1
I am penning this memoir in the hopes of thwarting an impending doom upon the country. It may be too late for me, but I must tell the world the full account of what has happened on the off chance that it can do some good for humanity.
My story starts in late Spring when I was packing up for a trip to Mahtmouth to sign on to a whaling voyage in the hopes of earning enough money to last through Winter. My wife and children do well on their own in the Summertime, and this would be the third time I've left them for the sea in this fashion.
The cetus whale carries within its massive head a most lucrative prize. It spends the seasons of Summer and Sunfall in the Windward Sea off the boreal coast of the Headlands, and the forty-eight days within those two seasons offer a short window for whaling vessels to go after that most prized substance: cetum, more commonly known as cetuswax. The candles and lamps of the world burn brightly from the toils of the whaleman, and a ship full of wax will pay its crew handsomely upon returning to shore in Autumn.
The week before my planned departure, our youngest child fell ill with the Fever. We had lost our firstborn to the Fever many years ago, and the parallels were too horrifying to consider. The local corporealage was fortunately much more skilled at the internal arts than the one in the old village where we lived before, and he was able to eventually cure the child and so we avoided our worst fears. Tending for the babe and supporting my wife were without question my primary duty during this scare, but the days slipped by and the Shove-off Festival was now very close at hand. Having no more time to waste, I bade my family farewell and hurried west to that coastal town of Mahtmouth.
The whaling season traditionally begins on the first day of Summer, and on Summer's Eve the Shove-off Festival roars through town like a drunken bull. Whalemen and their friends and families alike pray for a successful haul and cast their fortunes to Carnissus for protection. I had most heartily enjoyed the festival over the last two years, but being as delayed as I was—though through no fault of anyone except perhaps fate itself—I unfortunately missed the festival celebrations. I was so delayed that I arrived in Mahtmouth on the third of Summer, and to my chagrin there were no whaling boats left in the harbor for me to sign on with. I was sick to my stomach at the thought of not being able to make such a large payout, and worried about what that meant for my family's financial situation come Winter.
I moped about the town for a while, trying to decide the best course of action. I considered looking for work as a hand on a regular fishing vessel, and started inquiring around the docks and taverns in that regard. In my search, I discovered there was one remaining whaling ship that had yet to depart—named the Teapot—and keen as I was to not let the season go in vain, I sought out the captain of that tardied vessel.
I soon discovered the location of the ship's mooring. She was on a pier far away from the main collection of docks and wharves, almost a mile up the coast out of town. I made my way there immediately, not wanting to miss out on this opportunity and quite possibly the only chance I had at salvaging my Summer.
There was something about the ship that repulsed me upon my first spying her. The Teapot was small for a whaling vessel, only around one hundred feet long. Built in the standard catamaran configuration as Merengian whaling ships are, the two pontoon hulls were much more slender in proportion than the ships I was used to. Furthermore, both hulls on either side of the ship appeared to have an additional pontoon lashed to their outer sides, with four extra mast-sized beams lying athwartships across the main deck and two others lying endlong beneath them. I had originally suspected this was all for added buoyancy when straddling a cetus whale. Whaling catamarans pull up right atop their catches and process them at sea, and use their tackle rigging to secure the creature between their hulls while doing so. This smaller ship looked like it would have a rough time securing such a large creature.
Speaking of the whaling tackle, this ship did not have a standard rigging, and only had its smaller tackle affixed to a windlass instead of strung from the top of the mastheads. I figured this ship must be in the business of slaying smaller whales—perhaps blackfish and grampus—which have their own types of oil but which are not nearly as pure or waxy as cetum. Resigned to the idea of not making as large of a payout, I nevertheless approached the ship and crew who were milling about on the pier making their preparations.
The crew were an eclectic bunch. There were several Merengian whalemen like myself, most of whom appeared downtrodden and who were presumably just as hard up for a voyage as I was. These characters gave me no ill feelings, but it was the other crew members who didn't sit well with me. There were some imposing Tzaigoni men, some old Headlanders, and even a few brutish sailors from Plallo. Though foreigners will regularly sail on whaling voyages, such a cosmopolitan crew I had never seen leaving the fairly homogeneous shores of Merengia. I enquired with these men about the ship and its voyage and requested to speak with the captain regarding my joining up with the crew. The looks I was given were perverse and unwelcoming, nevertheless I was led onboard the ship and down into the belly of the craft.
The captain was in his quarters, pouring over star maps and sea charts. He was an old Eeodian man by the name of Jondolan Rabby, gray of beard and scarred of face. His presence was unsettling, though he struck me as a man who was holding onto the end of his career for dear life. He hardly noticed as I entered his study, and it wasn’t until I had cleared my throat and interjected with my name that he paused his research and looked up. I pleaded my case to the man, and as I spoke, a sickening smile stretched across his face, as though he knew in my misfortune that he held the upper hand in the discussion. He inquired as to my financial situation; I spoke of my family and my need, and he not so subtly implied that I would be an expendable hand brought on for the hardest of labor and the meagerest of wages. What could I do? This was my last chance to shove off and whale away the summer for pay, and Captain Rabby knew it. Finally he acquiesced, and after securing a position on the crew and negotiating my paltry cut of the profit, I was shown the book and signed on as an oarsman to the crew of the Teapot.
2
We departed on the sixth of Summer. Our preparations were well out of the ordinary for a whaling vessel, and whenever I inquired about the methods of the ship and captain, I was either shushed or given vague, ever-changing answers. The most I could put together was that the captain had his own way of doing things, which accounted for the differences in vessel, equipment, launch time, and his peculiar handpicked crew. I soon became closely acquainted with the other Merengian whalemen, most of whom had also missed the Shove-off Festival as I had expected. They, too, were keen on earning a whaleman’s pay to last the Winter, and we all commiserated together regarding our sorry lot. The other crew members kept to themselves and leered at us from a distance. They spoke in huddled circles and disappeared throughout the ship from time to time. They seemed to be in the confidence of the captain, and they were the only ones trusted with navigational orders.
My quarters were in the portside forecastle, bunked in a hammock along with the other oarsmen and green hands. The mates and tradesmen bunked in the starboard forecastle, apart from us hired hands, and Captain Rabby slept in his stateroom at the aft of the starboard pontoon. None of us journeymen whalers were permitted to enter the starboard hull at all, although we didn’t need to be ordered to stay away from that detestable hold. As our voyage went on, rumors began circulating between the oarsmen regarding the inhabitants of the starboard pontoon. A couple hands swore they saw some mysterious silver-haired passengers emerge from the starboard hold during the darkness of first watch. Others alluded to strange sounds coming from belowdecks.
