“Only five today, sir,” Jake said as Ryan came aboard The Moon-shadow.
“Only…” Ryan murmured, glancing at the corpses lined up on the deck, wrapped in blankets. “Is everyone aboard?” Ryan turned to the crew.
“Aye, Captain!” They shouted.
“Let’s go,” Ryan waved his arm and the crew ran to grab their oars, rowing the small ship away from the pier, making their way to the south where the death wind would fill their sail and carry them to the Crimson Abyss.
Ryan paused beside the bodies, his heart heavy. So many lost in the three years since they’d come to Tav’res. First to illness and accidents, but lately due to starvation and thirst. Yesterday there had been nine. The day before that; seventeen. He knelt down to tug the blanket away from one of the faces.
“Isn’t that Mrs. Hastings?” Jake asked, looking over Ryan’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, smoothing the blanket over her gaunt face and then uncovering her feet to tie a stone weight to her ankles.
“Dang,” Jake said, shaking his head. “She was such a sweet old woman. Always making things for the kids.”
Ryan tugged away another blanket. Asa, a homely girl of about twenty. Mya’s age. Beside her, her mother. Still wearing nightgowns, they’d clearly died in their beds. Ryan leaned down for a closer look, noting the smears of blood in their mouths. “Another box-jelly poisoning,” Ryan said, exhaling.
“Decided to go together, eh?” Jake said.
“Looks that way,” Ryan said, covering their faces. He pulled the blankets away from the final two: a pair of men, too old to help gather food from the sea and without families to care for them. Their dry skin, sunken eyes, and cracked lips suggested that thirst had ended their lives. Guilt and disgust washed through Ryan. Guilt that he hadn’t added them to his list of people to help. Disgust that Lord Miad wasn’t doing more to see to the needs of the people of Tav’res and that his laws made things harder than they needed to be.
“Don’t,” Jake said, nudging Ryan.
“What?” Ryan glanced at his first mate.
“I know that look,” Jake said. “You’re beating yourself up, like it’s somehow your fault they died.”
“I should have checked on them,” Ryan said. “Made sure they had what they need. They lived only a few houses away.”
“You’re already taking care of the Tates and your ma,” Jake said. “And I’m pretty sure I saw you give your supper to the Murphy twins the other night.”
“Their pa didn’t return from the war,” Ryan said. “They need help.”
“A lot of pas didn’t return from the war,” Jake said. “You can’t take on all of their families, y’know.”
A breeze ruffled Ryan’s dark hair, startling him. “Unfurl the sail,” he said, quickly tugging the blankets back over the two elderly men’s faces and tying stone anchors to their ankles before taking his position at the tiller.
“Aye, Captain,” Jake said. “Only two more days, after this, Ryan.”
Ryan nodded.
The death wind filled The Moon-shadow’s sail, tugging the small ship forward as the crew stowed their oars, carrying them toward the Crimson Abyss for the fifth day in a row. If not for their grim task, the men might have enjoyed the brief journey as the ship bounced over the waves, water splashing away from the bow while seagulls followed in their wake.
The Moon-shadow passed between the red rocks that marked the entrance to the abyss as the crew gathered up the sail and lowered oars into the waves. Ryan guided the small ship over the dark water of the trench that had become a grave-yard for the citizens of Tav’res—by Lord Miad’s command. Sharks of many species crowded around the ship, anticipating the feast that was to come. No matter how many times they made this journey, Ryan and his men never grew accustomed to the brutality of dumping the bodies of their friends and neighbors into the toothy jaws of the deep.
The sailors began slapping their oars on the surface in a futile attempt to scare the sharks away, trying to buy a few moments during which the dead might sink with dignity.
The men gathered around the bodies for a moment of respect, but no words were spoken that would make the corpses too real, too human, to be dumped over-board like garbage.
“C’mon,” Ryan said, nodding to Jake as he lifted Mrs. Hastings by her shoulders. Jake took her ankles and the attached stone weight and slid them over the side of the ship. As gently as he could, Ryan lowered her into the sea while his men swatted away the sharks with their oars. He watched her sink into the darkness, then looked away when the water clouded with bits of shredded flesh and blood as the sharks tore her apart. He reached for Asa.
“Send them in together?” Jake asked, gesturing toward Asa’s mother.
“Yeah,” Ryan said.
Two sailors lifted Asa’s mother while Ryan and Jake carried Asa to the opposite railing. With coordinated effort, mother and daughter sank into the sea side by side, almost disappearing from sight before the sharks noticed them. Moving to the stern, they lowered the two elderly men into the water together and watched them vanish, momentarily undisturbed by the preoccupied sharks.
“Let’s go,” Ryan said, anxious to leave this task behind for the day, and grateful that each ship only had to do it for a week at a time.
Keeping their eyes forward, the sailors slowly paddled The Moon-shadow out of the Crimson Abyss and turned toward the little sand bar where they would pick up one of the foraging winds that would carry them to a designated food gathering area…
S.R. Olson—Author 