Distopia (Land of Dis)

by Robert Kroese

  The Erdis Evena was the largest of Bulgar’s three ships, a round-bilged keel ship with three masts. It was about sixty feet long and fifteen feet wide, and had a crew of nineteen plus Wyngalf. Wyngalf gathered that there were supposed to be twenty men, but the first mate, a man named Fendrelli, had apparently come into some money unexpectedly the day before, gotten extremely drunk, and was in no shape to join the expedition. Another man was promoted in Fendrelli’s place, and the ship embarked as scheduled.

  Bulgar the fishmonger, having organized and paid for the voyage, had evidently come to the conclusion that his own destiny lay elsewhere. He and his wife saw Wyngalf off. Evena, despite her excitement about Wyngalf’s “adventure,” was nowhere to be found. It saddened Wyngalf a bit not to see the girl waving from the docks with her parents, but he assumed she had been overwhelmed by emotion at the thought of his departure.

  Wyngalf learned that the Erdis Evena was the same ship that had nearly capsized in the storm a week earlier. He knew little about the mechanics of fishing, but to the extent he thought about it, he had assumed that fishing ships stayed relatively close to shore, filling their nets and returning at the end of the day. This was mostly true, but enterprising businessmen like Bulgar had evidently learned that they could acquire larger volumes of fish more efficiently by sending larger ships out farther, and leaving them at sea for days or weeks at a time. These ships used long nets that hang like curtains across the travel paths of the herring schools. The nets would be taken aboard at night and the crew would process and salt the fish for barreling.

  There was no reason in theory, Wyngalf supposed, that such a ship couldn’t successfully navigate the Sea of Dis, although he’d never heard of it being done. The crew seemed confident enough in their chances, but Wyngalf wasn’t sure how much of that was due to their misplaced faith in him as the prophet of the gods who had saved them from drowning a week earlier. Or was it misplaced? He supposed that the One True God (in Nine Persons) must have saved them, in some sense. And that same God (or one of His Manifestations) had brought Wyngalf to Skuldred at just the right time to convince Bulgar of that fact. But was this voyage part of some divine plan to bring the gospel of Nonitarianism to Dis, or was it simply Wyngalf’s punishment for failing to repudiate the fishmonger?

  By the third day at sea, his nausea had diminished to a tolerable level, but he found in its place a growing sense of unease about his role in this expedition. The initial enthusiasm of the crew about undertaking a divinely ordained mission had begun to fade, and increasingly they were looking to him for reassurance. At first Wyngalf ascribed their uncertainty to the expected length of the voyage, but it became clear from conversation with crew members that several of them originally hailed from fishing villages to the north, where voyages of two or three weeks were not at all uncommon. As far as he could tell, the voyage to Dis was expected to take just over a week, depending on the weather. Clearly the crew possessed some deep shared foreboding about the journey that arose from some factor of which Wyngalf was unaware. Wyngalf knew almost nothing of seafaring and figured that whatever was spooking the crew was beyond his control, so he avoided pursuing the matter as long as possible. He was having enough trouble as it was mustering the enthusiasm to deliver the occasional pep talk about the crew’s divinely ordained destiny.

  The captain of the Erdis Evena was a man named Savikkar. Savikkar seemed competent and reasonably well-respected by the crew, although he had an air for the dramatic; the men tended to roll their eyes and mutter under their breath when he started in on one of his stories of seafaring derring-do in decades past. He was the man who had proclaimed that he would undertake a voyage across the Sea of Dis if the crew were spared. That meant he was largely responsible for Wyngalf’s current circumstances, so Wyngalf, not certain whether to regard him as the agent of his glorious destiny or an instrument of divine vengeance, found himself with conflicting feelings toward the man.

