Chapter Six
The Storm
I blinked a couple of times and then I reached up to feel at my very sore head. Someone had wrapped a bandage around it and the smell of dried blood was heavy in my nostrils.
I was still in the wheelhouse, but no one else appeared to be. Alarm at that helped drive me painfully up to my feet.
I clutched onto the wall for a moment as I’d risen too quickly and the world was spinning. I suppose it was still spinning wasn’t it? Or did the world above spin upon this inner world?
It occurred to me that I didn’t know as I didn’t know much about any of what was happening. I didn’t know from where all this light was coming from for instance.
I stumbled out of the wheelhouse holding onto the railing as I went. Looking up I had my answer as to the source of the light and yet I didn’t.
I could see where the light came from now, but I couldn’t explain how it was being generated. We were upon a sea and above us was a vast dome like ceiling of clouds. How high up I couldn’t say, but it was high.
The top of the dome like enclosure was a mass of shifting clouds that strikingly resembled the Aurora Borealis or northern lights of the northern hemisphere. Instead of the blues and greens though the colors shifted from yellow to orange and then red.
The light given off wasn’t as bright as the sun, but it more than lit up the place with a hazy twilight glow. I would never have believed that such a place as this was possible, but seeing is believing.
I could only guess as to the makeup of the clouds overhead and the curious reactions taking place causing them to give off the shifting colors that they were. Perhaps gases interacting with the heat of the magma above, who knew, but what I did know was that we weren’t in the dark without light. I was grateful beyond words for that, even as I was pressed for words to describe the shifting beauty of the clouds overhead.
The others had all been gathered outside and I walked up among them as they all stood staring upward.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” Matt said, as I came to a stop beside him.
The sea around us had a hushed awe to it as if the calm before a storm. I didn’t care for that sensation, but ignoring it for the moment I nodded in response to Matt.
He tore his gaze away from the mesmerizing clouds overhead to me, “How’s that head?” He asked.
“It hurts!” I said in response.
He patted me on the back, “You’ll be fine. You always have been such a healthy animal.”
He was silent for a moment before saying, “Thank you for bringing me along Eli. This right here is worth seeing.”
“Don’t thank me just yet Matt.” I said grimly, as I followed where Serena pointed to something behind us on the horizon.
Serena called out in concern, “I think a storm is coming!”
Everyone else turned and gazed at where she pointed. In the distance the orange clouds had turned gray and then a blue electric beam of light streaked out through the clouds branching out like the outstretched many fingered arms of a tree, until the whole horizon was lit up by one fragmented bolt of electric sizzle, whose endless repercussions echoed loudly out across the water at us.
It was the most indescribably beautiful lightning event I’d ever seen in all my years at sea and it was also the most horrifying. I wanted no part of such a storm that lit up the entire horizon with just one lightning bolt. The percussions of thunder that rolled across the waves at us sounded like World War III had just begun.
“Ortega get our engines started up so we can make a run for it!” I called out.
Ortega scurried off quickly followed by Flynn. Heavy wind hit us in the face all of a sudden and it soon became clear that we were in for a hard time of it all over again. I hadn’t recovered from falling through the Earth yet to suffer through a new ordeal of this magnitude, but that was the fickle way of the sea.
I had never seen a storm move so fast as this one did. We were underway as the Celestia’s Prize gave all she had to keep us running ahead of the storm, but she wasn’t fast enough. The storm overtook us and a new horror revealed itself in the clashing waves that rose up vertically all around us.
I did my best to steer through the troughs and then the sudden rises, but how could you handle the ferocity of a storm that had cyclones touching down everywhere?
Funneled cyclones of swirling power radiated down out of the clouds to plunge into the sea and stirred it up to an even greater ferocity. I’d never seen anything like it and I lost the faith to believe that I could survive through it.
Lightning streaks plunged all around us through the shifting maze of twisting cyclones and vicious waves. I came down into a trough and almost immediately a wave three times the height of the Celestia’s Prize rose up on the starboard side.
There was nothing I could do as the wave spilled over and came down on the boat with deadening force. The Celestia’s Prize under the overwhelming force of the water hitting it amidships heeled over and dipped into the water off the port side until it was on the verge of capsizing.
I hung onto the wheel as my feet left the ground and every window was busted out of the wheelhouse. The room filled with seawater and I held my breath underwater as slowly like a drunken sailor the Celestia’s Prize righted itself.
I blinked and sputtered, as I tried to focus on the path through the swells up ahead of us as the water drained out from the wheelhouse. Why wasn’t Jim helping me?
I could barely hold the wheel against the force of the waves on the slippery floor of the wheelhouse. I glanced around blinking my eyes trying to clear them of the burning sea spray being blown in through the shattered windows at me.
Everyone was gone!
I glanced the other way and saw Big Jim and Matt by the port side doorway. The door had been blown away by the force of the water.
Jim had one hand gripped onto the corner of the door frame, while Matt further inside the wheelhouse held onto him desperately with both hands. Jim’s other arm was stretched out and I saw that he gripped one of Christina’s ankles.
