Dreamlands (5 page)

“But
they knew Captain Bromm,” I said.  “They jumped up to defend his name.”

“Knew
him by reputation.  Your uncle told you about Bromm, eh?  I envy you that night,
Isaac.  How I would love to revisit those times.”

“Mrs.
Caddock denied that he had any seafaring career at all.”

“That
blithering harpy’s still alive?” Longbottom asked, eyebrows raised.  “The good
die young Isaac, and she’s living proof.”

We
walked awhile in silence as I worked myself up to the most important question.

“Uncle
Eamon suspected he was being spied upon by enemies from decades ago, that they still
pursued him.  When the last story was finished, he had a message for me, but fell
exhausted before he could finish the thought.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but
is there actually any threat from the past?”

Longbottom
physically shied from the words, as if I had shone a bright light in his face.

“This
is what an old sailor calls home,” he said lightly.  We had arrived outside a ramshackle
fisherman’s hostel and my question was left unanswered.  “We’ll talk more tomorrow,
eh?”

I
watched as he limped from sight.  Our conversation had left me acutely
dissatisfied, and the mallet in my head had not let up at all.  I blame its
pounding for driving me straight back to the Chinaman’s drug den.  If opium could
not return me to my vision of the exotic harbour, I resolved it would smother my
uncertainties, if only for a time.

It
did smother me, beneath waves of absolute blackness.  When they parted, the
proprietor was cussing me in Chinese and, when my eyelids began to flutter, in
English.  Both my funds and my welcome had reached their end.

I ascended
from the muggy cellar into the dead of night, a different night from when I had
last walked down those steps.  I was without a coat, but the cold was to me of
no importance.  Navigating by the black hump of the church hill, I had been headed
for my rented room near the docks when the squat form of a man stopped me in
the street.  It was Bo’sun Longbottom.  He grabbed my arm and began brusquely to
steer me on, to a soft bed I hoped, for the blank unconsciousness of drugs had afforded
me no rest at all.

“To
answer your last query,” he began without preamble, “yes, the Sloans and I have
enemies.  Makes one cautious.”

He
pulled me into a disused doorway and cast about the lane.  He was puffing with
exertion, though we hadn’t traveled far.

“There
was some question as to your identity,” he said.

“You
didn’t recognize me, you mean.”

“No
no,” he said.  “You’re the picture of your Uncle Eamon, minus some sun and a
few years of hard work.  Listen, there is a little bit more to your uncle’s
estate, but I had to be sure you truly were Isaac Sloan." 

"Go
on," I said, hoping whatever he said next made more sense.  He was looking
out at the street as if someone had swapped all the landmarks when his back was
turned.

"Eamon
had a cottage on the outskirts of town.  It’s a bit of a hideaway, impossible
to find without directions.  I'll tell you how to get there, but that is all
the assistance I can provide.”

After
imparting the directions, he said cryptically, “Remember this, Isaac:  to seek
is to find, so choose carefully what you seek.”

I
did not know how to answer that, but it didn’t matter.  The old mariner was
already hurrying away.

* * *

Longbottom’s
directions led me on a long hike.  Gas lamps gave way to the odd candle burning
in a window, and candlelight was succeeded by old-fashioned starshine.  I had no
torch, but the stars twinkled brightly enough, and the sea breeze helped clear
my mind as I made my way towards the cliffs on the west edge of town.

At
the top of the bluff Longbottom had described there was a remarkable view of
the uneasy sea, but no cottage or shelter of any description.  Too exhausted to
walk back to my room, I was entertaining a night on rocky ground when I spied a
light bobbing at the periphery of my vision.  It was not, as I first suspected,
someone walking the headland with a lantern, but something like a will o’ wisp. 
It hovered over the track, low to the ground, and as I watched began to move
away.

I
did not pause to wonder how something like swamp gas could form there, but on
instinct followed.  I was led to a different branch of the trail, invisible in
the feeble light.  After a few minutes, my quarry meandered from the footpath to
the edge of the cliff.  I approached, cautious of the unguarded drop, until the
light descended over the verge and out of sight.  Looking down, I saw the track
continued along the cliff face.  I lowered myself to the ledge, hoping it was
the darkness and rising wind that made it seem so narrow.  The mystery light,
whether the issue of Fate or my disordered mind, had vanished.

