“I'm on a boat motherfucker take a look at me
Straight flowin on a boat on the deep blue sea
Bustin five knots, wind whippin out my coat
You can't stop me motherfucker cause I'm on a boat.”
The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain, I’m on a Boat
The trip was long. And cold. And long. But at least there was food. Well, “food.”
Call me a snob, but Army rations aren’t really food. I guess the army decided that since Nestor had a boat and air travel is now a thing of the past because (surprise) dragons are still dicks, there’s no reason he wouldn’t want to help his country and sail some food to Africa or wherever, right?
Not so much. Crotchety old Cap’n Nestor told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted, especially when Gunnar said, “We should at least feed the pregnant lady,” gesturing to me with a thumb.
I didn’t have time to frown at Gunnar (I’m not sure whether it’s endearing or annoying that he refers to me as “the pregnant lady”) before Nestor was congratulating me. So I tried to remember that I had manners, and even if I was angry this guy hadn’t done anything to me, and told him thanks.
On our way to accepting Malsum’s invitation we sailed into some weirdness. It was… it was the type of thing you’d expect to see on some show where the characters get stuck in the Bermuda Triangle. Or something. Then the weirdness parted, or abated, and there was an island ahead of us.
We got off the boat and used the Zodiac thingy to maneuver ourselves to this lonely island in the middle of fucking nowhere. Of course, before we departed, Captain Lucas Nestor made it clear that this island was not on any of his maps. I’m not really sure why that bore mention, since I’m pretty sure we clued him in on the “this trip is going to be weird, and yes, you are probably going to die” front of things. This definitely fell under weird, so there’s no reason this island should be on any map a mortal knew of.
Besides “someplace weird,” I wasn’t completely sure where we were. Then we came upon this big buffet type spread, and some animals milling about. Well, lots of one type of animal. Pigs. Lots of pigs. Kind of, exactly like in that story with Odysseus where Circe derails him and turns half his crew into pigs and won’t turn them back into normal people until Odysseus has boned her for a year.
As soon as this hit me, I turned to the group. “Don’t eat the food.” Because the food was how Circe turned the men into pigs in the first place. Gunnar had figured it out, too, which was great because then I didn’t feel so much like I had to tell him not to get any fucking ideas about Circe. I had the thought that if she wanted to bone someone for a year, I would vote we give her Harlan. One, he’s the only guy in this Band not wearing a wedding ring, and two, he’s the prettiest guy here anyway.
And if she turned out to be a lesbian today… Well, then I would have to tell her to grow a dick and go fuck herself, because I’m not cheating on Gunnar.
And we heard a lion’s roar, and the kids were in trouble and it was just like Fate had told me. I don’t really wanna replay it. Short version is, their research had drawn them to Malsum too, and they’d gotten drawn into the weirdness storm and landed on this island just like us. We hauled ass to help them out, and everything ended up okay. For now. Until we get to the part of the “one of their number” type thing happens.
Yeah, there were some mild injuries. Basilisks suck, and I still remember the way Gunnar screamed in the deserts of Mutavilya when he jumped nearly on that nest.
But no one was seriously harmed, so we gathered the kids up and sent them to the Zodiac. And then it was time to talk to Circe. Yay.
So, what do you tell a topless witch-goddess when you show up unannounced in her sanctum sanctorum? Well you start with “Hi,” and continue with “Thanks for not killing us,” and from there it’s pretty much the same thing you’d tell a clothed goddess. You tell her the truth, as much of it as you can muster, that you’re chasing some asshole who’s trying to end existence and that somehow you ended up here.
Turns out that the truth shall set you free. Circe said she isn’t the one who drew us here, but she thought she knew who had. Circe was really unexpectedly helpful.
Now, I want to be clear here. I am not by any means penciling her in on my “people I think probably won’t fuck me over” list. I just don’t really think Circe’s on the up and up. I think she just wants to be on whatever side is going to win. She’s probably going to straddle both sides, and feel free to take that as literally as you please, until a victor emerges, and to the victors shall go the spoiled.
And I’m not just speculating wildly here because I have a thing against women who parade around topless in front of married men. I do have a thing against women who parade around topless in front of married men, but that’s not the point. I’m speculating on the basis that, somewhere back in her timeline of crazy, Circe fucked a titan.
Yeah. Curious as I was, I didn’t ask which one, or how that even worked, and I probably deserve a pat on the back for that. But one day Circe decided she wanted to have the child of a titan, because that seems like a good way to give herself an in with whomever comes out of this mess ahead.
