Somewhere northern, farther than they'd meant to go, the ship had faltered to its end. When the disease struck them, Phillip had not cried. Not when the captain had plunged Mr. Peterson’s body into the ice, or when any of the others were flung. When the captain had no one strong enough to drop him into the depths, it had been a last straw of hope in everyone’s eyes. Like the teasing of a sonata's careful end, the cries of the passengers had died down from three, to two, to one. The ten year old boy that he was, Phillip somehow found adventure in the silence. There was no illness for him. It was like a story, he thought. And he would be the hero in the end. Blond-haired, brown-eyed, of a smaller stature than his classmates, he had an opportunity to guide a ship to port, to be welcomed home to prestige. Everyone else, after all, had met their own demise.
Walking to the captain's wheel, he felt the spokes and turned them with a full-bodied tug. Again, he heard the giant crack the captain had complained of. The sails, heavy-laden with a perfect sheet of ice, gazed down at him like the enigmatic eyes of a tortoise. The child-thick rim of ice surrounding the ship seemed like nothing as much as a nuisance. He sighed. There was Mr. Peterson, just over the railing behind him, still unbroken through the chill, lying in a purple heap below. It was a dim sight in the light of his small lantern, but Phillip did not mind as he gazed down. Mrs. James, on the starboard main, was on top of Mrs. Sahm. Mr. Ambly was nearer the stern, as he would have come too close to Ms. Eloise otherwise. Phillip had looked down at them for days, each of them unchanged, as though they might wake up and stretch at any moment. Even the captain, with his jolly laugh, might spring up from his office, and might go down to help Ms. Hanbrook to stand. Mr. Peterson's wrist, though, looked like it had broken upon the ice, and would need attention if the occasion ever did arise. On whimsy, sometimes Phillip spoke to them. Gazing at Ms. Eloise in particular, he always seemed filled with topics, as she had landed in a strangely pristine position, as though in a faint. Her purple muslin dress looked impeccably placed and proper, right above the flash of her matching heels. She had gone out in style, his mother had said. His mother, in her black, ugly dress. On this night, Phillip wanted to look sophisticated, too. He pulled a match out from his breast pocket and lit it on the sole of his shoe, in the fashion of Mr. Peterson. He had found the cigarette in the unlocked cabin of Mrs. Crump lit easily. “Hello,” he said, quietly, down to Ms. Eloise as the lantern light flickered over the fog separating them. She looked like she was dreaming. The creak of the ship made him shift his feet uncomfortably. “I couldn't push Mr. Winston overboard,” he continued, “he just sort of rolled a bit. Took me a long time to get him in his room.” He dragged his cigarette. It roiled his stomach, like a small storm. “I guess we ain't going to make it,” he said, and kicked his foot against the ground. Ms. Eloise, only sleepy-looking, gave him a strange feeling, like she could wake so easily. In the lantern light, a yellow glaze lit across her pallid face, she seemed almost alive. The small part to her lips, the gentle curve of her fingers, it was as though she hadn't died vomiting blood over the side of the ship in a small puddle now resting at her purple heels. It was like her eyes– a blue color –still open and staring, could see him and knew everything about him. She knew he was a shy and self-conscious boy who hid his glasses under his pillow before he left for school so his mother wouldn't find them while he was gone. She knew he was friendless, rebellious, that he had liked her before she had died, and that he had wanted her to like him back. She knew she would never like him and he knew it, too. Phillip stepped back. He inhaled one last time on his cigarette, and then quickly breathed it out, coughing all of the phlegm from his lungs. He could hear his mother's voice, calling somewhere from the past, “Good boys don't smoke,” and he took another drag. He breathed it in until his stomach felt like a mess of maggots and he vomited onto the deck. When he stood, afterward, he threw the last of his cigarette overboard, not caring where it landed – whether it was on Ms. Eloise or Mr. Peterson. Not caring that he wasn't supposed to smoke on the ship at all, and that his mother would have boxed his ears in. Instead, he leaned over the railing and spit down on Ms. Eloise for not liking him and threw his lamp to the ice. It landed sideways, flickering a moment, illuminating the young lady's face, showing the swell of her cheeks, the bruises and scabs of disease, the bright blue lightness of her lips. Then it flickered out and Phillip walked away. He ventured down the stairs to his mother’s cabin on the lower deck where the sounds of her breathing could still be heard. He had forgotten about her. When he could see, just barely, the flicker of her lamp under the door, he stopped. Her shadow paced, and her small groans of despair rang out. The floor creaked beneath her, like the sound rocking horse makes, with the speed of a small child running. Phillip caught his foot on a corner, and he cursed as it made a thud. The shadow came to a halt. “Phillip?” his mother said, just beyond the door. “Is that you?” Her small voice was withered, like her aging eyes and mouth; the sound of a mind near breaking. There was a thud as her body slammed the door. “Go away! You sick, sick boy! You'll get us all sick! We'll all die!” Wham, wham, wham, the door rattled in its frame. Phillip backed off, his small body hunched slightly in the dark. Wham, the door shook. “GO AWAY!” When the noise died down, Philip was sitting on the floor, his scarf wrapped tightly over his mouth. He pulled his wool cap downward and his coat around himself. He scuffed his shoes so that they made a soft sound with the rats. He wiped at his nose and waited. When the noise was gone completely, he spoke again. “Mama?” She was silent. The light below the door was darker now – just a flit shone through. Philip scooted closer, on hands and knees, heart fast but steady. “Mama?” he asked. Silence. Phillip crouched down low. In the crack below the door, his mother's face drooped downward, eyes wide and dilated. Her mouth seemed to kiss the floor. Scabs and bruises marked her nearly blood red face. Phillip placed his face on the floor, too, staring. Neither one of them blinked. It was just as everyone else had been—loud until the end. Placing his fingers to his lips, he blew her a kiss, not at all insincerely, and once more stood. From his breast pocket, he pulled out a match, then, reconsidering, followed with his hands along the wall. In the room adjacent – Mr. Peterson's room – he found a lantern. Like the pop of a gun, it screamed at him as he shattered it on the floor, fire spreading on the well dried deck, as he ran quickly back up the stairs. The crackle and hiss of the flames followed him upward, though not in a rush. It would be a slow burn – perhaps not even enough to burn a single room. But it burned nonetheless. In the captain's cabin, he found a compass, a tin of food, a rope, and, with one last look backward, lowered himself to the ice. He walked past Ms. Eloise first, then to Mr. Peterson, then past the Captain. Along the immeasurable distance of this unexplained sheet of ice, he began to walk as far as he could, in any direction he desired. 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