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TWO YEARS AGO

September 29th, 1893Delphine Transit Log

4:44 A.M.Underway early to try and beat the storm.Crickets are loud. River is flat. Mr. Owl missed logging the passengers. Marked down who I saw board:

Crew:Captain LaffiteMr. OwlMr. DouglasScrawlback JimJellico Bennings

Passengers:Mr. & Mrs. CarmichaelFrederick Dellowit from Algiers Ice*Rest Unknown

6:45 A.M.The river is cast in gray light. Higher than this time last year. A row of houses sit half-flooded and sunk. There are children on the roofs throwing rocks at us. The captain is thumbing the hammer on his rifle, and I don’t bother to stay his hand.

8:15 A.M.We took a deep wake portside in passing a lumber barge. Something heavy dislodged in stowage, and Jellico and Scrawlback started to scuffle. Captain stepped in and slapped them both in front of the Carmichaels. No one will say what they’re transporting down there. But Frederick said he heard whispering from one of the crates.

10:10 A.M.Nearly broadsided an oak tree felled by the wind. Gusting up to 25 knots already. Captain doesn’t seem concerned. He’s excited. I would be too if my duty was to drink on deck all morning.

12:00 P.M.I saw the gust blow a circus tent clear into the river and knew there’d be people caught inside the flotsam of canvass and logs. Steered away as best I could, but couldn’t stop in time on account of it blowing over 35 knots. The passengers don’t know. Had Mr. Owl clean the blood off the bow.

If this storm wasn’t haunted, it’s going to be now.

4:00 P.M.Captain won’t let us turn back. The storm has burn-mark clouds. The wind is getting stronger, tastes like ash. Every omen of a hurricane is upon us.

If we survive this, I’ll make sure the captain never sets foot on this boat again.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerTale of Submission, Verse One

May I doubt the strangeness of the clouds no more. Many forget, but those of us who remain Grounded know that there is something darker lurking behind them.There is a sickness in this rain. It clings too long to leaves and bark. The sound of it dripping on the soil is wrong. Each drop leaves the impression of an insect’s footfall in my mind. The mist here tastes rotten, and I’m repulsed anew with each breath.The strange folk about are not bothered by the wetness. They dart out of bushes and the rain holding iron, boards, wrack. They are building a sculpture from this driftwood and the gnarled parts of a boat wreck. They carry each piece as a sacred object. A rare treasure.They are too caught up in their work to notice me.I slunk to the altar they constructed and discarded the secrets of my honor to its tainted form. In return, I have gained a Shadow. An extra shade over my own.The Corrupted cannot see me now. Not the Hives with their screeching and swarms blown like leaves. Not the Armoreds strung with wild barbed wire. If I’m quiet, I slip between them. I’m a Shadow thin enough to cut light.With the bayou’s blessing, I can hunt the miscreation known as Rotjaw.But I have lost something.When I close my eyes, I see veins of silver. They are my own veins, but it is not my blood inside them. It is blood from a different land.I feel it. Something else seeing through my eyes instead of me. Something beckoning me to kneel on the banks. To kiss the tracks of the beast with its jaws open to the clouds.The beast that drinks this rain and wishes upon us the foulest season of rot and bloom.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerProseuchomai of the PrimalVolume One, Chapter One

This is the vow all Primal share.I’ve only seen a glimpse of Her through the overwash. Rot-dappled. Lumbering with a full bellied sway. There was someone inside Her, not whole eaten. They shot a gun through Her flank to escape. But She tensed, twirled the angels of Her stomach, and crushed them so only an arm dropped out.I gathered that arm. I enwreathed it with blue crab. I balanced it on the bitten carapace of a turtle to make myself a compass. Not one that points near north. But one that aims true to the wishes of men soon to be preyed upon.The others want to gut Her. Lash Her mandible. Sip Her salt-life until its red be gone and they possess magicks not known.That Reptilian folk can’t be tracked. He has gained some instinct–some knowledge of my presence without regard for the direction of the wind or sound, like he smells the blood beating in my heart.His children are easily followed, that Ward and the hornbacked one. They’re clumsy. They move with the steps of drunk fairies and leave their filth like crumbs.I can lick a beetle and tell of their direction. That is the filth they leave behind.If there is testament to be writ here, it will be through our proseuchomai: this prayer that does not cease. We will come face to face with Her. We will offer Her the miracle of many fleshes. We will feed Her until She cannot move. Around Her we shall make a shrine.But I will be the one to sit atop Her. I will have a throne in these waters at last.

