Fillydelphia did not signal to us its approach. In an instant, its skyscrapers appeared on the horizon, and all at once the untainted steppes were gone, the copses nowhere to be found, all replaced with suburbs, asphalt, road signs, and general traces of frequenting.
Nothing about Fluttershy indicated that she had just spent an indeterminate time in the wilderness. Throughout our journey, I’d marveled at her natural inclination, how she seemed more at ease surrounded by nothing and nobody than by civilization, how when time came to bivouac she would be able to obtain what she needed from the surroundings, how she’d collect wood for fire, twigs for shelter, and leaves for insulation. Never had I had to worry about care of her (I wouldn’t have been able to anyway) or entertaining her with frivolities. She was as silent as the grass and was content to be as such. She welcomed and cherished my like desire for silence but also would be there to listen whenever I occasionally found myself in dire need to hear speech, noting carefully what I had to say and offering advice when she could. When I’d felt myself slipping away, when I’d needed her to talk or to stay back, she’d do either without my having to specify, as though she knew exactly what to do to set me at ease.
We spent a night on the outskirts before moving into the greater area. She, as was her wont, went to sleep early. On the night before we walked downtown and started the final episode of my and my family’s cataclysm, I did not thrash and turn and fear her gaze, but sat up to watch the sun set and the city emerge in the distance, sparkling against the boundary between the sky and the sea. When I squinted, I thought I could make out the contours of the skyscraper I had alighted upon when I’d first arrived in this land. I remembered that feeling of looking down on the sprawling city, full of wonder, and thinking how immaculate it looked, as though it were beseeching me not to touch lest it spoil. Now, from below, I looked at the city in the distance, as brilliant, if not more so, than before, and the same thought occurred to me, that of not wanting to touch it, but the feeling originated from a completely different source: before, it felt as though it were asking for mercy; now, it felt as though it were hovering over me in shadow and mystery, issuing an amicable but fierce and solemn warning to let it lie, lest it have to rise up and drown me.
The next day, we went to the city. As we walked through its long, regular streets, amid traffic, intersections, and crossings, I should have noticed that the attitude of this city was quite unlike that of Canterlot and should have marked the particular bearing of the residents, their manner, which had once amazed me—but all that was washed away under the overbearing feeling that something was wrong. There was an oppressive atmosphere felt everywhere but unspoken. The citizens did their best to carry on as they always had, but their demeanor had an ineffable falseness about it; it was as though they knew they were being watched.
Gradually, the buildings grew shorter and narrower, the air more brackish, and the roads sandier. A change even affected the ponies themselves: as we approached the water, their manes began to split, their gaits to slouch—and, above all, the coarseness of their language became more marked. It seemed as though we were wading to the bottom of the pond, past the clearness and freshness of the surface, and were now moving among the dregs.
When I touched water, I knew the road had run out. My eyes had not been focused till then; the frigidness of the water shocked them clear, and before me stretched the ocean to no visible end.
“So,” came her voice behind me, “what do you want to do now?”
I barely heard her. “Home . . .” I whispered.
She pressed closer. “While you decide,” she whispered, “can you go somewhere else? This seems like a bad area . . .”
I turned. What I had recognized as the city so many times had all but gone, disappeared in the west and separated as it were by rows of indefinite walls, shacks, tents, and booths. In place of the indifferent, if not cold, ponies we had seen downtown, there was a new creature which perambulated the coast. Though pony in appearance, he did not walk but strolled with a careless, crude air, his and his cohorts’ voices not droning but rather leaping on each other in harsh, singsong screeches.
“Maybe you shouldn’t stare . . .” she whispered.
I caught the eyes of a particular group, three of them. The shortest one, after nodding his head to his compatriots, he smiled, licked his lips lasciviously, and trotted over toward us with a staggering, wide gait, while he tossed his greasy mane around his neck in a triumphant arc, as though sweeping out the area of land that he wanted all to know was his.
There were two males, one short and middle-aged, the other tall and young, accompanied by one female. All three were sallow, greasy, and their legs up to their torso were covered with sand. As they bantered and rallied one another (as I inferred from their tone and laughs, for I could barely make out their words), occasionally their mouths would open, all showing at least one tooth missing. Blotches of sunburned red stood out on their cheeks and backs.
