“Come along young ones. Under the moon will we play. Till day breaks again, a naked reverie. Blushed unabashed, flesh flushed the color of newborn. Wild as the briar, as the beasts, as we are. Reborn!”
Adam shivered in the darkness without ever realizing that they were his words fogging the office thick and white as opium smoke. And when finally he did notice, his words were no longer alone. Long and eager breaths sounded from the edges of the room where shadows were thickest—panting that became laughter, raspy and familiar. Adam jumped out of his chair clutching Magdalynn with one hand, reaching with the other for his father’s sword. Nothing. He groped around his hip, on the chair, on the floor, but the weapon was nowhere. All the while, the heaving seemed to get closer and closer. Then the girl screamed and bit and fought and cried for Adam to save her from the monster as she broke from him and darted into the darkness. He called after her, heard the laughter in response, and pursued—his heart pounding against the knot in his stomach as he scoured the room till he found her: a listless mass crumpled under the bed. He pulled her out by the leg, and she was pale as his breath—panting, heaving.
A moment after, there was laughter again, and the pastor’s son clasped his gaunt, yellow hands over his mouth. Splintered nails traced the crevasses of his jaundiced skin and over his wormy lips, caught in his black-thicket beard, him cackling all the while, releasing white ghasts the shape of demons between his fingers. The feeling lingered. A euphoric malice, a malicious bliss.
When Adam awoke, it was to the rock of the boat and the deck coming fast from below. He landed flat on his back. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs and sprung his eyes open to the hammock hanging upended above him. Jeers came from all around. It was night now, and most the crew had fled here to mid-deck to drink and gamble and catch a few hours’ rest. The gang surrounding Adam were such kinds of men: surly and dirty in soiled sailor’s linens, greasy haired, wearing oily hats, each with a flask or flagon in his hand, and all of them hunched around an overturned trough playing dice cut from a dead man’s phalanges. They glanced inanely in the direction of Adam’s fall then turned back to their game—all but the one squatting closest to the pastor’s son whose back was turned to the stinking manure lanterns and could see in the dark the bulge beneath his tunic and the fresh, damp blotch.
The crewman cried between bucked teeth, “Oi, lookie here! The bishop’s skivvy’s been dream’n again!” That caught their attention, and the whole room looked to see the young Messah turn the color of overripe peaches. Adam clambered to his feet. His father’s sword was still pressed against his chest, but it could not protect him from the roaring chortle or the humiliation he felt as he fled for the surface. “Bishop’s Bitch,” they called after him, “Pretty Skivvy,” and “Captain’s Cunt.”
The pastor’s son could hardly see for all the tears in his eyes by the time he reached the upper deck. He could hardly breath, mucus coating the rear of his throat. He choked and spat and crawled through the hatch into the rain. It chilled him to the bone, but he was glad to feel his clothes soak through until the warm, wet blotch vanished into his garments. Then he remembered the precious steel in his hands, and he ran for shelter where some rain-catchers sat, under the central mast and beneath a tarpaulin.
It was noisy and cold below the folded canvas. There were no walls to lessen the bitter wind and no sound except the patter of rain and an incessant drip into the surrounding barrels. Adam thought the lot of them welcome as he wedged himself among the driest wood.
“What are you doing out here?” asked a voice from the dark.
The pastor’s son jumped—bumped his head on the canvas—his heart stopped his breath till his eyes adjusted; it was only Adnihilo hiding from the rain, crammed between catchers like a caged animal.
Adam answered half in a daze, “What am I doing here? Why in Hell are you—”
“Is that David’s sword? So it’s true.”
“There are rumors already?”
“What else is there to do but talk and drink?” Adnihilo reached behind a barrel and retrieved a bottle: small, green, round, and opaque. He brought it below his nose and wrinkled his face before taking a swig and passing off to Adam. The Messah didn’t hesitate. He drank down a mouthful of foul liquor and found his mood lifted. He hadn’t noticed the megrim until then.
He took another swig to take off the edge and said, “Where’d you find this? It’s worse than kumasi.”
“If I tell you, will you tell me?”
“About the sword?”
Adnihilo nodded, and so Adam agreed and told the half-blood all he knew about the bishop’s scheming. He told him of the brand on Ba’al chest, how it matched those on their necks and protected them from the captain’s black magic. Then he repeated Ba’al’s promise to save them and Magdalynn—that’d he’d given him permission to keep his father’s weapon. Only after that did he divulge the mutiny and the treachery he’d agreed to play. The witch’s son sat with head cocked in uncertainty.
“You don’t believe me,” Adam sighed.
“I don’t believe him. This is another trick. It’s a lie.”
“And so what if it is?” The Messah spoke half to himself. And so what if it is?
Then they sat in silence, neither having more to say as the rain became light and broke through the clouds—not day, but moon light.
