The Coming of the Whirlpool (20 page)

And yet, rather than being sucked back towards the whirlpool, Dow saw that he was actually being carried rapidly eastwards. He studied the waves; yes, there were two currents at work here – Boiler had spoken of them once. Dow was now caught in the great north-east flow that ran perpetually across the base of New Island. But if he turned back towards the Rip he would cross into the flood emerging from the bay – a wide swathe of darker water surging off to the south-west.

It was there, Dow finally recognised, where the two currents rubbed side by side, driving in opposite directions to each other – at the mouth of the Rip, but not wholly within it – that the maelstrom had formed. Dow could sense its hidden abyss even now, yawning with monstrous appetite. And yet it was simply a giant eddy ground out between the conflicting flows. Why, little whirlpools formed the same way among the rocks and ripples of any stream.

The knowledge brought no comfort. Even though the maelstrom was a natural thing, to be inside it had felt utterly unnatural, utterly aberrant, and to be devoured by that black funnel seemed to Dow the loneliest death a man could face. And the question came, creeping and unwanted: Was Nathaniel actually dead yet? And worse, was there a chance of rescuing him even now?

No, it was impossible. Dow could not go back. No one could ask him to go back. Surely he had only imagined that look on Nathaniel's face anyway, that achingly sane stare, so lost, so forsaken. The old man had sought the whirlpool willingly, had he not? So leave him there.

But an unforgiving presence within Dow refused to accept such excuses. Because in truth he
could
go back. He understood the workings of the whirlpool now, he could decipher its currents and ride them if he so chose. And he had the wind at his disposal should he need to flee once more.

Only, he was afraid . . .

Dow raised his gaze, almost beseeching, to the Heads. He could not see anyone, but surely the folk of Stromner were still watching him from the heights, and the people of Stone Port, and the Ship Kings too. And yet, what help or guidance could any of them give? He was alone upon the sea, and he alone knew the whirlpool's ways. If Nathaniel was to be saved, only Dow could do it.

And slowly the full force of that thought came to him.
He was alone upon the sea.
Had he not wished for exactly this, as a boy, when he'd first spied the ocean from the headland? And now here he was, despite all the obstacles that had been placed in his way, sailing free in the face of storm and gale, master of his own boat, and voyaging where even the mighty Ship Kings feared to go. Moreover, he was a man now, and it was within his power to save another man's life.

Dow took a deep breath, then set his course.

His fear had not left him, no. But he held the rudder firm until the cliffs of East and West Heads lifted stark before him on either hand, and the swell of the whirlpool's rim rose up again before the bow.

He knew what he must do; as the boat climbed, Dow swung it hard to the left, so that he would enter the maelstrom against the rotation. He came atop the lip once more, and in the moment before the descent began he stared out and down across the whirling void, searching for one thing. There! A mote hanging low in the maelstrom's depths, spinning about the very brink of the funnel's mouth; the skiff . . .

Then the
Maelstrom
was diving down, cutting a path across the racing current as sharply as a knife. Spray flew; the wind was a thin wail above the thunder. And as Dow descended, the maelstrom reared up immense on all sides, the air growing darker, the waters blacker, as if no light could reach down so far from the sky. The tiller bucked against his palm, and only the boat's reckless speed prevented it from being swept away around the circle.

Steeper and steeper became the incline, and now the
Maelstrom
was canted so severely that Dow had to brace himself against toppling forward. He was nearing the mouth of the funnel, the horizon beyond which there was only the final fall into ruin down a throat that gaped a hundred yards wide. He risked a last glance up – the sky was an arched roof resting upon leaning walls of water, and whether it was the sky that revolved, or the walls, it was beyond the eye to tell. He stared down again, head spinning with vertigo, and spied the skiff.

‘Nathaniel!' he cried, knowing it was to no avail.

The old man lay sprawled across the bow of his craft, face down, an arm hanging over the side. He appeared to be unconscious. The skiff was racing around an ever- narrowing circle, only a scant few feet above the final descent. Dow read the angles and saw that if at the last moment he turned
with
the maelstrom's spin, then he could slip up beside the skiff, match its path for perhaps half an orbit, and then climb away again with the thrust of his sail. In that half rotation, he would have to drag Nathaniel bodily from one boat to the other.

There was no time now even for fear. Dow was a predatory bird, swooping in to steal prey from the grip of some vaster but slower creature. Spray sheeted again as he wrenched the
Maelstrom
around to join the spin, and then came chasing along to the stern of the skiff. But now a suffocating weight bore down, so tight was Dow's trajectory about the funnel. He sank slowly to his knees. The boat was pinned to the rotating wall and the world had become surreal, a barrel tilted on its side with a madly whirling sky at one end and a black abyss at the other.

