Siren
Being an exploration of what it means to be an adult in a place heretofore reserved as the domain of childhood.
It was the lashing of rain against the portholes that woke me from my nap. A vicious storm had blown in from nowhere, it seemed, and I tumbled from my cot and scrambled above decks, hoping against hope that I could get my sails in before they were torn to shreds.
My sails might have survived with only moderate damage, but my navigation equipment wasn't so lucky. As I bobbed and rolled like a cork in the endless black seas, I watched, dejectedly, as my GPS and navigational equipment began flashing errors. There was nothing left to do now but hope I wasn't blown too far off course before I was able to get my equipment back online.
I would be the one to sail into a mystery storm, in the midst of my bid to become the fastest solo female to circumnavigate the globe. I was nearing the end of my journey, sleep-deprived and haggard, and I was dreaming of a real bed and clothes that weren't stiff with seaspray and a chance to hide from the blazing sunshine for hours at a time. I must have nodded off before the weather reports, I thought darkly, wrestling to keep my vessel on course. All the same, this wasn't the sort of storm one expected in the North Atlantic at this time of year.
As the storm blew onward, I was afforded the briefest moments of relief, before I realized I was taking water. So close, and yet so far, I thought, starting my pumps with a loud, mechanical complaint. I could probably make repairs myself, but the thought of sailing out into the open Atlantic on a "probably" wasn't terribly appealing at this juncture. As it was, I would be limping along at drastically reduced speeds until my sails could be mended, and even more slowly if I was taking water, and there was no guarantee I wouldn't be hit by another storm and rolled before I could shore up the hull. Having lost most of my lead time over the last month, it was becoming clear to me that my record bid was over. Sighing, I weighed my options.
I was half a day off the coast of Portugal, maybe a little more, depending on my current speed. If I turned back, even if I wildly overshot my course back toward Europe, the worst I could do was make landfall in western Africa. With a hopeful glance back to my GPS and Sonar, (both unhelpfully scrambled) I sighed and headed below decks to retrieve the sextant that my grandfather had used during WWII, and attempted to mentally prepare myself for the amount of math it would take me to navigate by starlight.
The storm itself may have left me behind, but in the darkness that preceeded a bright dawn, the low-hanging clouds remained ominously. Just my luck. I swiveled around, peering for something, anything visible in the night sky. Just as I was preparing to give up and head back to the pilothouse for a brain-bending session of 2am math to estimate an even more inaccurate path, the clouds at my stern broke open and a pair of gleaming stars began twinkling seductively through.
It wasn't much, but it would have to be enough. Consulting my equipment, maps now cluttering the navigation panel of the pilothouse, I chose the rightmost of the pair, murmuring a prayer that I would at the very worst run into Morocco, and laid the coordinates into my navigation systems. At least this vessel could still steer itself if I told it where it was headed, I thought hazily, as my brain again began to fog from lack of sleep. Perhaps a short nap, then I could better assess the next steps to take…
I awoke to sunlight, streaming weakly into the portholes. I had clearly slept far longer than intended, though I felt just as hazy and exhausted as before. The vessel had begun to list slightly, and I was grateful I had at least made the decision to run for Europe instead of limping farther into the North Atlantic. I clambered to assist my mechanical equipment, manning the manual pumps until I felt the swaying below me return to a somewhat more normal cadence.
Climbing up into the pilothouse, I was astonished to see land springing up before my eyes. It was a smallish island, blazing green and gold in the sunlight. Bafflingly, I couldn't even estimate where I might have ended up, based on my maps. Perhaps I had come too close to the Canary Islands?
I elected to swing south around the island, hoping for a calm place to drop anchor, trying to figure out if this place I had ended up was inhabited or not, and figuring out how to avoid ending up scuttled here forever. Suddenly, up from the south, an immense sailing ship came gliding elegantly over the water. As it approached, growing from what initially appeared to be a tiny cloud scudding across the waves, I realized with a twinge in the pit of my stomach that the ship was flying a jolly roger at the top of its tallest mast.
"Literally no actual pirates are obvious enough to brand themselves like that." I reassured myself in a whisper.
I had crash landed on an amusement park. That had to be it. I'd get there, and everyone would speak Portuguese, and we'd all be confused as hell and get a great laugh out of it, and then I'd get my vessel towed to drydock for repairs and that would be that. Right?
Still, the unbelievability nagged at me. On a good day, I could outmaneuver and outrun a ship this size as if it were standing still. Today, however, I was limping on ragged sails and a belly full of seawater, and I was in no shape for a race. The ship continued to swell, sliding silently alongside my vessel, and I peered up at the towering decks, only to find a squat, dirty man with tiny round spectacles peering back down at me.
"Ahoy!" he shouted. Really? Has anyone shouted 'Ahoy' since 1896?
"Ahoy!" I called back, not without irony. The squat man adjusted his spectacles, peering at me for a long moment.
"So… I hate to be rude, but I'm taking water, and I'd really like to not drown out here with you ogling me." I prompted.
"Right. Uh… Hold that thought a minute, Miss."
Before I could dig up another scathing reply, he was gone. Moments later, he returned, coils of rope slung over one arm.
"We'll tow you in. Cut your engines."