Chapter Text
A map, an aged orange, with markings scrawled over it describing various locations. In the center is an odd arrangement of islands, described as the Clogs. To the east is another collection of islands, somewhat larger than the Clogs, save for the Clogs’ main island; the Drain.
This eastern collection of islands is called the Lost Man’s Hands, and they do indeed look like hands, all pointing in different directions with the appropriate islands representing phalanges. Some are scratched out, with the caption ‘sunken’, and others are drawn in with pencil, supposedly having arisen from the ocean, with an approximate year listed as well.
To the southeast is the Bellowing Deep, illustrated as what appears to be a blue hole.* The ring encircling it has some towns drawn in with the map’s original ink, although those too are crossed out.
The north holds the Broken Teeth, a trail of mountain-like islands that spread from the top of the map down to the west. They are ragged and chained together, with many towns scattered around them.
The compass in the lower right corner is jagged and sharp, bringing to mind shark’s teeth. Next to it is a name in cursive, partially torn in half until all that remains is Gawr. The overall title, in thick dark calligraphy, is the Anatomy of the Smoke Sea.
* A blue hole being a large marine cavern or sinkhole that was formed during past ice ages, when sea levels were as low as 100-120 meters.
- - -
The ocean was kind occasionally. Gura knew this like how she knew the taste of a storm in the air, how the swirling eddies lapping against your hull warned of dangerous rocks. The rope was rough on her hands as she untied it from the docks, threw it onto the deck of her boat, eager to get a move on.
The sun was barely out, just licking the small hills of the island with its rays. The brine in the air was strong enough to sting one’s eyes, like a pure bath of saltwater to the face. Gura laughed aloud with a glee matched by the cawing of the seagulls, hair flowing in the wind, tied back as messily as she could manage.
Her engine puttered weakly as she moved as quickly as she could, mindful of the rocks, marking out the ones she hadn’t yet seen in a small notebook she kept tucked in her pocket. The splashing of the waves whistled in her ears like a song, the rattling of the little shark keychain she kept attached to her boat keys keeping in time with it.
Gura let herself move monotonously, working out her routine that she would spend her days doing. Check the crab pots, mark the spots of disturbed water to see if they were regular. Keep an eye on the horizon for a storm, the sea for turbulence, the islands for other towns to do business in.
Soon, her hands were wrinkled from working in the water, and her boots squeaked across the deck. The sun trickled down her back and into her shirt, making her skin prickle and likely turn red. A dip in the ocean sounded mighty fine right then.
Wiping her brow of sweat, Gura looked out towards the sea, dark green and endless, empty of anyone or anything else.
- - -
She could see them working, humming some tune that carried over the waves and was smothered by the surface. Still, the voice reached her, melodious, a shell held up to your ear to hear the waves it had captured throughout its life.
It was beautiful enough to make you forget you were listening to a corpse.
- - -
According to a recent survey of various sailors with varying jobs aboard their ships, ranging from ages eighteen to sixty plus, they find great peace in the ocean and themselves. Their stories detail the sounds of gulls in the morning, the waves lulling them to sleep, a peaceful life on their boats working with their crew. Their responses to questions about mental strain, anxiety, and stress show feelings of being calm and supported by their crew.*
Additional surveys may be needed, but this combined with other experiments involving repeated clips of white noise and droning audio to various test subjects, seems to suggest the concept of going ‘mad at sea’ has less connection to the sheer noise that comes with it, and rather has to do with isolation.
All sailors who took part in the survey were part of large ships, so next we moved on to smaller groups and vessels, with crews with numbers less than ten.
- Dr. Marie Klaska, Anchor Publishing Company, 1958, “SOS: Lost at Sea, the Sounds of Silence”
*These statistics leave out a rather large number of outliers from crews that frequent the Bellowing Deep, the Broken Teeth, Lost Man’s Hands, and the Clogs; all part of the Smoke Sea region. All the crews from these areas claim to have heard ‘voices in the waves’, to have eaten strange plants that grew in even stranger areas, to have seen ghost ships that lead other foolish crews to early and watery graves. Simply, and a little unprofessionally put, they are part of the afflicted group that we are trying to study and find proper treatment for.
Until then, their testimonies and responses shall be released at the end of this study in Appendix IV, along with other faulty numbers that we logically assumed to be skewing our results.
