Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space)

by Catherine Lundoff

  Cinrak straightened her vest and bow tie. Despite the big fright, she was proud of Benj. She didn’t know well how ocean or star magic worked, but perhaps there was a bit of the chinchilla in the kraken, or the other way around. Honesty, a pirate’s mainstay, was the best solution.

  “As I be responsible for breakin’ apart Queen Orvillia’s crown to set free the Star of a Thousand Years, I bear responsibility for replacin’ the crown jewel with something equally, if not more, magnificent. The fabled Heart of the Ocean be the perfect solution. A prize worthy of Cinrak the Dapper and the Queen’s legend. But if Agnes is the Heart’s guardian, I be more’n willing to negotiate custody of the jewel.”

  A few more of the crew had crept above deck, rodent faces vacillating between dread and wonder.

  Large tentacles wiggled, setting the startled ocean a-slosh. Benj chewed his whiskers, absent-mindedly stroking the tentacle. “Agnes says there may be the possibility of a deal.”

  Cinrak beamed.

  “There’s a slight problem. The riddle of the Edge of the World. It’s not much of a riddle at all.”

  The crew held their breath.

  “It is, in fact, a gigantic whirlpool.”

  The crew groaned.

  Fear swirled in Cinrak’s broad chest, but she reminded herself a good captain only showed enough fear to display how they’d overcome it.

  “As I suspected.” Cinrak took a deep breath. “Ay, if Agnes be so kind as to cease cuddlin’ the ship, we may get underway to assess the problem.”

  The tentacles shivered in apology and released the ship. The riggings sighed, the Paper Moon peeked out from behind a cloud, and the North Wind whistled softly in relief.

  “Agnes says you will have never seen a drain such as this one. Those of her ilk who weren’t killed by it have simply...left. She is the last.” Both kraken and chinchilla gestured towards the excitable stars popping into existence. “There is an additional problem. The drain is encapsulated by The Bruise.”

  The crew and ship groaned louder.

  “Ahh, the riddle wrapped in an enigma! So that be what that great storm hides. Ay, Captain Cinrak the Dapper never been one to swim away from a challenge. Nor is she one to leave a friend in distress. Whether they be friend on the ocean or in the ocean, we can always come to an amicable agreement.”

  Life fell into a strange routine as the great kraken joined the retinue. Thrill-fear lifted Cinrak’s fur every time she caught a glimpse of the fabled beast leading them on. Agnes knew nothing of borders—the ocean was Everything and Everywhere for her. She turned them due south towards where even the heartiest of maties feared to sail.

  Though the North Wind quivered at the peril it pushed them towards, the beneficial weather took them beyond Here Be Dragons. Cinrak would not allow her crew to be lulled into a false sense of complacency. They did storm drills every day.

  Eventually, Agnes won over the timid crew members. By day, she would intimidate balls of fish towards the ship, so they never went hungry. At night, she provided shadow puppetry with the assistance of the exuberant Moth Moon. Benj watched on, proud as a parent, rapping out a beat on a drum. He didn’t seem in thrall to the kraken. In fact, beneath the salt-steel that was becoming his pirate way, there remained a gentleness Cinrak couldn’t help but admire.

  Try as she might with all the languages of the ocean and sky, Cinrak couldn’t taste the magic of this ocean creature. When Benj was otherwise occupied, Agnes demonstrated to Cinrak her easy power, chasing sea things with big teeth. Once, Cinrak watched fascinated and horrified as Agnes casually cronched a shark, tearing them apart with terrifying efficiency and feeding the struggling beast into the concentric carnassial circles.

  The Bruise.

  Cinrak smelled the broken, heavy air through darkness even before the oily storm wall slid its silky fingers over the horizon. The rest of the crew woke to the odious clouds to go with their hardtack and tea.

  Even Agnes hesitated, swimming agitated circles around the ship. The crew tried to ignore it; she had become something of a mascot and even the timidest crew member had respect for her oceanly talents.

  Cinrak ordered the anchor dropped and started her calculations all over again. The storm was bigger than rumour had suggested. The roar of the wind and drain was audible even at a safe distance and above the determined heave-ho songs of the crew.

  “What says Agnes?”

