanged man when I get back. I'm chewing on the back end of a matchstick -- not because I like matchsticks, but because on a day like this a man needs his nicotine; only Amir the Useless Cunt was supposed to be back with my cigarettes half an hour ago and I'm getting just a mite impatient.
I'm here to check up on our investment. Well, it's not really our investment, it's the investment of the Babylon movement, the insurgents, only we're making the investment for them. Which is only fair, since the movement is our investment. Or if it's not them, it's the shit they're kicking up.
So I'm here to see that they kick up as much shit as possible. Only in this heat I'm constantly catching myself focusing on the idea of a nice, cold beer instead of the investment, which finished demonstrating its marksmanship some fifteen minutes ago and is now marching past my vantage point for the second time.
I have to admire them, though. I mean, the sand must be this close to melting into a solid plate of glass at this point, and half of them don't even have shoes on. They're marching in a large box pattern, in full gear and with rifles slung over little shoulders. Amir the Lazy Bastard took the jeep, didn't he? Thought as much.
It's not like they're much use fighting, these kids with guns. But there's something about having to kill children that just gets under a westerner's skin like no other. Especially if he has children of his own. You might think it makes it easier that the kids are trying to kill you, too. It doesn't.
The Babylon movement's psychological weapon has now passed me in its entirety and is heading away again. Alec said Mahmud had wanted to throw in another batallion for two-thirds the price, but we turned down the offer. We don't want to give the insurgents the upper hand. We just want to fuck with their political terrain while everyone's busy killing everyone else. Besides, what good will that be if they actually overthrow the regime?
Look, the bureaucrat is coming out of the bunker. Hi, Alec.
"Hey. We're going."
That's not a moment too soon. Alec vomits out a string of words to Mahmud, who responds in the same awful regional gibberish. He shouts something to the kids and they stop marching.
Alec squints at the sky. "The chopper should be here in five."
Then, the son of a bitch lights himself a cigarette. You had cigarettes, you whore? He gets the same smug look as the sun and Christ, I'm so angry I just want to punch his face in. "You didn't ask, did you?"
* * *
Ridiculously close to the deadline. Which is to say, two minutes before midnight. I'm trying to post on consecutive dates.
Anyway, here's a main character you're actually supposed to hate.
* * *
It's hot as fuck here.
It's got to be around noon by now. I know this because the shadow I've been occupying, thrown by the squat watchtower at the east end of this shitbrick bunker I'm sitting on, is rapidly shrinking into nothing. I can already feel the sweat starting to trickle down the side of my face. The bastard sun of the Middle Eastern warzone is grinning down at me smugly, like some kind of retarded white cymbal.
I discarded my shirt long ago. I have to keep the scarf, though, if I don't want the wind to give me a mouthful of sand. Bloody rag chafes horridly if I try to move my head, I'm going to look like a hanged man when I get back. I'm chewing on the back end of a matchstick -- not because I like matchsticks, but because on a day like this a man needs his nicotine; only Amir the Useless Cunt was supposed to be back with my cigarettes half an hour ago and I'm getting just a mite impatient.
I'm here to check up on our investment. Well, it's not really our investment, it's the investment of the Babylon movement, the insurgents, only we're making the investment for them. Which is only fair, since the movement is our investment. Or if it's not them, it's the shit they're kicking up.
So I'm here to see that they kick up as much shit as possible. Only in this heat I'm constantly catching myself focusing on the idea of a nice, cold beer instead of the investment, which finished demonstrating its marksmanship some fifteen minutes ago and is now marching past my vantage point for the second time.
I have to admire them, though. I mean, the sand must be this close to melting into a solid plate of glass at this point, and half of them don't even have shoes on. They're marching in a large box pattern, in full gear and with rifles slung over little shoulders. Amir the Lazy Bastard took the jeep, didn't he? Thought as much.
