And The Ocean Was Our Sky

by Patrick Ness

“Captain–”

  “Am I a devil who would kill innocent mothers and babes?”

  I believed she might be, but I knew how to answer this one at least. “No, Captain.”

  “Am I a devil who would lead my Apprentices into hopeless battles?”

  Again, I answered contrary to my belief. “You are not.”

  She turned a great eye to me, wide, her voice the only thing that existed in my world. “No, Bathsheba, that is not why we fight. We fight so that we may stop being devils!”

  And at this, I could hold back my anger and confusion no longer, even if it killed me. “But what if it’s the fighting that makes us so?”

  Immediately, her great body bent in the water, her tremendous forehead, the rusted harpoon sticking from its scar, moved past me like a tidal wave, her voice dropping to a kindness so sudden, so shocking, I nearly swallowed my breather bubble.

  “And there, at last, my dear Third Apprentice,” she said, “is the adult question.”

  Treasure and Willem exchanged glances at the surprising warmth of this, as if I’d just discovered a secret.

  It would turn out that I had.

  “Let me tell you why I chase Toby Wick,” the Captain said. “Let me tell you why that coin was meant for me to find. Let me tell you why I and this brave pod of mine will be the ones who will end him, once and for all.”

  25

  “IT WAS THE SOUTH SEA,” THE CAPTAIN BEGAN. “Not far from where we are going, if our captive tells no lies.

  “I was First Apprentice on a hunting ship. The Velazquez. You will have heard of it. The great Captain Velazquez, he of the scar that ran from blowhole to tail. He took us from one corner of this world to the other, hunting men of all kinds, taking us through dangers you three calves could barely imagine.

  “Now, every sea has its particular hazards, and the south sea’s is that it is hot. So hot this one day that we were required to breach into the Abyss in order not to lose consciousness and drown. But breaching, as you know, is the most dangerous of all for a hunter. Still, needs must. We calculated our risk, we waited for an empty sea, then we breached.

  “It seems impossible . . .

  “No, it is impossible, yet I will say it and I will vouch for its truth until my last briny breath.

  “We did not see him.

  “No echolocation told us there was a ship nearby, none of us Apprentices nor Captain Velazquez himself reported any hulls – white or otherwise – in the water. You will say our senses were dulled by the heat, and you would be correct, but what group of hunting whales would not see a ship on the Abyss on a sunny day?

  “And yet.

  “The sailors breached. Then the lower two Apprentices, then myself. Oh, how sweet the touch of cool air, like a crisp slap on the skin as the water falls away and for a moment, a few seconds at most, you are in the Abyss, free of our ocean, plunging somehow both downward and upward into the world of men, crossing their barrier, breathing the air around you, not just a small bubble of it. And no sooner have you leapt, then you are falling again, back to your own world, a thief who has stolen just a fragment.

  “I crashed back in as we all do. Cooler but dazed, surrounded by wash and foam, swimming up to reorient myself to the proper whale world.

  “And so I never actually saw Captain Velazquez formally breach. I saw his tail forcing its way to the surface, but only at the end of his leap. He was a big whale, but strong, the power he could generate, the speeds we would travel. It was the key to his success. He was the rare full-grown Captain who could breach completely.

  “In the churned-up ocean, we held our breaths for the returning crash of our great Captain.

  “I am here to tell you that it never came.

  “He leapt into the Abyss. He did not return.

  “Only his blood. It fell past us in gouts, currents on their own, winding their way up into the ocean sky.

  “And there was the great white hull, among us from . . . From nowhere. For how had we not seen it? How had we not echolocated it?

  “Toby Wick had our Captain, who I hoped died swiftly at least. Within seconds, harpoons thundered into the water. Our sailors were picked off at once, and the Second Apprentice was struck right through his blowhole, nets already dragging him to the surface before he could even react.

  “The Third Apprentice raced to my side, but she was small and I watched as she was plucked from the water in front of me. The whole of her jerked into the Abyss as if by a giant set of jaws.

