by P. D. Kalnay
“Ow!” I pulled back from kissing her neck—Ivy bit my ear, and not in a playful way. “What was that for?”
The kissing hadn’t been one-sided.
“Not until we are wed,” Ivy said.
Her face was flushed, and like me, she was out of breath. Ivy climbed off of my lap and stood, straightening her dress and retying laces that had somehow come loose.
“Sorry,” I said.
“There is no need to apologise. I too lost my head, but I wish to do things in the proper order and at the proper time. Some matters must wait until we wed.”
It was hard to stop thinking about those matters, but then I had a brilliant idea.
“On Earth, sea captains can perform marriages…”
“We need no third party to complete our bond, but we are still too young.”
Fae marriage was on a long list of the things we hadn’t discussed. We’d both turned seventeen on the same day, months back, but with everything that was going on, I hadn’t noticed.
“How old do we have to be?”
“On our eighteenth name day, we can complete the second part of the ceremony, and three years later—we may wed.”
“Four years! We have to wait four years?”
Ivy’s face went slack.
“Am I not worth waiting for?”
A powerful bout of thunder and lightning punctuated her question.
“It’s not that,” I said.
“Then what?”
“Well, we’ve broken most of the possible ties we could have with our people, and taking away Knight’s Haven means no reconciliation will happen, right?”
“I expect they will make further attempts to kill us.”
“So, why should we care about their rules or laws? If we’re going to get married anyway—why wait?”
Ivy took a few steps forward until she was right in front of me again. Her nose was almost touching mine.
“We have completed the first part of a powerful enchantment. Our choices are to finish it, or to end it once and for all. No third choice is available to us.”
“Are you sure? This isn’t just a tradition, is it?”
Ivy peered at my face for a long minute without speaking. I don’t know what she saw, but eventually she laughed, turned, and to walked to the door.
“What’s so funny?”
Ivy’s emotional state was more tumultuous than the Maelstrom.
“Let’s eat dinner while it remains hot,” she said. With a giggle, she added, “Pervert.”
Chapter 6 – Kraken
Captain Danar had finished half his dinner by the time we arrived, and other off-duty officers were leaving the single table running down the middle of the mess. We were usually among the first to eat, so it must have been later than I’d thought. Captain Danar nodded in greeting as we sat.
“Finished enjoying the fine weather?” he asked.
“It’s wild out there,” I said.
“The journey will only get wilder before we return to waters this calm again,” he said. I wondered if he was joking, but nothing in his demeanour indicated humour. “Hopefully, your talents will make the voyage smoother.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
Ivy was digging into a heaping plate of vegetables. Life at sea had increased her appetite.
“Find the clearest path through the lightning. Even if we must move a little off course, it’ll be worth it to avoid the worst parts of the Maelstrom.” He gestured to the windows at the end of the table and to the spectacular electrical display. “If you can keep us in waters as calm as this, I’ll consider our bargain well kept.”
The storm raging around the Starburst was the nastiest I’d ever seen. It was a storm that would have instigated widespread evacuations of coastal areas on Earth and resulted in catastrophic damage. I had trouble imagining how it could get worse. A lip, running around the edge of the table, collected the serving dishes at my end as we crested a wave. A few drips of soup escaped a pot.
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “When should I start?”
“We should have a week of this, yet,” the captain said. “The two of you can continue learning for that time. After we head into the core, you’ll stay on the bridge.”
I didn’t know if I was up to the task, but it wasn’t as if I had a lot of other things to occupy my time.
***
Ivy and I continued our lessons and learned seamanship in terrible conditions. Even with a skilled crew and the sails reduced to a sliver of their normal size, death waited a single careless step away. A day where no one washed overboard was a good day in the Maelstrom.
Sometimes, the safety lines weren’t enough or ill fortune brought a wave or powerful gust of wind at the wrong moment. My wings proved a detriment, and I stopped working higher than the top deck. Ivy was amazingly nimble, but she gave me countless frights moving like a monkey, high in the swaying rigging. Enchantments on the masts and hull channelled electricity harmlessly to the sea, but seeing the blue electric arcs travel across the ship never became routine.
I developed friendliness with a few of the crew as we worked side-by-side—sharing in danger and hard work can create a bond that overcomes differences in background. Over those days, Ivy and I grew to feel like real crewmembers. Once we pushed into the thick of the storm, I spent my days or nights at the helm, and Ivy stayed below.
***
On Knight’s Haven I’d only made my wind magic work when life-or-death situations cropped up. My petrathen abilities and the crafting of things had come easy long before I’d travelled down the Tree, but accomplishing any of the more tenuous enchantments of wind and air had been hard won. In the middle of the Maelstrom, I realised why. Everything Lyrian had told me to do was wrong and worked at opposite purposes to using my natural talents. Only when I’d stopped thinking and simply done things had the winds answered my call. My trying too hard to focus on specifics was detrimental to sensing the winds and performing intuitive magic.
Stimulus to succeed surrounded me as each moment in the Maelstrom was life-or-death, where a wrong move or careless mistake might cost everyone on board their lives. My windsense had never been sharper.
***
“Take us to port,” I shouted to Captain Danar, in between crashes of thunder.
