The Folly of the World (20 page)

“Sometimes the big ones have rats in the belly,” Andrei said, panting. It was hard to tell from his tone if he was gleeful or horrified. Jan dared not take his eyes off the fish and the girl. “Da, they push the mud for dinner, but big ones also have rats. Ducks, even.”

“She look like a ball-washing bird to you!?” Sander shouted.
He
was decidedly gleeful.

“Pushing mud for dinner in, in… graven yard? Da, pushing mud for dinner in graven yard, he finds more than worms. He finds dead men! Maybe he has grown a taste for us after this dinner, da?”

The fish was right on top of her—she was an instant away from being bit. Shaking the water from his hair and eyes, Jan looked behind him for a pike but saw something better—the Muscovite’s cat was just behind him, taking advantage of the chaos to creep forward and steal from the small net Andrei had been casting before the Leviathan arose. The net had trapped a few bream that now flopped about, the tabby cautiously slapping at one as though the fish were hot and might burn her paw. Jan had her by the scruff in an instant and, ignoring the claws kicking at his forearm, he spun around and hurled her.

The cat tumbled through the air, a horrible mewling instantly drowned out by the Muscovite’s frantic cry, and then she slapped into the water. The fish had gotten too far ahead for Jan to see whether it took the bait or continued after the girl, but Jolanda was still above water, which—

—Jan was on the floor of the boat, blood burning his eyes. If he hadn’t been squatting when he’d thrown the cat, he would
have gone in, maybe drowned, but instead he’d simply slumped down. He had pissed himself, he realized, his legs wetter and warmer and—

—Christ’s wounds. Sander had nearly decapitated Andrei, the fallen Muscovite’s twitching body taking up the bulk of the craft between Jan and the rowers’ bench, where the mad bastard had resumed his seat. Sander worked his oars furiously, his face nearly as red as the blood soaking Jan and everything else in the bottom of the boat as he braced himself and strained his arms. They had slowed, reeling drunkenly over the meer instead of sliding neatly across it, but they were still moving forward. Only a few dark cables and a palm’s worth of skin connected Andrei’s shoulders to the head that lay heavily on Jan’s foot. He kicked it off, trying to sit up straighter, but then the boat careened to the side, burning wet garbage forcing its way up and out of his throat, the hot sick bringing with it the worst headache of his life. Still, he was better off than the man he was puking on.

“Get the fuck up,” Sander groaned, his tone the same as when he was being speared on Jan’s cock. “Couldn’t’ve done much. Weak cunt.”

“Ugh,” said Jan. He spit, only to have the slimy rope swing back under his jaw and stick in his chest hair.

“Fuckin rublehead. Lost it. Oar. Dropped you with it. I dropped him.”

“Jolanda,” Jan managed, bracing an arm on the side of the boat and pulling himself farther upright. “She—”

—Screamed, somewhere close. It might have been his name. Jan squinted into the returned mist, the tombstones and rushes waiting just ahead to greet them. Sander grimaced as the oars dragged through the water as though it was honey, pudding, old blood, his breath wheezing, his hands bloody, and Jan picked up the sticky red sword Sander had dropped beside the dead Muscovite. Fucking bottom dwellers.

T
he rushes cut her arms, but Jo didn’t feel them as she squirmed through the muck of the graveyard, trying with all her might to keep from retching. Breathing was like drinking boiling dye, the heat of each inhalation striking her like a father’s fist to the belly, but to give in now, to let it all spill out here, that would be worse than never having found it, worse than never making it to dry land, to safety. Except it wasn’t dry, and as something whipped her calf hard enough to draw her notice along with a stripe of blood, she realized she wasn’t safe.

What she had hoped was an island in the cemetery was nothing more than a small patch of mud and reeds that barely broke the surface, and that fucking fish had followed her up onto it, beaching itself in the mire and wriggling forward in monstrous parody of how she had gained the marshy prominence. The meaty whisker that had struck her leg protruded just above its yawning, fat-lipped mouth, and seeing it in the light of day, she wondered how she had evaded it as long as she did, the size of the thing unbelievable. She kicked its lip, pushing herself forward in the mud as it eagerly squirmed after her, cutting itself a channel in the muck as Jo slid back into deeper water, the bar of sediment crossed as quickly as it had been gained.

