“She's still out there, I know it.
Just have to keep looking. Make a few more calls.”
“It's too late now. We've looked.
It's not happening.”
“How can you say that, after all
we've been through? Don't you also want to have a comfortable life?”
“Of course I do, but we've run out of
chances. It's time to get out while we can.”
The two men idly drummed their fingers
on the table, milling over the words that had just been spoken.
There was a certain tension lingering the air, as though both sides
had much more to say, but neither wanted to be the first to speak.
“Who are you talking about?” Pack
asked, breaking the silence. The other two men at the table turned
to look in his direction, having paid him little attention until now.
“The last big sale”, said the first
man, who had a shiny bald head and a grey moustache. “I know it's
still out there.”
“The market's dried up, and we're too
old now”, said the other man, who still had a smattering of brown
hair on his head and wore thick glasses. “We're done.”
“And here I thought you were talking
about a woman”, Pack remarked, looking disappointed. Both men
laughed uproariously.
“The market's dried up on women too!”
said the second man, barely able to contain himself, his glasses
almost falling off his face.
“Speak for yourself when you say
we're too old!” said the first man, reaching across the table to
slap the second man in the shoulder. Pack rolled his eyes, which
they must have seen.
“Suddenly regretting that you never
got married?” asked the second man, attempting to regain his
composure. “That's not like you.”
“In some ways you're lucky”, the
first man added, “don't have a family to answer to. My wife always
wants to know when the next cheque is coming, and I wish I had
something better to tell her. I wouldn't give her up for the world,
though. She stuck with me this whole time, that's far more than I
deserve.”
“We all have things that we still
want to do”, Pack said, pulling up a chair and sitting down at the
table with the men. The bald man nodded.
“But that's not always the same as
what we can do”, said the
man with glasses, “sometimes we just have to admit that a move on.
And it's been so long since we've heard anything. Deep down, I think
we all know we're at that point now.”
The table fell silent once again. This
time, Pack didn't want to say anything either.
“Well, I still want to give it one
more shot”, the bald man said, standing up.
“Do what you like”, replied the man
with glasses, leaning back in his chair. “But this time, I'm out.”
“What about you?”, they asked him.
“I- I don't know” he responded
nervously, not expecting to have been put on the spot.
“Well, think it over”, said the
stranger, “but we can't wait forever...”
---
Pack hadn't left his cabin since he
returned that night. “We can't wait forever...” he mumbled under
his breath. The stranger's words had bothered him tremendously, and
now it seemed as though he had brought that tense atmosphere back
with him.
He forced himself to stand up. “The
nightly address. It's so terribly late”, he told himself. In
truth, he didn't really care, but he had to get out of his room. He
staggered out the door of his cabin and to the helm of his ship.
He expected them all to be waiting for
him – at a time like this, they would all depend on his leadership
and support, but he was wrong. Snag and Hour were swabbing the deck,
Design was mending one of the sails, and Quill was busy working away
on his charts. all without being told what to do. Someone looked up
at him as they walked by, but that was it. Everything was as it
always was and no one seemed the least bit distressed.
“It's just business as usual for all
of them”, he thought to himself, incredulously. “In spite of all
that's happened, they seem content enough just doing what they know.”
He sighed. “Maybe it's better that way. I was like that once,
too. Before I met her, all I cared about was maintaining this ship
and doing my job every morning. Could I ever feel that way again?”
He walked back down the steps to his
cabin, flopped down in his chair, and took out his notebook, flipping
through the pages as he had so many times before.
---
“Sir”, Scout said, gesturing out to
sea. “I've spotted it again, sir.”
“Let me see”, Pack said, reaching
for the telescope and fixing it to the horizon.
Scout pushed the telescope to the side
with his paw. “It's there, sir.”
“Oh... that's right. There is...
something.” He squinted harder. “It's too small to make out.”
“I've seen it for three nights now,
sir.”
“It must be a ship. What else could
it be?” He leaned farther over the railing of the crow's nest,
though it did him no good. “But Corsair and the others should be
nowhere near there...”
“It... it could be the Black Ship,
sir.” Scout offered, fidgeting with his paws.
“The Black Ship doesn't exist,” he
said irritably, putting down the telescope. “We just must have
made some error in our calculations, that's all.”
“So what should we do now, sir?”
“We'll just have to go and see what
it is. Then we can correct our projections.” He gave the
telescope back and started down the ladder. “Let me know as soon
as you can get a better look.”
But the projections had not been wrong.
It was a ship, but not one of the ones he knew. He rolled his eyes
as his crew peeked out at it from the safety of the hatch to the
lower deck.