Inch by inch the
Maelstrom
crept up on Nathaniel's craft. Agonisingly slow, the two boats drew level, a single foot of water between them. And agonisingly heavy, Dow's hand stretched across to clutch the side of the skiff. He pulled, and the two boats were hull to hull. Nathaniel was in reach. Dow stretched again and felt his fingers brush the old man's shirt. Nathaniel stirred at the touch. If only the old man would reach his own arm out—

Then Dow lifted his eyes and saw beyond Nathaniel, and knew that none of it mattered anymore. They had crossed over the brink of the fatal horizon, and he was gazing straight down now into oblivion.

They were inside the funnel.

It did not seem to Dow, in the frozen moments that followed, that such a place could exist in the world he thought he knew. Where there should have been only whirling darkness there was, in fact, a vivid blue glow, shimmering and flickering as if unseen bolts of lightning were igniting in the deeps. And revealed by such illumination was an enormous gullet falling sheerly down into the ocean, a throat so full of noise that it was like a gale in Dow's face, icy somehow and stinging his eyes. Down and down the hole dropped, so far that it seemed impossible that the sea could even be so deep so close to shore, and that the maelstrom must spin instead over some chasm in the seabed that opened into a bottomless netherworld.

Except there
was
a bottom. Far down, where the throat narrowed at last and where the watery walls met and thrashed together, there was solid ground. It was an upthrust pinnacle of rock, drowned deep for most of its existence but undrowned now, hard and jagged, proof against all the water's fury – the fulcrum indeed upon which the entire maelstrom turned.

And there were things upon that rock.

The frigid air might have been a lens of glass, so mercilessly did it magnify those things to Dow's gaze – and, no doubt, to Nathaniel's.

There, amid the lank seaweed and the noisome blisters of shells and polyps, was jammed a boat – or at least, the shape of a boat, seemingly formed of stone. Indeed, it might have been a natural formation, not a craft at all . . . or it might have been a fishing boat, sucked down and dashed there some ten years before, and glazed since by layer after layer of nicre. And the question of which it was might never have been answerable, if not for the evidence of the smaller shapes that lay within. Two figures, grotesquely pale and whole and preserved by the salts.

Dow stared at them, his horror creeping, even as the maelstrom roared about him and his own boat spun on the verge of annihilation. The first of the corpses lay before a stone pillar that had once been a mast. Its arms were clasped about the other corpse, and this second figure stood upright, the mast at its back. Ropes of seaweed had replaced the actual ropes that had once bound it there.

So suggestive were the poses that even now the first figure might have been striving to free the second – the father struggling with the ropes that he himself had tied to preserve the life of his son, but which now lashed the boy to a boat that was lodged against the underwater mount, never to rise. And in their white rigid faces and in the black hollows of their screaming mouths could be read the hideousness of those last drowning moments.

All this Dow saw in a heartbeat, gazing over Nathaniel's shoulder, their two boats still side by side suspended at the top of the funnel. But it was an eternity too, and in that same eternity Dow saw Nathaniel turn his head, away from the sight of his family, away from the irrefutable fact of their death and from the cruelty of its manner. His gaze met Dow's at last. And Dow could see that all the wild madness in Nathaniel had indeed been snuffed out, that in the old man's eyes there was nothing now but desolation and grief, and a terrible knowing.

Dow extended his hand again, straining against the oppressive weight of the spin, and Nathaniel managed to shift his own arm a fraction, his trembling fingers reaching achingly close to Dow's . . .

But then the skiff shifted across the wall of the funnel, its bow suddenly nosing down. Dow lunged – his fingers grazed Nathaniel's he was sure – then their hands were a yard apart, and then two, the gap widening. It was too late. The skiff was falling away while the larger boat hung on the lip a moment longer. Dow was granted a last glimpse into Nathaniel's eyes to see the awareness of his fate lighting there, and the despair and the terror.

Then the old man was flung aside, and like a leaf the skiff was whirled away, down into the flickering chaos, irretrievably lost.

Dow could not even wait long enough to witness Nathaniel's final end, his own doom hung too close. His hands as heavy as iron, he grasped the rudder and heaved with all his will. For an incalculable length of time – one circuit of the funnel, or twenty, Dow would never know – nothing happened. He was poised perfectly on the brink and would remain there, it seemed, until some slight ripple broke the balance and sent him tumbling down in Nathaniel's wake.