It sounds to me like a great way to make sure that the kid has a messed up childhood and is ostracized by both factions for being a half-breed.
Anyway, I suppose I should thank both Fate and the gods that Circe has only been able to successfully bear one child. The child’s name is “Hope,” and Hope defies description. Hope is frail and weak. Hope is covered in sores. Hope is blind and looks to be in constant pain. Hope is, to put it very kindly, a thing that probably should not be.
Hope is also a pretty kickass prophet. See, Hope knew that we would be accepting Malsum’s invitation. Why? Well, because Fate had told me that we needed to, and we do make an effort to do some of the stuff that Fate says we should do. Sometimes.
Anyway, Hope intercepted both us and the kids, rerouting us to this island, Aeaea. She had something to give us. Something to give me, and I had something I was supposed to give to Hope. That scroll that Gunnar had gotten in Duat, the one from the girl who said I was supposed to be there, apparently Hope knew about it. Fate had told me that we would get to where we were going with a “map unlocked by blindness.” I wasn’t sure there was a map in that scroll case, but here was blindness standing in front of me, and I didn’t have any better ideas.
It wasn’t really a map in the truest sense, it was like one of those stamp rollers. Except it looked blank, and the map it produced changed depending on what you wanted.
Most of us didn’t really have anything to say to Hope. I wanted to ask about the things I’d seen at the hospital, when I consulted Sibyl. Some of it still didn’t make sense, and I wanted to know if there was something I was just missing. So I told Hope everything, even the stuff I hadn’t told the rest of the Band, or Gunnar. I told Hope why I’d started screaming and that someone was going to have to die, and that thankfully it wasn’t one of the kids – yet – but that this whole thing wasn’t over and I just don’t know what to do when every vision I see of the future is about the world falling apart.
Literally. I asked Hope, “What do you do when your whole world is about to fall apart?”
And I got this confused look, because apparently what you’re supposed to do is just not get so damn attached to everything so that it’s not such a big deal when everything goes to shit.
And from Nevermore, who’d taken a break from yelling at Gunnar for knocking me up to sit on my shoulder while I talked to Hope, I got silence. Complete and utter silence, like he just didn’t know what to do with me.
I guess I’m just getting tired of hearing the people I love scream. If that’s all the future’s got for me, then I think I’d just rather not know about it anymore.
Anyway, I was done with Hope, and done with looking at things I didn’t understand and couldn’t help anyway.
Then we got back to the boat and we got out of the weirdness and away from Aeaea. I told all the kids I was proud of them and I loved them, all that standard Mom stuff. And I told Alex that Jaime was alive and okay and back at Gunnar’s, and then we told them to head off to somewhere that wasn’t where we were going to be, somewhere that wasn’t near Kane and Ixion and Mikaboshi.
Gunnar went back to driving the ship, Harlan and Nate went back to fraternizing, Kate went back to being Never’s best friend ever, and everyone else went back to… whatever else they had been doing before, I guess. I got to go back to not being terribly social.
There’s not a lot to do on a boat trip to Antarctica, especially not when the only person you’d really want to have an extended conversation is occupied with the task of making sure we don’t actually go the way of the Titanic. So while Gunnar was busy driving the boat, I’d spent 14 hours drafting the plans for Nevermore Mk. 2 (he threw a fit that his former, corporeal self was the Mk. 1, “Just as the Lord Apollo, happy and healthy may he forever be” had made him). And for the other bajillion hours, I’d been spending my time staring at the water. My conclusion? It looked wet.
After a day and a half of watching me, Nevermore finally sauntered over and put his beak in my business. It showed amazing restraint on his part, waiting a whole 36 hours. Though, he was probably a little preoccupied breakdancing for the steampunk princess and occasionally trying to get some sort of reaction out of Gunnar. “Oh gods no! Not the iceberg! The ghost iceberg will kill us all! Gunnar can’t you see it?! We’re all going to die!”
Gunnar still can’t talk to dead people, which I have given up on trying to make the bird understand. Or respect.
But I’m not always great at ignoring the bird, so I couldn’t help but look up when he edged his way down the railing toward me. After a minute he bobbed his head at me, asking, “Sup, luv?”
“I had some time to think about what happened at the hospital,” I told my dead bird. I went back to looking at the water – it gets more interesting when you’re talking to a nosy, belligerent ghost bird – but I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
He cocked his head at me, I guess trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about. “Oh, the prophecy bit and your resultant impression of the Incredibly Emo Hulk. Right.” He bobbed a bird version of a nod. “And?”
