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“Clear the camp, Mr Fitzjames!”
The cry came from the east and slithered across the flat shale bed before clattering off the bank to the west.
“I don’t know how many men you have down there, but I reckon you’ve only two rifles. Clear the camp. You have an hour.”
There was no way we could pull a boat. Mr Blanky and the Captain had not returned from the cairn, the landscape was littered with the bodies of murdered officers and Esquimaux, and before we could determine whose hand had done what a great fog had descended bringing with it the creature called Tuunbaq, and those not immediately gored were scattered. Somehow we were luckier than all that. Hickey’s cabal had numbers, guns, and position. The rat bastard might not have got the count but I could have managed it on one of dear old Dundy’s ruined feet, if I hadn’t lately seen them disappear down the gullet of the beast. There were three of us left in that barrel of a camp ground, fish rotting from the inside out, and a good shot could have saved us all the trouble. There was no way we could pull a boat. We had a light sled, little more than a pair of planks on string, and that would have to do. With limited haulage we loaded up the Mule with only the essentials, amongst them half a box of matches, eighteen cans of poisoned veal cutlets, the remainder of Dr Goodsir’s pharmacopeia, spring fashions, and every last bottle of booze we could find.
Bollocks to Hickey. We were leaving and we were taking the party with us. It was two hundred miles to Back Fish River. It had taken us nearly a week to cover the thirty miles from the ships. A vast and uncharted field of stones and misery lay between us and our only possible chance of survival. It was not something one attempted sober.
I pulled a sheet over the Mule, then spun around to stick two fingers up to the east and the mutineer rat farm. Really give them something to think about.
“Well gentlemen, looks like it’s just us,” I said. I kicked one of the runners and grabbed hold of the rope alongside Little and Jopson. “Forward fucking march.”
We hauled across the tundra for as long as we could, the steady crunching of our boots measuring the time and distance between us and the forsaken camp. We did not make conversation. The urgency of our retreat fell away and was replaced with weariness and hunger, a gnawing knot within each of us that we knew would not be sated by the supplies we were dragging behind us. As each step became agony and the air pierced my lungs I decided we had to stop. Little assembled our single tent while Jopson got a small fire going. I patrolled about, creating an arbitrary perimeter we had no means of defending. Our scraps of kindling would not last long. I kicked about for anything useful amongst the flat wretched rocks and came up empty. There was no sign we were being pursued by man or beast so I turned my attention to libations. The air was cooling rapidly and even when darkness came it would last only a couple of hours. I would study the stars when they showed themselves, and attempt to plot our progress across the maps. But until then there was rum.
The bottles we had were miraculously almost full. I made a show of digging around in the pile of things on the Mule before calling over to the fire.
“What, no glasses, Jopson?”
“Afraid not, sir,” he replied, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Dashed uncivilised, though I suppose we can make do.”
Every muscle screamed as I dropped to the ground beside him. I raised the bottle to my lips and took a long gulp. The sweet liquid heat washed through me and settled to a slow burn in my empty stomach. I passed the bottle to Jopson and he did the same, hissing through his teeth before handing it back.
“Splice the mainbrace with us, Lieutenant,” I called to Little, who was standing a way off, staring out into nothing.
“Sir?”
“We made it through one whole day out here, Edward,” I said, waving the bottle at him. “I don’t know how many more we’re going to be able to say that for. Have a drink, would you?”
He waited a moment, giving no further indication of having heard me, and then turned to join us. We sat quietly for some time, passing the bottle back and forth until the glow of the fire and the alcohol loosened our tongues. I told some of my old stories, classics from the Clio days, and one or two that weren't for dinner and esteemed company. When we broke out a second bottle and some madeira along with it, Edward sang songs from France, in a surprisingly sonorous baritone that stunned Jopson and I into silence before he switched to bawdy drinking songs and we joined in.
*****
Jopson was clattering about in the trunks on the Mule, searching for another bottle, so I thought. Instead he produced a bowl and a badger brush, a mirror and soap, and began arranging them on a case by the fire. It appeared, out here, in my drifting mind, as a ritual or a meditation. A dance. I was mesmerised. He plucked the madeira from Edward’s hand and took a swig, then poured a splash into the little round bowl.