In the end it was the maelstrom itself that saved him, and the howling breath that came from its throat – for that same breath filled the sail near to ripping it apart, and slowly, fraction by fraction, the
Maelstrom
began to right itself and climb away. The lip of the awful funnel receded, and Dow felt the blood flowing in his limbs again. He rose from his knees. Clear of the throat at last he saw that the wind of the everyday world, the northern gale, still blew. At length he was able, as before, to turn, and then begin the long climb to the outer rim.

It was a harder ascent than the last. By the time the
Maelstrom
struggled free, Dow's arms and legs were trembling in the extremities of exhaustion. But he was numb now to all pain or wonder or fear. All he felt was the emptiness of his failure and the finality of Nathaniel's death. When he thought to look about himself, he saw that he was sailing on the open ocean again, far out beyond the Rip, and that the clouds were thinning and streaming away in the wind. Sunlight glistened on the wave-tops, and the water was blue and brilliantly clear.

But even the sea held no appeal to him now. Dow brought the boat about and, as the day wore from morning into afternoon, tacked mindlessly back and forth across the Heads while the maelstrom raged and the Claw emptied itself of its flood waters. At some point the flow fell below that necessary to drive the great whirlpool, and its roar began to die. Eventually it frittered away to little more than a revolving circle of foam, huge but impotent. And yet it was hours more before the outflow ceased entirely, and the Rip was safe again to cross.

It was evening thus, the sky cold and empty, the north wind fading, when Dow finally sailed his little craft back through the Heads. He came slowly, riding with the incoming tide. Around him the waters swirled in harmless spirals, tentative and laced with old foam – as exhausted perhaps as Dow himself, and equally uncertain as to where they should go. It was very quiet now all about the headlands, the thunder of the day only a memory. The channel and the Claw looked much as they always had, as if the whirlpool had never risen.

But upon East Head, and upon the Stone Port seawall and the high bastions of the Ship Kings' citadel, the thousands waited still, watching in silence as Dow and the
Maelstrom
came home from the sea.

T
he following few days were the most aimless and empty that Dow had ever known. He was alive and unharmed, his heart beat as strongly as ever and the blood pumped warm in his veins. Overhead the sun shone bright in the blue sky, as if summer had returned, and all around him Stromner went swiftly about recovering from the flood, with a great bustle of hammering and sawing and rebuilding. Folk went to and fro, smiling in the sunshine. Everything, it seemed, glowed with new life, having emerged from the shadow of the maelstrom. And yet Dow felt only cold and numb, as hollow as an old shell upon a beach, and as brittle as a rotten tree trunk that was upright yet, but ready any moment to fall.

He returned, on the evening of the whirlpool, to Nathaniel's shack, even though he no longer had any claim to the house. People came clamouring to the door, Boiler and the other villagers, bringing drink and food, their faces eager, their mouths babbling with questions. But nothing they said reached Dow. He felt deafened; there was a roaring in his head, and all other sounds seemed to come from far off. Finally Boiler shepherded the visitors away, and Dow tried to sleep, but when he closed his eyes the world spun, slow and horrible, and so he sat upright in Nathaniel's chair, awake in the darkness.

At dawn he walked down to the beach. A vague notion had come to him that he should be fishing, now that the storm was over. When he arrived he saw that the other fishermen of Stromner were themselves getting back to work, and were busy with the morning's launch. They called to him, but still the numbness in Dow was impenetrable, and he did not answer. He looked at the
Maelstrom.
It sat where he'd left it the night before. And he knew he could not go fishing. The
Maelstrom
was not his to use
.
He had no more claim to Nathaniel's boat than he had to Nathaniel's house. Not now that their true owner was no more . . .

He turned away. All that day, and then the next, Dow drifted without purpose. At times he walked about the village, amid the drying mud and the noise of rebuilding, oblivious to the stares of those he passed by. At times he slept, in snatches of unconsciousness that left him no more rested than before. At times he picked at the food that his visitors of the first night had left behind. But mostly he simply sat in Nathaniel's chair and stared at nothing. He knew it wasn't right. He knew that there were surely things he should be doing. But somehow he couldn't think of a one.

On the third night, for lack of anything else, he went to the inn. As he approached he could hear shouts and laughter coming from the bar, and when he entered a crowd of faces turned to him, bright with drink and good cheer. But he paid no attention to the Stromner folk. He was apart from them. A space was cleared at a table, and Dow allowed himself to be led there. Boiler brought him a mug of beer, and Inga, her manner oddly shy, brought him a meal. Then they drew away. Dow ate, barely aware of the silence that had gathered around him, or that everyone was watching his every move.

