Natural Magic

Chapter 10 - Serpent and Sea-Legs

Below decks on the ship The Hereafter, Trevor Tweesly sat at the navigator's desk. Beside him was a porthole through which he could see the tilting, churning horizon. At least, he could if it were daylight outside.

He pored over his notes and star charts by the light of a nearly spent candle in the holder, which was bolted to the desk top to keep from tipping or sliding as the room’s gravity swayed indecisively. The pieces of yellowing parchment which he was studying were in varying states of being rolled up, and each depicted the curved lines and dots which are the hallmark of the navigator's craft.

They were each depictions of a night sky, like a an insect on a collector's board, euthanized, with the wings spread and the body pinned amidst descriptive notes.

Trevor, in between the furious action of his quill, would pause to push his round iron-rimmed spectacles back up the bridge of his nose before resuming his organized scribbling.

The small room was illuminated with an inpatient flickering light, threatening to go out, sputtering indignantly against the humid, salty air.

Strung up along the far wall was a hammock. It lay twisted and tangled, neglected and unkempt.

A blanket and pillow were caught in the webbing, not unlike the husk of a fly in an abandoned cobweb.

A bronze sextant on a tripod stared limply down at the floor.

Mounds of things sat against the other walls, like hounds haunching at the edge of campfire light. They were bags, crates, canvas, lumber, rope, and a small bookshelf with tomes.

The books on the bookshelf were locked into place with clasping Iron bars, restrained from gravity’s seductive dance. They were too delicate and valuable to be left free to the elements, so they were kept apart for their own safety.

The skinny brown haired man, his thoughts at the end of their track, slowed his scribbling.

The fine details trickled out of his brain, down through his arm, and he trapped the final notes of the ship's route there on the page.

Satisfied, he holstered his quill and stoppered the ink well, both built into the desk.

He folded his pair of compasses and put them back into their velvet fold, which he rolled up and secreted into the drawer, along with his leather-sheathed quill knife. This he did with care, obvious even through the hallmarks of sleep deprivation.

After blotting the ink from the finished work, he stacked the notes into a rough sheaf before laying them into a binder.

Finally, eagerly, he rolled up the topmost charts on the desk. He slid the roll into a waterproof scroll holder with the cap dated for this week in a practical script. This he deposited into its place among the pigeonholes on the wall, one in a collection of sixty three others.

Standing there with the binder under his arm and about to go out the door, he stopped to glance at the hammock.

He stood there for several seconds, trapped in a kind of trance. For Tweesly, the room fell away.

The weight of the binder in his arm disappeared.

The gentle swaying of the ship became the pulse of his universe.

He stopped noticing the flickering light.

In that moment, he saw only the essence of the hammock.

Tearing himself away from his thoughts, he extinguished the candle, which was mere minutes away from burning out on its own.

The firelight was replaced with the grey light of dawn, which had just begun creeping from the horizon.

This pre-dawn light inched over the ocean. It crawled through the port hole and into Trevor’s room.