AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Maybe I should wave to him tomorrow."
Shandy, still smiling with relief, cocked his head. "Wave at who?"
"Hicks. He'll be on a cliff at Portland Point, tomorrow at dawn, with a telescope." Hurwood chuckled. "He doesn't like the idea - he's giving a big dinner party tomorrow night, and he'd far rather be home preparing for it - but he'll be there. He fears me. I told him to watch for this ship and make sure he sees me out on deck, and sees me wave to him."
"We won't be anywhere near Jamaica by tomorrow dawn," said Shandy. "I don't think this ship could be."
"Oh." Hurwood closed his eyes. "Then I won't wave to him."
Shandy had been about to leave, but now he paused, staring down at the old man. "Why were you going to wave to him? Why will he be out there watching?"
"I want to sleep now."
"Tell me." Shandy's eyes darted to, then away from, the lamp. "Or no chocolates."
Hurwood pursed his lips pettishly, but answered. "If I don't sail past and wave, he'll assume I'm not going to arrive in time, and so he'll do the first part of the magic. The part that has to be done on Christmas day. I meant to be in Jamaica today, to save him the trouble of even going out there, but the storm yesterday and you today ... " Hurwood opened his eyes, though not wide. "I just thought if we were going to be near there tomorrow, I'd wave to him and save everybody the trouble. After all, you've made the full procedure impossible by destroying the head." He closed his eyes again.
"What's this ... first part of the magic?" Shandy asked, feeling the first faint webs of anxiety falling over him again.
"The part that can be done on land. The big part, which I would have had to do, has to take place at sea. Tomorrow noon he'll do the first part. He'd rather I did it. He'll be unhappy not to see me sail past."
"He'll do what? God damn it, what is this first part?"
Hurwood opened his eyes again and stared wonderingly at Shandy. "Why ... the dumping of her mind. Elizabeth's mind - her soul. He'll drive it out of her body, with magic. I showed him how. Though," he added with a yawn, "it's a waste of time now. Now there's nobody to put in her place."
Sudden pain in his kneecaps let Shandy know he'd fallen to his knees. "Will she come back, then?" he asked, forcing himself not to shout. "Will Beth's soul go back into her body then?"
Hurwood laughed, the light, carefree laughter of a child. "Come back? No. When she's gone, she'll be ... gone."
Shandy restrained himself from hitting or strangling the old man, and he didn't speak until he was sure he could again match Hurwood's casual tone. "Well," he began, but there was a rough edge in his voice, so he started again. "Well, you know what? I'm going to see to it that this ship does get to Jamaica by tomorrow dawn. And then you'll wave at your ... friend, this Hicks, won't you?" He was smiling, but his maimed hands were clenched into fists as tight as stressed knots.
"Very well." Hurwood yawned again. "I'd like to sleep now." Shandy stood up. "Good idea. We'll be getting up damned early tomorrow."
Peering from the corners of his eyes - he was supposed to look as if he were deep in prayer - the altar boy had to admit that the church really was getting darker. And while he was afraid of the dry, dusty birdlike things that would be free to come out when all the light was gone, he was hoping that total dark would come soon - for after the wedding ceremony the minister would dispense communion, and the altar boy knew he had sinned too direly to take it, and so he wanted to be able to slip away unseen ... even if that meant becoming one of the cobwebby birdlike creatures himself. He shivered, and wondered unhappily what had become of all the nice things. There had been friends, a wife, scholarship, the respect of colleagues, the respect of himself ... Perhaps they had only been a tormenting dream, and there had never really been anything but darkness and cold and the slow in-creeping of imbecility.
He took comfort in the thought.
The wedding couple finally came together in the shadows below the altar and linked arms, slowly, like lengths of seaweed tangled by listless sea-bottom currents. Then they began ascending the steps, and the altar boy realized that the absolute darkness had held off too long.
The bride was just an empty but animate dress; that wasn't so bad - it was always reassuring to find only an absence where it had seemed there might be a presence - but the groom was present and alive: it was impossible to be sure that it was human, for the skinned, bleeding flesh it consisted of might be manlike in form only because of the constriction of the clothes. If it had eyes they were closed, but the altar boy could tell the thing was alive because blood kept running out of it everywhere, and its mouth, albeit silently, was opening wide and clamping shut over and over again.
All at once the altar boy realized that the flayed thing there was himself, but the knowledge carried no horror, because now he knew too that he could move out of himself: all the way, if he was ready to let go of every thing, to non-being.
This, with profound relief, he did.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When the first hints of the dawn's glow began to dim the brightness of Sirius and the three bright stars in Lepus, Shandy called for the telescope and scanned the faint contrast in dark grays that was the southeast horizon - and then, though after the night-long labor he was too exhausted and hoarse to shout, he bared his teeth in pleasure, for he could see the irregularity that couldn't be anything but Jamaica.
"We're there, Skank," he said quietly to the man beside him as he handed the telescope back. "Ten hours of night sailing and navigating our course by the stars, on one reach because we couldn't tack, and the pre-dawn shows us sitting squarely where we wanted to be! By God, I wish Davies could have seen it."
"Aye," Skank croaked dully.
"Have one of the lads go fetch Hurwood up here. It's nearly time for him to step onstage."
"Aye, cap'n." Skank lurched away into the darkness, leaving Shandy alone on the bow.
Shandy stared out at the dim horizon, trying to spot Jamaica again without the telescope's aid, but after going two nights without sleep, focusing his eyes was a physical effort, and all he could see were illusory transparencies that swirled in different directions every time he moved his eyes. He was desperately looking forward to rescuing Beth, but more because he could then relax and go to sleep somewhere than because of any glory or fulfillment he might derive from accomplishing it.
