Chapter 6 — The Shooter

  Fredon heard the captain’s orders echo across the deck and ran with the other crew members toward the entrance to the hold. Zelma was beside him, her fingers gripping the sleeve of his coat as they descended the creaking wooden stairs.

  The door slammed shut behind them with a dry thud.

  They all crowded together in the narrow, dark space, breathing heavily, their faces pale in the faint light of the lanterns hanging from the beams.

  Zelma let go of his sleeve and said, trying to force a smile:

  “I think, for now, the attention around you has died down.”

  Fredon didn’t answer.

  He was standing by the door, completely still, his eyes fixed on the sliver of light coming in from underneath. His face held an expression she had never seen before—focused, distant, as if he were listening to something no one else could hear.

  Zelma frowned.

  “Fredon?” she called softly.

  Nothing.

  “Fredon, are you okay?”

  He turned suddenly, so fast that she instinctively stepped back. His hands grabbed her shoulders tightly, his eyes shining with pure, almost childish excitement.

  “Did you see it, Zelma? Did you see that beautiful creature?”

  She blinked, completely confused.

  “The… what?”

  “The whale!” he said, his smile growing. “What’s her name? Did you see how beautiful she is? Her eyes were shining, Zelma! And the wings! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Zelma just stared at him, mouth slightly open.

  “Only you, Fredon. Only you would get excited at a time like this.”

  He frowned, still holding her shoulders.

  “Hm? What do you mean?”

  She was about to answer when they heard a noise coming from the back of the hold.

  Something heavy falling.

  Then the sound of bottles rolling across the wooden floor.

  Everyone turned toward the sound, tense, bodies ready to run if necessary.

  From the shadows emerged a figure.

  A man.

  Tall, far too thin, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He wore completely black, torn clothes that looked like rags stitched together carelessly. His beard was poorly kept, grown unevenly and tangled. His face and hands were covered in dirt, as if he had slept on the ground for days. He wore a strange, faded cap with a symbol no one recognized.

  But the most disturbing thing was his eyes.

  Black. Completely black. No shine. As if he had seen things no one ever should.

  He appeared to be around thirty years old, but there was something about him—in the way he moved, in his exhausted expression—that suggested he was younger than he looked.

  He held an empty glass bottle in one hand, the other rubbing his eyes as if he had just woken up.

  He looked around, confused, and asked in a hoarse voice:

  “So… have we arrived?”

  A young crew member beside Zelma muttered quietly:

  “Honestly, this ship’s full of lunatics.”

  That was when the ship tilted violently to the left.

  Everyone fell sideways, shouting, grabbing whatever they could. Crates slid, barrels rolled, lanterns swung from the beams casting wild shadows across the walls.

  The whale had struck the ship again.

  The man in ragged clothes stumbled, dropped the bottle, and watched it roll across the floor in the opposite direction.

  “No!” he shouted, running after it clumsily. “Come back to me, my baby!”

  No one had time to comment.

  The hold door burst open and Captain John appeared at the top of the stairs, his face red with fury, a gun in his hand.

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  “Hey, you brats! Change of plans! Get up here and fight the whale!”

  Everyone shouted at once:

  “What?!”

  A blond-haired crewman, braver than the others, stepped forward.

  “How do you expect us to fight that thing when it’s bigger than this ship?”

  Captain John clenched his teeth.

  “I don’t know! But I’m not dying up here alone, so get moving!”

  A young man named Cheldon, tall and broad-shouldered, crossed his arms arrogantly.

  “And what if we don’t?”

  The captain raised the gun and pointed it directly at him.

  Absolute silence.

  “Then I’ll put bullets in you, and you’ll die first.”

  No one moved.

  The captain shouted, his voice echoing through the hold:

  “Out! Now! That’s an order!”

  They all ran for the stairs in panic, shoving, stumbling over one another, climbing toward the deck where the wind howled and saltwater lashed against the planks.

  When they reached the top, the captain was already shouting orders.

  “Grab the rifles! They’re scattered around the ship! Start shooting the damn whale!”

  Fredon didn’t run for the rifles.

