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Sometimes, on cold nights where the chill seeped through the bricks and windows of his bedroom, through the layers of blankets piled atop the bed, Solomon dreamt of shale. And he dreamt of souls.
It always began the same way. He found himself before the gallows, hands bound, Crozier’s voice droning in his Irish brogue. In his dreams, the words were strange and distorted, reduced to meaningless gibberish, but the captain was straight-backed and strong, just as he had been the last time Solomon had seen him. The features of his pock-marked face were clear and sharp. That was more than he could say for the others. Men he had known, men had had laughed with, had been reduced to misty smears in navy blue uniforms, a faceless, hostile crowd. As the months marched on like men over shale, more of the crew lost their faces in the fog, cast aside like so many of the useless things they had thrown away on the walk out.
As Crozier spoke, Solomon waited. The noose was empty; Hickey wasn’t there. Solomon never dreamed of Hickey, and so there was little else to do but stand silently. Although he knew what would happen, he was somehow always surprised when Collins emerged from the gloom, laughing raucously, and the beast lurched out after him.
Unearthly screams interrupted the captain as mist-shrouded men ran and the beast gave chase. Blood sprayed against the shale and he tasted iron in the air and in his mouth. Solomon ran for the armory because he always ran for the armory. It never occurred to him to do anything else. Working his hands free of their bonds, he leapt over the dead and dying. Most were made unrecognizable by their wounds; yet, there were men he did recognize who, by all accounts, should not have been there. Heather lay with his skull broken open, trampled anew by the crew fleeing the creature. Bryant was covered by a collapsed tent and his severed head was resting several feet away. Oddly enough there was even Braine, buried and abandoned on Beechey, flesh waxy and frozen.
As he came upon the armory, Tommy lay torn upon on the shale, eyes glassy and empty. Solomon stopped, struck by the sight. Were his eyes green? Solomon could have sworn they had been blue. He stood there for a very long time before he looked away and grabbed the guns. This was when Little was supposed to arrive, and yet the camp had gone silent and still, shrouded in milk-white fog.
The world shifted strangely, and when it reformed, he stood alone in an empty expanse of shale. Tommy was gone, the armory was gone, so too were the rest of the tents and the blood and the bodies. Some distance ahead, a shadow staggered through the fog, and fell upon the ground as the beast careened into him.
It was not Mr. Collins. Instead of the second mate, it was Edward Little’s wet eyes glaring at him, betrayed. He seemed uniquely unbothered by the beast rending open his ribcage and snuffling around the steaming, red flesh inside. Cracked lips moved soundlessly, and Solomon stepped forward as though it was possible to hear what he was saying. At the clatter of the shale beneath his feet, the beast pulled its too human face from Little’s innards, lips wet with blood. It perfunctorily stepped forward, crushing the rest of the lieutenant's torso beneath its paw, and began to suckle out his soul.
Fear turned oddly to fury, to anguish. Little’s soul was iridescent and accusatory and blindingly bright, vanishing into the beast’s maw in a stream of golden light. Solomon made a choked sound, raised his rifle, and charged forward.
Snorting, the beast regarded him flatly and said, “Tozer.” Then, as he stopped, confused, it added, louder. “Tozer!”
He jerked awake, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, chest heaving and blind with panic. A hand caught his shoulder, gentle but strong, and kept him from leaping to his feet. Blinking, he settled and found Edward Little leaning over him in his nightgown, wrapped in a brown woolen robe. It was still strange to see him in anything but blue.
“Did I wake you?” Solomon asked, voice rough.
“You were screaming,” said Little levelly. Streaming weakly through the windows, the moonlight threw into relief the small, pinprick scars in his face, a small constellation of grief. “I could hear you from down the hall.”
There were dark shadows under his dark eyes. Solomon doubted he had been sleeping, but misliked the idea that he had disturbed the former lieutenant. “M’sorry.” Then, compelled by some urge to explain himself, he added, “Nightmare.”
“I’m sure.” Primly, Little pulled his hand off Solomon’s shoulder and began to rise from where he was perched on the edge of the mattress. “Goodnight, sergeant.”
The thought of Little padding back to his room at the end of the hall was a deeply unpleasant one. It was not enough—not now, fresh from a night terror—to content himself with the knowledge that he was here in the house. “D’you ever have them, lieutenant?”