We all dutifully kept to the port side pontoon where the galley and food stores were found, as well as stowage for the yet-unused whaling equipment, along with countless empty oil barrels ready to be filled. The cooper kept busy by day, inspecting and repairing barrels as needed, and feverishly building new ones from the spare lumber onboard. We had been sailing for a few weeks, and still hadn't lowered our whaling boats for the chase. I wondered if we would even fill a third of those barrels with wax before the end of Sunfall. The mastheads were both manned exclusively by the Tzaigonis. Several times I thought I saw the plume of mist from a whale's blowhole on the horizon, but never did those lookouts utter a single cry of "there she blows!"
Our course took us on through the weeks, always heading borealward, further and further away from the continent and far past my idea of the usual whaling grounds for cetus or even the lesser whales. The journeyman crew, along with myself, started becoming uneasy, wondering aloud what this captain's plan was and openly questioning his methods. As Summer became Sunfall, confrontations started rearing to a head between the Merengians and Plallish. Historically bitter enemies, and further alienated due to their divisions of labor on this increasingly detestable voyage, the sailors would now openly accost each other on deck, until finally an all-out brawl erupted between the oarsmen and tradesmen. I must admit at this point that I was caught up in the disputes myself and my hands were not clean. No sooner did the battle begin then several tall, black-cloaked, silver-haired individuals ran out from the starboard hull, and waving their hands in some occult fashion, succeeded in supernaturally arresting our motions on the spot. Our implements proceeded to jump from our hands and fly through the air, landing in a pile at the feet of the mysterious newcomers. Captain Rabby then marched on deck and addressed us angrily.
“Avast, you gibbering slugs! What manner of children have stowed away on my ship? Is this how you were taught to keep watch on a cruise? You brainless oafs should be tied and lashed for your insolence. What were you all thinking, letting your thick skulls get in the way of your duties? This incivility will not be tolerated, and the next lubber who so much as raises a hand at their fellow sailor will be locked up for the rest of the voyage, understand? It pains me to see you act this way toward each other. This voyage depends on all of you working together, and that clearly isn’t happening. I didn't want to have to send my associates out against you, but you left me no choice. I value the success of this trip more than your very lives, and if you take arms against each other again, they will destroy you."
The captain let out a long sigh and continued. "Let it be known, you are not in any way owed an explanation as to the nature of this voyage. However, if it keeps you all from killing each other before you’ve proved your usefulness, then I suppose I may as well tell you why we are sailing so far out from land without lowering for a single whale thus far. You are all clearly restless and no doubt worried about what sort of portion of profit you’ll be receiving with so many empty barrels below us. I assure you, those barrels will yet be filled to bursting, with a much more lucrative prize than cetum. This ship has been commissioned by my partners here, the venerable Prodkin, to sail far past the shallow edge of the sea where the water disappears, to meet the Winter Wanderer as it transits up above the horizon on Autumn's Eve night. We are timing our voyage to be in such close proximity to that celestial being to harness its power for ourselves. These fine gentlemen have devised a method of extracting and storing this magic power, which we will all work together to achieve. If this all goes to plan, we shall become wealthier than all the Lords of Merengia!"
The crew was of mixed mind after hearing the news. I myself was at first upset at being duped into setting sail under such false pretenses. I had been promised a portion of profit from a whaling haul, and now I was expected to perform vague other duties to which I had not agreed or otherwise been made known of. After getting over my initial anger, I then started to become anxious as the thought of sailing to the edge of the sea. Not many trustworthy records exist as to what lies beyond that horizon, and none of them give me any courage.
The clearest opinion as to what lies beyond the sea comes from the accounts of sailors whose ships had ventured too far from land or had been pulled outward by violent storms and sudden swells. It is well known, by the use of the sounding plummet, what the general depth of the ocean is at any given point near to the continent. By dropping a weighted line over the edge of the craft and feeling the gentle thud of the bottom of the sea, one can accurately measure how deep of water one is in. The seabed slopes down at a fairly consistent rate in all directions out from the mainland until soundings are lost, typically at 100 fathoms, though some ships have spliced two lines together to take soundings down to 200 fathoms at around forty leagues from shore. Further out, the seabed is too deep to measure; however, a strange phenomenon is known to those sailors who venture even further out to sea: if soundings should be taken at an extreme distance from the continent, starting anywhere from 90 to 120 leagues from shore, a different sounding is notated. Differing from soundings taken off the coast which land on the hard seabed and can bring up sand or pebbles as the terrain allows, the soundings taken so far out to sea always come up clean, and do not settle on the bottom in such a definite way. They do indeed register, but the plummet seems to bob at a certain depth as though it were floating on the surface of yet another sea, heavy and dense enough to cause the lead plummet to float at its surface. These soundings are known as soft-bottom soundings, and no method of sampling has revealed the nature of the viscous fluid far below the open water.
The further one sails from the continent, out toward the misty horizon, the higher these soft-bottom soundings become, so that one can fairly accurately discern how far away one’s vessel is from shore. It would follow, then, that eventually this sounding level would rise all the way to the surface of the sea, until one’s ship was sailing on this new, denser medium. Such a voyage of discovery has not to my knowledge yet been undertaken; no vessel has been outfitted for such a long journey of discovery, and the further out toward the misty horizon one sails, the wilder the rolling swells become, until, they say, the whole ocean is rolling and folding over itself. I could scarcely bring myself to imagine how we were supposed to sail through such rough seas in such a small vessel.
