Maelstrom

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There was a new rumbling sound below, but it went unnoticed by the eight-year-old girl swaying in the sailcloth hammock. Her slumber was already filled with the incessant rumbling and groaning of the working hull, and the endless, hissing blows of the pounding sea. Then came another rumble, and another, each more insistent than the last. Still, she didn’t stir from her dream. In it she’d been swallowed by a leviathan, just as she’d dreaded since before the strange voyage ever began. Every night, as soon as the lids closed over her large, jade-colored eyes, the same terrible dream came again. She was in the very bowels of a leviathan, and the rumbling, hissing roar was the sound of its belly digesting the ship. The voices came-there were always voices-excited, urgent voices in a tone entirely appropriate. Of course there would be dreadful voices in a dreadful dream. She knew what would happen next…

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