The Coming of the Whirlpool (24 page)

‘But beware, Dow Amber,' said the captain, so sombrely that Dow looked at him, all visions forgotten. ‘Beware of the sea. You have longed to voyage upon it, but I tell you the sea is not a thing for longing. We Ship Kings know this. It is not a thing to love or hate, nor to take as a friend. It is not a thing with which a man should presume to form any bond at all, no matter how well he thinks he understands it. The sea is a fool. It is witless and unthinking in its power, wayward in its kindness and cruelty, and beyond all appeal. Do not mistake that.'

Dow made no response, but a disturbing memory came to him, of the maelstrom, and of the
mindlessnes
s of its strength, to pluck one man down helpless to his death, and yet to set the other free . . .

Vincente turned, his grave gaze becoming sardonic as he glanced about at his ship. ‘However, it is perhaps the affairs of men that will endanger you more in the near future. Lieutenant Diego won't be the only one who dis- approves of your presence on board the
Chloe
. There will be others – and many more in my homeland. There are wiles and plots of politics of which you know nothing as yet. You set sail into these waters blindly, Dow Amber, and it is I who have launched you there.' He sighed, then straightened briskly. ‘But enough. It is decided, and there's no going back. Already the tide is turning.' He made to go, then paused. ‘You may remain up here as we get underway. It seems only fair, considering what lies ahead, that you're allowed to bid a proper farewell to your home.'

And so Dow remained on the high deck as the wind stiffened from the west and the
Chloe
readied itself to put to sea. He made no effort yet to understand the many commands shouted by the officers, or to decipher the meaning of the whistles blown and the bells rung, or to grasp the purpose of the manifold and mystifying tasks carried out by the hundreds of sailors on the deck or in the rigging. There would be time enough for all that in the weeks to come.

Instead he stared over to the beach of Stromner, his home of the last four months, watching the boats delivering their sad cargo of refugees onto the sand. Or he stared north across the Claw towards his truer home, hundreds of miles away, thinking again of his family, and of the fate that had brought him so far from them. His strange
fate, as the captain had called it.

But what
was
fate? So many had spoken of it to Dow in this last year, but he felt no closer to knowing. His mother had feared fate. Nathaniel had defied it – to his doom. Boiler doubted it, and yet bent to its commands. Mother Gale seemed to commune with it and give it voice. Even the Ship Kings, it appeared, paid it heed. But Dow himself had always struggled with the notion.

After all, it was his own life that he was living, was it not? A life where his own desires and choices mattered, no matter whose blood might flow in his veins? Only as the maelstrom had loomed and he'd set off in pursuit of Nathaniel had he allowed himself to believe that perhaps he
was
ruled by fate – and look what had happened. Fate had tricked him and Nathaniel had died.

And yet, had Dow not gone to the whirlpool, he would not now be where he had always wanted to be: standing upon the deck of a true ship at last.

It was imponderable.

‘Weigh anchor!' came the cry.

A rumbling rose from below, and then the clanking of the anchor chain as it was winched in. Sails set, the
Chloe
moved in full state towards the Rip. On the left, the beach and dunes of Stromner disappeared from view behind the bulk of East Head. On the right, the ashen ruin of Stone Port fell away. Ahead, the ocean opened out before Dow in all its restless eternity.

Farewell
, he thought. But it had no meaning.

And anyway they were not yet done with New Island. Clear of the Heads, the
Chloe
turned left to run with the north-east current as it flowed along the outer shore of the Claw's eastern arm. For a long while they sailed within a mile or two of the coast, and Dow stood at the landward rail, watching the dunes slip by. It was a clear day, the wind fair in the battleship's sails, and the ocean bright and blue. But Dow felt bound still by the land, and by the ties of all he had left behind.

Then, late in the afternoon, the
Chloe
finally bore away from the peninsula, turning due east to sail into the coming evening. Behind, as the sun began to set over New Island, the land itself sank away. Dow saw it as a long black hump, diminishing steadily, until it had almost vanished along with the sun.

And that was when the girl came to him.

Dow was staring over the stern rail, lost in his thoughts, and suddenly she was there at his side, gazing west as he was. He had not glimpsed her since the feast, and then only from a distance; now she was close enough to touch. For a moment, in his surprise, he studied her unabashed. She was dressed again in men's clothes, topped by an officer's coat, her hands in its pockets. So absorbed did she seem as she gazed out – her face lit to a glow by the dying sun, her scars merely wisps on her skin – she might have been unaware of Dow's very presence.

But then she spoke, with a nod to the dark sliver of land on the horizon. ‘And there you would have stayed, if I'd had my way.' She glanced to Dow. ‘My name, New Islander, is Ignella of the Cave.'