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893Delphine Transit Log

2:00 A.M.Hell is real and I am inside it. I am certain there has never been a wind such as this on these shores, or else there would be no shore left to stand upon.

2:30 A.M.The paddle wheel is churning up bodies of drowned people. They’re bursting on the deck when they fall.

2:45 A.M.We passed through a wall of insects. It seems everything is made of them now. Some have burrowed into the bodies on deck.

2:55 A.M.A wave reached so high it broke the windshield. Brought with it a six-foot bull shark. It’s thrashing at the back of the pilot house. Some massive beetle is screeching inside its mouth.

3:00 A.M.The captain left us. I saw him. There was a kind of lightning I have never seen before, and it scared him. It scared him worse than it scared me. It struck the boat, and the sound of a gong rang out from the cargo hold.The captain jumped overboard, holding onto a whiskey bottle. I’m the only one who saw him do it. No one is going to believe me.

7:00 A.M.We are lost.This is not a poetic statement of the ship sinking. We are somewhere that in no way resembles any causeway, inlet, marsh channel, or tributary on the map. At first I thought it would be on account of the tide surge. Everything is flooded. But no. We are somewhere else. The storm seems to have put us in its eye and the breeze is calm, steady.I would say it blows from the southwest, but the compass is erased. I mean to say something has cleared all markings from it.One more note: The sun didn’t rise. I think the storm has eaten it.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerHelmsman’s Land Log

The Smuggler’s Pact is to put gold before souls. If they don’t bleed money, I don’t care what risks they take.But the Captain smells land worn. A coward, even. He clings to his rifle and sweats.“She’s near,” he sputters. “Rimbo, Jazz. Into the dew reeds to look for the cargo. Don’t linger at the trace.”Get in the reeds they do. They slide through the pluff mud and heron bones. Me and the captain wade across the still water and take cover behind a palm fringe. We watch them get distracted by the trace.The creek trembles. It shivers. Rattles my knees.The Rotjaw breaches with Jazz clamped in her mouth. Those jaws could crush a cannon ball. I don’t know what to call what they do to Jazz’s head.Wind surges. It whitecaps the marsh upstream. I brace for the gale-force, steady the captain as he shoots. He’s got dizzy aim. Sends a bullet through Rimbo’s chest.Rotjaw purges her shackles. Bolts of blue-green lightning leap from the water and burn Rimbo. His scream comes out of his eyes instead of his mouth. I guess that’s because his mouth is gone.Captain gave up watching the frenzy. He stares east.“There it is, mother of Mary. There it is.” The captain drops his gun.The smokestack of a ship rises through the gatorfroth. It steams with a dead fog. But it’s real, knocks a tree over. The Rotjaw stops playing with what’s left of Jazz and Rimbo. She slinks away and follows the smokestack as it glides downstream on vapors.“I don’t see how we’re s’posed to get treasure from a ghost ship,” I tell the captain.He winces. I imagine he’s thinking the thoughts of all cowardly captains: that one day gold might float true enough to save him from what he’s left to drown.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerProseuchomai of the PrimalVolume One, Chapter Two

She is generous with Her gifts.I find Her cage, perched in the middle of the still water, rocking like a cradle with two Hunters tucked inside. Pine beetles march up their legs, enter the chapel of their mouths and come out of other holes and windows. What kind of prayer is at work here I do not know, but I study the patterns of the beetles till dawn.The metal of the cage trap is soaked in Her blood. I taste it. I feel its rot melt and molt and multiply. She is healed through the things that hurt us, and this is a special wonder to me.On those metal ribs are all sorts of wire spools–veins from machines. Things pretending to be alive. It disgusts me. A plate welded on one of the nodes reads: Algiers Ice Company. Curious, this science that crowns the ribs of our queen.Whyever the reason, it is sacrilege.I spear a catfish and touch it to one of the cage spikes. Lightning sparks and smokes through its gills. It doesn’t turn to ice.The sound of it is loud, foolish, causes someone to find me.I feel their soul as gentle as a moth lands on a skull at night–a pollen of orange flittered in the darkness of my vision, an Instinct. This sense is new, a gift from Her, and it will keep me safe.I pick up a railroad sledge from one of the dead Hunters. It is slick with tide rot, oyster filth.I slide quiet, crouching around bundles of pampas grass till I hear the person swish their cane in the water.I time my movements with the swaying of the tall stalks.My legs move as Hers move. I am silent in the stream.I raise the hammer and know that I am blessed.I let the hammer fall and know that I am blessed.