Other horrors lie far out to sea besides the wrath of the ocean. The enormous cetus whale, king of the continental shelf, has enemies that lie below in darkness far beyond the reach of sunlight. In the depths of the water, swelling to unthinkable sizes, are creatures that settle near soft-bottom and consume all manner of life that wander too near. The older sailors on the Teapot began whispering of such creatures once our destination was made known to us. One such creature above all others made us shudder as the old hands told their stories: a gelatinous, snakelike fiend far larger than any boat, writhing in blasphemous coils as it crushes and devours ships and sailors alike—this being was known only as a waterwyrm. Long rumored of by old salts on shore but never dared spoken of at sea for fear of summoning the foul things, waterwyrms were now on everyone’s mind during our daily labors, and haunting our dreams at night. Between the unknown edge of the sea and the unknown horrors below, our sanity started slipping from our shells until we all became overly silly and friendly to each other, singing loudly at all hours and dancing around the masts and windlasses, even with the tradesmen and the mates, who now seemed to share in our mental escapism. Before our slip from sanity, there were whispers of mutiny, and stealing control of the ship in order to turn homeward and escape our doom. Now, we all seemed to be in strange spirits, joking about how wealthy we would soon be and hungering for the adventure before us.
3
As we sailed on ever borealward, we started hitting soft-bottom soundings on the seventh of Sunfall. The line shortened quickly over the days, until we were sounding at only eight fathoms by the twelfth. It took considerably longer to make it further and further out, even with the sea beginning to roll treacherously outward. Huge swells would build miles behind us, and we could only watch and brace as they would eventually pick us up and propel us dangerously forward. The valleys of these swells proved even more jarring; as we dipped down low, our ship would rattle violently as the sea seemed to drop out from under us until it waved back up and lifted us again. It was around this time that the order was given to extend the auxiliary pontoons. The curious extra pontoons lashed to the side of each hull were now unbound and extended on large beams so we were now a four-pontoon, extra wide sailing vessel. This accounted for four of the six excess beams across the Teapot’s bow, two holding each new hull in place.
It was on the sixteenth of Sunfall that our keel hit soft-bottom. The sea got choppier as we headed further out, though the swells thankfully calmed down a bit. At this time in our voyage we observed the sea glowing in the night, as if we were looking up through the water into bright daylight shining from below. The water around us was behaving queerly, having a calm, glassy appearance while still wobbling in tight little bumps on the surface. Those mysterious Prodkin gave orders to remove everything from the lower holds up to the higher levels of the ship, including onto the top deck. This peculiar command was carried out shortly after we extended the auxiliary pontoons, and now that we were sailing on soft-bottom, the reason started becoming known to us. As the ship settled into the level where the sounding plummet floated, the crumbs and remaining debris from the floor of the holds started rising up into the air and congregating on one flat plane. The further we sank into that sounding level, the higher up the settled debris rose, their positions always corresponding to each other. Soon enough the sounding level came up to the side of the ship at the usual water level, and a most curious phenomenon was observed by the crew: as we carried on, we sailed straight out of that shallow water into the thin air! We seemed to still stay afloat in some fashion, and the plummet confirmed our case: the lead weight would bob curiously in mid air right at the level where the waterline had been.
The open sea is an unforgiving landscape in which the firmest of mettle is required to last two or more seasons sailing out of reach of land, while known hazards and unknown horrors plague one’s psyche to the point of breaking. Being pushed still further into uncharted regions where the sea tears upon one’s spirit in an unfeeling display of carelessness, tossing one into its churning pits of tormentation—that is enough to drive even the hardest sailor to mental ruin. Imagine us now, sailing beyond even the rarest accounts of the far reaches of the ocean, pushing our craft still onward until the very sea dropped out from below us, leaving us streaking over the abyss in a flagrant display of hubris toward our place in the cosmos—imagine then how our minds must have cracked and buckled as we were pushed further than our sanity could allow, some of us even descending into gibbering madness aboard that heterodoxical ship.
As strange as it was to be sailing through the sky, even curiouser was the phenomenon taking place below decks. Where the external sounding line corresponded to the internal holds, objects—and even people—would float comfortably on that singular plane. It was discovered that an object brought below the sounding line would fall upwards until reaching that invisible plane, then bob in place until it settled in the air. In the lower holds, some of the crew took joy in finding that the upward force was so similar to the gravitational pull from above, that one could get around comfortably by walking as normal on the ceiling! It appeared that we had reached the bottom of the world, and were now floating between two separate atmospheres, both pushing against each other as we sailed through the air.
Now that we had left the rolling sea, I realized at this point the relationship between this gravitational anomaly and the soundings known as soft-bottom. Once we had sailed past the floor of the continental shelf, there was nothing beneath us but two halves of the same ocean, held together by our gravity and its inverted twin. Soundings we had registered were merely the lead plummet resting upon this gravitational plane that had now become known to us.
The purpose of the remaining two beams became apparent shortly after we pushed out past the Windward Sea into the air. The mates had us affix the mighty timbers to the fore of the main deck with mammoth rods locked into hinges overhanging the bow that we then rigged to each windlass. The tops of the beams were strung with heavy cables which were dropped over the midbow and down under the ship, to be taken up again at the aft. We were then commanded to haul the cables while manning the windlasses, and as we did the great beams rose up into the air from their fixed points on the hinges, then swung forward so they were pointing over the bow straight ahead, then continued their journey down and under the ship so they were hanging vertically underneath us, or I should say rising up into the air within that inverted plane below. The order was then given to rig up sails to the two new beams, now giving us two masts above and two masts below. The borealward wind of Sunfall was in our favor, and now with no resistance from the water and sails above and below us, we raced through the sky at a feverish clip.
We made excellent time in our strange flying vessel. Day to day life was fairly similar to nautical sailing, however now there was double the amount of sails and rigging to manage. Watches on the underside of the ship were a bit harrowing, the hull bottoms we now stood upon as our new deck were sloped downward, so lines of thick rope were strung at intervals around each pontoon to which we would harness ourselves in order to keep our feet on the slick planks. Cleaning the hull was a task made easy by the new gravitational situation—standing upright atop the inverted ship allowed for easy repair and maintenance. We had to be diligent in keeping the timbers oiled and sealed to prevent the hull from drying out and cracking while it was exposed to the air.
From our position way out we could faintly see the ocean girding the continent far behind us, and it appeared now as just a thin, flat line on the horizon, like a platter holding up all the mountains and cities of the world surrounded by a ring of sea. A startling realization was made, though I suppose that it follows logically with the physicality of our experience: noticeable from our expanded view of that flat discus of a world, we could see peaks of mountains rising up into the air on the underside as well, held down by the opposing gravity to the obverse side of the continent! How many lands and countries exist unknown to us on that opposite plane? The thought of new peoples and cultures captured my thoughts over the next several days.
