12. In which the weather is stirred and there is an angel and a demon
IN WHICH THE WEATHER IS STIRRED AND THERE IS AN ANGEL AND A DEMON
“Hard to starboard,” Hester yelled down to Fliss, who stood at the wheel in her furs.
Up in the crow’s nest, the spyglass to her eye, Hester could see for miles.
The loose pack ice the whaling captains had warned about stretched out like an enormous sparkling mosaic into the distance.
Every so often, luminous blue bergs poked up, nudging towards the sky.
It was different to the Frozen North. Like there was limitless potential down here.
The Intrepid was over to starboard in a patch of looser ice, while the Valour was hemmed in between two floes, but making steady progress forwards.
“Port easy,” she yelled next. “No. Hard to port! Hard over, Fliss!”
“Make your mind up!” Fliss yelled back, wrenching the wheel over.
Hester chuckled as the ice ground against the hull, slipping away harmlessly.
“Reef the foresail, Betty. I cannot see the bergs,” Hester shouted, and Betty scrambled into action, polka-dot hair scarf flapping in the light breeze.
Hester pulled at the magic in her chest, bringing the wind on a little stronger to compensate for the lack of sail.
She sighed, settling back and basking in the Antarctic sun.
There had been no more strange singing, no more men attempting to throw themselves from the ship.
Maybe Arnold had just gone a bit stir crazy.
“Oooh,” Hester whispered, spotting penguins. “They’re like little gentlemen in their finest suits.” She smiled to herself, focussing back on the slabs of pack ice.
“After all these years,” a voice rumbled.
Hester sat bolt upright, looking all around. “What the—”
She looked down to the deck, but no one else seemed to have noticed anything amiss. She got to her feet and crouched, frowning and shaking her head to try and clear it. Perhaps the cold weather was playing tricks on her hearing.
“You were hidden from me. Hidden so well. And now the one who cast that protection is dead, I finally see you.”
Hester looked out over the ice. A dark shape passed under the floe between the two ships. Her eyes widened, pulse quickening. What on Earth was that? She swung her legs over the side of the crow’s nest and climbed down the rigging to the deck, compelled to take a closer look.
“Charlotte? Pass me that alpenstock, and the harpoon gun,” Hester murmured, eyes still fixed on the ice as the dark shape turned back. Charlotte frowned, but did as Hester asked, handing the long-handled ice axe and hefty gun over.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked.
“I’m not sure—I thought I saw a shape under the ice. Did you hear anything unusual?” She hung over the railing, scrutinising the ice suspiciously. Where had it gone?
“I didn’t hear anything other than the ice against the hull. Gosh—it’s not that singing again, is it?”
“No. Something else.”
“Come closer,” the voice growled, and Hester found herself leaning too far over the rail, not quite in control of her body.
Charlotte asked, “Hester? What are you—”
Hester let out a shout and fell over the side.
She hit the ice and rolled once, twice, three times before she came to a halt. She grumbled and rubbed her bleating back. What the Hell happened? One minute she was leaning over the side, the next, she was on the ice. How embarrassing.
She got steadily to her knees, leaning against the alpenstock, which she’d managed to keep hold of. The harpoon gun lay a few feet away. She shuffled towards it, then looked up to see Charlotte and Winston peering down at her from the deck.
“Are you alright?” Winston shouted, concern on his face.
“Fine,” Hester huffed, getting to her feet, lifting the harpoon gun. At least the pain in her back was receding.
A dark shadow passed under her feet. It moved swiftly to the far edge of the floe. A spurt of mist shot into the air.
Hester jumped back. A whale? An orca? The orca from Argentina? There was no doubt in her mind that whatever it was had spoken to her. Spoken into her head.
“Good Lord, what is that?” Charlotte said, shielding her eyes.
“Throw down the ladder,” Hester shouted, hefting the gun. The ice shuddered under her feet. “Hurry!”
“No one evades me. No one. And yet, you dared to make a fool of me?” The voice was an echoing call, laced with the screams of men.
A shiver of dread ran down her spine. “Winston! Get that ladder NOW!”
