“We’re here,” Harris whispered, cradling a long ornate double-barrelled shotgun, silver trim glinting in the light of a dozen flash-lights. “That door there.”
One of the guards moved to open it, but the Mariner restrained him.
“No, let me. If she sees a familiar face, she might not struggle.”
He crept forward and inched open the door.
Inside was a large room, half bare, the chairs and desk that once adorned it now laying upturned in a corner. The other half was separated into three barred cells, with little more than a wooden board jutting out of the wall acting as a bed.
Only two of the cells were empty.
The Oracle sat in the third, like a dignitary about to play host, just as ethereal in beauty as he’d first experienced. If Harris had been hoping that her incarceration would have weakened her, he was going to be disappointed. Flesh glowed with health, eyes sparkled. One could think her reclining within the cell of her own free will, and only for a matter of minutes, rather than locked there for several weeks, the last of which without nourishment.
Her eyes widened with delight as he entered the room.
“Claude! Oh Claude! How wonderful to see you again. I was saddened by your abrupt departure, there was so much to discuss. And how silly of me not to recognise you. I recognise you now though. Very clearly.”
The Mariner slowly walked towards her cage, the others filing in behind. The Oracle’s smile faltered as she saw his accomplices.
“Oh, Claude, you’ve fallen in with bad company. How sad.” She began searching their faces with her piercing eyes, finally falling on Harris. “And the captain! Back for more games?” Her silky words slithered through the bars. “Loose lips sink ships, wouldn’t you say?”
“Look at the ground, don’t speak to her. Unless you want to end up like the last crew.” The Mariner glared at those behind until they averted their gaze from the caged creature.
“Claude, how could you?” she chuckled in mock anguish. “The least you could have done is bring your friend, he was delightful. So many stories, so much history. Delicious.”
“He’s dead.”
The Oracle shifted uncomfortably. “Dead? Oh my, how sad.”
It doesn’t like not knowing, he thought as he stared at her, powerful yet vulnerable in her enclosure. It’s not used to having to ask. It prefers to take.
“Not interested in my thoughts?” Her sour expression, oh so brief across an expertly-honed mask, betrayed the truth in his teasing.
“That would be rude wouldn’t it?” she retorted, smooth once more. “I just want to talk. If only we’d talked sooner we could have both avoided falling in with our mutual friends here.” She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “They will be the death of you, you know.”
But the Mariner was not going to be diverted. “You tried to steal my thoughts before, but couldn’t. Why not?”
“There’s nothing to steal!” she snapped, bitterness returning. “Nothing in your head at all!”
Ice deep in his chest. The Wasp took everything else.
“That’s not all.”
“No, you’re right, it isn’t!” she spat, suddenly seeming childish and petty, striking out to hurt.
She’s an infant, he thought, suddenly understanding an aspect of the creature before him. It’s subtle, but it’s there; she’s merely a child, and she doesn’t understand what’s happening.
“Your mind stinks! It makes me want to puke. Urrgh! Yuk! I wouldn’t eat a thought from your head if I’d been in this cell a thousand years. I think a Gradelding must have snuck up during your sleep and shat in your skull. Or perhaps you fell in the sea and the Ethusmanier laid eggs in your ear? Yes, perhaps that’s what must have put that stink in there?”
“Or perhaps it was the Wasp?”
The Oracle suddenly stopped her ranting and her once knowing, then furious, eyes widened with fright. Colour drained from them, as colour would drain from a frightened cheek.
“What do you know of the Wasp? How could you? Unless?” Her hands suddenly flew up, covering her face. “Unless?” Fear became terror. The Oracle leapt to her feet, jumping up onto her bunk as if he were a rat nipping at her toes. “Get away from me! Get away! Don’t look at me with that horrid head of yours! Don’t bring the Wasp here!”
“What is the Wasp?” He grabbed the bars, pressing his face closer, eager to learn. “Where can I find it?”
“I didn’t wake it! I wasn’t the one! The Pope, he knows! The Pope! The Pope!” she screamed, bawling like a frightened toddler. “Just stop looking at me. Please, please leave me alone! The Pope woke it, it’s his fault!”
Behind him, the Mariner heard an intake of breath.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“The Pope!” Heidi hissed back, although the Oracle, still wailing and shrieking, was beyond listening. “We’ve been searching for him as long as any Anomenemy. He’s worshipped across the whole ocean.”
“Where is this Pope?” he yelled at the Oracle. “Where is he?”
“North! Past the waterfall, where the air is cold and the Ethusmanier swim. He lives on the Moors, not the sea. He hates the sea. I would too if I’d woken the Wasp!”
“But what is it? What is the Wasp? What’s happening to the world? Is the Wasp a demon, stealing our world from us, is that it?”
The Oracle, suddenly stopped crying and peered at him between her fingers. “No, you’ve gotten it all wrong, the Wa—”
The gap between her fingers exploded with dark blood as a bullet pierced her hand and then her face, shattering skull, snuffing out life. The creature known as the Oracle was thrown back against the wall, where she stood for a second or so, teetering on shaky legs, before sliding down into a heap. Stunned silence followed and the Mariner, ears ringing, turned to Harris, his shotgun still smoking from the blast.
“We have the location of the Pope,” he said, unapologetic. The Mariner’s fury was dark. “He’s the most notorious Anomenemy in the whole ocean. Other than that, I can’t see how listening to any further heresy can help.”
“It was going to tell us the truth!”
“What truth?” Harris laughed. “Do you think that creature knew anything? You’re not the only one to spend time with that witch. She was mad, and she’d tell you anything to buy her own freedom. But that doesn’t stop it being nonsense. Besides, we know what’s happening to the world. Mavis told us. We know what needs to be done.”
34. FIVE-FEET HIGH AND RISING
“WORD OF THE POPE FIRST came to us through graffiti scrawled on walls within abandoned ships. Usually they would be in the most squalid of cabins, the sort littered with drugs and faeces, but later they appeared in more extravagant abodes. At first we thought they were deluded references to some shared hallucination, a mass dream if you will, but as we began scavenging more and more vessels, we began to realise that the Pope was real, and had wide reach.”
Heidi spoke with a slow sincerity, easily heard by those gathered around her upon the Neptune, a small fire lighting their faces in an otherwise stiflingly dark night. McConnell sat behind Grace, with her leaning against him, not just for warmth, but for protection from the ghost story being told, for that’s what the Pope had become across the endless ocean: a whispered ghost story.