Shan, Darren - Cirque Du Freak 10 - The Lake of Souls

"I'll give it a miss then," I said. Harkat had a high tolerance for alcohol, and could drink just about anything. If the poteen had made his eyes water, it'd probably blow my head clean off my neck.

"Yerra, go on," Spits encouraged me, passing over a jug filled with a clear liquid. "It might blind ye, but Won't kill ye. 'Twill put hairs on yer chest!"

"I'm hairy enough," I chuckled, then leant forward, nudging the jug of poteen aside. "I don't want to be rude, Spits, but who are you and how did you get here?"

Spits laughed at the question. "That's what this 'un asked too, the first time he saw me," he said, pointing at Harkat with his thumb. "I've told him all about myself these last couple o' days — did a helluva lot o' talking fer a man who ain't said a word fer five or six years! I won't go through the whole thing again, just give ye the quick lowdown."

Spits had been a pirate in the Far East in the 1930s. Although piracy was a "dying art" (as he put it), there were still ships which sailed the seas and attacked others in the years before World War II, plundering them of their spoils. Spits found himself working on one of the pirate ships after years of ordinary naval service (he said he was shanghaied, though his eyes shifted cagily, and I got the feeling he wasn't being honest). "ThePrince o' Pariahs was 'er name." He beamed proudly. "A fine ship, small but speedy. We was the scourge o' the waters wherever we went."

It was Spits's job to fish people out of the sea if they jumped in when they were boarded. "Two reasons we didn't like leaving 'em there," he said. "One was that we didn't want 'em to drown — we was pirates, not killers. The other was that the ones who jumped was normally carrying jewels or other such valuables — only the rich is that scared of being robbed!"

Spits got that shifty look in his eyes again when he was talking about fishing people out, but I said nothing about it, not wanting to offend the man who'd rescued me from the lake.

One night, thePrince of Pariahs found itself at the centre of a fierce storm. Spits said it was the worst he'd ever experienced, "and I been through just about everything that old sow of a sea can throw at a man!" As the ship broke apart, Spits grabbed a sturdy plank, some jugs of whisky and the nets he used to fish for people, and jumped overboard.

"Next thing I know, I'm in this lake," he finished. "I dragged myself out and there was a small man in big yellow galoshes waiting fer me."Mr Tiny! "He told me I'd come to a place far from the one I knew, and I was stuck. He said this was a land o' dragons, awful dangerous fer humans, but there was a shack where I'd be safe. If I stayed there and kept a watch on the lake, two people would come along eventually, and they could make my dreams come true. So I sat back, fished, found spuds growing nearby and brought some back fer me garden, and I been waiting ever since, five 'r six years near as I can figure."

I thought that over, staring from Spits to Harkat and back again. "What did he mean when he said we'd be able to make your dreams come true?" I asked.

"I suppose he meant ye'd be able t' get me home." Spits's eyes shifted nervously. "That's the only dream this old sailor has, t' get back where there's women and whisky, and not a drop o' water bigger than a puddle in sight — I've had enough o' seas and lakes!"

I wasn't sure I believed that was all the pirate had on his mind, but I let the matter drop and instead asked if he knew anything about the land ahead. "Not a whole lot," he answered. "I've done some exploring, but the dragons keep me pinned here most o' the time — I don't like wandering off too far with them demons waiting to pounce."

"There's more than one?" I frowned.

"Aaarrr," he said. "I ain't sure how many, but definitely four 'r five. The one that went after ye is the biggest I've seen, though mebbe there's bigger that don't bother with this lake."

"I don't like the sound of that," I muttered.

"Me neither," Harkat said. Then, turning to Spits, he said, "Show him the net."

Spits ducked behind the shack and emerged dragging a stringy old net, which he untangled and spread on the ground. "Two o' me nets slipped through with me," he said. "I lost t' other one a couple o' years back when a huge fish snatched it out o' my hands. I been keeping this 'un safe, in case of an emergency."

I remembered what Evanna had told us, that we'd need a net which had been used to fish for the dead if we were to find out who Harkat had been. "Think this is the net we need?" I asked Harkat.

"Must be," he answered. "Spits says he didn't use his nets to … fish for the dead, but this has to be it."

"Course I never fished fer the dead!" Spits boomed, laughing weakly. "What'd I do that fer? Mind, I been thinking about it since Harkat asked, and I recall a couple o' people who drowned when I was fishing 'em out. So I guess it probablyhas been used to drag up corpses — accidentally, like."