Victorious

• Sophie Newsome, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2009

The monster bellowed. Intangible, tugging fingers slapped the deck with foamy brine and clung there in swirling puddles. Gaping jowls gnashed for bones and death and shiny black scales glinted under a waning moon. The monster moaned, then reared up, shook its dripping mane and crashed onto the “Victorious” with a terrible war cry. The howl echoing, it shrunk back into an abyss of churning soot.
Cedric gasped. Brackish air was clogged in clammy thickness and collected in seeping drops on his sweaty forehead. Thirst was a solid lump, a desperate longing in his dry throat; the taste of fresh water clung to murky hallucinations, pulling at the men’s sanity. Undrinkable, invincible, indestructible.
The galleon was huge, labelled unconquerable by man, yet so powerless against this angry fiend. A vigorous jolt and Cedric was on his knees. He grappled to his feet, but was slammed onto the deck by another wave. He saw a sailor on his knees, ten feet away, hands searching for solidity that was slipping away. The man’s pallid skin was pulled tight over pointed bones, framing two grey eyes, drawn to the precariously swaying foremast. Billowing in a frantic tussle, the sails were on the verge of tearing.
“Finn! Cut the sails down! The wind will tear them apart! Cut them down! Now!” The tangled wilderness that his voice had become caught him off-guard: a rugged mix of terror and thick Spanish.
Finn’s bloodshot eyes looked over Cedric with a startling intensity of hollow fear, yearning thoughts of family pulsing through his troubled mind. Smack. They were hurled onto a bed of slashing water, and with a wild scream, Finn was thrown overboard. Panting, Cedric closed his eyes for a moment. He started toward the foremast, alone.
Pushing, pushing... against a solid wall of air pressed firmly against his struggling body, the foremast swung crazily just out of his fingertips’ reach. Pain hammered his muscles; screamed at his arms to give up. Then, the iron barrier fell away, and he fell forward into empty space. He plunged his arm into a deep pocket and held a dagger to the muted light of the pale moon, skeletal shadows creeping over the polished blade. Spewing lava deep inside him fuelled the sharp movement of his strong arms slicing taut rope. The beige sail fluttered towards the deck in some secret rumba, snaking its head and tail, immersed in an impenetrable trance of movement, then was captured by the wind and carried far away...
Cedric glanced over the side of the “Victorious”. A million narrowed, silver eyes stared into his, then transfigured into a crashing ocean.
He lumbered to the mainmast and slashed the squirming rope. The “Victorious”’ swaying eased. A cacophony of sound roared past: eleven voices drowning in the wind. An ebony tail shot up from the ocean and towered over the “Victorious”. A figure from the legends of old? Or a delusion of the human mind?