Leviathan's Huntress, Ch. XII: The Trainee

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“How many corpses did we recover?”

“Fourteen, Master.”

“How many were we able to identify?”

“All save the last two which were despoiled by sharks. The rest have sunk.”

“And they’ve received the rites owed them by God?”

“They have, Master.”

“Good… that’s good. Mister Fose, what of the bomb harpoon?”

“I have it, Master.”

“Do you know how to operate it?”

“I’m already in discussions with Iurdan — I will soon enough.”

Gartzela nodded slowly, swirled his cup, approached the question with caution. “Mister Gogor. How many barrels of oil have we?”

“One hundred thirty-seven.”

“And the Mazabina?”

“I… I have asked Mister Errolan. He says most of the free-floating barrels look intact. We’ve counted ninety-seven in the water, but Mister Beletz believes there are many more trapped in the Mazabina’s hold which account for the wreck’s buoyancy.”

“How many more?”

“At least fifty, but possibly over a hundred additional.”

The Master-Surgeon nodded. “Mates, we’ve given the dead what they’re owed. We oughtn’t spurn salvage. We’ll lie by her and haul those barrels up to—”

A chair kicked out and clattered against the wall. Motza left and slammed the great cabin door behind him.

***

They rigged tackle to the Embanesa’s mainmast yard and stays. The rest of the day they spent fishing barrels from the ocean and lowering them down the main hatch and into the hold. Beletz shored the deckbeams from below until the lower decks were an arcade of vertical timbers. His maul rang out for hours, punctuating his incessant grumbles about athwartship loads, preventers, mast wedges, step working.

Iona would not go belowdecks. She slept in the corner of the cutting stage for a full day and another night, unmoving. The crew moved around her. Nobody disturbed her.

The next morning the wind was strong and the waves choppy and the Mazabina’s whale carcass stank hideously. They had taken all they could from the debris but the rest remained in the Mazabina’s flooded hold. Gogor and a few men climbed onto the wreck again and carefully — very carefully — made another incision in the hull beside the whale corpse, cutting down into the Mazabina’s hold. As soon as the opening was made wide enough the first few oil barrels came blasting out with the rest spilling free like misshapen eggs. The crew watched for minutes as the Mazabina emptied and sank lower and lower and as she drowned she pulled her rigging down with her and still the barrels were escaping and leaping from the surface and when they were finally spent and the Mazabina consigned to the sunless depths the tackle and falls began again.

Iona was still lying in that corner like a fish tossed upon a beachhead. She’d not moved. Fose was sitting at the quarterdeck buffing rust out of the bomb harpoon’s bore when someone asked him if Raifin was dead. He didn’t answer.

Motza crossed the deck, squatted beside her, and tapped her shoulder.

Her lids fluttered, she blinked several times, then squinted into the sun and his placid blue eyes.

“How fares your head?” he asked.

***

She thought she’d learned much from her independent nighttime training. She knew nothing.

“Bend the knees,” he said. “Ride with the waves as they come.”

She tried, foot in the kalpa’s cleat and iron grasped in her hand. The waves were crashing and rising and falling and the barrel that was their target disappeared in every trough. Another crest and she lost her balance again and nearly fell. The other greenhands were all watching from behind.

“Here,” Motza said, coming up behind. “Your knees. Bend. Now raise and lower. Up and down. Breathe. Feel it.”

Aye, she felt something. Felt his right hand on her waist and his left hand below her knee guiding her movements. ‘Twas exactly the instruction he’d given every other greenhand. Perfectly fair. Nothing untoward about his touch or the proximity of his shirtless body. Nothing at all.

His hand drifted toward the small of her back. The last person to put a hand there was Durain.

“Breathe. Breathe. You’re holding your breath.”

Of course she was, and ‘twasn’t only due to the placement of his hands. The skin around her armpits bled quite easily now, and the training required her to open her chest, roll her shoulders, put her arm overhead — all movements her bindings fought against. She found herself sneaking down into the hold nigh daily to adjust them and apply a whale oil salve to the chafing. It was clear after a week that it didn’t work.

“Breathe,” he instructed her when the winds were mild and the sun unusually hot for autumn. He was patient with her — perfectly, imperturbably patient. The other mates spoke in roars and gibes and curses, but no matter how many times she failed to ride the waves, steady the dart, or inhale, Motza’s voice remained calm and level as a plumb line. It made her want to scream. And after each round of failures when she sat among her fellow greenhands they were all equally encouraging:

“That’s alright, Raifin.”

“Chin up. Chin up.”

“Your throw’s strong, Raifin. The breath will come with time.”

She couldn’t understand. They were all looking at the crimson on her face and assuming it was shame.

