Read Online The Dream Vessel by Jeff Bredenberg - Free Book Online

waves—occasionally, even at its nadir, the lolling sea buried him. Quince strained his lips toward the red, blackening sky, pulling fiercely at the bolted cuffs, wrists bleeding down there.
    And finally there was no more air. His Rafer lungs would last him half an hour at most, and already his heart was thrashing a grim tattoo up his spine and into his head—a-wump, a-wump, a-wump.
    Quince knew his religion—better than most. Had taught it to the hundreds of youngsters for whom faith comes easily; was fluent in the scriptures of the god Rutherford Cross and well versed in the deeds of Cross’s son Pec-Pec. He had always considered himself a religious man, with all of that knowledge framed out to perfection. But now, with the sea water gnawing at his bulging eyes, taunting his lips to open, Quince was surprised by a rush of calmness, a warmth and ease he could only attribute to his faith welling up in proportions he had never known.
    Out in the darkening murk of shifting green water, Quince saw a large white body glide by. The scribe thought briefly, without fear, of the vile feeder beasts who owned the night waters, but as it passed again he saw it was not one of them. On the third pass he could see clearly the monster dragon fish, thick as five dock pilings, red, green and gold fins trailing yards behind. And mounted atop the glorious fish, precisely as described in the scriptures, was the dark-bearded Pec-Pec, the god-man son of Rutherford Cross. He wore a bemused expression as he wafted past on his sea-steed, unable to speak but clearly intending, My, how fortunate that I wandered by just in time.
    Pec-Pec pulled the streaming dragon fish into a sharp turn and slowed to a hover by the manacled scribe. He thrupped his fingers across each of the bolts gripping Quince’s limbs to the dock, and the black little shafts spun and backed out of the piling wood obediently. The manacle covers fell away. Quince mounted the grand dragon fish behind Pec-Pec, and together they swept into the black ocean.
     
    In the morning, Big Tom ordered that Quince’s body not be unshackled. Leave it there in the low tide muck. Let the fiddler crabs do their work.

10
A Shift of Ballast
    For Sailors, oh the murder wind!
    For Healers, the Trygulkul flu,
    for Sounders, it’s a shattered skin,
    the bones not tossed, the bones gone rot.
    But what’s the fearsome, gnawing beast
    that feeds upon the men who press
    the borders of reality?
    It inhales fear and suckles gloom—
    the madmen speak to Cantilou.
    —Rafer nursery rhyme, translated by Jersey Saple
    Little Tom, naked and brain-numb, was staring at the ceiling of his cabin, entranced by whispy little ganja ghosts dancing across the woodwork. His nose was twitching, as if from some imagined rotten smell. He beckoned to Tym with a lazy roll of the wrist, legs open.
    Tym obeyed. She stroked the back of her hand down his inner thigh to signal that she was there, and his penis grew even more upright. In the same motion she worked the broken tosser disk out of her palm, then sucked away the smear of blood, drawn by one of its tines, from the base of her forefinger.
    She had meant this to be simple—pound the shard into Little Tom’s throat, then escape topside. The younger deserved the death. For the rape he intended. For the slaving. For the communities demolished.
    She envisioned the moist plunge into his neck. Hitting bone halfway through. The gurgle. It would be over quickly, and she would be alone then in a slaver’s cabin with a warm rack of flesh. Was that enough?
    Well, perhaps not. And without further thought she gently took his erect member into her hands, waited for the blissful smile to spill across his vacant face, and pressed the tosser disk’s deadly tines into it until they popped out the topside in four little geysers of blood.
    Little Tom bolted up to a sitting position, paralyzed by a scream too big for his throat. And that was when the entire ship seemed to explode. The