"Thou knowest that none hath sent down these clear signs but the Lord of the heavens and the earth..."

-Sura XVII, The Night Journey

The skiff rocked eerily under his feet. Mishar Battuta had a crew of three: old Ismail the pilot, Ibn the rigger, and Domingo the catholic slave from Palms, who served as their diver and porter. Mishar was the captain-gunner, operating a fez airbolt. They were all armed with long knives, except, of course, for Domingo. It was a nerve-pounding sensation to be this close to the wooded banks of the Devil Spawn Shore, from where the Great Satan had once ruled the world. It was now said to be a wild and feral land of horrors, overrun by the very creations of the Great Satan Nation that had once bestrode the world like a many-tendrilled thing of avarice. Or so the legends said.

Mishar was primarily concerned with the thick forest cover on the banks concealing some savage hand clutching a bent bow, stealthily anticipating feathering his back with some primitive arrow. There was little though, that could take his eyes from the beauty of the scene before him. Mishar and his men gazed out over the Manhattan Banks, where the fishing skiffs had been busy since dusk the night before. The skiffs themselves were but specks on the glimmering water beneath their colossal home, Clan Barge Lahab.

The rising sun was pulsing yellow, orange and red, seemingly squeezed between the cobalt blue sky streaked with ashen gray clouds above and the coffee dark shallows of the Great Blue Ocean below. The Lahab was just to the right of the rising sun from his vantage. Three other scout skiffs were out, along with a dozen fishing vessels. As the light streaked across the water the majestic contours of their home were illuminated.

The Clan Barge sat low in the water, ten meters of hull exposed above the water line, and twenty meters of hull and keel sunk below. Soaring groves of date palm ringed the center of the vessel above the Sunken Mosque, which could not be seen. The canvas tents of the people, scattered over a deck that was two kilometers long and a half a kilometer wide, were obscured by the bamboo stands that ringed the vessel, and provided the material for the skiffs, all short range surface skimmers powered by sail and oar. The solar collection panels that powered the massive barge, were protected from the sea spray by the thick bamboo stands. They remained unseen, and would not sparkle to life until two hours before noon when they would begin drinking the essence of the sun.

A scar was visible down the side of the Lahab, just fore of the skiff crane, the deadly gouge of a leviathan tentacle, the last remaining sign of the deadly encounter with the beasts in the Kelp Sea that cost the lives of three skiff and crew. A chill ran up his spine at the thought of it, of the rending sound made when men were torn between two waving obscenities emerging for the deep.

“Are you well Captain”, sounded the salt-worn voice of old Ismail.

“Fine Ismail”, came the reply from the youth still hoping to feel like a leader of men. It bothered Mishar that his position was due chiefly—no solely—to the influence of his Uncle Sulliman, Hetman of Clan Lahab. His hands were not even roughened by toil yet, as the crew would not let him do a thing other than command and shoot, for fear his uncle might see a callous on those perfect dervish hands. Mishar was still in training for his final dance, when he would earn the right to wear the sacred scarf. His hair was already quite nasty for having let it grow for the dance these past five years. This would be the scarring dance, when he shredded himself with the sacred blade before the elder dancers and the imans.

Domingo whistled and Ismail barked an order to Ibn about the sweep, before addressing him, “Captain game’s ashore. Let us get you within range so to bring meat back to The Hetman’s table.”

The updraft from the banks was catching in the unfurled sail and Ibn was plying the sweep with a rhythmic dip and draw. He readied his weapon. It was a heavy aluminum weapon of ancient construction. The air seals had themselves been replaced every twenty years or so for centuries. It could take 150 pumps of the amp arm without bursting a seal. The compressed air would then cast the steel bolt faster than any bow could an arrow. The first 7 rounds were at maximum velocity. This was an aging piece though, and the last 3 rounds suffered from diminished velocity. Something was the matter with the inner housing. Also, one might not begin pumping until the inner housing had expelled its air without further degrading the seals.

He shouldered his weapon as Domingo pointed to a small female deer looking up from where she drank along the fiord. The false dawn was now past them, with true morning brightening the sky at their backs and the sheen of the sun on the fiord blinding the animal to their approach. Mishar leveled his weapon and took aim, exhaling slowly as he steadied himself for the release.

Domingo could be heard hissing through his teeth, savoring the thought of fresh meat as only a savage Christian could. Ibn no longer dipped the sweep but fish-tailed it under water. Ismail’s old weathered hand was raised, indicating that his captain should not loose his bolt just yet.

A Flash momentarily blinded them all.

The sky sizzled above them and rained hellfire and brimstone, giving off an acrid stench. As the animal bounded off up the wooded slope Domingo pointed above to a demon hissing to earth from some hell above! The squat dark-skinned man went to his knees mumbling and making the infernal sign of addition in his uneducated state of terror. Ibn urinated upon himself, the smell of his fear mingling with the acrid scent of the demon, which even now plummeted to earth in a fiery image of the Final Days of Satan’s Reign, now some ten generations past.

