Most of a boltblacked trimaran has already washed up on the sandbar when Reaching the West Reaches awakens. He forces himself up to walk its length, gathering pieces of other shattered boats, driftwood and one precious, unbroken jar of ration water. Even moonstone floats.
He pulls six precious bronze nails from his automaton leg and drives them in with his fist. He won’t be able to stand well until he’s found something to replace them, which is just as well: his patchwork craft leaks.
Reaching the West Reaches grinds out to sail, and gulls follow the splash of his bailing helmet.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
“Like we’re being watched,” grates Reaching the West Reaches, spinning with his broken sword out.
“Away put your weapon!” cowers a dwarf. “I mean you no harm!”
He grunts and lowers it. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Found someone, you have! Help you I can, yes, mmm.”
“I don’t think so,” sneers Reaching the West Reaches, and leans on his sword like a stick. “I’m looking for a great warrior.”
“Warrior? Stumble Jade. You seek Stumble Jade!”
Reaching the West Reaches shares a startled glance with The Plum Of; but she just watches, always behind him, flickering blue as an ocean mirage.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
“We’re wasting our time!” snaps Reaching the West Reaches, and swings down hard to slice the dwarf in half. The little man sighs and takes the energy of his mighty strike, steps in, turns and buries the blade deep in pumice. Reaching the West Reaches strangles and Wishes and pulls with gearground arms, but the sword is stuck.
“I cannot teach him,” Stumble Jade growls. “The boy has no patience.”
“He will learn patience.”
“Hmm.” He smooths his bald head again and again. “Much anger in him. Like his father.”
“Was I any different,” murmurs Ratio Tile, “when you taught me?”
They meet atop the sixth of eleven mounds, the reliefs cut into their chalky flesh buried in the howling storm. The great dogs bell and shake off the snow already crusting on their flanks; Dog Shouting and See Me grip their saddle horns to stay seated.
“There isn’t enough life on this ice-rock to fill a cruiser’s hold,” snorts Dog Shouting. “The traps are set. I’m going back.”
“I’ll follow shortly. There’s a piece of moonstone that hit the ground near here.”
Dog Shouting frowns at him.
“I want to check it out,” shrugs See Me. “It won’t take long.”
See Me wakes, too cold to tremble, head down on a pile of bones. By the dim light of the cave mouth, he stands like a drunken mannikin and finds one splintered femur tight in his fist.
The monster is on him before he reaches the light. See Me cracks ribs on an icy wall and sees his own sword, a toy in the gray beast-man’s hand.
See Me lunges and stabs: clumsy, but good enough. Hot blood sprays his eyes. A high-pitched scream, and sudden pain, and a curious feeling of lightness at the end of his arm.
Reaching the West Reaches can run now, for the first time in many years. It’s strange and painful, and he staggers gladly to a stop at a cold-breathing cave to set the dwarf down.
“The Wish Power could never heal me before,” he grumbles. “Tell me why I can’t–”
“There is no why,” sighs Stumble Jade, sitting.
He peers into blackness. “What’s in there?”
“Only what you take with you,” says Stumble Jade. “Your weapon–you will not need it.”
Reaching the West Reaches takes up his broken blade anyway, and limps through the entrance.
The Backstroke is waiting inside.
“The goddess was bathing, and so she carved a sandalwood boy to stand guard,” mutters Reaching the West Reaches. The cave is dark, and his broken sword will not light the way. “But he was curious, and looked upon his mother in the bath; and her husband arrived home to find them–”
See Me leaps out, sword whole and gleaming. Reaching the West Reaches parries and feints, strikes, strikes again.
See Me’s head rolls to a stop. His own lacquer eyes look up from it.
“So the god cursed the boy,” he pants, “with an elephant’s head, too heavy to bear…”
See Me is a silver fish flitting through mangrove shallows. Sometimes he sees other places: the future, or the past, or old friends long gone. Ships skim. Dog Shouting screams. Ratio Tile and Reaching the West Reaches converse, watched by a little green man.
As his wrist heals, they wean him gently off the opium, and the dreams give way to the glowing braziers of the hospital cave. Finally, he finds himself fully awake. The Princess is there, in the darkness: her breath in his ear, her hand beneath the sheets.
“It’s good,” she whispers, “to see you fully functional again.”
The Heavenly armada’s icebreakers shriek and boom, furnace-heated bronze hydrofoils throwing gouts of steam, but they’re not fast enough to reach the Mjish Binn base: that’s what their cargo is for. The noise of the war-saddled mammoths charging matches even the ships.
See Me straps into his snowsled while Scoop Dozen runs up the sail. “Feeling all right, sir?” Scoop calls.
“Just like new, Scoop. How about you?”
“Right now I feel I could take on the Heavens myself!”
“I know what you mean,” murmurs See Me, his blood hot and thrilling with the memory of his Princess’s skin.
Reaching the West Reaches quenches the mended blade, and brackish steam flares up around him, faster than he expected: brings with it towers and terraces, figures in the mist, screaming, minarets shattered in flames.
Stumble Jade lifts his welder’s mask to glare. “Control, control, you must learn control!”
“I saw a city in the clouds,” says Reaching the West Reaches slowly.
“It is the future you see.”
“They were in pain.” He rubs his head thoughtfully, the scars smoother than they were when he came here, tan blending their edges. “Will they die?”
“Always in motion,” says Stumble Jade, “the future.”