We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

2

AT THE RINGING OF LAUDS, a group of four brothers bears Caplain Amita’s remains into the chapel and rests his thin, clothbound, bonefish body upon the platform where we Choristers would normally stand.

“Lauds is the hour where we praise the coming morning and the resurrection of Christ,” Marston says, no longer wearing the pale blue robes of Ex-Oh but the holy white vestments of a Caplain. He stands upon the driftwood dais, before the head of the deceased Caplain Amita. “Our beloved Caplain’s resurrection will come at the end, for all of us, on the final day, when the Last Judgment is delivered, and when we take our last song to the depths. And, until then, we honor his name, he who first heard the word of God. He who gave us purpose. He who put our song into the deep.”

Caplain Marston’s voice, often cold and colorless, is filled with heat. Power in his speech that would rival Caplain Amita in the days when he had his full strength. Movement in his tall, hunched body.

“And today,” he says, glancing at me—sea glass eyes burning like cold flames, “we honor his legacy with our song.”

Antiphon: “Quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia at vero Dominus caelos fecit.”

Chant: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum.”

Antiphon.

I lead, and though my voice does not break, it wavers under the weight of something. Something that threatens to close my throat. I fight back tears, looking at Caplain Amita’s slender remains.

“Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel; quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem plebis suae.”

Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free.

To close, a hymn. A special hymn just added to the psalter, penned by Caplain Marston.

Like a dirge, it seems to my ears. Slow and heavy.

“By fire, may they be pur-i-fied

“By poison, may they see His light.”

Finally, prayer.

“Laudate Dominum de caelis laudate eum in excelsis.”

Praise ye Him, in the high places.

A prayer that comes from this, the lowest places.

Does that not make the praise even more special? More powerful?

If so, then I pray that Caplain Amita might know peace. That he, himself, be praised for being an instrument of God’s will.

I am told I should take comfort in the face of death, and that I will see Caplain Amita again, in heaven, after the dead have been called from the ocean’s depths. But, for today, he is simply dead.

The one person who knew the truth about me, who knew who I really was, has passed. And he has left me with a task that I am not sure I am capable of.

The key.

I feel its cold metal still burning my skin, tucked tight against my chest.

Caplain Amita said Marston would never suspect me, but I don’t believe that to be true. His eyes narrow upon me at times. As though he’s trying to see through me. Like he knows I have a secret.

And what will he do to me if he finds out? I’m not sure which secret I’m most frightened of him knowing.

After the hour is done, Caplain Amita’s body is carried up to the Topside deck, where the elders and the anointed brothers will give him the final rights and, upon diving, commit his body to the sea.

I cannot be there for this rite. Me, nor the other Choristers. We cannot go Topside.

However, this marks the first time in days in which we are left to our own devices.

I slip away from Lazlo before he has a chance to notice I am gone, crawl down into the battery well, one of the very lowest compartments of the ship, where the air is close—a mingled smell of something acrid and metallic. Of fish rot and urine and other recesses. Few other than Caleb and I could fit down here into some of these spaces, for the room is filled by a massive bank of the heavy, block-shaped cells. At one time, the boat held a bank of thirty of these cells, and more in store to replace damaged ones, but now only twenty remain, several of which are seeping acid and are soon to fail.

Brother Ernesto doesn’t trust Caleb enough yet to clean these essential elements. I must be careful to touch only the wood plank barrier as I climb down, avoiding the terminals. They are live. The shock would kill a person in an instant if they landed wrong.

So, it is I tasked with cleaning the corroded terminals. I keep the contacts and wiring dry. Pump away the standing, oily, brackish water into the bilge. My feet burn if I stand too long in that acidic brine. It’s already eating away at the piping below, the very pressure hull. I remember once when we had taken on water from a burst ballast tank valve. The well flooded up to my waist. I had to pump for countless hours to keep the seawater from reaching the batteries.

If the water ever reaches the terminals, the electrical system will short. The boat will go dark. The Leviathan could be lost. Lost before its purpose is fulfilled.

I remove my robe, glancing through the hatchway above, making sure I’m not seen. I pull off my tunic, remove the key from its place, tucked against my chest inside my bindings.

