Cry, Mad Tashtego
And Pray, Listen

"He said to keep trying. I am still trying."
--Renne, in an unopened letter








The Captain had long since seen enough.

He regretted it, lamented it, but could do nothing about it. This new soul, living, unliving or dead, could not be released as far as he knew. The night crew worked tirelessly and as they looked on, they heard this living creature forge another gift and cast it to the sea.
They watched sadly as they heard their captain declare what they had already known.
Some almost smiled at Renne's reaction.

Renne didn't say anything. All he did was briefly embrace an old spyglass and a golden-haired doll and move astern. He knew nothing about operating any of this; he knew no one here and he knew nothing familiar beyond the sea.
He listened to the crew of dead men.
He mimicked them in action only.
His voice sang again as the sun set.

One, two. One, two.
Pull, hold. Pull, hold.

He found the rhythm and scaled up the rigging. He understood nothing of the orders called from below but his hands moved. Skeletal fingers sometimes guided his hands to where they needed to be. Voices reminiscent of living men whispered to him in rasping, gravelly tones.
Renne remained up in the swaying fighting-top above the mainsail and sang in time with the steady work around him.
Fall on your knees...

The ship sailed aimlessly on, haunting the Rhy'Din coastlines and the stretches of ocean beyond.
She was known to invoke terror to most mariners -- the sight of her alone was said to be a portent of doom and woe betide any mariner that looked a Dutchman crewmate in the eye. She was a ship captained by a supposedly ruthless, selfish man who had a wager with the Devil.
She was a ship that bore souls undeserving of compassion.

The legends spoke of such a vessel yet even these can change.

The voice that sang out from the ghost-ship crewed by dead men was not a ghost. It belonged to a living being who still dreamed. Who still clung desperately to the remnants of his world.
His voice sang of hope only a child can have.

He said to keep trying.
I am still trying.

Cry, Mad Tashtego
I'll Be Right Here

"Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled - the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?"
--Moby Dick, Chapter Seventy-Eight











The sea had been calm, so calm that it was an unpleasant one.

Men paced the decks below and men tended the sails above. There was no wind but this ghostly ship sailed onward. Wind or no wind, she sailed in and wind or no wind, she demanded homage from the men aboard her.

She never stayed still and as she sailed on, the vessel's living figurehead began to rouse itself from a troubled sleep filled with tears. The blue-painted 'head shook and threw about as if it had long hair with which to toss. Its useless eyes opened to the midnight, never knowing the sunrise in the East. Its huge ears twitched and were aware of the men above and around, whispering warily.
And the figurehead began to sing once more.

---------------------

Brandon Eggerston stood on the maindeck of the Titan's Reverie eyeing the horizon. It wasn't yet noon and the winds had already begun to die off. It wasn't yet midmorning and the lookout had fallen silent.
The entire ship had gone quiet.

"Sigurd! Report!"

Sigurd frowned as hawk-eyes scanned the sea again. The slight man of thirty-one peered down from the crow's nest and shook his head.

"Nothin', Sir. They musta' turned down."

"All right, Sig. Keep an eye."

"Aye, Sir. 'Ay, Cap'n?"

It wasn't like Sigurd to address him that way -- Sig wasn't the type to speak much outside of orders and the occasional shanty. Brandon turned on his heel and turned his bearded face up skyward.
Even as he asked, Brandon already heard the second and a half of hesitation in his lookout's voice.

"What is it?"

"Sir, some o' the men during watch says they heard somethin'. Like, singin'."

"Whale-song?"

"Far from, Sir. It weren't human, that we know."

"Ah, daft, men. You know how superstitious seamen are."

"I s'pose, Sir."

Sigurd turned again to his duties and strove to hold to his captain's words. Indeed, sailor-folk were often superstitious and the fact that they were in unfamiliar waters made those beliefs somehow more real. Sharper, keener somehow. Silly things like not whistling became of tantamount importance. Praying at every meal became commonplace among the men.
As the day wore on and watches switched for the night, Sigurd went below to get an hour or so of sleep.

The last thing he heard as he drifted off was a haunting, melancholy wail that seemed to sing.

-----------------

"He's started again, Sir."

Skeletal men whispered to each other and the Captain as he emerged on deck. They were very aware that the Captain could hear it as clearly as they but these men began to become genuinely afraid. Few, if anyone, ever pondered the question of what might frighten a ghost. Few, if any, ever asked "If ghosts frighten the living, what frightens a ghost?"
These old, weary mariners had begun to find out the answer of what frightens them.

It wasn't eternity at sea. It wasn't their own Captain. It wasn't inexorable time itself and it wasn't even that age-old tale of how men as themselves were forever trapped, with no chance of redemption.
It was this singing, wailing beast that wasn't dead but shouldn't be alive.
It was this singing, crying beauty that wasn't saved but wasn't damned.

They stared as the Captain strode toward the bowsprit and howled over the keening, living figurehead to the heavens. He thundered out a second vow that, after long hours of deliberation, superseded the first.
To Hell with the Horn.

It was said that love was their redemption.

The Captain swore on the deck of a ghost ship that no longer would he and his herald death. No longer would their eerie chants and echoed shanties sing of some poor sot's imminent demise. No, he and his were weary of that. He and his were long weary of death, broken souls and wrongful damnation.

"Gentlemen. This ship shall no more speak death."