The ice shuddered again, and Hester slipped, landing on her backside with a curse.
She scrambled to her feet. The rope ladder clattered down the side of the ship.
Hester stepped towards it, and the ice floe rocked, sending her skittering backwards.
Eyes wide, she darted back towards the ship, but a huge wave rocked the floe, pushing it further away.
Another spray of water jetted from the sea, followed by a shining black expanse of curved head and a tall black dorsal fin.
“Hurry!” Winston bellowed, leaning over the side. “What the Hell is that?”
Hester watched in horror as an enormous orca surfaced and flung itself onto the ice. The floe tilted, and Hester staggered and fell once more, sliding slowly towards the orca’s open maw.
“Hester!” Charlotte screamed.
Hester rolled onto her stomach and thrust the alpenstock’s axe-head into the ice to stop herself from sliding. Breathing in ragged pants, she held on tightly. Her heart raced, every muscle in her body tensed.
The floe tipped up and up, sending her higher and higher until she dangled from the shaft of the axe, the floe almost vertical. She took a gulp and looked down into the open mouth of the orca. The sharp teeth, the huge tongue, the waiting death.
This couldn’t be how it ended. “Oh God,” she whispered.
One slip of her hand and she would fall into its jaws and be minced.
Hester wasn’t especially afraid of dying, but the idea of leaving her crew to the clutches of the Southern Continent, and indeed, of this monster, sent terror screeching through her veins.
“You can’t hang there forever. Let go. You belong to me.”
The surrounding white of the ice was dazzling, and Hester cursed herself for not wearing her snow goggles. She tightened her hand around the alpenstock’s handle and aimed the harpoon gun directly into the monster’s throat. Her finger curled around the trigger as she screamed a battle cry.
The trigger wouldn’t budge.
“No no no,” she muttered, pulling it again, whacking the gun against her thigh, then wrapping a second finger around the trigger. The mechanism was stuck. She couldn’t hold on much longer. Her arm muscles screamed, her hand cramping.
This could not be the end.
And then, suddenly, the trigger depressed, and the harpoon flew downwards, and flew true, impaling the orca in the back of the throat. The great beast snapped its jaws shut and reared back. It smashed down onto the ice so hard that the vibrations shot through Hester’s hand.
Her grip slipped.
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
She fell down, down.
She did not fall onto the ice, or the orca.
She could hardly make sense of the world as she hit freezing water.
Charlotte’s heart almost stopped.
The entire crew screamed as one.
The ice floe spun upside-down.
Their captain was trapped underneath it.
This couldn’t be happening.
“NO!” Fliss screamed, the emotion in her voice sending chills up Charlotte’s spine.
Winston stilled, the rifle in his hand dropping with a crash to the deck. “Hester.”
Across the floe, a figure jumped from the deck of the Intrepid.
Cold, cold, cold. Burning, searing cold pressed in on Hester from every side.
She swam upwards, but her fingers met ice.
She thrashed this way, then that, under the ice floe, not knowing which way would take her towards air faster.
She picked a direction and struck out, her lungs already burning, her mouth clamped shut.
She spun around, trying to find the orca, but in the rush of bubbles she could only see a dark shape swimming away, a red, undulating creature swimming after it.
The cold was so all-encompassing she could barely function, thoughts slowing, hardly able to move her limbs. She clawed along the underside of the ice, knowing her body would soon betray her and attempt to take a breath.
Not like this.
There seemed no end to the ice, the pain in her lungs reaching unbearable levels. She had always wondered how she would die. Drowning would be a fitting end for a sailor.
Her body shuddered, convulsing from the lack of air, and her mouth flooded with saltwater as she made one last futile attempt to swim.
And then she knew no more.
Shouts rose from the Intrepid as the figure dived and hit the water with a splash.
Fliss was wailing, a high keening sound that Charlotte wanted to cover her ears against, so forlorn and absolute was the grief in it.
Charlotte’s eyes welled with tears that rolled down her cheeks.
She turned to press her face into Arnold’s shoulder as sobs wracked her body.
