Glory Season

One thing for sure, she wasn't about to join other passengers cowering below. Out here one must face the storm unsheltered, staring at soaring mounds and abyssal gullies of heaving ocean. But across that terrifying vista, that maelstrom, she had last sighted the Zeus. Her twin rode that other frail matchbox of wood and cloth and flesh, and if Maia was too ill and clumsy to help Wotan's struggling crew, at least she could keep watch, and call if she saw anything.

Mostly what she saw was watery nature, a conspiracy of foamy sea and sodden air, trying its best to kill them. The green hillocks, taller and steeper than the clanholds of Port Sanger, arrived in a rhythm well-timed to deepen the ship's pendulous roll. On passing the next crest, Wotan heeled far to starboard, hanging precipitously, about to spill over a terrifying slant. The entire vessel shivered.

Just then, a fresh gust struck the other side, yanking mightily at the groaning masts, levering the freighter's great bulk over its keel. Loudly protesting, the infirm ship listed and plummeted downslope. Gravity rotated, becoming a sideways force, pressing Maia against the rails. One leg slipped between, dangling into space. In horror, she saw the gray-green sea reach with foam-flecked gauntlets . . .

Time slowed. For a suspended moment, Maia thought she heard the waters call her name.

Then, as if bemused by her helplessness, the ocean-beast slowed . . . paused . . . halted just meters away. Eyeless, it looked at her. Like an unhurried predator staring straight through her soul.

Next time … Or the time after . . .

The trough bottomed out. Maia's heart pounded as the freighter's list began slowly to roll the other way again, drawing back the hungry waters. Gravity's fickle tug rotated toward the deck, once more.

Suddenly, from underneath came a sharp, splintering crash. A horrible, fell vibration, like wooden ribs snapping. New, panicky cries pealed.

". . . Eai! The cargo's shifted! …"

An image came to mind, unasked for. . . . Tons of coal moving in black, liquid waves from one side of the hold to the other, assailing the inner hull as the sea hammered from without. Wotan sobbed, Maia thought, listening to the horrific sound. Dark figures ran past, prying at the cargo hatch with steel bars, sending the door flying off like a leaf caught in the wind. Not waiting for help, the dim forms dove inside, presumably to try shifting, the load with their bare hands.

Maia glanced overboard as the sea rolled back again, nearly cresting at the gunnels this time, before receding even more reluctantly than before. Just a few more such oscillations, and Wotan was surely doomed. The cries of those aloft rose in pitch and urgency, along with sounds of frantic chopping. Someone screamed. An ax glittered in the rainswept beam of an emergency lantern, tumbling to the raging sea. Belowdecks echoed the wails of those facing a different hopeless task.

By utter force of will, Maia overrode her nausea, as wild as the storm. Her hands uncurled from the vibrating rail and pushed off. "I'm . . . coming . . ." she managed to croak, for no one to hear. Knowing she lacked any skill to aid those struggling aloft, Maia stumbled upslope across the slippery deck, toward the yawning darkness of the hatch.

Inside the hold, all hell had broken loose, as well as several partitions meant to guard the contents against shifting. One barrier had given way in the worst possible place, near the bow, where all that mass suddenly piling starboard added to their list and worsened the rudder's lumberous response. Dim electric bulbs, running on reserve batteries, swung wildly and cast dervish shadows as Maia grimly traversed a creaky catwalk straddling huge bins half-filled with chunky coal. Black dust rose like spindrift, clogging her throat and causing her nictitating membranes to close over her eyes, just when she needed more light, not less!

Stumbling down a crumbly talus, Maia came upon an infernal scene, where shattered boards let tons of coal pile rightward in great sloping mounds. Other vars had already joined the men below, toiling to tame the rebel cargo, tossing it morsel by morsel over groaning walls into yet unbroken compartments. Someone handed Maia a shovel and she dug in, adding what she could to the pitiful effort. Through the suffocating haze, she saw that a trio of clones were also hard at work — first-class passengers whose clan must have taught its daughters that dirty hands were less objectionable than dying.

A good thing to remember for our daughters' curriculum, pondered a remote part of her, exiled to a far corner along with notions that kept gibbering in stark terror. There wasn't time for dread or detachment as Maia bent to her task with a will.