The Wondermark Gazette

DISPATCHES FROM WONDERMARK MANOR, VOL II: Voyages from Wondermark Manor

“I never knew my mother,” I told the waves, leaning on the creaking railing of the H.M.D. Flopsy Bunny, staring at that unending sea, stretching farther than I could imagine a sea could stretch without snapping.

I didn’t know why I spoke out loud. Maybe I was tipsy from the breakfast-grog, salted with Cap’n Narwhal’s own spice-mix, which some in the crew rumoured was actually the leavings from his daily pumice-rub.

It could also have been the gentle rocking of the merchant ship, which tended to lull me into a womb-like stupour; more than once on this voyage, I’d awoken in a foetal position on the poop-deck, finding every hardy man on the crew with their peepers set on me, and staring at me too.

Perhaps it was even a moment of genuine sentimentality, of which I’d been noting more and more since coming aboard those long weeks ago, and which I’d been policing out of my behaviour with rigorous discipline below-decks.

Whatever the reason, I found my tongue continuing of its own accord. “I remember Papa telling me about her,” I went on, and my idiot nephew Josiah turned to listen, shifting against the railing, no doubt waiting for his chance to interject with some stupid comment about himself.

I’d been certain the feeble, motor-mouthed brat would be dropped on a peg by the crew within twenty minutes of making open water, but he’d actually shouldered a surprising bit of below-decks labour, having assigned himself head sock-darner and busying himself with an ale-barrel full of the vessel’s sweaty backlog. Cap’n Narwhal and his men had been quite happy with the arrangement, having been without a suitable darner since their last had dashed his skull against a bulkhead during a high swell and subsequently proclaimed himself the Duchess of Vichy; at last measure he’d been holding court on the Continent and was apparently making quite the rounds on the snooty circuit. Beneath all that French make-up you couldn’t hardly make out the beard anyway.

I recalled how Papa, the lout, had often described my mother to me as a means of making me fear him; for example, often he’d bear his horse-whip high and thunder, “If I could bear to drive your mother away, as perfect as she was — imagine what I could bear to do to you.”

Among the bits and drabs of his descriptions — things like, “Your mother would swallow her pearlescent teeth if she saw your room in such a state,” or “If your mother saw these school-marks she’d positively tear out her reddish-orange tresses,” or “These grapefruits remind me strangely of your mother” — I’d managed to assemble a rough image of her in my mind. The woman who beckoned me through the gauzy mists of my imagination was a reddish-orange-tressed, grapefruit-skinned woman with teeth that glowed in the dark. I wished I had known her.

“Some say she was a mermaid,” I murmured to myself more than to Josiah, staring at the sea foaming by below. “Perhaps we will encounter her on this voyage yet.”

“Oh, Grandmama wasn’t a mermaid,” Josiah said brightly. “We used to go to her cottage for tea all the time, my mother and I. I remember she smelled thoroughly of menthol, even when we were outdoors. It put me off smoking all through university, because I couldn’t bear the thought of burning up my own grandmother and sucking in her vapours, no matter what the chemical thrill. That’s just the kind of boy I was back then, and I won’t apologize for it.”

This was life on board ship with Josiah. Every day since we’d set sail from Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats, I learned a new ridiculous detail about his neuroses. He was afraid of pudding. He was leery of the Portuguese. He was unsure of his mittens’ intentions; on cold nights he thought they might be trying to steal his fingernails. And that was just Day 1. Day 2 had brought the litany of complaints about the hidden ingredients in corn-meal, and it had been strictly down-hill from there. He’d been a fine help in a crisis, as we’d certainly been in back on land — but the unending boredom of weeks at sail set even the most amiable of room-mates at each others’ throats, and each layer the sea peeled back from Josiah was proving more bitter than the last.

“How far off do you suppose we are from Dublin?” I asked. Each day with the boy was one day closer to Dublin, and the reason I had fought to come aboard ship in the first place: the search for an ancient book, the Tome of the Precious Lore, which may hold the key to saving the life of the one I dearly loved…

Lara. Sweet Lara. Lying comatose back in that cursed Hospital, her skin white with pale blanchedness. Struck into her prolonged slumber by my darkest foe, that venomous dandy Peapoddy. I would find that book and restore her to life.

For I loved her deeply. And she had at least a solid professional relationship with me. At the very least.

