Blankmap: Book I

12. Return to the Sea

The next day brought grey weather as they left all traces of the small island of Nishaya behind them. Stormclouds threatened from a distance, dumping their shadow of rain into a sea peppered by blasts of lightning that seemed to rend the very sky apart. Still, the wind was favorable, keeping the Petrichor on the east side of the tempest and doing nothing more than whipping the waves higher than they had been in weeks. The daytime watch on deck had doubled, and Solomon watched the ri-Marij anxiously scanning the horizon from the stern, as though at any moment a ship with a charred mainsail might appear hot on their heels.

The only break in the watch came at midday (as best as Solomon could figure it, with the sunlight so well hidden by clouds--at any rate they ate lunch immediately afterwards), when the Irooj led his people in the sad duty of consigning their fallen to a final resting place. Four of them had been killed in the skirmish, and over the body of each the Irooj gave a lengthy treatise. They were the first dead bodies that Solomon had ever seen, and for the remainder of his days he would remember how small they looked there laid out on deck, weapons and fishing gear resting lightly on their chests. Two of the four were women, and he saw that sometime in the night the ri-Marij had woven shells into their hair. A bright blue dye of some sort had been added to the ink that tattooed the four bodies, such that the pictures shone clearly even in the gray half-light.

When the Irooj was done speaking, two sailors carried each fallen warrior of Marij to the side of the ship. A bucket was brought, and from this the sailors scooped liberal handfuls of what looked like fat. They rubbed it over the skin of their dead such that it glistened. Finally, and with a last reverent word, each body was gently lifted over the edge of the Petrichor, and consigned to the waves.