Reviewers, I thank you kindly for your patience, especially after that last very abrupt chapter. I hope this one can sate your curiosity. Also, I have a small confession to make: I've just gone and changed a minor something in chapter two; just a little consistency problem. I wasn't thinking things quite through. Anyway.

Rated T - The following chapter contains passages which may be disturbing to, well, just about anybody. Reader discretion is advised.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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My hand... It itches, and twitches.

I feel strange. I feel as if there were two of me, two selves. One says Enough, and wants to die. And one holds the pen, and demands that history--my story--be told.

And I quail, and shrink, but I think again, it comes to me: Writing about bad things is better than not writing about them.

Writing about bad things is better than not writing about them.

Writing about bad things is better than not writing about bad things.

If I write it down more, will it become more true? After all, writing something down gives that thing power, right?

I feel sick.

And I look, and am surprised at myself. For I have never begun an entry without the date. Did I sleep... twice? Did I sleep at all? It feels like two sleepings, two times of sleeping.

That would make this the twenty-first waking. But is it a sleeping time again? Where is the sun, so that I may tell? Darkness and light, light and darkness, sky and cloud. What's happened to us?

It pains me, it feels like poison in my soul, what happened. Log-lust! Who are you? That you must know! Why! You who force my hand to write and write! That I relive my horrors!

But they would fester inside me?

They would eat me away, kill me. A poison.

But if I write them, the poison is drawn from me, and written into a book. Poison removed, and set aside.

But must it be written? It is still poison. Can it not die with me? Sorrow of the dead, I wish this hadn't happened. I wish none of this had happened. I wish we were not here. Would the Rains could streak down in fire and kill us all now.

For we are lost.

No, but I must write.

But it is evil, the memories are evil, they should die with me.

But a dead memory is no memory at all. A dead memory is lost, just like me. Would I cast my memory to the pits of Deep Sky as well?

No memory. Oblivion. Not knowing.

No, not knowing is worse. Much worse. Unknown. A poison is a poison, and known. But something unknown would be more evil, more intolerable, more painful. Empty. Would I leave that emptiness to whoever finds this book?

But no one will find it.

I don't know that.

Hand, why do you plague me so?

But I must make peace with myself. I am given a choice between the evil of writing, and the emptiness of not writing. And I choose the evil. I should have known it from the moment I began.

I should be happy that I have the pen with which to make the choice. How stupid.

And I surrender to the self of me that wants to write.

Moons...

To start? Where did I end? Two entries ago was the seventeenth waking. I went to speak with them.

For a brief time it seemed as if Porter were back to himself. But before the waking was through he holed himself up in his quarters again.

Shanda's body raged with fever for two wakings and two sleepings. She seemed a little delirious at one point. There were times when we had to force her to drink, to make sure she had enough fluid. Greys did that. Neither Dhalan nor I could bring ourselves to force-feed her fish-blood. And then, at the beginning of the nineteenth waking, her fever broke. Dhalan wept.

We were all relieved that Shanda was doing better. But by the beginning of that waking, we had already eaten our last mud-worm, and drunk our last dregs of fish-blood. We had to go fishing again. Greys decided he would take me. Shanda would stay, that much was given. And we decided to let Dhalan stay too, to be with his sister. Porter had taken back to hiding, so we left him anyway.

Greys and I hiked all day up and around the slope, far out on the prow-ward side. The yield in that direction was the most plentiful, or it had been. It was getting so hard to find the mud-worms. We had even tried fishing downslope again. But they were just not to be found. Blasted ugly fish-things. I had loathed them, but now I was worried for their over-fishing. We couldn't bear to return empty-handed. We searched and searched until we found only one, and it was very small and looked sickly. But it was getting late and we were getting tired, and it was all we could find. So we followed our tracks back down the slope.

When we got back to the Zephyrus, there was a fire on the platform. It made some of the big engine pieces we had left outside cast weird, twisting shadows. And it lit up the deck exactly the way the lanterns used to at night, when we were still at sky. I remembered the color of the wood.

