Page 20 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

The bells continued to ring, somehow louder, and he ran off.

The ship lurched hard to the right. Jina and I grabbed the table, shells sliding, scattering. The porridge bowls followed. Above us the deck continued to erupt. Boots running, ropes snapping, Russo’s voice cutting through, orders lost in the roar of water and the groan of wood bending under pressure.

I picked up my dagger and said, “I change my mind. You’re not staying here. It’s our chance to escape.”

It was the craziest plan, but I’d rather die escaping than in the hands of that captain.

“What if the sea monster?” Jina swallowed.

“Sea monsters don’t exist.” I lurched, slamming into Jina against the wall. “Shit. Sorry.”

“We don’t know how to swim.”

I recalled what happened when we were tossed into the sea. Mac knew more than he shared.

“Yes, we do,” I said with conviction. “We were safe inside the water until the net came for us. The water is the only place we’re safe until we find land.”

I couldn’t think too much or I would stand down. I had to make a decision since Jina was always indecisive. Someone had to look out for us.

I grabbed her hand and rushed up the stairs. In the chaos, they had failed to lock the door to the mid-deck.

The ship banked hard and we caught each other. Water began to seep down the floor we just came from. The ship rocked violently from side to side. The wind found the ship all at once, pressing against the hull like something alive and furious.

“This way.” I led Jina toward the side, the area empty of the crew.

“Oclego!” a crew member shouted.

The word meant nothing to me but the terror behind it did.

I looked up at the sky. No clouds. No lightning. No rain. But the gale was cold and sharp. Not a storm for sure.

The ship lurched again, harder this time, not sideways but up, lifted from below, the hull groaning with the pressure of something underneath it. I grabbed the railing and looked over the edge, Jina doing the same. A wave crashed over the bow without warning, hitting and soaking us before we could brace. I gasped from the shock of the impact and held on.

Something the size of the ship moved about the surface.

Chains clanked and reeled somewhere above, a mechanical grinding that shook the upper deck, and then a long spear shot from the bow with a sound like a crack of thunder, disappearing into the churning water below.

A beat of silence.

“We missed!” someone shouted.

“Again!” I heard Russo’s voice somewhere from the upper deck.

Something inside the wave rose. It came up slowly at first, the way a nightmare arrives, giving you just enough time to understand what you’re seeing before it’s too late to look away.

This had to be a dream. Because that creature couldn’t be real.

“There it is!” Someone shouted. “Fire the arrow!”

But it was real.

The oclego, one of the crew members had called it, was the size of the ship.

“Holy gods,” I murmured.

Eight arms spread from a body as wide as the hull, each one thick as a mast, the skin a deep bruised purple that shifted to black at the tips. Rows of pale suckers lined the underside of each arm, large enough to swallow a man whole.

Two dark sets of giant eyes set on me, ancient and utterly aware. One arm rose from the water and wrapped around the bow, the wood groaning and splintering beneath the grip, and the ship tilted hard to the left.