“Needs must,” he said, passing the bottle back.
He lathered some soap with the brush and I watched him sweep thick white stripes across his face and then carve long lines through it with the razor, clearing the weeks of shadow that had accumulated. He caught my eye once or twice in the mirror and when he had finished and wiped his face clear of the lather, he gestured at his makeshift barber shop.
“Captain?” he offered.
“How drunk are you?” I said, looking between the bottles and the razor. “Because I’m sauced.”
“Not so much I’ve forgotten how to do my job.”
“My first madeira shave. Why not?”
Jopson dipped the brush into the wine and set to working up more soap. He held my head, one hand cupped about my jaw and ear as he drew the brush over my face. At this distance I could see the little spots of soap he had missed on his own cheek and wiped them away with my thumb. My beard didn’t grow in as thick and he made quick work of removing what little there was of it. I appreciated the attention, and I believe he appreciated the work. How many more times on this journey could vanity and deft fingers be indulged?
Edward of course declined a shave. This fucker, I thought, could only be hoping to be mistaken for a beast if Tuunbaq returns for us. His hair had grown long and fell about his face, pulled by the wind like something out of Byron. His beard was ragged, and though he refused the razor Jopson eventually succeeded in cajoling him.
“You don’t have to look at the bloody thing. How do you think we feel? If you don’t let me at least tidy it up I shall shave you bald the next time you pass out.”
And so Edward allowed Jopson to trim the longer ends until the steward smiled sweetly and declared him very dashing indeed.
As Jopson cleared his things away I joined him at the Mule. He was rolling up a cigarette from an unexpected tobacco stash.
“A gift,” he explained, ducking his head. “For the promotion. Do you want one?”
I waved him off.
“Let’s open the box,” I slurred. “I know the good Doctorsir is holding.”
I rummaged through the provisions until I found the medicine case. Just a light wine and coca, no need to get into the serious stuff. Behind the case was a sad and charred bundle I had tucked away, salvaged really. I had found the dress in a heap of things padding out the trunk of rockets and taken it as a sign.
“Fuck it, if we’re going to die out here, I’d like to do it looking fabulous,” I said as I stripped down to pull the dress over my head.
“Do I get a costume too?” Jopson asked, his face as wide and bright as the moon.
“We gave the men our costumes,” Edward grunted, as if he had ever wanted to wear anything other than a uniform.
“Everyone gets to look fabulous,” I declared and took a pull from the Peruvian. “Drink up. Pick out something pretty.”
Jopson unfurled a pair of crooked angel’s wings. The wire holding them together was easily bent back into shape, and the gold detailing glittered in the firelight and caught his eyes, distracting from the shabby tattered strips of white fabric.
“Will you play, Edward?”
“Depends what you bring me,” he relented, making no move to get up from the fire.
“Shall we be nice to him?” I asked Jopson with a wink.
He bumped my shoulder in reply and took out a long robe. It may have once been the same colour as my dress, but the velvet was now faded and softened with wear. The trim had seen better days, something of a common theme, and the faux ermine was matted and grey. The crown was even less impressive, being merely card painted yellow with cut out paper jewels. Jopson walked over, a divine emissary, to where Edward lounged and set the crown on his head, pressing it down over his hair.
“Quite the prince,” I called, enjoying the boozy blush that dusted his cheeks.
As the embers of our fire died, Jopson and I danced pressed cheek to cheek. Edward crooned softly, some melody I faintly remembered from home, and laughed at Jopson ineptly leading me about the waltz. We fell into our tent and missed the sunrise.
*****
In the morning, Jopson cut the skirts to my thigh.
There was still some alcohol sloshing around in my blood and I couldn’t bear to be stuffed back into trousers and shirt sleeves. Edward and Jopson started putting their costumes away but I protested.
“Die. Looking fabulous.”
