Blankmap: Book I

22. Patching Holes

Jacques Hyrax was not idle in the hours that Melion and Solomon were gone on their errands. After finishing his breakfast he struck out for the lagoon, where he borrowed a small rowboat. The powerful muscles of his back bulged as he pulled the oars in a rhythm that quickly shook off the rust of years. 

He had thought that retreating to Hyrax Manor, where no water could be seen save for a small pond in the trees at the edge of the eastern forest, would be best for everyone after Solomon was born and everything had gone so wrong. If he were able to take himself away from the sea, he had reasoned, he would find a way to dull the pain of it, of all the heart-rending anguish that it had caused him. If he could distance himself from the pain, he might do a halfway-decent job of raising Solomon. That had been the plan all those years ago.

He did not allow himself to look in the eye the nagging suspicion that it had all been a waste. That it felt good, too good, to be back on the water, and that keeping Solomon away from the sea had been an act bordering on cruelty. Jacques had seen the way Solomon's eyes had caught the light their first day on the deck of the Petrichor. It had been foolish to keep his son from his birthright. 

Though he had been busy all those days onboard the ship with Melion's crew, and on the Windjammer before it, he had not failed to watch his son with a father's gaze: with love doing its damnedest to claw out space between criticism and impatience. Love had won out, he was fairly sure. It had done things to him to watch Solomon stare out across the waves, to see his nostrils fill instinctively with the salt breeze the way Jacques' own had so many years before, the first time he had left the shores of Merriport receding behind him. 

It's not love if I only appreciate him for the bits of myself I see in him, he reminded himself. There's a lot of him to be proud of that has nothing to do with me.

Jacques continued to row the boat. The Petrichor, his destination, was anchored to the reef, but the lifeboat tie-up was on the far side of the ship's great bulk, forcing Jacques to negotiate the sharp upswell of waves where the lagoon gave way to open ocean. With skill untarnished by the years spent absent from the water he navigated across the edge of the reef, where the depth of the water dropped off so precipitously that even the ri-Marij could not say for sure how far down one could go before striking bottom. 

As he pulled the boat into the shadow of the great ship he could not help but think about the horrific things that had happened on their last day onboard. To the end of his days, he was quite sure, he would never forget the sight of his only son firing the weapon that he himself had invented; it had been an impossible shot, a ludicrous shot, one that Jacques would never even have thought to try. And Solomon had found his mark: the only place where the gearbow's bolt could have done any good. 

That impressed you, didn't it? Jacques asked himself. He was like something other than himself in that moment. He'd never had to kill before, had never been asked to do it. And yet in that space of seconds he knew exactly what to do. He killed the Irooj to save him from something worse. That bit of him doesn't come from you. It's stronger than anything you're made of.

Jacques' small boat bumped up against the side of the Petrichor with a dull thud. He whistled high and long, a sailor's whistle that Rip Rap had taught him years ago. A moment later a thick rope came spiraling down off the deck. Had he not been looking for the rope it might have knocked him out cold, eclipsed as the sun was by the hulking vessel above him. He tied off the small rowboat and hoisted himself up the side of the ship as though he were scaling a mountain, rough hands on rough rope and bare feet scraping bare wood. 

"Breathin' harder than usual," said Rip Rap, as Jacques heaved himself onto the deck. "Must be gettin' old."

The old lighthouse keeper stood amidst a pile of freshly-cut planks of lumber, saw in hand. In an iron barrel behind him a fire blazed, lit to heat the pitch that bubbled lazily in a pot propped above it.