The Year BeforeOn the Night of the Apprentice Supper
It is night on the Marram Marshes; a full moon shines down on the black waters and illuminates the nighttime Things who are going about their business. Silence hangs in the air, broken occasionally by the glugs and gurgles of the Quake Ooze as the creatures that live beneath it make their way to a feast. A huge ship with a full complement of sailors has sunk into the Ooze and the Things are hungrybut they will have to fight the Quake Ooze Brownies for the leftovers. Every now and then a bubble of gas throws something from the ship up to the surface, and great planks and spars covered in a thick black tar float across the top of the Ooze.
Nighttime on the Marram Marshes is no time for a human being to be abroad, but in the distance, paddling steadily toward the ship, is a figure in a small canoe. His fair curly hair hangs limp in the damp marsh air, and his piercing green eyes stare angrily into the night as he mutters furiously to himself, replaying over and over a fierce argument he has had that very evening. But what does he care anymore? he asks himself. He is on his way to a new life, one where his talents will be recognized and not passed over in favor of an upstart nobody.
As he nears all that can be seen of the shipa single mast sticking out of the Ooze topped with a limp and ragged red flag with a line of three black stars he steers the canoe into a narrow channel that will take him to the very foot of the mast. He shivers, not with the cold, but from the feeling of fear that hangs in the air, and the thought that beneath him lies the ship's carcass, picked clean by the Quake Ooze Brownies. Now the debris is slowing him down. He propels the canoe forward until he is suddenly forced to a haltthere is something under the water blocking his path. He peers into the brackish sludge and can see nothing at first, but then ... then he sees something below him, ice-white in the moonlight. It is moving ... moving up through the water, and suddenly a skeleton, picked clean and bright by the Brownies, breaks the surface, sending a plume of black slime over the occupant of the canoe.