Krakens Attack at Dawn

[Author's Note: This is another writing exercise from Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook. The exercise was to consider the same story from different points in time. After writing my notes and some ideas for temporal placement, I enjoyed all of the scenarios, so I wrote them into a single story.]

The Night Before

Aboard the HMS Water Skunk, First Mate Skipper found the words first, and he immediately sought out Captain Blythe to show him. The captain lifted his eyepatch so as to see the scrawled message as best as possible. His mouth moved as he read the words.

“Krakens Attack at Dawn,” he said to Skipper when they were back in the captain’s quarters. “What do you suppose it means?” 

Akimobshanks meowed from his perch on the tabletop. 

“Indeed,” said Skipper. “It is an omen to be sure.”

“Yes, yes,” said Blythe. “But who wrote it?”

“Someone, I presume,” said Skipper. “Or else it might not have been written.”

“You mean the message may have just appeared, as if by bedeviltry?”

“No, Captain,” said Skipper. “I mean, if nobody had written it, it wouldn’t be there.”

Akimboshanks meowed again. Blythe took a salted herring from his cupboard and set it down on a fine china plate. The cat began to eat the preserved fish.

“We must query the crew,” said the captain. “We must find out who wrote it, and why. And quite possibly, what it means.”

“Besides a dire warning that the krakens will attack us at dawn?”

“Yes, just in case it’s some cryptic message that means something other than what is written. I’ve seen such puzzles upon treasure maps as a secondary means of further protecting the treasure.”

“What do krakens have to do with treasure?” asked Skipper.

“That we shall find out,” said Blythe. “Unless this is one of those straightforward messages. Then we shall not find out.”

“I’ll round up the men, right away,” said Skipper. He left the quarters. When the door had closed, Blythe gave Akimoshanks a scritch behind the ears. The cat purred. After polishing his wooden leg, the captain stepped out onto the deck.

All the men were lined up in two rows, one down each side of the ship to prevent any sort of sloshing about. Skipper had them lined up alphabetically, good for him. Blythe scanned the rows with his uncovered eye. He noticed a gap where Ionas should have been.

He stepped up to the gap, looking at Imran and Ipswitch in turn. “Do either of you men know where Ionas is?”

“No sir,” they both said.

The captain turned to Skipper. “I guess we’re at a dead end,” he said.

“Perhaps not, sir,” said Skipper. “For you see, though Ionas is alphabetically between Messrs Imran and Ipswich, he shares no duties with either of them. Perhaps if we checked among those that share his duties.”

“And what were Ionas’ duties?”

Skipper checked the ship roster. “He was in charge of provisions, sir.” he said. “One of the onboard fishermen.”

“Who else might know his whereabouts?” said the captain.

Skipper checked the roster once more. “It looks like Adams and Zeno both work alongside Ionas,” he said at last.

Fortunately, the two stood on opposite sides of the ship as one another, so the journey from one to the other did not take long.

“Adams,” said Blythe. “Do you know the whereabouts of Ionas?”

“No, sir,” said Adams.

Blythe marched across the ship. “And do you, Zeno?”

“Do I what, sir?” asked Zeno. “Apologies, but I did not hear your question to Adams.”

“Oh, my apologies, I’m sure,” said Blythe. “Do you know the whereabouts of Ionas?”

“No, sir,” said Zeno.

Blythe stepped midship to meet up with Skipper. “They do not know where he is,” he said.

Skipper rubbed his chin. “Perhaps they can tell us what he’s been up to of late.”

“Good idea,” said Blythe. He marched right back to Zeno. “Tell me,” he said. “What had Ionas been up to recently?”

Zeno shrugged. “We were fishing,” he said. “He hooked a fish and pulled it from the sea. A herring, if I’m not mistaken. When he saw the fish, he blanched.”

“He scalded the fish in boiling water?” said the captain.

“No sir,” said Zeno. “He turned pale.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t ask,” said Zeno. “I just kept fishing, and he went off with the fish he caught.”

“Thank you,” said Blythe. He pivoted on his peg and marched over to Adams. “And you?”