The mud she’d acquired bled off her, clouding the water as she swam, but before the swirling brown sludge obscured the bottom, she saw there were stones beneath her, and then more of them were rising up beside her. These were just little markers, smaller than she was. Nothing to afford sanctuary, nothing to
buy her even a moment to catch her breath. A great splashing came from behind and she knew it had freed itself from the mudflat, that it was back in the water proper, that it was moments away from having her in its belly. She swam harder, too hard, blind from tears and mud and exhaustion, not even trying to breathe anymore as she hauled herself through sludge and water with equal ferocity.

Then her forearm smashed into stone, the pain of it forcing a gasp, and she floundered as the fire in her lungs was smothered out by the splinters of ice shivering their way through her arm. She would have gone under if there had been anywhere to go, but she had nearly beached herself again, the water barely up to her waist. Filth running down her cheeks, she looked back toward the monster and there it was, barreling down a canal between the stones and rushes, its whipping barbels churning the surface before it. The crypt, she realized, her numb mind finally absorbing where she was; she had swum into the side of the crypt. Its roof was right there, close enough to touch, but as she deliriously reached up to grasp it, the bog seemed to pull her back down—as soon as she had set her feet on the bottom, the mud had begun to swallow her.

The fish hit her, and hard, water splashing, those sharp whiskers scraping her raised arm, her bare breast, her side; it fucking had her, the weight of it knocking her back. She gave up, falling against the crypt with a final desperate cry. It had her.

Except it didn’t. Jan had jumped between them, she saw, jumped into the water to save her. It had been him half-landing on her, not the fish, but even as she saw him, the monster struck. Jan’s body was suddenly thrashing between her and the fish, the brown water flaring red all around them, and she sank farther into the mud, gibbering at the sight of her beloved taken by a seabeast out of legend or nightmare.

And take him it did, the catfish suddenly twisting away and shoving itself back into deeper water, a broken arm ending in a
limp-wristed hand cutting the surface like a pennant before the fish dove and vanished, taking him down into the dark.

Jo let the swamp pull her down after him, the water lapping at her throat, and she sobbed, choking on the air as if it were smoke, as if it were brine. Then something else was on her, something crawling through her hair and over her shoulder, and she retreated deeper into the muck, unwilling to let it have her, not ready to—

“—fuck’s wrong with you, get up ’fore it comes back,” said Sander, his fingers like hooks digging into her armpit. It was not the sight of him hanging his upper body off the crypt to pull her up that brought her around, however—it was the figure holding Sander’s belt to keep the bigger man from falling in. Jo’s cries turned into ragged laughter to see Jan standing above her, his legs bloodied from his encounter with the fish but seemingly intact, whole, safe. Alive. She gave herself to Sander then—much as she wanted to use him as a scaffolding and scramble up to Jan, she was too fucking tuckered.

Jan helped Sander squirm back onto the roof with Jo in his arms, and there they lay for a time, Sander and Jo panting side by side as Jan stood over them, grinning. Sander was soaked in blood as well, and she wondered how they had conquered the fish after it dove with Jan, but she was still having trouble breathing, so the questions would wait. Besides, she had something to say first.

“Got it,” she finally managed, and as she did, Jan sank down beside her, settling on his knees and drawing her up, holding her against his stomach. Sander scrambled away from them, his satisfied expression shriveling and darkening like old sea grass tossed onto coals. Jan’s bare belly was warm against Jo’s cheek, and she let the tears come faster as he took her hands in his. “Got it.”

He was feeling her fingers, she realized, which was a disappointment, albeit an understandable one. She smiled to herself,
nuzzling the nest of hair on his stomach. He would be so proud of her. His voice broke as he said, “You dropped it, Jo.”

“No,” she said, unable to keep the smirk off her face as she raised her head to meet his gaze. “I haven’t. Just have to wait a day or two.”

“What?” He almost looked angry. “What are you—”

Jo swallowed loudly, and pulling a hand away from him, touched it to her stomach as she curled up tighter against him, the stone beneath her no longer so sharp, no longer so cold. Her other arm began to sing its agony again, but she ignored it, closing her eyes and pressing herself harder and harder against him, trying to sink into his very guts as he murmured, “Clever. So clever. You swallowed it when you saw the fish?”

