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This, of course, made him consider his cormorant.
Was the cormorant largely a bird, and sometimes a man?
Or had he been born a man and become a bird, diving
into the sea and mastering the depths and the turbulent
skies above, free to soar and swim?
As the boat pitched and rolled, Miles dug under his
pillow to retrieve one of his oldest journals. His sketches
weren't as fine as he wished they might be, but they
were sufficient. He ran his fingertip over the feathered
angles of a majestic, black bird and re-read the scattered
notes below.
Traumatic events can shift perceptions and warp
memories. (Was it real?)
Shifting Steam - 45
Did he leave something with me? A propensity to
dream? Must consider supernatural gifts beyond the
ability to shift forms.
The cormorant had strong fingers.
I remember.
***
After four days of trawling, the wells were full of
speckled cod, and the Ladybelle set course back toward
Buzzard's Bay. Miles climbed to the top of the
wheelhouse with a pair of magnifying spectacles and
watched three bloated dirigibles drift on the horizon.
Whale-watching expeditions, most likely; rich families
on holiday flocked to the port cities to board floating
ships and chase down pods of humpback whales.
At one point, Miles had considered a career aboard
one of the dirigibles, but they simply didn't get close
enough to the water. He'd also been offered the
opportunity to develop undersea transportation, but the
idea of being sealed away from the surface filled him
with terror that overrode the urge to advance science.
The boat passed a striped buoy with a chiming bell,
and Miles turned his spectacles toward it to study the
three cormorants sunning and drying on the iron arms
that extended to each side. He smiled to himself, feeling
slightly delirious with exhaustion after the long trip. The
boat moved sluggishly, her belly full of newly-dead fish
bobbing in bloody seawater.
When one of the birds took flight, circling and
swooping toward the Ladybelle's rigging, Miles thought
little of it. Seabirds usually began following as the day
heated, drawn to the drying bits of dead fish and
discarded crabs cast across the deck and tangled in the
netting piled up at the back of the boat.
Shifting Steam - 46
The cormorant's fine black wings stood out sharply
against the gray skies, the clouds having spread out into
one thick, oppressive blanket above them, as if the
heavens were stifled by a heavy fog.
"Lovely," Miles murmured, indulging briefly in
appreciation for nothing but the aesthetics.
Though Miles did not subscribe to the numerous
superstitions fishermen carried to sea with them, he
knew cormorants were considered a sign of luck. They'd
already had a good catch, but the thought of luck calmed
him anyway.
The cormorant shrieked.
Then a rogue wave caught the Ladybelle broadside,
causing her to roll so sharply dark water cascaded over
the deck and she dragged over, teetering on the edge of
capsizing. Miles heard yells and screams, and closed his
eyes like a coward, clutching the iron rail. The wave
roared, water sucking against the hull, causing the wood
and steel to groan in protest.
The boat began to right itself with sickening
momentum, and Miles thought, "Oh good, we're not
going to sink," just before he lost his grip on the rail and
pitched neatly overboard.
His body registered cold first. The water shocked
him, like slaps all over his body--ice and pain. He
reached and rolled, grasping for the sky and the air. The
Ladybelle glided past, noisy and heaving and
frightening. Miles saw her white hull, and then didn't, as
her wake blinded him and the waves pulled him under.
"Man overboard," he thought desperately, hoping
someone realized he'd been up above the wheelhouse.
Surely they'd see him and drop the skiff and pluck him
out of the depths.
While he waited, drowning didn't happen quickly.
Miles scrambled, sinking boots-first, his eyes open to
Shifting Steam - 47
the briny nothingness. It was like that, staring through
the dust-like haze of plankton and filtered light, that he
saw the man approach him in the water. He assumed it
was a hallucination, the result of nearing death. But the
man grabbed him with strong, corporeal hands and
began hefting him back to the surface.
They broke the surface, splashing and struggling,
Miles doing very little to promote his own buoyancy.
"It's you!" Miles yelled when he could. It came out like
a wet croak between bouts of vomiting seawater against
the man's bare shoulder. "You must be miserably cold."
The man in the water watched him keenly, black eyes
narrowed with a distinct air of disapproval. He had
warm, brown skin and dark hair that fell like wet satin
along his face and past his shoulders. "Why do you
come in a boat to die?" the man said, breathless despite
his ethereal beauty, and undeniably human.
"Oh, I came to study. And to look for you! I knew
you weren't a bird. Well, you are a bird, aren't you? A
bird and a man." Water splashed at Miles' face, choking
and silencing him briefly. His teeth began to chatter, the
click-clack of it jarring and painful.
"You are& very cold," the man said.
"I'm afraid I am," Miles said, nodding as best he
could without submerging his mouth. He looked around
and saw that the Ladybelle was slowly circling back.
Four crewmembers paddled toward them in her wooden
skiff.
The man pulled him closer. His skin felt warm
despite the moisture, like a tongue, or what Miles
suspected a tongue might feel like. He'd have blushed in
nearly any other circumstance. "You ought to become a
bird again. They'll likely not take to discovering a naked
man in the water with me."
Shifting Steam - 48
"I will," the man said, abruptly releasing Miles and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
