The Crescent Hour ✓

Chapter 3. The Ticking Clock

Using the wall to support her movements, Clara went upstairs. Her pounding heartbeats rose to a crescendo. The deck was a scene of wreckage and pandemonium. Travelers scurried back and forth, sailors lowered lifeboats with davits while others struggled with the rigged sails.

 “Step aside!”

A sailor pushed her away and rushed to help his companions. The ship plunged into the waves and lightning flicked among stormy clouds. Spears of raindrops drenched her body. A feeling of trepidation took dominance over her mind. Her feet were rooted to the ground and it was only when the bow of the ship hit against something hard did she wake from her stupor.

Esperanza titled to the side. She fell on the wooden floor. Something pricked her hand and she felt a throb of pain. She had flattened her palm on a small piece of broken glass. Pulling out the shard, she stood up. Blood seeped out of the small cut, running down her fingertips. She clasped the locket, wishing it would comfort her. Grabbing the railing, she moved towards the survivors to wait for a lifeboat.

Her mother’s necklace glowed and the cold metal became warm. Clara looked down at it. Her blood was smeared all over it. Tendrils of amber light emerged from the locket and lit her face. She gasped.

Someone shouted at her.

A broken mast descended upon the deck and when she glanced up, she saw it swinging down to where she was standing. She dived away but the ship toppled to the right side and she fell.

Time slowed down to a snail’s pace as Clara was tossed into the turbulent currents. The waves churned and plunged her below the surface, swallowing her whole as though she was a sacrificial maiden offered to the tempest. She kicked and flailed but the ocean resisted.

In the embrace of darkness, enveloped by the swirling waters, trapped under the forces of nature, her muted cries stopped. Her throat constricted and her breathing weakened. Icy water flushed into her mouth and nose, trickled down her throat and splashed into her lungs. Unable to cough it out, she was forced to swallow it. Her body quivered under the assault of cold water.

 Tick-tock tick-tock!

Something burned within her chest. Her vision darkened while her body grew weary. The faint ticking of a clock had reached her ears but she mistook it for soft beating of her heart.

Tick-tock tick-tock!

The burning in her chest grew warmer and then a tiny spot of light shone through the layers of darkness, leaching into her closed eyelids. Using her last strength to pry open her eyes, she stared at her mother’s necklace.

Too weak to move, she watched as helices of amber light pulsed from the locket, twirling around her shoulders, her head and her hair. They moved to her waist, her thighs and then to her ankles. The yellow strands of light enwrapped her body, twisting and weaving to form a shell around her.

Yes, let me fade into the light.

A sudden sensory deprivation convinced her that she was dying. She wasn’t even sure if she was a physical entity anymore. She couldn’t feel the ache in her lungs or see the tendrils of light coiling around her body.

Perhaps her soul had left her body and all that was left of her was the remnant of her former self. As the ticking of the clock came to a cessation, Clara’s body disintegrated into millions upon millions of shimmering particles. They swarmed in the water like fireflies before drifting into the darkness of the sea.

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She found herself being pulled into consciousness slowly. Her senses returned one at a time but her thoughts were a mass of disjointed pieces.

First, came the sense of touch. She was lying down on her back against something flat and hard. Her hands were heavy and her chemise clung to her figure like a second layer of skin. Then the sense of smell returned to her. Her nose picked up the ineluctable whiff of wet timber. She sniffed and resisted the urge to throw up.

A low whimper ripped its way out of her mouth. She placed her right hand over her temple where a headache corkscrewed round her skull. Clara plopped herself up on her elbows. There was a soft murmur of voices and the shuffling of feet.

This is strange. Am I not…dead?

That one thought stuck out from the rest like a hammer punch in the gut. The image of her drowning experience had been veiled but that single thought provoked the grim recollections. Clara remembered it too well. She had died or so it seemed. How come she was still breathing? Was this heaven or had she fallen into the depths of hell?

Hell would be too hot.  

Propelled by a whirlpool of panic, she opened her eyes. She saw blurry shapes floating back and forth. There was also blue fog all around her. Her vision was hazy and clouded so it took her a few seconds to adjust to the strange surroundings. As the moving shapes became clear and the blue fog dissolved into something more vivid, Clara sat upright. If her throat hadn’t been so dry, she would have screamed.

Scattered around her were men—about twenty of them—who were attending to their duties. A few of them fixated their eyes on Clara while the rest of them scrubbed the wooden floor, fiddled with the mechanisms of the masts or cleaned their weapons. They were aboard a ship and she was sitting in the center of the deck, in plain view. What she had presumed to be blue fog was actually water.

She breathed hard and pushed herself backwards, unable to believe what was happening. It was not the men that had shaken her and forced her to question her own sanity. It was the ship itself.

 A great one it was with several colorful sails flapping in the water and hundreds if not thousands of oars paddling on their own as if invisible hands controlled them. The oars jutted out from the edges of the ship and paddled against the water, navigating the ship that sailed underwater. Several lanterns were scattered on the deck.

No waves crushed the ship. It moved along the currents with the deftness of a fish swimming in water.  The men didn’t seem the least bit worried. In fact, they hardly paid any attention to the fact that they were sailing below the surface.

Impossible! It can’t be!

She was inhaling clean air. That much had been long established with every breath she took. What she couldn’t fathom was the mystery of the ship. How could such a vessel withstand the force of the sea without being flooded with water? What of the oars that magically paddled on their own?

 She shook her head. Either she had gone raving mad or she was in some twisted form of paradise. She couldn’t think of a sin she had committed that would be so dire as to have her sent in Hell.

Clara spotted a sailor hoisting a flag. It was black with a white skull displayed in the middle while two swords lay parallel below the skull, their tips facing her left. On top of the skull was a green hat with a single red feather sticking out from the front. She knew what that flag meant. Regardless of its design, a black flag with a white skull could only mean one thing. It was a Jolly Roger—a flag that identified the crew as pirates.

“This couldn’t get any better.” She closed her mouth when she realized she had spoken her thoughts out loud.

The pirates stopped moving and parted to let someone pass. He was a man of average height with silver hair spilling down to his back. A dark green cavalier hat was perched on his head. A red ostrich plume trimmed the wide-brimmed edge of his hat. Half of his ageless face was covered by a strange black mask which had three red streaks running straight from the top of where his left eyebrow would have been to the lower part of his jaw. He exuded confidence in his gait as he approached her.

Clara could tell he was a man of authority. Dressed in a flamboyant outfit consisting of a beige tunic, striped purple pants and a brown cloak with frilly paddings on the shoulders, he looked more like a thespian from a play than a pirate of the sea.

He swept his index finger from left to right, pointing at his crew. “Hello, me beauty. I'm Captain Saberlot. They didn't bother you, did they?”