- - -
The sun was setting as Gura headed back to harbor; a small thing huddled in the shadows of hills. The Clogs were living up to their name, leaving Gura to dredge up enough trinkets and materials to last her a few days. Her ice box was full, she made a small note to herself to save up for a larger one, perhaps just another for more storage space.
She hummed a little song to herself, wiping the sweat from her brow as she worked to move the icebox into a provided wheelbarrow, preparing to head over to the fishmonger’s cabin.
“It looks like shit,” Gura said to herself, below her breath, as she stood at the crooked, humidity-swollen front door.
It was a wretched little thing at the beginning of the docks, all warped boards and tarped over windows that spoke of a building that had probably stood there since the creation of the town itself. It reeked of fish, salt, entrails, of wood that was rotting inside.
That’s why Gura spent as little time as she could manage within it, because every step she took had the walls creaking and threatening to fall down atop their heads.
The old wizened man inspected the wrapped fish with a piercing eye, the other one swollen shut and leaking something dark. Gura looked away when he caught her staring, letting him return back to poking and prodding at the various types of fish she had caught. No crab today, Gura had to mark all the locations she had put them at as low probability spots.
When he deemed it acceptable, he handed her the money and she bolted out of there before the door opening could send the whole place crashing down.
She wandered a little after that, still in the not too late hours of the night. The ocean was audible no matter where she went in the town, a constant hushing in her ears. The shipyard looked promising, and the fishmonger’s request board by the city hall was also noted by Gura to check them out the next morning.
Her steps echoed on the cobbles below, her hands shoved into her pockets as bitingly cold air swept in from the sea. There were no lights on in the few houses dotting the hilly landscape of the island, spread out on varying levels.
Strangely though, even with the low light levels of the island, no stars shone in the sky save for a few scattered around in the direction of the island’s lighthouse. Gura squinted at them, stopping for a moment to gauge their spacing, to remember its shape.
It looked a bit like an eye, when she thought about it more.
- - -
The stars hated her, she just knew it. Rarely did they ever peek out from the darkness of the Smoke Sea’s sky to look down on her, a poor thing swimming and waiting for the light. The tall structure on the corner of the largest island in the Clogs shone a light too, the strongest thing out there in order to pierce through the mists.
She would settle on a good rock, soft from algae, worn smooth by waves. She’d feel the cool sea wind rush through her hair, the strands the color of the shallows in the Broken Teeth; a light green. Her hands would fiddle with all the knicknacks attached to her dress as she looked up at the meager stars and the lighthouse.
She really liked her hands. Delicate things, entwined with rings of bone, things carved from old friends who used to come around more often, when the Teeth were a little less Broken and the Bellowing Deep was quieter.
A little small part of herself told her that was her fault. But that couldn’t be right. Her hands were beautiful, reaching for the sky, for the lump of shadow snoring on the new boat that had entered the Clogs’ harbor; painted a vicious blue that reminded her of the sky.
Pride burst in her chest as the shape moved under its coat, though it dimmed when it slipped off its chair with a loud thump onto the deck. But still! She’d gotten them back home, onto the ship, closer to the ocean and herself. It wasn’t good to spend so much time on land.
That surely wasn’t healthy at all.
- - -
Gura blinked. Her hands felt clammy, brushing the familiar texture of the deck of her ship. She noticed a dent in the side, she’d have to fix that soon before it got worse.
“When…” she managed to say through a dry mouth, licking her lips with a tongue that felt fuzzy and fat, a caterpillar. “Did I walk here?”
Standing on legs that acted as if she hadn’t spent the majority of her life on the sea, Gura wobbled to the bow of her ship. The sun was rising, too high up, Gura should have been out on the water hours ago.
Stumbling, with a veritable symphony of curses, she hurried to prepare her equipment and icebox, making sure it was good and cold. Undoing the moorings, “Who had done the moorings last night?” spoken out loud to the empty docks to no answer, obviously. Gura pushed her ship away from the docks and clicked on her engine, the purr of it lifting her spirits as she headed back out onto the ocean.
Her days continued like this, of going out to sea to fish, collecting requests for the townspeople, exploring nearby islands too. Little trinkets found their way into her pockets, she talked to people from the towns scattering the islands of the Lost Man’s Hands. Gura skirted around the dark abyss of the Bellowing Deep, too freaked out by the odd noise it hummed in her ears to stay too long.
Gura caught a few trophy fish, growing to lengths she’d never seen before. Their eyes haunted her, did you know that? One stared at her as she kept watch over her line, its glassy eye never blinking, its gills never fluttering. It lay there, limp, head slit open as soon as Gura caught it so it would stay fresh.
