Anchored to the ocean floor by bonds of mucilage she has secreted into the bedrock. Held there by the terrific pressures in this deepest well of the planet. Pressures caused by the crushing weight of countless fathoms of water pressing down on her.
Aroused from her benthic bedchamber, the queen of the abyssal plain is suddenly unchained as the deep ocean floor imprisoning her is riven by seismic rents.
Adrift in the still depths at the bottom of the sea, she rises!
Undergoing dramatic transformation as she passes through the ever-falling pressure. Pressure that holds her down no longer. Pressure that releases her upward toward the harsh intensity of two suns.
The creature’s enormous bulk looms progressively larger as she rises through the intermediate pressures in the mesopelagic gloom. Reaching prodigious proportions in the anemic pressure of the euphotic shallows nearer the ocean surface.
As her size balloons, her shape shifts . . . and continues to shift as her ponderous mass finds no firm purchase in her expanded casement of soft, fluid ectoplasm.
Even her vast tentacles, arms that grasped unwary creatures in an embrace of death on the abyssal plain, are losing their strength. While they still have movement, their grip is greatly weakened.
It is when she reaches the surface that the final transformation occurs. Barely visible but overwhelmingly lethal. Scorched by the suns’ caustic rays, the beast bleeds acid!
Only her tentacles remain free of the toxic sweat. No acid bleeds from their oily skin.
The creature bodily respirates the very lifeblood of her digestive tract. A loss that dooms her to slow starvation in this open, sunlit world.
But fate, in a more dire form, will shortly intervene.
∆ ∆ ∆
Rising early to begin harvesting the school of silver fish that gathered around the craft during the night, Lin-o-Peia approaches the fore hatch, lance in hand, and pulls aside its flap. She is startled by the unexpected scene that greets her.
There in the offing is a mound-shaped island stretched across what was bare, empty ocean the day before. While her heart rejoices at the sight of terra firma, there is something odd about its appearance.
It is preternaturally symmetrical and smooth. Devoid of any tree-line or other topographic feature. And its surface is oddly pale and luminescent.
It reminds her of the soft, dead tissue of the diaphanous creatures that dwelt in the lagoon at the foot of the cone-mountains.
What she cannot see are the enormous tentacles lurking beneath the waves washing up the sides of this mysterious land mass.
The creature is caught in the confluence of two currents streaming across one another. Creating a static zone of offsetting forces where they intersect.
The same forces have joined to generate a powerful, noisily sucking maelstrom. Hidden from Lin-o-Peia’s view by the enormous bulk of the titan she mistakes for land.
While she cannot see it, her sisters are soon awakened by the mounting crescendo of growling, gnashing, guttural sounds of the sea rushing into the vortex of the racing whirlpool.
Reminded of the cataracts crashing down from the heights of the cone-mountains, they merely suspect there are similar waterfalls hidden somewhere in the recesses of this bare, lifeless island. And so they deploy the oars to speed them along the current propelling them toward the unexpected land.
But the closer they draw, the more puzzled they become by its strange and eerie landscape. An-o-Peia is first to notice the oozing liquid bubbling on its surface.
As the sisters track the wispy substance streaming off the side of the mound, they notice the smoking carcasses of fish dissolving in the waters at its shore. So intent are they on the drama unfolding on the shore they fail to see the thick, gnarled tentacles uncoiling in the sea beneath them.
Alarmed, Sei-o-Peia cries out:
“Quick, sisters. Grab the oars. We must leave this island of death!”
As the fifth-born, she knows this trial is hers. And she means to put a safe distance between the wicker craft and the lethal shore it is approaching.
It is too late!
Already, the far-reaching tentacles are arching upward out of the depth to ensnare the craft in their serpentine coils. But the enervated, compromised creature has not the strength to draw the craft under.
Leaping to the hatch, Sei-o-Peia begins hacking at the closest tentacle and, as its grip relaxes, calls to her sisters:
“Grab lances and help me!”