Then the whispering began. At first only a mutter here, or a hushed word there, but slowly it grew, until it was a soft rain that filled the bar. And strangely it was the very softness of the sound that finally breached the deafness in Dow. For the folk of Stromner were praising him. In reverent murmurs, one to another, they were extolling his feats against the whirlpool. Dow Amber, they said, the boy from the highlands, had triumphed where no mariner ever had. He had defeated the maelstrom and broken its power. For had they not seen him descend into its monstrous funnel, and yet had he not emerged from it alive?

And at that, an emotion finally did stir in Dow – a dim, crawling horror. For they were wrong, as wrong as they could be. He had not defeated the maelstrom. No one could defeat the unthinking fury of that howling funnel. It knew nothing of any winning or losing, it knew only obliteration. And it had swallowed Nathaniel whole. Nathaniel was dead. He was
dead.

But no one mentioned Nathaniel. The old man might never have lived. The whispering gave way to louder con- versations, and then to shouts and laughter again, and calls for more beer. The evening had resumed its course. And now an anger mounted steadily in Dow. For he saw how things were.

Stromner was
happy.
The fishermen were celebrating bountiful catches in the bay and bragging of the high prices they had set over in flood-ravaged Stone Port, where supplies were short. The women were chattering gaily about the repairs to their houses; it was a chance to make things better, to build new rooms, to lay new floors where old ones had rotted. And parents were wondering aloud if it might even be time to send for all those sons and daughters who had been packed off to other towns in the years previous, and bring them home.

For everyone agreed on one thing; a change had come over Stromner. They'd all felt it the moment the whirlpool had died in the Rip; a lifting of the spirits, a lightening of the air. Whereas the first maelstrom had blighted the village fortunes, it seemed that this second maelstrom had done the opposite. Hope had returned. And it was Dow Amber who was to thank for it. He had dispatched the whirlpool's curse, just as he had been brought there to do.

This was more than Dow could bear. The crowd's approval washed over him like a hateful, beery breath; every respectful glance he was given grated, every burst of laughter set his teeth all the more on edge. It was bad enough that he had failed Nathaniel, but now to be admired for it by these fools . . .

In his revulsion Dow looked suddenly to the corner where Mother Gale always sat, for it came to him that she must be behind it all, that she must be the one spreading tales of his purported victory, and convincing the Stromner folk that all their troubles had ended. It would be typical of the lies she told. For she did lie. He had discovered as much in the maelstrom.

But the old woman was not in her corner.

For no reason he could name, this alarmed Dow. Boiler was passing by with a tray of drinks. Dow rose and clutched the innkeeper's arm urgently. ‘Where is she? Where's Mother Gale?'

‘At home in her bed, I'm told. She's ill.'

But a woman nearby – it was Mary Strand – overheard, and laughed. ‘Ill? She's not ill, not unless choking on her own words has made her so. She's miserable, is all, because her prophecies of doom and woe have not come true. Foolish old witch. When times were bad she was the only one who was happy. Now that times look better, where is she? Taken to her bed to sulk. Ha!'

An inexplicable rage arose in Dow at this; his hands clenched and in another instant he might have throttled the woman where she stood.

Boiler intervened, quickly putting down his tray, and taking Dow aside. ‘Go home,' he advised. ‘Company is not what you need right now. Go home and don't come back any time soon. There's nothing to worry about. I'll send Inga of a night, with all the food and drink you could want.'

And Dow's rage popped like a bubble, leaving him empty again, and wearily confused. Why had he been so angry? What did he care if Mother Gale was mocked? There was nothing he owed the old woman.

He nodded wordlessly at Boiler, and left.

The next day the sun continued to shine and Stromner continued to heal, but Dow sat all the while in Nathaniel's shack and in Nathaniel's chair and still did not know what to do with himself. That night Inga brought him food, as promised, but when Dow tried to pay for it from his few remaining coins, she only shook her head and said, ‘My father says we must not take money from a hero.' And then she left him alone with the appalling word.

Hero.

He wrestled with it the night through. Was it true – not only what Inga had said, but what all the folk of Stromner were saying? Was it the act of a hero, the thing he had done? To not only pursue Nathaniel into the maelstrom once, but then, having escaped, to return? It certainly sounded heroic. And yet it hadn't felt heroic. It had felt only that there was a responsibility he could not ignore, a burden that he could not put down, no matter how unwanted it was.

