Episode XXXIII - The Maelstrom's Heart

            Ellis stared at the decaying door, listened, frozen to the sounds coming from within and then, gently, ever-so-tentatively, put his hand against the wood and pushed.  Instantly those sounds were amplified and they hit him with such intensity that it felt to him almost liked a wave crashing over him.  He was unprepared and for a moment was almost swept away by it, but if anyone noticed his uncertainty they made no effort to welcome him in or cast him out and so he stepped inside and let the door close behind him.

            The Maelstrom’s Heart seemed an apt name for this establishment.  The bar stretched along the right-hand side of the room, tapering towards, and ultimately into, the wall where a partially rotted wooden staircase arced over it into a sea of rickety floorboards, which in turn populated the floor so sparsely as to resemble rafts adrift in a storm.  Tables congregated where the boards were at their most plentiful and patrons had to be fairly nimble to navigate the more treacherous areas whilst balancing their drinks.  In an effort to make this easier someone had hung lengths of rope from the rafters, which dangled at heights both convenient and less so, for anyone who could reach them to cling to in a moment of instability.  There were also patches of netting across some of the larger holes, through which Ellis caught glimpses of the basement level below; flooded and reflecting the light from above with a strangely sinister rippling motion.  The overall effect was one of a ship slowly wrecking in the midst of a whirlpool.

            Once he had gotten over the startling appearance of the room, Ellis noticed that Siren stood near the bar and was smiling at him, seemingly oblivious to the lecherous gazes of several white-bearded types who were in the process of navigating a path to buy her a drink and looked likely to fight each other for the privilege before they got anywhere near her.  She cupped her hands to her mouth and called out to him above the din of drinking chatter, “Ellis, over here!”

            He nodded and began to make his way over towards the bar, being careful to find the path with the least pitfalls, and clutching every rope he could reach as he went.  Eventually, and with only one close call, he made it.  Siren seemed mildly impressed.

            “Not bad for a first timer,” she said with a grin, “still this isn’t the bar’s busiest time.  You might not have made it if we’d set off a little later on.”  She clapped a hand on his back and then, half-turning to face the bartender, asked, “What can I get you?”

            Ellis stared at the shelves behind the bar.  Rickety and sloping though they were, they managed to hold a large number of bottles of various shapes, sizes and colours.  Some had faded labels declaring them to be such well-known brands as ‘Smokewells’, ‘Drygeist’ and ‘Coffinash’, but many others were just mysterious fluids in unmarked vessels.  Ellis found it impossible to work out what any of them might actually be regardless, so he turned back to Siren and said, “Whatever you recommend.”

            “Two glasses of ‘Old BFW’, please Barkeep.”

            “‘Old BFW’?” Ellis asked as the bartender turned and began to scan the shelves for the correct bottle, possibly using some kind of clairvoyance technique or a dowsing rod, since Ellis saw no sign of a matching label.

            “‘Old Bonewart’s Fortified Wringings’.  The Ebony Crest could never have sailed without it.”

            “Oh, it sounds… great…”

            “Just get us a table, will you?”

            Ellis scanned the room and spotted an empty table half-hidden in a corner.  The path to it looked quite treacherous, but he couldn’t see space anywhere else.  He turned back to Siren, but she was no longer paying him any attention, instead watching the bartender with intense, critical interest as he poured out a thin, slightly greasy-looking liquid from one of the unmarked bottles.  Shrugging, he made his way over, stepping carefully between the sparsely laid out planks and hanging from the ropes where possible.  Several times he was nearly knocked over and into the mysterious, flooded basement by the flailing arms of an over-excited sailor, mid maritime story.  On one of these occasions he found himself suspended, face down, over the pit and was nearly shocked out of his grip by the sight of something tentacular reaching out of the water before retracting its suckered limb into the depths with a splash.  Not unshaken, Ellis at last made it to the table and was surprised, and a little embarrassed, to see Siren sit down beside him a second later, drinks in hand.

            “There you go,” she said, placing one of the glasses of vile fluid in front of him, “drink that down you!”

            He stared at the glass in disgust until Siren slapped him on the back and told him to, “Just get on with it!”

            Cautiously lifting the glass to his mouth he took a single, short sip, hoping to avoid the liquid hitting any tastebuds as it went down.  He was unsuccessful, however and his mouth was filled with a sharp taste like sour apples before he managed to swallow.  For an instant his throat felt like it was burning and then he was left with nothing but a pleasant aftertaste, a bit like watermelon, and the light buzzing sensation supplied by all strong drinks.

            “What do you think?” Siren asked expectantly.

            “It’s… it’s actually kinda nice.”

            “See, I told you!  We lived off the stuff for three months once when we were traversing the reeds of the Whalesbane straits.”

            “I’m not sure it’s that nice.”

            “No, neither were we in the end, but needs must and all that.”

