The Beast of Cretacea

  It wasn’t long before he understood why his foster brother wanted to climb the smokestack. It was an opportunity to see Black Range from a new perspective. While it was still too dark to pick out much detail, they could see that the town was clustered around the huge Zirconia Electrolysis station. Beyond that were the chopped and gouged undulations left from hundreds of years of strip mining. Black Range had once been renowned for its anthracite — pure and with a high carbon content — but the supply had been exhausted centuries ago. Now the station depended on imported, low-quality lignite, which burned so dirty that some mornings you could sweep the previous night’s soot with a broom.

  About two-thirds of the way up the stack, Archie stopped. Ishmael glanced back down and felt queasy. He was no great fan of heights, and this was undoubtedly the highest he’d ever climbed. He looked up at his foster brother, who had let go with one hand and was pointing into the distance.

  Far, far away in the blackness was a small, faint bluish-green dot. It might have been convex in shape, but it was too distant to know for sure.

  “What is it?” Ishmael asked.

  Above him, Archie shook his head and scanned the horizon, perhaps to see if there were any other places like it. Ishmael also peered out, but he couldn’t see any.

  “Maybe we should go higher,” he suggested, his curiosity overcoming his discomfort about heights.

  “Can’t.” Archie reached up to the next rung and shook it. It wasn’t securely anchored.

  Suddenly voices rose up from below. Ishmael looked down and saw three figures searching among the rubble. One of them had Archie’s crutches. The other two had taken hold of one of the rusty pipes and were working it back and forth, trying to free it from the ground.

  “Scrap poachers,” Archie whispered.

  Joachim and Petra had often warned their foster sons that scrap poachers, like other wrongdoers, were also capable of kidnapping children and holding them for ransom — or worse.

  There was nothing the boys could do but wait, clinging to the metal rungs and hoping they wouldn’t be seen.

  “Do ye know many girls on Earth?” Fayaway asks.

  She and Ishmael sit together on the sand, catching their breath after a long swim.

  Fayaway no longer frowns when she sees him; in fact, she smiles. In the broiling afternoons they swim and tease each other and laugh. Ishmael is distressingly aware that he is finding himself growing more comfortable, not only in the water and with Fayaway, but with the islanders’ way of life as well.

  “A few,” Ishmael answers.

  “Art they pretty?”

  “Not as pretty as you.”

  Fayaway looks hurt. “Don’t make fun.”

  Ishmael’s surprised. “I wasn’t.”

  The small waves turn the sand near the water’s edge dark. Fayaway touches the patch of pink skin around her left eye. “Can’t be pretty with this.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “No one else has it.”

  “Then it makes you unique. I think it looks nice,” he blurts out before he has time to think. His face quickly feels hot, and it’s not due to the sun.

  Fayaway turns her head, but Ishmael senses that she’s pleased. Suddenly she swivels around, punches him mischievously on the arm, and jumps up and runs toward the woods, laughing. Ishmael gets to his feet and sprints after her.

  Moments later he catches her beside the trunk of a large tree. He grabs her arm and spins her around. They look into each other’s eyes. Fayaway’s go wide with uncertain excitement.

  Thwack! A knife whistles past inches from their faces and buries itself deep in the bark. Fayaway jumps back, and Ishmael feels the breath rush from his lungs like air from a burst balloon.

  Wearing tall hide boots, Gwen steps out of the brush and works the blade out of the tree. “Sorry to ruin your fun, but I thought you should know that Billy’s awake.”

  Sliding the knife back into its sheath, she heads up the trail toward the village. “Go,” Fayaway tells Ishmael. “’Tis time t’get back t’work.”

  When he gets to the healing hut, Gwen is helping Billy sit up. Strangely, the whites of his eyes are a deep pink. As Gabriel promised, the maggots are gone and there’s shiny, healthy-looking new skin on Billy’s thigh.

  They get him to his feet and walk him outside, where he squints dumbfounded at the elevated village perched in the trees. “W-we’re . . . on l-land?”

  “An island,” Gwen says.

  “Wh-what’s that m-music?”