Motza’s lessons were not only on throwing irons. Once afore a rising gale he took them out on the waters to teach them how to row on troubled waves. Then when the gale finally reached them it struck like a forgehammer. Wind scraped spray from the waters. Waves crossed from different directions. Then a large one would come like a tower and they would have to turn the kalpa into it or be swamped. But Motza stood at the bow, and he was smiling. He spoke to them in the easy way he always had of the art of hunting and the nature of man and the world. The ocean had a soul, he said, as did all its fishes. And when one died it became another in the fashion of its life and death.

“And what of the leviathan?” shouted Iona.

He suddenly looked at her, surprised out of his reverie, his aspect poised and resolute against the roiling sea and sky. “Aye,” he answered, “she too.”

It took hours of hard rowing to return to the Embanesa and they fought the waves and rain the whole way. When the davits finally raised them up the wind had subsided and they were all soaked and shivering but Motza gestured for Iona to remain back a spell. The other greenhands left but before he could speak she did: “Why did you refuse to train me before?”

She knew not whence the question arose, but here it surfaced, and she looked on him and watched the rain running down his jaw as she waited for an answer.

He was on the point of speaking. But he reached up and lifted a length of wet hair that clung to her forehead. “That’s looking better,” he said, referring to the scar left by the paddle where her skin had split and a speck of white bone showed beneath. Then he left and followed the others.

Many Azketa sailors braid their hair in the front to keep it from their eyes. That evening, Iona did the same. Appraising her reflection in a waterpail, she somewhat fancied the new look.

***

Days. Weeks. Hoary overcast, darkness belowdecks. She thought more often these days of how County Fyrthsex must look this season: cool nights, blush of foliage, cold rains from the northwest that roll across the dales to foretell winter. In the nights when she laid her head down to travel the midnight highways, her dreams took her ever to those dark green waters and craggy coastline of her home. In every instance she was in her own kalpa, alone, rowing on and on and on toward home. But home never came. So she rowed further. She should be there by now. Surely, she should. Perhaps another mile. Perhaps two.

They went on hunts, and the knowledge obtained from Motza’s lessons permitted her to watch with new eyes. Jula was a master, truly skilled beyond his years. Motza had the better poise and form, but Jula compensated with speed. He took the riskier throws, and Fose knew it and piloted his kalpa accordingly. He would guide them directly behind the pod where Jula had almost no throwing angle but was least likely to be spotted. They charged high waves that mounded ten feet high and the whales were only visible for a breath’s length before the kalpa crested and dropped into the next wave’s trough. More than once Fose commanded they paddle directly into the vapor field birthed from spout and thrashing where the stroke-oarsmen could scarcely breathe much less see. And every time, with the window of opportunity at its narrowest, Jula would throw. And he rarely missed.

Throw, not aim. Iona thought on this, and brought the wisdom to her lessons.

“Breathe,” Motza instructed, standing beside her at the kalpa bow three days later. “Take a deep br—”

She loosed the iron. The line contorted behind it and the dart made a pop as it stuck into the drogue.

The greenhands all exclaimed in unison. Motza’s lips were tight. “You should breathe.”

“I stuck it,” she said, tossing the braids from her face. The roll of her shoulders looked casual, but the skin beneath her bindings was on the verge of breaking.

“You should breathe.”

From that point onward her skill improved, but so did her brazenness. On one late-evening hunt they stuck a bull and by the time the crimson light was drowning in the west the bull was in the flurries, swimming senseless circles and huffing blood. Motza paddled close to offer his skin of fresh water, but the waves were troubled and the bull kept rolling and thrice Motza nearly fell. Fose laughed.

“Why do that?” Iona called out.

Motza did not look at her, but the rest of the men did. “It’s tradition,” a greenhand answered her uncomfortably.

“Aye, but why? The whale’s dead anyway, or will be in minutes. What good’s water to it now?”

Motza still did not look at her. He reached out one more time and poured a bit of water into the bull’s saw-shaped lower jaw.

***

She could learn the harpoon, but she still could not be a harpooner. She’d broached the question a few times with Motza but gotten nowhere. Oxara had no interest. When she asked Gogor, he removed his spectacles and stared at her. “How many cruises have you been on, lad?”

Against her better judgement she tried asking Fose, but found him wholly unapproachable these days. Every minute they weren’t hunting or trying out the first mate spent obsessing over his beloved bomb harpoon, dissecting and arranging the guts carefully on a blanket laid over the quarterdeck. Inspecting this piece. Buffing another. Holding the little tubes and orifices to the light to peer down their lengths. Rubbing his stubbled chin and finger-combing his greasy hair. Once a swell struck the Embanesa broad to starboard and she heeled violently toward her beam-ends and all the gun’s precious pieces went rolling and scampering to larboard and the freedom of open water. Fose cried out and pounced on them, and would have leaped overboard had any escaped the ship.

It finally happened one calm, nondescript morning. All hands about their watches and affairs. Iona was up on the foremast ratlines tarring the shrouds. Motza was at the rail amidships. Beletz and Errolan were standing just below the quarterdeck speaking to Steward Jakue on fears regarding the volume of barrels belowdecks. “We can better explain to the Master ourselves,” said Beletz. “Please, let us speak to him.”

