The Nowhere Island

~~~

Where had all the noise gone?

It never got this quiet. Not when night fell and the ghoulish mists of the sea started whirling around their ship like the stench of death had been whirling around the bodies of its crew.

The pirate knew something was up. For twelve long nights, he had listened to the humming of a thousand deceased voices. The voices of all those who had given their lives searching for the treasure of the Nowhere Island. His crew must have been among them now. Trying to drag him down with their moans of despair.

The pirate glanced to the compass at the palm of his hand. The steel needle was spinning more aggressively than usual. He was close.

With a leap, he jumped off the staircase and onto the main deck. The wooden floor creaked under his boots as he strolled towards the lookout tower. A gust of salty air passed him. The sea was more active than usual tonight.

There they lied, half a dozen of them, wrapped in linen sacks and scattered across the deck. The pirate kept them aboard so their families could have a proper burial upon his return. Though he was uncertain about how to explain to them their fathers' and husbands' deaths.

Each night, at least one of them had dropped dead, for reasons unknown to them. Though that was not entirely true. The pirate knew what killed them.

The Nowhere Islands would not simply reveal themselves to anyone casually looking for them. You had to stay persistent. That was what the captain had kept uttering ever since they set sail. And yet, soon after they had entered the mists, the first and weakest of the crew lost their faith, and in a result, passed.

With each loss of men, the crew had grown increasingly uneasy. When the mysterious, deep voices started humming all throughout the night, more and more began yearning to give up and go home. Only those with the strongest wills endured... until now. With the captain's death the other night, the pirate was left all alone.

Though that did not discourage him. He was still here, cleaning the deck, heating the stoves, washing the clothes, steering the wheel. And now that the humming had faded, he knew that his efforts had not been in vain. He had left behind those too weak for this journey, and finally passed the test.

A grin formed on his face as he climbed the ladder up the central mast. Their sails had been furled for days now; the wind was barely ever strong enough to carry them further anyway. It was mostly the ever so tiny waves slowly pushing them forward.

After finally reaching the lookout, the pirate pulled the wooden telescope crested with rings of gold from the belt around his waist and extended it to its full length. It used to be the captain's property, but, for obvious reasons, was not of much use to him now anyway.

The grin on his face grew even wider as he looked through it. Back there, in the distance, the mist was clearing. He was approaching the end of these unholy waters, reaching the eye of the storm. This. Was. It.

In one swift motion, he swung around and grabbed the rope to his right. "Set sail!", he yelled, leaping off the lookout and untying the knot around the giant linen plane in the process. As he triumphantly hit the ground, the sail spread behind him to its full extent. He did not care about the effort it would cost to tie it back up all on his own. They were going to use what little wind there was to move forward as quickly as physically possible.

Usually, the captain would now order his crew to man the paddles, only there was no crew left to assign this task upon. That was fine. The pirate could do it himself.

He hurried down the stairs, through the kitchen, past several more corpses, and, eventually, reached the lower deck. The scent of mold filled the air down here, but the pirate could not be bothered by that. Without hesitation, he ran towards the first oar port and hurled the body of one of his former crewmates off the stool in front of it. After sticking a paddle, the length of a pine through it, he began rigorously rowing to the best of his capabilities.

Soon, sweat started dripping from his forehead, as he kept putting all his strength into moving the ship forward, if only ever so slightly. He kept switching sides, paddling a bit to the right, then to the left, making sure they stayed on course.

It was only after a while when the exhaustion hit him and he glanced through the window to see how far they had come, only to realize he had long left the mist behind him. His breath hitched. Filled with new excitement, he ran towards the stairs and ascended back to the main deck. He ran towards the railing, ripping the telescope from his waist, almost dropping it in the process, looked through it and found-

Nothing.

Before him was nothing but the quiet, black waters of the nightly sea. No silhouette of a mountain in the distance, no rocks poking out of the water suggesting he had entered shallow waters.

That could not be. The pirate scratched his forehead. Maybe he had to keep going further? Maybe the area surrounding the Nowhere Island, these waters free of mist, were simply larger than anticipated. But as he waited there, drifting forward, it slowly dawned on him that he was not in the middle of the ghastly sea, but rather out of it.

He missed it.

Turning around, he watched as the mists slowly grew increasingly distant. The place were all his crewmates died. Only he had survived.

He read his compass, realizing with a heavy stomach that their ship had somehow turned around when they were in the mists. He was now heading home.

Empty handed.

The pirate was not going to let that happen. With a firm step, he marched up the quarter deck and grabbed the steering wheel, spinning it around to get them back on course.