The ice was clean. Blood stained the deck. Gura figured she’d have to mop soon.
- - -
She disliked doing this, but to disturb the calm waters around the boat would give her away. She wished her fisherman would go to the Deep, where it was easier to watch them from an out of sight position. She figured the noise was just too loud there, which was true.
It was a constant, bassy, crooning hum. It was a baby’s wail, it was a mother’s song, it was an old sea shanty sung by throats worn by hard labor and too many vices. It slipped into the soft parts of you like a tender embrace, loving, understanding, but no mortal could handle the concept of being fully known, apparently.
That made her sad. At least she thought so. Maybe she’d always been sad, staring out from the eyes of dead fish to catch a glimpse of white hair in the sun.
- - -
Dashes denote illegible script. [?] denote unidentified symbols.
Welcome to the Clogs! Home of the - ---- - ---! Fantastic creatures of the depths abound! A thriving ------- comm--ity! Heart of [?] *. On the opposite side: Come back so---. We ---- you already. [?]
- A sign found from a dredging ship, out in the edges of the Hands. The wood is old and worn, but only shows signs of the physical wear and tear associated with being out on land. No algae grows on it, no barnacles found a home on its surface. Fish gave the ship a wide berth when they hauled it onboard. It is unknown where this sign could have been placed. Sign handed off to the Smoke Sea Historical Collection, whose building can be found on the northernmost index finger of the Hands.
*All unidentified symbols, upon being observed for a longer period of time, begin to shift shape, according to some witnesses. Claims vary, from hands, to eyes, to teeth. All say they felt headaches and had to lie down, upon which they experienced strange dreams in which nothing happened. Nothing at all.
- - -
Gura kept a routine; set out crab pots with marked locations, venture farther out to find more fishing spots to keep the nearer ones sustainable, and gain the idea invest in a radio so she wouldn’t have to sit in silence every time she had to move from one place to another in the droning hum of the engine, the rush of the water against her ship’s sides.
Then, after days of catching the most high paying orders, the radio didn’t work. When she was on the island, it would play cheerful tunes, the radio host always chatting with someone who had called in. They were probably stationed on the Hands, on one of the tall, rocky mountains, where the ocean floor had buckled and groaned and pushed itself out of the water. That would imply they had a strong signal, to be able to reach this far, and yet as soon as Gura left the Drain’s bay, the main and largest island in the Clogs collection, and went out past the lights attached to the rocks to mark them for boats coming in at night, the song would immediately fade into static.
“Oh for the love of-” Her voice trailing off into a few more curses she’d picked up while sailing, all of which would make her parents roll over in their graves, she smacked the top a few more times. It croaked out a bass line before it again, fell into static.
So Gura just gave up and let it do its thing.
Her hands robotically reeled in the line, killed the fish, dropped it into the ice box, reset. The static wasn’t really too annoying, and it was nice to have some other sound out on the ocean. At the very least its drone managed to overpower the sound of the waves.
They’d been getting on Gura’s nerves for some reason.
She meandered away to her captain’s station, her little room on the boat where she kept some supplies if she ever built up the courage to stay out later, or just wanted to have lunch on board instead of on an uninhabited island.
There were plenty of them, with rich and varied landscapes, with perfect spots for fishing some more unique and rare fish, in deeper parts of the Smoke Sea. Gura was perfectly content with her boat, though, and the static on her radio.
- - -
She wasn’t sure if she liked the radio. It was loud, drowned out the ocean in her ears and the bubbles drifting by. It played pretty songs when the fisherman was in the harbor, songs that crooned, songs that screamed, love songs that she sang to the bleached bone skull of a sailor still resting on the deck of a sunken ship, down by the Teeth.
She wondered when she’d started using their names. It was usually just home, and all the rest of the ocean. She used to not care much.
Maybe when it was when the fisherman in her bright blue boat first got the darn thing, beamed like the sun when it turned on all crackly like, playing out a charming tune. Ah hah! They had crowed, a bird with a shiny new find. That’s how you do it! And they had done a little dance.
In the water, the other, herself, had watched. Her eyes were wide at the movements the little fisherman made, the little hip checks and tapping feet, ropes undone and engine turned over all to the rumbling beat of some song that sounded sad, but she kind of liked it.
