Odds Are Good (15 page)

The woman returned every day, usually in the late afternoon. Sometimes she would swim alongside the ship for hours, unless Jan tried to speak to her. Then she would immediately disappear beneath the water again.

On the eighth night, a gale swept down from the north, buffeting the ship with fierce gusts of cold wind. The waves grew higher and higher, until they were crashing over the bow. The ship was tossed across the water like a ball in the hands of the gods. Jan and Samos took refuge in the cabins below and finally tied themselves to their bunks to keep from being flung against the walls.

When morning came, they staggered up to the deck of the ship. Jan clutched Samos's arm in terror. “Look!” he whispered. And even when he remembered that the old man was blind and could not see what was ahead of them, he was too frightened to feel foolish.

Flying fish were leaping all around them. On the starboard side of the ship, a few hundred yards away, swam a pod of whales. They, too, were leaping out of the water, flinging themselves into the storm with abandon, creating enormous surges when they landed.

These things were strange, but not terrifying. What terrified Jan was the great waterspout that rose from the sea directly ahead, a whirling column that stretched so high he could not see its top.

“Drop the sail,” ordered Samos, when Jan told him what he saw.

The ship was moving faster now, the sea peeling away from the prow in curls of foam. Jan raced to the mast and fumbled with the knots. They refused to budge. He drew his sword and sliced the rope.

It made no difference. The sail stayed proud and full.

They drew closer to the spout, which loomed above them like some living tower, dark and swirling. Jan grabbed a coil of rope. Taking Samos by the arm, he hurried him to the mast. Then he wrapped the rope around both of them and bound them to the wood.

The roar of the water was deafening, the headlong rush of the ship terrifying. The wind clutched at them, as if trying to pluck them from the deck.

Then they were part of the waterspout. The ship, snatched from the surface of the sea, swirled up and up, riding the dark column as helplessly as a leaf on the wind. Around and around they spun. Higher and higher they rose, sometimes on the surface of the spout, sometimes pulled into it. Water drenched them. At times they couldn't breathe.

And still up they went. The sea was appallingly far below now, so distant that the leaping whales looked like minnows. Looking straight ahead, Jan saw clouds swirling by. Twisting his neck, he saw the dark spout, and the strange sea creatures trapped within it. A moment later they were spun back inside the whirling wall of water themselves, and he could see nothing.

Then, like a cork bobbing to the surface, the ship burst out of the water spout. Jan shook his head, causing water to spatter from his long hair. He blinked to clear his vision, then cried out in astonishment.

“What is it?” gasped Samos. “Where are we?”

“I don't know,” said Jan. “It looks as if we are on the sea again. But how can that be, when the spout carried us so high away from it? Is this a sea in the sky?”

“Perhaps the spout has taken us to another world,” said Samos gravely.

Jan thought of the stories his mother used to tell, stories of worlds beyond worlds, and shuddered. He began to fumble with the rope that held them to the mast. At first the sea-soaked knots were hard to undo, but finally he managed to loosen them.

When he looked up again, he cried out in surprise.

“What is it?” asked Samos.

“An island. We're sailing straight toward it. Brace yourself. We may run aground.”

And, indeed, moments later they ran right up onto the sand—crossing the line where the sea met the shore and continuing on for twice the length of the ship. Jan was still marveling at this when he realized something else.

“Come on!” he cried. Still holding Samos by the arm, he helped him climb over the edge. They dropped to the sand, which was warm and silky beneath their feet.

“What is happening?” asked Samos breathlessly.

“The ship is getting smaller,” said Jan. His eyes widened. “And smaller still! Now it is no longer than you are tall. And still it shrinks. And now—”

He stopped, too surprised by what had happened to speak for a moment.

“What?” asked Samos. “What is it?”

“The ship has become a coin,” said Jan. He plucked the shining disk from the sand. On one side the coin was engraved with a perfect replica of the ship. On the other the golden surface showed a gull in flight with a single star above it.

