“Hundreds of spirits are asking this question.” The man surged halfway to the ship. “Do you know the answer?”
I hadn’t known exactly what to expect when I began conversing with the water-woses. I had intended to talk a little, listen a lot, and hope for inspiration. I had not expected them to engage in such heartfelt philosophy with me. I wished I could tell them something that wasn’t a lie, or at least wasn’t a guess.
“Noble spirits, I regret that I can’t answer that question for you. I admit I can’t answer it for myself, either. Krak cursed me with a task and a sword, not with knowledge.”
The woman spirit rushed to the ship, spraying water half as high as the masts. She gripped the gunwale and stared at me with unblinking amber eyes, her webbed hands almost touching mine. “The gods can give sorcerers knowledge in trade. It’s told that the gods will do this.”
I resisted a powerful urge to lean back. “The gods only give the knowledge they want to give, and it’s usually something you wish you didn’t know.”
The man roared, “You’re not much use then, are you?” The wind rose to a gale, made the rigging whistle, and heeled the ship over so that everything not stowed tightly tumbled against the inside of the hull.
Pil’s watery voice called out from behind me. “I know the answer to their question.”
The wind died as if somebody had shut a window. The woman spirit shouted at me from four feet away, “Make her tell you, sorcerer!”
I gaped at Pil and raised my eyebrows.
She pretended not to notice. “I don’t belong to him, not a bit, because I don’t belong to anybody. I really don’t. But I can answer if I decide to.”
I did not open my mouth and say that the spirits would get a better answer from any random bug they pulled out of a dead stump. It wasn’t a polite thing to say, and it might convince the spirits to pop us open and repaint the ship with our blood.
The man spirit boomed, “Tell us now! Or somebody torture her and make her tell. Or let me do it! You’d be amazed how much better torture is using an octopus or two!” The spirit had grown two-inch fangs, and I had never seen any spirit do that before.
Pil raised her chin and pulled back her shoulders as if she were going into battle. Then she threw herself against the side to vomit some more. Her spew sounded like a clump of mud falling down a rainy hillside. I damned myself for convincing her that she controlled everything in her life.
The woman spirit swam backward thirty feet. “This is a joke. You are joking, aren’t you?”
The man raised out of the water with no strain, standing naked on the ocean surface. “I damn well hope they are joking. I’ve wanted to kill them ever since I first smelled them.”
“I can answer!” Pil panted. “But you have to promise not to kill us!”
The woman spirit jumped over the gunwale, as graceful as an otter, to stand on the deck beside me. “In one minute, I will kill everyone on this vessel! Almost everyone on this vessel. Nearly everyone on this vessel will be killed, except for one person, whom I might decide to . . .” The spirit glared at the deck and shook her head. “In fifty seconds, I will kill most of you!”
“And I will laugh as you die,” the man spirit roared from out in the water.
“Wait!” I bellowed, both hands up as if that would help anything. “What if Pil tells you the truth, but you don’t like it?”
The woman frowned at Pil. “That is possible. Maybe likely. The truth is rarely pleasant.”
I stepped between Pil and the woman spirit. “So, we offer this: Pil will answer with the truth, and you won’t kill us even if you don’t like the answer.”
“You’re just trying to cheat us!” the man yelled. “If you do a bad job, you should all be killed. If I could still tell riddles, I’d have torn you all into bits the size of snowflakes ten minutes ago!”
I glanced toward Halla but saw only her back as she dangled over the side. “Noble spirit, think about this. Your wife, whose bosom I am not staring at, by the way, acknowledged that a true answer is likely to be disagreeable. If you threaten to kill us for an answer you dislike, why would we tell the truth? We’d be smarter to lie and tell you something you’ll like.”
“Shark shit!” the man bellowed.
“No,” the woman said. “It makes sense. Tell us the truth, then, and we promise not to kill you for it.”
“Wonderful!” I said. “Nobody will be killing anybody, then. Right?”
Both water-woses nodded.
Pil hurled over the side again. It sounded like whatever she threw up came all the way from her feet. Whistler was draped limp over the side. Halla stood tall now, her black skin the color of ash, and she swallowed three times.
I patted Pil on the back and pulled her upright. “Sorcerer, we stand ready to hear your wisdom. I hope it sounds good.”
Pil cleared her throat. “Our existence has no meaning.”
The woman leaned over Pil. “And?”
“I think that ‘no meaning’ implies pretty strongly that you shouldn’t expect an ‘and’ to come next.”
Halla cleared her throat. “Does any logic stand behind this answer?”
Pil nodded and then swayed.
“Open your mouth and let it roll out then, you miserable cow-eater!” the male water-wose boomed from out in the water.
Pil took a breath and put on a grave expression. “You asked for an answer, not an explanation, which I am not giving you, because if I did, then you’d kill us as sure as hell is