When the radio finally switched to static, which she definitely felt sorry for because that was just a little bit her fault, the fisherman had frowned. Had given it an old thump or two to hear just a few cut off words before the static swallowed it up again.
Feeling rather remorseful, she’d rushed off to the Deep, caught a little bit of the sound that she let herself sing oh so long ago, that still echoed in the lava tubes down below. Hurrying back, she pressed the song into the radio, a thing that no mortal could truly hear.
It was only a snippet, maybe just the cracking of a neck, a gush of a cut, a sound lost in empty, desolate space. She smiled when she heard it alongside the static, near imperceptible, watched the fisherman gaze at the radio with an odd look in their blue blue blue eyes that she so wanted to have like a treasure in her cave.
Not that she’d take them. That wasn’t nice.
The fisherman let the radio play on with its static as they fished. That was nice. A little bit of the Deep’s song brought to the surface again.
- - -
"The human element is increasingly acknowledged as an important factor contributing to accidents at sea. What is infrequently considered however, is the extent to which social isolation, and its effects on seafarers, contributes to both marine incidents and to the problems of seafarer retention currently experienced throughout the industry as a whole. This paper draws on the findings of several related studies undertaken at the Seafarers International Research Centre (1999-2002) along with a number of published studies on seafarer health. In doing so it considers both the causes and potential effects of social isolation on seafarers. These areas have not traditionally been subject to systematic scrutiny and analysis. As such they are substantially under-researched and are often under-emphasized by policy makers and practitioners in the maritime sector."
- Sampson, Thomas. 2003. “The social isolation of seafarers: causes, effects, and remedies”
- - -
The real kicker was when the radio went dead silent. Gura knew for sure it was on, she did the whole shebang of technological repair, known by all; she turned it off and on, checked the batteries, and thumped it real good.
It did not work, for some unknown reason.
Adrift at sea, with a nasty knotted lump of seaweed tangled up in her engines, Gura stood out on her ship’s deck and watched the sun set. She hadn’t been out this long before, the inky darkness of the sea seeming to bloom outward from the depths.
She tried to flick on the lights again, the new halogen ones she’d installed less than two months ago. They spluttered to life, then shut off again, this time with much more finality. They didn’t turn on anymore.
Slowly, panic started to rise. Boots squeaking on the deck as she paced back and forth, Gura stared up at the pitch black sky, squinting for the small patch of stars she’d marked. She really needed to invest in a compass, but in the meantime, tried to remember the almost eye shaped constellation’s placement.
A little bit to the left of the boat’s prow, was a light. It wasn’t high enough to be part of the sky, maybe some low flying plane. But no planes flew over the Smoke Sea, especially at night with its incredibly low visibility.
The light flashed.
An animal thing in Gura’s chest told her the light was watching her.
“Please,” she managed to say, eyes wide with her hands gripping onto the railing of her boat. She didn’t know why she said it, maybe some prayer out to the universe for nothing to happen at all, for it to just be the lighthouse back at the Drain undergoing some technical issues.
The light went out.
She could feel the boat rock underneath her feet, caught in a small swell, pushing it even further away from the Drain. Air hissed through her teeth, sucked in along with rising nausea, the bitter burn of bile in her throat. Gura ran a hand through her damp hair, squinting, for the light to maybe come back-
-the light came back, red, pulsing, at a rhythm that grew faster and faster and faster-
-it was matching Gura’s heartbeat, her frantic steps as she booked it into her small cabin on board, locking the door and sitting beside the captain’s chair and dash-
-there was a sound with the light, a wail of the wind through jagged rocks, the rattling of chimes. A whisper in Gura’s ear, “It’s alright-”
“It’s not!” Gura cried. Her teeth worried at her bottom lip, threatening to pierce and draw blood. Gura was rather glad she’d painted her ship blue instead of red, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to see that color ever again.
Her knees brought up to her chest, her hand fiddling with the shark keychain of her boat’s keys, the jingle drowning out the scream of whatever was watching her before it died out, guttural, choked to death on its own air. But the light remained. Not that Gura could see it from where she was.
As Gura’s breathing slowed and her panic faded, the light outside grew, larger and brighter, illuminating the inside of her cabin and deepening all the shadows inside, until Gura’s panic was rising again, until the light was swallowing up the sky and replacing it with-
The Smoke Sea’s normal night time constellations; barely any. The light fizzed out like a particularly boring party, one where everyone had left. Now it’s just you and your boat, floating out at sea.