Fluttershy shrunk back as they approached. I held my ground, which I knew was the only proper response to what was nothing more than a dominance gesture.
They stopped before us. The two taller ones glanced curiously and skeptically at me and Fluttershy. The short male gazed almost exclusively at Fluttershy with a glance the intent of which I could not place.
“Lost!” he spoke at last, still gazing at her. “Ye are searching but have stumbled awry! Pleased to meet ye and to take ye back on your route.”
The younger male sniffed. “What have they?” he said to his short colleague. “How canst thou tell?”
“See them, thou,” the other replied. “The sand barely touches their ankles! ’Tis clear to me and would be obvious to thee if thou develop thine eyes.”
I said nothing. Fluttershy only murmured.
He went on. “Silent, are ye? Ah”—he laughed, a mocking guffaw—“see I, yes do I! Ye are captives with your tongues cut out from a distant land! Whom have ye incurred the wrath of? Whom hath Mare sent to mutilate ye?”
He extended a hoof toward Fluttershy. “Come now, frightened one! Away from thy mute statue of a stallion! Stubb’ll take care of thee; yes, promise I that!”
“Come along; come along,” urged the young one hurriedly to him. “Thou art ornery; aye, aren’t we all! The sequestering hath us all in shivers. It will be gone soon enough. Meanwhile, thou need’st only feel the water on thy back again. There’s Mare’s loving embrace; come—I’ll jump with thee if thou would permit.”
“Jump first, I’ll make thee!” Stubb declared, turning round to his companion. Spinning back, he said in a distant voice, as though still addressing his companions: “There are these ones. If they be slaves, let us lead them back to their masters and receive the reward. But if they be nothing more than interlopers, then do we not have a duty to end this trespassing?”
“Then let ’em dry in the sand or founder in the water,” said the female. At this, she screwed up her eyes and looked in a singular manner at us. “They’ve been walking, ’tis clear; here is the water; ’tis the end of all walks. If Mare get them not first, then ’cross Nihil they’ll stumble. Mark me; can ye not see? From the land, to Mare; from Mare, to Nihil; that’s true, on my word, on their misfortune! Nothing can help them or check their path!”
She paused. “Something about them,” she continued, “about him especially. Aye, a danger looming over them, sense I—an inevitable crash and subsequent pain.” She placed her hoof on Stubb’s shoulder. “Let ’em be, and be not we caught in the undertow. To them and whoever will be unfortunate to come ’cross them, well, come what may.”
She nodded to the younger male, and she and he started off in an athwart direction. Stubb lingered a moment longer, eyeballing Fluttershy. Then his eyes went wide, and he dashed off in the direction of his companions, as if he too had seen a foreboding premonition.
*
Blue sky, blue sea, the occasional forlorn beach wanderer; boats drifting in the distance, running parallel to the land, or gently bobbing on the enormous dock driven into the bottom of the ocean which hugs the coast from the city’s northernmost point to its southernmost extremity—these are what one would usually see on the Fillydelphian coast.
Perambulating on this dock, one hears the rolling of the waves, the squawking of the seagulls, the rippling of sails, the languorous chirping of a ship’s bell. But there is a general sense of sanctity, as of a cathedral, which permeates the air, commanding all to be silent, smothering all except the natural sounds, as though they were the chanters and as though the ships were the pious believers who are supposed to stay silent and utter small cries of exclamation only when overcome by a profound awe. Voices are heard every so often, even a shout perhaps; but they seem distant and muted; they do not disturb the stillness of the coast. Even this aforementioned chirping seems estranged.
But, on this day, that blue sky and sea were nowhere to be seen; across the sky, across the horizon stretched, as it seemed, an uninterrupted and constantly oscillating tarp, of the sails of scores of ships docked or trying to find docking, many appearing to have run aground. The rolling of waves was drowned out by the stomp of many hooves upon the pier and the wooden decks, the squawking of the seagulls replaced by the vituperations and oaths shouted from all sides. Nothing but ships and sails could be seen; nothing but bells, shouts, and stomping could be heard. It was as if wild creatures of the sea, who were meant to swim and breathe the brackish air, had been suddenly thrown upon the land and were now roaring with terror.