  The quarters below deck were adequate, if not particularly comfortable or spacious; the crew slept in hammocks that hung three high in a large room that took up about half the space below deck. The other half was taken up by a hold that was ordinarily filled with the crew’s rations, bags of salt, and barrels for storing the salted fish for transport back to the mainland. Currently, though, the proportion was tilted heavily toward rations and other supplies, as fishing was not the primary purpose of this voyage. Wyngalf was a little unclear what the purpose actually was, other than traveling across the sea to the land of Dis. He knew very little about this semi-legendary land across the sea, and no one had said anything about what they expected Wyngalf to do when they got there. He supposed they expected him to disembark at whatever port they found and immediately begin making converts to his religion. The fact that he’d been aboard a ship with twenty men for three days without making a single convert didn’t seem to trouble them; like Bulgar the fish merchant, the men evidently believed they could somehow further the divine plan of Wyngalf’s god without troubling themselves with the details of his faith. No one had yet asked him a single question about Noninitarianism; the prevailing view among the crew seemed to be that risking their lives on a journey across the Sea of Dis was devotion enough, and maybe they were right.

  Like all sailors, the crew were a superstitious lot; they were constantly uttering strange oaths and engaging in bizarre and arbitrary rituals like sprinkling salt on their shoes or rapping on their foreheads with their knuckles. Probably they simply didn’t have room in their crowded pantheon of gods, spirits and sea sprites for another deity—even if that deity was the one who was ostensibly in control of their destiny. They were also, like most sailors, an uncouth and smelly group, and Wyngalf was grateful the weather had so far been mild, allowing him to spend nearly all of his time above decks. He’d been issued raingear constructed of oil-impregnated canvass, but thus far hadn’t needed to use it. His nausea hadn’t receded to the point where reading was possible, so his copy of the Six and a Half Revelations of Saint Roscow and the Noninitarian Prayer Book remained wrapped in wax paper in a satchel in his hammock, and he occupied his time by praying to Illias the Interceder and contemplating the meaning of the twists of fate that had brought him to this point. He tried very hard not to think about the challenges that faced him in the Land of Dis and the growing sense of dread that seemed to grip the crew, but finally broached the subject during a rare pause in one of Captain Savikkar’s unlikely and obscene anecdotes involving mermaids and death rays.[1] Other crew members tended to flee from Savikkar when he told these stories, so it was just Wyngalf and the captain leaning against the railing during this pause in which Wyngalf’s curiosity finally got the better of his fears.

  “I’ve noticed,” Wyngalf said, “that the men seem to be developing some trepidation regarding our voyage.”

  Savikaar shrugged and puffed a few times on his pipe, looking out over the open sea. “Just nerves,” he said. Wyngalf saw that he was staring at dark clouds on the horizon. The wind had begun to pick up, and it seemed to be coming from the direction of the clouds.

  “But what are they nervous about?” asked Wyngalf. “Dis is a strange land, to be sure, but what horrors could it possibly hold that cause such unease while we are still at least a week from landfall? They seemed quite optimistic at first, but the closer we get to Dis, the more troubled they become.”

  Savikkar shook his head. “Oh, it’s not Dis they’re worried about,” he said. “It’s what they fear we’ll encounter before we get there.”

  “What?” Wyngalf asked, watching the sky darken to the east. “Another storm?”

  “The men have been through many storms,” said Savikkar.

  “What then? Why does no one ever cross the Sea of Dis?”

  “Men have crossed it.”

  “Far to the north,” said Wyngalf. “I have passed through many seaports on my way down the coast, and I have never heard of a ship departing for—or returning from—the land of Dis. Why? Is there some h
azard in the middle of the sea? Rocks? Whirlpools? Sea monsters?”

  Savikkar said nothing, taking a long draw on his pipe.

  “Sea monsters?” Wyngalf asked again. “They can’t seriously believe—”

  “No good to talk about it,” said Savikkar curtly.

  “But surely it’s your responsibility as captain to allay the crew’s unfounded fears about mythical creatures!” cried Wyngalf.

  Savikkar again said nothing.

  “They are mythical, right?”

  “We don’t speak of such things,” said Savikkar. “Bad luck.”

  Wyngalf stared in disbelief. “What’s bad luck is having your crew paralyzed with fear of something that doesn’t exist. If you simply tell them there are no sea monst—”

  “Hafgufa,” interjected Savikkar.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We call it the ‘Hafgufa.’ It means ‘the thing in the sea which should not be spoken of.’”