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Still)Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.M. - Time UnknownTime is irrelevant here. As is hunger, thirst, and other bodily functions. If Mr. Carmichael were to cut me open, he would find clockwork. Clocks inside all of us. The moon here is a joke. It barely moves.

00:00 A.M.There are more people aboard than I thought. Most are hiding in cabinets or shuddering naked beneath poker tables. Some find river snails and isopods and shove them into their eyes. There are only a handful of the crew and passengers left to talk to.

00:00 A.M.I told the rest that the captain abandoned us.Mrs. Carmichael called me “faithless.” Said I steered us into a twilight hell.Mr. Carmichael accused me of pushing the captain over and Jellico agreed, mentioning that our cargo was “immaculate.”Frederick claimed we had the Ark of the Covenant onboard, that he could hear a voice from it without using his ears.Mr. Owl said he’d gut Frederick if he kept on like that.Scrawlback Jim shot off some rounds, shut them up. He said he wasn’t hungry and hadn’t pissed for a thousand years. There was something stalking the boat he wanted us to go shoot. Apparently the Delphine is full of guns and stolen goods.He mentioned some kind of crenulated “insectile head” like an artifact, too.

00:00 A.M.They’ve been shooting for an hour. At the giant beetles that plow these channels with their migrations. At the trees. At the waterlogged, roaming sailors that explode silver vomit from their mouths. The sailors seem out of time, more lost than we are.

00:00 A.M.The gunshots woke something up. It raised the Delphine a whole foot out of the water then swam out, turned, and rammed us head on. All I saw were jaws tearing into the paddle wheel.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerHelmsman’s Land Log

They say time heals all wounds, but it runs like water and drowns the unwary.“When you untie me, I’m going to stab you,” The Rat told me. She was wet and shivering.I shoved a rag into her mouth. Smeared grease across her eyes out of courtesy. Testing the powers of a ship curse is brutal work.Captain left to talk to that man, Finch. Orders were to see if the Delphine had “blessed us.” I went beside Glib and the Gunrunner by the altar we found.I didn’t feel this would work.The Rat was in the middle of the river. She couldn’t move a finger lashed to that tree.I shot first. Hit her in the shoulder. She didn’t make a sound.Glib and the Gunrunner shot her next, both in the legs. She made a sound then. It was muffled through the rag.I watched her through my scope. Damn me if I don’t speak true, the water boiled at her waist. Her skin spit out each bullet. The holes closed. All healed by the water.I shot the knot, let her loose.Glib spat tobacco on the altar. “This don’t mean anything.”“The Delphine is running from us,” the Gunrunner told me. “From the captain.”We hadn’t seen or heard The Rat swimming. She was just there. Tucked a bayonet into Glib’s ribs.Before I could cock a hammer back, she shanked the Gunrunner in the neck and stuck me in the armpit.I’ve seen men shredded by anchor chains. Slit at the throat by crane wire. Somehow, we bled more than all of that.“Go on boys,” The Rat said. “Time for your bath.”We stumbled into the stream and the water boiled at our waists. Glib murmured something about mermaids drowning. Our cuts healed. Water turned to blood.The Rat pointed north with her bayonet. To where steam rose above the trees, and a boat’s ghostly engine struggled.

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Forever)Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.M.It seems we’ve been underway for ten thousand years. It feels like I’m made of leyline and fog.Mr. Carmichael can’t leave the saloon without licking five barnacles in ritual sequence: north, south, south, west, east, south.Mrs. Carmichael lives inside what remains of the paddle wheel now. She hugs the axle and spins with each turn. Sometimes I hear her singing.Frederick has been building a contraption. He says he can use it to “transport” us home. When he leaves the cargo hold, I go and break parts of its cage.

00:00 A.M.Mr. Owl caught a beetle the size of a sea turtle and tried to bring it aboard. He was going to try eating one again. But that alligator lurched out of the water and snapped his arms off.Mr. Owl won’t be flying anytime soon.Again, that young girl was on the banks, watching, moving her hands all strange. Maybe she can control that thing.Maybe she can control all of us.

00:00 A.M.Mr. Owl has rotted from the inside out. Last word he spoke was “Rotjaw.”

00:00 A.M.After the fifth attack by the “Rotjaw,” we were boarded by a man on a rowboat, some stranger we’d never seen before. It shocked me.It ruined my view of this place as pure and chartless.The man said our cargo was special. He said the “insectile head” buried under the guns was special.“Julius Caesar sacrificed a goat on that very relic,” the man said. “Napoleon Bonaparte tried to feed it to his horse, too.”He said the object once showed a man how to make the very first fire. He said if we shoved it inside that alligator, we’d all go home.He tapped the deck with his cane when he said “home.”

