Ch.167Act 2: Ch.10 – Long Live the King (19)

People made way for us as they saw us. Some made the sign of the cross, while others knelt and wept. Abashina paused briefly, perhaps due to intense pain, but she didn’t give up.

We reached the barricade. Harpoons aimed at us flew through the air. Dead sailors pounded on the ship’s railings. Bodies hung like meat, dangling over the sides. I recalled the answer Abashina had taught me.

“You told me to say it’s lovely.”

“Please tell me.”

“I love you, Abashina.”

“I love you too.”

Abashina leaned in and kissed me.

“You showed me who I am. Thank you. I won’t forget.”

Suddenly, my body flew backward. Abashina had thrown me back. I tried to reach out, but my desperation couldn’t close even a hand’s width of distance. Thick-handed men caught me. I shouted and tried to break free, but they held me firmly and wouldn’t let go.

“You’ll die too! You’ll die too! Come to your senses!” the men shouted.

Lightning struck. I could see the words above Abashina’s head.

[Abashina, Last Blood Chieftain]

Lightning struck again. The words disappeared. Rain poured down—not rain of water, but of harpoons. They were aimed at Abashina. Most missed, but one pierced her right wing.

Abashina stood still. She slowly spread her arms. She didn’t fall. She wasn’t dragged away. She just stood there with her arms spread. Yet the dead didn’t stop their harpooning. The weapons pierced her fragile body with sickening thuds.

“Pull! Pull! Crucify her!”

The whaling ships spread to either side pulled their ropes in unison. Abashina didn’t scream even once. She was just pulled up, higher and higher. White bare feet beneath her slipped-off shoes. Blood dripping beneath those bare feet.

Lightning struck again. The mast caught fire—St. Elmo’s fire, they call it. It burned blue, but what do the dead have to fear?

“Hang her! Hang her! Hang her!”

Ecstasy. Pure ecstasy. The ecstasy of nudging a cornered mantis with your foot. The predator’s paw stroking the head of a paralyzed mouse. A ship moved to ram Abashina as she hung between the vessels. I read the nameplate on its bow.

Unicorn.

No sailors were visible. I knew why. They had all been annihilated by Chekhov. But the ship belonged to Pollard… it answered the call.

The Unicorn’s mast was broken. Only the main mast maintained some semblance of its form.

“Turn her over! Turn her over! Turn her over!”

The sailors skillfully twisted the ropes. Abashina’s body flipped in midair. Such a tiny body. Blood rushing to her face. Harpoons and ropes that wouldn’t allow even the slightest curl of her body.

The Unicorn’s main mast rammed into Abashina.

“Pull! Pull!”

The Unicorn tried to crawl forward. Abashina’s inverted body blocked its advance. The ropes began to snap one by one with popping sounds.

“…George Walker…”

One sailor dropped his rope. Abashina’s voice was faint.

“George Walker. Born in West Virginia. Cabin boy in the Dixon’s officer’s quarters. Born March 1899. Died 1920 in the Indian Ocean…”

The Unicorn stopped. The dead looked at each other in confusion. The ropes loosened slightly. Only Abashina’s voice could be heard clearly.

“Nathaniel Nickerson, born in California, second mate of the Twin Brothers, born February 1833. Died in the Society Islands in 1861.”

“Charles Ray. Born on Pollard Island, first mate of the Enderby, born November 1843. Died in the Caribbean in 1875.”

The grip of the hands holding me tightened. “Charles Ray?” It was a bearded, older man. He walked forward as if entranced.

“Charles Ray! Mr. Charles Ray! My name is Benjamin, Benjamin Ray! Born on Pollard Island, born in 1890, and my grandfather’s name is Obed Ray!”

“Obed!”

A dead man on the ship marked Enderby cried out.

“Obed! My brother’s name! Obed! Charles, my name! My name is Charles!”

“Charles Ray! Charles Ray! My name is Benjamin Ray! My grandfather’s name is Obed Ray!”

A rotting rope ladder was lowered from the ship’s side. A man who couldn’t sink descended hurriedly. An unsightly man. A man whose bones weren’t even intact. A man with no tears left to shed.

“Obed’s grandson…”

“Great-uncle! You are my great-uncle!”

The sailor who had returned home cried out. He fell to his knees, prostrate on the ground, wailing.

“What have I done! Oh, brother! Brother! I have sinned, I have sinned! My brother’s grandson… my brother’s grandson!”

“Go.”

A gentle voice flowed. It was Abashina’s voice.

“Go. And sin no more.”

“Mercy!”

A dead man who had remembered his name reached out.

“Mercy! Mercy!”

Benjamin Ray ran to him. He embraced the dead man without hesitation.