It need not be said that we had since lost the darkness of night. With no land or sea to shade us from the Bright Sun, we were bathed in eternal sunshine at all hours. Looking abaft, we could watch the Bright Sun travel in a perfect circle, rising up on our left, making its daytime arc over our side of the world, until what should have been our sunset as it dipped below our plane to the right. From there, darkness covered our world as the Bright Sun continued on its journey, lowering down on the right and arcing over the opposite plane for its own turn at daytime, until the sun set on that world and rose once again for ours.
We reached the point of transit of the Winter Wanderer on the twenty-second of Sunfall, two days before Autumn’s Eve and the time when that celestial being would cross our path. We pulled in the sails and circled back around, keeping near to the point described in the captain’s star charts. I should tell you now something I learned about the Winter Wanderer that was made known to me on this voyage that is not at all common knowledge back on land outside of the most elite academic circles. It is known to the average countryman that apart from the wandering stars, our world has five named celestial objects that grace our sky. Two of them are the Bright Sun, which shines on us by day, and its opposite the Night Wanderer, barely discernible, who follows in the same path east to west and haunts the darkness. Their course is fast and prompt, completing their full cycle every twenty-eight hours. Then there is the Dim Sun, whose light is too dull to be seen by day but gives off a reddish glow by night. This generous body is the source of all atmospheric heat, and as it makes its yearly voyage around the world it ushers in the changing of the seasons on its journey from borealis to australis. As it rises it brings Spring to the world, then as it enters its zenith it provides us with a warm Summer season. As it slowly sets in the sky, we experience the season of Sunfall, until the night of Autumn’s Eve when the Dim Sun sets and its companion, the Winter Wanderer, rises and follows the same path. We then have Autumn, Winter, and Hibern, until finally the Winter Wanderer sets and the Dim Sun rises again for us, completing the 144-day cycle of the year.
What is not explicitly known at large is the nature of these four objects. It is generally assumed that they are physical beings that orbit our world, three-dimensional orbs that have enormous mass. In truth, it seems that they exist only as a singular point of energy, one of extreme cold in this case, the others being the epitome of full, unbridled heat; shining beams of radiant light; and the absorbing curtain of pure darkness.
I leave out the fifth known celestial object here due to it differing in almost every way to the others. I of course am referring to the Stationary Moon. This unmoving body in the sky rests directly above the center of the continent and provides an accurate measure of the distance from the center of the world by calculating the angle, in relation to the viewer, at which it sits in the sky. For us on the Teapot the Stationary Moon now appeared as a small orb floating gently above the disc of the world. A notable observation here is that the opposing plane seems to lack this fifth celestial body, only able to observe the movements of the other four.
The preparations were now underway for the transit of the Winter Wanderer. The ship’s blacksmith worked tirelessly, shaping small twists of metal shards into loops, broken off from a metallic substance he called giant’s teardrop. These twists were tied onto the knots of a wide hemp net, looking just like a net that would be used for casting into a school of mackerel, only much larger and strung open wide from the far extremes of the pontoon afts. Thousands of twists did he craft, and all of us midshipmen cut our fingers to the bone affixing them on each and every crossing of the hempen fibers on that infernal web. The net was cast upon completion, and it floated dutifully behind us on that unseen sounding level.
The temperature was dropping fast as the Winter Wanderer approached, and by the time Autumn’s Eve Day arrived it was well below freezing on the ship. The blacksmith’s furnace was kept raging to warm us above deck, and the cook’s fire was kept constantly burning to keep the keels from freezing inside. The tryworks, that enormous brick chimney common to whaling vessels and used in rendering the cetuswax from the whale’s carcass, was also alight for warmth, but since we had caught no whales on our voyage, we had no excess fat or whale skin to burn like a whaling ship would usually have at this time in our expedition. The tryworks, cook’s oven, and forge, were thus all burning precious scraps of lumber, spare planks, and whatever else the captain felt we could afford to chop into kindling. We had long since run out of proper logs for the cook’s fire, and I mourned the loss of hot meals for the return voyage.
The time came to position ourselves at the point of intercept. The Winter Wanderer, as I have previously described, is but a point in space, albeit a fiercely powerful one, and thus will pass neatly through whatever mass is in its path. The danger lay in the possibility of it passing through the ship should we not be in the right position. We were called to bring the ship about in a final placement, but the winds had begun raging in a fierce squall, coming from directly above us and beating down as it blew by on below. The net, mostly held in place by the gravitational plane, was now flapping wildly under us due to the fierce winds. Myself and another oarsman were unlucky enough to be called upon to add extra ballast to the net. A harness was tied around our waists and secured to the net with moveable carabiners to let us safely float out into the air and traverse to the far corners of the webbing. An anchor from two of the small whaleboats were then tied onto each of us, and in a very unintuitive manner, their weight actually helped keep us steady as we drifted out to the far ends of that peculiar hemp contrivance. It took around an hour of climbing across the net to get to the far corner, tie up my anchor, and shimmy back to the ship. The maneuver seemed to do the trick, and the net held fast once again in the ripping gale.
4
The hour of transit had arrived. A plume of cloud could be seen far below us, rapidly advancing upward toward our position. The wind was now howling straight down, and it seemed as though we were going to be smashed between two wild forces. The crew was on edge like sheep before a thunderstorm, myself included, and were it not for the unshakeable nerve of Rabby and those enigmatic companions of his, I’m sure we all would have flown straight away out of that path of impending peril.
Keeping the ship steady was a challenge. The lack of water resistance, once in our favor when spanning such an enormous distance in so short a time, was now against us as we were pushed around mercilessly by those tormenting gales. Right as the Winter Wanderer approached, the winds increased in strength by an order of magnitude and our ship was nearly blown down under the sounding line as it fought against the pummeling air pressure. We only had our topside sails unfurled at this point, and just the two mainsails for stability to try to keep us steady in the right position. Even so, the wind kept pushing us dangerously in reverse, so that the ship itself would get perilously close to the point of transit, threatening us with who knows what sort of fate should we be caught in the path.
The wind changed in an instant. The plume of cloud that was racing for us met up with the bottom of the ship and blew us almost fully over as a swirling vortex of snow and ice whipped around us and lashed at our rigging, tearing the port mainsail and tying the flailing net behind us into a twisted tangle of knots. Anything that wasn’t lashed down spilled overboard, although the unsinking flotsam kept mockingly near to us.