I walked as in a daze down this pier, past the rows of ships, of ponies, of curses and shouts. There was such movement—from above, ponies in the network of the sails looming overhead, jumping between the masts of neighboring ships; from below, ponies in the water and spitting out salt in between curses; from the sides, ponies galloping after one another, pushing each other into the water, jumping from the dock to the ships nearby—I constantly lost track of what direction I was facing.
I could only walk forward and do my best to listen. From all directions, harshly spoken words in a dialect I could just but understand assaulted me; and, with one half of me too lost to form any definitive plan but the other part too scared to ask for guidance, I tried my best to make out the words of individual conversations:
“If I be taken from the sea to land, take I the sea to the land!”
“Move, curse thee! Mare devour thee and thy vessel!”
“Sail, sail, sail, say I! What have ye ever cared for their injunctions? Why freeze now?”
“Look there! The Manticore hath the foremost spot! She went and sold herself out for that docking. I hope she have no regrets!”
“Dost thou hear me? He cometh, in a suit and tie I say, as though he own this spot, eyeballs me, and starts asking me questions. He sees the standard—yes, this one here!—frowns and sayeth: ‘Thou wavest the standard of Boom’s Privateers, but hast thou a letter of marque?’ And say I him: ‘Mark me!’”
“Run through? Nay, I’m not as crazy as to do that. The moment I think about setting her in that direction . . . well, then thou canst call me Nihil.”
Every so often, when the wind, collisions, and the gropings of the sailors in a frenzy pushed back that endless rippling canvas of innumerable sails, an outcropping of the beach could be seen. A little farther inland, in the midst of a square permeated by booths, traffic, and promenaders, appeared a marble erection covered in dirt, grime, and weathered away by the decades spent in the rain and ocean mist. From what could be seen of its original nature, it was the statue of an equine figure with a contorted yet elegantly long and firm body, across whose long neck her mane swept in layered billows. Her tail was cast in a similar vein, falling but rising above her as though in the form of an inundation. Her mouth was open; but whether it was from surprise, shock, power, exaltation, it was impossible to tell, for her features had been washed away. The ponies on the land circulated about this statue with noses turned high and away, as though trying to convince themselves that that structure was not influencing their every step. But occasionally, a pony would approach it, stop, peer up into its face, and then shudder and cry; but these tears were not from being awe-struck, nor were they from a feeling of profound reverence; rather, it was more as though he would laugh to tears because the statue, carrying hints of majesty but now plainly dilapidated, conveyed to him an abjectness to such a degree that it was profoundly absurd given its position in the square and the height with which it towered over its onlookers.
Flask, the mate of the Star Buck, took the cacophony and the chaos around her and her ship docked at the end of the pier as a librarian would take silence. She did not twitch or flatten her ears when the sound of an anchor striking rock rang through the air or when glass broke against wood and metal in the midst of drunken oaths. When she moved in the presence of her crew, they’d instantly stop their jokes, resume their work, and drop their eyes to the floor lest she catch them indolently gazing. First at the bow to help unfoul a rope and to chastise the crew member responsible, then to midship to threaten to cut the tethers of the ponies rappelling over the side, then to the stern to talk to the pilot, more often than not to censure him for being incompetent during the journey and useless while docked, Flask was feared, loathed, but respected by all aboard the Star Buck, known for her captious nature and her clear, rich voice which barked oaths for every fault she found. But her swears and fury would erupt only when no land could be seen; when on the shores of Fillydelphia, when representing the ship and her captain, she spoke at her clearest and politest when needed, but was quiet and stern at all other times. When an obnoxious sailor from a foreign vessel would approach the ship, whether to make some indiscreet remark to her or to tempt the wrath of her crew, Flask would need to whisper only a few words to make him pale and retreat. She was her captain’s angel upon the shore and his personal assassin upon the sea.
No matter who was walking in what attitude, Flask could tell from a distance if he was approaching the ship; and, if he was, what purpose he was bringing. If he was bringing business, Flask would not deign to speak first; if he was looking to cause trouble, Flask similarly didn’t worry, for she knew she had only to mention the captain’s name to make him run. But today, when she saw us approaching, she took us as ponies bringing business; but something gave her reason for pause. Whether it was because it was clear that we were not seagoers and were walking with a strange, unplaceable intent; or because we, like her, managed to carry ourselves regardless of the commotion around us, she stopped, dried off her hooves with a rag; and, with a mighty stride, lept over the gunwale of the Star Buck, and adroitly alighted upon the pier just in time to meet us as we stopped at the end of the pier and in front of her ship.
