2016 words

Red and Black.

There used to be others, I heard. Lights we can't imagine because we've never seen any other than Red and Black. Red like the vastness of the sky above, Black like the roiling waves we ride. Red like the lightnings that power our vessel, Black like my drowned love's eyes.

The Cap shrieked her mourning call, the one we'd all been waiting for and dreading. Her long howl was our final warning, low electric current turning into no electric current, low hope to none. The Ruxandra flickered, her bright red lights dimming to crimson before brightening up again for one final time. Then, she went black. Whatever was left of her spark was gathered to the emergency pack at the back, the engine rumbling an emptier tune than before, trundling out in coughs and gasps.

"Alive! Sail up!" the Cap cried. She had her lens aimed at the horizon, a line of energy so dense it was death to the eyes. That was the trade all Captains made; see the horizon, see nothing else. I was there for everything else.

"You heard'er! Sail up! Heave!" I shouted, and we pulled together as one body. I didn't dare ask the Cap if we heaved because she'd seen a flicker of power we could use to fill our tanks, or just to make sure death found us with busy hands.

I didn't need to; by the third heave, I felt it in the air. A crackle, and the taste of blood. A silent sound that made the insides of my ears itch. The blackwater going still, churning into frothy waves further away, towards where surely, surely a Behemoth's heads and tails boiled the swell, its backs glistening with the electricity we starved for. Soon, the cracks followed, big peals of red power ripping through the crimson sky, distant for now but it wouldn't be long before they'd fry our eardrums. The sail was up, we stuffed hide rags in our ears and mouths to keep pressure against the inevitable flow of blood, and the chase was on.

Cap's eye never left the horizon. Mine never left the vessel. I barked, and our gunners loaded the heavy shot into the mounted harpoons, sharp tips to pierce a leathery black hide, coils of cable behind them to suck red sparks into our tanks. The fasteners pulled every rope and strap tight, secured every scrap of bone plank, jammed every door open so they wouldn't blow out with the surge of power and throw us into the spray. I yelled and pointed, and a gunner ran with a strip of oiled leather to where a piece of exposed cable would likely fry our frail human meat to jerky if we touched against it at the wrong time—if we committed a minor miracle and speared the Behemoth. I barked, and we were as ready as anyone ever was, which meant we were ready to die.

And in that silent moment between the fear and awe of flickering into nothingness, and the fear and awe of the creature before us, I looked down into the waters and saw, as I always did, Althea. Her skin was so drained of color as to be almost the pale red at the core of lightning, radiant and bright. Her black lips parted, and she said, "let me go", and the waves were her voice box, the vessel she chose to leave in.

The Rux jerked right over her image, nearly swinging me overboard but for my clenched, pale fist on the starside rail. Althea dipped below the ink; it had only been a moment's vision, but cold sweat pooled in all the valleys of my coiled body. Cap called for another four-point shift darkside and the lythe vessel obeyed, and I finally got a good look at what was coming for us, churning the water, easily four times as fast as the Ruxandra and easily forty times as large. Three long, slender heads rose above the water, the rest blending with the dark mess below. Our only sure sign of where the creature began and where it ended were the zaps of incandescent red flowing front to back, front to back, hypnotic and relentless. A good, rich harvest. Life for all of us for seasons, maybe longer.

A peal of lightning closed all our eyes, and when I opened mine again, the scar of it crisscrossed my vision.

"I'm in the dark!" Cap warned me. That was it, the beast had drawn too close, and Cap could guide us no longer. It was on me now; she pushed off to the back where she lashed herself to the mast and I took her place at the front.

"Arm the shooters!" I called, and heard it called back four times. Another ten breaths and we'd stop hearing anything at all, maybe twenty and we'd be on top of the beast. The crew moved with drilled perfection, but there was no such thing as order in the face of chaos. Blasts of power crossed the sky above us again, and again, and again, and the vessel bounced higher and lower with every wave. I let go of the railing I'd been hanging onto and used the ship's upward motion to throw myself to the back and grab a new support just in time to be lifted from my feet again. Ten breaths, and was it water dripping from my ear, or blood? Five, and I raised one hand to call the gunners to the ready, my mouth sealed shut from the air's trembling hum. Three, and—

—like a slick slurp on a fish's guts, the ocean swallowed the creature whole. Between one breath and the next, it'd gone below the ship, and though the water still roiled, the air calmed as soon as the Behemoth went under.

Boots clattered on the bone deck where we rushed to peer over the rails. Deep below us, disappearing rapidly into the dark, a vast labyrinth of lights was born, then died, only to be born again a moment later. There was no other hint of the hidden creature, no outline to trace but that eternal black on black, no movement, not even any sound. Just the lights growing, then dimming, a little further down into the abyss each time.