The wind settled down shortly after. We were nestled into a sort of freezing fog, with a shimmering, silvery glint coating nearly every surface. Upon inspection, the silvery coating was not in fact an icy substance, but rather a burnishing of soft metal coating the entire ship. While a peculiar phenomenon in itself, it seemed that the insides of the ship which were unexposed to the forces of nature outside were also covered in the silvery sheen, and even, we later noticed, the insides of barrels that were fully sealed against the elements. This strange metal (the name of which, I later learned, was mothersilver) seemed to have precipitated out of every surface and substance during the transit, even showing itself in small quantities in our fingernails and hair. The ship and crew were as a galvanized menagerie of sculptures, brilliant in the bright white fog, radiantly sparkling as if to herald our triumph over the cosmic forces.
I now come to the most bizarre and truly unbelievable portion of this whole experience. It took a while for me to realize that the change in my body was more than superficial. Perhaps some of that expelled mothersilver found its way into my very core as it found its way into the sealed barrels below. However it came about, I first became aware of a feeling of intense vigor, akin to inhaling a strong drug or quaffing a potent liquor. I felt filled with vitality, and my movements seemed to flow quicker than my muscles meant for them to. It seemed that all of us onboard the Teapot shared the same feeling, for we all started jumping and whirling in strange, overly athletic fashions. The extent of our vigor was constantly being tested by the crew, until we realized we could jump so high and so skillfully that we could vault up over the yard arms and alight gracefully atop the mastheads. Some of us, myself included, found that while leaping aloft, we could alter our course or even pause in mid air and hover a bit. What a gay time we all had, filled with both the relief of escaping a disastrous fate and the rush of the heightened physical abilities we now possessed.
Captain Rabby now reappeared from below and addressed us all. “My boys, a fine job we’ve done! Well executed, all! We made the transit and we lived to see it through. I see you have begun to enjoy your new abilities. They will wear off, to be sure, but by all means enjoy them for now. You have come face to face with death and emerged the victors, and now we have been rewarded handsomely. Look around you at the ship. See how it shines like a beacon in the mist? That is the signature of the Winter Wanderer; we are signed and sealed as proven champions in the face of cosmic peril. And more! The mothersilver within you is no doubt enhancing your actions as it is my own. I clearly see you trialing your queer new abilities. Know this, it is not an enhancement of your body that you now experience, but truly an enhancement of your mind. Reach out beyond yourselves and touch something with your thoughts. You will see how far your powers will serve you.”
And with that he took off his hat and held it high, and then letting go, made the hat hover before him as though it were resting on an invisible hook. He gave a slight gesture of his hand and the hat rose straight up into the air, whirled around the masts in several figure-eights, then set back down neatly on his head.
We were agog at what we had just seen. We stood gaping for a moment, then erupted at once, each trying to find loose items to ambulate with our thoughts. It didn’t take us long to learn, and soon enough we were sending all manner of items through the air, including ourselves and each other. The flotsam was all duly recovered, and thrown about all over again. We made a right mess of things in our revelry, and only too soon we were called upon to cease and begin tidying up the ship in preparation for our departure back to land.
Once the ship was uncluttered, we got to work repairing the sails and other mangled casualties from the recent gale. The bitter cold cut to our very cores, but our new mental abilities more than made up for the stiffness in our hands and bodies. We could use tools without holding them, and so kept our fingers tightly wrapped inside our cloaks for warmth. Mounting the masts to repair the rigging was inconsequential, simply hovering up to the mastheads to conduct our repairs.
When the ship was back in shape, we began preparations for hauling in the wide net that was still floating behind us, although much more calmly now than before. The cooper’s mad collection of barrels were all brought out on deck, and then when the area was ready, the crew was sent as a body to fly out and retrieve the enormous net and contents. We encircled the net at regular intervals, and all of us both pulling and using our minds to guide it in, managed to easily and gracefully land the net on the top deck in a neat pile. Then came the task of removing the contents of the net. I mentioned before of the twisted metal tied at each juncture of hempen fibers within the netting. Now this metal was glistening with all the silver radiance of our ship, and more. The mothersilver precipitated out of these metal shards in a most curious manner, leaving little spiky crystals along their surfaces. It was now our task to remove these crystalized bits of metal from the net and secure them in the empty barrels. Even with our enhanced minds on the task, it was still a grueling chore, and it took all of us several hours of monotony to finally seal that final barrel.
An observation we made as we worked was the discrepancy between the metal crystals at different positions in the net. It seemed there was a spot toward one side of the net where the spikes on the metal pieces had grown larger and more pronounced, presumably where the actual transit of the Winter Wanderer had taken place. Further into this area, in a perfect circle around two yards in diameter, the crystals were so large that the shards were trapped in fist-sized balls of metal spikes. It looked as though we had caught a haul of giant glinting sea urchins.
This was the grand prize the captain was after. Referred to by himself and the Prodkin as “sharpsilver,” these spiny, silvery clumps were very closely monitored as we carefully detangled them from the netting and put them in special chests. I recall the insistence of those mysterious task masters that none of us should lay our hands or any parts of our bodies on the spikes of the sharpsilver, and only to use our minds to free the prickly stones from the net. We were all too happy to oblige, not wanting to be lanced by those thin, protruding needles. The Prodkin were quick to lock the chests and ferret them away into the captain’s cabin upon our completion.
5
Now that the harvest was over, the order was given to promptly set sail for home. With the Winter Wanderer high above us, we were now firmly into the season of Autumn. The traditional whaling season ends with the last boats pulling into the harbor at the tail end of Sunfall in order to allow for enough time to unload their deep holds and then sail further australwise to the Bay of Tittin in Eeod where the sea stays free of ice year round. As it was, we were looking at a journey of at least thirty days, which would see us returning home to Mahtmouth in the dead of Winter, far after the coast of Merengia starts freezing over. The anxiety we all felt on our way out past the edge of the sea was now creeping back into our minds at the possibility of becoming ice-locked out of our port-of-call until Spring. Our rations were already getting dangerously low, and pushing our bodies to their limits with mothersilver had only made our appetites grow exceedingly larger.
