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35.2: TROUBLED WATERS (part 2)

Three hours later, Rupert had concluded that, on a list of his favourite activities, swabbing decks would not rate highly. At all. His knees were scraped from kneeling on the wooden deck, his hands sore from gripping the wash-rag, and his arms ached from scrubbing to and fro, to and fro, to and fro...

Besides all that, it was hot. In fact, it was the kind of hot that Rupert, having lived a largely nocturnal afterlifestyle for all of his one hundred and fifty two years, had never experienced before. The sun beat down on the deck like a blacksmith beating his anvil. And if he'd thought being surrounded by water would help, well, he knew better now. The sea only acted like a mirror, the sunlight bouncing off it and rebounding entirely—or so it seemed to Rupert—onto his sweating form on the deck.

Oh yes, sweat. That was another thing he had never experienced before and he didn't like it one bit. He had some vague notion, gleaned back at school during Middler Education class, that sweat had some kind of useful biological function, but he could not for the afterlife of him think what it was. Sweat was uncomfortable, disgusting, and smelly. It had even led him—against all vampiric code—to peel off his waistcoat and shirt so that he didn't have to feel the horrible sensation of the fabric sticking to his body. It felt terribly undignified to bare his pale flesh to the open air like this, but at least he wasn't chafing any more.

Rupert glanced up at Harriet, who was swabbing opposite him. Her own cheeks were red and her hair stuck to her forehead. She looked up at him too, and grimaced.

"I don't know... how long... I can... do this," she whispered, in between swabs.

"Me... neither," Rupert admitted.

They both ducked their heads as the bald sailor strode past them. A pair of keys dangled from his belt, a reminder that he could lock them up again just as easily as he had unlocked them. When the sailor had first brought them up on deck, Rupert had briefly entertained the idea of escape, but the sailor had been vigilantly patrolling ever since. Besides, escape became rather complicated when there wasn't anywhere to escape to.

"My arms hurt," Harriet told him.

"My knees hurt," agreed Rupert.

"My hands hurt."

"My back hurts." Rupert flinched. "Actually, my back really hurts. Night's shades, it feels like it's... Like it's burning!" A mixture of panic and elation rose in him. "Harriet," he hissed. "My back is burning. Do you think... Maybe the hex is wearing off?" He got half to his feet. "Night's shades, I've got to get out of the sun! I've got to get a cloak, I—"

Harriet's hand shot out and pulled him back to his knees just as the bald sailor strode past them again. "I'm sorry, Rupert," she told him in a low voice, "but that's not the hex wearing off."

"How do you know? It's really sore, it's like—"

"Burning, I know." Harriet drew her hair up and showed him the back of her neck. It was very red. "It's something that happens to Middlers," she explained. "In the sun. I'm sorry, Rupert, but it's normal."

Rupert started swabbing again, dejectedly. "But it hurts," he complained.

"Then put your shirt back on."

"But then I'm too hot."

"Then suit yourself."

They swabbed for a while more. Everything hurt some more. Then, "Have you seen Juggalug?" Harriet whispered.