Gura felt, with an odd shiver down her spine as she stood, throat hoarse from screaming, though she was pretty sure she hadn’t, that she still wasn’t entirely alone.
- - -
They’re hidden from view, their bright hair dimmed by the low light. They had run into her ship’s little room and locked the door, and then their head disappeared out of sight from the windows. She could hear them scream.
It made her frown a little, hands cracking apart the shell she was holding. The tender meat inside was a soothing snack, running cold and liquid down her throat. She really did think that her fisherman would like the lights. She’d liked the radio’s song, after all. So as an afterthought, she let that play along too, murmured by the ocean’s swells and the groan of the fisherman’s hull. The screaming didn’t stop. She tried to whisper something soothing through the small chip of whale bone the fisherman kept pierced through their ear, but they just shivered, their scream breaking into a plea that she couldn’t really define.
Strange, really. She didn’t think she’d ever understand mortals.
Then she watched as the fisherman’s boat ran aground on a small island, hitting no rocks after a little interference from herself. A moment, and then the head of snow white hair peeked out of the door, looking around the deck of the boat like they were searching for something.
Almost nodding to herself, cheering her fisherman on, she watched as they took cautious steps onto the deck, still keeping their head on a swivel. Carefully, they jumped off the side of the boat into the shallow waters, stepping onto the sand.
Horrible. She’d never know what was going through their head when they made the conscious choice to go on land. Something about them went quiet, harder for her to ascertain. A stone to your ear instead of a shell, with only the salt water soaked into their skin letting her listen to their worries as they stumbled around the beach in the dark.
But still, she watched, as they sat on the beach with a haunted expression and waited for the sun to rise again.
- - -
[a low, mellow voice speaks, perhaps a young man. His voice crackles with static interspersed throughout his statement, sometimes cracking his voice into something alien, off.]
“Meteorological data suggests the differing temperatures and humidity of the split areas in the Smoke Sea region lend a hand in its odd seasons and strange weather patterns. Sometimes temperate, sometimes a roaring typhoon to strike fear into the hearts of the most experienced sailors, sometimes doldrums, did I say that right? Yeah? Great , doldrums to leave sailors wasting away in the middle of nowhere. [pause, crackling static, possibly cut out information] Whew, that’s our ocean! This is a real interesting thing, I gotta say. Check back in at nine, for now we-” [radio cuts out into static]
-Broadcasted out on November 13, 1964. The information itself is never released, nor is the source. The broadcaster, a radio station on the pinky of the south-east Hand, sank along with the whole finger ten days later.
- - -
At night, a fog would rise, heady and thick, practically another liquid atop the surface of the sea. Gura watched it roll into the Drain’s bay from the safety of the docks, feet firmly on solid land, only giving one forlorn glance to her boat before she turned and walked deeper into town.
The fishmonger had become a rather helpful resource, telling her which parts of the Smoke Sea had the best fishing spots, what types of bait to use for each one, and so on. Their business relationship had reached a point where Gura could tell him a crappy joke and he wouldn’t kick her out immediately. An improvement from before.
She wandered further, knocking on certain doors to deliver requests (because the old man didn’t want to do it himself), as well as little trinkets they’d asked her to find, if she could. Strangely enough, they always did turn up at some point or another.
Throughout this, her mind was in a haze, still trapped on that island the night her engine died, as well as everything else on her boat. She had to throw out all the fish she had caught, because they stank of rot the minute she stepped back onto her ship at the first sight of dawn. Her lights had to be replaced again, costing a pretty penny, though her engine was repaired.
The strange thing was how the shipyard worker had stared at her when Gura had explained the seaweed that had gotten caught on the propeller.
“That’s Blistering seaweed,” they had said in the low drawl that was the Drain’s main accent. They sounded like they’d been smoking since birth, with the teeth to match. “Only grows in the Bellows.”
“But I’ve never went there,” Gura said, quite confused. “Don’ have the equipment.”
The shipyard worker had shrugged, picking another piece of the seaweed off and setting it on a metal tray before tugging their thick gloves off. “Well, whatever happened, good thing you didn’ touch it.” They leaned in close, conspiratorial, breath stinking of fish. “Real bad for you.” Then they turned and lumbered off to get the replacement propeller, having deemed Gura’s current one a lost cause with how much ‘Blistering seaweed’ was still tangled up in it.
Gura had figured that much out, with its bright red color and distinct smell of something spicy, with the added aroma of rot. When her engine was finally repaired and her ship was back in the water where it belonged at the docks, she headed over the small, cramped building that was the Drain’s library.