I'd often wondered what the world would be like if we could sink into the depths and draw our power directly from wherever spawned these creatures, whatever wells they drank from. Chase them to their beds, stir them in their sleep. I dreamed that maybe in some world, Althea and all those gone down into the water like her, still lived below and searched for answers for us. Searched for more of a future for humanity, for something other than this.

But they weren't, and she hadn't. She was the absence of power, now. She was the opposite of fuel. She was the bottomless whirlpool that sucked at all my body's currents, dragging them back every waking moment. Whatever I recovered during the day, she pulled back away at night.

"Call her!" Cap croaked, and for a moment I thought she meant Althea. "Call her while she can still hear you, or are you asleep?" She yelled, and she meant the other beast in the water. "Are you ready to lie down and sleep forever?"

We stood to attention, and the others looked to me for guidance. A choice that was barely a choice, either die cold in the dark and deathly silence, or call the devil to throw you a funeral. Somewhere on the frightening edge of my vision, Althea floated peacefully in a merciless slumber that called to me. Her pale arm mocked and beckoned. She would always be there. All directions would lead to her, eventually.

I fell to my knee and put my fist to the flat, near-colorless hull, our home made of clean bone plates interlocked with flexible cartilage ribs. My crew all followed. The call was a rhythm that every person on any stretch of darkwaters must have known; and if there was such a place where people didn't, I couldn't imagine it. If there was a place where babies weren't rocked to this call, they had no idea how lucky they were.

Thun-stop, thun-stop. Thun-thun-thun-stop, thun-stop.

The heartbeat of a Behemoth.

Thun-stop, thun-stop. Thun-thun-thun-stop, thun-stop.

All of us, in unison.

Thun-stop, thun-stop. Thun-thun-thun-stop, thun-stop.

Nothing, at first. Then, a rumble.

Thun-stop, thun-stop.

A great, bubbling boil.

Thun-thun-thun-stop, thun-stop.

Sparks leaped out of the water and the Rux vibrated so hard my teeth felt soft. I raised my hand to give the signal, but all my crew were mesmerized, still on hands and knees, some still pounding the desperate beat. Even as I yelled them to action, I knew there was no time, and reached for the nearest mounted gun myself.

The Ruxandra shook and groaned, sliding hard darkside as the beast broke water beneath us, taking a chunk of hull with her. I aimed, prayed, pulled, fired, and the shot went so wide I laughed a ridiculous laugh into the roaring wind. A peal of lightning broke the crew's stun, but it broke most of them right into chaos and panic. One gunner, fleeter than the rest, was by my side in an instant and fired another shot, this one connecting with the back end of something like a fin and bouncing off into the water. Another lightning strike hit the mast and split it wide open with a deafening crack, Cap a bloodied cinder still tied to its base. The top half of the mast rocked and crashed onto the fourth harpoon, leaving us with one.

I reached for it, but the game was lost before my fingers ever brushed against the fuse. Likely filled with rage at our audacity, the Behemoth flailed, slapping the Rux across the hull with a head—or a tail?—some slick, black appendage that ended in death. With remorseless, thoughtless, pure reaction.

We blew apart into shreds so fast that it was like the vessel had always held on by nothing but hope. I swallowed a lungful of black and held onto a piece of board and muttered prayers to Gods whose names I no longer even remembered, until eventually, a long time later, there were no more screams, and no more zaps, and the water calmed.

And I floated on my back, heart to the life-giving, ever-darkening crimson above me, slowly sinking down into the black, Althea's cold hand holding mine.

I turned my head to see her more clearly, the perfect beautiful shape of the one who gave up and judged me for not giving up with her. The way she growled, "let me go, then," when I asked her to wait a little longer, to sail a little further. My high-contrast phantasm, skin clear and colorless, inky hair melting into the water, charcoal eyes burning through me. Only the inside of her mouth, when she opened it to growl her goodbye again, shone bright electric red, like life itself rode her corpse like a ship.

I choked a sob and pulled more water into my lungs, but the shock of not breathing made my body recoil and flail by instinct, throwing my bone plank wide, kicking through my vision of Althea. Suddenly, my hand was empty and only water-cold, not death-cold. Suddenly, I saw through to what lay behind her.

All roads would lead to her, eventually, but not now.

Now, an almost-impossible swim away, a shape I could barely make out broke the horizon. Broad and flat, it stretched side to side almost as far as my vision reached if I stared at its middle. Towers and spires and spokes and masts rose to the sky, and most divinely, they were riddled with strands of bright electric red hope.

A city, and power. And only an almost-impossible swim away. And me, paddling towards it with the hollow ghosts of Althea and my Captain and a dozen crew at my back.

© 2025 Alex Woodroe