“What matter compelleth you here?” she said, and immediately cursed herself silently. She’d tried to hold her tongue, as was her custom, but the sight of us had struck her with an ineffable sense of unease.
There was no more space for us to walk. We stopped in front of her and the Star Buck; and for a few minutes we only stared at each other. I don’t know what she had seen in me, but it threw her into a frenzy which would never relent as long as I was in her presence.
“What business bring ye to thus disturb me with your appearance?” she spoke a second time. She said ye, but it was clear she meant only me. “No, away with you! Ye have venom to inject and blood to suck! For what do ye seek? Speak quickly; your words fall upon ears which are easily bored and strained!”
“Transport,” I said. “I’m trying to find a way to get across the ocean.”
Flask spat at the ground in front of me. “Art thou? Then why dost thou stop here, at the end of the pier, while scores of able vessels surround thee?”
“Do you wish to say your vessel is not able?”
Flask’s face went white, but then just as quickly turned red, as she furrowed her brow. Some of the crew in and around the Star Buck went silent, stopped their activities, and stared at her, not daring to move or whisper. Fluttershy backed away as Flask approached. I held my ground.
She brought her face close to mine. Her breath smelled of salt, fish, and fury.
“Look here, thou deceiver,” she whispered, between her teeth. “Dost thou think thou can walk upon this pier, walk in front of me, in front of my ship, parade as whole under the false airs thou assumest, and expect to get what thou desirest? Dost thou take me as a fool in front of my crew? Well, listen here, so that thou know what outsiders ought: Thou art both a hapless genius and an unwitting fool. ’Tis mandated by him to let thee speak before I strike thee away. Well, then, speak, thou; speak so that I may unleash upon thee; or worse for thee, call him to help me!”
I knew better than to ask who “he” was.
“Madam,” I began, “we are only travellers. You have correctly observed that we are not natives of this city but outsiders. I apologize for any impropriety I may have shown to you, but please forgive me, for I assure you that any trespass I have made is unknown to me and inadvertent . . .” etc., etc., I spoke thus, slowly, and in an effort to emulate what I thought was a business style. Flask’s ironic smile only augmented as I went on.
When I was done, a bilious laugh spewed from her throat. “I wasn’t sure before, but ’tis clear now!” she roared. “Thou knowest not what thou art doing or saying; I can tell from the words which, like thee, carry pretenses of substance but have naught. A true scholar!” Again she spat on the ground before my feet. “So, Scholar, whom dost thou bring with thyself?”
“Do you mean her?”
“Dost thou intend to bring more? Who are ye?”
“She . . .” I stammered, looking to Fluttershy, “she’s . . . her name is . . . Deponent.”
“Actually,” she whispered, “it’s—”
“Avast!” yelled Flask, jumping forward with a look that was almost one of alarm. The tone of her voice, though still harsh and sonorous, had the slightest hint of a strange note of compassion. “Avast! I say this only out of a courtesy to thee, because thou art of yet uncorrupted—thy birth name hath no place upon the shores of Fillydelphia. I heard thy name was Deponent, so Deponent be thy name. But enough of formalities,” she went on. “What means of payment have ye?”
I looked to Fluttershy. She only closed her eyes and shook her head.
At that moment, he came out upon the deck of the Star Buck.
The air around went silent. The seagulls and clamor muted. The deckhands of the Star Buck passed between each other as on their regular movements, but now not one dared to laugh, to joke, to sing; they relegated their speech to short facts and requests from their colleagues, their words carefully chosen to reflect only reality, such as to reduce the risk of pointing inadvertently to the creature who was now taking his slow steps across the ship, which seemed to oscillate according to his hooves only. His presence did not contain itself upon the vessel: The deckhands of the neighboring ships were stricken with the same sort of unease. Ships cruising listlessly in the middle of the bay checked their movement. Down the pier, a pony walking in the direction of the Star Buck reared up, spun around, and took off at a gallop as if a phantom had come down upon him.
