The Wondermark Gazette

Our story thus far: Alone and adrift at sea, I have encountered a strange, wrinkled man apparently stowing away in a barrel of salt.

The awful creature followed me up the ladder and onto the fore-deck, his wrinkled skin grasping the wooden rungs with a sureness of grip that surprised me. Everything he touched came away with tiny particles of salt pressed into its surface; fine white dust still hid deep in every cranny of his pocked, yellowish body. I found myself thankful that he was at least wearing a sort of soiled loin-cloth; who knew to what depths the salt had penetrated, and from exactly where the grains now scattered across the deck had originated.

Though his movements were deft as he ascended the rungs to the surface, crossing the threshold into the noon-time sunlight nearly knocked him off the ladder. For a moment I thought he would topple backwards into the hold, strike his head on an iron railing, and solve my problems for me, though of course that would turn out to be just another foolish prayer. I had no idea who the man was, and could not entirely confirm that he wasn’t a hallucination brought upon by too many Shamrock Shakes — the polar bear in my coin-purse was certainly pleading for a look. But the man had been hidden away in what seemed to have been a perfectly physical barrel of salt, and he had easily defended himself against my prior attempt to murder him; thus I deemed him “real,” and these were the same reasons that I would rather have him dead or vanished than clambering about my ship.

Regretfully, he did not perish in that sunlit instant. He merely tightened his eyelids for several long seconds, mustered his energy, and climbed sternly onto the deck. He stood there unmoving, scraggly strands of his beard flitting about in the lightest of breezes, basking in the bright blue stillness all around. I thought it perhaps best to divest myself of any Shamrock-Shake-related hallucinatory artifacts, the better to discern bitter reality from pleasantly deceptive fiction; for besides, once this interloper was dealt with, I could always retire below-decks and help myself to another heaping portion of that goopy, milky delight, and would enjoy the pleasure doubly for having earned it with begrudging minutes spent in the realm of this hot, dry truth.

Thus I fought the coin-purse from my pocket and lobbed it quickly over the side of the ship, despite the bear’s muffled Francophone cursing trailing an arc all the way to the lapping sea. I had no real need for the purse, as there was neither soda-machine nor laundry nor car-wash aboard ship; besides, all that’d been inside was a shiny button I’d found in the galley and my idiot nephew Josiah’s spare dental-bridge, which he certainly wouldn’t be needing any more. Perhaps he would be reunited with it on the ocean floor, in fact. As for the purse itself — well, whenever I found land I could always castrate another llama and make myself another satchel. It was one of the many skills I’d picked up by simply paying careful attention to Father.

The purse made a light splash, and the wrinkled man whirled. He snapped his eyes open, his pupils shrinking in the sun, shooting backwards, deep into his head. “Never toss anything overboard,” he said sharply. “That’s Rule Number One. You might need it later, and there’s no going after it.”

“Listen,” I said, ensuring that the velvet bulk of the Cap’n’s cap was seated firmly on my brow. “I’m the cap’n, here, and I make the rules. I’ve half a mind to toss you in the brig for stowing away. What’s the idea, anyhow — suppose I’d wanted salt on my hardtack tonight, but now you’ve sweated in it all?”

The man stared at me, slowly cocking his head as I spoke, until finally he appeared to be looking at me entirely sideways. “You’re the cap’n, then,” he said, turning to look around the deck. “And I suppose you’re the first mate, too? And the head cook and the chaplain as well?”

Oh, it was going to be like this, was it? Lipping off to the Cap’n? I may not have been able to beat in his brains with a pry-bar, but I could certainly dole out a stout tongue-lashing — if only he wasn’t so caked in salt! I would have to settle for a purely verbal assault. “I’m whatever job needs to be done,” I said, lowering my voice to what I hoped was an imposing growl. The sea air had dried my throat, though, and the timbre of my words cracked embarrassingly. “I’m everything you’re not,” I squeaked at the end.

“Helmsman, then, too?” he asked, matching my growl and adding a much scarier one of his own.

I looked back to the helm, where the wheel was lazily spinning freely. “If there’s a–”

The boat interrupted me by running aground.

The deck bucked, throwing me from my feet, and I slid a ways, coasting on the thousand grains of salt that coated the boards, including, perhaps, butt-salt; who can tell. The man never so much as wavered; his ancient old feet stood sure as rooted trees despite the vessel’s shuddering motion.

Then, all was calm, and he extended a thin hand to heft me up.

It was right there in my face. I had to take it.