“You can’t wear that to walk,” Edward had said, indicating where the dress dragged along the ground, and it seemed more practical to alter the garment than the man.
The miles were endless, and wore away at our spirits. Half bleached blind by the sun and pale plains, it was all we could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It did a man no good to be faced with so much emptiness. An abundance of absence could turn a brain inside out.
“What is that?”
Edward, whose eyes never stopped scanning the nothingness around us, started running ahead. Truly we were all going out of our minds in different ways. He dropped to his knees and scrabbled around in the stones and then ran, again! Back towards us. In this barren wilderness I was perfectly content to let the few points of interest come to me. What good did it do to go running headlong into things. How could a true appreciation for potential be achieved if its mundanity were exposed right away. No, the longer I didn’t know what was going on the better, but that wouldn’t wash with Edward. He held in his hand some leaves and stalks that looked very much like every other leaf or stalk I’d ever seen in my life. They were distinct, however, in being the only vegetation any of us had seen for months.
“The hell is that?”
“I’m not a fucking botanist, it’s a plant.”
“Nothing good could grow out here, put it back.”
“I’m going to eat it,” Edward said, but instead of putting it in his mouth he held it out to us. “Should I eat it?”
The leaves were small and flat and diamond shaped, the stalks thick and covered in fine white hairs. Some kind of native nettle, perhaps. But then I wasn’t a fucking botanist either. We stood there, gathered around Edward’s handful of plant, looking at each other uncertainly.
“Oh, fuck it,” I sighed and grabbed a leaf. “If only to move the plot along.”
Jopson followed suit, sniffing suspiciously at the stalks.
“I figure it’ll either kill us or cure us,” Edward said.
“Wouldn’t either be a mercy,” I said with a rueful smile. “Chin chin.”
I put the leaf on my tongue and chewed. Immediately my mouth filled with saliva, an ocean to battle the bitter and sour needles that were jabbing at me. Tears sprung to my eyes. Jopson made a face.
“I suppose it’s possible it does nothing and just tastes really bad,” he winced.
“Quiet,” I said.
“Eat your vegetables,” Edward barked at the same time and lunged for Jopson, shoving the rest of the leaves into his face, the pair of them yelping and squirming around each other, laughing stupidly, giddy on exhaustion and pain.
“Christ, it’s awful.”
I swallowed the small pellet of chewed leaf. Edward was still masticating, a stalk sticking out between his lips, sending Jopson into interminable giggles. We carried on walking and eventually reached the place where the plant was growing at a reasonable pace, without running. Edward bent to pick more of it, stripping the leaves and discarding the root and tougher stalks. I looked at him in disbelief.
“What? It’s not bad.”
“You said Christ it’s awful half a second ago. It’s terrible.”
“It’s… fresh?”
“Suit yourself.”
Jopson took another couple of leaves and the rest went into the pocket of Edward’s coat.
“Oh Tom, not you too?”
“It’s like medicine,” he said. “Like sour apples and cloves. Maybe it is good for us.”
It was only a few minutes later that I noticed a strange taste in my mouth. Or rather, the lack of a taste. I ran my tongue around my gums to be sure. There was no pain.
“Gentlemen, my teeth have stopped bleeding,” I announced.
Jopson pushed a finger into his mouth and inspected the result.
“Me too.”
“Right, more leaves, Nedward. Hand them round.”
We chewed more horrible bitter mouthfuls of the plant. I took a wad of pulp from my mouth. It never seemed to break down, as though we could just keep milling it between our teeth forever. Though the leaves were a pale green it became almost black when mulched up. It had no particular smell. Before the hour was up the shale beneath our feet began to list this way and that, pitching and rising like waves beneath our feet as our legs turned to gelatine. The Mule became a dead weight, anchoring me as I clung to it for dear life. I could see Edward walking ahead, his knees bowed out and twisted, his arms like ropes reaching out for a hold he couldn’t find. Each little stone became a church window, colour and light, cartwheeling away. Even closing my eyes couldn’t stop it.
“That’s some medicine,” I said. Holy Jesus.
