The Isle of Blood (Monstrumologist)

Pellinore Warthrop was not finally, fully, furiously alive. height='1em' width='0em'>I retreated to the safety of the bridge, where I could at least keep an eye on him, though the water splattering and streaming down the glass obscured my view, turning him into a maddened, wraithlike shadow against the lighter gray of the white-capped sea. As it happened, Awaale had taken the helm. His massive arms flexed and stiffened as he fought the wheel.

“What is he doing?” he wondered. “Does he wish to be blown out to sea?”

“He is anxious,” I answered.

“Anxious for what?”

I said nothing. To face the Faceless One, I might have answered, but said naught.

The storm chased us well past nightfall, forcing the Dagmar miles off course, far south of the island, and putting her directly in the path of the monsoon winds driving down from the north. When the weather cleared, Russell planned a heading to bring us back to the west of Socotra; it was, he told the doctor, the only prudent course.

“We can’t approach from the south, not with winds like these,” he said.

“That would cost us at least a day,” the monstrumologist pointed out, his jaw tightening with barely suppressed ire.

“More than that,” answered Russell grimly.

“How much more?”

“Two days, two and a half.”

Warthrop slammed his hand down hard on the table. “Unacceptable!”

“No, Dr. Warthrop, unavoidable. I tried to tell you back in Aden. No one goes to Socotra this time of—”

“Then, why in God’s name did you agree to it?” the doctor snarled.

Russell called upon all his English fortitude and said, in the calmest manner he could muster, “Coming from the west is our only hope of getting you close enough for a landing. Forcing our way north against this wind could take just as long and entail twice the risk.”

Warthrop drew a deep breath to collect himself. “Of course I will defer to your judgment, Captain. But I hope you can understand the urgency of my mission.”

“Well, I do not understand it. You’ve been marvelously obtuse about your purpose, Dr. Warthrop. Perhaps you could realize your hope by telling me what the bloody hell is so important on that desolate rock that you’re willing to risk life and limb—my life and limb—for it.”

The doctor said nothing for a moment. He stared at the floor, weighing something in his mind. Then he looked up and said, “I am not a botanist.”

“I have seen some strange things in this dark part of the world,” the captain confided at the conclusion of the doctor’s confession. “But none as strange as those you describe, Warthrop. I’d heard of—what did you call it?—that foul jelly tht brings madness and death, but never thought it to be real. I’ve also heard men speak of the so-called red rain, blood pouring from the sky like some biblical scourge, but I never put much stock in sailors’ tales. You could very well be mad, which is of no concern to me, except when that madness threatens my ship and the safety of my crew.”

“I assure you, Captain Russell, I am neither mad nor naive. The stories are true, and I intend to show you the proof when you return for us. If, that is, we ever manage to get there!”

“I will get you there, Warthrop, but I must ask how you plan to prevail over a squadron of Russians and capture this monster of yours, both intent on killing you, with nothing more than this boy by your side and a revolver in your pocket.”

Both Russell and I waited for his answer. I did not think he’d give the one he gave to me in Aden— this is what will save us—and he didn’t.

“I will leave all things nautical to you, Captain Russell,” he said. “If you will leave all things monstrumological to me.”

“Did you hear, walaalo?” Awaale asked me later that night as we lay in our hammocks belowdecks. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the thrumming of the engines. “I am going with you.”

I was stunned. “What do you mean?”

“Captain Julius asked me tonight what I thought about it. ‘This damn Yank may be the biggest fool I’ve ever met,’ he told me. ‘He could very well be mad as a hatter, but I can’t just drop him on the beach and be done with it.’ He offered to double my pay and I said yes, but not for the money. I said yes for you, walaalo. I said yes for you and for the one whose life I took all those years ago. I think God has sent you to me that I might save my soul.”

“I don’t understand, Awaale.”

“You are my redemption, the key to the prison of my sin. By saving you, I will save myself from judgment.”

He stroked my arm in the dark. “You are his gift to me, my walaalo.”

There are spirits in the deep. On this night, the last night in the long march of nights, you can hear their voices on the open water, in the sea spray and the wind and the slap, slap of the water breaking across the bow. Voices of the quick and the dead, like the sirens calling you to your doom. As you face that spot where the sea meets the sky, you hear their portentous lamentations. And then, before your startled eyes, the horizon breaks apart, thrusting up jagged shards of itself to blot out the stars.