Strange Navigations

by Rudi Dornemann

We rolled the wicker cage out of the water and onto the beach. Within, water poured from the convolutions of the brain shell.

From a gaff-pole’s length away, we rolled, waited, rolled; the shell tumbled, dripped. We repeated until the rolling didn’t spot the dry sand, and we figured it was as safe as it’d get. Dry, they’re sluggish.

“Careful!” said the captain. He stood twenty paces off.

Bellamy, a share-and-a-half man who’s been with the crew twenty years, buckled on the shield and glove. The shield was giant tortoise’s shell. Set in the middle, the glove was shark hide and stank from all the lard greasing it into flexibility. It hasn’t been used–or needed–for a dozen voyages.

We’ve been lost in mapless seas for two months, and becalmed for weeks. Some blame the captain’s timidity in keeping us far from stronger winds in hope of avoiding cyclones. Others say it’s simple bad luck.

But we all agree: if we ever want to get home–or anywhere–we need brain shell stew and the uncanny sense of wind and current it gives.

That’s why I volunteered to be a spotter, leaning down to watch and shout instructions to Bellamy, who couldn’t feel or see where he was reaching.

“Three hand-breadths to me,” I said.

“Down about half that,” says Higgs.

“A little away from me,” I say. “Right. That’s it.” Behind me, I hear the others setting up a cookfire for the pot of water that’s already boiling down nearer the ship.

“Good men!” said the captain. I didn’t look, but he sounded to be another half dozen paces away.

Bellamy’s fingers closed over the shell.

I looked up to see Higgs grab his throat, the welt flaring already up the side of his face.

“Gods, no!” said Bellamy, dropping the shell and its now-poisonous meat.

While Higgs writhed and cursed, the quartermaster and I ran and hurled it back into the water. We returned to find the captain and Higgs wrestling over a pistol.

“It’ll be… a… mercy,” says the captain.
The welts are stripes now, and Higgs’ skin echoes the brain shell’s pattern.

The pistol boomed; the captain fell. The thing that wasn’t Higgs struggled to speak.

We gathered to hear our new captain’s first orders, knowing we’d see home shores now for certain, if we survived to see any shores at all…