LIV
It was almost impossible to see anything and breathing, well that was a challenge. Though on the outside everything appeared absolutely normal, on the inside, it felt as if the air itself were a clenched fist, and with each breath, a hand reached inside of The Young Cripple and pulled her lungs out through her mouth. And with each inhale, the very same fist punched her lungs back inside of her.
After barely a minute in this strange atmosphere, The Young Cripple felt bruised and half broken. She still had the detector hanging over one end of the platform while The Father’s hands busily scanned through frequencies, sorting through the myriad of channels that were dedicated to fear and suffering; ignoring those whose themes were merry and offered either sweet and tacky gossip, or learned and self-righteous wit.
“It’s been forever,” said T. “We haven’t heard a single thing. Maybe he’s dead.”
“Don’t say that,” said The Young Cripple.
The Father hadn’t noticed. He was listening, so finely, to every burst and crackle of static in the radio just as a native tracker might turn their attention to the pattern of scattered leaves and broken twigs as opposed to the blatant and obvious beacons of flight which the common person would only think to search out. He sifted through burst after burst of static; listening for what he supposed might be an escaping breath or a twitching finger, something in the static that was shaped like his boy.
“I didn’t thank you,” said The Father.
Even when he was being polite, it sounded like he was about to punch you. It was hard to tell if he was expressing empathy and remorse for not having expressed the gratitude that he felt, or whether he was just an angry bastard, and he was just expressing a fact. Either way, The Young Cripple was a little hesitant in her response.
“It’s ok,” she said, feeling a heavy sand bag in her stomach. “Most of this is my fault I suppose.”
“That’s not important right now,” said The Father, still trained to the radio. “What you do next is. The past is merely a construct of sweet or sour emotion. Your regret, should you wear it about, is an anchor that will drown each and every one of us. What we have done pales in comparison to what we are about to do.”
As he spoke, there was a ripple in the static.
“You hear that?” shouted The Father.
The Young Cripple stared over the bow.
“There,” she screamed, pointing The Whale south. “Can you see? There’s a commotion down there, through the mist. That must be it.”
“Hang on,” said The Whale, in a manner that was more playful adventure than it was, a grave warning.
The Whale kicked its flippers and shifted its enormous weight, aiming its vessel in the direction that the girl was pointing. This atmosphere was tough to sail. It felt, for The Whale, as if it were swimming through an ocean of wet cement. Its body felt slow and heavy, and it required a great deal of effort just to move its fins. It did not, though, for one second, assume that this was a reason to abandon this quest. For all he knew was a whale’s work, which was to guide mankind towards land, and there was not a single peril imaginable that would have him lose faith in his own purpose.
“There, I can see now,” said The Young Cripple.
The Father was hanging over the platform, he himself, anchored dangerously to his desperate worry. As The Whale brushed against the ground, The Father almost toppled over completely, hitting his head once more, and when their vessel finally came to rest, sitting on his hind, counting the dots and stars that whirled about his dizzy head.
The radio was now playing the conversation that was happening in front of them. There were several voices. They didn’t sound like men or women. They sounded like an amalgamation of the two, mixed with this low end gurgling and grinding which sounded like wither a wart hog sharpening its tusks on dry jagged rocks, or an old man, choking on a broken denture.
They couldn’t make out everything that was being said as most of it was in some alien tongue. The Young Cripple could understand, though, quite clearly, the sound of taunting and bullied laughter that played harmony to rampant gasping and pleas for help, which, in whatever alien tongue, had not to be deciphered or transcribed to be understood.
The Father tried to lift himself, but he was still too weak. His intention was well enough, but his body was fickle, and it would take little string to tie him in a bind.
“I’ll go,” said The Young Cripple.
“No,” said The Father. “You’re just a girl.”
The radio started playing what sounded like canned laughter, and satiric applause. The Young Cripple kicked The Father. Not very hard. It was just a knee-jerk reaction. That happened, from time to time, when people said stupid things. She kicked him, though, as if she were kicking along an empty can, and The Father buckled in useless and decrepit pain.
“Fine,” he said, conceding. “Just…go with care.”
There was no better companion than brash risk. She knew this. Care and caution were the servants of staleness and tradition. They would not account for or allow strange coincidence, and from it, they would take no stake in its unwinnable odds. The Young Cripple, though, had found herself, her entire life, drawn towards the unknown – out of fear. And because of this, she parlayed with chance – without care, and without proper calculation.
And she was damn good at it.
“You coming?” she asked T.
She had never heard a radio gulp before, but she did now. The two slowly climbed off of The Whale and stood on an icky and murky ground that raised and fell as if beneath it, was an ocean swell or a monster’s sapping lungs.
“I’m scared to death,” said T.
“So am I,” said The Young Cripple, excitedly, as they disappeared into the thick punching mist, towards the decadent laughter and desperate gasps of the coming, impervious commotion.