“The Master-Surgeon is engaged in the navigation room, but I am happy to relay your concerns. Are the barrels recovered from the Mazabina intact?”

“Aye,” answered Errolan, “but for how long?”

“I should think you’d tell me, cooper.”

“Not my casks, not my staves, not my hoops. Steward.”

“And ‘tisn’t only the barrels’ ruptures we fear,” Beletz interjected. “The Embanesa’s lost tenderness. She’s going stiff. She heels and snaps back too fiercely. The weight’s all low around her belly.” His hands were up in demonstration of a pendulum.

“I hear you,” Jakue mollified, “and the Master-Surgeon will—”

The air above the jibs exploded.

Iona felt the rush and dropped her tarbucket and instinctively threw herself against the ratline for bracing, hooking arms and legs as the sound passed over and deafened her and the canvas shook and the birds were all set to disarray.

“‘Twas I!” shouted Fose from the forecastle. His right hand was raised apologetically to both crew and creation and his left held the smoking bomb harpoon. “‘Twas I! Return to your watches!”

Iona’s tarbucket lay far below steaming and emptying across the deck. Her ears were still ringing and her nostrils filled with noisome sulfur.

Beside the bucket stepped Motza. He looked up at her.

“Stroke-oarsman,” he called, “clean this up.”

A fair and even request. Delivered by a mate to a lower hand.

She could hardly breathe for the anger.

That night he appeared on deck to pray later than usual. These days her throwing practice combined with his training was paying back with interest. She’d ruined every spent drogue on the galleon and had to resort to rotten pieces of wood as targets. For added difficulty she stood upon an empty, rocking barrel wedged by a single quoin.

No thinking. Only the throw. Her arm released and her braids swung. Iron stuck in board and together they toppled and clattered and lay still in the crisp starlight.

She looked at Motza, sitting in his usual spot, arranging his little bones.

“Aught awry, Sir?” A tone not altogether respectful.

He ignored her and continued his ritual, so she continued her training. A sheen of sweat had collected on her forehead and arms despite the cold.

“You asked what good’s the water offering,” he said finally.

She was about to throw again, but stopped and looked at him. He was standing arms crossed and shanks planted.

“I was adopted into this life,” he continued.

“Aye, you’ve told me—”

“Hold and let me finish. I was born a bastard. My father left for Azketa when my mother grew quick with me, or so she told me. So she traveled to Azketa herself and took me with her ere I was six years of age. She never found him, but within a year she’d berthed with another man and left with him. She abandoned me in Azketa. I spent a winter eating rotten fish and dead crabs that washed beneath the pier to survive. Then my adoptive parents found me. They were Joek, the first men along the coastline. The first to hunt the whales and throw the iron. They gave me a new name such that I have forgotten my old one.”

Iona clasped the dart in her hand. Somehow in the moment it felt incriminating. “And you never found her?”

“Found whom?”

“Your mother! Or your father! What became of them? Where were they?”

His voice grew calm again. “I didn’t search.”

“What? Why not?”

“Why would I?”

“They wronged you! They deserve justice!” Vicarious outrage was pushing upon her chest and she was pacing toward him.

“No… no, I pray for them.”

“You pray?”

“Every night.”

“Pray they’ll drown, I hope.”

“Don’t say that.”

“They are your parents! They abandoned you!” She stopped at the perimeter of his bone circle, two feet away from him.

“My parents… are Joek. ‘Twas they who taught me their language, who taught me to sing the song of the sea.”

“Yet you leave your first parents’ sin unanswered. Do you care about injustice, or have you merely surrendered to it all?”

His melancholic blue eyes fell, the injury written all over him as clearly as his tattoos.

His hand went to his side. He untied the freshwater skin, raised it like a riposte to her dart, then unstoppered and poured a mouthful into his palm, making a tidepool for the starlight. When he finally spoke, ‘twas a whisper, an exhale. “Aye. I feel it. Every day I feel it.”

The tidepool trembled under his emotion, the stars therein coming apart.

“But what do I see, with my human eyes? Am I so keen as to see the world’s soul?”

Now he looked at her.

“And you? The thing you hunt was born of hatred and rapacity, yet you intend to use these tools to hunt her? But can you shoulder the sins of the world or weigh the merit of a heart? Can you without blinking look upon creation and discern between what’s living and what’s dead?”

He raised his cupped hand to his mouth and drank.

“No kill without water.”

Then he bent down to pick up the bones and she realized that somewhere in their discourse she’d stepped inside the ring with him. She jumped back quickly and nearly apologized but didn’t. Her jaw was slack and his words were awork upon her in ways she couldn’t describe. She kept thinking of Durain and could not divine why.

He finished, drew his bag shut, headed for the companionway. “Your throws look good. But you should breathe.”

***

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