His hands pressed into her back, but otherwise he stood stock-still and silent, his muscles tensed.
“Someone from the Intrepid just jumped in,” Arnold said, voice strained. She could barely hear him over Fliss’s wails.
Was this some awful nightmare she was about to wake up from?
“Surely it’s not possible to save her under there,” Rufus breathed, clinging to the rail. “Surely she is—”
“Don’t say it,” Mei begged.
Charlotte turned to watch the water and the ice. The figure from the Intrepid disappeared under the floe. They all watched, breath held, Charlotte clinging to Arnold’s coat so hard that her hands ached. Hester couldn’t be—she just couldn’t be gone.
She closed her eyes and prayed. To God, to the albatross that wheeled overhead, to whoever would listen. “She can’t—” Charlotte sobbed, and Arnold pressed her closer. That life, that spark, brighter than anything she’d known, couldn’t be gone.
Long moments stretched out.
“Look! What’s that?” Valerie shouted, pointing to the edge of the ice closest to the Intrepid.
Charlotte whipped her head around. She squinted against the glare of the sun and the ice, shielding her eyes.
A figure was swimming, dragging another behind it.
“Could it be?” Arnold murmured, squinting into the distance.
On the deck of the Intrepid yellow and red flags swooped and stabbed the air.
“They say they have her. But—” Winston swallowed and whispered, “No sign of life.”
Fliss’s wails increased in volume, and she pressed her forehead to the deck where she knelt, her whole body shaking.
Charlotte crouched next to her, wrapping an arm over her back, Mei doing the same on the other side.
All Charlotte could think was how it was surely all her fault.
All her fault for asking Hester to bring her here.
And now that bright light was gone, and along with it, all of her hopes and dreams.
Charlotte tore her gaze from Fliss over to the Intrepid, to see the figure hauling Hester’s limp body up the ladder, handing her to the crew as he swung himself onto the deck and knelt down.
Red and yellow flags flashed again.
“No breathing. No heartbeat. They’ll attempt to revive her,” Winston said, his voice breaking.
Hester stood on the deck of the Intrepid, an odd scene playing out before her. Septimus, wet all over, his hair and beard dripping with water, skin almost blue, was leaning over—Hester’s own body.
She frowned.
Her own lifeless body was laid out on the deck.
“What on Earth?” she asked, but no one seemed to hear her.
She turned her hands over, staring. They were transparent, the colour leeched from her skin.
A heavy weight, not wholly unfamiliar, pulled at her back, and out of the corner of her eye she saw golden feathers.
She turned her head further, eyes widening as she took in the feathered wings that sprouted behind her.
From her own shoulder blades.
This was all very confusing. “Well, I surely wasn’t expecting this.” She spun to try and get a better look at the wings. “An angel? Surely there is some mistake.”
She surveyed the scene before her again. Septimus pinched her nose and blew into her mouth.
“Excuse me!” she said indignantly. “And where, pray tell, is—” She sighted Victor, his blonde hair sticking up from where he’d raked his hands through it.
Septimus sat back and growled at the bosun, “And you said she was beyond saving. You would not go in after her, you coward.”
“Look at her, my lord. She is dead, and you could have died also,” Victor snapped.
Angel Hester narrowed her eyes. “You would not go in to save me?” She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to keep afloat that part of her that sank.
“I could have died, yes. I did not,” Septimus said, then blew into Hester’s mouth once more.
Angel Hester bared her teeth at Victor and splayed her wings wide. “Oh, I will have fun haunting you, Victor. Oh ho, yes. Wait. Are angels allowed to haunt?”
Charlotte held her hand to her mouth as the red and yellow flags flashed again, and Winston broke down. “They’re giving up,” he bit out. “She’s gone.”
Charlotte and Arnold lurched forwards as Betty collapsed in a faint, catching her just before she hit the deck, and Fliss gave her loudest cry yet, the awful sound ringing in the air.
Winston removed his woollen hat and clutched it to his chest, his face lined with anguish as he walked to the stern to lower the ensign flag to half-mast.
Charlotte collapsed next to Betty.
It was all her fault.
All of it.