HYBRID MACKENZIE - Chapter One

- BOOK ONE -

I. Mother Lands.

Cold water smashed hard against the hull.
The wood yawned lazily as the tidal waves battered the surface harder with each eddy. The sky was as colourless and as oppressive as the ocean upon which they sailed.
The lick of the sea-salt spray stung bitterly against the skin and the cracks in the lips of Agnetha and Gustav ached with the sting of the taste. Their faces were caked with the mist of the waves and their eyes were red and swollen from the exertion and strain.
Their hair matted and soaked, their skin shivered and ached from holding each other tightly as protection from the waves.

The hold had a putrid stench that rested heavily in the nose. Sweaty and sweet. People were packed in tight and uncomfortable; limbs squashed hard against each other. Breathing made difficult by the elbow dug deep into the ribs, necks stiff from the cold, the soak on the above deck dripping through the cracks of the timber above them into the boxlike, dark and cramped hold.

The groaning became louder.
Wood strained against the water, the tiny window in the hold broken and spray pouring in with a violent whistle of wind, strafing against the flesh of the faces and the stuffy collective of abandoned souls struggling for breath and space in this hellish prison below decks.

Agnetha looked out of the porthole, one hand raised against her temple to visor against the blinding white light of the lighthouse that shone in pulses and strobed bright before turning to the other side of the bay.

They were so close now,
The shore was so near.
Almost there, but for the rocks.

The light strobed once more and the sharp brightness stabbed her deep behind the eyes. It was a jagged, harsh pain, one that penetrated deep into her skull and shook her senses.
Her other hand fell to her brothers, Gustav grasped her fingers tightly, but his face dropped into a deep shaken ghost like maw as he looked out the hole in the hull.
Agnetha turned her head to him and caught his gaze; she looked perplexed and worried trying to place the spur to this sudden look of panic washing his face.
Half turning to the porthole, she saw the reason mere seconds before the impact – as rocks, sharp, deadly and irresistible loomed heavy and sudden into view and the boat rocked hard and buckled under its violence.
The hull smashed in, timber roaring and spitting wet splinters inwards and a flush of ice cold, brittle ocean water gushed through the hold, drowning the chorus of screams and terror that it prompted.

The boat split in two like an over-ripe mango, and the bodies of those not fast enough to cling to anything they could hold were grabbed by the oceans water, grasped in vast oceanic grip and pulled screaming into the Gordonian waters.
Women and children, strong limbed, well muscled men tried to cling to flailing arms and hands, dragging them into the hull, only to see them snatched once more by the next surge of ocean foam.
The men swallowing lungful's of the freezing liquid, weighed down and exhausted, succumbing to the waters heavy push.

Gustav clung to his sister by the fingertips.
A tight, but strained monkey-grip all that kept him inside the boat.
Agnetha desperately grabbing and pulling at his sleeve for anchor, yet, to no avail.
The waters pulled harder... A second huge blow slammed down upon both Agnetha and Gustav as she lost her grip and was forced to watch helplessly as Gustav – in a glancing moment she would never forget in all her days – peacefully looked her hard in the eye, static and immobile, smiled his sweet, thin-lipped smile and mouthed the words "I Love You Sister" - before the vice-like clutch of the retreating tide pulled him whiplashing into the air and then slamming hard onto his back buckled and pulled him under the waves.

Gustav was never seen again, he was now nothing more than another denizen of the deep, cold, murky depths.
Another trinket for the Boson's locker. A lifeless prisoner to the floor of the Gordon.

Agnetha flung her arms out to grab something to save herself, but was seized just as quick by the waters hand, she tried to drag herself hand and claw over the smashed beams of the hold to the far end where the water could not reach. Climbing over the bodies of fallen and drowned comrades from the journey. But she slipped and submerged awkwardly below the wave, her foot snagged on a split timber stanchion, she pulled herself forward and felt the warmth of blood run from a deep gash on her ankle, she slipped below the waters surface one more time, her lungs ached and burned from the attempts to escape the brittle, furious water. She pulled hard once more and felt the blood run thicker, her face screwed up in agony and then surprise as the jagged split of wood unlatched from her and she was free, she burst from the surface and gasped a thick, glorious breathe and no sooner had she swallowed it deep down than the greedy ocean pulled her screaming back into the water, her efforts proven to be for naught. Her voice a shrill banshee cry as the water filled her lungs again and she gagged and spat ice crystals out, vomited green-black water, her head smashing against a piece of the holds timber wall, blacking out, she was draped over a shard of the hull amongst a torn and ragged strip of the green and white flag that once was displayed proudly on every building in the once glorious, long legendary eastern city of Thörendahl.