            “Did you know there was something with tentacles in the basement here?”

            “Oh, yeah, that’s Squirt.  He’s sort of a pet.  Squeezed his way into the hold of Captain Maelstrom’s vessel – he’s the owner of The Maelstrom’s Heart – and by the time they next made port it was completely tame.”

            “But, what is it?”

            “Why, it’s a Greater Horned Squid, of course.  What else would it be?”

            “Oh… of course.”

            They sat in silence for a moment whilst they sipped their drinks.  The noise of the bar seemed distant from their corner and all Ellis could hear was the sound of the strange liquid sloshing down his throat.

            “So,” he said at last, looking up from his glass into Siren’s expectant eyes, “do you come here often?”  His face cracked into a grin, but rather than laugh at the cliché, Siren was looking wistful and lost.

            “I used to,” she replied softly, “before I lost my ship.”

            “That ship meant a lot to you, didn’t it?”

            “It was pretty much all I had left… actually, since you let a Grinder trash my house, that’s it.”

            “Uh… sorry about that.”

            “It wasn’t your fault and if it hadn’t happened I’d never have met you or Franck or Sydney-”

            “You’d never have been poisoned by a Grinder or possessed by a Daemon either.”

            “I’m in a better position to find my ship now than I have been for a long time, regardless of all the other circumstances, so I don’t really mind all that.”

            “Wow.  I don’t think I could be so calm about it.  I’m not calm, although I’m trying not to think about it.”

            “You were nearly dead.  I think that’s natural.”

            “But from what Franck said on the way back last night, so were you!”

            “Well, I’ve been there before.”

            “So, we’re back to that, huh?  You’re a pirate, so you can take it on the chin?”

            “Why does that bother you so much?  Are you so scared of being scared?”

            “I… I don’t know…”

            “It’s alright to be scared.  I may not face off against villainous philosophers every day, but this is at least my world and it works by rules I’m familiar with.  You’re lost and it’s okay to be scared by that.  You don’t have to be a hero.  No one thinks any the less of you.”

            Ellis thought of Sarah and the things she had said to him in DUSK.

            “That’s not what it would be like back home.  There I have to pretend to be someone else-”  You’re just a soulless doll, she had said, “-and even that doesn’t work.  It’s strange, but… I think Shadow is forcing me to face up to who I really am.”

            “And who is that?”

            “I’m just a coward…”

            Siren’s hand slid across the table until it was lightly caressing his own with a soft, slightly distant, self conscious touch.

            “You’re not a coward, Ellis.  You might not always know what to do, and you’re still finding your potential, but you’ve faced things far worst than most people will ever have to and you haven’t back down.  That isn’t cowardice, that’s strength.”

            Ellis blushed and tried to look away, but suddenly Siren jerked her hand away and shouted across the bar, “You!”

            Ellis looked back at her at once to see that she was rising out of her seat and pointing across the bar at a man who had just entered.  He was quite a tall man and very thin, with a slight stoop so that he looked shorter than he actually was.  His hair, tumbling out from beneath a mouldy-looking tricorn, was long, dark and greasy and tended towards wild curls.  He wore a full-length brown coat which bulged slightly at the hips where, Ellis assumed, he had a set of flintlocks holstered.  The stranger half turned at the sound of Siren’s voice and now stood, with a hand near one of those bulges, but his eyes were wide with surprise.

            “Gulliver Blake,” Siren called out to him in a tone that silenced the whole bar, but then she smiled and said, in a much softer voice, “long time no see!”

            The stranger relaxed and smiled awkwardly, revealing a gallery of misshapen teeth, before walking over toward them with long, gangly strides which somehow never missed a board.

            “I thought you was about to call me out,” he said, a little shyly, as he reached the table, “what with what my brother did, an’ all.”

            “Gulliver,” she said gently, motioning for him to sit, “you and your brother have always been like opposite ends of the ocean.  I could never blame you for his behaviour.”

            Gulliver blushed, then suddenly seemed to notice Ellis for the first time, “An’ who’s this then?  New boyfriend?”

            “This is Ellis,” Siren replied, before adding, in a whisper, “he’s from the other world!”

            Gulliver raised his eyebrows for a moment, then shrugged, and held out his hand for Ellis to shake, “I am most ‘umbled to meet you, Ellis.  Any friend of Siren’s is a friend of mine.”

            “So,” Siren said, “if you’re here, does that mean that the Ebony Crest is back in port?”

            “Oh no, I quit ‘Arker’s crew the moment I realised ‘ow ‘e’d swindled you, but if you’re looking for a way to get your ship back, I might just ‘ave a plan what would suit your particular sensibilities.”  He grinned and Ellis fought the urge to look away from his horrible teeth.

            “Well, go on, tell me,” Siren replied, “I’m all ears.”

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