Someone would find us if we had a fire.
Someone would save us if we had a fire. It’s the rule of the ice.
They’d just save us for later.
I’m colder than you. Pull your leg in and close the gap with the head.
You’ll have to unscrew the leg.
It’s off. We’ll have a nap. It’s warm through.
Into the belly of the beast, foot to head, the two of us about to be birthed into another world not half so—
That was quite a bear.
Not so much white as green. I thought it was a shrub come to life.
Not as green as that.
Mossy.
If you be the back legs, I’ll be the front and we’ll creep up to a pack of them.
The front paws are frozen dead to the drift.
Pull, pull.
No, sleep, sleep.
Sleep will kill us.
Sleep.
Open the wound as a window.
There. Now the snow is houses-high.
There be no houses here.
Some new snow, as I said.
You forget how much in your sleep. It’s no deeper.
We’ll sink and be swallowed, we’ll need a boat to cross it.
It will harden or it will melt.
What’s that coming? Another bear?
Quit your shaking, you with your mighty cutlass.
He wanted our bear.
He wanted a bit of talk.
He wanted to separate us and then slaughter us.
He wanted to get inside.
A South Seas whaler, can you imagine that? A man from the colonies is a rare enough but a whaler from such a place, coming all the way from what they call the Viceroyalty of Peru to here?
Must’ve been pressed.
Must’ve been hard pressed.
So all the time you had a paper.
Aye.
Kind of him to read it.
He thought it would save him, I thought it would save me. Baltrick wrote it out, the cur. But instead of it swearing I’d been forced—
It said to kill us.
It were the Black Spot, only with words. I could have read the Black Spot. At least I didn’t give it to the gaoler.
You get to your death and it says the same for everyone.
I should have learnt to read words.
And myself!
The paper was very complimentary to my bravery.
He read it wrong.
You’re a cagey brother. It shows we are not related, this caginess.
You were looking at me with eyes penny-size whilst his whale-lance whistled through the bear.
His face was at me so sudden.
We had the bear’s true likeness with that fur upon us so well and tight, and breathing hard with us going about inside. He was no fool.
Too bad you hit him so hard.
I didn’t think so quick as my cutlass.
We could have wanted more of a talk from him.
Aye. A bit more before the dying.
At least he read out the paper.
But he ate the paper.
Must’ve been hungry. All those weeks he had without what you need, food or a drink of water. Alone.
Put your hat on your head, your nose has gone black.
By the blood of the bear.
That whaler thought you were the almighty himself, with a pitchfork and tails, and that by reading he could get a berth with you, the devil-priest carrying the paper for our hangings.
You’ll not remember.
What?
He was our brother. See the ring on his last finger but one? A perfect emblem of the scar on your back.
You’ll be seeing brothers in bears next. You are saying we shouldn’t eat him?
I am not saying so much as that. I’m saying Brother!
A South Seas pinkie whaler? Ma could do better than that.
Brother!
He would eat you and then me if we had not been so fast. Better we drag the leg of the bear with us for food and keep watch for the boat he left behind him with others of his like. He’s not going to spoil.
I’ll keep my cutlass clean.
Let’s try seven paces forward and then seven west and seven north and fourteen east, each time forcing a distance away from them without returning.
I hope you prove better with numbers than with letters.
Seven’s the number, a lucky one. See, we’re moving directly in one direction even though we’re touching all four of them.
Seven, and seven, and seven. The seven seas. I can do sevens.
And fourteen. Oh, for a cove and the depths.
You did make a pirate, didn’t you, after all, brother?
Seven.
Sorry. You have to watch which way. Now I’ve lost count.
What’s this? Did somebody else leave their golden gods out on the ice like a service was wanting? Is this a regular dropping off spot for sacrileges? What could the priests and Beezlebub be thinking? All of them in a nice little row like that, not buried nor mapped neither.
Quiet now, silence. You’ll shake the snow off the cliffs.
I have the need to speak as much as you do. South Seas, South Seas.
Spit it out. South Seas! But silent. By the by, isn’t that your ear there we saw from the last time around?
The navigator’s. Too tough, remember?
Perhaps our boat met the South Seas’. “Two Boats Abraided by the Icy Seas” be the figure.
Aboutface on seven, lips or no lips, I say. We’re walking away from them, we’re leaving them.
Was that a whole turn or a half?
The wind feels by half.
Yes, that’s good. I remember the wind against the gold.
Nothing can scare me after Ma.
Must be death coming on if you’re telling me about our old Ma again. Must be death in a hat or all this quiet.
Shshshsh. Someone’s abreast of us.
It’s gone, whatever followed.
There’s always blood to mark the spot.
Only if it were plenty.
You want to kill me to mark it.
I did not say that.
It were on your very lips.
Nothing but ice on my very lips. Let’s leave the cutlass instead of blood. Finders would know pirates was here with such a one as yours, with the rubies at the hilt.
You just want me unarmed, you’re wanting me to leave it so you can grab it and use it on me and then eat me too, your own brother.
Never. Truly, never. Ach — these lips.
You’re not going to bother with a match or some wood like you did the others, you’re just going to take my cutlass and stick me to mark the treasure with and then eat me raw and bloody.
Bloody hell.
Give the eye up.
It’s mine.
Give it up.
I don’t have it.
I know which pocket.
Oh, which?
She was my woman and not no one else’s — not Peters’ nor yours, you traitor of the seven seas. Brother!
Give me that back, give it to me—
Traitor.
You threw it, you half-a-brother with half-a-leg and one eye and no brain and a hook, with an idiot’s stagger and the pirate’s want of parts lost out of stupidity and cupidity and titty — goodbye this time for good or ill. Goodbye and nothing. You can find your own way, you can crutch along until your stump goes soft, you jealous slag. I’m away, I’m off, I’m gone.
28
You cast out the whale’s eye?
My brother threw it.