We didn't know what it meant, so we hurried to get closer. I didn't know what to think. I don't remember being afraid, just... confused.

We saw the fire was built over a big metal sheet--it had been stripped from the oven in the galley--to keep the planks in the platform from burning. And set over the fire was a steaming pot. I remember thinking and wondering so hard--we had eaten the last mud-worm, hadn't we? Had there been anything more to cook and eat? And why was it outside? We never figured that out.

This is hard.

Just write.

I remember I went closer, and Greys said, "Wait." And I came around the big shadow and toward the platform.

Then I heard Porter's voice. I didn't see him, just heard his voice. And it... frightens me still. I can still hear him. His strange, mad tones, and it makes me think, Why am I here? How did this ever happen? Why? He said--I can write it--Porter said, "Nasrean stew, boys? Or maybe I'll just put you in it!"

Then time seemed to split, and part of me stopped on "Nasrean stew". It was like a wall, with no seeing beyond. It felt like Haley dying all over again. Like the point when I knew that he was dead, but just didn't want to see it, tried to will it not to be so. My mind ran in circles, No, no, no, it said. Rising and falling, convincing and surrendering, convincing me No, and then surrendering Yes, over and over, faster and faster, and I thought I should go mad. Maybe I am now.

The other split of time went much faster, more mechanical, and my eyes followed it. I saw Porter come from crouching in one of the shadows between the two biggest pieces of engine to my right. All at once, at the words "put you in it", he jumped at me. He had Dhalan's cutlass in his right hand. Porter was a big man, and it was frightening to see him move so fast.

Something stupid in me realized that he was trying to kill me. I didn't want to die. But somewhere inside, dashing in and out of the No's and Yes's, I didn't really mind the idea--I even preferred it a little. If I died everything would be over, all this sadness and madness. But somewhere deeper down, I still didn't know, I was still unsure, and the No's held sway, and I wanted to live. But I just stood, and looked at Dhalan's cutlass reflecting the firelight. Then there was a loud bang like a snap of thunder, and Porter dropped the cutlass and collapsed at my feet. Greys shot him dead.

Then my heart started beating hard, and my head felt hot, and I felt like I couldn't breathe fast enough. My knees didn't want to work, but I wanted to find Dhalan and Shanda. I wanted to know. And then it was like a million mad demons clawing questions at my head: Did he kill Dhalan and Shanda? Did Greys really just kill him? He was alive a moment ago. Greys kept a pistol? Are Dhalan and Shanda alive? The colors of the deck-wood in the firelight. Shadows deeper even than the dark limbo around us. Why did Haley die?

It haunts me.

My mind could not see, for all the burning and turmoil. But my eyes and my hands searched through the shadows cast by the engine pieces, looking hard and hating it. Fearing every glance I took but unable to stop for a greater fear of the unknown, of not knowing. The firelight made it a labyrinth of light and dark. It was a nightmare.

It is still a nightmare.

Write, write. It will be a nightmare for as long as I live. Forever.

I came toward the ship, thinking to search inside, and found Dhalan and Shanda.

I cannot write. I sit. What is the matter with me? It just... stops. My hand.

I came up to the deck of the Zephyrus, and found Dhalan and Shanda. They were both decapitated.

I am suddenly finding it easier to breathe. I feel as if I've broken through a wall. Is it my hand, is it my pen?

They were dead, and their--

Moons help me. I can write, I can write, it is drawing the poison from me, it erases the darkness and fills it with knowledge, because knowledge is better. Even knowledge so hellish. Not knowing would be the real hell.

I can write.

They were up against the deck, on the muddy planks next to the ship. The shapes did not look human. Was that why I did not see them right away? Their limbs were cut up into pieces. The meat was piled onto another platter from the galley, halfway in the shadow of a twisted piece of metal. I looked at the pot. I felt bewildered that I did not think to look there first. "Nasrean stew"? It stank of meat-food, and I felt sick.

I saw Greys stooping where Porter had been, and looking around the fire. There was a half-eaten bowl of already stewed flesh. The pot bubbled and I wondered how much Porter had eaten, how many servings.