Josiah shook his head and shuddered. “Not far enough,” he groaned. “The closer we get, the worse my hives become. I think I’m allergic to the Irish. Or at least their representations in popular culture — my mother never let me have Lucky Charms, so I never developed an immunity. You should know that; I put it in the ship’s news-letter.”

“I didn’t read my copy,” I said through gritted teeth. I don’t know where the boy had found a printing-press, but his sordid rag was always waiting, tucked into the hammocks, when we awoke each day. I’d actually made an effort to learn to read, back when I could afford the lad some favourable attention, but quickly abandoned the effort when I saw how decidedly one-sided the paper’s official stance was on the subject of the hour that I commandeered in the ship’s head each evening.

The clink-clink-clink of Cap’n Narwhal’s hook-feet approaching precluded any further discussion. I whirled to face the craggy sot. “How long before we reach Dublin?” I asked.

“Oh, a good six months, with this wind,” he replied cheerily, sucking on the stem of his pipe. “We’ll have ourselves a nice Christmas in that old Irish port, then hit the sails for the return voyage when me men sober up around President’s Day.”

Six months! “Is the wind really that poor?” I asked the mariner.

He stared at me with his milky, ivory eye, trying to see if I was joking. “Dublin’s our last stop,” he said slowly. “Ye didn’t know that when ye made that big swim t’come aboard?”

This was unfortunate news to me. Six more months with Josiah! I’d go mad and slaughter the crew after two, and eat them after four. “The leprechaun-traps in the hold,” I said slowly. “The barrels of Shamrock Shakes. We’re not taking them directly to Dublin?”

“Aye, we are, ’tis true,” the Cap’n replied. “But we can’t sell leprechaun-traps without leprechaun-bait, can we? The best leprechaun-bait is from Prague. Then we’ll set sail for Dublin.”

“That seems like a terribly inefficient route to take,” I said with a scowl.

“Oh, a terribly inefficient route,” he mimicked, a bit too loud and too high-pitched to be a reasonable imitation. He was terrible at impressions, as I’d learned over weeks of tedious dinners. Still, deck-hands turned to watch — many of them were the Cap’n’s own men, but a few were Kippers, loyal to me. It hadn’t come to blows yet aboard ship, but trying as the long days at sea were on the best men’s souls — for these chaps they were positively trying and succeeding. “Who’s the Cap’n, eh? Who sets the route? Who looks through the sextant and steers the wheel thing?” He was dancing, now, on his hooks, surprisingly nimbly. Clink-clink. Clink-clink.

The jeers cut me to the quick, but my anger had no outlet here. For Lara, I had to get to Dublin. For Lara, I would suppress my simmering rage. I said nothing.

“You think you know a better route? You can sell un-baited leprechaun-traps and expect to pay all these men?” His hook-handed gesture took in the growing crowd of swarthy sea-mates. Kippers and sailors both were beginning to gather. “You want to be the Cap’n, is that it? You think you can steer this ship?” With his silvery hooks, he doffed his cap’n’s-cap and fluttered it just out of my reach. “You wanna be the Cap’n? You think you can do it?”

The boat hit a swell. Brine-spray kicked the faint scent of clover into the air. Josiah sneezed and doubled over.

The sea had given me my chance. I had to take it.

I stepped on the lad’s back, leapt into the air and snatched the cap from that smooth metal hook. Before my boots hit the deck I was wearing the Cap’n’s black velvet hat. It felt warm and sweaty with cap’n-juice. It felt like Power.

It felt good.

“Throw him overboard,” I shouted to the crew, and indicated Cap’n Narwhal. When no one moved, I added “Do it!”

“The cap doesn’t make you Cap’n,” Narwhal sneered. “The cap I got at Target. It cost four ninety-five on sale after Halloween.”

Josiah sneezed, again, gibbering snot all over the deck. I stretched my back, felt a satisfying pop, and gathered my strength. Then I reached over, closed my hands around his collar and his belt, and threw the boy over the side.

He didn’t even shout as he fell. The sea swallowed him. I heard one last sneeze on the wind, and then he was gone.

The sailors stared at me. It was still my move.

“If I’d do that to him,” I said, looking Narwhal straight in that unblinking ivory eye, “imagine what I’d do to you.”

NEXT: Mutiny!

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