  He approached the captain, his expression serious.

  “Captain, what route are we taking to reach other lands?”

  The captain looked at him and replied without hesitation:

  “I don’t know.”

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the captain, mouths open in shock.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?!” someone shouted. “What kind of captain are you?!”

  Captain John wiped the sweat from his forehead and answered with strange calmness:

  “On the island of Anduza, Mr. Olsen only told me to take you. He said that after a few hours of travel, we would encounter a whale.”

  Cheldon stepped forward, fists clenched.

  “And what else? What did he say?”

  The captain gave a bitter smile.

  “He just smiled and said we would have to find the solution.”

  Cheldon stood still for two seconds, processing the information.

  Then he exploded.

  “Damn it! Damn it! We have to go back to Anduza right now!”

  He ran to the helm, shoved the man holding the wheel aside, and spun it hard in the opposite direction.

  “Shovel coal into the engines! Now!”

  The crew rushed to the boiler room and began throwing coal into the furnaces. The ship gained speed, the side wheels pounding against the water, the bow slicing through the waves.

  But behind them, something was happening.

  The whale had dived.

  And now it was rising.

  A gigantic wave lifted behind the ship, so tall it blocked out the sun, casting a dark shadow over the deck.

  One crew member looked back, saw the wall of water approaching, and froze completely.

  All color drained from his face. His eyes widened. He began to tremble.

  And then he smiled.

  An empty, desperate, broken smile.

  “Goodbye, cruel world.”

  The wave crashed down on the ship like the fist of a furious god.

  The impact was brutal. The ship was hurled forward at an impossible speed, surfing the crest of the giant wave like a toy.

  Crew members flew through the air, grabbing ropes, masts, each other.

  Zelma slipped.

  Her feet lost their grip on the soaked deck. She tried to grab onto something, but her hands slid over the drenched wood.

  She began sliding toward the edge of the ship.

  “Fredon!”

  She screamed, her hand reaching toward him, her eyes wide with pure terror.

  Fredon saw.

  He saw her fingers slipping.

  He saw her body sliding faster.

  He saw the sea waiting below—dark and cold and endless.

  He didn’t think.

  He grabbed a rope tied to the mast, wrapped it around his arm, and jumped.

  The wind struck his face as he swung through the air, arm outstretched, fingers open.

  Zelma was falling.

  Her hand reached desperately into the air, searching for something, anything.

  Their fingers touched.

  Fredon tightened his grip.

  He grabbed her hand so hard he felt the bones of her fingers against his own.

  The rope stretched with a sharp sound. Their combined weight pulled him downward, but he held on, the muscles in his arm burning, teeth clenched.

  Zelma hung in the air, her feet swinging over the void, her eyes locked on his.

  “Are you okay, Zelma?” he asked, his voice tense but steady.

  She nodded, unable to speak, tears mixing with the saltwater on her face.

  Fredon swung the rope, gained momentum, and threw her back onto the deck.

  She landed with a heavy thud, rolled across the floor, and lay on her back, breathing as if she had run for miles.

  Fredon released the rope and fell beside her, gasping, his hands trembling.

  They lay there on the soaked deck, side by side, staring at the sky while the ship continued to be pushed forward by the massive wave.

  ---

  Minutes later, the wave disappeared.

  The ship floated normally again, but it kept moving at a strange speed, as if something were pushing it from beneath.

  Cheldon stood at the helm, eyes narrowed as he stared at the horizon.

  He frowned.

  “This isn’t normal,” he muttered.

  A crewman approached.

  “What isn’t normal?”

  Cheldon pointed ahead.

  “At the speed we were pushed, we should already be seeing the island of Anduza. It wasn’t a full day’s journey. It was only two and a half hours.”

  The crew began to grow nervous.

  “Hey, Cheldon!” someone shouted. “Where’s the island? We didn’t travel that long! Where is it?”

  Cheldon remained still, eyes fixed on the empty horizon.

  “I don’t know. It should already be visible.”

  Another crewman stepped forward, his voice rising.

  “You mean the island disappeared?”

  Cheldon nodded slowly.

  “Yes.”