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerTale of Submission, Verse Two

The breath of a flower could break this man in half.“If you patch me up right, I can tell you about the alligator,” the bloated man says. He has been wet for a long time. His skin is sick from the rain. The sores seem like a mold he should not have touched. His many broken bones were splintered by a heavy hammer.The man was brought to me by The Wolf Pack. Their leader kicks him in the ribs. I smell blood on them. There was a fight. They want me to heal them.If they betray this kindness–I can squeeze their life back out.They hand me a Trait totem. I grip its skull and channel the restoration within as I have heard done before. The thing is dark and hot, and its energy is strong. I feel blood multiply inside the Wolf Hunters, and the mold withers away from the lowly man’s flesh. The totem vanishes.“You are Mr. Chary?” I ask. “A weak name. A name for a worm.”“Even a worm has seen things you have not.” He stands. I hand him a stick instead of his cane.“How has this ‘Rotjaw’ come here?” I place my hand over his on the stick. I squeeze hard enough to make him bleed again.“There is a man who has traveled to another place. The Land of the Dead. He brought something back and used this monster to do it. He’s selfish.”“Where is he? Does he too have the name of worm?”“No. He has the name of a bird: Finch. And I know where he’ll be when the sun rises.”“Will the Rotjaw be there?” I draw a grub on the man’s face with his own blood.“Yes. She strikes at the sun like men break their teeth on gold.”

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerTale of Submission, Final Verse

I’m riding her snout through the wind, and her mouth is creaking open. The murmuring deafens me.Arcs of lightning bloom across the swamp, boiling the silver veins inside my eyes.I’m riding her snout through the wind, and the rain festers on my lips.Her smell is thyme and lavender, if herbs could weep pus.I’m riding her snout across the sky, and the rain putrefies. My ropes sling tight under her jaw and hold firm.I plant my fear inside my spit, and I spit into the holes of her jaw. This is my respect.Her spit is the color of fireflies squashed between a child’s finger and thumb.I’m riding her snout across the bottom of the river, and the rocks cut me.I’m riding her snout through the boards of a shack, and her entrails snag on wood and glass.Her rot blossoms in the creek, and many fish burn and blacken, and I breathe in their life to give my arms the strength they’ve lost.I’m riding her snout over the creek, and her tooth shears the lashing rope.She death rolls. I let go. The bow of a ship steams in her lightning filth, arching over her.I’m standing before her open mouth and I bow, my arms out. If I drip on her tongue, she’ll bite. If I breathe into her, she’ll bite.I stand still. I swallow vomit and the rain. Inside the Rotjaw, I see an object not of this land.It’s head-like, maybe a paper fossil, maybe a pupa birthed from the first insect to tread on land. Its decay whispers in languages not heard since people first made fire.I dodge the Rotjaw’s bite. She sinks with the boat.I know now what has fouled this rain.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerProseuchomai of the PrimalVolume One, Chapter Three

That wrestler weakened the Rotjaw and stopped the rain somehow. The clouds are like the fur of a sleeping animal: dead calm.She gurgles in the water. She calls me to Her. But others have heard too:

Four Smugglers in a watchtower.The Reptilian and his kin, skulking under walkways.A shield of Hunters caring for the Grounded behind the trees.

The Skinned one rushes from the roots of an upturned tree. Muzzle fire flares from both his hands. Bark explodes behind my head.A firebomb flutters and breaks on the watchtower, as a moth might were it full of moonshine and lust.Those Grounded Hunters bring a grunt horde led by a host of Hives. They weave through them, undetected, as the Helmsman and his captain get flanked.The Reptilian’s avtomat fire blows apart a Water Devil herd.The Hornback sets off my trap. She screams, suspended on barbed wire.I hear pistol ammo run dry. I roll into the water. I was born to be as quiet as the thoughts of a wave.My lance pierces the Skinned from behind. I push its tip all the way through the birdcage of his lungs.Bullets slip through my skin. They’re the wishes of butterflies scorched by summer.A knife blesses my shoulder. An arrow finds my leg. The pain rings a cicada in my ear.But I am relentless.I’ve made it to the Rotjaw. I touch Her for the first time. The heaving, pulsing, wildness of Her.I bleed all the blood I have left into Her mouth and banish Her soul as mine is leaving too. I find the ghost of her hand and hold it.If I can cheat this death, so can She.

I whisper:I can’t save you.I can’t make of you a throne.I can only crown you queen of my heart, and hope its beating brings you back to me.

