The funny thing about the Amerigo was that no-one aboard knew exactly where the next port of call would be. Two days into the voyage I found myself wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into; the ocean stretched out interminably and my sea companions droned on likewise.
Two months before the Amerigo would dock again. We knew that much. The girl in the cabin opposite kept wandering over to check up on me, make sure I was still capable of breathing, so on and so forth. She was a pallid thing with a beaky nose and pinched face. Her lackwit lustre could have shrivelled the most garrulous of grandmothers. Her father the captain was a noble man, or so his crew said; perhaps before time and the rigours of rampant intoxication had come to collect their dues. Noble or no, I never saw him spare a nod for her.
I spent the nauseous days sulking in my cabin or staring out into the fogstained view. Godforsaken clouds hung low and pregnant with ill-omen; as the weather grew ever gloomier I was soon the only man on deck save the crew, who avoided my cold silences as I avoided their banter. They quietened in the oppressive climate and girded themselves for trouble; we might have been a ghost ship for all the noise we were too afraid to make.
We were sailing through the grey zone. The last clock had tinkled to a stop.
“Look,” said the beaky girl. We were standing on the deck. She had come out to me, and she held in her hand a brooch of startling beauty. As she turned it over in her palm, clockwork whirred, and I realised it was a minute garden, all the parts of which constantly shifted and realigned. First it was a hanging garden, then an arboretum of old oaks. I tried to value it; it would have fetched more than all the trinkets I had ever gotten from my poor wife, it would have been a gift from emperor to empress, and I could not understand how this girl had come to have it.
“What does it mean?” she asked. “Why would a man give a gift to a girl he claims to love, after spending a night with a wife he doesn’t love?”
I had nothing for her. Instead I looked out into the turbulence that had sprung out of the night and lurked into morning. That was how I saw it.
—more conflict? I have post-dated this so it flows into the bulk of the so-called horror.—
