The Fabulous Beast by Garry Kilworth Page A

staring eyes and mouths containing a forest of teeth. They have terrible faces, these beasts, and hideous bodies which taper from a bulbous head to a thread at the far end. Living as they do in the pressurised depths of the ocean, when they rise to the surface they swell to gigantic proportions.
    Giseppi said, ‘I am glad I do not have the intellect to indulge in such nightmares, Greta. The sharks and whales hold enough fear for me, without inventions of the mind. To lose a foot to a dagger-toothed dogfish is to lose one’s life. Or paralysis from a box jellyfish. Or even the arms of an octopus, knitting itself around a leg. These are terrors enough.’
    ‘For me,’ I said, ‘it is the vastness of the space around us. It falls away on either side, to back and to front, and nothingness, nothingness in all the corners of our present world. Even the sky is empty. What I would give to see the odd wild sea bird flying from nowhere to nowhere. I would know then that we are not walking to a place where the waters of the ocean fall into a bottomless pit of blackness.’
    We brooded for a moment on our own particular horrors, then spoke of brighter things.
    ‘When we reach the East Indies, as surely we will,’ Greta told us, ‘I am going to buy two slaves, one for the day, another for the night.’
    Giseppi smiled. ‘I can be your night slave until you have purchased one,’ he said.
    Greta stared at his groin. ‘I have seen what is on offer, my ribbon companion, and spaghetti comes to mind more swiftly than the image of a pikestaff.’
    My male friend looked aggrieved. ‘I have had no complaints from other women,’ he stated.
    ‘But do they ask for a second helping?’ countered Greta.
    Giseppi’s brow wrinkled and he went into deep thought. ‘No, by God, they don’t – why do you think that is?’
    Greta and I almost burst with laughing. Strange it is, human social contact, for I knew that Greta was in love with Giseppi, from her body language and from her looks. He knew it too. Yet she invariably mocked Giseppi’s sexual prowess and pretended to find him wanting. It was perhaps that she was afraid of rejection and needed to protect herself.
    The rest of that day became darker and more forbidding. It seemed the sky was closing down on us, pressing upon us with some weight. The air around the whole flotilla grew colder until we were huddled together around the shelters which formed the centre of the rafts. Inside our hut the domestic stock were restless and I could hear the goats bleating in distress. Waves began to wash over the rim of the raft and soak our feet.
    That night there was fire in the sky, but at a great distance. It lit the Heavens every few seconds with a blanket of light. No thunder was heard, so if it was a storm it was too far off to concern us. A tempest was of course to be dreaded. There were stories of rafts being washed clear of men, women and livestock. None could walk in such conditions, so if we found ourselves in the sea during a storm we drowned. There were safety ropes to cling to, to hook one’s feet into, but waves are mighty beasts when unleashed with fury, and they will rip you from your anchor.
    The unsettled weather lasted for two days, but if it did not grow better, it grew no worse. It was simply miserable. Everyone remained wet and cold, despite wearing leather smocks. Even our leaders looked despondent and yet we were hardly out of sight of land.
    It will be a poor showing if we go no further than our present position. At least this long halt gives me time to catch up on my journal. This small leather-bound notebook I have is getting damper by the day but the charcoal sticks I brought with me serve better than pen and ink, the latter which would run like black rivers down the page.
    ~
    Today the heavy air lifted! We woke this morning to a great swell which rocked our raft this way and that, but the surface itself was much less the dancing water than that which we have endured