Seven probing, piercing lances soon dislodge the tentacles and, as soon as the craft is freed, Sei-o-Peia urges the sisters to paddle toward the opposite side of the island. Away from the grasping arms under the sea.
But like an obstinate curse, the tentacles pursue the craft as it emerges into the angry sea on the far side of the mound.
Spotting the vast whirlpool, Sei-o-Peia seizes the opportunity and immediately calls on the sisters to paddle toward the rim of the vortex.
Suddenly, the sea glows as a stream of luminescence beckons the craft in the direction it travels.
Reassured, Sei-o-Peia urges her sisters on along the silvery, pulsating track toward the eddy’s rim.
The great maelstrom spins counter-clockwise, and Sei-o-Peia means to draw the pursuing tentacles into its embrace while diverting their small craft to one side.
What she does not know is how the mound-island is reacting!
The massive creature is slowly revolving and, like its tentacles, seems to be stalking the small craft.
But the fifth sister is intent on the more immediate threat. On avoiding being drawn into the whirlpool while luring the tentacles into its swirling maw. Unconcerned for the moment about the behavior or fate of the island behind them.
Touching the outer rim of the maelstrom, she tells the sisters to steer away, using their oars to create drag. And the craft nimbly shoots away from the sucking cone of sea.
Not so the tentacles!
The weakened, bulky appendages are seized at once by the overpowering centripetal force.
Looking on from a distance, the sisters are mesmerized by the spectacle of the mound-island inexorably following the tentacles into the maelstrom. Of the tearing and rending into huge shards of flesh, diced and minced in the swirling blender at the eddy’s core.
It is in this final act of destruction that the sisters realize the mound-island was in fact alive. A creature so immense it rivaled their own island of cone-mountains.
What they do not realize is the maelstrom reaches to the very bottom of the sea. Returning the beast to the hellish depths whence it came.
The sisters spend the rest of this day regaining the current that bears them ever westward.
Beyond the perpendicular flow of the great cross-current.
Beyond the dead zone.
Beyond the devouring maelstrom.
Far, far beyond.
When the two suns quit the sky and blackness thickens, the exhausted crew repair to their berths and sink into the somnolent solace of profound sleep on a calm, silent sea silvered in starlight.
The same starlight that awakens a stealthy night hunter which, despite its great size, stirs barely a ripple as it rises from a following sea.
Chapter 64. Night-Stalker
The creature is first cousin to the giant skate the sisters encountered in their first trial on this primal ocean. Similar in size and nearly identical in appearance. Yet, more sinister.
Unlike that eyeless filter-feeder concealed in shadow, this monster is keen-eyed and carnivorous. And while it lurks in hidden repose beneath the diurnal sea, it breaches the night waves with the gift of flight.
It is the great blue skimmer-ray, the ocean’s most deadly solitary surface hunter. And it feeds on whatever luckless creatures it finds.
This blue ray is many leagues from the sleeping sisters, but it follows the same current it knows will yield a rich harvest of marine life. It skims effortlessly on silent wings. Occasionally dipping beneath the surface to
seize prey with its razor-edge beak.
The harpoon-like beak is the instrument of the skimmer-ray’s ruthless versatility, serving both as a skewer of slippery, slithery life-forms and as a slicer of their thick, scaly skin, flesh and bone. Once impaled, there is no escape for its prey.
∆ ∆ ∆
The wicker craft continues to ride the westward current as the sisters perform the daily chores necessary for survival on this savage sea. As the silver fish are plentiful, supplemented by occasional beds of nutritious kelp, and the night rains frequent, they settle into a comfortable routine of harvesting the sea and collecting rainwater in the improvised gourds.
The monotony of the featureless ocean depresses them greatly. They wonder if they ever will see real land again.
Only Mei-o-Peia overcomes the melancholia. Chasing it away with thoughts of what lies far ahead. The prize that awaits the sisters if they survive the seven deadly perils. Confident the Earth Spirit will protect and guide them to the unknown destiny she foretold.