Flask turned upon me a twisted smile. “Thou shouldest have taken thy rejection a while ago and walked away intact,” she whispered. “But now thou hast lost that chance. Cometh he—and here thou standest, asking of him, without a coin to thy name, and from here never wilt thou move.”
He alighted upon the pier, a swift, graceful, but resolute step, taken blindly but none the less assuredly, and started toward us.
A certain weariness could be seen in his eyes and cheeks, as of a soldier or a spy who had been under march and watch for too long. His legs wobbled as he walked. Though he was old, it was not age that was eating him away. When he came close, I could feel from him a definite infirmity, as though he were not here on this pier but somewhere else, in a realm he thought about and yearned for, though it subjected him to a constant state of suffering, the dichotomy between the strange place of his in which he wished to exist and the corporeal form that he was forced to present in reality causing a tear within him and estranging every action of his.
Flask turned to him with that same smile of hers when he stopped beside her.
“Captain,” she began, a single word accompanied by a gesture to me, as though that communicated all that she wished to say and he needed to know. “Captain, he wanteth a service. But, alien as he is, expecteth he to obtain undeservedly. He presenteth nothing to me!” She chuckled. “Ah, what a shame, what a shame! Because there is something competent in his head there; but ’tis pointing to all the wrong things!”
No sooner had our eyes met than something lit up inside him, suffused him, and brought him here, fully into this world, into my gaze. No longer did he appear weak, unresolved, dominant, or oppressive; he was only a simple creature in a world not made for him; and, in that look, I knew that there existed some life still within him that could thrive.
He turned to Flask and spoke only two words:
“Come he.”
Flask paled. “Captain! . . .” she stammered, “but, Captain, we—”
“Worry not, mate. Come he, and whomever he bringeth, and all should be well.”
“We have not the room, they no money; we can’t possibly—”
“Worry not. The crew get ornery without thee and must be checked. Wilt thou not attend to thy duties as thy captain asketh?”
When Flask was gone, the captain turned to me.
“Scholar, thou sayest?” he asked. “Would that this meeting go forever and never grow stale. Come along; come along—I would like that very much.”
“But we have no money.”
“Call me Captain Nihil. The Star Buck is thine as she is mine, as thou wouldest know if thou wert to ask any on the shores of Fillydelphia. Whatever thou mayest yearn for, seek, the Star Buck should be at thy disposal with me at her helm. I would be glad to serve Captain Scholar and his Deponent. What dost thou command?” I asked him if he was to pilot the Star Buck to a land due east of here, a land which I called home. “Thither?” he replied. “Done, done! ’Tis a good evaluation, home; half a mind have I to call it home as well. ’Tis on the path I planned to take. Well, Scholar, if thou be willing, I’d take thee there, the stop before all others, as thou commandest! But had I any say in it, Scholar, I’d only ask that there be a pause, that we wait till sunset before striking off. See thou, Scholar, that there are problems abounding on the expanse.”
He gestured toward the ocean’s horizon. “Doth it look to thee tranquil? Nay, hear me say, nay! There, there, and there; dost thou see the places wherein the sky becometh disturbed? Aye, there thou seest now; well, those are sails of the coast guard. Canterlot’s calamities erupt over the land, spilling to all. They’ve been there for I can’t remember now, keeping us from returning to our natural state. Spread us, spread they. ’Tis simple.”
“And, would ye believe?” cried Flask, as she trotted back to where we were standing. “Call now a blockade it they! Now, whatever inanities one might hear upon these shores from them, blockade—well, now they have mandated folly!” And she laughed.
Nihil turned. “Did I not instruct thee to remain with the ship and her crew?”
Flask shot him back a glare that would have melted bronze. “Aye, I have,” she hissed. “’Tis done and well. The crew are a good, sufficient bunch. May I not spend a few minutes leisure upon the land?” When Nihil said nothing in response, she turned that glare on me.
“I don’t understand,” I said, more out of nervousness than want of knowing, “what is humorous about the blockade?”
