Riven Isles

36 | Make Them Proud

We hit the ground hard, all the force taken by his fragile frame, reverberating through his bones. He cries out, coughing painfully through shuddering ribs, but holds me only tighter, spindly limbs twisted protectively around my body. His fingers wrap all the way around my biceps, tightly clenched, his long legs curl over mine.

Time seems all but frozen, my vision filled with the slow and disorienting swirl of the tumultuous sky. A ringing fills my ears. There is nothing in my mind, nor in his face, but shock and confusion. Sweat pours shamelessly from our brows and armpits in fear as the ground shakes beneath us and heavy thunders and shouts deafen in the near distance. My chest feels inflamed, constricting my breath with a great and terrible pressure.

"Doctor," I gasp.

In the strange stillness surrounding us, a lull in which a fourth thundering collision should have been heard, he slowly, hesitantly, unfurls. His spidery limbs retreat to himself, brow woven deep with bewildered wonder, thin lips parted. Blue eyes the size of portholes turn away from me, raising to the sky in amazement.

My shoulders roll resistantly as I push my hands beneath my weight and laboriously sit up beside him, dragging my laden chest out from the grass to greet the ashen air. Flakes of black tickle my cheeks and catch in my hair.

"Send it back, boy!" shouts Leslie, his loud voice quiet with the land between us.

"Send it back!" a chorus of crewman agree.

"Send it back!"

Teeth ground hard together, I glare up at the heavy cannonball spinning in place just ahead of us and it begrudgingly turns. Its spinning reverses direction. Slowed first by the resistance of the air, it picks up speed like a sprinter.

"Drop it, Walter!" the doctor cries, grabbing hold of his wig in anguish. "Don't send it back!"

It is already moving across the clearing, whistling loudly, but its motion shudders with my doubt and it slows. But I can't stop! I can't stop! I won't be able to start it again! My muscles are seizing, nausea burbles in my gut, climbing tauntingly upwards with every moment that I hesitate, but I don't know what to do. I could be like my father and kill to protect the rest of us, but my moral compass points another direction that can't allow it, and the tears on my cheeks spiral down as if they wish to take the ball down gently with them. Then, why should I hold onto it to the point that I sicken myself, if all for naught?

"Do what is right, Walter," the doctor pleads. He clutches his wig in his hands, wispy grey hair blown out in disheveled tufts on his bared scalp.

"Be your father's son!" Leslie encourages, raising his wide blade in the air in empowerment.

"You are better than that."

Blinking and blinking at my traitorous tears, I can see men reloading cannons in the distance and I cannot do nothing. Maybe the captain was right that I should not fight with my sword, but I can still make him proud. I can still make the doctor proud, and Mrs. Marks, and Professor Woods.

Resolutely, I will the cannonball onwards quickly, as quickly as I can manage it, and it hurtles a path through the sooty snow in the sky straight towards a cluster of men surrounding one of their cannons. The opponents dive out of the way, fear plastered on their distant faces, and my ball stops midair before it hits, still spinning and spinning, but held in place. I wheeze, one shoulder seizing painfully. The men are on the ground in a heap, covering their heads protectively. I can't breathe. My nose tingles. Wet dashes down my lip and tastes of iron through my gritted teeth.

Raised in concentration towards the ball, my fingers gnarl. My throat trembles, closed off as if strangled.

"Put it down, Walt!" the doctor shouts in distress. "You are killing yourself!"

I swish my quaking hand sharply through the air and my cannonball ploughs through the first cannon. Thinking is only getting harder as my head grows lighter and my lungs tighter. Through the next cannon, and the next. The men on our side are cheering, the men on theirs are shouting and ducking and running. Bullets are screaming through the air, some so close that I fear they will hit me, but I cannot lose focus.

When the last cannon falls in a pile of thick metal and wooden rubble, I fall, too. As heavy as the cannonball, I collapse in the long grass, gasping for air through my swollen throat. I wheeze laboriously, mouth wide open to suck in the largest breaths I can manage.

"Stay down, Walt!" Leslie shouts, his voice closer now. It gets closer still. "Well done! Well done!"

The doctor gets down on his elbows beside me and squeezes my shoulder. "Well done," he praises quietly. I can't read his expression through the blur in my vision, thick and hazy. His voice echoes disconcertingly in my head. "You made a wise and noble choice, Walter. I'm proud of you. Your mother would be proud of you. Now, rest."

His blurry head turns; the pink of the ribbon at the back of his repositioned wig fills my eyes. I squint. Of course, I had not caught the other three cannonballs. Across the field, our men are struggling to get to their feet and I had not stopped it from happening. Could I have? What would they think of me? Saving myself only, like a proper coward?

Shame rises in me and it's all that is needed to propel the nausea in my gut up and out. The acid of misery and weakness scalds my sore throat as it forces its way to the grass, shaking my shoulders.

"Let it out, Walt," Dr. Oswald soothes, patting my back, though his eyes are still fixed in the distance at the wounded.

I grimace and meekly look up again, my sight filled with fire and steel from the strange guns of Harvey's collection and the standard pistols and muskets joining in battle against the unusual weapons from the opposing force.

A large capsule zooms high overhead, and I wonder faintly if it was poorly aimed, or if it is meant to be so far away. My eyes narrow to slits and with the last of my will and strength and breath, I send this one back, high over their heads, perhaps thinking unclearly. Perhaps saving our crew.

The last that I see is the rain of a liquid over their advancing army, and the last that I hear is their screams as it sizzles upon their flesh, and in the moment of my inviting slip into sleep, I think faintly to myself, what have I done?