‘I ain’t goin’,’ said Peck.

‘You stay and trull for boxies, Peck,’ Ambel replied cheerfully.

‘I don’t wanna stay,’ said Peck.

‘You could hook us some sea-cane and a few gourds as well. We’ve a barrel or two to spare, and some bags of dried salt-yeast,’ said Ambel, ignoring this.

Peck snorted and returned his gaze to the island. After a moment, he turned away, stepped out of the nest and scrambled down the mast to the deck, from where he again returned his attention to the island. Ambel watched him for a moment, then shrugged and walked over to the wall of the forecabin, from where he unhooked his blunderbuss. He also shouldered a case containing powder and shot. He turned to Anne and Boris, who had just come down from the cabin-deck.

‘You two fetch your stuff and get down to the boat,’ he said — then, turning to Sild and Gollow, ‘You two as well.’ To Pland he said, ‘Keep an eye on things here,’ flicking his eyes in the direction of Peck. Pland nodded, and Ambel ducked into his cabin. Once inside, he closed the door and laid his blunderbuss and bag on the table. After a pause, he went over to his sea-chest and took out the Skinner’s box. He opened it and looked at the head inside. Insane black eyes glared back at him from the grotesque object. Ears that looked like spined fins wiggled. There seemed a lot more of them than there had been before. Ambel looked closer and noted lumps growing down the side of the long-snouted end of the thing. They were similar in shape to the lumps from which its tusks sprouted. Ambel stared at it some more, then abruptly came to a decision.

‘It’s sprine for you,’ he said to the head.

The head rose up on its bottom jaw and tried to shake itself free of the box. Ambel slammed shut the lid and locked it. The head was still banging about inside its box as he closed it in his sea-chest. He took up his ‘buss and his bag and quickly left his cabin.

With a fear gnawing his gut, Peck watched them rowing ashore. Horrible things happened to you if you went ashore. Memory was a feeling. He could feel a long bony finger under his skin, working round between dermis and muscle, tugging and ripping. Why can’t a Hooper faint? he wondered. Why did the pain have to last for so long? Somewhere deep inside himself Peck knew he was being foolish. The Skinner was finished. Ambel kept the head in a box and the Skinner could no longer do what it had been named for.

The boat grounded on the beach of the cove and the five of them hopped out, secured it, then made their way into the dingle. Rhinoworms would be in the deeper water surrounding the island elsewhere, so they would have to make their way round there, and out of the shallow cove.

Peck looked at Pland, who was standing at the bows with two juniors. The three of them had dropped lines over the side and were milling for boxies. Nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. But then the whispering started again: a kind of hungry pleading.

‘Wants some buggering sea-cane does he?’ Peck said loudly.

Pland glanced at him. ‘Get it from the stern. I don’t want you stirring it too much here.’

Peck nodded, then moved to one of the rail lockers, where he pulled out a coil of rope and a grappling hook. He walked then to one side of the stern end of the ship, hurled the grappling hook out, and began hauling away. Soon the hook snagged one of the sea-cane plants, and he pulled carefully until it slid up to lodge in the tangle at the plant’s head, then he increased the pressure. With a puff of black silt the plant came up out of the sea bottom. He drew it in to the edge of the ship then hauled it up hand-over-hand as far as the rail. With it draped half over the rail, he grasped the stalk, which was as thick as a man’s leg, pulled out his panga, and with one blow cut off the hand-like root and anchor stone to which it was clinging. Root and stone splashed back into the sea, while the rest of the plant flopped on to the deck, its gourds thudding down like severed heads, scattering small leeches, trumpet shells, and coin-sized prill across the planks. Peck then spent a happy five minutes stamping on the prill and leeches, and dropping trumpet shells into a cast-iron bait box. During that time he forgot the whispering, but when he had finished it returned stronger than ever.

Come…

With a sweat breaking out, Peck clung to the rail — then he swore and headed for the rear hold. Down below decks, he muttered to himself and crashed barrels about with more vigour than was entirely necessary. Two barrels he hoisted out on to the deck before climbing out of the hold and rolling them over towards the sea-cane. After opening the barrels, he stamped on the few leeches he had missed, then began plucking gourds and tossing them into the first barrel.

Need…

‘Shaddup! Buggering shaddup!’

The stalk of the sea-cane Peck sliced up with single panga blows so each fragrant section fell into the second barrel. The ribbed red-and-green skin of the cane stalk was only a thin sheath covering a gooey yellow honeycomb that smelt strongly of aniseed. Peck scooped up the tangled top and tossed it back over the side, before quickly snatching up the grappling hook and casting it out into the water again. It’s a coward, he thought, as he yanked in another cane. It’s only this bad when the Captain ain’t aboard. But today the whispering was particularly strong. He’d never known it as persistent as this before. But this time he would resist. It was only when he had dealt with the second sea-cane, which had nicely filled both barrels, that he remembered that Ambel kept the salt-yeast in his cabin. Then the whisper became even more intense, even more eager. With elaborate care, Peck returned the rope and grappling hook to the locker before clinging tight to the rail again. He clung there for as long as he could, but a horrible fascination eventually turned him round to stare towards the Captain’s cabin. After a moment he walked to the door and — out of Pland’s view — he ducked inside.

The pain. The pain had been transcendent. It had taken Peck somewhere he had never before been. There had been a terrible understanding in it, too. It had been given to him so he might understand, yet he had failed. Peck stood over the sea-chest with his sweat dripping on to the ornately carved wood. Here, concealed in this box, was something that all Hoopers — with their ambivalent relationship with pain — could not but fear and worship at the same time.

I mustn’t…

It was so hungry, and if he fed it, the whispering would stop. Peck abruptly turned from the cabin and ran out on to the deck. For a moment he stood there gasping, hoping it would just cease. That subtle voice suggested untold pleasure and pain so intermingled they were indistinguishable. He had to silence it, so if food would do the trick, then food it must be. He reached into the barrel where they kept the sail’s feed and pulled out the last, rather putrid rhinoworm steak. He headed back into the Captain’s cabin and opened the chest.

It was there in the box; moving about in the box. Peck studied the secured lock and felt a strange relief.

I tried…

Then the lock clicked.

Oh bugger.

Gliding on thermals rising from banks of sun-heated coral, Windcheater observed the motorized dinghy as it hurtled for the shore, the wake of a chasing rhino-worm close behind it. Steam and explosions of water blew from around that wake as the figure crouched in the back of the dinghy tried to hit the pursuing worm with a high-intensity laser. Windcheater recognized this because only recently he had been scanning, with wonder and no little dismay, a weapon-dealer’s site.

‘They’re bounty hunters. Batian killers. I already know about them,’ said the Warden, as the sail tried to describe what he was seeing — he hadn’t yet quite mastered transferring images across from his visual cortex.