Fortunately, the wind had shifted with the season and was now blowing us toward land, although still in an upwardly direction. The intense fog still persisted all around us, so a magnetic compass was brought out and placed before the helm to aid in our navigation. The compass needle was ever-trained upon the center of the continent, owing to some sort of magnetism of the land, and so we slipped through that cloudy curtain with confidence. Our heading was angled toward the western shore in order to skirt the Windward Sea and use the open air to travel faster for a longer stretch. I assumed that we would then cut east after a time to take the shortest route over water back to Merengia.
Our mental abilities had started to wane as the captain had predicted. We all felt a distinct lessening of our capacities as soon as that last chest of sharpsilver was sealed and removed below decks, and then over the following days we lost our ability to manipulate objects, and finally ourselves, as I presume the last of the mothersilver metabolized from our bodies. Oh, the aches and pains we now suffered! It hadn’t taken long to become accustomed to supernatural mobility, and now that it was gone, our normal labors seemed twice as difficult. The silvery sheen in my hair remained after the effects of the mothersilver had gone, although it disappeared entirely out of many of the other hands. I noticed, too, whilst using the forecastle mirror during a shave, that my eyes—having been my whole life a nut brown color—had now adopted a curiously bright lavender-colored ring around my irises.
We were a week into our return journey when Rabby came on deck to address us once again. He was flanked by two of the Prodkin, who seemed to be sizing up the crew as we assembled. All of us midshipmen were called to gather in the midbow around the foremast. The mates and the tradesmen were all present as well, arcing around us so that we were encircled save for the sea at our backs.
The captain spoke from atop a crate afore the main mast: “My fellow lords! It pleasures me to be in the company of such wealthy men as yourselves. The balance of power will shift in our favor the moment we step on shore, for we are now the richest men in all the world!”
The crew responded heartily. I was taken up by the captain’s address, to be sure, and all of us standing on deck were struck with foolish grins as he continued.
“Aboard our ship lies the most lucrative cargo ever carried. Half its value would buy us our own kingdom, should we choose it. Our ship’s generous commissioners have secured a market for our hard-won prize, and we shall all live out our days as princes once our work is through. Be it known, however, there is still much work to do. Our illicit cargo will not be permitted to land at any port, and for good reason! With just a handful of sharpsilver, we hold the power to rout the mightiest armies and to topple the kingdoms who send them against us. To be sure, those in power will not allow us to upset their comfortable status. We must be cunning, and fight for our futures when the time comes. Our chief advantage is the veil of secrecy within which we sail. No one yet suspects our triumphant return to land, and once we have shown our hand it will be too late to stop us. In the name of the great old one, Carnissus the Wise, and in the name of our new Prodkin masters, we shall conquer the world!”
The crew was enthralled by Rabby’s speech. A strong sense of crewmanship surged about us, as we were made to imagine ourselves standing together, pitted against the common foe of the entire world. A veritable feeling of dread was nevertheless percolating through my psyche as the portrait of the future which the captain now painted seemed darkened and fraught with uncertainty and peril.
The captain now turned away from us hands and addressed the tradesmen. “We are sailing now, not toward the icy Windward Sea, but to Eeod, where we will meet with our commissioners and unload our cargo in secret. Much will be expected of you all, including taking arms against those that will surely oppose our rise to power. Sacrifices must be made. In the end, we will live handsomely while serving our new masters, and you will all be rewarded for your loyalty.”
A dark smile crossed over Rabby’s face. “Gentlemen, the time we have previously discussed is upon us. Those of you who have taken the oaths and sworn your allegiance to the Prodkin—you know who you are—show me now, in your first display of loyalty to your new masters: tie up the silver-haired Merengians and lock them up in the brig. The rest of them, cast off the ship into the open air. On with you!”
We were pounced upon in an instant. I was badly beaten by the mob of sailors taking advantage of their first opportunity to prove their loyalty. The six of us who had retained the silver in our hair now had our hands tied as the rest of the journeymen sailors were violently accosted and tossed overboard to float away screaming through the sky. Once the last man was over the rail, we were roughly taken into the bottom of the starboard hull and locked in a small room. We could hear the jeers and cheers of those crazed men as they paraded back up to the top deck and left us to wallow in our prison.
I was broken. We were left in that fetid cell for days, with nothing but handfuls of hardtack to keep us from starving. Foul rumors circulated wildly in our tiny prison as to the nature of our eventual fate. The prevailing notion was that we were being kept alive for some sinister purpose, or they surely would have already dispatched us overboard into that yawning expanse of a sky. I sank into thoughts of desperation, fearing for my future and for that of my family. What would become of them, or me for that matter, if I was never allowed to return home? I thought of my wife and children, nowhere to turn to in the harsh Winter, weeping and starving as they tried to surmise my fate. Curse my rotten luck, and curse this foul ship and captain! Never again would I take to the sea, I swore to myself, should e’er I be a free man again on land.
And what of the freedoms of the innocents in noble Eeod, or mighty Merengia? This dark craft that flies swiftly shoreward brings death and destruction in its holds; it sounds a knell for this age of peace. Too soon will it make berth, and to think my own labors have aided its twisted aims! Curse those strange figures, and curse their blasphemous ambitions. Theirs must be a just and painful end, and if ever a clearer purpose had fallen upon me, I have not recognized it, for now I was filled with the resolve to do something, anything, to thwart their vile doings. Though it should cost me everything, even my very life, I am already dead to my poor family in my incarceration.
The men with whom I was imprisoned came to their own similar conclusions, save one who went completely insane in the blackness of the hold. We resolved to rush the door at the first evidence of landing and scatter ashore to attempt to raise an alarm against those foul plotters. Until then, we had to save our energies and strengthen our minds for the charge. We would only succeed as one unit, and most of us would surely perish in the flight. As long as at least one of us was able to escape and reach the ears of the state, then our sacrifices would be worth the cost—anything to keep the world untouched by the suffering it was soon to see.
6
Several days crawled by, perhaps weeks. Time was not a construct in our miserable abandonment. Occasionally we would hear voices outside our cell, or feel the tug of an exceptional storm, but otherwise we were left to languish with our maddening thoughts. Then one day, all at once, the ship lurched so abruptly we were all pulled from our stupors and thrown against the wall. It felt as though we had run aground, and now that the ship had slowed it seemed to be grinding or rubbing against something. My thoughts turned to the ice floes that course around the continent this time of year. We must have entered the ocean again, and were now battling through a sea of icebergs. I shuddered to think of us striking one of those frozen obstacles, for surely we would be left to drown in our squalid prison should the ice breach our hull and send the ship under.