  Cinrak found Benj in his usual spot by the figurehead. He’d knotted a green scarf to represent his growing rope skills and respect for his captain’s Dapperly Arts. Along with his new muscles and groomed fur, she couldn’t help but be proud of her protégé.

  Benj’s smile gave no assurance. “Brave is scribed in her blood, ser, but I can tell she is a little...concerned. She says the whirlpool has grown since she was here last.”

  Cinrak repressed a sigh. She had hoped out of all involved, Agnes would have some idea of how to penetrate the boiling purple and blue clouds stabbed with eager lightning. It was not like Cinrak the Dapper to back out of a challenge, but she had the whole crew to think about. Best take a hit to her reputation than a hit to the Impolite Fortune.

  A cough.

  “Sorry to barge in, ser, but you’ll be wanting to see this,” Riddle said, unpatched eye hot with hope.

  The crew parted to let the captain and cabin boy through. The sun beamed a spotlight on Colombia, a mer, sitting precariously on the starboard railing combing out his waist length auburn beard and hair.

  “Captain Cinrak!” The mer air-kissed Cinrak’s cheeks. “So lovely to see you!”

  “Cut the starfish poop,” Cinrak grinned. “Yer a long way from home.”

  “Our scouts informed us you’d made it this far and that you had a friend in tow.” Colombia winked at Agnes who blinked back, her eyelid sending a curious dolphin scurrying.

  “You knew a kraken still swims.” Cinrak folded her arms.

  Colombia took no offence. “Of course. We’re all friends in the waters. Honestly, we didn’t think dear—” Colombia pronounced Agnes’ full name with ease, “was associated with any of this.” He gestured towards the boiling storm. Agnes waved back.

  “So why she be attachin’ herself to the Impolite Fortune’s fortune?” Cinrak asked. “What be so different about our attempt to sail over the Edge of the World and retrieve the Heart of the Ocean compared to all other ships that failed?”

  Colombia leaned forward and looked up through his long-lowered lashes. “Magic.”

  Cinrak threw up her forepaws. “Deepest Depths!”

  “It’s true.” Colombia combed out a hair knot. “She can taste it on the ship.”

  In her head, Cinrak catalogued the small charms she kept in her cabin and the abilities of her crew. Some of them, like her, had small skills in weather work, but nothing that could soothe such a storm and certainly nothing on a wizard’s level. That meant...

  “Benj?”

  “Me?” The cabin boy trembled.

  “So it’s you who can talk to her.” Colombia’s sharp grin turned on Benj. “Congratulations. One in a century.”

  “M... Me?”

  Colombia placed a meaty, hairy hand on Benj’s shoulder. “You’re made of stars, m’boy. Tell me what you can taste on the air.”

  The crew stepped back as Benj closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Emptiness,” Benj intoned, his voice taking on a deeper timbre. With the health benefits of Night Rose tea, Cinrak knew he’d come through puberty fine. “A black hole that goes deep into the...no, not the ocean or the earth. Into a void, a nothing. There’s water there, but it’s not water.” His furry forehead screwed up at the contradiction. “I can feel... far away, a heart beating.”

  Cinrak’s fists and jaw ached. The jewel, pulsing under some beautiful light! So close! But so far!

  “Good, good,” Colombia soothed, iridescent fin tips twitching with delight. “What else? Spread your senses wider. Soar up, like the star you are.”

&
nbsp; “The water we can see, is... not as smooth as we’re lead to believe. It...runs rapidly across ragged rocks. Huh.” Benj opened his eyes. “So that’s what those old maps in the library meant.”

  “Explain,” Riddle asked.

  Thinking of her secret maps, Cinrak nodded as Benj spoke.

  “Millenia ago, there used to be a series of merholm scattered far out into ocean,” Colombia explained, serious as a swordfish. “But the ocean never sleeps. Volcanos, glaciers, heat, cold. Those islands are now underwater. What we know as coastline today has been changing and will keep changing, so slow you can’t see it. But sometimes, like the Edge and Bruise here, very fast.”

  “For ev’ry magical action, there be a natural reaction,” Cinrak said.

  “Correct,” Colombia said. “Just like you can’t take a star from the sky and put it into the queen’s crown without the stars being upset.”

  Cinrak grimaced.

