Chapter 5: My Shadow
Crushed.
I took the time to evaluate what I could about myself. First, I could feel from my struggle with Calibri that I had weakened. Second, I had lost weight. Third, I am locked away and it is now evident that no one has slept in these cots for awhile. Fourth, an accusation directed at me. I'm cursed.
"What the Hell does that mean? I've been cursed or I am cursing everyone or there is a curse about me?" That first one would reference having been cursed and awoken from its grip like someone who had succumbed to a head wound and woke years later. "I hope to the Almighty that is not the case." As for the second reference, everyone might have been encountering obstacles and misfortune while I slept. I can understand their frustration, considering I rested the whole journey while they labored. "That would make sense..." The last one keeps me silent. It is superstitious crap like that which causes friend, neighbor, brother, and even father to turn on one another. To calm himself, before losing control in a raged fit, he recounts the tale of Abraham on top of Moriah with his son Isaac.
"Isaac? You're more like Ishmael, foreigner." Startled from my seat in the cot, I jerk away from looking up at the locked door, searching around the other cots, but not finding the source of the voice. "Not there... No... Not there either. Look inside."
"Inside where?" I turn around to see if there is someone hiding behind me, however unlikely that would be in my proximity.
"C'mon, you are smart. Think, Hremod, think hard where else I could be." I sit completely still. Had I heard right? Hremod. My name of birth, Hremod Gyridson of House Akra. "Oh, thinking a little too hard there."
"SHOW YOURSELF!" Enraged, losing control, I snarl out the command as I stand to my full height and fan my arms in eagerness to come to grips with whomever this maybe.
"Yeesh, talk abou- Oh fine," a snap of the fingers later is a dark silhouette sitting across from me. I can't make out any features, as if this being is made of all shadow, but there is something certainly familiar with the shape. "You know, it was getting kind of fun spooking everyone up top for a day or two. I had been really looking forward to talking with you, but if you are going to be just like them, then I don't really know if I want to help you."
It, that is all I can call this being right now, kept on talking as I tackled through its incorporeal mass. It may have judged I was to do that and positioned itself in the cot for me to land safely. Looking over my shoulder, I watch it twist its shadowed head clearly around to gaze at me. "What are you?"
"Me?" It points up, the index finger nearly tickling its chin, and in a strange way I can sense it smiling at me. "I'm someone you should know, but forgot."
"Wha-?"
"THE HELL IS GOING ON DOWN THERE!?" Light shines down into the cabin as Calibri unlocked and slams the door wide open. I pull myself out of the cot I'm currently in and seat myself warily back into the one I've been in for... Weeks? I still have so many questions to ask, like how long I've been out and where we currently being the top two. Calibri looks over his shoulder at the other men, an equally wary expression on his face, then returns his focus into the interior of the ship before heading down. Another slam from the door shuts it behind himself.
I take a quick glance at the cot in front of me. It, the Shade, raises a single finger to its lips. "Ssh," it shushes me. Standing, the Shade silently takes a step and turns its back to me. Without warning, as if its body had been blown towards me, the whole dark figure sucks through me. No... In me. In the place that the Shade had been sitting, Calibri sits.
"Which are you? Kris or... It?" He asks me this with a weary sound in his voice. I had not taken note of it before, but he isn't as big as I recall. Withered, thinner, a sack of skin rather than the bulk he used to have. Those eyes of his are hollow and dark. What had happened here?
"I- I don't understand. Look at me, I'm Kris. You remember me, right?" There is a chance that he did forget, if I had been down here the whole time with them attempting to sleep up top.
"Kris... Yes, I know who you are, but I doubt you do." He plants his face into a upturned palm, rubbing the heel of it into his sockets to irritate the sleep away, and returns facing me fully. "You were not- It wasn't venom or poison..." He chews on his lip, for a moment, and goes into thought. I keep quiet, wanting to be patient about this, but if he doesn't start speaking soon I'm going to scream.
"..."
"..."
"HAAAAAAAA!" I shout in his face. Shocked back into his senses, he stares at me like I wasn't there before, crawling back into the wall of his cot in fright. A glare of expectation is directed right at him. Righting himself, the former Captain... No, he is the Captain by now and commands a bit more respect on this ship than what I just did. Except, I think he really did need that or else he would have sat there in a stuppor all day.
"Right, sorry. Okay. Whew-hoo," his hand darts at points on his chest, making the cross over his heart, before speaking more clear and calm. "Cursed. Hoo... You are cursed," pointing at me, he makes this twice clear. "You would not wake after passing out. Before we braved the storm, I ran back to find a dokter, but instead ran into that woman." Okay, now I am intrigued. What in the world did this woman have up her sleave that could curse me? "I stopped her, a bit roughly I might add, and asked for an apology before I began asking her questions. Rather harshly, I'm afraid..." This is more comforting, Calibri sounding like himself again. "You know women, though. Once they are drawn into a corner, they use all kinds of tricks to get out. Luckily, women don't belong in the sea." At this, he finally sports a smile on his face. I can't help it, I smile back, nodding in agreement. "So, I nearly drown her until she spoke." He pops a finger in the air, "Oh, and don't worry about me catching that curse. Sandy-salt water does the trick washing those hands of hers," then drops the finger. "Now, she mostly gargled, but I got the jist of it. Tires. Some kind of curse, has to do with tiring people, I guess. I wasn't worried about it, for the time, but It... IT wouldn't let us sleep." I have to think about this for a moment. Tires? Then what the hell does that have to do with this Shade?