Instead of dreading the empty ocean, she turns her thoughts to the Earth Spirit’s words and prophecy. And she comes to some remarkable conclusions.
It seems clear that, despite the destruction of their island of cone-mountains, she and her sisters are not alone in this world. That there are others like themselves. And that those others include males.
Else, how could the sisters, alone, bring forth the new race the Earth Spirit prophesied? For they are all females.
While she does not shrink from a destiny foretold, she dreads the rutting ritual that must accompany it.
The eldest sister also infers that their destination is the greatest island in the world. Nothing less will serve if, as the Earth Spirit predicts, they will remake that world.
Surely, the most sublime purpose must be performed on the grandest stage. Not trivial or isolated in scope or effect.
For her part, An-o-Peia keeps sharp vigil on the sea around them. Wondering what monster she will face when her turn comes next.
Nor does she have long to wait. As the giant skimmer-ray races along the great current bearing the frail craft across the trackless sea.
The darkness arrives early this day as gray squalls of lashing rain hurry from the south and pummel the wicker skin with pelting shards of hail. Even the great ray, drawn aloft by the disappearance of two suns, retreats again beneath the waves to escape the fury of the raging storm.
But the violence stops as suddenly as it began. Drawing back its curtain of darkness. Surrendering the late afternoon sky once more to the light of two suns. And the giant carnivore keeps its station beneath the waves as the great current carries it along. Bringing it ever closer to the wicker craft.
Standing her watch in the deepening night, An-o-Peia is bathed in the silver glow of a starlit sky. Peering through the open aft hatch, she is mesmerized by the shimmering beauty of starlight dancing on the calm waves of an endless ocean. Tracing its dreamlike display across sea and sky, she is suspended in an infinity of ebon and silver clarity.
The spell is broken by a dawning realization that a ribbon of phosphorescence has intruded on the surface of the otherwise unbroken carpet of starlight reflected on the starboard quarter of the sea. Leading directly away from the craft. Toward a sudden wide rippling in the water’s surface. Off in the distance.
“Awake, sisters!” she cries. “The Silver Maiden beckons us again. Danger is afoot, and we must heed her call to follow the starboard tack.”
As the sisters turn the craft, lashing the flanged-oar rudder to the starboard course, it glides nimbly onto the ribbon of phosphorescence. As the current propels them steadily in its wake.
At once, they take up spears and muster at the fore hatch. Ready to repel any assault upon their frail craft.
That is when the rippling surface ahead is broken by the slick, scaly back of the greatest behemoth that prowls this savage sea!
It is the megalodon of this world.
Whose immense size dwarfs that of all animated creatures, save only the tentacled colossus that made its home on the deep ocean floor. But that queen of the hadopelagic abyss has only once ever left her realm and is no more.
Leaving megalodon unrivaled at the top of the food chain. Supreme apex predator. Undisputed lord of the ocean sea.
So vast is its bulk, so awesome its crushing jaws and so mighty its boundless strength that the leviathan eschews the great streams and currents that confine the lesser creatures of its domain. Preferring instead to bask in the placid, lifeless stretches of ocean. Crisscrossing the currents only to harvest the largest beasts that dwell there.
Appalled by the immensity of the monster they are approaching, the younger sisters appeal to Mei-o-Peia to turn back. But the eldest sister demurs, counseling them to stay the course.
“An-o-Peia will guide us”, Mei-o-Peia insists, “and the phosphorescent trail reveals she is guiding us true.” As the craft races toward the mountain of terror that is the savage sea’s supreme predator.
Meanwhile, blinded by their failure to keep lookout at the aft hatch, they are unaware death approaches on silent wings behind them. As the giant skimmer-ray homes in on its hapless prey.
But just as the sisters fail to detect the swift pursuit of the menace aft, it, too, is blind to the greater threat beyond. Fixated on its quarry, the ray does not perceive the presence of the megalodon directly ahead of it.