“And me, what?” said Adams. “I didn’t hear what you asked Zeno.”

“Oh, the apologies are all mine,” said Blythe. “What had Ionas been up to prior to his disappearance.”

“I’m not sure, beyond the time he came to the salting table with a herring in his hands and looked as if he’d seen a ghost.”

The captain looked about quickly. “Do you think the ship is haunted?” he said.

“No, sir,” said Adams. “It was just an expression.”

“Oh,” said the captain. “Go on.”

“Well, I took the fish from him. It had some strange markings on one side.”

“And on the other?”

“It looked like a normal fish. He made to stop me from salting the fish.”

“What a feisty fish,” said Blythe.

“I meant Ionas,” said Adams. “But I salted the fish anyway. Then he asked if I had about me a grease pencil. I did, so I loaned it to him. Blighter never gave it back.”

“Thank you,” said Blythe. He returned to midship to meet with Skipper. “Was the message written in grease pencil?” he said.

Skipper considered this. “I believe so,” he said.

Blythe nodded before walking over to Zeno. “And what did you do with the fish?”

“What fish?” said Zeno.

“My apologies,” said Blythe. He turned and went over to Adams. “And what did you do with the fish?”

“I put it aside before the boy put it in your cupboard.”

Blythe looked up and down the row of men. He did not see the boy anywhere among their number. “Skipper!” he called. “Where is the boy? Perhaps off with Ionas, I’d imagine.”

Skipper scurried over to the Captain. “No, sir,” he said. “He’s still below deck. I only gathered the men, you see.”

“Ah,” said Blythe. “Well, fetch me the boy.”

Skipper scrambled down the hatch and hollered for the boy. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that the boy emerged. “What is it?” he said.

“Boy, said Blythe, “I’m looking for a fish.”

“Any particular one?” said the boy.

“Yes,” said the captain. “A salted herring you presumably put in my cupboard.

“Oh,” said the boy. “Was it all weird on one side?”

“Presumably,” said the captain.

“I’ll show you,” said the boy. He led them to the captain’s quarters. When Blythe and Skipper and the boy were inside, the boy opened the cupboard and looked at the fish dangling there. “Strange,” he said. “All these fish have normal fish markings.” He looked at them once more. He pointed to the gap where Ionas’ fish had been. “Where’s this one?”

As one the three looked over to Akimboshanks. The cat was cleaning his face. He noticed that he was the center of attention, so he looked up and meowed at the three. The half-eaten carcass of a fish sat beside him on the plate.

The captain approached the plate. “Was this the fish in question?” he said to the boy.

The boy nodded.

With delicate fingers, the captain flipped the fish over to its uneaten side. With a wince of pain, he noticed that the underside of the fish looked exactly as a fish should be. “Blast and drat,” he said. “Now we’ll never know why this fish made Ionas so trepid.”

“Did you ask Molly?” said the boy. “I think she might know.”

Blythe turned to Skipper. “Where is Molly?” he asked. “Perhaps she too fled with Ionas and the boy.”

“I’m still here, Captain,” said the boy.

“She’s in her quarters,” said Skipper. “Again, I only gathered the men.”

“Let’s go see her,” said Blythe. “Come on,” he led the other two out of his quarters, down into the belly of the ship, and toward Molly’s quarters. Being the only woman aboard the ship, she had her own quarters, complete with a door and no fewer than five locks.

The captain knocked at the door.

“Who is it?” said Molly.

“Captain Blythe,” said Blythe.

She unlocked the locks on the door. Blythe attempted to count them, but lost track when she opened the door a crack. “Yes, Captain?” she said. 

“May we come in?” asked Blythe.

“Who is ‘we’?” said Molly through the crack.

“Me, Skipper, and the boy,” said the captain.

“Of course,” she said. She opened the door the rest of the way, and allowed the three to enter. Akimboshanks appeared from nowhere and popped through the door before she closed it. A knife in a scabbard had been nailed beside the door. The rest of the room, though, had a decidedly feminine touch, from the furniture to the curtains, neither of which would be found in the other crew quarters.