Nihil laughed. “’Tis quite simple,” he said. “Now, up in Canterlot, with their desks and dukes, their princesses and pearls, they know not this: the shore, the coast, the ocean, the ports. Thou mustest have heard: newcomers, knowest thou? However well they meant or want, the senators and members of parliament and speakers didn’t like them. So scattered them they as a solution, but did not kill them. They’re around, I know that—I see them sometimes, hear strange things—but now, say the politicians, we shouldn’t have scattered them but collected and contained them! Nothing should leave the land, say they, and we must stop their exodus. The ports are their doors out. Hence the blockade. But a blockade in itself, necessarily, even though a sovereign land hath the power to close its own ports; but they know that the Fillydelphians, forever in their spite, would never agree to that, even by mandate. A blockade as of a foreign is the only way.”
“Will that affect our journey?” I asked.
“It effected the chaos thou seest before thee, the agitation, the cacophony. As much as the Fillydelphians would like to break through, their schooners have neither the speed nor the firepower to contend with Canterlot’s men-of-war. But they”—he smiled—“they are not Captain Nihil. They have not the Star Buck.” He turned to look past me. “Upon what is thine attention turned, lost one?” he said to Fluttershy, who had been silent this whole time.
“Who’s that?” she said, pointing to the marble pony in the distance.
“Avast!” said Flask. “I’ve had enough of these irrelevancies. Thou needest not know and shouldest not ask.”
But I too wanted to know, so I repeated the question. “What!” said the captain immediately. “Ye walk upon the shores of Fillydelphia, but ye don’t know Mare?” And at once Nihil began to expound. The more he spoke, the more intense his garrulousness became, and the colder was Flask’s frown and her silence.
“Whoever entereth into Mare’s domain,” he commenced, “that is, whoever walketh where the asphalt endeth and the sand starteth, where the ocean lappeth against the sodden grain, or where ’tis the water and only the water—and especially there—whoever he may be, Mare seeth and protecteth. She guideth the waves, the movements of Her vessels, the eddies of Her currents, and the tempests of Her wrath when She be angered.” He shook his head sadly. “That is, She did. Perhaps ’tis so no longer. She is dead.”
“How did she die?” I asked.
He shrugged. “How would one kill any deity? He need only stop believing in Her. He need only wrong Her, mock Her, take Her name in vain till she fall. ’Tis and was the course of myth and gods.”
“And ’twill be only the course of myth and gods,” hissed Flask. “Dreamers are so easily misled. Ah, now look!” she suddenly cried, peering over our heads. “Now come new ones. That is what happens when we talk of religions: congregations form.”
Into the group stepped two more ponies. The crowd jumped back, gasped, stared, and giggled at the sight the newcomers had brought.
They were ponies, one male and one female. Though there was nothing about the former that attracted the eye, he served only to amplify and pronounce the latter. The female had the appearance of a bush or a stunted tree. A completely round head sat on hunched shoulders and a contorted spine, such that it was impossible to say where her torso ended, her neck started, and her skull began. Her knees were stubby and pointed outward, and when she walked, she hobbled, as though unsure in what direction she wished to start. Gnarled teeth projected out of her crudely closed mouth. In addition, she was half the male’s height. Her companion, who never left her side, who mimicked her steps and movements, seemed only to make her more twisted with his juxtaposed plainness.
“My!” shouted a sailor perched on the foremast of the Star Buck. “Mare hath ejected creatures too terrible for Her bosom to Her sandy extremities!”
“Stop,” whispered Fluttershy to me. “It’s rude to stare.”
Fluttershy’s attempt at indiscretion incurred the opposite effect. At her words, the two of them turned to look at us. The female’s lips parted to show more of her teeth—outwardly appalling, but the gesture appeared so natural to her that it was enough to make it come across as almost welcoming.
“Don’t worry, dear,” she growled, her voice a deep, gargled groan. “I’m used to it.” Her laugh, though choppy, screeching, and intermittent, seemed to be more pure in its delight than others. “Ah, I see, can’t believe me, can you? Do you see before yourselves a fantastic creature? Yes, sirs, we’re not just cathedral bell ringers or opera house squatters. We’re among you.” Her companion smiled and nodded. “And we’re not ashamed of it neither.”
“You’re very brave,” said Fluttershy.