Suddenly, the phosphorescent trail turns sharply, and An-o-Peia leaps back to the rudder to steer the craft onto the new course. Abandoning the great current to enter the calm stretch of greater ocean.
At that instant, with the veil of the small craft’s detracting motion gone, the leviathan espies the skimmer-ray. And before the silent flier can veer away, the megalodon breaches. Catching the ray in its yawning jaws. Crushing it and carrying the struggling creature down to the blackest depths of the leviathan’s lifeless ocean realm.
So great is the surface displacement created by the monster’s sudden dive, it draws the frail craft toward the whirlpool of its wake. But An-o-Peia had sensed the danger, ere it happened, and had flanged poles at the ready.
Thus prepared, the sisters quickly paddle the wicker craft away from the suction of the swirling eddy. Back into the gentle force of the current.
As peace returns to the starlit sea.
Chapter 65. Typhoon
The exhausted sisters sleep as their frail craft drifts listlessly and is becalmed in the dead water beyond the current. When they awaken, they will face a stillness of sea and sky beyond their experience:
The mid-oceanic doldrums!
Their narrow escape from the skimmer-ray has left them marooned in the inter-tropical convergence zone, whose windless wastes they will not escape by dint of their labor alone.
Em-o-Peia is first to rise, and to experience the utter absence of the frail craft’s motion. As twin suns edge slowly upward on the far horizon.
Soon, the other sisters join her—all wondering what it means.
“It means we have lost the current,” she explains, “and we are becalmed in lifeless waters. There is no sign of fish about the craft, and we must have food to survive. We have provisions enough for only a few days. Then, all our stored fruits and dried fish will be spent.”
The sisters quickly agree on the urgency to regain the great current, where life abounds. But none can divine the direction in which it lies.
“This peril falls to me,” Em-o-Peia acknowledges, “and so I will take the rudder. Perhaps when night falls, we will have a trail of phosphorescence to guide us aright.”
She could not be more mistaken!
This is not the peril the Earth Spirit has in store for her. Nor will the phosphorescent trail appear this night, or any other, so long as they remain becalmed.
The suns rise and the suns fall twice more before the sisters tire of their inaction and, once again, take up oars and begin paddling in a direction they hope is true.
They are halfway t
hrough the third day when disaster strikes!
That is when mid-day turns suddenly to mid-night. As total darkness creeps across the ocean to engulf the small craft.
The air turns heavy, the sisters’ breathing labored. And an anechoic silence surrounds them like the voiceless echo of a tomb.
Em-o-Peia is first to grasp the dire warning of the cataclysm to come.
While the doldrums are new to her experience, these signs are not. And she knows what will follow.
“Quick,” she calls out in alarm. “Batten down every loose object. Secure the hatches fore and aft. And fashion tethers to anchor yourselves to the elevated ribs of the craft.
“The storm will be upon us soon, and we will have to ride it out. I have a plan to take us to the other side of the storm, but we have to prepare now if we are to survive long enough to reach it.”
With that, the sisters scurry about the craft, tying down every loose thing. They quickly improvise tethers, which they secure to the structure of the craft at one end, leaving an open noose at the other to fit their wrists. Scarcely are they done when the storm strikes.
It is a typhoon!
Much like the most violent storms that struck their island home. But this time, the sisters have no caves to shelter in. No refuge at all.
They are caught in the open in the maw of the savage sea’s most destructive force. And Em-o-Peia has to find a way through.
A great mass of towering clouds sweeps down on the craft.
Venting all its energy-charged fury on this lone occupant of the surface-sea, the typhoon seems intent on punishing the interloper for its impudence. The storm claps down towering waves that swallow and vomit the wicker craft out onto great roiling swells of surging sea.
The very air itself is electric. With snapping, sizzling bolts of fire.
As the elemental forces tear at the wicker skin with grasping swipes of whiplash wind.
It is a vengeful, ripping, rending monster pouring all of its malevolence into the crashing sea and the bobbing object it seeks to destroy. Hour upon hour, the calamity clashes and roars.
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