His grip was perfectly strong, not at all the grip I would expect from someone pushing triple digits in age (as the copious wrinkles seemed to indicate). Once I’d found my balance, he strode purposefully to the railing and peered over the edge. “Sandbar,” he said. “Saw it coming a mile away. One degree to port or starboard and we’d have missed it by a mile.” He turned back to look at me. “Tough steering the ship when you’re busy down-hold sucking on juju-milk and assaulting old men, innit?”

My hands flapped to my brow, but I’d lost the cap’n’s cap in the tumble, and perhaps my associated charisma. “Now see here!” I managed, sputtering for a clever retort. I’d think of the perfect line an hour later, of course.

But he wasn’t listening, his attention having been captured by our surroundings. “Oh, I’ve been here before,” he said with an air of recognition — then with three long strides, he walked to the edge of the ship, vaulted the railing, and disappeared from view.

It was easily ten feet down to the waterline - would he break an ankle? Be caught in an undertow? At this point I’d settle for sand in the pants. Of all the nerve! Making me out to be a bad pilot! On my own ship!

I climbed to the port bow and peered about. Sure enough, a thin sandbar not ten yards long protruded from the gentle green water, the bow of the ship ground into it firmly. The old man was tramping up and down the length of the tiny island, nodding and speaking seemingly to himself, waving his arms furiously, apparently having an argument with either himself or an invisible entity.

If I could cast off and maroon him there - ! But how? I took a few steps down, looking around at the battered deck for anything I could use to draw a sail, or maybe a long pole I could use to push off from the sand…

No, that was stupid. This wasn’t a dinghy at Aunt Lydia’s secret lake-cottage, where she’d entertained agents of the underground Revolution during my primary-school summers. This was a multi-tonne merchant vessel, taking on water down in the lower decks, currently firmly run aground and stranded in the middle of the ocean. There was nothing within miles that could move this boat.

With a lurch, the boat moved. I stumbled, but caught myself — I was getting better! I rushed back to the bow, and of course, what did I see: the old man, shoving at the hull with his bare hands!

“Hey!” I shouted. “Don’t be an idiot!”

He said nothing, just shoved the boat off the sandbar with a little grunt — then scrambled up the side of the hull like a spider, clinging to tiny juts of wood with those impossibly sallow fingers. In three seconds he was back up on the deck with me, watching the sandbar slowly drift towards the horizon.

“Happened to me once before,” he said with a shrug. “If I’d been up here an hour ago I’d have remembered it’s there. I think I buried something there once, actually. Figured nobody’d find it this far out.” He laughed and clapped me on a sunburnt shoulder. “I guess you’re the lucky one!”

I turned to look at his crazy, bearded face, still flecked with salt, those eyes sunken deep into a skull just barely wrapped with skin like a Sunday apple. “You’ve…been to that sandbar before? That very one?”

“Well, it’s different now, you know, the tides and all that mess with it a little,” he said. “But I’d recognize it anywhere.” He looked around at the utterly featureless sea, blue sky and water meeting in every direction, with no trace of land save for that tiny sandbar. “It’s been a while, of course. But sure, I know right where we are.” He pointed in a direction I couldn’t tell was any different from any other. “France is that way, Morocco’s that way — which puts Iceland way over there.” He arced his finger as if pointing far over the horizon. “Iceland’s nice this time of year. If you’re going to Iceland, this is the time of the year to do it.” He stretched his arms and yawned. “Good to move around again. Nice day for it.”

I could think of nothing to say, besides the meek admission: “I was headed for Dublin.” Then I yawned too, because, c’mon, seriously.

He turned to me and laughed, spraying salt from his beard into my face, into my eyes. “Headed for Dublin? No, no. Going to Dublin, maybe, by a roundabout route. But you’re headed, at the moment, for Portugal.”

“The tiller’s broken,” I managed to stammer. “There’s been no wind–”

“Only a lazy man needs wind to move a ship,” he said, tossing the words over his shoulder as he walked towards the stern, taking the steps to the helm two at a go. The man was crazy. I was alone on a boat with a crazy man. A crazy man I couldn’t kill.

The crazy man stopped, crouched, and came up with the cap’n’s cap in his hands. He looked at it for a few long seconds, tracing the cheap Chinese stitching with a fingertip, then turned back to me.

“I’ll take you to Dublin,” he said.

He fit the cap to his own head, snugging it against that crazy old brow.

“But I’ll have to wear this,” he added, and when I had nothing to say, he grinned.

NEXT: Betrayal Afoot

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