  “Oh, my dear heart!” Benj gasped, leaning far out over the railing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Agnes dipped low in the water, the tip of her remorseful eye peeking out.

  “Tell ye what?” Cinrak asked, heart already aching.

  “Magic made this mess! Agnes worked with her beloved, Xolotli, to protect the Heart,” Benj said. “But even the best and longest of loves can go through rocky times, and they had a, uh, disagreement about how best to protect the great Heart from pirates. In a fit of anger, Xolotli banished Agnes from their ocean home. Xolotli’s agitation was so great the Edge formed above them, preventing Agnes from returning once her temper had cooled.”

  The crew either snuffled or attempted to look staunch. It was a love story for the ages.

  Colombia chimed in. “None of the other kraken-kind could help Agnes because the Edge was too strong. They all eventually departed the ocean for the stars, perhaps attempting to find a solution.”

  “She’s been swimming the oceans for hundreds of years, alone?” Riddle wailed into her kerchief. “That’s terrible! Cap’n, we have to do something!”

  Cinrak chewed her whiskers. “Even with me best calculations one ship couldna possibly hope to defeat the storm, let alone survive the drop into the drain.”

  “The rocks!” Benj gasped, his eyes widening. He turned to Colombia. “You said the old merholm were submerged, but some of them would have had hills and mountains that would be near the surface now, yes?”

  “We’ve swum around a few and collected artifacts and samples,” Colombia confirmed. “But the closer to the drain, the more treacherous it becomes. Even a group of strong mer linked together can’t battle such a current.”

  Benj whirled to his captain. “You still have your famous merhair rope that helped you win the race of the stars, Cap’n?”

  “Of course.” She brought it out as her best boast on rare occasions. “But it be only a ten span at best.”

  “But it is a link to the stars.”

  Colombia nodded. “We come from the same material as kraken and stars.”

  “Air, ocean, made of the same stuff, just different states.” Benj’s eyes shone like the stars. “With Agnes’ strength, the merhair rope, the crew’s skill, and a series of underwater tethers, we might be able to make our way into the drain. Together.”

  “I’m going to sing up a few extra nearby scouts,” Colombia said as he plopped down into the water. Agnes patted him as gently as she could on the head. “A little extra muscle wouldn’t go amiss. If that is all right by you, Cap’n.”

  All eyes turned to Cinrak. She shrugged and grinned. “Do’na look at me. Seems Benj and Agnes have this well in hand.”

  Benj bounced in place and clapped his forepaws. “Let’s get Agnes back together with her beloved!”

  The crew cheered. Agnes waved a half-dozen tentacles.

  Cinrak rubbed her forepaws in anticipation. The most precious jewel in the world was so close, she could almost taste its glittering candy facets and the eternal gratitude of her queen.

  Cinrak didn’t know where the wind’s scream ended and the crew’s cries and ship’s tortured creaks began.

  The first tetherings and tentative excursion into the outer rim of the storm had gone well. Both anchors were linked to merhair, which was linked to Agnes, who held fast to underwater rocky pillars and swung them further inwards. But now the crew and mer scouts were tiring. There wasn’t any rain, but the crashing waves kept everyone soaked.

  Strapped to the figurehead, Benj yelled instructions as Agnes inched along the submerged rocks. Having an enormous eye upon the precariously close ocean floor made things a little easier, though every channel was a close call.

  A jerk, a groan of anchors, and a sudden flash-clamber of iridescent scales as the merfolk tumbled on board.

  “What gives!” yelled Cinrak through her boomer from her place in the crow’s nest.

  “Current is too much!” Colombia yelled back. “It’s all Agnes from here on in!”

  “She be all right?” Cinrak called to Benj.

  Benj lifted his own boomer. “She’s hating it! And loving it! This is the furthest she’s ever made it into the drain!”

  “Tell her she can stop at any point. Her safety comes first!”

  Benj saluted understanding.

  The Impolite Fortune shuddered forward through another narrow channel.

  A hundred nights fell all at once over the ship, and thunder pressed its invisible hands against Cinrak’s ears. But this thunder kept going and going and going. The dark sound laughing them into the storm’s maw was no beast; here was the gigantic drain, an intertwining of magic and nature writ large.

