I retreated into my mind, trying to keep myself calm and focused, allowing no frightening stray thoughts to make me want to scream in terror, even though I knew any sane man would be babbling by now. He wanted me to pay him back for saving my life. I could certainly do that. But I asked, "I do not understand. You saved me in a way that no mortal could have saved me. If this is not an elaborate dream, if I am not dead, I would say you can do anything. What could I possibly do for you that you cannot do yourself?"
Cold silence stretched on and on. The Cretan light danced wildly, shooting off blue sparks that sprayed upward into the darkness, then suddenly there was calm. Was the light a mirror of my savior's feelings? The voice said, "I have sworn not to meddle. It is a curse that I must obey my own word."
"To whom have you sworn this?"
"You need not know that."
"Are you a man as I am a man?"
"Do I not speak incessantly as does a man, to hear the sound of his own voice? Did I not laugh like a man?"
Yes. No. "Will you tell me where I am?"
"It is not important, my friend."
His friend? If he was such a friend why could I not move?
Suddenly I felt my fingers. I wiggled them a bit, but still I could not raise my arm and that was surely alarming. Yet I wasn't alarmed, truth be told, merely interested and intrigued, as a man of science would be at the discovery of something unexpected. Had he seen the thoughts in my brain? Now, that gave me pause.
I said slowly, "What could a ship captain possibly do for you? You have demonstrated powers I cannot begin to imagine. I was aboard my brigantine in the middle of the Mediterranean, five miles from Santorini, my last port, and a huge wave appeared out of nowhere. I heard the screams of my sailors, heard my first mate yell to God to save him as that nightmare swell crashed over us. Then a splintered board speared into my side, tearing me open, and then the crushing mountain of water, and yet—"
"And yet you are here, warm, whole."
"My men? My ship?"
"They are dead, your ship destroyed. But you are not."
I thought of Doxey, my first mate, loud and crude, loyal to me and no one else, and Elkins, the cook, always singing filthy ditties, always making lumpy porridge everyone hated. I said, "Perhaps I am dead, perhaps you are the Devil and you are toying with me, amusing yourself, making me believe I am still alive, when I am really as dead as—"
A laugh. Yes, it was a laugh, low and strangely hollow, and something else—the laugh wasn't quite a man's laugh— it seemed to me it was more the imitation of a laugh. Was I in Hell? Would evil Uncle Ulson trip into my line of vision, ready to welcome die to his home? Why was I not afraid? Perhaps death removed a human's fear.
"I am not the Devil. He is a creature that is something else entirely. Will you pay your debt to me?"
"Yes, if I am actually alive."
I felt a bolt of pain so horrendous I would have welcomed death as a savior. My side gaped open; I could feel my flesh ripped away to my bones. I felt my guts oozing out of my belly. I screamed into the blackness. The Cretan light shot high, a wild mad blue. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped. The Cretan light calmed.
"Did you feel your death blow from that falling beam?"
For a moment, I couldn't speak I was breathing so hard, bound in the memory of that ghastly agony. "Yes. I felt my own death but an instant away, so I must be dead, or—"
I heard amusement in that black voice, again somehow hollow, not quite right. "Or what?"
"If I am truly alive then you are a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, though I am not at all certain there are grand differences amongst those titles. Or you are a being from above or below that a man of reason cannot accept. I know not and you will not tell me.
"You need me because you have promised not to meddle. Meddle? That is a curiously bloodless word, a word empty of threat or passion, like a promise a maiden aunt would make, is it not?"
"Will you pay your debt to me?"
I saw no hope for it. He was through with me. "Yes, I will pay
my debt."
The Cretan light winked out. I was cast into darkness blacker than a sinner's heart. I was alone. But I had heard no retreating footfalls, no sound of any movement. There was no breathing in the still, black air but my own.
But what was my debt?
I fell asleep. I dreamed I sat at a grand table and ate a meal worthy of good Queen Bess herself, served by hands I could not see—roasted pheasant and other exotic meats, and dates and figs, and sweet flatbread I had never before eaten. Everything was delicious, and the tart ale from a golden flagon warmed my mouth and coursed through me like healing mother's milk. I was sated, I was content.