Sea of Two Suns

by Nicholas McAuliff

  “It’s staving the ship!” screamed Jerimiah.

  Isaac felt suddenly as if under a riptide, breathing one moment crawling upon the deck, the surgeon beside him. The next he was submerged, burning needles of seawater in his nose, in his lungs, in his eyes, an everlasting rushing sound as if mountains of the sea were suddenly atop of him. The silver pillar sank by as did the eagle’s head which rolled glittering to the depths, beak agape as if the inanimate silver bird were appalled at its fate.

  Again there was air, a frantic intake of the stuff, again under the blue. The writer thrust his arms upwards and out toward the surface again, the murky vision of a dead ship and light rays dancing on the waves of that surface, but only water came when he sought air. His vision streaked black and red and his brain felt as if about to burst, still he kicked and pushed despite that, until again there was air.

  Muffled screams filled that air and broken pieces of mast and sails and bundled riggings floated by, the latter sinking rapidly. Again the writer was under.

  As his head bobbed above the surface again, Isaac witnessed the fore and main masts turn inward and crash into each other, sounding like a hundred trees at once snapping in twain.

  And around and about the crumbling ship he saw symmetrical strings of tiny pink fish enveloping it, blush and pink radiating intermittently. They hugged the ship, pulling it down and asunder as The Roc gradually deconstructed.

  How are they moving it, Isaac thought as he tread water.

  “Francisco,” came a voice.

  The captain tread water calmly, a gash across his chest exposing white rib and sternum. “Francisco, west by South,” he said. “And move the pillar to the stern, the lot of you,” he said. He spoke clear-eyed, but he gazed at the horizon as if he were conversing with the elements.

  Jerimiah swam with a purpose, he grasped Isaac’s arm. “Come,” he said, wet grey hair completely covering his eyes. “There is much blood,” he said through struggled breaths. “We must make for the island now.”

  Lukas swam toward the converging men from outside the circle.

  “The eye!” screamed Julius.

  The captain groaned and clutched his chest with one hand, rolling sideways and bobbing in the sea. “Julius,” he whimpered. “Julius.” In the other his Kukri was grasped tight. He slashed upwards weakly toward the empty sky.

  “Captain!” yelled Jerimiah. “Come together, come together now brothers,” yelled the old man and he swam and Isaac followed him as did the dog.

  Suddenly above Lukas hovered the ropes of pink fish, now a darker pink contrasting the sea around them.

  The surgeon looked up at the living ropes and they seemed to lean toward him somehow. “Hark the Herald Angels sing,” he sang.

  “Lukas!” screamed Jerimiah.

  “Glory to the newborn king.” The fish ropes doubled in number and surrounded Lukas, more rising from the deep.

  “For the island god damnit!” screamed Jerimiah. He grasped Isaac again tightly.

  Miska whined quietly, that whine then transitioning into a ferocious bark.

  Suddenly into view came the scope of the thing hovering over the surgeon.

  “Captain!” screamed Isaac. “Allison! How father!” he yelled.

  “There,” said Jerimiah, and he clutched Isaac’s arm and pulled him in tight and pointed toward the thing.

  To Isaac’s vision the pink fish ropes became at once a writhing mass of arms extending to just under the surface, and there were two tentacles dangling behind them longer than Isaac could follow. Pointed ends like fleshy bolts of a siege Scorpion just cusping the surface.

  Suddenly appeared rising was Nukilik’s broken harpoon which hung from the thing’s gargantuan conical head, one eye closed and gashed but the other helm-sized and stark white around a black void that was its pupil. Its pink mandible alternated a sandy brown then deep pink and so on it fluctuated. Smooth it jetted closer to the surgeon, like a snake would slither through the grass. The head just above water yet still enough to cover the surgeon.

  Julius screamed and the captain’s eyes sharpened again.

  “Brother!” the captain shouted as he swam toward Julius.

  “God and sinner reconcile,” sang Lukas.

  The gargantuan squid retracted its arms and brought its head higher above the water line.

  Isaac heard a scream and then another before realizing they were his own.