  “I finally returned to my wits and began a great vertical dive. Our ship was lost, my crew dead. I was sure to follow.

  “Which was when the harpoon struck me.

  “I spun and spun into the ocean, a spiral of blood behind me, but the harpoon would not come free. I was going to bleed to death or die from the shock and then my body, too, would be cut to pieces by the men who’d destroyed my ship and crew.

  “It was then that I found myself back at the surface. I thought I had been diving up, deeper into our waters, but somehow, I was on the Abyss, my fins and tail spinning in the air, splashing blood and foam.

  “I stopped when the harpoon itself was grabbed. I was pinned to where I was, my head held below the water. I knew that I was going to die. I knew that it would be painful and prolonged and that I would fail to live to avenge my crewmates.

  “I waited for death.

  “It did not come.

  “The end of the harpoon was snapped off, leaving the remainder in my forehead where it still sits today.

  “I was released. As I lay in the water, choking on the blood that poured into my throat, I was only able to turn on my side and catch the briefest glimpse of the hull as it sailed away.

  “The T and the W etched on the side of it.

  “I expected death to claim me, but unconsciousness did instead, the sharks leaving me adrift while they gorged on the other whale remains in the water.

  “When I awoke, I was as you see me.

  “Alive. A harpoon fragment my permanent scar, embedded so delicately even our own surgeons fear to remove it. I have had to wear it as a reminder.

  “Not that I needed one, for I have been unable to echolocate since that day.”

  26

  WE WERE SHOCKED INTO SILENCE, EVEN Treasure, even Willem. Our Captain could not echolocate at all? The great Captain Alexandra, best hunter in the seas, did it all almost blind?

  “It is why I call it prophecy,” she said. “This was meant to be. I was spared as a challenge. He took away my best weapon and then dared me to see if I could still hunt him. I can. And I will.” She turned to me again, her voice so low and powerful in the water that the sea itself bent to her words. “I will destroy the devil Toby Wick. Not because he made me a devil, but because he thinks he did.”

  “It is prophesied,” Treasure said, wide-eyed, almost as a blessing to herself. Willem quickly did the same. They all looked at me.

  “My Captain, I–”

  She turned her face back to the great open ocean, one she could no longer track with echoes, one she simply had to see in all its incompleteness and rely on her crew to find the way for her.

  Now we knew. We knew why she believed in the prophecy. We knew why she interpreted the disc as she did. We knew why she believed that Toby Wick had chosen her from all the whales in all the oceans.

  It was only in my most secret of hearts that I wondered how much truth lay in the prophecy. How much the present had rearranged the past. She had not seen the man himself, after all; she had only seen a ship scratched with his initials. Surely a version of her story had happened, surely there was truth. Even I knew how stories grew and changed in the telling and retelling, especially among hunters.

  But how much was entering into legend?

  And who, in the end, would be destroyed by that legend?

  I did not have long to wait. Before the end of that day, we found again the trail of Toby Wick.

  27

  IT WAS ANOTHER MAN SHIP, BUT C
OMPLETELY upside down. Its hull poked into the Abyss away from us, but the deck and mast of it, sails and all, were underwater, a perverse flipping of their world into ours.

  It felt almost an obscenity.

  The ship was seemingly wholly intact. No damage, no holes in the side, no wreckage to indicate how it had tipped. It was merely a whole abandoned ship, waiting for us.

  “It seems empty,” Treasure said, after our third surveillance pass.

  “They would drown,” Willem said.

  “Obviously, there’s no crew,” I said.

  “There must be air in the hull,” said our suspicious Captain. “Otherwise it would not keep to the Abyss.” She turned to me. “And what does the captive say?”

  “He says he does not know.”

  “Then perhaps, Third Apprentice, his usefulness is at an end.” She swam closer to the ship, looking for further signs, an explanation, anything.