I slip it into a crevice between a support strut overhead and the deck. I dare not keep it on my person, nor in my bunk or locker. Not with Caplain Amita dead and Marston in charge. Our bunks and personal lockers have already been searched for contraband.

Worse, Caplain Marston’s God is somehow more wrathful and expecting than the God Caplain Amita bade us serve. The new Ex-Oh Goines, with his steely expression and tumorous neck, has become his enforcer. Always was a man even more exacting and severe than Marston, when he was just the Watch. Ten lashes given to Brother Micah for speaking when he should not. Twelve lashes to Brother Gregory for wasting food during his galley duty.

It’s his new mission to remind the brothers and Choristers of our sacred, solemn duty.

To toil and to pray.

We Choristers have always been spared some of the harsher penance, but that cannot be guaranteed any longer.

I cannot step a toe out of line.

If they lash me, then they will see my bindings.

I must keep my bleeding hidden, when it returns. Surely it will. My curse.

A dry lump grows in my throat, thinking about Caplain Amita.

What a lonely feeling it is.

A hollowness in my tummy. Like a gutted rockfish.

I could tell Lazlo—I have thought of it before. I trust him more than anyone. He would keep my secret.

There might be a time when it’s necessary for someone else to know. When I’ll need help.

But not now.

Not yet, anyway.

I retighten the strip of linen about my chest, pulling the wrappings tight as I can. So tight I have trouble breathing. Round and round. That’s how tight it needs to be in order to conceal my shape.

If I am to last long enough to fulfill the task Caplain Amita set upon me, the task God has chosen me for, then I cannot be found out.

Today is a fishing day, a task that requires most brothers to be on hand.

“Must mean we’re in a good, clean stretch of water,” Brother Aegis says, pulling off his robes and tunic. The long scar that runs from his jaw to his temple gives him sort of a maniacal countenance when he smiles. A pink ripple. “No Topsiders.”

It is no simple operation, fishing beneath the waves.

Brothers Aegis and Callum climb into the access port of the empty number eight missile tube, massive length of net folded and stored beneath them. And then the tube is flooded and the missile tube hatch opened on the top deck. Then they swim out, spreading the net. After, they must swim to the forward trunk, a task that requires holding their breath for up to five minutes.

The Leviathan drags the net along at low speed through shallow waters for a time, and then the nets are drawn back into the missile tube by winch, guided along by two other brothers. Sometimes Jacob, sometimes Martino.

All of it, dangerous business.

You can easily get snared in the nets, become trapped in the tube, or not make it back to the trunk before breath runs out.

Three have drowned since I’ve been aboard.

None for some time, though.

When the haul has been reeled in by winch and the missile hatch sealed, then the tube is pressurized again, the catch unloaded onto the deck of the chapel.

It normally takes no less than ten of us to pull out the haul; however, today, like the last several months, our catch is meager.

Skinny skipjack, smelt, a small reef shark, one baby bluefin, a handful of mackerel.

Brother Aegis, dripping, shivering, lips blue, crosses his arms around his skinny waist, frowning at the fruits of his labor. Sucks air through his few teeth. A whistle.

Ex-Oh Goines, who has been overseeing the operation, shakes his dour head. “The poison has finally reached our last fishing grounds. The day is drawing near, I fear.”

No one dare respond to him, lest they wish to feel the bite of his leather lash.

He lumbers off, not helping us to collect the catch, or to roll and repack the nets.

“These aren’t poisoned, nah,” Brother Silas mutters under his breath as soon as we have carried the haul to the balneary, what was once known as the torpedo room, for cleaning, and it is just the three of us. Rare for him to speak outside of the mess, and especially a word of derision.

Lazlo shares a knowing look with me, eyeing the large, round-faced Brother Silas with great interest. A man whose eyes always seemed to be smiling, even on a day like today.

“How do you mean?” I whisper, untangling the flopping, rough-skinned skipjack.

The broad-shouldered brother takes the wriggling fish from my hand and holds its head to show me its eyes. Unmoving but alive, clear.

“See, not milky,” he says, then he turns the fish and opens its gills so that Lazlo and I might see. The layered rows of the shark-teeth organ pulse and flex. “Its color is good, see? In’t sick.”