We all suppressed a mild panic as we put our ears to the door and strained for some clue toward the fate of the ship. Presently we heard feverish yelling coming from above, as if the crew were fighting for their lives against some common foe. A renewed surge of fear coursed through me, for surely the fate of the ship was balanced on the ability of the crew to navigate safely through the treacherous ice and best this tribulation.
It must have only been a few minutes, but it seemed we were listening for an hour or so. All too soon our worst fears began to materialize as a trickle of water started running underneath the door. We all looked through the darkness at each other, and knew that the only way we would survive the day was to break out of the cell. Immediately we started kicking and throwing our shoulders against the locked portal, but the boards didn’t so much as creak. We became increasingly panicked as the trickle of water turned into a current passing into our little room. We began running at the door and taking flying leaps to break free, but to no avail. The ship started to list to port, lifting our own starboard pontoon up and out of the sea, causing the water in our enclosure to rush back toward the door and disappear under the crack from whence it had come.
We hardly rejoiced, for while this bought us time, it signaled worse news in the very near future. With the floor now sloping sharply toward the door, we took advantage of our high ground and began our onslaught with renewed vigor. We had just started seeing signs of stress on the door jam when a great cracking noise reverberated throughout the hull. The ship shook violently and we were all knocked down to the floor, then were tossed about again as the ship tipped nearly on her side and then smack down level again. Water started rushing into our cell once more, and we then began listing to starboard, allowing the pool to collect deeply inside our living tomb. We were no longer able to give the door a proper bombardment and so half-floated—some of us in hysterics, others in a daze—anticipating our approaching end.
Salvation for us came at the expense of the ship. Another mighty cracking was felt throughout the hull, this time buckling the floorboards and inner wall of our room. Water flowed rapidly out through the splintered planks, and we could see light streaming in through a few cracks by the door. We hurried to take advantage of our chance and began pulling at the boards, until one spot was ripped out in a large enough hole for us all to squeeze through and escape our watery prison.
We found ourselves alone below decks. The earlier commotion was still playing out above, and knowing the ship was not much longer for the world, we whispered a hurried strategy to each other planning our next course of action. If we were indeed sinking, we would need an escape off the ship. The four whaling boats would most likely be taken by the rest of the crew, and there would be no chance that they would let us ride to safety with them. However, in the dangerous frozen waters teeming with icebergs, the only way to avoid perishing in the sea would be to have a proper boat. We decided the only option was to run on deck, swarm the nearest whaling boat, and fight for our escape against the other crew members. If we took them by surprise, we might just be able to win the boat and lower away before anyone could stop us.
We crept up the stairs until we were just below the level of the deck. From here we still couldn’t see the commotion, but the sounds we heard were quite worrisome. Orders were being shouted by the captain, while screaming and yelling of all sorts were coming from the rattled crew. Loud crashing and the breaking of wood could be heard over it all, and rumbling underneath was a new sound, a low, slow moaning. We agreed we couldn’t waste any time, so we worked up the nerve and darted up out of the holds onto the starboard deck.
What we saw made us all stop dead in our tracks. The Prodkin were in a pitched battle with what looked like the sea itself, as thick waves of deep blue spiraled up over the decks and coiled themselves around the bows and masts. Harpoons and marlinspikes were being thrust at massive twisting arms by the crew, though they seemed to have little effect; it appeared that the bluish substance could and did absorb the implements and even the sailors who used them. One of the whaling boats had also already been absorbed by the gelatinous, translucent limbs. Two of the other boats, we now noticed, were levitating about in the air as the Prodkin rode inside whilst holding large sharpsilver stones in each hand. Some of the crew rode inside each vessel, pummeling the shimmering tentacles from above with all manner of objects. The captain himself stood atop the midbow, holding his own sharpsilver stones and gesturing wildly with his arms. We noticed right away what he was manipulating with his mind, for right above him was the entire length of the foremast itself, ripped from the ship and now being used as a giant lance against the undulating sea menace. The twisting, watery arms seemed to take offense to the captain’s piercings, and reached up and encircled the mast, fully absorbing it inside itself in an instant.
We all scurried back below deck. We could scarce believe what we had just witnessed, all of us in silent shock. Presently one of our number spoke. “You know what that was, then, don’t you? What the old sailors spoke of before? With a twisting body that mimics the waves, and engulfs all manner of ships and creatures with its faceless corpse? That was no doubt the horror of the outer sea, the bane of the deep—the dreaded waterwyrm!”
I didn’t want to believe it, but the thought had already crossed my mind. Far more treacherous than an unthinking ice floe, we now stood to become nourishment for this strange, unfeeling terror. Our only hope now was to grab that final whaling boat and escape together while the Prodkin and the monster were distracted with each other. We all conferred and resolved to go through with our plan. Crouching near the bottom of the stairs, we readied ourselves for our reemergence and hopeful escape.
A shudder rocked through the ship, and once again we listed, to the aft this time. We were thrown against the door of the captain’s quarters, and as we lay pinned beneath each other against the wall, we could hear smashing inside the room beyond. The door buckled off its latch and we were thrown through the threshold of the captain’s study. As the ship righted itself once more, we stood and felt an invigoration coursing through our bodies. The feeling was instantly recognisable, identical to the one from our brush with the Winter Wanderer. We looked about the cabin and saw the large chests of sharpsilver, one of which had rolled around and broken open, spilling its spiked metallic prizes all over the floor. We all looked at each other in a knowing glance, then all at once ran toward the pieces and carefully picked up the sharpsilver with our bare hands.
The rush of power I felt was unlike anything I had previously experienced with the mothersilver. I felt instantly connected with every minute object around me, and a lightness filled my body such as it felt I only needed to think my actions instead of physically performing them.
Quickly gathering up as much sharpsilver as we could manage, we then raced out of the cabin and up the stairs to the deck. The battle was still raging, so we hurried on toward the last remaining whaling boat and started unlashing it to lower into the water. These moments felt like a dream to me, having to simply think of what needed doing and watching it as it unfolded before me.
There was a mighty crash as the two pontoon hulls of the Teapot were twisted in different directions, and a splintering rift appeared in the center of the midbow and tore on through the main deck as the ship was ripped in twain. The portside hull began to be engulfed by the waterwyrm as the hull we stood upon started rolling to the side, threatening to toss us into the sea.
