Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [109]
“Or not,” said Tim, and grinned. His teeth were bleeding and his eyes were full of tears. “Let’s do it. Before we all go mad. We’re dead anyway if we don’t.”
Skip’s teeth chattered loudly in my ear. “Oh shit,” he moaned in a terrible, deep voice that sounded nothing like him.
“Each of us equal—”
“Oh, God,” said Dan.
“… lots …”
“There’ll never be a ship,” said Skip bleakly, “never.”
“I can’t stand this anymore,” I said. “I’m with Tim.”
“Wait!” Dan cried out. “One more day.”
“What’s the point?” Tim sort of laughed, his voice high.
“One more day.”
“Why have you got the gun? Ain’t we equal?”
Dan put his head in his hands. The horizon soared high and dropped away. Soared high. Nothing happened for ages, just Skip’s eyes getting bulgier and more terrible. “There are demons,” he said, clutching me harder. I wrenched my hand from his and hit out at him. Tim put his arms round me, both his arms. He was a lot bigger than me and I got a funny feeling I can’t explain, almost as if he was my mother or something. I didn’t want to get tearful now, it would be too hard, so I put it away in the back of me.
“God send a ship,” Dan said.
Which was stupid because, one way and another, enough praying had gone on in that boat to sanctify all the holy places of the earth, and it had long since become plain that God didn’t answer. Not so’s the average idiot could understand anyway. You could cry, “save me, save me” all you liked, but it wasn’t going to make any difference to what was going to happen. But we did anyway. Cried “save me, save me” all in our own ways, with or without words, as you do, all morning and all afternoon, looking for a coast, a golden clime, till I felt my mind going again, and Dan took the gun out and laid it between us in the middle of our circle.
“I don’t care,” he said. “You can shoot me if you like.”
All this time our mouths were steadily clagging up again. It was hours since our last drink. They frothed and gibbered revoltingly, gumming together, pulling apart with great effort to slobber forth the words. We were hideous. A light rain was coming on, silver and grey and very beautiful. Wonderfully cool on my forehead.
“There’s rules,” Tim said seriously.
“Rules!” Dan threw back his head and laughed like his old drunk self.
“It has hooves,” said Skip.
Dan laughed harder. You’d have thought he was sitting in the gods at the Empire.
“Anyway, you’ve got a family and all that,” said Tim, and that stopped him laughing and had him suddenly all dissolved in tears like a big rock toppling. He hung his head and wept softly, mouth distorted in a monkey grin.
“Equal shares,” said Tim.
Dan wiped his nose on his sleeve, put his face down farther till his shaggy head was resting on his knees, wrapped his arms tight round himself and shook hard, and that was it again for a while, as if we could only proceed in quick bursts and long vacancies. The sting brought me out of it. It had been constant and vile for a long time, but for some reason in the past hour had reached the pitch of madness, specially in the cracks of my elbows, where it raged and groaned and made me yearn for claws to tear it with.
“Drink,” I whispered.
The rain had stopped. My tongue would go again soon. Puff itself up like a bladder and demand air.
“Yes, drink.” Tim touched Dan’s arm. “Have to.”
Dan raised his head and looked at us with something like humour. “Of course,” he whispered.
“Equal shares,” said Tim, reaching for the old tin cup.
Things would happen. I’d lie here and watch. If I once closed my eyes I could sleep for years and years like Rip Van Winkle and return into some other place. When the water came my way I received it as a sacrament. I kept my eyes wide open. What a bright, beautiful-sounding world we were in, humming and shushing all around us, bobbing us here and there, cat’s paws spinning us; what a weird violet sky. There was blood in the water from someone’s mouth. Dan was still crying, and it was catching. It was the cool water on my tongue tipped me over, it was so