He turned the wheel, and the Starburst heeled over to the port side. I waited until the course was correct.
“That’ll do it. There’s a long stretch of clearer weather ahead.”
“How long?” Captain Danar sounded tired, but that went for all of us.
“We’ll have three days… maybe longer, of clearer sailing.”
I’d been guiding the ship for a week and had spent my waking hours being buffeted beside the captain or the pilot as we drove westward through the endless storm. It hadn’t rained continuously, but I could count the times it stopped on one hand—with fingers to spare. A few minutes passed before the lightning slowed around us and the winds became less powerful.
They were still strong enough to sweep the unwary or unsecured from the deck and carry them to a watery grave.
The Starburst had lost eight of its crew since we’d entered the Maelstrom. I’d stopped learning peoples’ names after the second mate, Thranal, washed over the side. That people crossed the Endless Sea to make money seemed crazy from where I stood.
“Go below, and rest,” Captain Danar shouted. “You’re no good if you aren’t sharp.”
“Fine, call me if you need me.”
It would be nice to get warm and eat something—anything—hot. Continuous wind and wet leached more heat from my body the longer I stayed on deck, but as cold as it was, my steel hand proved a blessing. The hand never tired of holding the rail and never grew cramped, and I kept my right hand stuffed inside my robes like a lanky, winged Napoleon. My magical, mechanical hand had saved my life early on when I lost focus. Without its powerful grip, I’d have washed overboard. Ivy remained below decks, since there was not
hing for her to do, and only a fool would have braved the storm without reason.
Inside the ship it was downright warm, and I closed the door behind me with a sigh of relief. Ivy waited in our cabin, and she’d already collected a tray of food from the galley. She always knew when I was coming back. The tray was hooked to fine chains that hung from the ceiling, and it stayed level, swinging, like our lamp, in an endless counterpoint to the rocking of the ship. I’d forgotten what it was like to stand on a surface that didn’t rock.
“You’re soaked through again,” Ivy said.
She stripped my sodden clothing and hung it from a line stretched in front of the windows. The view never changed anyway, and I’d seen enough hurricane to last a lifetime. Then Ivy towelled me dry and pushed me onto my bunk. Under other circumstances, having Ivy rub me down while I wore only a loin cloth would have stirred up all kinds of reactions, but I was too tired. Living on a few hours of crappy sleep each night and spending long days concentrating on miles of surrounding storm, while being conscious of not losing myself within that storm, was exhausting. Ivy took a bowl from the tray and fed me like a child.
I was also too tired to argue about that.
“You mustn’t push yourself, Jack.” Ivy spoke as she fed me the fishy stew. “We can’t replenish ourselves away from land, and we’ll grow weaker the further west we travel.” She touched her necklace. “I have this, so I’m more independent than I once was, but you may suddenly find yourself drained and unable to work the simplest enchantment. Please, be careful.”
“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I don’t feel any weaker, just tired, and hungry.”
I couldn’t keep my eyes open after the shivering stopped. When I finished the food, I lay on my side, falling asleep as soon as my head touched pillow.
***
It seemed like no time had passed before Ivy shook me awake again. Nothing in our cabin provided a clue as to how long I’d slept.
“Jack, wake up!”
The terror on Ivy’s face ripped me from slumber in an instant.
“What’s going on?”
“There is something below the ship!”
I shook my head trying to clear it. Ivy could be moody, but she wasn’t timid in the face of danger.
“An iceberg?”
“No, something alive, and vast. It’s so powerful that I can sense its aura through the ship and the water.”
I knew the absence of land underfoot and the seawater diminished Ivy’s senses, and that fish and other sea creatures needed to be near the surface.
“Maybe it’s just a whale.”
We’d seen plenty of big shadows swim under the ship.
“I can perceive part of its mind. The thing below us is ancient and filled with malice. It has matched our course for the last hour, and I believe it intends us harm.”
“If it’s under the water, I don’t know what we can do about–”
A tentacle whipped across the uncovered section of our windows, cutting off the rest of my statement. The lightning outside illuminated a sucker-covered limb the size of a giant redwood. That didn’t seem possible, but the same tentacle shot up again from the water and crashed against the stern of the Starburst. The windows didn’t break right away, and I had a fine view of the suckers, thanks to our lamp. Each sucker spread wider than a garbage can lid. The powerful thump of the first tentacle was followed by other thumps that shook the ship as—I assumed—more tentacles wrapped around other parts.
The monster attacking us was larger than the Starburst.
I jammed on my mechanical hand and sprang from the bunk. There was no time to waste on clothing, and I snatched up my shield and hammer at the same time that Ivy gathered her bow and quiver.
The windows shattered before we made it out of our room.
Shouts came from other parts of the ship along with new noises. Wooden sailing ships don’t produce the hum of engine that modern vessels do, but they have noises all their own. Like an old house creaking in the wind, the Starburst made regular, normal noises. The creaking, squeaking, and occasional popping sounds were something I’d become accustomed to after our weeks at sea. The groans surrounding us, followed by the booms of exploding timber, were new.
I’d grown used to the constant thunder of the Maelstrom too, but the new sounds were more… personal.