We finished our hasty preparations and jumped into the boat just as the listing keel was stove in by the flailing arms of that gelatinous beast. We pushed off and sailed through the air not a moment too soon, and with our combined mental focus, the six of us flew in our escape vessel, hovering a few feet above the water toward land and safety.
Until, that is, we lurched to a halt and started moving backward. Looking behind us, we saw another whaling boat approaching through the air, with a furious Captain Rabby bearing down upon us. I could feel the pull of his rage on my very bones, and braced myself to avoid tumbling out of our struggling craft. One of our number did get ejected, falling overboard into the sea to be swallowed by the chopping waves.
Our boat drifted ever closer to that mad sharpsilver wielder. We renewed our mental focus and strained with all our thoughts to free ourselves from his telekinetic grip. Our boat warped and buckled under the psychic tug-of-war we now waged, and presently our craft split in two, with one oarsman clinging to the aft portion and the other three of us on the fore piece. Several smaller chunks of boat crumbled off our rendered vessel, and though we were broken in pieces, we remained stationary in the air, locked in a battle of minds while surrounded by the suspended, splintered boards.
The cache of sharpsilver we had stowed away on our boat was now exposed, and from the broken edge the spiky pieces started tumbling one by one off the fore segment into the water below. The Captain saw this happen and flew into a panicked rage, releasing the pieces of our boat and summoning the sharpsilver to himself. We fell down into the water, the aft portion sinking immediately along with its rider, and our fore portion quickly taking on water.
I held the last two remaining sharpsilver stones in my hand, and refocusing my thoughts, I started to raise our crumbling raft out of the sea. Rabby, who had now finished securing all the fallen sharpsilver stones onto his craft, turned his attention back to us once more. The broken boards and splintered wood floating in the water all around us were lifted into the air, and with a dastardly grin he made the debris point toward us and swiftly jet through the air and stick us like a volley of arrows. The man on my left was hit the worst and died almost instantly. I took several pieces to the leg and arm on my left side, causing me to drop the stone in my left hand. The man on my right, known to me as Jaron, was knocked clean out of the boat by the pummeling boards.
Filled with stinging pain, I no longer had the will to keep the boat afloat in the air. I fell to the sea once more, as I saw the sharpsilver stone I dropped rise up into the air and slowly drift toward the Captain’s boat, which was now hovering just a few yards in front of me. With all my remaining focus, and seeming to channel my own rage, I pulled on the escaping stone while squeezing the last remaining stone in my hand, piercing my own flesh. Not wanting to give in or admit defeat, I strained my mind and my body to the limit, boards still sticking from my side and blood coursing down my fingers.
He pulled much more strongly than I, and the stone drew ever closer to his outstretched hand. I released my mental hold on the stone as I collapsed in exhaustion, and I heard him cackle as the stone streaked through the air toward him. With my last ounce of strength I cursed the Captain as I let out a wave of forceful anger toward him. My bowshock of rage caught the airborne sharpsilver stone in mid flight and pushed it suddenly much faster, catching Rabby off guard as it sped toward him and caught him square in the throat. He gargled with a shocked expression as he tumbled backwards off his craft into the sea and disappeared beneath the waves.
The boat that was until now my nemesis fell slowly into the water. I drew it toward my sinking pile of boards and painfully boarded it, then propelled myself away from the carnage of the waterwyrm. I saw my last compatriot, Jaron, flailing in the water, and so pulled up beside him and helped him aboard. He and I sped away as the last of the Teapot was pulled underwater by a horrifying glob of blue.
7
I made it home to my family eventually, though much later than I was planning. I didn’t have anything in the way of payment to show for my three seasons of absence, though I did make off with the collection of sharpsilver stones that were aboard the whaling boat in which we rode back to shore. Jaron and I agreed to split the stones equally and hide them away from the world to prevent those dark cultists from ever laying their hands upon them. While I made good on our promise, I certainly wasn’t above using the stones from time to time to craft a better life for my family and I, especially since I lost out on the wages I was expecting. With my thoughts I built several additions to our house, and had no trouble hunting for game to feed us through Winter. After a few years, once we reached a modest level of comfort, I did indeed seal up the stones in the cellar of my house. There they sit to this day, safe from the treacherous aims of those that desire their power for themselves.
That should have been the end of the story. Surely I would never have thought to pen this narrative if I felt there was nothing to come of that sinister cache below my floorboards. As it was, Jaron, with whom I kept in regular correspondence, started hinting to me that he felt as though he was being watched around his estate, with evidence that there had been some attempts to break into one of his outbuildings where he kept his portion of the sharpsilver. He became increasingly paranoid, frequently moving the location of his stash and shoring up his household defenses. I offered to keep the stones safe for him but he balked at the idea. Shortly after that, I ceased receiving any communication from him whatsoever. I thought he might have taken offense to my offer of aid, so after a few weeks I took a trip to visit him to see if I could mend our friendship and assist in calming his nerves about the whole matter. What met me upon my arrival was not altogether terrifying, but the implications were too horrible to consider: my friend was absent without a trace, and upon inspection of the property, I discovered the many hiding places of his stash of sharpsilver all broken open, with no stones to be found anywhere.
I hurried home to secure my own hoard, as well as to ensure the safety of my house and family. All the while I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed by some dark person or persons, trailing me back to my house. Upon my arrival I quickly barricaded the place, then ran to the cellar to confirm the security of the sharpsilver stones. Everything seemed to be in order, so I shut the stones up again, save for one which I kept on my person to defend my home from any sort of invasion.
This was two days ago. I have since discovered evidence that persons unknown have been making exploratory casings of my property, and on one occasion tried my doors in the dead of night. I am writing this account to send out into the world on the chance that something sinister does in fact happen to me and my family and the sharpsilver falls into the wrong hands. As it is, the amount of sharpsilver stolen from Jaron’s estate is more than enough to wreak havoc throughout the world. I shudder to think what plots those foul people are designing at this very moment, most assuredly plots of terror and cruelty. Citizens of Merengia be warned! Let all the world be on guard! For now on this third night, I hear the slinking of strangers once again. They file up to my porch with malicious intent and blasphemous aims. How they assault my door! Fly, oh manuscript; may you reach the eyes of the authorities unmolested, and may your words be heeded and acted upon. My fate has come home, and yours will soon follow. Quickly now—the window, the window!