It's not like they're much use fighting, these kids with guns. But there's something about having to kill children that just gets under a westerner's skin like no other. Especially if he has children of his own. You might think it makes it easier that the kids are trying to kill you, too. It doesn't.
The Babylon movement's psychological weapon has now passed me in its entirety and is heading away again. Alec said Mahmud had wanted to throw in another batallion for two-thirds the price, but we turned down the offer. We don't want to give the insurgents the upper hand. We just want to fuck with their political terrain while everyone's busy killing everyone else. Besides, what good will that be if they actually overthrow the regime?
Look, the bureaucrat is coming out of the bunker. Hi, Alec.
"Hey. We're going."
That's not a moment too soon. Alec vomits out a string of words to Mahmud, who responds in the same awful regional gibberish. He shouts something to the kids and they stop marching.
Alec squints at the sky. "The chopper should be here in five."
Then, the son of a bitch lights himself a cigarette. You had cigarettes, you whore? He gets the same smug look as the sun and Christ, I'm so angry I just want to punch his face in. "You didn't ask, did you?"
* * *
Ridiculously close to the deadline. Which is to say, two minutes before midnight. I'm trying to post on consecutive dates.
Anyway, here's a main character you're actually supposed to hate.
Sunday 8 June 2008
The Messenger (Day 1)
Empress, your servant approaches. He gropes at the frozen forest air in coarse gasps. As he expels it again his breath turns to mist, hanging on the air like a ghost of the banner he used to carry. The cheeks that used to flare red against the cold gave up their resistance hours ago; now the whips of winter pelt your servant's face with newfound mirth, and the ice has reached in and penetrated the marrow of his cheekbones.
He has ceased to recite his prayers; it has been long since he had enough of his voice left to carry over the wail of the wind and the crackle of the snow under his boots.
A wrist-thick branch, frozen solid, snaps like a leper's finger under your servant's feet. He fights to keep his balance and manages not to fall over. He must keep his balance and, above all, he must keep moving, steady steps up the shallow slope. What was once a physical effort has become mindless trudging; he doesn't even feel his feet anymore, he is moving forward only because his legs have forgotten what it means not to walk. His feet have forgotten how to stop.
Your servants fought valiantly, Empress, but the winter took its toll, and the heretics and savages from the north outnumbered us heavily. Only this standard bearer escaped their wrath, and since then he has done his most to reach you with greatest expediency.
His steed allowed him to gain the first three hundred miles with haste, but it expired before the last one hundred. Your servant has been covering ground as fast as he has been able, but weariness and cold have impeded his progress. The enemy is on the move even as your servant makes his way now. He prays he will be on time to bring these grave tidings before the Throne.
The wind ceases. This brings temporary relief from the bite, but the wail still rings in your servant's ears. Just as he doubts his voice will ever be with him again, he is afraid the wailing will.
The trees sparse out abruptly as your servant reaches the top of the hill. The sun gets through to your servant here, and he is heartened by the bit of warmth it brings him. But he is even more heartened to see the golden tower of Lufundi, the Hall of the Throne, glinting in the distance. The sky is cloudless and, on the bald head of the hill, the sight is clear.
Your servant feels a jolt in his chest.
He looks down to find his coat pierced by the shaft of an arrow. It runs flawlessly through the bearskin and it has splintered the bottom of your servant's breastbone. On the arrow's bodkin tip, he recognizes red drops of his blood, blood belonging to the Throne.
He tries to utter a plea of forgiveness, but his throat has died long ago, and the rising wind suffocates even the weak rasp of his last breath.
Your servant has failed you.
* * *
A humble (not to mention late) start. But at least it's a start. I'll try to cook up another one in the remaining hours of today to catch up. Meanwhile, feel free to comment on this work.
He has ceased to recite his prayers; it has been long since he had enough of his voice left to carry over the wail of the wind and the crackle of the snow under his boots.
