sit, bankside, upon my rear,
Anâ chew the wax from out my ear.
âOraccan childrenâs song about the Riverkeep
Â
Morning found Wull, undrunk tea cold in his hand, perched opposite a fragment of skull as though he had arranged for it to enjoy a formal breakfast. He sat, still tight with cold,slow-blinking in the glare: the morning had arrived without cloud, and the small window was filled with the dazzle of sunlight on snow. It illuminated a woodcut darkened by soot and time: a man, barrel-chested and thickly bearded, standing proudly in a bäta with a modestly wrapped corpse elegant in the stern. The sky was a sweep of cloud with a fat, benevolent sun beaming down.
Wull looked at it a while, then turned to the inelegant lump on the cadaver slab: the arrow-shaped piece of skull and its strip of faceâcomprising the eyes, most of the nose, and a corner of the mouthâthat had peered at him from beneath the ice. Once he had realized it wasnât attached to a body, he had stretched out an oar to lift it into the bäta. Snagged in a drift of net and weed of the type that often clung to the hulls of ocean barges, it must have come up from the coast on the back of the head-shaking captainâs boat.
As first recoveries went, it wasnât especially unpleasant. It certainly hadnât taken much lifting, and with his hands, shoulders, and tailbone in a grim state following the disaster at lantern three, he was glad of that at least.
He had recorded the skull in the ledger as soon as feeling returned to his fingers:
The partskulle of a mann discoverd under the ice neer lanttern three. Some face remayns and also bothe eyes, returnd to boathuse.
He remembered the story of Pappaâs first recovery: a guardsman whose strangled corpse had settled in the bottom weed. Before he could float to the surface, an ocean barge anchored directly above him, and stayed for the summer months while the captain gambled away winterâs money. As the water fell, the barge settled deeper in the river atop the corpse, so that when eventually the captain returned to his winter trading, Pappaâthen a gangling boy of sixteenâfound the guardsman on the bank, pressed as thin as paper, looking like nothing more than a discarded floor mat.
Wull wondered if Pappa had ever failed to light the lantern wicks. Or dropped a whole bottle of whale oil. It didnât seem likely.
His
recovery was now sat in the mortuary at the head end of the cadaver slab. At first heâd set it in the middle, as heâd seen Pappa do with torsos, but the head section had a small, raised pillow in the stone. And it
was
a head after all.
He could have set it to face the other way, but somehow that seemed worse: he imagined the swollen eyes pulsing into life and flicking around the walls. So he had sat in the clay-smelling room opposite its slack gaze, fighting the needles of his slow-thawing flesh and his trembling hands, waiting for Mrs. Wurth the undertaker to make her weekly appearance.
And now the maddening woman was here, keeping perfect time as ever. From the parlor, behind the closed door, came the urgent silence of Pappa straining against the bonds on his wrists and the cloth wrapped across his mouth. Wull was certain only he could hear it.
He sighed, and felt his wind throb in the struggle to control himself. The constant, dull ache was back: the acid boil of tension and worry that filled him from his guts through his muscles to the tips of his fingers. He ignored it.
âAnâ whairâd ye say ye found this?â said Mrs. Wurth.
Wull looked at her gray face. Mrs. Wurth had shown no sign of surprise or disgust or humor on seeing the face peeking up at her from the slab; just turned it over to inspect the mottled insides and nodded.
âIt was under the ice by lantern three,â said Wull. âThere was weed all round it, like when they gets caught under barges.â
Mrs. Wurth nodded again.
Anâ chew the wax from out my ear.
âOraccan childrenâs song about the Riverkeep
Â
Morning found Wull, undrunk tea cold in his hand, perched opposite a fragment of skull as though he had arranged for it to enjoy a formal breakfast. He sat, still tight with cold,slow-blinking in the glare: the morning had arrived without cloud, and the small window was filled with the dazzle of sunlight on snow. It illuminated a woodcut darkened by soot and time: a man, barrel-chested and thickly bearded, standing proudly in a bäta with a modestly wrapped corpse elegant in the stern. The sky was a sweep of cloud with a fat, benevolent sun beaming down.
Wull looked at it a while, then turned to the inelegant lump on the cadaver slab: the arrow-shaped piece of skull and its strip of faceâcomprising the eyes, most of the nose, and a corner of the mouthâthat had peered at him from beneath the ice. Once he had realized it wasnât attached to a body, he had stretched out an oar to lift it into the bäta. Snagged in a drift of net and weed of the type that often clung to the hulls of ocean barges, it must have come up from the coast on the back of the head-shaking captainâs boat.
As first recoveries went, it wasnât especially unpleasant. It certainly hadnât taken much lifting, and with his hands, shoulders, and tailbone in a grim state following the disaster at lantern three, he was glad of that at least.
He had recorded the skull in the ledger as soon as feeling returned to his fingers:
The partskulle of a mann discoverd under the ice neer lanttern three. Some face remayns and also bothe eyes, returnd to boathuse.
He remembered the story of Pappaâs first recovery: a guardsman whose strangled corpse had settled in the bottom weed. Before he could float to the surface, an ocean barge anchored directly above him, and stayed for the summer months while the captain gambled away winterâs money. As the water fell, the barge settled deeper in the river atop the corpse, so that when eventually the captain returned to his winter trading, Pappaâthen a gangling boy of sixteenâfound the guardsman on the bank, pressed as thin as paper, looking like nothing more than a discarded floor mat.
Wull wondered if Pappa had ever failed to light the lantern wicks. Or dropped a whole bottle of whale oil. It didnât seem likely.
His
recovery was now sat in the mortuary at the head end of the cadaver slab. At first heâd set it in the middle, as heâd seen Pappa do with torsos, but the head section had a small, raised pillow in the stone. And it
was
a head after all.
He could have set it to face the other way, but somehow that seemed worse: he imagined the swollen eyes pulsing into life and flicking around the walls. So he had sat in the clay-smelling room opposite its slack gaze, fighting the needles of his slow-thawing flesh and his trembling hands, waiting for Mrs. Wurth the undertaker to make her weekly appearance.
And now the maddening woman was here, keeping perfect time as ever. From the parlor, behind the closed door, came the urgent silence of Pappa straining against the bonds on his wrists and the cloth wrapped across his mouth. Wull was certain only he could hear it.
He sighed, and felt his wind throb in the struggle to control himself. The constant, dull ache was back: the acid boil of tension and worry that filled him from his guts through his muscles to the tips of his fingers. He ignored it.
âAnâ whairâd ye say ye found this?â said Mrs. Wurth.
Wull looked at her gray face. Mrs. Wurth had shown no sign of surprise or disgust or humor on seeing the face peeking up at her from the slab; just turned it over to inspect the mottled insides and nodded.
âIt was under the ice by lantern three,â said Wull. âThere was weed all round it, like when they gets caught under barges.â
Mrs. Wurth nodded again.
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