“And it fucking sucks,” I finally looked at him.
There was a long silence while the bird just looked at me. He didn’t blink much to begin with, and he doesn’t blink at all since he died. It’s a little unnerving. “Laur…” I got the impression he’d be pinching the bridge of his nose, if he had a nose. And could pinch.
He made a point of taking a deep breath that I knew he didn’t need, letting it out as a sigh, just to show me how exasperated he was with me. “Well. Deep thoughts, by Laurel Esparza. Move over, Nietzsche. You should publish that shit.”
“Fuck you.” Never has turned the act of annoying me into an art form. He manages to drive me from zero to pissed in less than a second.
“Oi, you kiss your kids with that mouth?”
“I haven’t kissed my kids in almost a month.” Not the ones I’d given birth to, anyway. “So, fuck you.”
He tilted his little bird head to the side. If I had higher expectations of him, I might have accused him of thinking. “Seriously, Laur… what’s wrong?”
“You know what’s wrong,” I stared at him. I know he’d heard me tell Circe’s daughter all about the prophecy; he was sitting on my fucking shoulder. And Never loves telling me how his memory is perfect, so he had to remember the part where I told Circe that my whole world was about to fall apart.
Someone is going to die. I know this to be an inevitable truth.
It’s not that I don’t think I can stop it. It’s worse than that.
It’s so much worse because I know I have to let it happen.
To move forward, to hold the line, to stop the darkness… someone is going to die. Fate told me. If I don’t let it happen, we don’t move forward, we don’t hold the line. We don’t stop the darkness. The world gets swallowed and then the world probably ends. Or maybe not, which would suck in an epic way, too. Either way, I don’t want to be around to see it, because it’s game over. No reset button.
So I have to stand here on this boat, sailing for Antarctica and pretending I’m okay and accept that I am going to let someone I care about die while everything in my heart, head and nature is screaming at me not to let it happen. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right?
Right?
“This isn’t the best day I’ve ever had,” I said tersely, putting the railing of the boat in a death grip.
“You spent the day on a boat, Laurel. Some call this ‘vacation,’” he quipped.
“Normal people get to call days that period between one sleep and the next. I’m…” I trailed off as he started just shaking his beak at me. “Fine. Month. Whatever, however long it’s been since the Labyrinth. That period of time, I’m not having a great one of those.”
“So you were poisoned and kidnapped. So someone cut away that godawful tattoo of yours and was kind enough to put you to sleep for it – about which, love, we are going to have to talk because you owe that Iapyx fellow at the very least a fruit basket. So someone – named Iapyx, to be very clear – made sure that it wasn’t Ixion who put you under the knife because people and things tend to get bloody well mutilated to the point of fucking death on his operating table. One, Iapyx did you a fucking favor by carving up your back himself, love. And two, so fucking what?” Never stared at me for a second, maybe letting it sink in that he was actually, seriously, yelling at me. “The tattoo was a glorified tramp stamp, and you have had worse days, Laurel.”
I raised one eyebrow and stared at him. “Doubtful.”
“Love, you obviously don’t remember. I’ve been waiting for your Viking to tell you, but I don’t think he’s gonna. Maybe he’s trying to protect you, and it’s about bloody time, but he’s going about it a little wrong.”
He shuffled closer to me, dropping his little bird voice. “The worst day you have ever had was the day you watched two dozen people die. They weren’t people you knew well. Fuck, some of them were complete strangers, but sweet little damaged Laurel,” he paused to look at me pityingly. “It ripped your heart out all the same. There was not a fucking thing you could have done. Your father Apollo, bright may he shine and long may he live, even told me so himself. You were helpless and busy bleeding to death. And still you felt like you failed them all. Still you had years of nightmares to the point you just stopped bothering to sleep.”
I felt something squirmy in the pit of my stomach, this sick, sad feeling like maybe I should remember this. Like maybe, if Never was right and Gunnar was keeping something from me, even though it ticked me off, Gunnar really was protecting me by not telling me the whole truth.
Two dozen people? Shit. I’m pretty sure I’d remember fucking up that badly. I didn’t remember, though, and that pissed me off, too. So who better to take it out on than Never? He’s contractually obligated to put up with my shit.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Afghanistan?” He edged closer again and made the word a question. If he’d had arms instead of wings, he probably would have tried to hug me. The fact that he was being so gentle made me way more nervous than the topic at hand.
“…No?”
“It’s the whole reason you started writing anything down, Laur. You wrote it all down. Your therapist made you. Everything that happened to you in that damned place, and all the incredible nonsense what’s happened since. You ain’t read none of it?”