  Like dogs responding to the pack the others screamed too and Miska barked still, though now it was a wispy weak bark.

  Suddenly Lukas was encased and his body brought inward to the monster’s own face.

  “Join the triumph of the sky-” Lukas was silenced as a black beak fitting of the Caucasian Eagle snapped and the surgeon’s head disappeared, his body rolling backwards atop the sea and reddening its surface.

  Julius wailed.

  Isaac felt a different sort of cold enter him and without thought he turned and swam toward the island which was close enough to show its greens and tans contrasting with the open frozen deathly water. He saw the shoreline and Jerimiah swam behind him and the dog by his side.

  Isaac looked back and Julius dipped under the water hard. The captain doubled his speed toward his brother.

  Again Julius surfaced. His lower jaw was gone and no scream came from him.

  The captain roared and suddenly he was held high and the monster wrapped him like ivy. His face and body disappeared yet even as the mass of man and monster sunk, the captain’s free arm stabbed wildly with his Kukri, its golden hilt bouncing sunlight. Again and again he thrust into the pink flesh which radiated redly before sinking into the waves.

  “Come!” screamed Jerimiah.

  At that moment Isaac did not realize he had stopped swimming and Miska barked wispily as if his voice were gone. The two man and one beast swam and did not look back again and Isaac tried to reconcile with death, expecting cutting agony to eviscerate his feet flailing behind him.

  As they did touch the sand no death came from below or behind and the two men crawled unto the beach as Miska shook furiously and rolled over the sand then shook again and barked hard and then sat and panted.

  “Francisco! Francisco!” screamed the writer. He stood on the highest dune of the island where the pillar once stood.

  “He is gone,” said Jerimiah squatting near the dog yonder and hugging his knees.

  Isaac turned and his eyes flared white. “I never saw him. Not after we capsized nor in the waters at all.”

  “Because he is gone,” said Jerimiah.

  Isaac cupped his hands to his mouth. “Francisco!”

  “Gone!” yelled Jerimiah and Miska barked as if to agree with the old Brit.

  Isaac groaned and sank and crawled to the man and the dog.

  Already Jerimiah was striking stone to stone trying in futility to make a fire above a tiny bed of wet kindling and what resembled a pile of palm husk. He removed his clothes to the nude.

  Isaac cried in the sand.

  “Get those clothes off,” said Jerimiah. “We must get a fire going now!”

  Isaac stood and stripped and finally the old man got a fire rising and made a rustic lean-to on which they hung their salt-soaked clothes. About the island the winds seemed to pick up and the trees shook, their yellowed fruits shaking too.

  It was as if even the moon trembled when the frozen dusk came.

  XXXI

  The fire had dimmed but tiny orange sparks still sailed toward the half-moon high. The two men and dog sat under the lean-to in the dark. Near was a weakly bubbling spring from which was collected steaming water let to sit and cool.

  “What was it?” said Isaac in a whisper. “How?”

  Jerimiah sighed. “What the bloody hell do you mean how?” he yelled.

  “What was it?”

  “Death! That’s what it was.”

  “Chief Panuk. Eholg.”

  “Yet we came.”

  “We will not make it off this rock.”
/>   “No.”

  Isaac rolled and buried his head in the dog’s back and wept. “I threw away my life for silver and scribe!” he said in a muffled voice.

  “As did I. I have seen enough of this world, I think.”

  “Francisco I think-”

  “He is dead you fucking Jew!”

  Isaac lifted his head from the dog. “Will you slit my throat before I wake you old drunk? I should have let your body poison itself back before we reached Baffin Island. This was your fault, you and the cursed map!”

  Jerimiah looked upon Isaac with a raw glare that the writer had not seen before.

  “And now Turner will sail into this death too,” said the writer. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps we may somehow fashion a sort of raft.”

  “A sort of raft!” screamed the old man.

  “If we can attract it-”

  That’s Baffin Bay you Swab!” Jerimiah said, pointing toward the black waters. “It be probably December by now!”

  Isaac rose and walked toward the sea but stayed far clear of the tide licking the sandy shore. The dog rose and walked by him and together they were a shoreline silhouette in the night.

