Ale Storm

You see, to a pirate, a true pirate, only two things are important in life. First, he needs a sea-faring ship with a capable crew. A pirate without a ship cannot sail the eleven seas and is thus stuck on land. Those poor souls are known as bandits, a retired or aspiring form of a pirate.

And second, which is even more important than the first - and can be used as a substitute for the first - is ale. And when I say ale, I actually mean every alcohol ever made; be it beer, rum, mead, gin, wine, bourbon, vodka, schnapps, various liquors and spirits, the blood of angels, sweat of demons… it doesn't matter what you call it, as long as it does its purpose.

Which is, to get one shitfaced.

And the captain of the sorry piece of assorted lumber we are forced to call ‘our ship’ is just that. He is a true pirate. And he has just acquired a map to his dreams.

***

“It’s been thirty years, to this very day,” our captain said, standing less-than-gloriously on a wobbly barrel, as he addressed the whole crew, “since a captain came to me and said; ‘Hey lad! Come join me, crew, adventure, and glory await for you!’ His name was Captain Morgan and I was the man that led a mutiny against him. This is his ship we sail on.”

The men - including some women who snuck on board wearing fake beards - gasped at this revelation, myself included. You see, Captain Morgan is considered somewhat a myth, a legendary name amongst the piratical pantheon of deities; he is the god of the amber gold, the elixir of life, a liquid so pristine it is said that it is collected from the eyes of crying mermaids. This is, of course, rum I am speaking of. And by killing Morgan, man has acquired rum for himself, bringing the godly drink to us mortals.

“Whoah, are you truly the one who brought rum to us, men?” some young lad from the crew asked. Our captain looked at him as if he saw the lad for the first time.

“Of course not, ya halfwit! I’m trying to inspire you bunch of morons, so we can go on the most dangerous quest of our lives!”

“Oh,” the lad said, somewhat disheartened. The crew began to murmur and I shifted on my feet. The most dangerous quest? Whatever could it be?

“Whatever could it be?” I asked a man next to me. He was actually a she, wearing a fake beard. 

“Aye, scurry dogs, treasure and whores, yarr,” the woman replied with a painfully exaggerated accent and as deep a voice as she could manage. 

I wanted to ask what her disguise was all about but was overwhelmed at the captain’s next words. He said; “We’re going to Alesland. And we’re gonna get drunk!”

The crew went wild, some firing their flintlocks in the air, others foaming at the mouth from euphoria. I could barely contain my own enthusiasm, but my experience told me to be cautious. Alesland wasn’t just someplace you went for the weekend. It was a fabled land, consider nothing more than a story for most. The only proof of its existence was in a piece of broken pottery that some drunkard once brought back to the mainland, claiming it was from the Ale Island - known today as Alesland.

“Yarr, harr and all that,” the captain said and jumped from his barrel. “Ready the sails, tie down the cannons, and prepare yer empty tankards ‘cuz there be ale where we’re headed!” 

The crew cheered and began working the ship. The fake-beard woman next to me began climbing the mast and I walked to the captain.

“Captain,” I said, “are we really doing this? Also, did you realize there is a woman on board, wearing a fake beard?”

“Ah,” he said, looking at me as if a bug fell in his drink, and completely ignored my questions. “It’s you. I thought of leaving you behind.”

I paused. “Sir?”

The captain shrugged. “Then again, I often think of leaving common sense behind. Ain’t no place for it where we’re going.”

“Sir, Alesland is a myth! And even if we do reach it, the journey there is… well, let’s just say crews with better ships and more competence have failed to get there. What chance do we have?”

He bore those thirsty little eyes of his deep into my skull as if wanting to see through my head. “We,” he said, leaning closer, “have a map.”

My heart began to beat faster. “A map, sir?”

“Aye. It be showing us the way.”

“May… may I see it?”

His left eyebrow rose in question.

“Just a glance?” There has not been a pirate in existence that did not find himself in fascination with maps. Not ever. 

“Please, sir, it would put my soul to ease,” I crossed my fingers.

The captain glanced around, noting the men were busy. “Fine,” he said. “Just a quick peak.” He unbuckled his belt…

“Sir!”

“Shh!”

“I meant the map, not-”

The captain pulled down his pants and I instinctively covered my eyes, but he smacked my hands away. 

“You fool! Look!”

There, on the side of the captain’s white-clean underwear, was a small scribble.

“You’ve washed your underwear, sir? That’s commemorable-”

“No, idiot!” He pulled his pants back on. “It’s a map. Drawn on my undies. Well, re-drawn on a fresh pair, as the old ones…”

I shook my head in confusion. “That scribble is our map? On your… But how... why…”

“I was talking to Yarr Face at a pub and got him drunk enough to tell me the route to Alesland,” the captain said, grinning. “He said he’d been there once and I believed him. I quickly drew the map on my undies before I could forget it.”