  “Okay,” said Wyngalf. “Simply tell the crew that there is no such thing as a Hafgu—”

  “Shh!” hissed the captain. “Don’t say it aloud. Bad luck.”

  Wyngalf threw up his hands. “Well, what do I call it then?”

  “You don’t!” snapped Savikkar. “That’s the whole point. It’s bad luck. Drop it.”

  “This is ridiculous. How did you even find out about the… about the thing we can’t talk about, if nobody can talk about it? Have you seen one?”

  Savikkar said nothing.

  “Of course not,” said Wyngalf. “I’d wager no one in the crew has seen one of these things. But they whisper about them secretly, and so the rumor grows. And your unwillingness to talk about the matter openly makes it impossible to dispel the myth. In fact, by creating a mystique around the thing, you give the myth more power. So this is why no one ever goes to Dis. Because of some unfounded, superstitious fear of a monster that doesn’t exist!” Wyngalf found himself nodding excitedly. He finally saw the truth: the barrier to trade between the Jagged Coast and Dis was an illusion—a blind, stupid fear of a mythical creature. “Yes, yes!” he exclaimed. “This is why we were chosen to go on this voyage. Don’t you see? The true purpose of this mission is to show that faith can overcome fear! We’re going to demonstrate to the world that there is nothing to fear in the Sea of Dis, and thereby reestablish communications between the Jagged Coast and Dis!” And I shall be renowned in both lands, he thought, as Saint Wyngalf the Fearless! Or perhaps Saint Wyngalf the Navigator. The Reconciler? He’d let the powers-that-be at the Stronghold work out the details, but there could be no doubt that his canonization was assured.

  Savikkar chomped on his pipe, shaking his head, but Wyngalf couldn’t concern himself with what this superstitious old salt thought of him. He turned toward the crew members on the deck, who were engaged in various tasks with ropes and chains that he didn’t understand. “Men of the Erdis Evena!” he exclaimed. The men stopped what they were doing and stared expectantly at him. “I have been granted a vision of our purpose!”

  Men muttered to each other and shrugged.

  “It’s come to my attention,” Wyngalf went on, “that some of you are concerned that we may encounter a certain sea monster known as the Hafgufa.”

  Several of the men gasped in horror at the sound of the name.

  “You may rest easy,” announced Wyngalf, holding up his hands as if giving a benediction. “There is no reason to fear such a creature.”

  The men murmured to each other. One of them spoke up: “Are you saying there is no… I mean, that the you-know-what doesn’t exist?” His voice was hopeful, as if he had long suspected this himself, but hadn’t dared express his doubts openly. Wyngalf saw expressions mirroring his on the faces of several other men. All they needed to be delivered from their irrational fear was some confident reassurance.

  “Not exactly!” cried Wyngalf, and he saw disappointment come over the men’s faces like a shadow. He went on hurriedly, “That is, there could be a Hafgufa, but I’ve seen no convincing evidence for it. Now, given that lack of evidence, coupled with the principle of Horkuden’s Knife, which is a rhetorical device for eliminating propositions that are…”

  The men’s eyes were glazing over. “Is there a Hafgufa or not?” one of them yelled.

  “What I’m saying,” Wyngalf explained, “is that I believe that if there is a Hafgufa, it’s largely metaphorical. And therefore our struggle against it is metaphorical as well. What we are fighting against is not a sea monster that is somehow ‘out there,’ but rather a sea monster that exists in our own souls. There is, perhaps, a little Hafgufa in each of us.”

  Pandemonium is the only word for what happened next on the Erdis Evena. One man, who had been suffering sea sickness all morning, tore off his clothes and threw himself onto the deck, his body jerking in spasms, screaming that a metaphorical Hafgufa had taken up residence in his belly. Wyngalf was relieved to see several other men subdue him, until one of them produced a knife, clearly intending to cut the monster out of him. The men pinning the victim cheered on the attacker, one of them proclaiming that he wielded Horkuden’s Knife, the only blade capable of destroying the vile parasite. Other men joined the fray, some of them trying to get in on the action, others apparently trying to stay the knife. The motives of even this latter contingent were not entirely reasonable or altruistic, though: several of them were screaming something to the effect that it was too dangerous to try to cut the monster out, and that the man should be thrown overboard. Two other men had also stripped and thrown themselves to the deck, apparently convinced that they too were inflicted with metaphorical Hafgufas. Others stood by in stunned silence or screamed in terror.

