The Final Days of Springborough

Captain Jonathon James of the sea vessel The Hamptons Chase was for the first time in as long as he could remember, getting sea-sick. Not just sick, but Jonathon felt like he didn’t know what was going to happen to him first, whether he was going to throw up all the bread he had ever eaten in his lifetime, or whether he was going to pass out strapped to the ship’s wheel. It seemed that whenever the ship bucked at one wave, and came back down over to the other side it was already rearing up again. Any up-splash would be carried by the wind and hit Jage’s face head-on. The coldness of the ocean water tightening up his skin so any contact would feel like a slap across the face.

He was so rattled that Jage had forgotten how to swallow. With his mouth open, he simply let spit and drool hang from his bottom lip, letting it wash away in the wind and waves. He found it was much more helpful to just leave his jaw like an open port, and let the salt water in and out rather than close it, and fight not to swallow the dehydrating water. Too much salt water could make a man sick, which could be his excuse if any of his men found him retching over the side when in truth it was the motion of the boat, a hard rocking up and down that was as rough as J.J. could possibly remember. And now, all he wanted was to be off this boat he had come to love so dearly.

It wasn’t long until the wind had whipped the sails so hard the fasteners had come loose, completely depleting their use. Jage cursed whoever was not as keen at tying knots, but knew nothing could be done about it now. He had to keep his men safe by keeping them below, and keeping the ship upright. Sail or not, the wind was only a portion of his current problems.

The rain water was blinding and unrelenting. He spent most of his time trying to blink it away just to be able to focus on the swelling of the water. He tried to keep the boat on course, but when he was able to wipe the compass clean, it swung maniacally about, making it impossible for the Captain to pinpoint a direct line in the sea toward home. So, he had to forget about going straight toward home, and simply hope he wasn’t steering them terribly off course. Direction would have to come after the storm, if they survived it.

The waves seemed to come from all different directions, so J.J. tried his best turning the wheel this way and that, angling the boat to the best of his ability so that no crest of a wave would be able to roll the vessel. He had little hope that the boat would be able to get out of a capsize, and even less hope that the mast wouldn’t break, the crew wouldn’t he trapped, or that they all wouldn’t drown before any help came to save them. So, he bobbed and weaved, and he spun the wheel with such ferocity that his fingers began to blister. And when the blisters popped, his fingers bled. And when the salt water hit them they would sting, but still Captain Jage wrestled with the wheel for his sake and his crews, ignoring the pain for now, knowing he’d be lucky if he were alive later to deal with it.

At this point in his life, storms didn’t seem to bother Jage. He didn’t mind the wind, the lightening, the rumble of thunder, the rain as someone a little bit younger might. It was what the sailor said that troubled the young, blonde Pirate. “They’re in the storm!” he had said with such panic that Jage thought the first winds would be rife with cackling laugher, demonic faces, and black smoke that would form the outlines of fallen pirates. But, none of that was true.

There was nothing to fear but the storm itself, which was plenty enough for his crew.

A wave crashed over the hull of the boat, throwing the Captain off his feet a little bit, the strap growing taut, and slamming him back against the wheel of the boat. The air knocked out of him, he tried to shake away his water logged brain and focus in time for another wave to crash over the side, sweeping him the other way. All the excitement, all the rush, all the determination to succeed was quickly leaving Jage as his spirit was floundering. He soon found himself just wet; just standing at the wheel, soaked. His eyes couldn’t adjust to the stinging. When lightening flashed, all he saw was the threatening seas bulging up in front of him, beckoning him to come forth so they could take him. Thunder rumbled, but he could barely hear it over the flapping of the sails or the cracking of the wood of the ship, or the rain, or his own grunting that seemed to escape his throat with every breath, him being no longer in control of his own groaning.

“I’m not a pirate,” J.J. confessed to no one, “I’m just a boy. I’m just a boy looking for his home. For his parents. For his family. For the Lost Kingdom of Gambrille. I am not a pirate. I’m just a boy. Lead me from these seas.”

He didn’t know who he was talking to, but he thought that if he could bargain with anyone, anything, it would be for the best. Sailors are superstitious. He had heard talk of sun gods, and ocean people, and wind spirits, and any and all things you could think of. Jage once watched as Juba prayed to a music god while stringing a three-stringed instrument, thanking the god for the music he was about to play.

“Does everything you do have to do with something else?’ Jage asked him.

“Everything one does is connected to everything else, Captain,” Juba had replied. “Why, perhaps my praying to the god of music wasn’t actually supposed to be me showing gratitude for the song I was about to play, but was for you to acknowledge there was a god for it. All I know is that if I didn’t have the want for music, didn’t have the extra moment of thought as I strung the guitar, you wouldn’t have heard me pray, nor would you have questioned the existence of a god of music. It’s all connected.”

“It’s not hard to be connected when stranded on a boat,” Jage had replied.

“We ourselves stranded us here. We ourselves can jump off anytime we want. Then we can pray to the god of the sea to not let us drown.”

“Aye, but you would. And die.”

Juba smiled and shrugged. “Perhaps after death is just another life to live.”

The thought of this calmed Jonathon James during the storm. This memory and his recent confession to not being a pirate, as he was not one. He called himself a pirate when the crew had asked where all his money had come from. Thinking nobody would respect a boy who had shown up at the docks looking for a boat with “money my mom gave me” he said that he had stolen it.

“Stolen it? From where?” Murray would ask.

“Why? Missing any?” A sailor named Beverly, big and gruff with soft eyes and a heavy hand, despite his somewhat girlish name.

“Maybe.”

“I got it from the Lost Kingdom of Gambrille!” J.J. declared, drawing attention from everyone in the dock’s tavern, where all the men were sitting, drinking, trading sea stories and waiting for their next departing orders.

The tavern laughed at him. Little, blonde, skinny Jonathon James, standing for a moment of time in the doorway of a room where men stayed. He was no taller than five feet, looking up at some men who stood a gargantuan six foot five or taller. One man’s thigh was rippled with muscles and tattoos and looked as wide as J.J.’s torso. The boy didn’t know what to say or do. But, he told his mother before they departed Quakenfalls that he would get a ship and search the seas, and that was what he was going to do. He had never let anyone down. He wasn’t going to do it at the start of his journey.

After another wave, J.J. looked to his right as the ship careened out of his control. Lightening flashed behind him, but he saw nothing off of his bow. Nothing but torrents of water falling down. Collecting somewhere, and cascading down like small waterfalls. He remarked about how strange it looked, these little streams collecting in clouds and falling down like that. It wasn’t until it was too late that Jage realized the water wasn’t streaming down from clouds, but rather from a piece of land that jutted out about him.

His ship was about to smash into the cliffs of Quakenfalls.

He thought about his sister, Brynn, hundreds of feet above him.

With a breath caught in his throat, and certain doom upon him, he apologized to his mother.

He didn’t like feeling he let her down.