“Then why have the fish been so scarce?” Lazlo asks.

“Because,” Brother Silas says, pausing for a long moment. So long a moment, I wonder if he will continue speaking at all. When he does, he leans in, serious: “Topsiders are pushing us out of the best fishing grounds.”

“Seems like there are more of them than there used to be,” I say.

Again, a moment of quiet reflection. Words unsaid. Something eats at him.

This is confirmed later, after supper. When the rumors begin to spread among the tables in the mess. Tonight, there will be a raid.

Of course, any real information must be paid for.

We trade and buy in teeth.

Things that have been lost but are still our own. Pieces of us.

Not all teeth are of equal value. Molars are worth more than incisors, but the quality of the tooth matters as well. Blackened ones are worth less than browned. Browned worth less than yellowed. Rare white ones—normally baby teeth—are worth the most.

I have managed to have kept most of mine which have fallen out—seven white baby teeth and five that have loosened since—and five others from trade. Takes more teeth to make a deal these days. That’s because, since the worst of the scurvy has set in, there are more teeth to be traded. But also, it takes more teeth to make a trade, because goods worth trading for have become scarce.

Lazlo and Ephraim and I each sacrifice one of the best of our individual collection—two ochre incisors and a molar marred by only one blackened pip—and pass them along to Brother Leighton—one of the youngest brothers. Upon examining his payment and finding it suitable, he leans in and speaks conspiratorially.

“Brother Augustine an’ me been asked to sharpen the blades, right? Readyin’ flame jars and the like.”

Brother Silas, seated at the adjoining table, listening in all the while, confirms the rumor with his silence.

“Praise God,” St. John says, who had been sullenly scooping at the remainder of his watery broth with the back of his spoon. “We have not had any fruits or meat in…”

He cannot properly remember.

Neither can I.

“Will it be an island?” I ask. “Coconuts, perhaps.”

“Mangosteen.”

“Bananas.”

A litany of words that conjure sharp memories.

I remember a time when, from the gleaming hatch of the conning tower—the halo of light—they brought down from their gathering a bushel of limes. They were still warm from the sun. They tasted like the light. Sweet and sour. My mouth wanted to collapse on itself.

Remembering those limes, my tongue tingles.

Normally, this would be a topic of some excitement, particularly for us Choristers, who never get to step foot Topside, but Brother Silas, brow already shelved and heavy, appears positively downtrodden.

“What troubles you, Silas?” Ephraim asks.

“No—no island,” he says.

The jubilant mood is doused.

So, a ship raid, then. A raid on Topsiders.

No getting around it.

We have enough fish to last us a week, if we stretch, but we are low on all the other goods. Medical supplies, pantry items for the kitchen, fresh cloth and soap—whale blubber and ash is harsh, burns the skin—twine to repair the nets, oil for the engines, and other rarer but essential parts like gaskets and seals, and, if at all possible to locate, batteries. All of which have become more dangerous to acquire, since they can only be collected from Topsider ships, which are fiercely protected.

“We should launch the Last Judgment now,” St. John says in his usual dictatorial tone, as though he, himself, might be the caplain. “End their miserable lives.”

“They are wretched and should have our sympathy,” Lazlo says.

“That’s what old Caplain Amita thought,” St. John says. “No, the Topsiders are sinners. Marauders. Caplain Marston has reminded us of that, yeah?”

“We were once Topsiders,” I interject.

“And we were blessed. Purified. Thus, we should be careful to remain loyal and faithful, for our place in heaven is not fixed,” St. John says, definitive, leaving no room for response. I look up and see him staring at me, an impish delight in his eye. A look that says, Not even for you, Remy.

I had only just come on board when St. John received his cutting.

The newly devoted are given two weeks to recover—the minimal amount of bedrest necessary, it was deemed, in order to have the best chance of surviving the procedure.

But that often wasn’t enough time.

Many died from blood loss.

Some from ague. Infection.

St. John was stoic, even then. Would not let on the amount of pain he was in.

I found him one day, stumbled upon him in the storage compartment. Found him doubled over, heaving great, shuddering tears, blood pooling between his feet.