  A soft melody floats through the air. Just as he’s become accustomed to the heat, Ishmael realizes that he’s been here long enough to become so used to the music that he isn’t always aware of it.

  Queequeg joins them, and they sit in the shade and answer Billy’s questions. He seems gleefully fascinated by this place. When Queequeg offers him a sweet and sour plant food, he first takes a tentative nibble, then quickly devours the rest and asks for a second.

  Gabriel arrives, and Billy is quick to thank him when he learns that the islanders were instrumental in his recovery.

  “Just don’t ask how they did it,” Gwen quips, then says to Gabriel, “Looks like it’s time for us to say good-bye.”

  But Gabriel shakes his head. “Not yet. ’Tis still weak and needs t’get his strength back. The Pequod shall pass again. Be patient.”

  A week later, in a distant corner of the lagoon, two outriggers drift together under the midday sun. Fayaway and Ishmael have tied their outrigger to Gabriel’s, and they share a lunch of treestone meat and dried scurry.

  “’Tis Gwen still eager t’leave?” Gabriel asks.

  “We . . . haven’t talked about it lately.”

  “’Tis busy hunting,” Fayaway adds. Each day, Gwen joins the hunters, and she is becoming skilled in their techniques.

  “’Tis good for Billy t’have the time,” says Gabriel. To help Billy regain strength in his leg, Mikal has been teaching him to climb the tall, limbless trees and harvest treestones.

  Ishmael chews on some dried scurry, feeling the distant tug of the Pequod. What if there’s been news about Archie and his foster parents? “It does seem like his leg is better.”

  “The leg, yes, but ’tis his spirit that still needs t’heal.” Gabriel takes a drink from a treestone and glances up at the sun. “’Tis time t’get back. And ye?”

  Fayaway lifts a long, pointed stick. “’Twill dive for dinner.”

  Gabriel unties his outrigger and sails away, and Fayaway and Ishmael slip into the water with spears. Now that he is comfortable swimming, Fayaway has been teaching him to hunt large scurry.

  Soon, Ishmael finds a fat brown spot swimming lazily among the pink, green, and yellow corals. But each time he gets close, the plump scurry scoots just out of range. The large ones are skittish, but Ishmael has learned that with time even the biggest will tire of constantly swimming away, and that’s when they become vulnerable. He swims behind the scurry for what feels like a considerable distance, and gradually the creature ceases to flee quite so far when he comes near.

  Finally, taking a deep breath, Ishmael dives and kicks down. But the brown spot, sensing that this approach is more aggressive, shoots behind a big coral formation. Ishmael follows — and comes face-to-face with a terrafin!

  Air bursts from his lungs and he bolts toward the surface, fearing that at any moment he’ll feel the poisonous skiver that will spell instant death. But he makes it to the surface unscathed. Gasping for breath, he looks down and watches the terrafin glide away, apparently unbothered by the confrontation. He looks in the direction the creature is headed and sees something he can barely comprehend: poles and netting jutting up from the water and, inside the nets, dozens — maybe even hundreds — of baby terrafins!

  An outrigger floats inside the netted area, and the woman in it gently pats the water with her hand. Moments later, the black-and-white wings of small terrafins splash on the surface, and the woman begins to toss out handful
s of what appears to be ground-up scurry. Other men and women stand waist-deep in the shallows while dozens of juvenile terrafins swim around them. Ishmael watches, mystified, while the men and women work in teams, one lifting a small, docile terrafin out of the water while the other gently massages the base of its tail over a vial. Even from a distance, Ishmael can see the iridescent green liquid slowly drip into the vial.

  Hearing splashing, Ishmael turns to see Fayaway paddling their outrigger toward him, an alarmed grimace on her face. He climbs aboard and she gives him a grave look. “Ye shan’t have seen that. If anyone finds out . . .” She shakes her head unhappily.

  Though eager to ask her about what he’s just seen, Ishmael merely assures her, “If it’s a secret, I can keep it.”

  They paddle back to shore in silence.