Cry, Mad Tashtego
Return to Sanctity

*"When autumn comes on Double Ninth Festival
My flower will bloom and all others perish
When the sky-reaching fragrance permeates Chang'an
The whole city will be clothed in golden armour."
--Huang Chao; Chrysanthemum








I go now on the land to find Home.

-They that took you, then spat you.-

I go home.

The dialogues within his head had begun again with a vengeance.
As he had gone from that empty place with nothing but bare earth, memories and his newest reinforcements of bonding, the sinister thing he sought to eradicate whispered inside his head.
It twisted things from fond wishes into warped nightmares. It dragged names mercilessly through the vilest of filth.

He felt dirty just having to hear it.

But, Renne moved on, traveling routes that had etched themselves into his memory years ago

These were paths when he knew what innocence meant. These were paths he wanted to return to, never wanted to leave. He moved down paths fraught with scent and textured by various types of ground beneath his hands, knees and feet. Paved cobblestones, the dampened planks of dock, bare dirt and packed sand ran beneath his flesh like the slides off of a film reel.
And then he was there.
The ground was different.

The ground still held the taint of ashes.

The ashes still bore the faint stink of magic.

This too, was home.

He didn't linger too long there -- long enough to sit, think, pray and hold onto one of the two charred bits of wood. This one was from here; the smell was the same.
And it was time to go on.

Slekt fremfor alt.

The voice scoffed in reply to a long-known, long-held motto.
Renne moved onward, shutting his ears against the sound as best he was able. When he found the 'Leaf, he stifled a small sigh of pleasure that at least it still stood.
He crawled inside smelling of strong brine and seaweed.

-----------------

Zonker had been right.

Renne did need a bath and badly -- his own nature wasn't enough to cleanse all this from him. It didn't matter for a while though. They had spoken well and related tales over cider and, for the Norseman, his ever-present ale.

Still, Zonker had been right in more ways than one.

Renne needed far more than a simple bath.

He hadn't even realised it until he was too far gone to do anything about it -- the merest thing had pulled that dark, rotting thing from within him out into the open with the utterance of one name.
The utterance of a desire and a dead man's name were the catalysts, bringing out that false, dark thing that had taken root.

-Ah, Night of Fools, this, I shall name it.-
You shall not. Speak no more.
-Night of Fools, Night of Fools! Night of Thunder-Fools!-
Silent! Away!
-Night of Fools. Night of Earthen Devil Fools! Night of Judas Fools!-

The beast inside taunted within as he had finally managed to pull himself together. He could only thank whatever merciful deity that was listening out there, that he hadn't lost entire control of his own body again.
Table legs could be easily repaired.
As Zonker departed for the night, Renne slowly followed; ultimately sleeping just outside the gates of Castle Moriah. His own uncertainty made that choice for him -- he didn't trust himself in the company of others yet, not when even wee ones were near. So he had chosen to sleep outside, guarding a last haven from whatever he might encounter.

Nothing had come except the first rays of the sun and the sinister, mocking voice of this thing inside his head.

It chanted at him as he left a brief message at the building's door and he didn't turn back when it was time to go.
How strange -- he had wanted off that ship of ghosts the moment he'd touched her decks yet now that he was away from that cursed vessel, he cried to return.
It was indeed, strange to him, that he'd wish to keep company with dead men.
Renne wept as his paths traced, sending him back the way he'd come.

------------------------

He reached the bare earth.

He reached that confusing muddy patch of ground.

He stopped there and still heard the poison in his mind trying to spread. He heard it as much as the Empress had felt the poison of the Persian black fungus work to drive her mad*.
The black Persian fungus had driven the Empress mad as the Hunter now drove Renne to the edge of madness and past it again. Renne cried as he stayed there on the wet ground. He prayed with his head thrown back and hsi voice howling in desperation. Around him, voices taunted and sang.
Within him and above him, voices whispered.
The three ladies in his life calmed him and gave him peace.
The five gentlemen in his life called to him; voices lending strength and the guiding assurance of a patient teacher.

Cinder's voice whispered to him of a promised adventure.
Zonker and Melkor's voices were steady, anchoring and patient.
Pendrell's voice reminded him of what was and what potentials could still remain.
Archie's voice was a steadfast tone, speaking of a golden kind of faith.

Renne crawled into the ocean, stopping when the water reached the tops of his large feet. As a toe landed on something hard, he nearly dismissed it as a shell or a rock. Rocks weren't this smooth though and shells were never this straight.
He found it, picked it up and sniffed it.

Around him, the sand and sea turned again into the decks of a ghost ship.

He heard the spectral crew murmur questions and form a circle around their living figurehead.

No one asked about the sand-crusted metal thing in his hand.

"Yer back, y'blue siren."

Renne didn't answer. He sat there on the rotting deck of a dead ship and prayed. The thing had by now gone into his pocket with the rest of his trinkets and his mind seemed to have gone with it.
He sat there, wailing until his voice could wail no more.
When he could no longer make a sound, he bowed forward on the deck and let his tears run with the sea.

There were no chrysanthemums to show him mercy*.

~<>~

*These are references from the following:
A Chinese film titled Curse of the Golden Flower released in the US on December 21, 2006.
The Double Ninth Festival, believed to be a very unlucky, dangerous day filled with negative energy. The chrysanthemum and the zhuyu plants are believed to be cleansers of such negativity.