Грег Бир: The Unfinished Land

And he remembered, as if his father were alive again, him dandling a much smaller Reynard by both hands, and the large man’s laughter, the sweetest sound, silent now for seven years but alive in memory.

“But remember this, all respect to our kin and the good people they know!” His father had cackled, lifting him high. “Old seamen fart loudest on shore. Keep your wits, lad, and leave the dead to find passage to where the wind sleeps, for only they are allowed to fish there, and they catch nought but monsters—and there be no market for monsters in Southwold.”

The old man brought him a small bowl of peas and sodden biscuit, this time with a slice of half-cooked carrot. Reynard was grateful for anything.

“I had a boy of mine own,” the old man said, sitting beside the cage and watching him. “A son, a wife, and a daughter. They gave me joy and solace for twenty years, in the Philippines. All dead now. I am far too old, boy.”

The look he gave Reynard was strangely hopeful, but then the old man reached into his own mouth and wiggled a tooth.

The day darkened into night. Only then did the fog part, but beneath the upper deck’s overhang, Reynard saw little but a black wedge interrupted by a sliver of moon.

As morning painted the sky gray, the old man opened the cage door. “Come. el maestro says that, having fished here, thou may’st tell us what sort of animal doth follow our ship.” Then he looped rope around Reynard’s chest and neck, knotted the two loops, and led him to the hind castle and up two flights of steps to the far jutting peak of the poop. Here, three sailors and a soldier clung to the rail with white-knuckled fists, watching the ocean behind. All four crossed themselves.

“There,” the old man said, pointing down.

Reynard looked into the gray-green churn swirling around the rudder. He shivered, as he always did looking into the deeps. “I see nothing.”

The sailors pointed and jabbered. As the morning brightened, the old man said, “Water here is fresh. No salt. Are we at the mouth of a river?”

“I know not,” Reynard said. The sailors started jabbering again and pointing, and now Reynard did see something beneath the waves, pale green, patterned like the wash itself, undulating, serpentine—neither fish nor shark nor any whale he had ever heard of. His first impression was that it had a pair of arms, and he thought it could be a mermaid—though he had never believed in such—but then, as it swam to the surface and, after thudding against the rudder, vanished with a splash, he saw the “hands” at the ends of the arms were more like claws, the long tail was segmented like a lobster’s, and what parts he saw stretched at least fifteen feet.

The old man said, “It would board and eat us. The sailors hath piked it twice and shot it with a crossbow, sin efecto, sin hacer daño. ”

Reynard shook his head and bit his lip. What did he know about lobsters that tried to board a ship? Nothing. But curiosity had taken over his fear. He was almost eager to know what this thing was capable of, and what it meant. He stared down at the waves, with an expression half grimace and half grin, trying to see below their wash and curl. The sailors watched the shape with wide, unhappy eyes. Then it slipped aft in the ship’s wake and vanished in rocky breakers to the starboard side.

Lookouts called that they were passing small islands jutting from the sea, capped with shrubs. The old man repeated in English. One larger island to larboard boasted a decent tree, some kind of twisted conifer with dangling cones as big as a man’s head.

Now Cardoza, el capitán himself, joined them on the afterdeck, accompanied by a harquebusier and two musket men. He finished strapping on his sword and cast a side glance at Reynard, then asked the old man, el viejo, if the boy was of use. Before the old man could answer, one soldier with a musket called el capitán ’s attention to the island’s lone conifer. A skinny, twisted sack hung from the middle branches, as long as two tall men, striped and spotted red and black, catching sunlight like dark silk and reflecting sparks of gold. All observed in silence. One harquebusier said that in the New World, Indians hung their dead in trees. Another observed the same was true in the far east, where other sailors had been, though not him. The old man translated, but, like his mother, Reynard was quick at languages and already had the sense of their words. Truly the Spanish empire was vast, though likely Drake or Hawkins had been to these places as well.

The bigger island fell behind. There were no people visible on it, and the waves pounding the sharp rocks around its base were fierce, cutting and roiling the water and spraying up to land on his lips—fresh water indeed, whatever that implied. A low fog closed behind, but the watch cried out there was land justo delante— dead ahead. At the jagged, echoing clash of breakers, more sailors scrambled into the rigging, struggling to bring the ship about, to slow or stop its headlong plunge.

Reynard was distracted and only heard part of what the old man was murmuring to Cardoza. “ Es posible que él puede ayudar con las lenguas bárbaras. ” Did the old man mean that Reynard might be useful as a translator? That was even less likely than his talent for geography. But his grandmother’s words came back again, words so familiar…

And then the great hull slammed to an abrupt halt. Men flew from the rigging and the masts, onto the deck, overboard.

And a horse screamed, then another, not far behind him, perhaps in a stable or a cabin.

Back to the cage he went, tied up and left alone while the ship became frantic with activity. The galleon could not get free—it had beached itself, and waves seemed to drive it farther onto the shore—waves and something the sailors were calling, yelling it out, actually: “ La tierra respira. ”

They thought the land was breathing.

Reynard drew up his knees. The breezes that reached him were chill and smelled of forest. His pulse quickened.

THE OLD MAN returned an hour later, wearing a greatcoat too large by half for his thin frame—a greatcoat and a sort of crested watch cap that made him look like a scrawny gray cat. “They say we are cursed,” he muttered. “What think’st thou? Curse or blessing?” He smiled, revealing the few rotten snags left on his gray-pink gums. “I shall inform el capitán thou hast true knowing.”

“I know nothing!” Reynard cried, angry now that it had all come to this, that, Earth’s trembling aside, they must have come to the Irish coast, or at the worst a French beach, and that he would soon be shot or cut to pieces or hanged. “I do not wish to be here!”

He did not add, I am afraid! Because in fact, strangely, he was not very afraid. This place had aspects of a dream, and perhaps it was a dream. In which case, he would soon awaken.

And if it was not a dream, he felt the possibility of a new chance, a new place not to fear, but to explore and hope to understand! Away from fish, away from Southwold, from his uncle’s tasks—but perhaps closer to his grandmother…

“Not a wish I can grant,” the old man said, and gave him a look that might have carried irritation—but also a touch of wonder. He opened the cage and untied the ropes. “But I can share a little more freedom.”

Reynard got up, legs cramping, and stumbled onto a deck crisscrossed by men carrying boxes and barrels, and one leading a horse—a fine horse, a gentleman’s horse, caparisoned as if for battle, with a forehead shield and side plates that would no doubt drown it had it to swim.