“I’m sorry, child! I’m sorry! I was wrong! I have sinned! Forgive me, forgive me!”

“Grandfather!”

The sky opened. Light shone upon the dead man. Peaceful light covered the dead body like a blanket. An invitation to rest.

“Forgive me… please forgive me…”

The sky closed. Benjamin Ray looked down at the empty ground with a dazed expression. All the whaling ships dropped their anchors at once. Thud! Thud! Gangplanks were placed between the ships. The sailors slowly lowered the ropes. Abashina’s body was gently placed on the deck.

“My name…”

The dead crossed the deck.

“Remember my name too… I can’t remember. My name is…”

“My children. Are my parents safe? Is my family here?”

“Why am I here… I was just wronged. I was just wronged…”

The footsteps of the dead crossing the deck quickened. Soon it became a massive crowd.

“Remember me! Help me remember! My name, my name!”

“Help me remember my homeland, help me find myself again!”

The dead climbed over each other. They became a massive, writhing pile. They jumped to where Abashina’s body lay.

“…Don’t worry.”

Abashina’s voice was clear.

“…If even the nameless wildflowers by the roadside are this beautiful, what about you? You know. You know who you are. Even if you’ve lost yourself for a moment, that doesn’t hide your light. George Coffin, Edward Philbrick, Thomas Heffernan… all of you… I’ll help you…”

Bells rang. Bells from all churches and cathedrals, bells hanging from ship railings, bells announcing the time for prayer.

From the pile of the dead, Abashina’s body was raised.

She placed her hand on each dead person’s forehead, awakening their names. The summer day napping under a tree’s shade, the childhood days playing with wooden swords, the thrilling moment of first setting sail.

Those who realized themselves wept with wailing cries. Just as the albatross cries in the harbor, so did they. Occasionally, people born on Pollard Island ran forward. People whose names they had only heard. Names they had only seen in old family trees.

But the longing for home was the same for these most ordinary people. People embraced each other. The dead returned to death. The living buried the chill of the dead in their hearts.

Those not born on Pollard grabbed the ship’s railings and laughed. They cried out the names of their hometowns. They wailed the names of parents and siblings, neighbors and friends.

Light lifted each of them.

Soon they became shining birds.

They took flight from the rotting tree stumps.

They fly toward home.

Impure things gathered. Things that couldn’t stand alone, things that could only survive by clinging to the pure, these phantoms rushed in.

But now, the ships blocked them. The very ships they once called home, called mother, that had embraced them during storms, these ships themselves rammed into those things.

The sunken fleet that had protected its pitiful unborn children moved. Every single plank, every insignificant nail, remembered the touch of the living.

The ships collapsed. They became storms themselves. Rotting wood and ropes and cloth, chains and dishes, small cannons and treasure chests, trinkets meaningful to just one person, all swirled fiercely. The dead, the suffering, threw themselves into the storm.

Abashina rose from among the dead. With closed eyes, smiling, touching the foreheads of the dead with her small palms, calling each of their names one by one.

The Silver-Masked King bowed.

[You are a monster]

Abashina did not respond. The Silver-Masked King asked patiently.

[Does a monster side with humans? Look. You have saved both humans and monsters. But humans do not take your side. Only fellow monsters stand with you. Doesn’t that make you resentful?]

Abashina did not respond. The Silver-Masked King tilted his head.

[Nothing will come back to you for doing this. This won’t make you human again. Your dead parents and siblings won’t return. You’ve already been branded a monster, so you have no place to stand. Stop. Stop hurting yourself. I will help you. To your human days…]

Abashina opened her eyes.

“That is for me to decide.”

The silver mask fell silent. Abashina didn’t get angry. Just as one becomes calm when someone truly ignorant says something frustrating, so did she.

“I have decided, and I have chosen for myself. I have said ‘yes’ to what deserves ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to what deserves ‘no.’ Anything beyond that comes from evil.”

[How dare you speak to a king like that!]

The Silver-Masked King struck down the sky. Everyone turned away. But I saw it. Abashina’s small hand supporting the sky.

[How!]

“This is not your territory.”

Abashina wasn’t angry at all. She simply commanded.

“This is human land. Land governed by human order. So, begone, demon!”

Her wings were enveloped in light. Broken bones mended. The dead raised their hands together. The remnants of rotting ships struck the mask.

Things once abandoned, things discarded by people, things that should have been remembered but were forgotten, the dead and forsaken, raised their hands for the world of the living.

[Realization burrows into *your* mind like a midnight serpent…]

Only then did I understand. Abashina’s true name. The name even she didn’t know. But the name that was waiting to sprout and grow within her.

[Abashina]

[Saint of the Forsaken]