“Aye. It came in a window…” she said, refusing to remember what came before it, refusing to see what had so transfixed her down there. She had thought she was drowning, and dreaming as she went, but here she was, and so the long yellow table, the dead people sitting at it, the eels, all that—

—She bit down as something pushed into her mouth, trying to wriggle into her belly, a fucking eel, it—

—Jan slapped her across the cheek and she relaxed her jaw, easing her teeth off his fingers as she looked up at him, confused, afraid. He smiled, working the digits farther back, making her gag. “We can’t wait, Jo. We can’t. Now, don’t you bite, you be a good girl and—”

—She gagged again, her eyes watering, trying so hard not to bite him as he worked the back of her throat over and over again, Sander saying something, Jan saying something back, and then she was sick all over him, trying to stop herself and trying to give in all at once. His fingers were out and he let her squirm away from him. She was crying then, not for relief that he was alive, that they were alive, but crying at her own folly, mooning over the first man who seemed to take an interest. The only interest he’d ever had was in his stupid ring, the ring she had taken from
a dead man’s hand. Christ’s crown, she’d taken it off a putrid finger and gobbled it up like a sloe berry, and the thought made her gag again, but nothing more came up.

“Ha!” Jan cried. “Ha!”

Wiping a cold, wet wrist over her eyes, she saw Jan hold up the small band. Threads of clear nastiness dangled from it, but he seemed not to notice, trying it first on one finger and then on another until settling on the middle digit of his left hand. The gold sparkled, and she realized the sun must be shining somewhere out there beyond the mist, marveling that it was not midnight, not black as the deep up here. It had seemed an eternity since they arrived, since she had first dived down, but looking at the puddle of puke forming a moat around Jan’s knees, she saw that the dinner they’d shared on this same crypt had hardly begun to break down.

Jan rose, webs of vomit and gore strung through the patch of hair on his belly, trousers soaked through with blood and bile, and Jo looked away from him, ashamed of herself. Sander stood with his back to her at the edge of the crypt, and she heard Jan drop down into the boat. Andrei was nowhere to be seen, and she realized who had flopped down into the water between her and the fish. That poor, wonderful Muscovite, sacrificing himself to save a girl he didn’t even really know, while Jan and Sander sat back and watched him do it…

She shuddered, suddenly very cold, suddenly missing the purple pots, her shitbird brothers, the clumsy attentions of the fisherboys whose deceptions were plain as their attempts to look older by growing weak little sand-beards. Sander’s shoulders tightened, as though wincing from her gaze, and he turned to her. Their eyes met, and she saw a strange sorrow in them, a misery she never would have thought him capable of, and a tight fear pierced her heart. No, not that, he wouldn’t—

“Jo,” said Jan, the boat creaking, but still she wouldn’t turn to him. She focused on finding any shred of strength that she hadn’t
left in the water, sitting up and wiping the spew off her bare chest. She was more aware of her nakedness than she’d ever been, and just wanted to get to her wadded shift and gown that still lay near at hand, the fabric soaked through with meer drippings; she just wanted to put it on and cover herself and be somewhere warm, and she would never tell, she would never speak a word of what she had seen here, what she had heard, what she had done.

No. She was just tired, was all, she was tired and had worked herself into a frenzy, what with that great big fucking fish, and then Andrei dying to save her, and now that it was over she wasn’t thinking clear. It was like when she had near-drowned the night she’d met Jan, and had to haul herself to her feet and trudge home in the dark, her hand bleeding out, too intent on getting home to think of what she’d do when she got there, where she’d plant that knife of his she held in her quivering hand. Get up, she thought, trying to will her sore frame into motion, just get up and get dressed and everything will be better, everything will—

—Hurt exploded in her left cheek like a knot popping in a fire, and then the right side of her face blasted away that pain with an even harder blow, her whole head engulfed in fire. She tried to jerk away from it, from the too-hard crypt she had collapsed against, facefirst, but as she did, everything swam, and the world tilted, and she found herself sinking beneath a shimmering wave.

Her head was lifted, tender fingers on her neck, but the pain this brought pushed her deeper into the water, down into the muck at the bottom, and she wondered if she had ever found the ring, if she had ever seen that macabre, impossible sight at the sunken dining table, or if she were drowning in the blackness, dreams taking her as the world left her. Then she heard his voice, drifting down, and she kicked up, floating higher and higher. She blinked away the tears, trying to see, trying to breathe, beholding Jan reaching down through the sheen to save
her, to lift her out of the water, but something had pinned her just under the surface, crushing down her arms, her chest, her throat.