Chapter Forty-Four Finlyr
chapter forty-four
finlyr
Ris and I take the helm, steering portside to face the oncoming vessel.
Now that it’s closer I can see their ship is smaller than ours, with fewer sails and the length of three trees stump to stem, but it is crewed by more living than dead.
They will be nimbler, more reactive. We have heft, that’s all.
We can’t risk another ship getting to the Maelstrom before us.
They’re right ahead of us, moving into the ideal position to take full advantage of the wind, trying to force us into their wake.
Isagani stands at the ballista, sight-testing the range of the arrow. I fear they might get catapulted into the sea from the weight of the recoil.
‘We don’t have many arrows,’ I counsel. ‘So we fire a warning shot first.’
‘And if that doesn’t work?’
‘It would be a great time for Sinigang to show us some more of those particular skills Narra promised.’
Sinigang hisses. ‘You’ll thank me when the time comes.’
‘Aim for the crew. Loose the arrow!’
Isagani strains, trying to pull back the string. They don’t have the strength to give it the tension needed. The arrow lands halfway between our deck and the other ship.
Ris curses, jumping to the ballista, and I barely have time to steady the helm alone. She stands behind Isagani, letting them aim again.
Isagani lines it up carefully, tongue poking out of the corner of their mouth. Ris slowly pulls back the string, sitting into the tension with a smooth and mighty squat.
‘Now!’ Isagani yells, and she lets go.
The arrow finds its mark. It does less damage than I hoped, but it’s certainly got the other crew’s attention.
‘Take cover!’ I command as their returning arrow finds its mark. I can hear the sloshing in the brig. I can only hope they are taking on water faster than we are.
‘Ris, get down to the bilge pump!’
‘The what?’
‘Below the keel. Pump the water out, or we’ll sink!’
Paranish, they can somewhat make their way around the ship but only just. Ris nods, hurrying down to rid us of some water.
I keep us steady as Isagani climbs back up the rigging. Sinigang and Biba stay on deck, Biba holding the spyglass and both of them relaying what they see happening on the other ship.
‘Going again,’ Biba yells.
Saltswept gives a low painful moan, a creaking in the hull of wood catching and disliking what it finds.
The ship lurches, and we try to stand. We steady our balance as the vessel rolls one way and then another.
A huge spray and the deep otherworldly wail.
It hums and vibrates, like someone blowing across an empty glass bottle.
I dare not turn around, but I dare not miss it.
I glimpse a huge tentacle slithering back beneath the waves, dark, livid purple suckers on mottled orange skin.
Across the way, I hear the other crew screaming and cursing.
I don’t blame them. I felt my spirit leaving my body the first time I saw it.
‘What in Paranish is that?’ Ris yells from below.
‘Is that a—?’ Isagani asks, in disbelief.
‘It can’t be!’ Ris counters.
He’s much as I remembered. He bobs towards the surface, almost a curious spectator.
Translucent save for the streaks of red across his tentacles.
Sailors have often mistaken whale penises for kraken, but there’s no doubt here.
He looks at me with his dark glassy eye, triple the size of a porthole, surveying me like a fish in a bowl.
Now that he’s here, I feel a strange calm wash over me.
Like being in the eye of the storm. Or in the eye of a kraken.
The kraken reaches for us, huge appendages striking the water around us. He catches the edge of the deck. The taffrail splits and tumbles into the water.
‘Hey! That taffrail was handcrafted by a Lassairian carpenter!’ I shout, clinging to the deck for all I’m worth.
‘I don’t think it cares, Fin!’ Ris shouts, ducking behind a crate.
I unsheathe my sword and take aim at the undulating tentacles, wrapping themselves around the mast. I step forward and come down with a hard overhead strike.
An unholy shriek from below and the kraken begins to uncoil.
Then another scream, this time from above.
Isagani is on the rigging, entangled and frozen in fear.
‘Stay still, Isagani!’ I insist, running over and scaling the ropes. It’s only when I’m halfway up I realise I’ve dropped my sword.
Isagani is within reach now. I cling to their shirt, and we slowly make our way back down to the deck.
‘Birdy fell, I couldn’t stop it!’ Isagani sobs.
