Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

Doxology follows. This, sung in a mode that hugs one primary note and strays little from it: “ Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto .”

I know some of these words. Glory to the father, the son, the holy spirit. Caplain has taught me some Latin. An old language. The language of the Church. Has let me know them and keep them for myself. The others sing by memory. Words and notes, unpinned to page or history. I’ve told Lazlo I know some of these words. It seems wrong that we don’t understand the meaning of what we sing.

The psalter, big as a crouching boy, bound in shark hide, lay opened, hymn selected. “The Heart of the Leviathan.” One I need not squint to see by, penned in violet squid ink.

“Azure, bla – zing heart. O, keep us true. Your spark, in the bel – ly of the Le – vi – a – th – an.”

Melody, at last. Harmony.

As Cantor, as principal, I take the descant. My melody floats above the others. Flies.

Singing is the only time my heart does not feel burdened. When I feel God. I think it is not vanity to sing. To like the sound of my voice. Higher than the others. Like light, bouncing off every bulkhead, reaching out over every surface of the concave metal hull.

Some of us Choristers change, even after the cutting. Those with the broken voices, Demis—those who can no longer sing—are sent aft with the rest of those taken from Topside and deemed unworthy. Through the tunnel, forced to work in the engine room, the reactor chamber, with the blue poison and fume. They are beyond our sight. Beyond His grace. Not to be spoken of. Not to be prayed for. They came from the world above, like us—like me. But God did not spare them. They are the Forgotten.

I have heard of their fate. Grease smear and boils and steam burn and bloody hacking. And poison from the reactor. Lazlo has seen them. Has smelled them.

A smell like everything is wrong.

Scripture now, this in the common tongue, for all to comprehend.

“ To the roots of the mountains I sank down, ” Ex-Oh reads from the book, voice like a hatch squealing on its rusty hinges. Feel the words in my spine. “The earth ’neath barred me in forever. But you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.”

Book of Jonah.

“As below, so above!” Ex-Oh calls out.

And this congregation answers in refrain.

“Remy,” Lazlo whispers into my ear, once we have filed out, dispersed to our duties, once we are distanced from the ears of elders. He speaks differently than the rest. His words have a lilt to them. His skin darker, despite being kept from the sun for so many years. Eight years.

“Your scar must be bleeding,” he says, pointing down.

I stop, lift my foot.

A drop of blood spots my big toe. Dusky red. Blackish.

Scars do still bleed. Even years later, they can reopen and weep.

But this wouldn’t be true for me.

Not a cut or scrape, either.

My heart crashes into my stomach.

It’s happened.

The first meal of the day is always the same.

Broth of bladderwrack. Dried mushroom and algae cake. “Grey cake,” Lazlo calls it. We grow and harvest the mushrooms from atop the generators. Used to be a time we would have fish press as well, but now press comes at the meal following Vespers. If we’re lucky. With our slurry and drip.

Brackish draught.

These meals provide little lasting sustenance.

There has been no raid above for some time. No meal or flour or canned, sweet things. Not that I would have an appetite for such delicacies.

Lazlo is trying to speak with me, from across the table.

We are free to speak in the mess. In whispers, but it’s allowed. A low chatter amongst the four tables, like steam.

Today, I have few words.

Lazlo wonders why, I know. Muddied eyes, squinted. Little body hunched. Big, red cheeks. Scurvy efflorescence, Brother Karson calls it. From a lack of fresh victuals. We all suffer it. I taste blood at the back of my throat when I wake. Bleeding, raw gums.

Worst is when the old scars open again.

Lazlo asks again if I am in pain, that he can get me a poultice if needed. Poultices help with the swelling, with the bleeding. He’s close with Brother Ignacio, in the galley.

I tell him it’s nothing, though my throat is tight with unsaid truths.

Caleb, the youngest, and the one with the freshest scar, has endured the worst of the pain and the bleeding. So much that when we have steamed sargassum or kelp, I give him some of my portion—one of the few plants from the sea that can stave off the scurvy.

Today, he looks pale.

“You know, if you bleed too much before your twelfth birthday, you’re in greater danger of turning out a Demi,” St. John says, in that stiff way he says things. Speaks the same way he sits—straight, rigid. Face tight with superiority.

Caleb, already pale, goes fully white.

“And you know where Demis go…” St. John says, leaning in, a taunting smirk. He is not above plain meanness, St. John. A long nose. A bulbous head prone to shaving rash. We all must keep our hair shorn, of course. Honed shells do the work well enough. In skilled hands, anyway.

“Don’t scare him,” Ephraim, the eldest of us, chimes in, unamused. “That isn’t true, Caleb.”

Caleb takes in a bracing breath and returns to his meal; all the while, St. John continues to wear a prideful smirk.

If voices break after a cutting, it occurs by the age of twelve or thirteen. Caused by an unblessed blade, they say, but Brother Silas has told me privately that it sometimes just happens. There’s no accounting for it.

St. John has passed that age where the breaking of a voice happens. Fourteen years. He has been vicious and haughty ever since. The truth is that half of all those castrated have either died from their wounds or turned. Become Demis, and must be purified in other ways.

I know that St. John has been waiting for my voice to break, or Lazlo’s, so that he might ascend to our positions. I know I will never change. But Lazlo is still in that dangerous range where, at any day, his voice just might leave him.

Any Chorister’s greatest fear.

Like God’s wrath, the reactor must be appeased—must be tended, or it will consume us as well. Brother Calvert explained it better to me—that the heart of the Leviathan, when functioning properly, can provide energy for decades. Energy that powers the turbines which turn the screw, which powers the oxygen generators and water desalinators, and runs the fans and all the electrics—but like everything else, it is failing. The reactor is powerful, but its power is poisonous. Some invisible poison called radiation. And yet, people must go into the reactor room in order to moderate the power. To keep it from overheating.

This is the work that purifies the Forgotten.

“I only mean that Caleb would be right to worry,” St. John continues. “And Lazlo.”

I grasp Lazlo’s hand to keep him from responding.

I see Ephraim’s patience has thinned as well. He’s about to respond when the Ex-Oh enters the mess—ducks to clear the hatch. Choristers and brothers fall silent. A rare appearance. Normally, he and the other elders eat their meals in the officers’ wardroom. Mouth bent down. Thin eyebrows raised. Eyes squinting and small. The dimness has made most of the elders near blind. Grey and dead-looking, like the eyes of the odd fish we sometimes catch in our nets, the ones that come from the darkest depths of the sea. Always surveying, scouring us for impropriety. For sin.

He levels his gaze upon me. I fight the urge to shrink.

My stomach twists into a reef knot.

“Come.” He ushers me with his yellow fingers. “Caplain wishes to have a word.”