I had to help him then to his bunk, for he could not walk, and called for Brother Dumas.

He was muttering nonsense, I remember. His skin, burning hot. Brother Dumas feared that the ague would take him, as it had taken so many of the newly devoted.

I had seen these deaths. Heard them. Loud, mad passings, as I lay in my bunk, when I turned eight years old, faking my own recovery.

So, I attended St. John, held his hand, when time and opportunity permitted, remaining by his bedside.

And he did not die.

The ague passed, and the bleeding stopped, at least for a time.

But the boy that was left was a cruel one. Particularly with me… perhaps because I saw him weakened, as no one else had.

And he hated me all the more for it.

Nothing to do about that, I figured long ago. And the sting of his rebuke has long since faded.

I almost don’t see Ex-Oh Goines step down into the mess—dour with the slight constant wink in his left eye, and the thick collar of tumular swelling about his neck. “Brother Lazlo,” he says sharply. “A word.”

Lazlo blinks. He looks at me as he slowly stands.

“He’s part of the raiding party?” I ask Ephraim, unbelieving. “Lazlo?”

The older Chorister is shocked as well. “That’s what I just heard Brother Augustine say when they were making preparations.”

I was curious as to why Lazlo had not returned to attend his afternoon duties.

“Why him, do you think?” I ask.

No Chorister this young has ever been sent Topside.

“Surely, there must be some mistake.”

“Something to do with his knowledge of the electrics. Circuits and the like,” Ephraim whispers. “Remember, Brother Calvert trained him up on fixing such things.”

“Why not send Brother Ernesto?” I ask.

Ephraim only shrugs, disheartened as myself. “Come, we have to prepare.”

To raid a Topsider ship, the Leviathan dives and then comes up from beneath the enemy on blown tanks, cutting engines so that it rises silently from the depths.

Leighton, Callum, Augustine, Silas—the strongest and youngest of the brothers—and now Lazlo, and Ex-Oh Goines himself, all comprise the raiding party. They have changed from their robes into trousers and tunics and hoods, all dyed a squid-ink black. Once the bulbs affixed to the bulkhead above the main hatchways begin flashing, they make their way forward, ready to exit up through the forward trunk hatch, at the top of the balneary, as soon as we’ve surfaced. They’re armed with the few remaining firearms the boat can claim but mostly with knives—rust-spotted machetes and lengths of chain and jars filled with used oil with rags stuck into them. Grapples and hooks and coils of rope. Lazlo is given no weapon at all. His garb hangs about his lean body like loose skin.

I fight the urge to step forward, to speak to him as he passes. To send God with him. But now is a time for silence. Each in the line receive the cross in oil upon their foreheads, are given communion. Lazlo’s face is wan, flat as he receives Caplain Marston’s anointment.

Silas’s face is tight and troubled as I’ve ever seen, and he has been on several boarding parties in the past.

It puts a sourness in my tummy.

When at last we are surfaced and the trunk hatch opened, I watch as they disappear in a line up the ladder.

When the hatch is closed, we each attend our stations, ready to dive, ready to respond, waiting in the dimness. In the control room, Caplain Marston keeps an eye on the surface through the periscope, while Brother Marcus monitors the radar, and Brother Philip scans the sonar, with its radial arm raking the round, green screen, ready to ping any new enemy contact.

Myself, I straddle the hatch to the chapel, ready to check the bilge pumps in both compartments should we take on water.

We wait in what should be silent prayer, in meditation. But my mind swims in other, deeper, darker pools.

Lazlo. He is not short, not weak, but younger by far, and nowhere near so strong and able as the rest of the brothers in the party.

I once asked Brother Silas what it was like up there, on the surface.

Many of us had already posed this question—to him, because we knew him to be the most likely of any of the older brothers to answer—but he only answered when it was just he and myself, on kitchen duty.

“Topsiders, though—the marked—they deceptive, like. Trick you into feeling guilt for them. But you cannot have guilt for them if you wish to survive—they vicious. More vicious now than when I come aboard. I was your age, about. The war had happened, yeah. I lived on an island. A small set of islands called the Maldives.