  Clinging to the smokestack rungs, the boys watched the three scrap poachers slowly toil to free one of the old pipes from the ground. It was taking a while, and the poachers frequently paused to rest and sip from flasks. Ishmael knew that it wouldn’t be long before Petra began to wonder where he and Archie were. In the meantime, it was getting harder to stay motionless on the rungs. Ishmael’s hands grew numb, his shoulders ached, and his back felt stiff.

  Ishmael feared his foster brother would accidentally bang a rung with one of his leg braces while shifting position, but that didn’t happen. Instead, they were discovered by dumb luck: One of the poachers happened to look up.

  “Hey, look!” He pointed, and the others saw them. The sky had grown lighter by now, and Ishmael could see that the poachers had scruffy beards and long, unkempt hair and wore tattered clothes.

  “What’re ya doin’ up there?” one of them called in a jocular tone.

  Neither boy answered.

  Below, the three men huddled, speaking quietly. Then one called up, “You can come down. We won’t hurt ya.”

  Ishmael and Archie remained silent.

  While the men huddled again, Ishmael hoped that as the day grew lighter and visibility improved, he and his foster brother might be spotted by someone heading to work at the plant.

  The three men must’ve been thinking the same thing.

  Because they began throwing rocks.

  When Fayaway and Ishmael return to the village, the mood is somber, and there’s no music in the air. At first Ishmael wonders if word has gotten back that he’s seen the terrafins, but then he and Fayaway encounter a teary-eyed Billy, who tells them that Mikal has suffered a bad fall.

  “W-we were up in trees near each other.” Billy sniffs and wipes his eyes. “Then something hit the ground with a th-thump that was too loud for a t-treestone. I looked down, and th-there he was.” He points at a knot of men and women moving toward the healing hut. Ishmael catches a glimpse of the old man in their arms.

  “Is he . . . ?” Ishmael begins.

  “S-still alive, but j-just barely.”

  As word of the accident spreads, the islanders abandon their chores to sit in circles and tell stories about Mikal that are more often accompanied by laughter than sobs. The time they found him hanging upside down in a tree, his britches caught on a limb, unable to free himself. The time he went out to spear scurry in a small dugout and was so successful that there was no room in the dugout for him when it was time to paddle back to the village. The crab races he would conduct for the entertainment of the children.

  Later, there is more music than usual in the air. Islanders wearing necklaces and garlands of sweet-smelling, flimsy petals — which Thistle calls “flowers”— play wooden flutes and stringed instruments. Gabriel and a few others sit with Mikal’s family and speak quietly.

  At a table nearby, Queequeg leans toward Fayaway and whispers, “What are they talking about?”

  “’Tis time t’ decide,” she whispers back.

  “Decide what?” Gwen asks.

  “Shall Mikal cease.”

  The table goes quiet. Ishmael isn’t sure which is more shocking — the idea that they are deciding the old man’s fate, or the casual way in which Fayaway speaks of it.

  “Shouldn’t Mikal have a say?”

  “’Tis not for him t’decide.”

  “But it’s his life,” Gwen says.

  “’Twill happen t’all of us someday. ’Tis the path. The old make way for the young.”

  “Can’t decide where ’tis best t’ go,” Thistle muses. “Perhaps t’be like Grandpa and spread in the sea.”

  “But then ye shan’t be here among us,” Fayaway says.

  “Be the whole sea. Here and everywhere.”

  Gwen gently pats Thistle’s hand. “Hopefully you won’t have to worry about that for a long time.”

  Ishmael, Queequeg, and Billy trade a look. This is a side of Gwen they’ve not seen before.

  Meanwhile, Thistle says, “Orson ceased last year and ’twas only a year older than me. ’Twas playing under a tree and a big branch fell.”

  “Well, hopefully you’ll be luckier than him,” Gwen says.

  Fayaway gives Gwen a curious look. “Luckier?”

  “You know, that something bad like that won’t happen to you,” Gwen explains.

  Thistle and Fayaway both display uncomprehending expressions.

  “What happened t’ Orson was sad,” Fayaway says, “but not bad. T’ cease ’tis not bad; ’tis not good. ’Tis just what happens.”

  “Just another way of looking at it, I guess,” Queequeg concludes.

