Day Thirty-Nine
On deck, early-morning. Jim was still asleep, so I was reading in the shrouds, legs dangling into the abyss. I ached to have my fingers on a harp again. They twitched in the air.
When I first was there the air was foggy, but it soon cleared to a spotless azure—endless, apart from a small grey mass in the far distance. This mass became odder and odder as we approached it: metal-black debris pieces seemed to orbit its centre.
I glanced up to Onus, who was watching it searchingly, unblinking.
"Onus!" I called, standing on the ropes.
"Waat!" His voice was raspy. He seemed irritated to have been distracted from the strange view.
"Don't you have a glass?"
"No!" he shouted. "I can see fine with my eeeyes!"
"Yeah, I'm not. . ." I sighed, and trailed off. "Ok." I turned back to the great cloud, hair billowing soft in the ship's movement, and squinted at it.
"Planet ho!"
He saw it but it was still a cloud to me, so I scaled the foremast. I felt a thousand miles above anything; see it: the globe, so low and distant. The air above the ship was stronger, and rattled my clothes against my body. I hung with one arm from the mast, in front of the sails, toes curling round the yardarm. There it hung in the atmosphere: swamp-coloured, shrouded in dense mists and rings like huge, neon scars.
"Ah—ha-ha!" Onus cried. "There it ees! Feast eyes and click heels, if y'got 'em!" The deck swam with bodies piling onto the sides. The murky planet was very beautiful, in its own gloomy, sordid way. Everybody had arrived except Jim, Doppler and Amelia. Where are they? I thought. I let myself slip down to a sitting position.
Our universe was tranquil for a few minutes. My papa disappeared momentarily, and everyone else on deck was lost in the ethereality of the planet—or perhaps the promise it held. I crossed my fingers, and my toes inside my boots, praying that the forthcoming events would hold no tragedies. It will be soon, I knew. I chewed my fingernails, then rolled back against the wind, and hung upside down for a few moments, smiling. I let my arms drip down, touching the peace, feeling every atom against my skin, brushing, soft, scintillating.
A dark cry broke through. Papa's voice. Slowly I pulled myself up, onto the yardarm, then onto my feet where I began to hasten. Nothing was happening on the deck. I began to slide down the mast, and was halfway when Jim emerged from the galley with wild eyes. He spotted me and I froze, hanging outwardly. My hair flickered. I did not move: he saw it in my eyes, the knowing. So it has begun. Jim frowned, as though trying to figure me out, and my papa re-emerged cursing. Jim sprinted across the boat into the cabin-room.
The weight of my heart pulled me the rest of the way down the mast.
Papa whistled, not having registered my presence yet, and everyone turned excitedly to him.
"Change in plan, lads! We—move—now!" Everyone spread, cheering. "Strike our colours, Mr. Onus!"
"Me pleasure, Captain!" No time to think. Go.