“Nope,” I shook my head and shrugged nonchalantly. “Been kinda busy with this whole ‘preventing the apocalypse and raising the dead’ type stuff. Plus, I don’t read that shit anyway once I’m done with it. Some of it’s written really fucking poorly.”
“Well, yeah love. You’re the Doctor, not the Bard. And just cos all of you Greek types want to talk about your feelings don’t mean you’re any good at it.”
Well. I certainly wasn’t. Behold the wisdom of a dead bird.
“And I admit,” he continued low and what was probably supposed to be soothing, “some of your entries are absolute shit. They’re circuitous, they ramble, they belabor the point while you sort out that bloody mess you call a noodle.”
I am pretty much incapable of just keeping my mouth shut, so I argued with the only part of that statement I accurately could. “I don’t call it a noodle.”
Yeah. Not only was I arguing with a bird, I wasn’t even doing it well. He just rearranged his wings, stared at me, and made a show of ignoring my half-assed protestations. “My point is, love, well-written or uh… not,” and he put a special emphasis on the not, “you’ve written it all down. Comedy and tragedy, your life is pretty much all there.” He then made a small gagging sound. “Thank the gods you left out the sex scenes.”
I scoffed a little. “Yeah, all three of them.”
His gagging turned almost immediately into a squawk and he covered his head with his wings as he tried to drown out my voice. If he weren’t dead, the whole boat probably would have heard him screaming, “I don’t wanna hear it! I don’t wanna hear it! I don’t wanna hear it!”
When he was sure it was safe, he continued. “Look, love, you keep talking a big game about how you’re better than your parents, better than your friends ‘cos you don’t keep secrets. Especially not from your Viking.” He paused, and waited for me to realize that was exactly what I was doing, gods-fucking-dammit. “Does that mean except for now and whenever else it happens to suit you?”
I opened my mouth to bite his head off, but he raised a wing, put some feathers over my mouth and fucking shushed me.
He ignored me and kept talking. “I can tell that you’re pissed and this time it’s not even completely my fault. I can tell that you’re scared and there ain’t nothin’ I can do for it. Can’t even hug you. No arms,” he flapped his wings a little for emphasis.
“So go do somethin’ that will make you feel better. Talk to your Viking. Talk to your husband.” And I knew Never was worried about me, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use that word in reference to Gunnar.
“If you won’t tell him that you’re pissed – at him, at the world, at the whole of creation – then at least tell him you’re worried, and tell him why. But for fuck’s sake, tell him something because that look on your face, moping like someone just kicked your puppy, is fucking killing me.”
“I’m not moping, I’m thinking.”
“Well, knock it the fuck off. You suck at it, and it’s bloody depressing.” And with that last bit of Nevermore-brand-encouragement, he fluttered off to leave me to my thoughts.
So yeah, Jiminy Cricket gave me a hell of a talking to. I took my bird-therapist’s advice, and finally broke down and told Gunnar everything. Everything everything.
I told him how I had known the kids were in trouble, and how I know that someone is going to die.
I don’t remember whether I let him in on the “I’m freaked out because I have to let it happen or the world’s gonna end” part of it. I think I just stuck to telling him that the Norns and the Fates we haven’t killed just told me one of our group is going to bite it. I left out explaining to him why I wanted to keep me away from the spindle. My husband is crazy smart; I’m pretty sure he figured it out that I don’t trust myself to keep my promise to pick the world over him. If there were a promise I’d break, it might be that one.
And Gunnar, who I firmly believe is a fair bit wiser than I am, didn’t pretend to have any of the answers. He didn’t tell me I was stupid for being so upset. He didn’t tell me much of anything, really.
He just listened to me trying not to cry while I told him what was supposed to happen and when I was done and still keeping it together, all he said was, “Right. Try not to die.”
It’s pretty much what I’d tell him, if our positions were reversed.
Well, okay. It’s the point I’d eventually make while I rambled about how I love him and I need him and I don’t really want to even think about doing any of this without him and how I’d really like to see him hold his daughter and how he isn’t supposed to die anyway because dammit we’re supposed to become gods together and save the world together and have lots of babies.
Unless this is how we save the world.
Fuck.
I looked at Gunnar for a heartbeat, trying to think of something reassuring to say. I wasn’t about to promise him that it wouldn’t be me, not when I wasn’t sure I could make that happen. Or not happen, as I was hoping the case would be.
Reassuring or not, I settled for, “Working on it.”
