Chapter Text
How to 200 people vanish?
How do two navy ships, most advanced of their kind anywhere in the world at their time vanish?Vanity? Mutiny? Possibly. But more than likely, the cause was the eyes of an empire, the stress on the commanding officers. Their lack of knowledge of the country they were sailing through, the overinflated sense of self that led to an under inflated pantry’s stock. We’ll be home by Christmas, of course we will.
Where those hulls lie, in the blinding whiteness of an endless tundra, the truth is set in an ice prison. Curled and frost flecked, journals of many seamen, tell of an entity far more sinister in its allure. In its crazed logic, in the smoothness of its reason. If a finger were to touch them, they would surely disintegrate, but as the arctic wind blows upon their pages the words dance to life again.
January 19th 184-
The year evades me, but Sir James is two-month dead and I have not forgot. I have been counting since then. I have to. Someone has to. We are at a stalemate with God. The ice around the hulls of both ships has yet to budge, we are poor of spirit, although what else can we be when we are destitute, many of us dropsied, scurvy riddled, freezing?
Henry is gone, they have taken his body away, not to bury, we have no more coffins and no more dignity to offer the dead. He wasn’t looking at me, when it happened ed. He wasn’t looking at me at all, he was looking through me, at something I could not see.
That dreadful hole in the ice is now scarlet and smells of iron and tears and the souls of good men, it makes my stomach lurch to imagine it even now. It stinks like the depths of unholy hell.
Our canned goods have spoiled, 1000 cans wasted, poisoned with lead.
And yet, we are nowhere near the end of winter. The worst is yet to come.
Marion.
P. S. I had the dream again, it was as vivid as ever. The blue sky. The green surf, the sound of the sea, churning. Sea birds in great numbers. And the voices, those glorious voices from heaven, the ones that cry to me ‘Come Home.! Come home!’
Marion Barbier turned, placed her journal back on the nightstand and shut off her lamp, looking mournfully at the space where Henry used to lie next to her, dishevelled, restful in his large, nautical jumper. She traced the outline of the visage she saw, paying close attention to the thick, curly mutton chops on his cheeks she liked so much and shut her eyes. HMS Erebus groaned and sobbed mournfully as the ice constricted her hull further, as she had done for the last year and a half, and Marion was content to sleep through it. Then. The voices came again. Like a Greek chorus they rose in resplendent cacophony and cried out to her.
Come home!
It was not just the wind; it could not have been because the voices were so frenzied and harsh, she could hear their vocal cords fraying. She felt mad with it, and stood up, running her white, bony hand over her stomach, feeling the cleft of it. Feeling her child, Henry’s child.
COME HOME
She was moving now, in a slow and methodical half waddle to the deck. It was freezing, she was freezing. But she couldn’t stop, she had to go, and she had to go now. Marion had to get home. Her boots, her clothes, skirt, coat, hat, gloves, socks, were all neatly lined up on the chest of drawers in her quarters. She picked up not one. She was going home.
MARION.
“Yes,” she murmured, using a ladder to climb down off the deck of Erebus and onto the ice below, the frozen metal ripping a thin line of flesh off the soles of her feet it seared hot, like a poker, like the scorn of a cat-o-nines. Like the fire of hell. “Yes, I’m coming” she wandered down onto the ice, and heard the panicked cry of the young watchman for her to get inside. The cry that her safety was in jeopardy. She heard quite well, but she did not listen.
COME HOME MARION.
She knew that voice, her mother perhaps? No. It was too kind, too young.
It did not matter who it was. It mattered she got there in good time. A lady is never late, she arrives precisely when she means to. “Goodnight, private!” She called, too full of girlish glee to even consider turning around. “Goodnight, Sir John!” She called down the hole, only a breath away from sliding in as she walked further afield. Away from Erebus. Toward home.
The wind blew gently at her nightdress, making it ripple against her feet. The sand was burning hot against her feet, turning to glass underneath them, she swore it. Was it sand? Snow? No. Not snow, it was to hot for snow. She didn’t recall. Whatever she was walking on crunched underfoot and invaded every pore as she trekked. Maybe she was walking on needles. “Hay in a needle stack, mon Dieu there’s a thought”. She laughed. Not because it was funny, but because of how ridiculous it was. The novelty of the thought. An anecdote for when she got home.
MARION. PLEASE. COME HOME.
Frantic
“I’m listening. Don’t shout. I’m listening” she croaked, marching on. She felt a warmth trickle down her leg and looked to see the snow. (Sand?) Between her skeletal legs turn crimson. “Queer” she hummed “blood’s in” Marion gave it not another thought. She carried on.
COME HOME.