Riven Isles

31 | Spiderwebbing Cracks

I set it on the chair next to his bed and he reaches for the dial. "Now go into the cupboard over there," he nods towards the other end of the room, "and bring me a bottle."

"What's wrong with this one?" I point to the one that stands beside the glass on the floor.

He makes a face and shoos me off. "Go on."

Of course, I do as I am told, all the while frowning because I'm not sure if it's the right thing to be doing. The scruffy drunk might try to fetch the liquor himself if I don't bring it for him, I suppose. Inside the cupboard there is a rack, from which I slide a bottle. As I hand it to him, he takes one long draw on his pipe, then hands that to me and waves me off again.

"There's an ashtray on my desk." He bites down on the cork of the bottle and jerks it off with his teeth, then spits it to the floor.

It hits my ankle on my return from the ashtray and I kick it away. He shakes out the map to Riven, holds it out in front of himself with glittering eyes, and smooths it out over his blanketed lap. Color stirs in his cheeks, alongside a smile. A genuine smile, not his standard beam of mockery.

"Come, sit," he says. He eases off his covers and swings his legs around—taking a painful amount of care with the injured one—to the edge of the bed, and plants his single stockinged foot on the floor.

"Should you be doing—?"

"Stop your worrying, Walter," he jeers, rolling his eyes.

I scowl and take a seat in the chair across him, moving the safe to the floor. He pauses to look at me, thinking, then tips back a mouthful of drink. He dries his lips and smooths out the map again. The wrinkles in it are permanent, folded in the same way for, I'd guess, all my sixteen years.

He thinks for a while longer, his brows pinched ever so slightly and his nose just a little bit wrinkled, lifting his skewed whiskers. The pillow-struggle he endured over the night shows in the unevenness of his beard, flattened on one side and fluffed on the other.

"Here, you see," he presses his finger to a point on the map, in the body of water surrounding the three isles of Riven, and I lean in, "is where my beloved ship, Eclipse, rests not in peace, but in pieces." The color in his cheeks is gone again, and closer now to him, I note the pallor of his features and the darkness under his defiant green gaze. He looks ill. Tired. But alive, undefeated. Admirably undefeated.

"When I take Riven back," he continues boldly, "I will dive down every day for as long as it takes to gather the wood of her bows; enough of it in good enough shape to build myself a home. It's been almost twenty years down there, but mark me, I won't have any other wood—it must be hers or it won't be home." He looks past me wistfully into nothing, unfocused, and smiling just a sliver. "And over the door will be her name, off her stern, just as it was when we sailed together."

His finger slides over the page to the edge of the smallest islet, and he beholds it like a gem—as if this one spot on the map is priceless. "The spray of the falls basks the back of this islet in fine, cool mist all year round. The vegetation is... unmatched. You'll never see anything like it anywhere else. The fruit is..." he laughs; just a breath escaping. "It's like nothing else. Sweet, but not too much so. Juicy, but just the right amount. Oh, and the flowers! They fill the air with the most enticing aromas, drafting over the islet like sea breeze." He sighs and smiles to the ceiling. "On the face of the same islet, the sun beams through the mist like the rays of the gods and warms the soft golden sand until it's the perfect temperature and one could lay there for hours without feeling a moment wasted. And I'll have my home, my Eclipse, right there in between the two halves of the islet, on its point, so that I'll always have a cool mist and the warm sun and the shade of this spectacular palm tree that sits just there, hanging over the beach." He sinks his chin into his cupped palm. "And right across the lagoon, I'll watch the foxes be incredible, as they are, building marvels. Modern day marvels, every day. It will be exactly right. The perfect ending. My paradise."