  I understood the command I had been given. But my own strange reluctance, which I barely allowed even myself to look at, was no match for my fear of Captain Alexandra. I returned to the ever-sicklier Demetrius and had already begun telling myself it was to end his suffering.

  Because it was, wasn’t it?

  “You do not know?” I asked him again. “You are sure?”

  “If I knew,” he said, “I would tell you.”

  “Perhaps you are only claiming not to know to hasten your death.”

  “It is a funny kind of torture where death is the only option either way. The only relief.”

  I swam around him silently, circling. He was right. What had I offered? Death if he told us the truth, death again if he lied. Where was the threat?

  And why was I keeping him alive?

  “I do not wish to kill you,” I said, surprising myself by saying it out loud, though quietly, for only Demetrius to hear.

  “That much is obvious,” he said, though not happily. “You have let me live far beyond kindness out of your own fear.” He dropped his head. “But you will kill me. Before the end. And nothing between whale and man will ever change.”

  I breathed from the bubble in my throat. There was no further delay I could make. He said he did not know what the upside-down ship meant, so he was right:

  I would kill him.

  And that would be the end. So many ends.

  I tried to remember the calf who drowned. I brought her to mind to make it easier for myself–

  But he looked so pathetic. So weak. So unlike a man who would strike at any whale. Had I found him? Had I truly found the man who wouldn’t hunt?

  I hovered in the water, a hesitation that would be noticed before long.

  “There’s a way in!” Treasure shouted from near the surface. She swam excitedly back to our ship. “A hole, just behind the mast, big enough for an Apprentice. Hidden, but clearly meant for us to find.” She looked at the Captain. “It’s another test, another sign.”

  “Surely it is that,” the Captain said. “But what kind?”

  “I will find out,” Treasure said. “If you command it. I would go anywhere for my Captain. It is prophesied.”

  “Swim in, then,” said the Captain, barely acknowledging her loyalty. “Touch nothing.”

  Treasure looked thrilled, shooting us her most arrogant look, before turning tail and swimming ferociously back to the ship. We watched, even Demetrius, as she found the hole she described and disappeared inside.

  “Is she going to die in there?” Willem whispered to me.

  “She thinks she’s fulfilling prophecy,” I said.

  “Sometimes it’s prophesied that you die.”

  “What do you see?” the Captain called out.

  “It is empty,” Treasure said, baffled. “Just an empty hull, stripped of all its decks, stripped of almost everything. But wait.”

  “What do you see?” the Captain said again. “Treasure?”

  “There is a box,” Treasure said. “A square in an air bubble at the very top – or bottom, I suppose – of the hull, just out of the water.”

  “Is there a sign on it?” the Captain said, urgently.

  “It is hard to get close . . . Yes!” she said, her voice exultant. “The same three mountains, the same letters, T and W.”

  The Captain looked pleased, her great bulk seeming to swell in the current.

  “And . . .” Treasure said.

  The Captain perked up. “And what? Treasure? What do you see?”

  “A setting sun,” Treasure’s voice came, still muffled by the hull, but her triumph growing. “He will meet us at the setting of the sun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I will bring it to you,” Treasure said.

  “No,” the Captain said. “Treasure, wait, I order you to–”

  But Treasure must have reached into the air and grabbed it with her mouth. Because the ship exploded.

  28

  MOST OF THE FORCE OF THE EXPLOSION went out into the Abyss, of course – water being a far better barrier than feeble air – but the ocean around us still lurched violently in the shock wave. Foam and bubbles shot past us, trailing from boards shuttling fatally fast. It was only a fluke no one was struck, especially a whale the size of our Captain, though many of the boards did impale themselves into the side of the Alexandra.

  “Treasure?” Willem asked before the ruptures in the water even ceased. Her eyes wide with panic. “Treasure!”

  “Gone,” said the Captain. “As prophesied.”

  “Prophesied by who?” I shouted.

  The Captain frowned at me. “It was clearly meant to happen. She knew it. I knew it. This was meant to be.”

  “Was it?” asked a distraught Willem.