Was that heroism? Dow knew many stories of heroes – so had
they
performed their brave deeds with the same reluctance? And later, had they found themselves equally as purposeless and lost? Had they also withdrawn to a dark room, unable to bear the company even of those they'd helped? If so, what a terrible thing bravery was. And what lonely people heroes must be.

At noon on the fourth day since the maelstrom, a knocking came on Nathaniel's door. Dow answered it, and found Boiler Swan there upon the step. ‘I have a message for you,' said the innkeeper, ‘from Stone Port.' And he shouldered his way, gently but firmly, past Dow and through into the shack.

Dow followed after him, noticing belatedly how stale and stuffy the room smelt. He smelt no better himself. He had not washed or shaved his face since the storm. ‘A message?' he asked.

‘Aye,' said Boiler. He stood in a strangely formal pose, with his hands behind his back, waiting while Dow returned to Nathaniel's chair.

‘Well?' said Dow.

‘First I must say this; you think me a coward, perhaps, after what I said to you on the beach, the day of the whirlpool.'

Dow only stared in puzzlement.

The innkeeper went on stiffly. ‘I argued that you should not go after Nathaniel, and yet you went. I was right to dissuade you; nevertheless, it was a brave act, and I would not want you to think that I don't admire it.'

A weariness rose in Dow. Admiration? No . . . it was the last thing he wanted, especially from Boiler.

But the innkeeper was studying him with a determined look. ‘Have you ever heard, Dow, how I burnt my face?'

Surprised, Dow had to glance away from Boiler. He'd become so used to the innkeeper's features that he'd quite forgotten how livid they were, like the severest sunburn. He shook his head.

‘It was a fire. More than twenty-five years ago now, before I became an innkeeper. I was a fisherman then, and Ingrid and I lived in a fine little house along the dunes a way. We had two children at the time. A girl, Inga, and a boy . . . my son. One winter's night I woke to the sound of burning. I don't know how it started – a candle left alight maybe – but the place was already well ablaze. I woke Ingrid and yelled at her to flee, then I went for Inga; she slept in a room of her own. I had to find my way through the smoke, but I got to her, and carried her out to safety. But outside, when I found my wife, we both realised . . .'

Boiler faltered, then swallowed and went on.

‘You see, our son was only a baby, he still slept in a cot by the bed. I thought my wife had him, she was certain I had him, and all we'd done between us was leave him alone in there. The entire house was in flames by then, but of course I went back, knowing full well I'd be burnt. All that mattered was my boy. And I did find him, eventually, through the fire, when it was much too late.'

The innkeeper had to pause again, and Dow glanced up. He knew he should be feeling something – pity, sadness, horror – but nothing seemed to come. Why was Boiler telling him this, and why now?

‘As you know,' Boiler continued, his tone level once more, ‘we later had another child, my wife and I. Another daughter whom I love dearly. But I was never to have a son again. And as a permanent reminder of my failure to save my boy, I got this face of mine. Oh, to everyone else I was a hero for having at least tried. I've been admired in this village ever since that day. I am regarded all about as a brave man, and in many ways I know that I am. But listen to me, Dow. I know as well as you the emptiness of a brave act that ends in futility, and the deep unhappiness that it stirs within. So I say this to you now – beware.'

Dow spoke at last. ‘Beware of what?'

‘Of despair. Of contempt for others, of a coldness in your thoughts. Call it what you will, but know this – it's a trap for the broken heart. It will soothe you for a while, or at least it will numb you, but in the end it will only banish you to long loneliness. And that need not be. Do not despise the folk of this village just because they admire you for daring the whirlpool.'

Dow blinked at tears that were suddenly in his eyes, his numbness pierced at last. A wild sorrow filled him, and shame.

‘They will offer you a home here,' Boiler added, ‘in their gratitude. Even without Nathaniel. If you want it.'

And that, Dow admitted, his head falling low, was the question he'd been so unable to face. What was he to
do
with his life now? Did he want to stay in Stromner? Or did he want to go home to Yellow Bank, to his old life, and to his family?

But now Boiler drew up an empty crate and sat close in front of Dow. ‘But before you think on any of this, you have business more pressing. I bear a message, as I said. Two marines arrived at my inn an hour ago. They announced that they had come to issue an invitation to one Dow Amber, he that rode the maelstrom. His attendance, they said, is requested at a grand feast to be held aboard the battleship
Chloe,
this very night. Indeed, he is invited by the Governor of New Island himself, who wishes to honour this same Dow Amber for the bravery he recently displayed upon the sea, and in front of so many witnesses.'