A wrist-thick branch, frozen solid, snaps like a leper's finger under your servant's feet. He fights to keep his balance and manages not to fall over. He must keep his balance and, above all, he must keep moving, steady steps up the shallow slope. What was once a physical effort has become mindless trudging; he doesn't even feel his feet anymore, he is moving forward only because his legs have forgotten what it means not to walk. His feet have forgotten how to stop.
Your servants fought valiantly, Empress, but the winter took its toll, and the heretics and savages from the north outnumbered us heavily. Only this standard bearer escaped their wrath, and since then he has done his most to reach you with greatest expediency.
His steed allowed him to gain the first three hundred miles with haste, but it expired before the last one hundred. Your servant has been covering ground as fast as he has been able, but weariness and cold have impeded his progress. The enemy is on the move even as your servant makes his way now. He prays he will be on time to bring these grave tidings before the Throne.
The wind ceases. This brings temporary relief from the bite, but the wail still rings in your servant's ears. Just as he doubts his voice will ever be with him again, he is afraid the wailing will.
The trees sparse out abruptly as your servant reaches the top of the hill. The sun gets through to your servant here, and he is heartened by the bit of warmth it brings him. But he is even more heartened to see the golden tower of Lufundi, the Hall of the Throne, glinting in the distance. The sky is cloudless and, on the bald head of the hill, the sight is clear.
Your servant feels a jolt in his chest.
He looks down to find his coat pierced by the shaft of an arrow. It runs flawlessly through the bearskin and it has splintered the bottom of your servant's breastbone. On the arrow's bodkin tip, he recognizes red drops of his blood, blood belonging to the Throne.
He tries to utter a plea of forgiveness, but his throat has died long ago, and the rising wind suffocates even the weak rasp of his last breath.
Your servant has failed you.
* * *
A humble (not to mention late) start. But at least it's a start. I'll try to cook up another one in the remaining hours of today to catch up. Meanwhile, feel free to comment on this work.
30 Days of Creativity
My friend Mr. Marrow has come up with a challenge for my dear locos and locas at project Locution. It goes as follows:
"I challenge you all to write something creative every day for the next 30 days. Every day you will then post your creation in a blog for everyone to see. It does not have to be heavily polished, but it does have to be new work. The idea is just to get creativity flowing, which I know from personal experience can be a real bitch to do."
Let's face it - I've been in a real slump, writing-wise; I've been slacking off and making horrible excuses. Sometimes they have been legitimate ones - I have been busy with school; I have had other work piling up on me. But now it's summer, I have nothing but time. Yet, I don't write. This can largely be attributed to one fact, i.e. I am a lazy bastard. So, something like this is the perfect cattle-prod for me; the perfect kick in the literary ass, that little carrot-cum-stick I need in order to actually achieve anything of merit.
And this is why I, (so help me God), pledge to post one piece of creative work every day for the next 30 days.
Alea iacta est.
Other participants' blogs:
J. Marrow
Eladnarra
Architectonic
Crihavoc
Fuchsia
Missedtarget
Tracer
Rouxinol
Meristele
Sarck
"I challenge you all to write something creative every day for the next 30 days. Every day you will then post your creation in a blog for everyone to see. It does not have to be heavily polished, but it does have to be new work. The idea is just to get creativity flowing, which I know from personal experience can be a real bitch to do."
Let's face it - I've been in a real slump, writing-wise; I've been slacking off and making horrible excuses. Sometimes they have been legitimate ones - I have been busy with school; I have had other work piling up on me. But now it's summer, I have nothing but time. Yet, I don't write. This can largely be attributed to one fact, i.e. I am a lazy bastard. So, something like this is the perfect cattle-prod for me; the perfect kick in the literary ass, that little carrot-cum-stick I need in order to actually achieve anything of merit.
And this is why I, (so help me God), pledge to post one piece of creative work every day for the next 30 days.
Alea iacta est.
Other participants' blogs:
J. Marrow
Eladnarra
Architectonic
Crihavoc
Fuchsia
Missedtarget
Tracer
Rouxinol
Meristele
Sarck
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