  The world seemed to simply end. The clockwise-rushing water fell into a darkness so complete the night sky would die from envy. It swallowed everything: sucking the soul out of what remained of light, flinging the shrieks of the crew down and stomping on them, tearing breath from chest leaving only iron-salt fear on the back of the throat.

  This was it. The Edge of the World, leading to the void. A nothing. A thoroughfare to death.

  But there. A flicker. A tiny sliver of silver promise. A throb. Another. A flutter of light to hold hope close.

  Way down below. The Heart of the Ocean. Beating.

  The crew lashed the mers to themselves and tied all to the inner cargo rings. Cinrak had never known rodents and mer to work in such harmony before. It was a beautiful sight amongst chaos.

  “That’s it,” Benj boomed. “That’s as far as Agnes can go! It’s all down from here!”

  “Deepest Depths, deliver us safely to your soft shores,” Cinrak invoked through gritted teeth.

  The timbers of the Impolite Fortune creaked such a protest, tears sprang to Cinrak’s eyes. Was this it for her dearest ship? Was the best beavercraft in the business falling apart?

  And what of poor Agnes? Was she tearing apart down there too?

  Aaaaaghhhrooooohhhhhhhh.

  A great groan rose, diamond hard pressure against Cinrak’s senses.

  The Depths...were answering her plea?

  Aaaaarrrrrroooooooohnnnnggggh.

  No, there was Agnes, her great eye gleaming as bright as a constellation of starfish on summer solstice.

  “Strap yourself down!” Benj shouted. “She’s gonna let go the tether!”

  Aaooooooggggahhhh.

  “What?!”

  “We’re going in!”

  Cinrak’s paws burned as she slid down the guide rope. She whisked the cabin boy the last few meters and tied them both to the scurry of crew.

  Oooooooooaaaarrrhh.

  “What is that?!” Cinrak yelled.

  “The call of the ocean!” Colombia cried, ecstatic.

  “Deepest Depths, that’s something living!”

  “The ocean lives!”

  “It’s Agnes’ beloved!” Benj yelled.

  “They’d be too far down...”

  “Here we go!”

  The world tilted. The boat and crew screamed in unison.

  Falling
forever, into a silence so profound it could write its own epic.

  Tiny glimmers of light rose from the depths of the void, like sunrise on the edge of whiskers.

  A coruscation of green-purple-blue from cephalopod skin, tentacles curving over every possible edge of the ship. Agnes cuddled the Impolite Fortune as, impossibly, the kraken and ship floated in mid-air.

  Cinrak blinked at the dancing sparkles. They reminded her of racing stars running backwards. The air tasted of petrichor and an indefinable sweet tang, like oranges, sword blades, and kisses all mushed into one.

  “Whu...?” she blundered.

  Some of the crew blubbered. A few silently wept. Most gazed in awe.

  Ooooooohhhhaaarrrhhhoooo crooned the moan. It came from all around now.

  The sparkles moved upwards faster and it took Cinrak a moment to realize the stars weren’t moving, the ship was. Going down down down. What sort of cushion would Agnes make for the biggest frigate of the IRATE fleet? Probably a very squishy one. They’d never get the smell of squid out of the drapes.

  She was dead, Cinrak decided. Definitely dead. And Locqualchi would have her guts for garters.

  A gentle bump put paid to Cinrak’s cleaning nightmare. The Impolite Fortune protested audibly as Agnes withdrew her embrace, but the kraken took not one splinter with her. The ship settled into its new medium with a sigh of contentment.

  When Cinrak dared a look, the light from the uncountable stars showed a medium rippling like water, giving way like cool molten glass under her touch, but not wet. The ocean-that-was-not-ocean Benj had burbled about.

  “Deepest Depths,” Cinrak breathed.

  “Indeed,” Colombia sighed, hands clasped in front of his hairy breast, smile as big as a sunfish. “That is where we are.”

  Ooooooohhhhhaahhhhh affirmed the occupant of the endless sky-under-ocean.

  A beast even more enormous than Agnes swum above, around, below in the not-water. Rainbows shimmered across see-through skin, which revealed pulsating, squirming organs in gorgeous jewel tones. Spine and skull curved like the finest of marble carvings, and it was strange to see the beauty in their movement as whalebone was usually only viewed in the repose of death. .