“But sir,” I said, astounded. “Pubs have napkins.”

The captain paused, giving me a blank stare. 

“No, they don’t.”

“Okay.”

Things became awkward so I pretended someone was calling me and ran away. Soon enough, we were leaving port, and perhaps our lives and sanity, and heading out at sea, following a hand-scribbled ‘map’ on the side of the captain’s underwear, told to him by the most renowned drunk in the whole wide world.

You can say that I had my concerns.

***

The first week sailed past uneventful. So did the second. And the third.

In the fourth week, the captain realized he was reading the map backward - he used a mirror to better see the sides of his underwear, and thus the map got, well, mirrored. So he decided to take the underwear off and we corrected the course. What I don’t understand is why he had to spread it over the dining table every time he read it…

So, in the fifth week, we were back where we started. We had spent more than a month going in a wide circle, like a bunch of idiots that we were. We resupplied the ship - mostly stocking on booze and bearded women - and set out again, this time in the proper direction.

How do I know it was proper?

Because all hell broke loose.

And it did so in a series of events, like staircases leading deeper and deeper down to your grandma’s cellar, the only place in the house that you weren’t allowed to go after dark… but you kind of wanted to, just because they told you not to. And when you saw all those bodies, the trauma never got away… No? Just me then? Okay…

Anyway, our journey truly did feel like those stairs. With each landmark we reached on the map, we barely got out of it alive. First, we were attacked by walrus pirates - henchmen of Yarr Face. The pirate lord didn’t like the idea of our captain getting him drunk and revealing to him the location of Alesland, so he had us hunted down, demanding the captain’s undies. 

And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen walrus pirates, but those things are huge! Most weigh over a ton, their skins are as thick as most men’s intellect, with huge pointy tusks that gut you like a paper man. Oh, and they sail on huge iceberg ships that ram into your punny wooden boat like it was a virgin, raped by a warmonger. Not the most pleasant of experiences.

Luckily though, we had cannons. And cannons are a blast at dealing with difficult situations. It turns out they can also punch holes straight through the walruses - and they don’t much like that.

After surviving the walrus attack, we were met with another not-so-friendly sea dweller - the metal narwhal. Those bad boys are even scarier than the walruses. They’re bigger, fatter, stronger, and have this huge spike at the front of their heads, like a unicorn from a little girl’s nightmare. And those horns not only pierce you and then some, but they also puncture the ship’s haul, causing leaks everywhere. Why are they metal? Who built them? Why are they there?

Who knows. I blame the government.

Our third step in the descent to grandma’s cellar was a true hell hole - and I’m not exaggerating. It was a natural narrow passage between two seas, called The Devil’s Butcheeks. You could only imagine how that looked like and you’d be correct. The thing with that passage was that you had less than an hour to clear it. If not, the gigantic tidal wave that sweeps through the narrow canal would smash your punny ship into the rock walls. Since the world is a flat plate that spins sporadically on a monkey’s middle finger, the tidal waves are unpredictable, but they flow from one side to the other in turns.

We barely managed to get out of that one. But the good thing is we lost our walrus and narwhal pursuers. Emerging out from The Devil’s Butcheeks we sailed across the calmest seas I’ve ever encountered.

I reckoned this was our last step before the horror of the bottom. Grandma’s cellar only had four of five steps, if I recall correctly…

***

I was jolted from sleep by a hand shaking me awake.

“Go!” a crewmate yelled at me. “A storm is coming and the cold is mind-numbing! Darkness has descended!”

Another ran to my other side and began screaming in my ear. “We’re all going to die, there’s no escaping! We’re all anticipating smashing our brains tonight!”

I stumbled out of the hammock, bemused, and made my way out on the deck. It was difficult to keep balance as everything was swaying violently. 

On deck, cannons were fired into the cold, dark winds. Rain and small hail pelted the floorboards, the ocean’s waves pounding against all sides of our ship. Gripping to the wet wood of the door frame, I could feel the cold piercing my fingers to the bone. Men fired their guns and stood on the ready, swords raised, gazing around at the darkness. Above everyone, the captain held to the mast, the flag flapping above his head and laughing, rapturing with pure joy as he held his mouth open to the skies above.

“Dear Morgan, he’s lost it,” I mumbled. But then, I smelled it. Bitter. A wave washed over the deck, sweeping some men to the floor. It was dark yellow, golden almost. And it foamed violently.

I walked into the receding water, dunk my hand in, and took a sip. It was ale!

“Rum, beer, quests and mead,” the captain screamed from atop the mast. “These are the things that a pirate needs!” He looked down at all of us. “Raise the flag and let’s set sail, under this night of the storm of ale!”