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Eternity)Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.M.Frederick retrofitted his electric device to slide around the alligator. He said the relic told him how to do it.When he thinks he’s alone, he cradles the thing like a baby, letting the isopods that follow it suck his fingers.

00:00 A.M.I have made a plan to stop Frederick’s cage and whatever the man in the rowboat wants. If I could feed them to the Delphine, I would.If my plan works, I’ll die.

00:00 A.M.I stepped off the Delphine for the first time.I wanted to know what it was like. But she is more a part of me than my own blood. We are married. I could never leave her like the captain did.I will stay here with her. We will have a kind of children together, I think.

00:00 A.M.Mrs. Carmichael sings when the Rotjaw comes near. She has sung for a whole geological age, but the thing has not appeared. Something else is about to happen.

00:00 A.M.The storm is back. Mr. Douglas has been shooting into the wind to try and stop it. Mr. Carmichael is licking his barnacles in reverse order. His wife won’t stop singing from the paddle wheel.

00:00 A.M.Damn them all. They put a meat hook through Scrawlback Jim and drug him on a cable as bait. It happened too fast: The Rotjaw bit down, and they used the paddle wheel as a winch to reel it onto the main deck.It’s set that young girl on the banks to screaming.It’s set Mr. Douglas on blue fire.It’s set me to work to save the ship.

PRESENT DAY

1895, SummerHelmsman’s Land Log

The Delphine rained down from the sky. She broke apart as cursed as any shipwreck could hope to be.

It happened when the fish woman crawled on the Rotjaw and banished her. The boat must have been ghosting through the clouds.

The paddle wheel crushed someone hiding in a bush. Hull planks speared into the mud. A chain almost halved me.

It was unnatural enough to scare off the other Hunters.

The crates and boxes and cases of her cargo rained down too. Guns and precious ammo tumbled from them. I picked up a double-barreled rifle with a shotgun bored beneath. I could tell it was more art than weapon. It was worth the lives of a hundred men.

Captain ignored the goods. He sifted through the black entrails of the gator. A rowboat fell and about killed him.

I heaved the captain out of that ichor and noticed a gathering approach. They shambled in the manner of priests. Gathered all the Delphine’s debris. The largest of their following stared me down while the rest constructed an altar. Some familiar hook slung over his back and steamed.

They marched their new creation downstream in silence.

The Rat didn’t like whatever they were doing. I suppose she was done with damning her soul for money.

She held dynamite and the means to throw it.

I shot her in the back before she could. The bundle went off in the water and tossed her.

The Rat hung on to life, and those gathering driftwood drug her to their shrine. They stacked and mounted whatever guts of the Delphine they could find.

They readied their ritual.

I watched The Rat’s soul get turned inside out and absorbed. It looked like a cloud. It smelled like the rain. Maybe that’s what this rain is made of.

But who’s left to care when there is treasure to sell and guns to fire?

I saw something gold in the water.

I waited and stared and waited longer to see if it would float.

TWO YEARS AGO

October 1st, 1893 (Time has an End)Delphine Transit Log

00:00 A.MFrederick has doomed himself and the crew. But not me. Not the Delphine.His cage fit around the alligator, and he took that relic and activated it and I saw Mrs. Carmichael flash to steam. The beast is loose and destroying the saloon.I pocketed a poker chip for luck and crawled into the boiler. Sealed it from inside.I will give all my blood to the Delphine if it will keep her afloat.

00:00 A.M.This is a miracle. The ship has chosen me. It will not let me die.The fires in this engine have not burned me yet. They have not consumed the ship’s log for fuel so that I may keep writing.The Delphine knows I’m inside her. She knows I’m home at last.

00:00 A.M.All is quiet. I knew the gator had won when the fire around me turned to pale green lightning. I see more stars in these sparks than the sky could ever hold.

00:00 A.M.I am drifting away. My arm is gone. Turned to ash and steam to give the Delphine breath in whatever waters she sails now.I will continue to ash away. I will become one with this ship. I will whisper forever that she needs no captain.

00:00 A.M.My legs go next. My spine blooms with a special kind of decay. In the dark, in the flash of lightning strikes, it looks like I’m becoming a flower. A daffodil for the Delphine.

00:00 A.MI am almost complete.Just ribs. A shoulder. My writing arm. My skull has departed ahead of time.I cannot see. But my thoughts are everywhere.I will become a hundred altars to her.I will turn souls into deckhands, mates, and chambermaids for her.She will always remember me.I will always be her shadow on the tide.