My horrified eyes traveled along out across Christina’s stretched out form to where she held on to Serena’s hands, who was suspended in mid air well out over the edge of the ship as a cyclone waterspout tugged at her. How Jim was holding onto them I could not fathom!
There was nothing I could do but watch. I couldn’t let go of the wheel or we’d all be in the water.
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Christina’s fingernails were drawing blood as she held onto her Aunt with everything she had. Her leg felt like it was about to be ripped off at the hip and the hard grip on her ankle was agony itself, but she wasn’t letting go. Serena was all she had.
No one had told her about her mother’s condition, but they hadn’t had to. It had been plainly obvious that her mother didn’t have long to live. Serena truly was all that she had now.
Nothing could be heard over the roar of the wind of the storm that raged all around, but Christina saw Serena’s lips move and she read their meaning, “Let go.”
Christina’s scream of “No!” was lost in the wind.
Serena’s lips moved again, “I love you. Everything is going to be all right.”
Serena twisted her wrists free, as she let go of Christina and it was too much for Christina to overcome as the wind ripped Serena away and into the whirlwind and out of view. Christina was abruptly hauled inward by Big Jim and Matt.
She was completely inconsolable with grief and Matt pulled her into a corner holding her tightly as he rocked her like he would’ve done for one of his own children, if he’d ever had any.
My heart was bleeding as I gripped the wheel. Christina’s wails of loss behind me pierced through me with awful force, but the worst was the sight of the big Samoan crumpled over on his knees by the broken door sobbing his heart out.
I don’t think Serena had ever noticed the secret attraction the big man had shyly kept to himself for her, but I had noticed it. I had hoped he’d get the courage built up to tell her how he felt for her, but he’d remained quiet locked up in reserved shyness and now it was too late.
The big man’s even bigger heart was breaking and I felt his pain even as I had myself once and still did.
“Jim?” I called out to him.
He looked over at me his eyes reflecting the raw misery that he felt. I gestured for him to come to me.
Slowly he got up and came to me. I took his hand and put it on the wheel and met his eyes and let him see the commiserating emotion I had for him.
“It helps to stay busy.”
He nodded and grabbed a hold of the wheel with his other hand, which was bloody from where he had been holding onto the doorframe. I stepped away and let him have the wheel as I moved back to help Matt with Christina.
Just as brutally quick as the storm had come upon us claiming the life of one of my friends it departed from us and the water was calm once more as the clouds began to glow brightly overhead again. It was as if the storm had never been, but my battered ship and wrecked heart of the girl sobbing against Matt’s chest were living testimony to the savagery of the storm that had left its mark forever.
Where was God in this horrible life occurrence? Why did such a thing have to happen?
Had God tricked me into making this trip into the deep?
Was He really planning a harsh destruction of me and what little I had left in repayment for my harsh words and rebellious heart of the past seven years? Was the death of my friend my punishment?
I could almost believe the negatives to all of my questions if it weren’t for one thing that I knew beyond a doubt. God loved me and knowing that wrote in the corresponding answers and opened up my understanding.
The offenses and tribulations that come in the course of a person’s life are not God’s fault. Mankind made a choice to rebel from perfection over six thousand years before with a bite out of the fruit of a tree that was forbidden to eat from.
The reproach of sin and all the suffering caused was mankind’s fault and not God’s, but God’s love showed through in that He hadn’t just left us to perish in our sin. He had made a way through the sacrificial slaying of His perfect Son in order to make a way for us to once again enter into harmony and experience the perfection of what was lost in the Garden of Eden.
God didn’t need to do that, but He had and it testified of His great love for mankind in doing so. Serena’s faith had been a sure thing as evidenced by how she had defined her life in her belief in her Savior. Instead of her life just being over without hope of more she was even now experiencing eternity in the loving rest prepared for her by God in a body eternal that no storm could ever tear apart.
As bad as the loss of her was to those of us still living, God had just gained another soul for all of eternity. To accept such an insight meant to accept the same in regards to my own wife and the lives of my two daughters taken from me before the age of accountability.
I knew where my daughters were. Even knowing that it still hurt, but it was better than no hope. It was good to know that they weren’t hurting.
That’s what was most important, but it was still hard on those of us left to pick up the pieces and go on living. As people made in the image of God we were fashioned to need relationship and the loss of it was awful, but instead of embracing the negatives in this moment I was making the conscious choice to fall deeper into my relationship with God rather than curse Him and die alone without hope.
By my best calculations the storm had driven us off in a different directional heading than the one that we’d had when we first arrived to this inner world. I literally had no way of finding my way in this foreign place.
There was no sun or stars to navigate by. I did my best to sail straight hoping that we would find land and a way of navigating about in this strange land beneath the land above.
We soon figured out that time was a hard thing to measure. The overhead canopy stayed the same brightness level all the time. I sailed on having faith that something would occur to help me accomplish whatever purpose it was that I and my crew had been sent to this inner world for.