The Unfinished Land

Blunters

A SHOUTING ROSE at the tree line.

Reynard and Manuel covered the fire and moved through a tightening crowd of unhappy sailors and cabin boys. In the middle of the gathering, ten or twelve paces off, they saw two middle-aged men with dark brown hair flanking a lone woman with a broad face, wide green eyes, and black hair, slightly younger—and all wearing leather jackets and pants. The three appeared healthy and strong and carried thick leather satchels.

Soldiers surrounded this trio with half-pikes presented, but despite the ominous greeting, the newcomers surveyed the galleon’s complement with an alert equanimity, as if expecting anything, but assured they would prevail. The sailors and soldiers were exhausted and near panic, but el maestro urged all to maintain their wits. Here were people who might have answers.

Manuel kept his eyes on the leather satchels.

el maestro approached the newcomers with hands open and empty, though his sword and three knives were slung on his waist. They exchanged words Reynard could not hear at that distance, soldiers relieved them of their satchels, and el maestro then called for Manuel to come forward.

The woman eyed the spiked head of the deer with apparent disgust, then spoke first—to Manuel. The old man glared a sharp warning at Reynard to stay silent, and shook his own head in response. The woman took a breath and tried again. This came out, Reynard thought, as Dutch or German, which Manuel knew well enough.

“She says we should not be here,” Manuel translated. “And we should not have killed the deer. It belongs to important people and is forbidden.”

“How sad,” the cook said, sure of el capitán’s favor.

The woman spoke some more. Reynard heard and half understood only “Als wij nog een nacht willen leven.”

“If we want to live another night,” Manuel translated for all, “we should return to our ship and go home.”

el maestro said in passable Dutch that the ship had a great hole in one side, but they would soon have it patched.

The woman now focused on Reynard, her brows knit, and called out, in English, with an Irish lilt, “Thou art not of them?”

Reynard shook his head.

“Thou hast come on a ship filled with weapons. Thy weapons?” She looked with a frown at the few soldiers in their armor and helmets, the sailors in homespun and canvas—all thin and wan. Desperate and afraid.

“Not mine,” Reynard said.

“What we learn is that there hath been a battle—a war,” the woman said. “Other ships packed with soldiers arrived in recent months. Maybe thy leader will find them out there, maybe not. Because of the Eaters, I think few remain. Fix thy ship. Get ye home whilst ye can.”

“Chronophagos,” Manuel whispered to Reynard. “Eaters of time. For me, useful.”

“Why art ye here?” el maestro asked them. “Why come to this beach? To spy?”

“We blunt dragons,” the woman said, lifting her satchel. At a flick of el maestro’s finger, two soldiers took charge of the bag and emptied it, showing a mallet and a kind of chisel.

el maestro raised a bushy brow.

“This is the season their nymphs rise from the waves and hang in trees. We must find them and blunt them, spike the exitus, the ostium of their sacks, or when they split and emerge, they will fly free and kill and eat whom they will.”

The soldiers returned the bag and the implements.

“We saw them!” el maestro said. “Under the sea, following our ship—was it one also, hanging from a tree on the little island?”

The woman nodded. “We have no time to waste.”

el maestro took Manuel aside, and they spoke more.

Manuel said, “el maestro tells me that one of these creatures visited us last night and grabbed up a dog.”

The two men, keeping close to the woman, maintained a watchful silence.

“He would also know about the Eaters of whom you speak. What is their food?” Manuel did not seem to be asking a question to which he, personally, required an answer.

“They eat lives,” she said.

“Are they vampires?” el maestro asked.

“They care nothing for blood. It is thy time on Earth for which they hunger. From those protected by pact, they take only seconds or hours, from the sick conclusion or the strong middle of our days, as exchange for their protection, or as part of ritual. From such as thee”—and she looked sharp points at el maestro—“without protection, thou wilt lose young months and even years, night after night. They come again and again until thou fad’st to dust or leave.”

The sailor who had watched from the boat told el maestro that the white forms had approached Manuel and the boy, the Gitanos, and touched them both, but they were either younger or no different. The sailors and soldiers regarded them with renewed fear and suspicion.

“I, too, see no aging,” el maestro said. “Is it because they are Gitanos?”

“No,” the woman said, and regarded Reynard with a strange sharpness, as if she feared him as well. She then looked off to the water. “We need to finish our work, and soon.”

“Keep these three here,” el maestro said. “Do not let them leave. el capitán may need guides for his ventures inland.”

Manuel suggested that was not wise. el maestro ignored him, and soldiers bound the trio and made them kneel on the beach. el maestro ordered them to bring two cages off the galleon, and the woman and men were roughly thrust into one. The burly sailor grinned as he locked them in. His gums were bleeding, and he had lost considerable hair and many teeth.

“And these two, hold them in th’other,” el maestro said.

Manuel and Reynard were locked in the second cage, some yards away. The burly sailor handled them roughly, his breath a stinking fume, and the other sailors and skinny boys murmured approval, while the soldiers studied the trees and the sky with apprehension.

“It is not going well,” Manuel observed. “I doubt anyone here understands what is about to happen… Dost thou?”

Reynard shook his head. He could feel odd and frightening tugs in his thoughts, even vague memories, but without shape, like forgotten dreams—and yet not his dreams, and not in the least connected to his short life. Perhaps he was still hearing, at a distance, the words his father and uncle, his mother and grandmother, had spoken, their stories, their legends. But he did not think so. The glassy-skinned woman had stared at him so strangely.

Something new was being awakened, something he had never expected and most surely did not want, any more than he wanted to be lost at sea and stranded with Spaniards on a strange shore.