There, after being scolded by the elderly librarian for ‘walking too loudly’ and ‘disturbing the other patrons’ (of which there were none) Gura found a small corner of the room to settle into with a small book in hand she’d managed to get after doing entirely too much apologizing to the librarian.
The book, old and worn with a dark blue cover that was turning black in some spots, smelled like Blistering seaweed itself. It detailed various fish and aquatic plants in the Smoke Sea region, along with some recipes. Funnily enough, the book described all recipes as tasting ‘like the ocean, meant only for those with a proper sailor’s stomach’.
“Rockin’ review,” Gura muttered to herself, sinking deeper to the creaking chair. Then her eyes were drawn to the passage she was looking for.
The Blistering seaweed species is an offshoot of the Broken Teeth’s tamer, Cold Noose seaweed, notorious for getting caught up in nets and other fishing equipment. The seaweed itself grows in the Bellowing Deep, at the more shallow parts of the Deep’s edges.
It is oily and red, with a pungent flavor. It can only be consumed after proper preparation, but even then cannot be trusted wholly.
“Wholly?” Gura muttered to herself, and tried to ignore the stink eye the librarian gave her. She read on.
To get the oil on one’s bare skin leads to itchiness and redness. If not scrubbed off quickly enough, sores will begin to open up on the skin. These sores soon swell with pus-
“Nope, nope, nope.” Gura, feeling queasy, skipped forward a little.
The oil itself also works as a hallucinogen, both applied through the skin and orally. Once ingested by sailors in the early 19th century as a cure for headaches and toothaches. Most accounts claim that ingesting the substance leads to ocean related hallucinations; of large fish swimming underneath their boats, ropes unfurling in their hands as they transformed into wet, amputated tentacles, the eerie songs of sirens ringing in their ears.
Sailors who ingested large amounts of the substance all drowned themselves, walking into the ocean in droves, sinking into the ocean to be lost forever.
“Ah.” Gura tapped her fingers on the worn tabletop. “That’s great.”
The seaweed itself is a food source for the few marine creatures found in the depths of the Deep. Some studies have been held under the theory of the seaweed affecting the toxins and properties of the wildlife there, making them unsafe to eat. All studies were suspended under law XVII section VI code-
Again, Gura skipped ahead.
Preliminary findings did indeed suggest the effects of the plant on native wildlife were not benign, leading to strange mutations and odd behaviors. However, denizens of the Smoke Sea actually consider these mutated fish to be a delicacy on some occasions, and do indeed still ingest the oils of the Blistering seaweed, especially those on the Broken Teeth.
The seaweed has been found to be spreading to other regions of the Smoke Sea, caught in fishing equipment or uprooted from the Deep’s oceanic shelf and dragged to other locations as an invasive species. It is unsure of whether or not if its effects are wholly-
“That word again, huh?”
-myth or reality. In any occasion, its tangled maroon vines hold a mystery, one which always leads back to the sea.
There was a moment where Gura stared at the faded lettering, thumbing over the rough paper. Her chair creaked again as she got up. She left the library, heading back to her boat with her head held high, a weight like an anchor in her heart. The book was tucked underneath her arm.
- - -
She hadn’t realized the seaweed had gotten in there. Perhaps it would work as a little, inadvertent push, bringing her fisherman closer to the Deep’s song.
The depths of the Bellowing Deep itself were cool and dark. Fish floated by; bloated, blind, barbed. Terrifying things with oversized teeth and pulsing cysts, milky eyes, gaping mouths. She loved them like how a shepherd adores their sheep, guiding them with a careful hand to the tall stalks of red seaweed she grew like wheat, a farmer at the bottom of the ocean.
With them eating, fat noses bumping against the swelling sacks on the stalk of the plant, she amused herself with all the treasures she kept in her cave. Bracelets, necklaces, rings, uncut and loose gems, books, mortal instruments and furniture. She fancied herself a bit of a collector, she supposed.
There was a sapphire that reminded her of her fisherman’s eyes, light blue, like the sky she so rarely saw. She’d been going up to the surface more to watch them, a doting smile on her face as she sent her untainted fish, not wanting to scare her off until they were more receptive.
Slowly, hunched over, horns modeled after the carcasses of deer that made their way into the ocean, dangling algae and seashells-on-thread into her face, she bit down into the sapphire. Her teeth cut through cleanly, though the sharp edge cut her tongue. Dark blue blood spilled out into the water, flecked with gold.