I couldn't think, and my stomach hurt, and my head felt so hot. I looked at their bodies again and could only say "Moons no, Moons no!", willing and hoping it not to be real. I retched into the mud by the stern. I didn't think there was anything left in my belly to vomit up, but something found its way. Greys yelled something at me, but I didn't understand him. My head was on fire and my eyes blurred with tears. All I could think of was death, death, death. All around me, eating ourselves, lost in the mud at the bottom of the world. I turned back and saw the fire, and Greys looming like a giant near me, and then I was alone in a very dark place.

I fainted. I had never fainted before. I felt hands under my back, moving me, but I just wanted to be left alone. It felt like a half-forgotten dream, and I didn't want to come back. I just wanted to lie down and stay in the dark. Then one hand came up under my head, and something touched my lips, and water ran down my throat.

We have water, o blessed miracle.

At first I didn't remember, and simply drank it. It tasted thin and metallic. Then I realized what it was, and all my senses immediately returned. I opened my eyes all the way, focused them. Greys was kneeling by me. His right hand was under my head, and in his left hand he had water in a cup. Then all the demon-questions came back. It felt as if they all vied for my voice. But all that came out was a moan. All the questions, all the sorrow, all the madness, all the death. They couldn't form themselves, I couldn't speak. All I could do was cry.

I rolled toward him and cried and cried, like a child. He dragged me up and hugged me against him and allowed me one moment of this. I thought of uncle Sal--he's the closest thing I have to a father. I felt like a child, helpless, nothing, nothing. Death. Yet Greys still stood strong, still picked me up, still held me steady. How does he do it? How does he keep his head?

But after a moment, he said, with increasing firmness in his voice, "All right, now stop... stop... not right now." He told me I should save my tears--my body might need the fluid. And he added, "Try not to vomit again." It's that much more fluid and nourishment I should try to keep inside me. I resented that he spoke as if I could have helped it, but I cannot begrudge his advice. It makes enough sense.

How can he be so strong? How can he endure it? And he killed Porter. Greys saved my life.

Greys saved my life. That is... difficult to take in. Even now.

Knowledge unwritten.

So I stopped crying, and I remembered the water, and asked where it had come from. Greys had found it hidden in Porter's quarters. He saw that there had been water in the stewing pot on the fire. Porter had been hiding it. He had been keeping water in leather skins buried behind a plank in his room. Greys also found two moldy biscuits in the bottom of a sack in the same alcove.

Did he ever eat the mud-worms? All the knocking up against his door, bringing him his portions, his fair portions... What did he do with them? All the mud-worms we caught. And he would take it up and close his door and set something heavy over it. Paranoid, but we thought he had been eating them--he stayed alive long enough. All that meat and blood, was it all wasted? Did he have his own store all that time? Biscuits! How many biscuits? How many biscuits? I miss biscuits.

Greys produced the two moldy ones and we each ate one and felt like kings. Hungry, tired, miserable kings of mud. And we had water. Water, water... I have never tasted anything so welcome and sweet in my life. It was the greatest meal I thought I should ever have. Moldy bread and stale water, and it was delicious to me, the grandest food and drink.

But it did not satisfy, it did not fill. Before then, we had not eaten all waking, nor most of the waking before. And we were still hungry. And Greys bled our tiny mud-worm into the pot, and cooked the meat over the fire. We divided the meager catch, and were not much sated. The hike around the slope had taken everything, and we needed our strength. And Greys looked at me, and his eyes spoke, and I was sad.

Evil? Or Oblivion? I would rather keep my Doom than extinguish its memory. Because then, it is known.

Are we animals?

The mud-worms were gone. The biscuits were gone. The water was scarce. It is scarcer now. But there was meat for us. Our only food left. We cooked more, and ate, and we were filled.

It tastes... kind of salty.

Then before I slept, the log-lust came to me, and I cursed it and sent it away. I allowed it a few words, but my grief would not allow more.

And I denied my tears, and laid me down, and sank into darkness, and slept.

Greys is here. The sleeping must be over, then. I did not sleep. There is no time now. It is time for us to go.