  Someone shouted:

  “Damn it!”

  That was when the ship shook again.

  But this time it wasn’t a side impact.

  Something was rising in front of them.

  The whale emerged.

  It didn’t dive. It didn’t attack.

  It simply floated in the air, a few meters above the water, its enormous wings spread wide, the golden lantern beneath its body glowing with a soft light.

  And it looked at them.

  The creature’s eyes were huge, bright, intelligent.

  One crew member began to laugh.

  Loud. Hysterical.

  Another turned to him, irritated.

  “Why are you laughing, man?”

  The laughing one wiped tears from his eyes and answered with a broken smile:

  “Let me give my last smile to death. Since we’re all going to die.”

  Some heard him.

  And they started laughing too.

  They laughed loudly, cried, fell to their knees on the wet deck as the whale slowly approached, floating like a silent nightmare.

  With every meter it advanced, they laughed louder.

  And cried louder.

  Despair and fear mixed into a horrible sound that echoed across the empty ocean.

  That was when they heard a voice.

  From above.

  “Don’t give up your lives so easily without putting up a fight, you bastards!”

  Everyone looked up.

  The man in ragged clothes was standing atop the main mast, balanced on a thin beam, his strange cap tilted back, the empty bottle still in his hand.

  He looked at the bottle, took the last sip, and grimaced.

  “Damn. This drink is terrible quality.” He tossed the bottle into the sea and looked at the whale with a crooked smile. “But you’re worse for giving up so easily.”

  He grabbed a rifle strapped to his back with an old rope, slipped a hand into his pocket, and pulled out a single bullet.

  He loaded it calmly, as if he had all the time in the world.

  The whale kept approaching.

  The man raised the rifle, pressed it to his shoulder, and aimed directly at the creature’s eye.

  “Not yet,” he murmured.

  The whale advanced another meter.

  “Almost.”

  Another meter.

  The man closed one eye, adjusted his aim, and whispered:

  “Now.”

  He fired.

  The bullet left the barrel with a thunderous crack that tore through the air.

  And it began to grow.

  Slowly at first. Then faster. Bigger and bigger.

  When it was halfway between the ship and the whale, it was the size of a barrel.

  When it was nearly there, it was the size of an entire ship.

  It struck the whale’s eye directly.

  The impact was apocalyptic.

  The creature fell backward with a shrill cry that made everyone cover their ears, slammed into the water with such brutal force that it created a wave that pushed the ship several meters sideways.

  The whale disappeared beneath the surface, disoriented, wounded.

  Silence returned.

  For two seconds, no one moved.

  Then someone shouted:

  “She’s gone! She’s gone!”

  And the deck exploded.

  Crew members shouted in relief, jumped into the air, embraced one another as if they had been brothers for years. Some fell to their knees and cried openly, this time with pure, raw joy. Others began to laugh again, but now it was a real laugh, free, full of life.

  Cheldon let go of the helm and raised his arms to the sky, shouting a word that made no sense but that everyone felt.

  A girl began singing a victory song no one else knew, but everyone started clapping along to the rhythm.

  Captain John, still with dried blood on his forehead, allowed himself a small smile and shook his head in disbelief.

  Someone grabbed a barrel of rum tied to the mast, smashed the lid open with an axe, and began handing out mugs. Within seconds, everyone had a drink in hand, toasting to life, to luck, to the mysterious man who had saved them.

  “To him!” someone shouted, raising a mug toward the top of the mast.

  “To the shooter!” another yelled.

  “To the madman who saved us!”

  Mugs clashed together, rum spilled across the deck, and the improvised celebration continued while the ship floated in now-calm waters.

  Fredon stood still in the middle of the chaos, his eyes fixed on the top of the mast where the man in ragged clothes remained standing, motionless, the rifle still resting on his shoulder.

  The man did not climb down. Did not wave. Did not smile.

  He simply stood there, staring at the horizon, as if none of it had happened.

  Zelma approached Fredon, followed his gaze, and whispered:

  “Who is he?”

  Fredon didn’t answer.

  But the same question echoed in his mind, over and over again.

  Who is that person?