“So, so!” she replied. “How I look ’tis not the saddest part, as I’m sure you all are aware. The saddest part is always, even in those stories, is that they die loving and wanting what they can’t have. Thought I was going to suffer the same end for most of my life.” She paused, then turned with rapturous attention to her companion, who smiled back just as rapturously in his turn. “Then he came along.”
The sailor who spoke last leaped down from the foremast, onto the deck, and plopped down to sit upon the gunwale with the enthusiasm that only the desire for a rejoinder can induce. “The one is unsightly,” he called. “The other appeareth too pretty. Yet they are together. What could they have in common? I hope never to see the more of him that matches her!”
The female seemed unfazed, as though the sailor had posed a question of genuine interest. “He’s mute,” she said. “That’s alright, though; if we never leave each other’s side, we’re complete. I’m the brains, and he’s the pretty face.” The male purred, nuzzled her, and she returned with a kiss.
“Why on us encroach ye?” Flask cut in.
“I’ve heard that everything goes to the Star Buck and her captain and that she and he go in their turn. Well, ma’am, we have need to travel. Do you travel?”
“Have ye payment?”
“Don’t worry about that, ma’am. Money is no object.”
“Done, done!” piped up Nihil. “My, is not our little excursion coming to quite the size! Scholar, with thee on the deck and at the helm, this journey can not help but become propitious.”
Flask frowned—only at me—before she called Nihil away to follow her down the dock. “Scholar,” he said, before leaving, “what sayest thou about the vessel?”
“It looks acceptable.”
Nihil laughed. “Ah, Scholar, thou wouldest best keep thy communication to thy letters! But thou carriest a natural, amenable placation to me, such that I’d be willing to help thee, whereas others would take thy words as an affront. Dost thou have a fancy for language and would like a lesson? The Star Buck, as any other christened vessel, is a lady. She glideth; Mare caresseth her; the expanse is hers. The Star Buck hath a name as any lady, and thou mustest treat her as such. But she’s the classiest of them all, and if thou please her, she will please thee. We leave, Scholar, we leave each other now to leave at sundown!”
We parted ways. Nihil walked down the deck with the smile of a foal, that is, of blissful harmony with things that are simple; while beside him walked Flask, whose hooves resounded off the deck with heavy, doleful strides.
When they were out of earshot, Flask turned to him. She expected her scowl to urge him, to communicate what she knew words could not. But still Nihil stared back at her, his eyebrows raised innocently, as though he knew not the source of her anger.
“What hath struck thee?” she asked.
Nihil shrugged. “I know not what thou askest.”
“What game playest thou?” ejaculated Flask through closed teeth. “Thou, who canst read a pony on sight, who immediately knowest if he bringeth succor or malice, whose instincts are never wrong whether they be pointed to ocean tides or to the character of a jade—’tis now, in the presence of this one, that thou feignest naivety and playest at the cordial officer?”
Nihil’s smile vanished. Flask was not entirely sure what emotion replaced it (she never was, during these swings for which he was so well known)—but she thought it was pensiveness and melancholy.
“Look here, my captain,” she pleaded, “I love thee, as thou well knowest. And I trust thine instincts; more often than not, they’ve extricated us from predicaments I thought final. But I know that thou trustest mine instincts too; and hear me if thou have never in the past, hear me when I say that that creature, the Scholar, bringeth only trouble. In him are only lies. Thou mayest shudder at the hunchback; but, believe me, the ugliness the Scholar hath beneath, if thou could see, would make thee scream. Insidiousness maketh him whole. And ’tis that insidiousness that hath ensnared thee, Captain. Listen to me, your mate and Flask; I can see it twisting up thee and around thee! ’Tis the nature of the very thing, that if it take hold of thee, thou wilt not see!”
Nihil smiled. “I know how it appeareth to thee,” he began. “I think now to thee, from thy place and perspective. I see how it runneth through thee. Well, my mate, fear not. I know him through and through, more than thou wouldest ever know, more and despite the angles thou seest. There is much about me that thou canst only piece together but which thou dost not know for certain. Believe me when I say, my mate, that there is a certain aspect about me unknown to thee, to all; but ’tis indeed that aspect that now causeth me to behave as I do now, apparently erratic and whimsical.” He touched her gently on the shoulder. “Canst thou trust me? Canst run with me as thou hast always?”