“The poison. You hear about the poison, from the great war, you know. How it kills. Slow, like. But wan’t poison got my people. Our island kept being raided by pirates—strangers from somewhere else. Evil Topsiders you hear about now. Accents I couldn’t understand. Nothing we could do to stop them after a time. Did not know God then, as I do now. That’s why I spared, yeah. They keep coming back, pirates. Finally, they took me one night. My family. Won’t tell you what all they do to them, what they going to do to me, yeah. But then their boat was raided by the caplain, an’ he showed no mercy. Took me aboard, though. Showed me God, yeah. Truth.”

“What about the sun?” I asked him.

He squinted. “Don’t remember much of that—only the elders can see the sun. But the moon, yes. Seen that. Plenty of that, on raids. Bright and round and blue-white. And the air. Rushes past your skin. Gives you chills,” he said, hacking off the head of a skipjack in one heavy swing of a cleaver.

“What was your name?” I asked him. “Before you took the vow of the order?”

After all he had just confessed, this request gave him pause.

“I gave that name up.”

“It’s just… I don’t remember mine,” I said.

“Good,” he said, swiping a large knife across the skin of the skipjack, scales flying every which way.

“I only remember an image. An image on a banner, I guess.”

And I told him of the emblem that for some reason has remained rooted in my mind. Of the palm tree and the sea and the blue sky.

“Silas is a better name than my real one,” he says. “Silas was a prophet. And you… you are named after a saint.”

“Yes, St. Remy.”

“Short for Remigius,” he said.

“An ugly name,” I told him. “In Latin, means oarsman.”

“Ah, perhaps someday you shall row us to some safe shore, yes?”

“But what safe shore is available to us?” I asked him.

His smile faded.

Lazlo remembers his name. He was older than me, even though he was rescued from Topside shortly after I was.

Alden.

Alden Tomas.

He had two names. And he came from somewhere green, he remembered. And he had a mother who sang to him when it rained.

I think I must have come from an island too.

Though I remember so little.

Nothing but an image of a tree, and a sea, and a yellow-orange beach.

A wrenching sound brings me to. Metal on metal screech. A shudder. We’ve struck something. At the very least, we’ve sideswiped another vessel.

The klaxon blares shrilly, but we’re given no order to abandon our current posts.

Another shudder, shouting from the deck above.

And then commotion forward, from the balneary. The raiding party has returned.

I abandon my post momentarily—just long enough to peek in through the hatchway.

The trunk hatch is opened, dripping water, and a prisoner, hands bound behind his back, a sack over his head, struggles, grunts as he is being dropped down through the narrow opening. Brothers Callum and Leighton struggle to contain his flailing legs. Once inside, the figure is led roughly aft by the two of them. I jump out of the way to let them pass. He is wearing a white uniform, this interloper from Topside, the short sleeve of his arm decorated with a colorful array of patches and symbols.

He wails, shrieks as he struggles against the men holding him. But no words. His mouth must be bound shut beneath the hood.

Never in my memory have we brought an adult prisoner on board. A Topsider.

Behind him, Brothers Ernesto and Augustine step down, and then I see Lazlo’s short form among them. Alive. All of them are sweating—Ernesto’s face bloodied. They fling several duffels full of goods to the deck. Supplies from the Topside ship. Coils of new, unfrayed rope. Jugs of water. A square package labeled INFLATABLE RAFT. Now they struggle to leverage in a heavier, more awkward package. Long, rigid.

When they release it, the sack crashes to the deck with a heavy thump, like it is filled with meat.

I look to the hatch opening, expecting Brother Silas to climb down at any moment, but Augustine is already closing up behind him, turning the hatch wheel.

“Sealed. Ready for dive!” Brother Callum cries out into the squawk box mounted on the bulkhead.

“What about Silas?” I say to Lazlo, whose chest is heaving from effort. “We can’t leave without him.”

And, yet, the dive bells are already ringing. I feel the hum of the Leviathan’s turbine in my toes. And Lazlo will not meet my gaze.

“Everyone to their stations,” Brother Augustine says, wiping the sweat and blood and water spray from his forehead, rushing past me.

Lazlo follows, but I hook on to his arm, staying him, making him look at me.

Eyes wide, he glances toward the largest sack resting on the deck.