ARABELLA AND THE KRAKEN KING

ARABELLA AND THE KRAKEN KING, by Gretchen Tessmer, Art by Andrea Alemanno

 

 

the captain’s widow is mad with grief

her dress stained in saltwater spray
her skin glowing blue-violet
in moonlight
and sparks from the mast

St. Elmo’s fire hovers in her hair
drenched, unpinned
wild and everywhere, in static strands

like tentacles of cephalopods—
those fiends who just snatched her lover from the rail

wrapped him tight
dragged him down
sunk him deep

eyes bulging, mouth open in an underwater scream

the others wait and watch, nervously

as she paces, then frets
calls on heaven to defend her
presses her hand to her heart
and thinks (for just a minute) about wailing loudly

but she tells them to lift anchor
and trim those goddamn sails

“cast out your nets, my bonny lads

we’ll dredge these white-capped waters
we’ll hunt their ilk and drain their ink—

we’ll bring the Kraken King to his boneless knees
prostrate on his seabed
arms raised to murky, algae-forest skies

until he wails and cries,

‘oh, what hideous monsters be these?'”

 

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Gretchen Tessmer is a writer/attorney based in the U.S./Canadian borderlands.  She writes both short fiction and poetry, with work appearing in such venues as Nature, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Zooscape and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, together with a previous appearance in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  

 

Andrea Alemanno  is a compulsive illustrator  who fills the line spacing, preferably at 300 dpi.
She’s  from Italy and loves to move into a new city searching for inspiration. In every city,  she constantly keeps drawing.  Now, 3 decades later (and a little bit more), she is  still drawing and learning something new everyday.  She loves the traditional touch into a digital tools world so uses pencil, ink and digital colors to give life to her artwork.  Sometimes she shares her knowledge with wannabe illustrators.  Her work has been selected for several awards and she’s currently working for Italian and international publishers.