“What does it mean?” asked Jan.

“I'd say that it means we're supposed to take it with us,” said Samos.

“Take it where?”

The old man shrugged. “Wherever we're going next.”

Jan looked around. The beach ended at a jungle. It would have been too thick to walk through, save that directly ahead of them was a clear path. Taking Samos by the arm, Jan led him forward.

The jungle was so green and dark that Jan felt almost as if they were walking underwater. It was quiet, too—unnaturally quiet. No breeze stirred the leaves, which hung limp and still. No howl nor roar, no cry of bird, buzz of insect, hiss of snake, nor chatter of monkey disturbed the awful silence, which was so heavy it made Jan afraid to speak. The only sound was that of their own passing, and even that seemed oddly muted.

Jan stopped. A huge web blocked their path, its strands as thick as his thumbs. He turned aside, but the jungle was too dense for them to go around. Nervously, looking above and to the side for any sign of the creature that had woven it, Jan sliced at the sticky silk until he had made an opening through which they could pass.

And still all was silent. They walked on, Samos keeping one hand on Jan's shoulder.

Another web, and yet another. And then, a hundred paces past the last web, the jungle opened.

Jan caught his breath in wonder. In the center of the clearing stood a building of astonishing beauty. Made of shining white stone, with broad steps leading to a golden door, it stretched high above the trees. Ornate carvings of gods and monsters decorated the walls. Whether it was a temple or a palace, he could not say. He knew only that it was wonderful.

He thought he heard the murmur of voices as he and Samos climbed the steps. But he could see no one.

The golden door opened easily before he even touched it.

They entered the building and walked through long curving corridors until, finally, they came to another great door. Jan waited for a moment. When the door did not open, he reached forward and pushed on it.

It swung inward without a sound.

They entered a huge, high chamber, its painted blue ceiling so far above them that it seemed like a sky. Around the chamber, in niches carved in the walls, stood statues of men frozen in horrible postures, as if they had been turned to stone at the most awful moment of their lives.

A wide carpet, blood red, ran the length of the chamber, all the way to a platform mounted by a series of five broad steps. The carpet continued up the steps and stopped at the foot of a golden throne.

On the throne sat Jan's father.

It took a moment for Jan to realize who it was, for he had not seen his father's face in ten years, and he himself had been only three years old at the time. But soon enough he recognized the straight nose, the strong chin, and most of all the look in his father's eyes, which made it seem as if some part of him was always looking into the distance, looking for something he could never find. Then Jan was seized by a strange welter of emotions—joy at finding his father, but also sudden, unexpected anger at the man for having been gone so long with no word. Underneath all that, and equally unexpected, was a kind of terror.
What will he think of me?
Jan wondered.
Will he even know me?

He started toward the throne. He walked for the first few paces. Then, unable to control himself, he bolted forward, racing along the carpet and hurling himself up the steps.

He expected his father to rise from the throne, to fling his arms around him. But he didn't, and Jan's joy withered into fear when he stood next to the throne and saw why his father remained sitting.

Hand and foot, arm and leg, he was bound to the throne by golden vines that seemed to grow directly from the throne and into his flesh.

The boy stood in silence, uncertain at first of what to say. Finally it was his father who spoke. “Is that you, Jan?” he asked, in a voice little more than a whisper.

Jan nodded. Then, as if the gesture had broken the cord that tied his tongue, he cried, “What has happened to you?”

Jan's father closed his eyes. “I have given my life to the crown and the throne.”

Jan, his knees suddenly weak, slid to the floor. He leaned against his father's legs, which were clad in blue silk finer than any he had ever touched before. “I don't understand.”

Straining against the vines, his father's fingers stretched forward just enough to touch Jan's hair. “When I went in search of the Golden Sail, I did not know I would be gone so long,” he murmured.

“Why did you go?” asked Jan, holding back his tears.

“Like you, my heart was restless. I longed for adventure.”

