Sarah stared at a sea of smoky black water. The first time she had seen it it had been a
shock. Water should not be that colour, she had thought. It must
be dangerous, acidic or something. It's
not right! That had been ten days
ago. Shadow was steadily teaching her
that you could get used to anything.
Like her unlikely assortment of companions. Just across the deck from her stood Dimsun,
erudite Stoneskin, walking encyclopaedia of all things Shadow, her guide in
this Wonderland-that-was-not. He was
jotting down thoughts in a battered notebook, occasionally glancing at the
others in a manner that suggested his thoughts were really about them and not
the distant horizon.
Towards the rear of their commandeered fishing
vessel, the deformed huntress Diana was having yet another argument with their
partially captive captain about their destination and how many days it would
take them to get back to dry land.
Frostfire stood by the bow, staring out at the waves
processing endlessly towards them, himself silent and still. Of all of their party, he was the one Sarah
least understood. Part Lithoderm hero, part
lone rebel, all taciturn focus. She
could only assume that he was thinking about his revenge, about the city
beneath the sea where those dreams would finally come true.
For herself, Sarah was at peace. There had been a great deal of trouble taken
in getting them to this point, trekking across a continent, hiding from guards and
tentacles and all manner of vigilant monstrosity, haggling for passage on ships
in half a dozen harbours before finally taking this boat, the Limping Hound, with threats and some
genuine violence, much of which remained unforgiven, despite their explanations
of the severity of the situation. Now
that was, mostly, behind them and what lay in front of them was murky and
obscure, like the depths of the ocean within which it lay hidden. For Sarah there was as much point thinking
about one as the other, so she remained still, simply living in the moment and
contemplating all that she had learnt since arriving in Shadow.
It had been an incredible experience and though
much, if not most, of that had been filled with terror, confusion and danger,
there had still been a lot to be gained from it all. She had gradually learnt to use her
artificially induced Slayer powers for a start and there was a sense of
satisfaction in directing that power towards the ends she sought, having come
to the conclusion on her own. She was no
longer being lead by Frostfire, half dependent, half slave. Now she was her own woman once more, and in a
better position to defend herself and make her own decisions than the rest of
her part. She had chosen to help
Frostfire in his revenge and not just because Doctor Barkham would have
information on Ellis. She could see in
what the vile Philosopher had done to her own daughter that justice needed to
be served in some way and all that they had learnt about the tentacular being
who now ruled Shadow told them that Barkham’s Noble Society was involved there
as well.
She had grown fond of Shadow, despite its horrors
and she had realised some time ago that she wanted to do her best to defend it.
And yet even that wasn’t the best of what she had
learned. Her survival and continued
sanity over the past few months had relied on much more than her own strength
of body and will. She had come to have
some understanding of faith – of putting one’s life in the hands of something
else. Before the events of that autumn
in Larksborough she would have undoubtedly called it ‘fate’, putting her trust
in the course of events – a ‘whatever will be, will be’ kind of attitude. Everything that had happened to her since then
had transformed that notion into something much less vague and nebulous. She was now increasingly inclined to believe
that there was actually someone in charge of concepts like ‘fate’ and
‘circumstance’ and, with only what she had learned from Thomas and the folk at
St. Stephen’s to go on, she was trying her best to learn and understand more
about this someone – someone she was even willing to call God.
Of course thinking about Thomas and Larksborough was
sad. She couldn’t help but worry about
the boy she had left behind, about her friends and of course her mother. They were almost certainly very worried about
her, if not grieving. Her mother
wouldn’t have given up looking for her, though, that she knew. Despite all this, she was finding that even
the pain and confusion of all that lay on the other side of the immense Aether
was lessened somehow by the knowledge that there was someone who was sovereign
over all of it. She wasn’t sure it would
all work out in the end – that wasn’t quite it – it was just knowing that it
was being handled, managed in some way by someone with more talent for it than
she had.
To her astonishment she had found that what she
wanted most of all on Shadow – the one thing she most regretted not being able
to bring with her – was a Bible. Thomas
had told her that it was God’s way of speaking to his people and, now that
Sarah was in another world, cut off, as far as she could tell, from anyone else
who had even the beginnings of belief, she wanted more than anything to have
that kind of connection to the God she was trying to understand. It wasn’t easy without it, of that she was
sure, but she persevered, because, in Shadow, there wasn’t much else to fill
the quiet hours. She prayed and…
sometimes… sometimes there were answers.
No words exactly and definitely not sentences, but
the turn of events themselves seemed to be an adequate response to the kind of
requests she was making and at the heart of them all was the desire to learn
more and to find more faith, to overcome the blind reason instilled in her
mother and see beyond the fabric of the world to some greater, more complete
truth. And her faith grew, slowly,
stutteringly of course, but still, in three months she had gone from inquiring
atheist to… she didn’t know what she was yet.
It felt like something new about to be born, but like ignorant
caterpillar, she had no idea what form this butterfly might take.
“That man is intolerable!”
Siren jolted out of her thoughts to find Lady Diana
Barkham standing beside her, her eyes burning holes in the distant horizon.
“We did steal his ship at arrowpoint. Surely that gives him some room for… well for
being unhelpful.”
Diana shrugged, it was an unpleasant gesture in one
whose muscles were so deformed and unbalanced, but Sarah was already quite used
to the huntress’ ungainly appearance by now.
She was even finding it easier to read the rough and sometimes vulgar
language of her body to some extent.
“What’s the problem now.”
“Oh, he’s demanding that we turn back, as
usual. I’m running out of arguments,
nevermind threats.”
Sarah glanced over towards the aging fisherman as he
whispered something to one of his remaining crew members. Those that hadn’t been necessary to run the
ship had been left behind in port – against their will.
“He’s never going to understand why we’re doing
this,” Sarah said. “The sooner we
acknowledge that, the better.” She
sighed. “He’ll attempt another mutiny
tonight.”
“Don’t worry,” Diana growled, “I’ll be
watching. I plan to leave a warning in
his hammock this evening as well.”
It did upset Sarah that they couldn’t have done all
this with the crew’s consent, but she knew that it was necessary. That didn’t stop a sense of guilt welling up
inside her, however. She tried to
remember what Thomas had been teaching her about forgiveness, but she wasn’t
sure if she was recalling all the details correctly. I’m so
new at this, she thought, what if I’m
getting it all wrong?
“You’re sure we’re heading in the right direction?”
Sarah asked. She had asked it before and
she had trusted in Diana’s answers, and yet… it was another kind of faith and
she was still learning.
“I’m sure.
Only another couple of days now and then we can descend.”
The two young women stared out across the smoky
ocean, unbroken as far as the eye could see, but for the gentle, wind-stirred
waves.
I will trust,
Sarah thought and for just then, that was enough.
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