I led Ivy through the outside doors and onto the main deck. A scene of pure madness met our eyes. The monster had torn off two of the Starburst’s three masts, near their bases, and they waved high above us, held aloft by more tentacles. The sail on the main mast looked like a flag as the massive timber swung to and fro, and the strength of the giant squid, or octopus—or whatever, was terrifying.
My first thought was that we might get to our boat and escape. Protecting Ivy was my number one priority, but that didn’t look possible. At least one, and who knew how many more tentacles crossed the deck behind us, blocking the way. That tentacle was twice as thick as I was tall, creating a rubbery wall before us. I might have been able to use my wind magic to leap the obstacle, but I couldn’t take Ivy along for the ride. Besides, the Maelstrom still raged around us, indifferent to our new plight, and I barely kept my feet on the slick deck. The jumping up wouldn’t be a problem, but landing back on the ship…
Ivy stole that choice from me.
She didn’t hesitate, attacking the nearer tentacle to our front. A single crewmember shared the narrow stretch of deck with us, hacking desperately at that tentacle with an axe. The axe cut no deeper into the tentacle than it would have into seasoned hardwood, and if his strikes bothered the creature, I saw no sign of it.
The first draw of Ivy’s bow caught my attention—even in the middle of the terror and tempest surrounding me. I’d never seen her shoot the bow, although I was always aware of her blue-chrome weapon, the same way I was vaguely aware of everything that I, or Marielain Blackhammer, had enchanted with the Blood of the World Tree.
When she drew string to cheek, I became more aware of the bow. Her arrow, which had no enchantments, developed a golden glow and left a faint trail of light behind as it covered the short distance to the tentacle. Ivy had aimed to the left of the Valaneese sailor with the axe, and her arrow buried itself, disappearing into the monster’s flesh. The tentacle gave a twitch that knocked the sailor onto his back. That was the only result.
“My turn,” I shouted.
It was hammer time.
I sprinted forward and swung the spike of my hammer as hard as I could into the side of the tentacle. The Arath made a far more dramatic impact, tearing loose a pinkish chunk of flesh the size of my shield. Then the tentacle twitched and tightened, cracking the deck boards under my feet. I struck again and again, ripping out chunks and splattering myself in thick, pink blood.
Ivy’s arrows peppered the creature on either side of me.
I’d torn through less than a quarter of the limb before it loosed its hold and climbed high above the ship. Then it smashed down again a little further away. I was about to charge forward when Ivy shouted my name, so I backed up to find out what she wanted instead. That saved my life as the colossal limb tore through the space I’d occupied, obliterating the axe wielding sailor.
Up rose the tentacle again and there was no mystery where it would land next. I hooked Ivy close with my right elbow and raised the shield above us. It seemed a pathetic protection compared to the scale of our enemy. The grey tentacle drove down on top of us with the force of a whole heard of elephants. It reduced the railings on both sides of the ship to kindling, but Ivy and I were unharmed by the attack—which was pretty amazing.
A dome of golden light surrounded us, extending out from the rim of the shield to the deck. Horrible pain tore through my shoulder as I struggled to hold the shield up. It felt as if someone had dropped a sack of cement onto my shield. Something tore in my left shoulder, which wasn’t great, but, all things considered, I couldn’t complain.
The wounded part of the tentacle lay right on to
p of us. After a few seconds, the pressure disappeared as it broke in half, showering Ivy and I in thick, cool blood. Both halves slid off deck and into the sea.
High-pitched wailing stabbed at my eardrums. Ivy covered her ears as the remaining limbs became more animated and the ship shook beneath our feet. It wasn’t the time to stand around counting, but there were more than eight tentacles. We’d hurt the thing and made it angrier, but I figured the likelihood that a single tentacle constituted a mortal injury was low. On the other hand, we had no shortage of tentacles to attack. I made eye contact with Ivy and then headed aft, deciding to fight towards our boat—just in case.
I got in a few blows on the next limb before more of the monster reared up from the sea, off of the port side. Based on the tentacles I expected something like a giant squid. The thing that hung from the Starburst was way freakier than anything swimming in the Atlantic or the Pacific. Saucer-like eyes ran in a ring around a scaly, crescent moon shaped head. The monster’s head looked too small for the body and tentacles below it. The top spread apart showing row after row of sharp teeth and another scream rang out from the horrible maw.
I struck the tentacle again, freeing a chunk of rubbery flesh. Then that tentacle lifted up and out of our way, revealing Captain Danar on the other side. He held a pole with a hook on one end—a pitiful weapon—and he gawked at us in comical surprise. Ivy and I raced past the stretch of deck the tentacle had blocked.
“What is that thing?” I shouted.
“Kraken—I think!”
“What should we do?”
The captain looked at a loss. I couldn’t blame him. He’d been working to exhaustion, and the world had just gone crazier.
“We fight!” Ivy shouted, behind me. “What else can we do?”
I had no alternative to suggest, so I ran sternward and towards the last tentacle between us and the boat. I’d taken a few chunks before I realised Ivy wasn’t beside me, but instead stood dangerously close to the shattered port rail.