  Ishmael feels the itch of memory. The night before they left for their missions, didn’t Archie say nearly the same thing?

  Ishmael and Archie were stuck, unable to climb out of rock-throwing range because of the loose rung above them. Fortunately, the poachers had poor aim, and the few rocks that hit the boys were slowed by gravity. The worst were the stones that flew too high, striking the smokestack above, then falling and clunking them on their heads.

  Then the rocks stopped. Ishmael looked down and saw why: One of the poachers had started to climb.

  Suddenly, the only thing racing faster than Ishmael’s thoughts was his heart. He and Archie were completely defenseless. What would happen when the poacher reached them?

  Riiipp! From above came the unmistakable sound of Syncro tearing. Archie had hooked his arm through a rung and was undoing one of his braces.

  He handed it down to his foster brother.

  Ishmael grabbed it and lowered himself a few rungs, then waited. When the climber got close enough, he’d club him.

  “Stop!”

  On the ground below, Petra, Joachim, and several others were running toward the smokestack. Joachim and another man were carrying guns. The two poachers on the ground instantly ran off with Archie’s crutches, leaving their comrade on the smokestack to fend for himself.

  Ishmael, Archie, and the last poacher began to climb down. “I didn’t mean no harm,” the poacher yelled to the small crowd below. “I was only tryin’ to help them down.”

  “Is that why you and your friends threw rocks at us?” Archie asked from above.

  The poacher dropped from the lowest rung and faced the group. “They’re just kids. Don’t believe them.”

  “They’re my kids and I do believe them,” Petra growled back furiously. “And your friends stole his crutches.”

  “Get going.” Joachim waved his gun. “If we ever catch you around here again, you won’t get off with just a warning.”

  Without another word, the poacher took off, soon disappearing in the gray haze.

  Joachim and Petra thanked their friends and then took Ishmael and Archie home.

  It would be a month before the boys were allowed outside again. And much longer before Petra or Joachim would let them out of their sight. But the boys had learned a lesson: not to put themselves in a dangerous situation without an escape route. Ishmael, though, would never pass a tall smokestack again without a yearning to climb up and see if the faint bluish-green dot in the distance was still there.

  “Anyone else noticed that there ar
e no chairs here?” Queequeg asks. “Only benches. And they never say ‘I.’ It’s always ‘we.’ As though the whole idea is to always be part of the group.”

  Fayaway and Thistle have gone off somewhere. The crew of Chase Boat Four sit on mats in the shade. Despite the somber occasion, Ishmael feels a sense of peace and well-being like nothing he has ever felt on Earth or on the Pequod.

  “They tr-truly care about one another instead of j-just th-thinking about enriching themselves,” Billy says. “It’s about as f-far from Earth as you can get.”

  Gwen makes a face. “Sorry, Billy, but I still intend to enrich myself. And if you’re well enough to climb trees, why aren’t we headed back to the Pequod?”

  “It could be hundreds of miles away,” Ishmael says.

  “Gabriel said the Pequod passes by here fairly often,” Queequeg adds.

  “Who knows what ‘often’ means to them,” argues Gwen. “Could be every ten years, for all we know. You really want to sit around here and wait?” She smirks at Ishmael. “Well, you probably do.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Queequeg asks.

  “You don’t think Ish would rather stay here with his girlfriend than get back to the ship?” Gwen asks.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Ishmael protests.

  Gwen lifts her eyebrows in disbelief. “You’re practically joined at the hip.”

  “Why? Because she taught me to swim and hunt scurry?” he asks. “She’d teach you, too, if you asked.”

  “I don’t need to learn that,” Gwen counters. “I need to return to the Pequod and do what I came here to do: make money.”

  She’s right. As pleasant as it is living on this island, they need to get back to their ship. Ishmael doesn’t even know if Charity was able to persuade Starbuck to grant Gwen and him the bait money for helping to capture the terrafin the day they rescued Daggoo.

  “So what do you suggest?” Queequeg asks Gwen. “That we stock up on food and water, set out in the chase boat, and just hope we run into the Pequod?”