  Angrily, I swam through the still-churning wreckage, Willem following close, but it was clear that nothing survived. All we found was a faint pink cloud of blood and pulverized flesh that had once been our irritating and proud First Apprentice.

  “She’s gone,” Willem whispered to me.

  I turned on the Captain. “I recall no prophecy that Treasure would die.”

  “Then that is your own ignorance,” the Captain snapped. “Everything is prophecy. Every action in life is meant to happen. Toby Wick was meant to find us. Treasure was meant to sacrifice herself for this message. Even you, doubting Bathsheba, you are meant to be here. And we, the remaining crew, are meant to find and defeat Toby Wick.”

  I could feel my anger flailing and was unable to hold it in. “Says who? You want revenge and are only seeing the prophecy that will allow it.”

  “Then the question must be asked, Bathsheba,” the Captain said. “Why aren’t you seeing the same prophecy? Your shipmate is dead. A brave convoy of whales is dead. Your own mother is dead. Is your universe really so meaningless?”

  “Is yours only filled with meaning that will bring more death? That will bring more war?”

  And then she did strike me with her tail, hard enough to make the blood flow from my mouth.

  “You foolish child,” she said, almost pityingly. “I see the entire trail of prophecy that has led us here. But that prophecy leads us to the end of war, Bathsheba. The end of Toby Wick. An end I will bring. An end you will help bring. Or I swear to you, I will bring your death myself.”

  “I see we find you again down one Apprentice,” said a voice, from across the water.

  Captain Arcturus and his ship swam toward us, menace in his voice mixed with delight.

  29

  “WE HEARD THE EXPLOSION,” HE SAID. He and his three Apprentices swam in a wide formation that could have been a prelude to surrounding us, if one wanted to read it that way.

  “You were obviously close enough,” Captain Alexandra said, turning her side to him as she did, the oldest whale warning in the book: never forget how large I am.

  “We heard strange languages under the water,” he said, looking over to Demetrius, forlorn in his bubble. “And we wondered if a pod was in trouble.”

  “We need no assistance,” our Cap
tain said. “Thank you.”

  “Yet a ship has been destroyed, along with” –he sniffed the blood in the water– “one of your Apprentices, it seems. And you have a man tied to your mast.” His voice took on a smile. “Surely there is some help here that another pod can provide.”

  I saw Willem had taken up a defensive position apart from our Captain. Then I saw I had unconsciously done the same.

  “I have neither time nor patience for this, Captain,” Captain Alexandra said. “State your business, make your attack, or leave us.”

  “Attack?” Captain Arcturus said, all innocent. “Now, why would I do that?”

  Before he had even finished his question, our Captain was in motion.

  With a speed I’d never seen even her achieve, she shot toward him through the water, so fast she left a wake that bounced me to the side. Like a living, giant harpoon, she flew at Captain Arcturus, mouth open, teeth bared, tail churning the ocean like the explosion from moments before.

  He had no time to prepare. She hit him under the jaw, taking it in her own, forcing him up and back, his blood already in the water as she slammed him into the hull of his ship. The impact was so hard the ship itself heaved and, shockingly, it cracked, a section of it caving under the force of our Captain – our terrifying, powerful Captain – pushing theirs into his own ship.

  “Do not!” I heard Willem say, swimming fast between the Arcturus Apprentices and our Captains. They were turning to attack, but I swam there fast, too. Though we were but two and they were three, they still hesitated at our ferocity.

  I don’t know what I was feeling. I was merely responding. Our Captain had made a move, and though just seconds before I was fighting with her, here I was, defending her. Why? Because of her obvious power? Because of her righteous anger at an interloping pod trying to take advantage of our shock and grief? Certainly not because of prophecy woven from thin water to explain any and all events.

  Yet here I was.

  “We outnumber you,” their First Apprentice said.

  “We will still fight you,” Willem said.

  “And we will beat you,” I added. “Like our Captain is beating yours.”