"Wait, what is It?"
"At first, I thought you woke up, but... It wasn't you. Not really, at least," he has a drawn expression, a stare like he is seeing someone over my shoulder. A peek over, there is nothing, but he still has that genuine fear directed at something beyond me. "You would walk, shake anyone who had been about to sleep, shout at us, terrorize the deck with stomps and slamming the shields, anything to keep us awake... But, when we confronted you, we also saw that you still laid in your cot, unmoving." A wheeze leaves from him, as if the air from his lungs were the only thing that could pass from his lips for the remainder of his reminiscing. Finally, his eyes train and target onto mine, "It, you were it, but it was you. A curse. You are cursed."
Somewhat, I believe him, a nod is given to his told explaination. Now, I want to know where we are and how long it took to get here. "Where are we?"
"Halfway up the Dnieper." This brings a cold chill through me. There is no way I had... No way we could be this far without suffering deaths. Lack of sleep would have driven everyone insane by now. It would have been like a fever driving them mad. Wait. That could explain exactly what is going on. We've gone mad! A smile stretches across my face at finally figuring it out.
"What- How did you- How did I survive without nourishment?" I still have to try and be reasonable. No sense in getting mad about everything, after all.
"I- At first, I gave you wine and fed you crushed feed. You drank and ate, maybe in a daze, but fell asleep right," his pudgy fingers try snapping a few times, "-well, right like that, right away."
"For how long?"
"I stopped trying when I couldn't tell a day apart anymore." Sleep depravation will do that.
"Do we need to resupply? If this is the Dnieper, Kiev is not far."
"We are fine and we had passed the port to break at Kiev a long time ago. We should be closing in on Toompea or Lemsalu." Kingdoms of Estonia and Livonia, then. We were very close to home, but not on the course promised by everyone.
"I thought we were head-"
"No. You are the priority here. The sooner we get you to where you are going, the better off I can be in my ship... Maybe with a new crew, but this is my ship now and I'm not jinxing it by stranding you someplace for your cursed ghost to haunt me," he stands up and shoots his fist out to punch my shoulder harshly, "Got that!?"
"Uh- Yeah, got it," I rub my shoulder, feeling odd how tender it became from what I normally would have considered an affectionate 'Love Tap' from the bulky man. How much has my sickly condition drained me of my health? I really want a look at myself. All I can tell, right now, is that the body I had looks slight from my downward perspective. My pecs seem a bit flabby now from the loss of toned muscle. I would have to find a way to return myself into a fit condition or else my family will think I returned in shame as a prisoner of war or worse.
"I'm heading back up or else they will think you swallowed me whole, okay?" A nod is given to him in response. "Stay down here. It is for your own protection." That sounds partly true, but I can guess that the others fear me just as much I do them retaliating for impairing their rest for so long. Calibri takes his leave up the stairs, opening and shutting the door, and setting the bolt back into place. No real point in telling me to stay put if he's still going to cage me in here.
"You could break out."
"FUCK!" Like two heads, the Shade sprouts a form of its face on my shoulder and shoots enough of its slender neck around to face me.
"Also, he's almost right. Everything he said about me is true."
Taking in slow, gradually, calming breathes; I swallow and state the obvious question, "What did he get wrong?"
"The curse. There is none."
"What?"
"You like that word, don't you. What-what-what-what!" It goes into a giggling fit, laying itself back to rest its head and shoulders on my upper thighs. Gazing down at this thing really makes me feel awkward while we converse.
"Explain yourself," I close my eyes, getting a sore headache from this ordeal, wanting to badly knead the center of my eyes, but I'd rather focus that pain into something more useful if I have to smash this thing until it talks.
"Not smart. You'll crush the wrong head and that will really hurt us. Could you wait until it disappears before doing that?"
"... Huh?"
"Oh! A new word! I'll add that to my journal... Well, that is, when we start one." Again, It giggles into a tight fit between my thighs, its hands raised up to its chin like a little girl having a field day with funny poems.
"I've had enough," my hand slams down onto the Shade, passing right through it, giving me a numbing sensation for a second or two before the radiating dull ache courses through my being. I clench my teeth, sucking in deep breathes, a sour burn rises in the back of my mouth, and at least finally getting the picture that this thing can't be harmed by me. It is like fighting smoke... No, smoke dissipates. More like fighting my own shadow.
"Wow..." No laughter this time. It shakes its head and slips back inside of me. "I'm not coming out until you cool your head. You can forget about me telling you my name."
"Wa- Wait! You, hooo-fuCK!" I close my eyes, straining them as I lean back to lay down in my cot. A drawn out and pathetic whimper hums from my lips as I curl up with my broken tail tucked between my legs...