“My heart longed for you,” whispered his son.

His father drew in a sharp breath and didn't speak for a moment. At last he said, “As you know, I went in search of the Golden Sail. When I found it, when I boarded the ship that carries it, the ship sped off on its own, bearing me to this land. Here I was greeted as hero, and king. Can you understand what that means, Jan? I was a fisherman, a sailor.”

“A father, too,” put in Samos.

Jan's father groaned. “A father, too. But suddenly I was called ‘king.' Little was it in me to resist, even though I understood what was being asked of me.” He sighed heavily, then shuddered. “I could have refused. They would not have forced me.”

“Who?” asked Jan. “Who would not have forced you?”

“The golden people,” said his father. “The people of this land. The golden land must have a king, Jan, or it withers and dies. But the land devours the king, as it has devoured me. Now I am withering, too; used up.”

“No!”

His father gave him a weary smile. “No sense in trying to hide from what is. I sent the ship to search for you, to bring you back, so that I could say farewell.”

“And who will be king when you are gone?” asked Samos, who had come slowly down the carpet to join them.

“Whoever will take the task,” replied Jan's father.

“Not Jan!” said Samos protectively.

The king, Jan's father, shook his head. “I did not bring Jan here to ask him to take my place. I brought him to say farewell, and to ask him to set me free. Could he be king? If he wants.”

“Why would I want such a thing?” asked Jan, drawing back.

“Because it is beautiful,” said his father, looking past him, as if he was seeing some other place, some other world. “The first years are more wonderful than I can tell you, Jan. You are beloved of the people. Feasting and dancing are the order of the day. But there comes a time when you grow tired, when what you are giving is more than what you have been given. Then the people grow petulant, like little children who have gone too long without a nap. And, eventually, you are empty, and it is time for a new king.”

“I'll set you free,” said Jan, drawing the sword he had claimed on the ship.

His father shook his head. “Not that way. It's too late for that. I want you to do something much more difficult.”

Jan felt his grip on the blade begin to falter. Fear blossomed in his heart. “What?” he asked softly. “What do you want me to do?”

His father looked directly into his eyes. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

Jan felt a deep heaviness inside him, a weight on his heart that threatened to sink it in the heaving sea of his sorrow and anger. To wait so long, to come so far, aching for his father, for what he had never received from him—and now, after all that, to find not that his father was going to come home with him, nor that he had become a great ruler and wanted to share his kingdom, nor that he had a treasure to enrich their lives, but rather that he wanted something more from his son, and the hardest thing of all at that, this was a bitter discovery indeed.

“Jan,” said his father softly. “Look at me.”

The boy stared into his father's eyes. They were like the sea during a storm, dark and troubled, and strange currents ran beneath their surface.

“I brought you here because it was the last thing I could do for you,” said his father.

“For
me
?” cried Jan.

His father stretched his fingers toward Jan. The boy hesitated, then reached out and took his hand.

“Forgive me and you will be free,” whispered the king. “You can go on to grow and live as you must. But forgive me not and I will haunt you as long as you live. You will carry me like a stone in your heart for all your days, and everything you do will be twisted out of shape.”

“You brought the boy here to threaten him?” growled Samos.

Jan's father closed his eyes. “This is not a threat,” he said wearily. “It is a warning. I have sat in this chair for many years now, and as the vines grew deeper into my flesh, and then my veins, binding me to both the throne and the people, I came to know their lives, and their hearts. This has brought me great wisdom.” He gave his son a sad smile. “Alas, the wisdom comes far too late for me. But not for you, Jan. Not for you. I tell you only what I have learned. Forgive me, or carry me like a stone for all the days of your life.”

Kneeling, clutching his father's hand, Jan gazed up into the eyes he knew so well, though it had been so long since he last had seen them. Hurt boiled within him, acid in his veins. So much lost. So much lost.

“I am more sorry than I can tell you,” whispered his father.