Unfortunately the healing properties of the nettles were as potent as the illusions and we were sick and dying men. The formalities of rank and file had fallen away and we did whatever we could to hold on to the last of our humanity and hold back the terrible cold. We chewed leaves constantly, hungrily gathering more whenever we found a sparse crop fighting its way through the rocks. In a cloud of swirling lights our pain lifted and over days the various fluids, viscera, and rot receded.
Ned carried his boots. His feet turned more to leather with each step. Not even an Esquimaux would go without four or five seals wrapped around their feet, but he wouldn’t be swayed. Half the time he also threw off his great coat and marched across the shale with only a chestful of dark hair between him and the wind, braces looped and swaying around his knees. His drug of choice was the landscape, and he intended for it to consume him in return.
“You have to give yourself to this place,” he would declare, stopping suddenly in his stride to heave great breaths of air. “There’s no beating it. We’re a part of it now.”
Jopson meanwhile was near out of his mind on wine and coca. His eyes swivelled in his head as he continually exclaimed about bugs and bats and ballrooms. Not an hour would pass without him springing like a mad hare to tell me about the creatures scurrying across the ground and over his skin. Now and then he would wave the bottle of Peruvian at me, the last dregs sloshing around in the dark glass. I only took a tiny sip.
That was all I needed to get the blood going, inject a bit of vim. I took a rum in the morning to see off my headache, and a rum in the evening to warm my toes. I chewed nettles to stop the agony in my bones. Gin and cigarettes were essential the rest of the time to take the edge off the Peruvian. Well, someone had to keep their goddamn head after all.
We slept every day but I hadn’t slept in a hundred years. I had never slept. The dead silence only put me on edge, and amplified every breath, every heart beat, every loose rock. My bones shook and cracked and my muscles wasted away. I never slept. I never felt awake.
“Is this what being alive is?” I whispered to no one at all.
“Why did we come here?” I didn’t know if I had ever known.
“You were looking for something,” Jopson answered from leagues away.
You, of course, because he had already found all he needed. Now look at him, the poor bastard.
We slept curled and close together. At first for the warmth, then later for the company. Ned in the middle, by virtue of running hotter than a brick furnace, and not constantly fidgeting as Jopson did.
“Is there any water?” Ned asked, his eyes glazing over. “I should like to float away for a while.”
“Shh,” I soothed, and pressed a hand to his chest, my fingers winding through the hairs. “Stay with us.”
He clamped a heavy hand over mine and held me there, a weight pinning him to the ground.
“Make me.”
Death would have been easier, of course. The days became less about how far we walked or which direction. Only that we walked at all mattered. That we chose to continue being, existing. Our bodies were no longer putrefying where we stood, but we were starving. And our minds, well, how much could we take before it all fell apart.
“Can someone please tell me if they also see that bird?” Jopson asked, hypnotised by his imagination.
I could not see any bird. What I could see was the vast white sky, a sheet of ice balanced above us, unbroken in every direction, no leads. I pitched low and sideways in an attempt to keep out of its range and saw Edward doing the same. Jopson was pouring with sweat, and when I touched my own forehead my fingers came away slick and cold.
“I'm going to eat it as soon as I hit it,” he cried and aimed his gun, firing a shot straight up, cracking the air in two.
Oh Jesus fuck. We were in the middle of a war.
There was a flat hollow boom that echoed across the plains and my head almost exploded. The musket ball whizzed past me, inches from where its cousin had hit a lifetime ago. I spun on the spot, squinting and searching the distant banks for rifles.
“Fucker’s shooting at us,” I yelled, as if it wasn’t entirely obvious.
“What? Where?” Edward swung his gun round. “I can't see anything, the sky is falling in.”
“Hickey! Over there! Can you mark him, lads?”
“Shoot the birds!” Jopson screamed.
“We'll be crushed!” Edward yelled.
“Birds? You need to worry about the rat farm. They're shooting cannons at us.”