Still, she swallowed, a bit more carefully though, and smacked her lips.
“Pretty good,” she said as she smiled, and the ocean quaked at her voice, a sailor threw himself into the ocean to hear it again, all the fish around her went stock still like a knife had slipped into their spines, leaving them dead in the water.
Crooning, petting one of the paralyzed fish gently, she bit down again, lips now cut and bleeding, and dreamed of the fisherman in her boat up above.
- - -
“Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”
“The ocean is a cruel thing, and its cruelty is mirrored and replicated in the human experience. To eat and be eaten, to fight and tear for survival, to pin one’s sins at the cross of necessity, perhaps to drown is the most karmic fate of them all, that god has no place at sea.”
- Moby Dick, lost edition #47.5, by Herman Melville with commentary by Enoch Berbay.
- - -
Her business was good, Gura knew. She caught a perfectly satisfactory amount each day, with enough stores in her various marked out spots that she had no fear of ever running dry. She kept them sustainable, dredged when she wanted to give them time to replenish themselves, moved to other areas for other species according to requests from the fishmonger. If she wanted any extra cash, she’d simply hunt around the Clogs for washed up ships and cargo, taking little trinkets to sell or materials to use for her boat.
However, a little part of her asked ‘what really was in the Bellowing Deep?’ The only places she’d really been to were around the Clogs, and a little bit of the Lost Man’s Hands. Some islands she marked down to not go back to, old sailor superstitions poking through after one too many nets snapping, water disturbances, lack of fish. At the very least, Gura needed to increase her variety of fish before she went insane looking at another Gulf Flounder.
The net she had now was a thick type of metal, still flexible and light enough to use though. Her engine powered through the water, Gura’s boat skipping over the waves. Her lines were designed to handle high temperatures, though that was mainly for the Broken Teeth region, if she ever went over there.
Her boat slowed as she reached the dark blue of the Deep, her radio shutting off on its own. That made Gura frown a little, but it turned out that the batteries had just died.
She set up; her waterproof overalls thrown over her clothes because it got too hot if she wore it all the time. Her boots given a little shine from a rag, gloves pulled on, net thrown over, a line cast. And Gura settled in, hairs prickling at her neck, the sky the lightest blue it has been since Gura got here.
When she leaves, with a partially full net with squirming, ill-looking fish, Gura looks pale. Something clings to her, invisible, a weight, a glow to her skin? Her boat leaves ripples in the water that are much too large for its size. Her wrist is smeared red, the static of her radio flickering on, a hiss in her ears, a crooning song she is learning the words of.
- - -
A dark wood table, lit by a spluttering candle before the flame steadies. Two photographs, grainy and dull, black and white and yellowing. There is a name on the back along with a date, both are blotted by time and water. The only legible thing that remains is a large ‘F’ in cursive.
In the first: A boat, two men standing aboard, brothers. Their arms around each other, one is a little bit taller than the other, with a beard. Behind them is the old harbor of the Drain, before it burned down for the first time in 1932 from a lightning strike. It’s obvious to tell by the design of the store fronts, and the fact that there are store fronts.
Sitting on the edge of their boat is a woman in a lacy dress. It is white, untouched by time and the photograph’s age. Her smile is small, like she knows a secret. Her hair tumbles down her shoulders, seashells laced throughout. There are bracelets on her wrists and ankles; she is barefoot, feet dangling down the side.
In the second photo: The brothers stand a little ways apart. Their sickness is obvious; gaunt faces, dull eyes that stare into the camera, greying beards, now matching. Their clothes are worn and patched. The harbor behind them is being rebuilt, evidently some time after the ‘32 lightning strike. The boat no longer has its sheen of shiny paint, the windows of its cabin are covered over with flat boards.
The woman sits in the same place. She is wearing the same dress. She looks almost the same, but her hair is a bit shorter, there are bones arranged like a crown around her head. They are more like antlers, with the swirling pattern of a narwhal’s horn. Something dangles off of them, algae possibly, turned black by the photograph’s monochrome. Her hands are folded in her lap, small and dainty and with a few rings, none shine like a kind of metal. Her smile is small and sharp, like she knows a secret. Her eyes are very, very dark.
The back of this photo has a legible caption: ‘The last photo taken of the Brandy brothers, last surviving descendants of the Drain.’ There is no mention of the woman in the photo at all.