“What can I do for you, Captain?” she said.

“We’re looking for a fish,” he said.

Skipper cleared his throat. “We found the fish, Captain.”

“Oh,” said Blythe. “The boy?”

“Right here,” said the boy.

“Ionas,” said Skipper.

“Right,” said Blythe. “We’re looking for Ionas,” he said. “Have you seen him?”

“In fact, I have,” she said. “He stumbled into the galley looking bewildered. I asked him what was wrong.”

“Did he tell you?” said the captain.

“Yes,” she said.

“And what did he tell you?”

“That he had just received a message from someone. He said their names were Bernard and Helen. He said that they would arrive in the morning, and that he figured if he swam, he’d be miles away before they arrived.”

“Did he say anything about who Bernard and Helen were?” asked the Captain.

“Not specifically,” she said. “But the way he talked about them, you’d think they were his parents.”

“Parents?” said Blythe. “But why would he write his message?”

“What message?” asked Molly.

“Krakens Attack at Dawn,” said Skipper. 

Molly looked at Skipper, then at Blythe, then at the boy. Akimboshanks hopped into her lap and she began to put him. “Do you think that Bernard and Helen are krakens?” she asked.

The captain considered this. “Molly,” he said. “How would you describe Ionas?”

“A pretty good fisherman, I’d say,” she said.

“I mean, physically?”

“Well,” she said. “He does have strange, mottled skin that seems to always be wet, and his fingers are always twisting this way and that. Besides that, I’d say he’s a pretty normal person, aside from his strange eyes.”

“Strange eyes?” asked Skipper.

“You know, not exactly human-like in their appearance.”

“What sort of -like are they?” said Blythe.

“More squid- or octopus-like,” she said. “But I just thought he had had an accident as a child.”

“I see,” said Blythe. “Well, good day,” he said, rising to his feet. He let himself out, followed by the others. After Akimboshanks darted through the closing door, he heard the indeterminate number of locks clicking into place. He kicked himself for not counting the locks on the other side of the door when he was in there.

“Easy there, Captain,” said Skipper, catching the captain as he wobbled over.

“What do you make of what she said?” said the captain.

“I think that Ionas may have been a kraken disguised as a human,” said the boy.

“I wasn’t asking you,” said the captain. “But I like your conclusion.” He turned to Skipper. “I think we should be prepared,” he said. “For the krakens attack at dawn.”

Moments Before Dawn

The men still stood upon the deck in their two neat lines, with only a gap for the missing Ionas. The night sky was clear, and if you were to look up at the stars, you could have seen the very depths of the universe, all the way back to the beginning, when everything was nothing and nothing was everything. Back then before the stuff that made us and all the things around was forged in the hearts of exploding stars, before what makes us us was just a bunch of goo that had not yet figured out how to move carbon around all on its own, before that, it was. And were any of the crewmembers staring up at that night sky, they might have felt, for just a moment, a singular unity with the entire universe, the thing of things, the origin of every atom that made their entire being and gave them whatever purpose they could scrabble up and hold onto.

They should have been looking down, though, into the water, for just as the sun peeked its luminescent face above the horizon (in actuality, a trick of forced perspective the universe keeps playing on us every day), two monolithic heads poked up from the water’s surface. Tentacles grew from the waves like kudzu, and soon enveloped the ship.

Captain Blythe stared past the tentacles and into the giant face of one of the creatures that now held the skip in its noodly appendages. The eye saw him.

“Excuse me,” said a bubble voice, for the thing’s mouth had not yet fully emerged from the waves. “We’re looking for our boy, Ionas. Have you seen him?”

“Yes,” said the captain, drawing his scabbard. “But not lately.”

With that, he lunged at the creature’s cyclopean eye.

“What are you doing?” said the creature.

After the Attack

Blythe hurt all over. He clung to an empty chest and stared at the wreckage of what was once his ship. Two almost perfect lines of the men floated in the water, save for the gap where Ionas would have been. As the water bobbed, they drifted more and more out of line.

“Captain?” said a voice from behind him. He turned and saw Skipper riding on the back of a barrel. 

