Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [108]
One day I woke and my tongue was out of my mouth. It had turned into a creature I did not know, lazy and fat, swelling and oozing as it thrust its way out into the light through the slack hole of my mouth. My own tongue made me retch. This brought tears to my eyes, which I gratefully drank. Was then I think I saw Skip’s demon, a cloven-footed, grinning thing like a shadow on the sky, looking sideways at me with bright, intelligent eyes full of mischief. The sky was dark, a morning of rolling black cloud, a quiver on the sky, the sea moaning. I saw it. I looked at Skip, but he was mad, sitting there grinning like his own demon and frightening me with his glare. His whole face had changed. His eyes stuck out painfully, big, goggling balls above the sharp lines of his bones. When I looked back the demon had gone.
I asked for water. That is, I gestured at my mouth and made a noise with my throat, a kind of bark. But Dan said:
“Not yet.”
What followed was a tantrum of the soul, within and completely silent. It’s not fair, I cried. It’s not fair! I didn’t do anything bad!
At last I got a little water, enough to wet my fat tongue. Dan trickled it on my lips from a cup. “Come on, Jaf,” he said, “buck up, boy.”
Water. For a little while we could speak.
“This is ridiculous,” Tim said.
“I want to go home.” Skip hugged his sides.
Home. Hope Ma’s all right. She should be, Charley Grant’s a good sort. Home, Ma, Ishbel, never get back, never go home, never again. A burning place in my chest. Something to hold against the terror, a blanket. I’m alive, burning brightly with a head full of everything that ever was, our Bermondsey home, the Highway, the tiger, the birds, the smell of lemon sherbet.
The night returned, darker than most.
In the morning we drank again, and ate a scrap. Dan showed us what was left of the food: a square of hardtack about the size of a matchbox. We laughed at it. “This is ridiculous,” said Tim, in a tone of mild exasperation. “Enough’s enough. Look at us.”
“Oh, boys,” said Dan, “we’re still breathing.”
We four joined hands. Skip’s face still had that gawk-eyed look on it, his tongue stuck between his teeth. Dan was a hunched, brown, leathery thing, shiny like a polished idol in Jamrach’s shop. God knows what I looked like, and Tim was a bony, brown elf with wide blue eyes and white hair falling down around his face. Smiling. “This is no good,” he said, “it can’t go on. No more.”
Dan said, “Something will happen.”
“Don’t, please don’t tell me.” Skip with his eyes on stalks.
Don’t bulge at me like that, I would have said if I could. His hand in mine was spiky, returning to bone.
“Help me,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” said Dan.
“Help me.”
“Skip, it’s—”
“Help me help me help me …”
His bones go crunch and I look down at his hand crunching mine, our bones together.
The sea threw us up high. The sky was muddy, but white at the edges. I was cold. I saw a fire in my mind, a fire somewhere blazing in a brown fug, a house, warm.
“Hold,” Dan said. “Hold tight, boys.”
“Please,” begged Skip.
“Draw lots,” said Tim.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know.”
“No.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s how it’s done.”
“No, no.”
“Only way. You know.”
“No.”
“It’s sense.”
Skip on one side of me, Tim the other. Skip grips like a madman.
“What’s happening?” he whispered.
“Nothing,” said Dan. “Hold fast now.”
Tim laughed. “It has a name,” he said.
“You mean lots,” Skip said. “Straws.”
“We have to do something.”
“Not yet.”
“The way it is at sea,” said Tim. “You know. It’s how it’s always been done.”
“Where do you think they are?” I said.
“Who?”
“Simon. The captain.”
No answer.
“I think there may still be a ship.” Dan wouldn’t give up.
“Too late for some,” I think I said. Thought it anyhow.
“It could bear down