I look around at the chaos on the deck. The undead don’t have the reactions for this, trying to continue their duties with no preservation instinct. The deck roils and some of them lose their footing and go over, Knuckles unable to grab anything with their gnarled fingers.
The kraken has retreated from its wounds, but it approaches again, moving swiftly.
Its tentacles crash against the hull and we’re all thrown off balance.
I scramble away from the exposed side of the deck, which now ends in a treacherous drop into the water.
The ship tries to right itself and we go flying, living and dead crew alike.
Biba screams and I see her small face as she slips from the deck.
I lunge, but she’s out of reach. There’s a circle of bubbles on the surface of the water where she fell.
‘Biba!’ Ris yells, rushing to my side. She’s peeling off layers, preparing to dive, when something breaks the surface of the water.
A crown, the kraken’s round head floats near us.
And atop it is Biba. She’s wet and gasping, but she’s alive.
She lies down on the kraken, her fingers gently stroking above its eyes.
He looks up at her and another deep moan erupts from its body.
Saltswept vibrates with it, and I feel the resonance in my bones.
‘Go now,’ Biba commands, with the precocious authority only she could muster.
The kraken’s eyes begin to close, and he gives a groan.
I wait for my moment, and then I reach for Biba, grabbing her bodily before the kraken sinks back below the waterline. She yells as I lift her up onto the deck, bruised and scratched, but otherwise unharmed.
‘She’s trying to protect her babies,’ Biba protests as I try to wrap a blanket around her.
‘Babies?’ I ask. Guess my old pal was an old gal after all. ‘But don’t they die after they—’
Ris wraps me in a hug, cutting me off. ‘Thank you,’ she says, giving me a pointed look and shaking her head.
The mothers die after they lay their eggs, giving their final days to protecting their young. Biba will have to learn that sometime, but not now.
Isagani’s lips are bloody and I take the kid’s face in my hands. I tip their head back, inspecting the gummy gap where their front tooth used to be. ‘What happened?’
They garble something, tongue flopping around. I release their head. ‘Gone with the taffrail.’
There’s a slight lisp on the ‘th’ and ‘eff’ sounds, and I pull them close. They squirm, unsure, and I let them go.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘I’ve had worse,’ they tell me, tugging their shirt collar up and feigning nonchalance.
‘I’m sorry about Birdy. And Knuckles. We’ll check on all of them, all right?’
‘I know they’re already dead, but they’re part of our crew, you know? He was my rotten boy.’
I nod and clap them on the shoulder.
‘There she goes,’ Biba points, and we all look across the water.
The kraken has re-emerged by the other ship.
They are desperately shooting arrows at her.
Fuck, why didn’t we think of that? I suppose staying afloat and not having the kids fall to their death was a priority.
The kraken cries out when they hit her, blood in the water, deep midnight blue.
She thrashes, coiling around the ship. She is immense, pulling the ship off balance.
The crew’s screams can be heard from here.
It takes a sickeningly long time for the ship to finally sink.
It disappears beneath the waterline, the kraken’s wails still ringing in my ears.
‘Holy Aistra, that’s awful,’ Ris whispers, when we finally break the silence.
‘We should patch up the damage we took,’ I say, assessing the casualties.
‘That entire crew is dead, Fin,’ Ris says, staring at me.
I indicate the flotsam of the shipwreck floating in the distance. ‘Wake up, Ris – that could have been us.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Biba says, staring at me assuredly.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, meeting her gaze.
‘I told her to stop the other ship,’ she says, a strange smile coming over her face.
‘You talked to that thing?’ Ris asks.
She nods, looking at me perplexed. ‘Did I do something bad?’ She turns back to Ris. ‘Mama, your edges are sharp again. You are spiky, like a rambutan.’
Ris squats down to Biba’s eye level. ‘You know you are powerful, right Biba? You have to be careful with that. It can hurt people, including you.’
Biba curls her hands into tight fists then. ‘I’m only trying to protect us.’
‘Meaning good doesn’t always lead to doing good. It can be scary for us sometimes.’
One day she’s sprouting ube and making mangoes fresh. The next day she’s commanding a kraken. I look at this tiny kid again, and this innocent baleful expression. She genuinely doesn’t seem to grasp the complexity of what just happened. A shudder runs down my spine as the wind picks up even more.