“Skipper!” said the captain. “Float on over and make yourself comfortable.”

Skipper kicked with his feet, holding his arms out to provide him balance. Soon, he was beside the captain’s chest. “It appears all the men are dead,” he said when their makeshift ships bumped into one another. 

The captain sighed. “Such a shame,” he said. “Those krakens were vicious.”

“I’m not entirely sure how it started,” he said. “But the tentacles wrapping around the ship weren’t so threatening at first.”

The captain shrugged. “And I lost my best sword.”

“Did you have another?”

“No,” he said. “That’s why it was my best.”

“Look on the bright side, Captain,” said Skipper.

“What’s that?”

“You see, when something bad happens to you, the ‘bright side’ is a way to look at the benefits of what happened so it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s like...”

“I know what the ‘bright side’ means,” said Blythe. “I want to know what the bright side to my situation is.”

“Oh, apologies,” said Skipper. “The bright side is that you also lost your worst sword.”

The captain nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Hey, you too!” said another voice.

Blythe and Skipper looked over to the new voice. On an upturned table sat Molly and the boy. They were rowing with some large wooden peels as makeshift oars.

Blythe looked at Skipper. “I thought you said that everybody else was dead.”

“Just the men,” said Skipper.

“Oh.” Blythe said. He watched as Molly and the boy paddled closer. “I’m so glad someone suggested having a regular pizza night,” he said, looking at the peels. “Otherwise, they might be rowing with spoons or something.”

When the table clunked against the chest and barrel, Molly threw them a line. “Tie up,” she said. “We can use the additional buoyancy to keep our raft afloat.” She looked out across the wreckage. “Perhaps we could even scavenge enough material to make a truly seaworthy vessel and get us back to civilization.”

They worked together, and within an hour had a respectable series of floating objects.

Skipper held out a compass. “Just need to make our way toward land,” he said.

Blythe closed his eyes and sniffed the air. After a moment, he opened them again. “I hear birds,” he said, pointing in a direction. “That way.”

“Set sail for land,” said Skipper. Molly and the boy saluted him before starting to row their sea shanty town toward what they hoped would be suitable land. As they rowed, the boy said, “I do wish the cat would have made it.”

“Maybe he has,” said Molly.

In Retrospect

The man stood by the pier in the full regalia of a sea captain. His coat was buttoned to the top, practically obscuring his face, at least the part that wasn’t covered by his tricorn hat. He watched the tide rise, leaning against a cane clutched in his gloved hand as he stared out to sea through smoked glass spectacles.

Something drifted inward with each wave. It started as a dot, growing more and more. It was a plank of wood with some lump on one end. With one final wave, it bumped against the pier. The board had words, many of which had been ravaged by countless weeks at sea, others filled with seagrass and fishbones. However, there was something about the outlines of the words that made the man take a second look. He leaned over to pluck the thing out of the water. The lump shifted as he pulled the plank from the water. It landed on the ground with a quiver. The man ignored this, wiping the muck from the plank. The words Water Skunk met his strange eyes.

“Oh,” he said, dropping the bit of wood.

The matted mass grew, stretching out into the form of a very hungry looking cat.

“Akimboshanks?” said the man.

The cat looked at him and gave a dry meow. How many days had this poor creature been at sea, floating on a plank, eating whatever food swam its way. He gave the cat a quick pet with his gloved hands.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s get you a proper meal and a soft bed.” He walked in the direction of a nearby inn.

The cat gave a muffled meow. The man stopped, looking back at the creature. It held a fish in its mouth. The man reached down, and with twitching fingers plucked the fish from the cat’s mouth. He read the message scrawled on the side of the fish before dropping it. He ran off, pushing past people who stood in his way.

Once he had gone, Akimboshanks began to eat the fish. When that was done, he ambled toward the inn, finding a nice, warm fire to sit by and groom himself. After a nice rest, he would find some work, maybe as another ship’s cat. Or, perhaps, he thought as he drifted off to dreamland, he’d stay on solid ground and chase mice. Soon he was asleep and snoring.