“It's the Black Ship, I knew it!”
Someone said in a whispered voice.
The next voice was not so quiet:
“What'll happen to us? I'm scared! Hey, stop pushing- AAAHHH!”
There was a loud crashing sound as Snag
fell off the ladder to the floor below. The impact jostled the trap
door free from where they had propped it up, and it fell back into
place, sealing off the hatch and the rest of his crew. “Honestly,”
Pack shook his head. “Such tomfoolery. The sails aren't even
black.”
His ship pulled quietly alongside the
other vessel. There was no greeting, and the deck seemed to be
empty, as did his own apart from himself. He extended the boarding
plank to the other ship and walked across.
The deck was completely silent. The
sails were drawn in and did not rustle, and he saw neither hide nor
hair of any crew. Even the wind seemed to have stopped. He actually
wondered just for a moment whether or not it could really be the
Black Ship, but he quickly dismissed it. “If it was, surely
something bad would have happened by now”, he told himself. He
pressed onward to the helm of the ship. There was nothing towards
the railing, but just behind the wheel he found a big heap of what
seemed to be dark-coloured fur. Gingerly he poked it with his paw,
and he reeled back as it let out a high-pitched squeaking sound.
“What- who are you?” he asked the
pile.
“I'm hiding.” it responded in a
muffled voice.
“Are you... all right?” he asked,
peering at it quizzically.
“I don't know,” the pile responded.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“What? No. I just wanted to see who
was there,” he said, strangely flustered. “Won't you come out?”
To his great surprise, the pile
uncurled itself, revealing a woman with scraggy brown fur of varying
colours who was even taller than he was, though substantially less
broad. She had an enormous fluffy tail, which had seemingly composed
much of the pile of fur, and when she opened her eyes, he saw that
they were different colours, one blue and one green.
“You're... one of us?”
“No, I'm me”, she responded.
He coaxed her into coming down to the
deck to talk, which she did by walking along the hand railing, one
foot after another, carefully keeping her balance with her paws.
“Are you alone here?” He asked
her. “I didn't see anyone else.”
“Yes, all alone.”
“How is it that I've never seen this
ship before?”
“I met some others, a long time ago.
But they said I was 'strange'. So now I just watch.”
“Isn't that... very sad?”
She cast her head upwards. “The
stars keep me company. And every time it gets light, I see someone
new.”
“Yes, he said. It's the same for all
of us. We're not so different, you and I. What kind of work do you
do?”
“Work?”, she said, puzzled.
“When the big light comes up.”
“Oh”, she said. “Do you want to
hear?”
“Sure.”
She stood up and walked towards the
railing. She put her hands on the railing and began to speak in a
strange manner that was unlike anything he had heard before:
“The day is long and hard,
And the night is dark and cold.
Dreaming of another life,
Waking with the one I've got.
Putting on a different face,
Trying not to lose myself.
Precious things drift away,
Taken by the tides of life.
But as long as you stand by my side,
I won't fear the night or day.
Together we can find our light,
And never fear what lies beyond.”
After she finished, it fell totally
quiet. He didn't know what to say at all.
She looked down at her feet. “It's
strange, isn't it?”
“No!” He said, hastily. “It's...
nice.”
She smiled a little, and stepped up
onto the railing, walking along and balancing as she talked. “It's
special, I just know. That's why I remembered it.”
He glanced towards the sea behind her.
Its colour was already starting to brighten.
“I should go back”, he said,
standing up.
She kept pacing along on the railing,
her big tail flipping back and forth. “Okay”, she replied, not
sad, but as though she had been expecting it.
Watching her go spurred something
inside him. “You know,” he told her, “if you ever feel bored
or lonely, you can come visit my ship.”
She quickly turned to face him, and for
a second he thought she would lose her balance and topple over the
railing, but she didn't. “Really?”
“Sure.”
She jumped down from the railing and
threw her paws around him. “Thank you!”, she exclaimed happily,
staring at him through her multicoloured eyes.
And he felt...
---
“It's too late,” he thought,
closing the book. “My memories of these events have all but faded
away. I might as well be reading about someone else.” He stood
up, and walked to his door. “The Pack who was Lapse's friend is
long gone. I let my sadness and guilt take control of my life. She
never would have wanted that.”
He came up to the deck, and walked to
the railing. He hesitated for a moment, then held the little book
out over the edge. “Goodbye, Lapse”, he said, dropping the book
into the water below, “thank you for everything”. It floated on
the surface for a moment, then sank below the waves, never to be seen
again. A single tear fell from his cheek, landing near where the
book had sunk. He forced himself to turn away, and he solemnly
walked back to his cabin.
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