Small Gods

‘Wait,’ said Brutha.

‘It’s nothing personal,’ said one of the sailors. ‘We don’t want to do this.’

‘I don’t want you to do it either,’ said Brutha. ‘Is that any help?’

‘The sea wants a life,’ said the oldest sailor. ‘Yours is nearest. OK, get his—’

‘Can I make my peace with my God?’

‘What?’

‘If you’re going to kill me, can I pray to my God first?’

‘It’s not us that’s killing you,’ said the sailor. ‘It’s the sea.’

‘“The hand that does the deed is guilty of the crime,”’ said Brutha. ‘Ossory, chapter LVI, verse 93.’

The sailors looked at one another. At a time like this, it was probably not wise to antagonize any god. The ship skidded down the side of a wave.

‘You’ve got ten seconds,’ said the oldest sailor. ‘That’s ten seconds more than many men get.’

Brutha lay down on the deck, helped considerably by another wave that slammed into the timbers.

Om was dimly aware of the prayer, to his surprise. He couldn’t make out the words, but the prayer itself was an itch at the back of his mind.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, trying to get upright, ‘I’m out of options—’

The ship smacked down …

… on to a calm sea.

The storm still raged, but only around a widening circle with the ship in the middle. The lightning, stabbing at the sea, surrounded them like the bars of a cage.

The circle lengthened ahead of them. Now the ship sped down a narrow channel of calm between grey walls of storm a mile high. Electric fire raged overhead.

And then was gone.

Behind them, a mountain of greyness squatted on the sea. They could hear the thunder dying away.

Brutha got uncertainly to his feet, swaying wildly to compensate for a motion that was no longer there.

‘Now I—’ he began.

He was alone. The sailors had fled.

‘Om?’ said Brutha.

‘Over here.’

Brutha fished his God out of the seaweed.

‘You said you couldn’t do anything!’ he said accusingly.

‘That wasn’t m—’ Om paused. There will be a price, he thought. It won’t be cheap. It can’t be cheap. The Sea Queen is a god. I’ve crushed a few towns in my time. Holy fire, that kind of thing. If the price isn’t high, how can people respect you?

‘I made arrangements,’ he said.

Tidal waves. A ship sunk. A couple of towns disappearing under the sea. It’ll be something like that. If people don’t respect then they won’t fear, and if they don’t fear, how can you get them to believe?

Seems unfair, really. One man killed a porpoise. Of course, it doesn’t matter to the Queen who gets thrown overboard, just as it didn’t matter to him which porpoise he killed. And that’s unfair, because it was Vorbis who did it. He makes people do things they shouldn’t do …

What am I thinking about? Before I was a tortoise, I didn’t even know what unfair meant …

The hatches opened. People came on deck and hung on the rail. Being on deck in stormy weather always has the possibility of being washed overboard, but that takes on a rosy glow after hours below decks with frightened horses and seasick passengers.

There were no more storms. The ship ploughed on in favourable winds, under a clear sky, in a sea as empty of life as the hot desert.

The days passed uneventfully. Vorbis stayed below decks for most of the time.

The crew treated Brutha with cautious respect. News like Brutha spreads quickly.

The coast here was dunes, with the occasional barren salt marsh. A heat haze hung over the land. It was the kind of coast where shipwrecked landfall is more to be dreaded than drowning. There were no seabirds. Even the birds that had been trailing the ship for scraps had vanished.

‘No eagles,’ said Om. There was that to be said about it.

Towards the evening of the fourth day the unedifying panorama was punctuated by a glitter of light, high on the dune sea. It flashed with a sort of rhythm. The captain, whose face now looked as if sleep had not been a regular night-time companion, called Brutha over.

‘His … your … the deacon told me to watch out for this,’ he said. ‘You go and fetch him now.’

Vorbis had a cabin somewhere near the bilges, where the air was as thick as thin soup. Brutha knocked.

‘Enter.’[5]

There were no portholes down here. Vorbis was sitting in the dark.

‘Yes, Brutha?’

‘The captain sent me to fetch you, lord. Something’s shining in the desert.’

‘Good. Now, Brutha. Attend. The captain has a mirror. You will ask to borrow it.’

‘Er … what is a mirror, lord?’

‘An unholy and forbidden device,’ said Vorbis. ‘Which regretfully can be pressed into godly service. He will deny it, of course. But a man with such a neat beard and tiny moustache is vain, and a vain man must have his mirror. So take it. And stand in the sun and move the mirror so that it shines the sun towards the desert. Do you understand?’

‘No, lord,’ said Brutha.

‘Your ignorance is your protection, my son. And then come back and tell me what you see.’

Om dozed in the sun. Brutha had found him a little space near the pointy end where he could get sun with little danger of being seen by the crew — and the crew were jittery enough at the moment not to go looking for trouble in any case.

A tortoise dreams …