I took cover behind the Mule and did my best to ignore the writhing beasts forming from the ropes and furs. I fumbled through our things until I found the rockets and set the stand aiming back the way we had come. The fizz of the fuse sent ripples down my spine until I thought I would vibrate right out of my skin. Then the rocket shot off, peeling and whining towards the bank.
“Maybe that’ll put him down,” I said. “Or maybe it’ll provoke him.”
Out of the rocket's explosion came the Tuunbaq, tearing towards us, blood on its jaws. Its head was low, like a charging bull, the shale kicking up in great sprays around it. It bellowed until my heart stopped and my ears rang, its mouth a gaping black hole.
When Jopson saw it he forgot about his birds, threw his gun down and ran at it, screaming just as loud.
“Where is he? Tell me.”
I could only lie there, sprawled out on the ground. Only the tips of my fingers would move, my arms and legs dead completely. Even my eyeballs were stuck, helplessly watching Tom Jopson trying to start a fist fight with an ice demon.
Edward had a rifle to his shoulder, trained on the beast although his eyes were on Jopson.
“Please. Please, Tom.”
Jopson was like a feral cat, his claws raised and hackles up. He just kept screaming the same thing over and over, storming towards the creature with his arms waving, teeth and eyes flashing bright.
“Jopson! It’ll tear your head off what the fuck are you doing?”
“It’s seen him, I can tell. Where is he? It’s seen him. It knows where the Captain is, I’m telling you. What have you done with him? Where is he?”
Tears streaked his face, tracking lines through the dust and dirt. He charged the creature again, and I felt my lungs seize up as Edward ran forward to stop him. With a roar the Tuunbaq coiled up, the tension rippling through it, and then released, its colossal claws slicing up in a great arc. I saw Edward and Jopson fly into the air but I did not see them land.
When I woke up my skin itched and crawled all over, but I could at least breathe and move again. It took a moment to realise this was somewhat unexpected.
“What happened? Did you pricks give me heroin? Was I narrating? Read it back, Jopson.”
There had been a writing desk once, I had seen it with my own eyes. A lovely little desk from which one might pen one’s correspondence.
“Jopson?”
Shit. Well that was that. I only hoped there was enough strychnine in the medicine case that I wouldn't feel the bite of exposure too bad-
“Here, James, here.”
I heard a scrambling over the rocks and there he was. Jopson leaned over me and I saw the scratches and the bruising on his face.
“What happened?”
“Tuunbaq, sir.”
Clipped military tones, as if I wasn't half dead, half baked, and wearing half a dress. Edward was there too, though I couldn't see him. I almost passed out again.
“Yes, I gathered that, thank you, Lieutenant. What happened?”
“I’m so so sorry, James,” Jopson’s hands were on my face, smoothing back my hair. He pressed cool fingers to my forehead and I realised I was on fire. My skin trembling and burning up.
“I could tell, you see, from the look of the thing. I don’t know how to explain it. I looked in its eyes and I knew it had seen the Captain. But I don't know when or where and I couldn’t ask and it couldn't tell me. But I just kept screaming and then it attacked, and Ned tried to save me. It must have run off after, I don't know.”
He was jabbering like a damn maniac, a torrent of words like a waterfall. So much bad gibberish, we all needed to calm down. I pulled myself up onto my elbows and gripped on to his shoulders.
“It's okay, it's okay. Just try to relax, we're all here? Yes? We're alive?”
“I think so.”
I looked around for Edward. He was sitting against the Mule, his coat draped over his shoulders. There was a long red slash from his collarbone across to his ribs, blood drying on his stomach. He was chewing up leaves and stuffing them into the wound.
“Good thinking,” I mumbled, my eyelids growing heavy again.
“Tom’s idea.”
“I hope it works. Pass me that laudanum.”
It was Ned who spotted them first. He pointed to a white shape tumbling towards us like a great snowball.
“The ice is coming for us,” he said numbly.
Only as it got closer it became clear it was not ice, but rather beast. Tuunbaq. It was heading straight for us once again, the scent of blood probably having drawn it along for miles. It lumbered on limbs too long, fast but not full speed. Not an attack.