The
ledge described a gentle slope, ending at a larger stage where the façade of a
cottage protruded from the bluff like a dollhouse on a shelf, one window and a
narrow door looking out at the horizon.  If privacy was what my uncle had sought,
he had found the ultimate real estate.  The way wasn’t locked, and after a little
searching I was able to inspect by oil lamp a tattered couch, a table scattered
with cigarette ash, and one larger piece concealed under a sheet, a Chinese
medicine cabinet with dozens of small compartments.

The
first drawer was empty, but for fluff.  The second held a rusty
screwdriver, the fourth a rolled up circular from 1913.  The fifth was also
empty.  The sixth drawer would have been the last I tried regardless, for fatigue
had all but overcome me.  Within it was a long, narrow box, painted with a brightly
coloured snake.  It did not contain the long stemmed pipe I expected, but
several sticks of incense, the scent of which was alluringly similar to that of
the Captain’s tobacco.

Setting
the incense to burn in an ornate wooden dish which had clearly been used before
for the same purpose, I turned the lamp down low and perched on the edge of the
couch.  Urgency made me tremble as I bent over the table and used a piece of
card to wave the fumes towards me.

I
inhaled, and after a brief dizziness everything came on clearer than before,
with the clean, quiet sharpness of a spring morning.  I felt as if the clamor
of the Industrial Age, and Man and his problems, had been banished.

When
I inhaled more deeply the world dimmed, but not with the oblivion of opium.  I
reclined on the couch, which rocked like a rowboat in open water.  I lay
cradled by the waves, each trough deeper and sweeter than the last, until I
descended to a realm unknown.

I
woke to a briny wind and the friendly creaking of my hammock as it swayed
between two tarry pillars.  The air resounded with sailors’ calls and the gulls’
replies, and ships with painted sails like a gypsy’s skirts bobbed in the
harbour.  This was not Arkham or Boston port.  The vessels were all wood, with
never an iron-hulled steamer to be seen, and the common goods –coal, lumber,
steel– of New England ports were nowhere to be seen.  I stood up and blinked
several times, but the illusion wavered not a whit.  Looking for a shirt to
cover myself, I found the grand sum of my possessions to be a linen cloth tied
around my hips for modesty.

I
walked barefoot along the cool stone wharf, completely, physically within the
vision from the tavern.  If I suspected that opium had finally driven me mad, I
was unafraid.  The first man I came upon, unshod and stripped to the waist like
me, was working on a block-and-tackle alongside a handsome double-masted
schooner.  Broad shouldered and brown from the sun, he could have been a
stevedore anywhere in the world.

I
hailed him in the King’s English and he replied in his own language, a pleasant,
lilting tongue that reminded me of Gaelic, or maybe French.  I tried to pick
out some word or phrase to help me place it as with a vocabulary of gestures he
related his problem:  he typically used an ox to help shift his cargo, but the animal
had died of a fever.

I
asked him where I was but the words felt clumsy, like a mouthful of toy blocks,
and he continued as if I hadn’t spoken.  He had hired two others to help him,
but they tired quickly and complained the loads were too much.  We spoke awhile
longer, and when his hands were busy adjusting the rig I realized I was
conversing like a native.  Unlike my desultory attempts to speak French while on
the Continent, whenever I reached for a word or phrase in this language it inexplicably
came to me at once.  With this marvel I cast aside the last shred of doubt.  I
had arrived in that fabled country which I would come to know as the Dreamlands.

“What
is the name of this place?” I asked with my new facility.

“Zij,”
he replied.

I wished
him luck and continued until I spotted a sign of a stick man with a slash on either
side, a symbol which in that world meant
Men Wanted
.  There and then,
with barely a rag to hide my nakedness, I would begin my new life as a
stevedore, New England fading in my mind like a half-remembered dream.

The
work – tying knots, shifting loads, lifting, reefing– was not exciting, but I
was so happy in it a week had passed before I missed my little brown bottle.  I
had between worlds shed the damp and dragging cloak of my malaise, and the
strongest drug in which I partook was the dockworkers’ raw rum.

The
people were generous with their friendship and goodwill.  There was always a
pipe or a talk to be had.  The women were of a kind with the one in my dream,
laughing and bold, with the grace of natural born dancers.  Their city’s past
must have been storied and strange, for there was a distinct division between
the cracked and ancient stone buildings, and the newer wood construction which seemed
provisional in comparison, as if her residents had all arrived a month before
and neglected to bring a carpenter.  The resulting skyline looked phony, like a
theatre backdrop or unfinished jigsaw puzzle balanced on end.