  “Isaac,” shouted Jerimiah. “Forgive me for my blood runs thin as does my heart,” he yelled through tears.

  The writer sighed and after a delay he and dog tread up again and lie under the lean-to and Jerimiah’s sniffles went on in the night and finally sleep came, broken as it was.

  Isaac awoke with a scream. His eyes scanned the sky. For a moment he had only a half recollection of where he was. He felt the cool air on his face and propped himself on an elbow then the full dread of the situation came to his awareness and he moaned and lie down again.

  Miska ran atop the writer’s chest and sand fell down the writer’s neckline and Isaac scowled and threw the dog off sideways.

  Jerimiah entered again and to the sandy ground threw a pile of yellow fruits.

  The air was cold but not deathly such and the fire had died now.

  The writer and dog and Jerimiah ate the fruits, no words between them.

  The dog whipped his head back and forth as if shaking a fresh kill, licking his lips, spitting out the fruit and taking it again in his mouth. Finally he ate the stuff in clear chagrin, and the men did too.

  “We best try to kill it,” said Jerimiah. “Futile as it be. Then as you say we can fashion a sort of fucking raft and try our luck back to the Hildale’s island. Be it months before we attempt to take to the water.”

  Isaac said nothing and bit into the fruit.

  “You hear what I say?”

  “I hear you,” replied Isaac as he ran a free hand over the dog’s fur.

  “Some of The Roc washed shoreside,” said Jerimiah motioning toward a tiny pile of splintered ruins dangerously close to the water’s edge. “Sailcloth for our backs, timber for the lean-to. The warmth is peculiar as it was at the insane Hildale’s island. Spring yonder,” he said, pointing to the smoke-hole sized hot spring that billowed steam into the sky. “If only the skies were temperate as such when I sailed for the Queen. Alas, this chill will still kill a man.”

  “Never was there tale of a beast as such, Jerimiah,” replied Isaac. “I am a learned man. I know of the dragon and the Mermaid and the leviathan, such that they used to be at least. The Kraken was said to-”

  “That was no leviathan,” said Jerimiah. The old man reached into a pocket on his filthy and ripped breeches. With a large shaking hand he tossed a pouch to the deck and out spilled flint and bits of metal though the strikers were missing. “For fire if it still lights,” he whispered and coughed.

  Isaac scooped up the kits and worked.

  “I once saw a hog in the Louisiana Territory the size of a carriage,” Jerimiah went on. “Everything eats, everything grows left undisturbed. I suppose the empty frozen sea would be most fitting for a thing desiring such a destiny.”

  “Destiny?”

  Orange and smoke birthed and Isaac blew softly onto the mass of rising flame.

  “That is god for all purposes that matter at current!” exclaimed Jerimiah. “And it’s not wrathful nor loving nor does it consider anything save for its own will.”

  “Nukilik’s harpoon,” replied Isaac. “I saw it stuck lodged in the eye where the demon was blinded.”

  “As did I.” Jerimiah set himself flat and clutched his own head and rocked himself as if trying to stand from a prone position.

  “Your liquor,” Isaac said.

  “Do not say it!”

  “You may be able to with the fruit-”

  “Isaac please,” Jerimiah sobbed. He groaned and rolled and buried his head in his hands and wept in silence.

  Morning came again and as Isaac rose he saw Jerimiah shoreside. The birds who had called intermittently, especially at the dusk each night, suddenly stopped their cries.

  “Jerimiah!”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” shouted Jerimiah and he walked to the dying fire and lit a fashioned crude torch then walked back to the shoreline.

  “What?” said Isaac standing up. “Stop it you old dunce!” he snapped as the old man walked carelessly into the sea.

  Jerimiah waved the torch like a victorious flag and Miska started barking furiously.

  The old man walked into the water deeper and held the torch for a long time. He waved it again as the birds circled overhead, specters of silence in one toroidal movement enveloping all beneath them.

  Jerimiah screamed in rage and threw the torch to the sea. “If your pen ever touches parchment again,” he yelled back, “tell them that Jerimiah of York sailed north as north goes.”