Flask shook her head and sighed. “Wilt thou ever tell me about thyself, my captain?”
At this, the captain withdrew his hoof, as if struck. “Nay!” he whispered. “Nay! Forgive me; I tell thee much that I would never disclose to others—but this . . . nay, do not ask of me.”
He stepped closer to her. “I must make preparations. But hear me, thou: I love thee as well—forget that never—and thou art close. But to this new one, aye, I don’t expect thee to be able to understand—thy nature forbideth it—but I’m closer to him in a way I could never be to thee. This should not be construed to suggest I don’t love thee or consider thee close—quite the contrary, but . . .” He sighed, drawing a long breath, as though realizing that he could not put the words together to express his meaning without their coming out as inconsistent and contradictory.
He wished Mare protect her, stepped away, and began ascending the ladder to the Star Buck.
As the waves rolled round the narrow outcropping of the pier at which the ship was docked, as the planks emulated their movement in their turn, there stood Flask in the middle of it all, as she was rocked both by the dock and by the movement of her feet in their places.
Alone on the pier, with Nihil gone, an old, familiar apprehension came back to her on the distant, cold, brackish air. Nihil was gone, and with him so did that rare intimacy he brought, a closeness that she had always been chasing, and which she caught fleeting, crude simulacra of while staring out into the distance after a week aboard the ship, having to the extent of her vision the sea, and only the sea, in an arc that swept around and in on itself an embrace which always seemed too distant. When she had met Nihil, when he had referred to the ocean as the earthly empyrean, she knew what it was that she was looking for when she stared out into it, and she had found it undiluted and pure in his strange being: wonder, that fear of the unknown, that introspective knowledge that upon what she was staring was more vast than she could understand, and in her fancies she imagined uncovering and exposing the whole truth of the matter upon which her sight had been turned for so long. Nihil had given that to her, and she had told him everything, and he in his turn would tell her what troubled him; and no matter how cryptic, eccentric, or peculiar he was, she would try to understand, often dwelling for days upon a single sentence seemingly thrown out of nowhere. And now, with Nihil hiding something, with his leaving her on the pier with questions unanswered, Flask was once again cast back into the watery mystery. So she turned to herself: the only one she could rely on before she had met Nihil.
“There is something wrong,” she mumbled. “Nihil? The nag’s mania hath reached something new. Before, it had given me some amount of pleasure to be around him, to hear about him the romances in one ear and the mystery thrillers in the other, and with him, to be able to go from a low to a high in the same swoop and to have the power and resources to indulge all. Even the strangest indulgences he hath insisted upon both on the shore and the sea, aye, I’ve been there to see, to be able to share when I was curious and stand far back and cower when they were incomprehensible. But all—all had been if not innocuous then demonstrations of power, of superiority, to let his victims know that he was Nihil, and beside him his mate Flask, forces to beware, to tread softly around lest they tickle our noses in an off manner. They were clear to me before, these vacillations in his mood—but now he hath gone too far! He hath become arrogant, haughty, and now . . . what is the other? Can he not see that the one with the pegasus is not only the skin that he presenteth? I see more clearly now, especially with her beside him: she radiateth kindness and trust; he, blackness, a collapsed star that absorbeth the former. For her, ’tis probably too late, Mare help her; but now Nihil’s playing with the one, unaware of what he is. Something ought to be done about him before Nihil succumb; he cannot be permitted to walk the decks: on ship, at sea, the virus needeth be checked and quarantined. But to me, ‘Flask, I know more than thou,’ sayeth he. My nag, whatever thou be, nay, thou canst not and shouldest not come to that one, much less give thyself up to him in whatever capricious passion thou hast now sucmmb to. He’s wrong, and so art thou; like wrongnesses should not come together.”
She paused as the last sentence came off her tongue. It was a thought that had crossed her mind many times before, but a combination of a lack of time and fear had driven her away from it. Now it came back, triggered by an ineffable something, and she couldn’t speak in the midst of the induced horror.
A yelp from the deck of the Star Buck caught her attention. Then Flask swore as loud as she could, wished Mare’s wrath upon the crew, alighted upon the deck, and scrambled up the trelliswork to chase up to his post little Pip, the cabin colt who needed her encouragement to conquer his fear of heights.