“Is that?” Tom said, rubbing at his eyes, his voice faltering. “Please, is that Mr Blanky riding Tuunbaq?”
Our minds were scrambled, but it did indeed look as though the old sod’s prophecy had come true and he had tamed the creature that taunted and haunted and hunted us. And now he rode upon its back, the debt for his leg repaid, his hand fisted in the fur of its neck. He was waving, and as they got closer the unmistakable hooting and hollering of one Thomas Blanky carried across the tundra. It really was him.
The beast took a skidding halt and as it turned we saw three figures close behind it. Only one of them didn’t flinch as Tuunbaq galloped back to them. They stood in apparent conference and then set out towards us. I would have believed it were a mirage if I couldn't tell from their faces that Ned and Tom saw it too.
As the gap between our parties closed one figure fell into the Captain’s distinctive gait. I had taken so many steps beside him I could hardly mistake it. Francis. We are saved. The words passed my lips without a sound.
“We are saved,” Tom and Ned and I spoke all at once.
Abandoning the Mule, we broke into a run. Ned outstripped us easily, sprinting towards our friends, towards an unknowable beast, with supernatural strength. I was close to collapse. It was Blanky on Tuunbaq, and Francis walking alongside, and there was Goodsir and Lady Silence. I couldn't be sure we weren’t running straight into heaven. If it were death I welcomed it.
I watched Tom and Ned fall upon the Captain, nearly knocking him off his feet. Blanky slid down and landed with a practiced grace beside Tuunbaq, a hand patting its neck as he walked forward, with no trace of pain or a limp, to shake my hand.
“Thomas,” I gasped, embracing him. When we parted I saw the twisted metal at his lapel.
“I like your buttonhole,” I said, brushing my thumb over the fork tines.
“A good luck charm,” he said, gravelly and gleeful.
“Here’s to that.”
“It gets better, Jimbo,” he said.
He was almost dancing with excitement. It took a moment to register what he meant. I hadn’t thought of the Passage for miles. It had lost its meaning. But suddenly it all came back. The bastard had done it. I clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed.
“I should like to see it.”
“Oh, you will.”
I turned then to Goodsir, who had watched patiently and sweetly.
“It is unbelievably good to see you, Doctor,” I said.
“And you, sir. This is Silna.”
He held hands with the Lady Silence. They had become so alike, like serene chess pieces. Perhaps they always had been. Silna stepped forward and I bowed a little, unsure of the custom. Her expression was fixed neutral as she pulled at the skin of my face, which had lost some of its meat, and then at my lips, to peer at my gums, and then my eyes, taking in the red rims. She broke into a laugh and rolled her eyes as she turned back to Goodsir. The doctor only smiled sympathetically at me.
“She says if you made a tea instead of eating it you wouldn’t be so stoned out of your heads.”
“She said that?” I asked as I looked between them, a great tidal wave swelling in my heart.
“In a manner of, er, speaking, yes,” Goodsir replied sheepishly. “What else have you taken?”
“Today? Oh, you know. Magic nettles, tincture of opium. Peruvian. Half a bottle of gin.”
“Oh- okay,” the doctor stuttered. “Well, I was going to say I was worried about how much you’re sweating, but I think it would be rather worse if you weren’t.”
Francis had freed himself from his lieutenants by then and approached me. He arched an eyebrow and looked me up and down.
“Am I late to the ball, Miss Fitzjames?”
It was only then I remembered what we must look like. Whatever kind of startling vision our friends had been to us, we must have appeared as an otherworldly apparition. He caught my wrist and pulled me close.
“I feared you gone,” he said against my ear, his voice coming out cracked and hoarse.
“Still standing,” I said, although it was extremely difficult under the circumstances.
“And your wounds?”
“My wounds are fine. Squeeze as hard as you’d like.”
His arms coiled tight about my ribs, his hands were strong and flat on my back. I let my knees give and buried my face in the crook of his shoulder as he held me. Safe. Warm. We are saved.
“Will we live, Francis?” I whispered against his collar.
“We will live, James.”