Ismail was praying to God, Domingo uttering his blasphemes, and Ibn quivering on the deck. Mishar had only one thought, foolish though it was. On impulse, he raised his fez airbolt and foolishly loosed a bolt at the monstrosity that plunged to earth a mile over their heads. Ismail looked at him with a frown and shook his head even as Ibn broke into tears and Domingo mumbled to some imaginary wench named Mary. The stench was keener now, the bitter particles now reaching them from beneath the tail of the descending demon.

Mishar had now walked the decks of Clan Barge Lahab for 19 years—making him 20—and finally knew what he wished to be. He stood on the deck, which now vibrated strangely beneath his feet. They all listened into the distance as the sizzling sound of the demon falling to earth grew distant, and then erupted into a crescendo of splitting trees. Finally there was a thunderous dirge way off over the wooded hills that seemed to echo in the back country.

Whatever had happened it must have been upriver, for the river water now seemed to be reversing course and waxing turbulent beneath the bamboo deck where he stood in his sandals.

He felt full of confidence now, knowing what must be done, what his destiny was!

“Ismail, set course upriver, now. I wish to slay the demon!”

The old hand turned and scowled at him like he was a fool.

The look of disdain on Ismail’s scowling brow then turned to fear.

The look on Ismail’s face then turned to abject horror and he screamed like—like a little girl who has seen a bat.

Domingo was hooting like an ape and Ibn crying like a babe, when Mishar turned and looked over his shoulder across the mouth of the Hudson Fiord to the Manhattan Banks, their clan’s rich perennial fishing ground this side of the Great Blue Ocean.

Tendrils thicker than skiffs were wide and many times longer than date palms were tall emerged from the shallows above the submerged city that pious men said was once Satan’s Den. Those pious men, the hermits on the Azores and the dervishes of Tenerife, and the other barge hetmen who preferred the risks of the Island Sea and its many pirates to fishing above the Tomb of Great Satan, had, it now seemed, been right.

A leviathan was generally twice the size of a blue whale, upon which they fed. Where the blues cruised the open oceans, their hunters laid in wait among the Kelp Sea, around the teeming island reefs, and about the volcanic vents of Iceland, which, it was said, had seen no ice in a hundred years or more. Leviathans were thought to be related to the giant squid, but Mishar’s father, Ibrihm, a noted oceanographer, disagreed. Ibrihim had noted that leviathan’s had no real propulsion system like a squid, but rather crawled along the bottom and then used buoyancy techniques to raise themselves, thus feeding exclusively from ambush.

The monstrosity that now encircled Clan Barge Lahab with its massive tendrils made a sound, the sound all leviathans made, but a sound magnified tenfold, as this creature was tenfold the size of the leviathan they had fought off in the Kelp Sea. The leviathan’s song was a gurgling hiss, like a kiss blown by a giant drowning man. One could only see tendrils, those enwrapping the barge, and those acting tent-peg like to brace the creature whose body mass was surely beneath the barge. These tendrils where not those that tore and rent, but those that Father had surmised propelled the great beast side-to-side across the broad plain of the deep, like some giant crab. Now these appendages were seen as giant spider legs propping up some hideous unseen mass that resided beneath the churning waters to send fourth its countless tendrils to rend and crush their home.

The turbulence alone had swamped all of the skiffs that could be seen. The men, thrown into the sea seemed to be struggling with some unseen horrors, as if the monstrous creature had babies feasting in its wake. The screams of agony could be heard like pops of sound above the low hissing song of the fiend. Mishar then noticed that one of the monstrous legs was braced to the bottom two bolt shots from them. He could perhaps take a shot and unbalance the beast, at least distract it.

“Ismail, get me closer so I can get a shot.”

“Are you stupid or insane boy?”

He turned to the old hand and barked an order in the manner that his uncle often had, “Heed me—your master—you common man! Get me closer.”

Ismail, a seasoned skiff pilot more than three times his age, snarled back, “No master of mine are you puppy of the sea!”

Ibn was quivering in a fetal position and Domingo was simply observing the goliath beast. Ismail, however, had eyes only for Mishar.

The doubt must have shown in his eyes, for, even as the sound of the barge being rent to pieces came to them, Ismail growled, “If you have to think about it you’re not man enough boy!”

With those words the old man spit in Mishar’s eyes, blinding the youth. Mishar reached for his knife with his left hand as he tried to level the airbolt with his right. The sound of his weapon being dashed to the deck even as his knife hand was pinned at his belt brought a sense of helplessness. Then, the old sea-strong pilot smashed his forehead into Mishar’s nose, causing total blindness to come in a flash of red. He could feel the man’s bristly whiskered chin move against his soft neck with every vile word as he was borne back onto the deck to be killed with his own knife it seemed, “I fart in your grandfather’s beard boy!”

Then his head crashed into the bamboo planks of the deck, which did not give, and he descended into darkness, without the many worries he had surmised would be his at death. It was as if he was carried off on a wave, carried off to the watery grave they all feared, rather than the sacred tomb maintained for their remains on LaPalm, Isle of the Departed.