“I’m a lieutenant no longer.” He stilled, standing and frowning down at him.
“And I’m only a carpenter, not a sergeant,” said Solomon. “Don’t hear me correcting you.”
An extended silence. Dark brown eyes, flecked with moonlight, flickered over his face. “Perhaps you should.” Another pause, as Little wet his lips. “Of course I have them.”
“Every night? As you had them on the ship?” There had only been two survivors to pull from King William’s land and they had spent weeks confined to the sick bay together, where Solomon had become intimately familiar with the panicked, distressed sounds Little made in his sleep.
“Does it matter?” Little folded his arms across his chest, frowning deeply.
Shifting, Solomon propped himself up on one elbow, exposing his shoulders to the night air. “I can help.”
Eyebrows knit together, and his nose scrunched up, highlighting one of the piercing scars in the tissue of his nose. “You need not burden yourself with the matter.”
“It’s cold,” Solomon breathed, trying to mask the plea in his voice.
A curt nod. “I know.”
“Must you make me ask for it?”
“No,” said Little, voice quiet. Wordlessly, he tuned back and came to the bed, crawling in as Solomon raised the corner of the sheets up.
There was the awkward reshuffling of limbs—easier now that the simple act of knocking their knees together wouldn’t result in a fresh, purple bruise. Solomon shifted to his side, his good shoulder pressed against the mattress, loose-limbed and compliant as Little burrowed into his embrace.
“Why have we not weaned ourselves of this?” The former lieutenant asked quietly, even as his arm snaked around Solomon’s waist. Little pillowed his forehead against his collarbone, unwilling to look him in the face. Warm, familiar, comforting breath ghosted over the skin of his neck.
Why do men do anything? Solomon thought. Why had Little strung the chains through his face? Why had Solomon, staggering bloody into the ruins of that camp, expend the last of his resources to keep him alive? When they had come across their salvation, why had Little lied on his behalf, sparing him the noose? And now, here they were, the sole survivors of the greatest tragedy of their time, two men who the rest of the world had yet to realize were only ghosts, souls left on the shale.
A soft sigh. “We are weak men,” finished Little.
Solomon would have bristled at that accusation once. Even now, it rankled some, but he had seen the end of the earth. He had seen a man’s soul. He had seen the god-shaped hole in the world and survived. He had made it home to England against all odds. The ice had stolen his strength; it had stolen his dignity,; it had taken his rank—but perhaps Solomon had lost that on his own. All things considered, perhaps that was a fair enough price.
“At least we’re alive,” he said.”
Little frowned against his skin. “Everyone says as much and yet I fail to find it much of a consolation.”
Disquieted, Solomon gnawed on the inside of his cheek, suddenly missing the familiar taste of blood, and watched the gauzy curtains glow white under the light of the moon. Outside the window was their quiet street, lined with terrace homes that felt too posh and expensive for him even now. Down the road was the park and market square where Little would meet his sisters from time to time, and further away, near the river, were the Admiralty’s offices, which had offered nothing except frosty silence after they had both rejected their promotions to Commander and Color Sergeant. Beyond that was the sea, and leagues away, the ice. The unyielding pack and the snow and the lights in the sky that danced over the bleached white bones of the men who died there.
Solomon swallowed and placed his chin on the crown of Little’s head, drawing him closer. “And yet you are here.”
“I am,” he murmured. Fingers weakly grabbed the fabric of his shirt.
“With me,” said Solomon, lowering his voice to a whisper.
Little exhaled, soft and slow. He was very warm. “With you.”
What else was there to say? They were alive and safe in the too fancy townhouse they leased from one of Little’s relatives. In the morning, Solomon would go to work, do something meaningful with his hands, and come home to Little reading in the sitting room in front of an unseasonably large fire. They would eat and speak—maybe he could get the other man to laugh—and when the hour grew late, perhaps they would finally go to bed together, rather than this months-long game of going to their separate rooms and pretending that they did not want otherwise.
Nosing his face into Little’s mussed and slightly greasy hair, Solomon passed his mouth over his temple, just light enough that it could be denied as a kiss. And then, he went to sleep.