One
lazy evening while I reclined against the low stone wall of the pier, watching
the sun drown in magenta waves, I heard the distant lilt of a song coming
closer.  I closed my eyes to listen and it evolved into the story of a widow and
her lost fisherman, a subject common to ports everywhere.  Yet I had heard this
particular song before, and in that same spot.  Knowing this, I was unsurprised
when the girl from my pipe-dream strolled by, so close her sleeve brushed my shoulder,
carrying a dozen bolts of cotton.  She had a lithe figure, delicately slanted
almond eyes, and raven black hair, a colour I had never seen on another head since
I had come to Zij.

“Your
gaze is bold,” she said, stopping abruptly.  “Are you a labourer, or some kind
of tout?”

“A
tout?”  I laughed.  “I work for my living.”

“That’s
what you call work.  Is it so arduous sitting by the water ogling girls?”

“Not
you, my dear.”

She
wiped her brow, rested her bolts of cloth on the half-wall, and studied me skeptically. 
She must have seen something worthwhile, for she said, “You’ll see no more like
me today so why not make yourself useful?”

I
took up her bundle and while we walked I learned her name was Isobel, and was invited
to dinner at the Iron Street apartment she shared with her father.  Their home
was so close to the wharf I imagined salt spray coming in at the window.  Though
every angle was askew, from cabinet to doorframe to ceiling, their three simple
rooms showed the fastidious housekeeping habitual to mariners.

“Isaac
Sloan, sir,” I said to the man.  He was lean and weathered, with midnight black
hair becoming streaked with grey.

“Solomon,”
he replied.

“Isaac
has been working as a stevedore on the Gull Street pier,” Isobel said to him, passing
me a cup of sour red wine.

“There’s
no lower man on the docks than a stevedore, and never a better way to learn
them, from the bottom up.”  Solomon hoisted his cup in salute.

“And
what is your line?” I asked.

“Retired,”
he said.  Isobel tried and failed to stifle a giggle, and with a mock scowl
Solomon amended, “Almost retired, from the shipwright’s guild.  I was planning
to spend my last days drunk on rum and playing dominoes with the other fossils in
the bazaar, but my partners say I’m too valuable.  Years back I designed a cutter
with a reinforced hull.  Made other men a fortune.  My reward has been their
high esteem, and constant badgering."

Solomon
withdrew a battered book the colour of a wine stain, pausing to briefly rest
his palm on its cover.  The atlas fell open to a meticulously annotated entry
on the Island of Oriab.

“Now,
Stevedore, if I don’t miss my guess you’ve not been long in Zij.  I sailed far
in my youth, but I’ve never heard an accent quite like yours.  Where do you
hail from?”  He flipped among the pages.  Every map was decorated with small
paintings of the different races of the Dreamlands.  “Far Celephaïs, perhaps?  From
the north, Inganok?  Surely not here.”  His blunt finger stopped at an area along
the coast to the south.  Though not so far from Zij, it was deliberately blank.

“Nowhere
in your book, I’m afraid.  I sailed farther than I had ever dreamed, and arrived
without a crust of bread to my name.”

“Hmph.” 
He set the book aside, again stroking its cover as if reluctant to part from
it.

“I
enjoy working on the docks, but I’d like to try my hand at crewing,” I said.  “Do
you know any vessels in need of a strong back?”

“There’s
more money in crewing,” Solomon replied, “but what do you know of ships and the
sea?”

He
paused to tamp a plug of tobacco into a small, hand-carved pipe while I
considered my two drowsy trips across the Atlantic.

“Not
much,” I said, and to myself, “nothing beyond my uncle’s stories of Captain Bromm.”

“Bromm?”
he said, drawing fire to his pipe.  “Doesn’t sound like any captain of the
Southern Sea.  Anyroad, Captain Harrog is shorthanded.  The Asphodel is his
ship.”

“I
don’t know that name.  Is she a cargo vessel?”

“Aye. 
Grain, flour, barley, dry goods.  You might think such humble wares safe from
pirates, but on this coast they’ll attack anything without an armed escort.  The
crew are a tough lot.  Most will have their stripes.”

“What
stripes?  Is that a form of rank?”

“You
must be a long way from home,” he said with a leathery grin.  “If you see a
mariner whose shirt is painted with crimson vertical stripes, it means he has defeated
at least one pirate.  That’s defeated as in dead, not knocked down in a tavern
brawl.  Serves as a warning to freebooters.”

“I
don't want him to get the stripes,” Isobel said, taking my chin in her hand.  “They
always come with scars and I like his face the way it is.”

