The Blessed Shore (second excerpt)
A few more hundred unedited words from the psychedelic pirate novel that I am working on throughout November, for National Novel Writing Month.
Around the ship, the deflated surf lies flat upon the water, spread by the action of the shore current into a distended tidal lace; one that has been ruinously pulled out of shape, as if by pawing lecherous hands. Sprawling amidst the suds of the crestfallen waves, the winding footprint of Petticoat Island holds a low profile; a meandering sprawl of fissured rock, the solidified volcanic spillage of a forgotten age before man, ending in the cloven stump of a jagged peak, the exposed strata of its crags faintly accented by recent snow.
“Your thoughts?” says Meade. “As if I need ask.”
He stands at the port rail, the fur-lined hood that he has drawn over his head limiting his field of vision. Unsighted, he can hear the crew as they advance with their pails, casting salt about the decking.
“I was just thinking, my patron has the ear of God,” says Beehag. “He sees me for a Jonah who has wilfully forsaken his appointed destination of Nineveh, and has taken steps to nudge me back on course.”
The dragon tattoo slumbers against his chest; a secret reserve of strength to be drawn upon at some moment appointed by fate and yet to be revealed.
“Your man Shapley almost went over last night.”
“So I heard,” says Meade.
Obscured from him by the hood, he hears Witherick shouting at the men.
“What now?”
“Now, we will bow to the celestial will, along with that of its earthbound avatar, James Scales,” says Beehag. “According to the charts I was given, there lies a shallow bay to the north side of the peak. With care taken, we can berth the ship within this natural harbour. Presently, I will instruct Hather and Spry to take us round.”
The song of the leviathan, entombed within the mountain, manifests as the unremitting creak of door hinges, unwinding from the serpentine ravines of the rocky island and heading out onto open water, fluidly increasing and decreasing in volume as it goes.
“What do you reckon of its meaning?” says Meade.
“It is as a lighthouse to their kind,” answers Beehag.
“But does it tell them to draw near, or else to stray far from these shores? Or is it that one of their kind sacrificed itself as a beacon, who now the guides the safe migrations of all the others.”
“It tells them simply: I am here,” said Beehag. “That is the declaration of any creature with language at its command. It is all I have said throughout my life and all I will ever say.”
He stares down over the rail at the sea; a white membrane approximating the fatty connective tissue marbling a block of greying meat.
“I venture that the oceans of the world would lie flat and still were it not for the perpetual warring of civilisations...”
Three men, whose days have been clouded by failure, are herded by the waves towards a life of piracy: Robert Meade seeks forgiveness from one who is indifferent to his guilt. Derrick Shapley fights on the sea for the rights of those who labour on the land. Charles Spry – 'the pink pirate' – sails into battle out of rose-coloured clouds of powdered coral smoke.
They are united under the flag of John Day, who has been delivered from the priesthood to run his family's trading empire, following the deaths of his older brothers, and who now seeks a back door to political power by captivating the souls of common men.
As whale song is carried on tidal winds from the Arctic Circle to the pinnacle of Scotland, and the islands of the Southern Atlantic collapse and burn to rubble, these four men, bound to a common cause, will find their union tested as they are pulled by the tides of fate towards divergent compass points.