I understood. We had reached the fabled ocean that is said to surround the mythical shores of Alesland. An amber-gold sea of ale, foaming white at the crests of bubbly waves. It sizzled as it splashed against the hull of the ship, so bitter to the taste and as cold as mercy on a hot day. It formed a sticky film as it washed over the deck, sweeping men and unfettered items overboard. 

It was raining beer.

Just as my heart recognized the stories were true, a monster materialized from the darkness. I was wondering what the men were firing at.

A wave of black scales swept across the ship, just barely missing the tip of the mast as the ship sank in a receding wave. I gazed up and at that moment, a lightning strike illuminated the sky for a brief moment.

“Oh, my…”

It was beyond mortal description. A leviathan so large that it could just as well be the entire ocean. Massive pillars rising from the ocean as tentacles, golden ale dripping in waterfalls and running like rivers over its scales, foaming all the way. A forest of limbs and tentacles that rose from the waves, twisting, swaying, searching for the next victim. And in the middle of this mass, a huge dark spot, like an island of a body. Burning red eyes adorned its sides, varying in size, with three big ones in a row, dotted by smaller ones.

It was the Terrorsquid itself! The guardian of Alesland!

Another tentacle swept lower and smashed the ship’s mast. Captain came tumbling down, but I managed to catch him, his fall slowed down by the torn sail. 

I looked at him and he looked at me, the monster looming above us, roaring in a distant voice, so primordial as the world itself.

“Do ye want to know the meaning of life, lad?” the captain asked me. The winds roared in my ears, the waves crashing and a shadow of the leviathan’s tentacle coming down.

“Yes,” I said, “before we die, at least I want to know that!”

“It’s this, this right here, lad!” he said, waving his arm around, smiling. Raindrops of beer pelleted his face. “Quest! The journey into the unknown!”

I wanted to reply, but I can’t remember what I was about to say. The tentacle came down and it destroyed the ship, sending us all into the golden waves of ale.

***

Sunrise.

Like a hammer banging on the anvil of my head, the sun came knocking on my eyelids, a wake-up call on the morning of a hangover.

I was alive. Everything smelled of beer and sweat. I could hear waves washing over pebbles nearby, as gentle as a mother’s cue.

I opened my eyes and was blinded by the golden sun, rising just in front of my face. I noticed I was lying on a shore made up of pebbles. No, not pebbles. Broken pottery. It resembled the piece that was once brought back to the mainland as evidence for Alesland.

Alesland!

I jumped up, blinking, ignoring the pounding in my head. As my vision cleared, I found myself standing on a small island, all made up of this strange broken pottery. Bodies and pieces of wood lay scattered around, washed onshore. The sea of ale foamed as it kissed the shore and it sent bitter smells to my nostrils, reminding me of my hangover; apparently, I drank a lot of it, but had not drowned.

The monster was nowhere to be seen, nor was our ship. Or any of the crew, alive.

I walked on the shore, turning over bodies. Some of the women still had their fake beards on…

“Captain? Anyone?” 

Silence. Then, a chuckle.

I turned, running in the direction of the voice. My whole body hurt, my head was exploding periodically, but I made it to the center of the island - it was surprisingly small.

And there, I found the captain.

“Captain, you’re alive!” I huffed as I crashed on the pottery beside him, listening to the pieces crunch beneath my feet. He stood there, next to a pedestal, a gentle breeze playing with his curly hair.

“This island we stand on,” he said, without turning to me, “is the island of Ten Thousand Toasts, where the gods allegedly had their drinking game and lost to the titans, thus losing their bet and having to create men. You and I, lad, we are the result of a lost bet. And this right here, are the broken shards of the Tankards of Creation - inside each one, a thing was made, then broken and released to the world. Legend has it that all but one tankard were broken.”

I blinked, struggling to process this unusual clarity of the captain’s words through my headache. Looking around, I couldn't help but feel a bit… lackluster. “This is it? This is Alesland? It’s just a tiny island.”

“No, lad,” he said, looking at me. His eyes were glowing with the delight of a child receiving exactly what he wanted for Christmas. “This,” he said, raising his hand. “This is Alesland. The last unbroken creation of the gods. With everything else corrupt and wrong with the world, this is the only pure thing we have.”

He held a clay tankard. Inside, there slushed a golden liquid, the purest of things I ever saw.

It smelled of bitter.

“What?” I gawked. “That’s what we risked our lives for? A tankard of ale? You could’ve just drank the sea-”

And then I saw it. And I understood.

The captain drank the ale dry, and the tankard then refilled itself when emptied.

Tears of divine joy fled my eyes as I bowed to the holy artifact and the man, no, the legend, who drank from it.