  “Stop!” cried Wyngalf. “There is no reason to fear! The Hafgufa can’t get you unless you let it!”

  But it was no use. He didn’t know how to speak to these men in a way that they could understand. They didn’t understand nuance, logic or figures of speech. It was like trying to preach to children. Very large, violent, sweaty children. With knives.

  “Let that man go, you worthless dogs!” roared Captain Savikkar, shoving Wyngalf out of the way. He brought his right fist down on the nape of the neck of the man with the knife, stunning him, and gripped the collar of another, jerking him backwards so that he stumbled and fell flat on his back. Another man got a knee in his ribs, and a fourth received a slug across the jaw. “You!” Savikkar growled, wagging his finger at the naked man in the center of the fracas, “get your clothes on! The rest of you, douse the sails and batten the hatches!”

  The spell of terror was broken almost instantly as the men stopped and stared at the darkening eastern sky. The storm was nearly upon them.

  “Move, you scurvy bastards!” howled Savikkar. Wyngalf noticed that miraculously the captain’s pipe was still clutched in his teeth. “And there’ll be no more talk of the you-know-what!”

  The men set to their respective tasks without another word. “Remarkable!” exclaimed Wyngalf, observing the unfolding scene in awe. “You must teach me the secret of addressing groups of uneducated, superstitious and fearful men such as these. Why, if I could—”

  “Not another word, preacher,” Savikkar growled, “unless you want to swim the rest of the way to Dis. Now get below decks where you can’t cause any more trouble.”

  Wyngalf started to object, but thought better of it. Chagrined, he retreated to his hammock, where he spent the next half hour listening to the wind howl and the ship creak and moan. In between waves crashing against the hull, he heard the frantic yells of the men doing whatever it was they did in a storm. Wyngalf was the only one below decks, and he felt worse than useless. He’d not only managed to feed the superstitions of the men, causing them to panic, but he’d distracted them from the onslaught of the storm. If they still harbored any illusions that Wyngalf’s presence granted them some kind of divine protection, this storm was going to disabuse them. If they survived.

  The pounding of the rain and howling of the win
d continued to get louder and Wyngalf’s hammock swung crazily as the ship pitched and rolled at angles he’d have wagered were impossible. The ship groaned as if it were about to be torn apart at the seams. He could no longer hear the shouts of the men, whether because the storm was drowning them out or because they’d all been tossed overboard he didn’t know. The only thing that broke through the constant roar of wind and waves was the occasional deafening clap of thunder. No light could get to him below decks, though. He clamped his eyes shut in the darkness and did his best to pray to Illias the Interceder for deliverance.

  The roar of the wind suddenly got even louder, and Wyngalf opened his eyes to see that someone had opened the hatch. A figure stood at the doorway, lit from behind by dim light filtering down from above.

  “Preacher!” hollered a voice. “You’re needed above deck!” Barely controlled terror gripped the man’s voice.

  Wyngalf opened his mouth to request an explanation, but the hatch slammed shut. The man was gone. “What in the name of Abasmos…?” Wyngalf murmured to himself. He couldn’t imagine what they might want him above deck for, unless they intended to throw him overboard to placate the angry sea. He considered hiding, but if they really wanted him above decks, that would be a temporary solution at best. If they had to drag him out, it would only make them angrier—although it was hard to imagine what they might do to him that would be worse than throwing him overboard. He sighed. Better to face his fate with a modicum of courage.

  He managed to get out of his hammock and crawled to the hatch, fighting the movement of the ship. Then he clambered up the ladder to the deck. As he peeked his head out, the rain slapped him in the face and he realized he’d forgotten to don his severe weather poncho. But before he could return below decks, a rough hand grabbed him by the collar and practically dragged him onto the deck. Unable to keep his feet on the pitching ship, he fell to his hands and knees. Wind pelted him with rain, drenching his clothing. He turned to see who had “helped” him onto the deck. It was Captain Savikkar.