Unnerved, Dow could only answer, ‘Yes.'

‘And do you know what I am?'

‘You're the scapegoat of this ship.'

‘Aye.' She smiled coldly. ‘It falls to me to safeguard this vessel from the perils of bad fortune. And it seems to me, Dow Amber, that you are bad fortune indeed. On some ships, my word as scapegoat would've been enough to have seen you left behind. But the
Chloe
is not such a ship, and Captain Vincente is not such a captain. He hears me out, but seldom listens to what I say.'

Ignella, thought Dow numbly. Not Nell, but
Ignella.

‘Indeed,' she continued, ‘the truth is the humblest sailor on this vessel has more of the captain's ear than I, for all that he pretends to consult me. He trusts only fellow mariners, and only men can be mariners, and I am not a man.' Her pale eyes widened to white, and for an alarming instant Dow was reminded of Mother Gale. ‘And now it seems that even a common New Island boy can win his approval, with no more than a few moments of foolhardy sailing in sight of the shore! How fortunate for you. Of course, in your land also, only men can sail.'

Dow merely stared, not understanding.

She faced him full on finally. With a clinical detachment – as one expert in the matter of scars – she reached up and touched the lumped wound on his forehead. Dow felt her fingers tug gently at the stitching, sending a strange spasm of pain and pleasure trilling down the back of his neck.

‘Lucky fool,' she said wistfully. ‘If only I'd had something heavier to throw at you, instead of my glass.' She shrugged, and glanced off westward. ‘Look, New Islander. Your home is gone.'

And with that she whirled and walked off.

Dow was left with mouth agape, dumbfounded.
She
had thrown the goblet? But then the import of her last words struck him even more profoundly. He spun back and gazed to the west. The sliver of land had disappeared. New Island and everything he had ever known had vanished below the horizon.

Loneliness pierced him, so raw and empty did that horizon look. But at the same time his chest swelled with an overpowering burst of excitement and relief and sadness, all mixed together and yet somehow not confusing anymore – rather, Dow felt all his doubts and cares finally dissolving into nothing.

He rounded again to face the bow, and the world seemed to expand to infinity. Behind was the fiery glow of sunset, to either side grey-green waves rolled away beyond sight, and ahead, in the east, was a misty darkness that promised only the unknown. The wind was gusting harder at his back and the
Chloe
reared into a rising swell, lofting up fine sheets of spray. Officers cried to the men in the rigging, their voices echoing the gulls that circled still about the masts. Dow tasted salt water on his lips, and smelt salt rich upon the air.

He took a deep, hungry, starved breath, then let it out.

At last, he was away.

ANDREW MCGAHAN
is one of Australia's finest writers of fiction. His first novel,
Praise
, won the
Australian
/Vogel Literary Award in 1992. In 2004,
The White Earth
won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize South East Asia and South Pacific Region, the
Age
Book of the Year, and the
Courier Mail
Book of the Year Award. In 2009, Andrew was shortlisted for the Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards for his contribution to Australian Literature.
The Coming of the Whirlpool
is his first novel for young adults.

Andrew lives in Melbourne.

Now the white film was rising above the tip of the block, a delicate latticework of new ice, like a frost. Only by fractions of an inch maybe, but undoubtedly the block of ice was growing.

‘Here in the warmth of the cabin,' said Fidel, ‘the process will not continue long. The piece of ice is itself already melting. But in the far north, where the water is at freezing point, and where the air is even colder, the process can continue indefinitely. Hence, when ice forms at sea, it forms not as a sheet as it would on a freshwater pond. No, because of the nicre, the ice climbs and climbs upon itself. In time, immense spires rise. But watch now . . .'

In the jar, the scaffolding of new ice was perhaps half an inch tall, and growing thicker. Then suddenly the entire block overbalanced and rolled in the water, and the little tower of frost was plunged beneath the surface. A new face of the block was exposed – and immediately the faint crackling resumed, and a film of fresh ice, white and fragile, began to rise.

‘Do you see now, Dow, why we call it the Unquiet Ice? The far north is a wilderness of great bergs that grow and grow – to hundreds of feet in height – until they become top heavy and roll in cataclysmic collapses, only to begin growing all over again. And that sound you can barely hear, that crackling? In the ice regions it is a constant thunder and groan.

‘But there is worse yet. In the far, far north there is no space left for the bergs even to topple, and so they pile up against each other, and grow to the very limit of the nicre's reach, forming a great and jagged rampart that rears a mile high and encircles the pole entirely, blocking all further progress north. The Ice Wall. No ship has ever passed beyond it, or beheld the pole. But it is there that we now must search after the lost fleet.'