“I
don’t know that Harrog will take someone so green as you on the Asphodel,”
Solomon went on, “but if he does, here’s a bit of advice:  don’t ever speak of
your cargo or route to anyone not in the crew.  There are spies about the wharf. 
There is one group in particular I wouldn't mind swallowed by the sea entire.”

Isobel
frowned as her father’s expression grew severe.

“Go
on,” I said.  I had thought him about to launch into some sailor’s yarn, but he
spoke in deadly earnest.

“They
arrived here spring before last.  We had all heard stories of the traders of
Dylath-Leen, with the hushed speech and soft hands full of oddly shaped rubies,
but they had never been seen so far south.  At first folks avoided them.  There
is something decidedly unwholesome about them, and the appetite for rubies in
these parts is small.  But this season they came with a variety of more common goods,
and some unusual items as well.”

“Imagine
it,” Isobel said lightly, “foreign merchants bringing us foreign goods.”

“At
first they could not earn a single coin,” Solomon said, biting down on his pipe
stem, “but they stayed on, offering simpering smiles and sweet tea to any who
would stop.  People are curious by nature, and their prejudice couldn’t hold
out against the lure of trade.  Their silk is good, their grain is sound, and
soon enough coin began to flow into their coffers.  They sell cheap, so naturally
the other merchants despise them and would like to see them driven out, but as
they violate no laws–”

Solomon
shrugged to show that this was the end of the story .

“And
what goods do they take in trade in for their return voyages?” I asked.

“As
far as I know, nothing but gold.”

“And
crew,” Isobel added.  “They seem always to be recruiting, and they must pay
well for they have no trouble finding oarsmen for their galleys.”

Solomon
made to speak, but instead drank deeply.

The
mood had soured with the topic of conversation, and I took leave of my new
friends, eager to find the ship Solomon had mentioned.

* * *

The
Asphodel’s quartermaster was supervising her loading, occasionally encouraging
the men with a broad range of obscenities, but as I approached he tracked my steps
with pale, appraising eyes.  He was slender, with an equally long and thin nose,
and had lived long enough to see his hair climb to the top of his scalp to make
its last stand.  His tunic bore the crimson stripes of which Solomon had spoken.

When
I had come close enough to address him, he pivoted on the ball of one foot and
seized my wrist as if to pull me off balance.

“Here,
friend,” he said, indicating the thick line the khukuri had left beneath my
chin, “that looks like a near thing.”

“I
owed a man some money, but don’t worry.  He has been paid in full.”  This
earned me an easy laugh.  “My name is Isaac Sloan.  Solomon the shipwright recommended
me to the Asphodel.”

“I’m
Erik.  Are you here to sign up for a short life of grueling labour and no
reward, or so little as to make no difference?”

“That
is exactly why I’m here.”

“Then
welcome aboard.”

* * *

I was
already hard and tireless from my work on the wharf, but aboard ship I learned
to be agile and quick as well.  I became a regular crewman on the Asphodel, as
at home among the waves as any fish or tern, and joined her many times on her
regular route, a round of the nearby coast and islands lasting between four and
six weeks.  It wasn’t until my third such tour that anything of note occurred. 
We had earlier that day left behind the stone terraces of Baharna, the farthest
point on our circuit, and I was drowsing between shifts.

The
peal of the lookout’s bell cut cleanly through my slumber, punctuated with the repeated
call:  “Pirates astern!”

Seizing
my sword, I stumbled up the ladder to the deck.  It was a clear day and we were
tacking into the wind, the Island of Oriab looming dim and green on our starboard
side.  Every man of the Asphodel’s crew was on deck and armed, mostly with a short-bladed
sword or club.  My weapon was a cutlass with a worn wooden grip.  I had been
careful to keep the blade sharp, but had not yet put it to use.

"Hard-to-starboard!"

Our
pursuer was a shabby but nimble cutter, much too swift for our brig to
outmaneuver.  As the enemy closed, I saw they were emaciated, and their eyes
shot red with pirate’s courage.  They came up on our port side, forcing us to either
reef our sails and be boarded, or risk running aground, no choice at all as the
latter course would leave us like a tortoise turned on its back.

In
the following instant the hulls clashed and groaned, and with the momentum of
the collision they bounded like fleas to our deck.  I should have been brained during
the first sally had Second Mate Jome not shouldered me to the deck as a
pirate’s club, studded with bits of glass, swished overhead to glance off the
mast.  In the pitiless fight which ensued, my shipmates fought with unwavering
focus, chopping and swinging as they hopped about the labyrinth of rope coils
and hatches.  On the relatively clear surface of the forward deck, I made my
stand against a young man with a freshly sunburned face.