  “Jerimiah!”

  A figure that shadowed The Roc even when the ship was seaworthy rose and the water dripping from it sounded like rain upon the sea.

  Without an utterance or scream Jerimiah was lifted under the sky as the thing pulled him inwards, its head barely peaking above the waves. With abrupt speed Jerimiah’s one free hand clutched Nukilik’s broken harpoon and he twisted and pushed at it, twirling it as one does a lance when looking for the whale’s heart.

  The monster radiated a blood red. Soon the old Brit was hugged by the writhing mass and his choking laughter ceased and after a space the thing opened its breadth of arms and out fell what looked like chum. The remains plopped into the ocean and at once the thing was again gone as if it never revealed itself at all.

  XXXII

  The skeleton peered from gaping holes where eyes once were. Its bones were a brittle, dull white, like limestone.

  Isaac peered back at the bones, where only the upper half of the body remained above the sand. One hand reached towards the sky. The skull lie slanted on the neck.

  “I know, brother,” said Isaac. He screamed at the sky, a scream fading to laughter. “Let me know if infinity answers you first,” he said.

  The writer bit into the yellow fruit and gagged. The succulent sweet was intolerant. For he craved to tear into steaming beef, or break apart bread and hard cheese, at least. Alas there was only sweet every day. It would take months for the fruit to starve him of his life. The water tasted of sulfur.

  He threw the chewed remnants at the skeleton and those remnants tilted the head further sideways as it hit. Near that head half buried was a plumed helmet with only frails of white sticking up as if the armor had gone bald over the years. Its sides were battered and dented.

  On that far side of the island no silver or treasure was, hence the crew’s ignorance of the three swords, their iron rusted to twigs and their hilts gone. There too was a boulder sticking upward with a red tint similar to that of the clay-colored stone that once topped the now sunken silver pillar.

  On that stone was a smooth side, as if a man had spent an eon sanding it with another stone. And upon that was drawn a straight line up and down the length of it and from it jutted a triangle outward and perfectly centered on that line.

  “What are you?” Isaac whispered as he studied the shape. Some symbol, s
ome intended design, perhaps made by the screaming skeleton when he was still a screaming man or made by one of the other mounds of wilted bones that were now beneath the writer’s feet.

  With a finger Isaac traced the line and triangle sticking to the right of it. “By God,” he whispered. And his eye caught the dome of a skull in the sand, near which sat yet another simple iron sword, red with rust, like the one the captain had procured at the Inuit shamanic island.

  From behind the dunes came Miska, tail wagging rapidly, he let out two barks.

  “You are in good spirits Miska,” said Isaac, patting the dog. “Always, good spirits. Perhaps your spirits can build us a ship.”

  Miska’s tail rose suddenly and he stiffened. Isaac followed the dog’s gaze. The dog started barking aggressively as the schooner-looking vessel came into sight. Aboard it was McDaniel, hand on the forward gunwale as if some Nordic explorer finding a new world. Closer and closer the mercenary emerged, and the dog’s barks grew deeper.

  Isaac saw no rescue. He saw the Irishman approach and he saw death as death was this island and the thing that swam around it. Yet death has moods and the current mood sailing toward the shallows was a lesser mood albeit still death.

  “I see you found the silver island,” said McDaniel as the ship raced shoreward. Isaac stood wordless with his hand on the dog’s trembling nape.

  “Aye,” yelled Isaac. “How fare Fur and Pine? Probably no better than I, now.”

  McDaniel chuckled.

  Without hesitation the Irishman appeared to run the ship aground such that the keel grated up from the low shallows and where it also struck stones violently and came to a likewise violent halt.

  McDaniel didn’t pay any heed to that and apparently in the same instant he hopped overboard and trudged through the shallows chin-high in the sea.

  For a moment the writer eyed a heavy stone, then eyed McDaniel, but in that moment of hesitation Isaac was too late as the mercenary rapidly slogged toward him, now up only to his waist in seawater.

  “In the least I can bring your head back to Fort Cognac,” McDaniel said as he drew his Bowie knife.