By Ryan Rahman

The tale didn’t begin with Captain Perera.

But it might’ve ended with him.

Earlier in the year, Edgar Hawthorne had set sail in search of a place most believe was fiction: a remote island called Erigam, whose people were said to wield impossible technologies. He’d found a tattered copy of The Secrets of Erigam Island by J.A. Singh, which was dismissed as fantasy by most scholars. But inside the book was a hand-drawn map, placing the island east of Mauritius.

Hawthorne sold off all his belongings.

He bought a ship he named Pursuer, gathered a crew, and set sail.

Pursuer was later found adrift and unmanned.

No crew.

No logbook.

No bodies.

Captain Perera, skipper of the submarine Retaliation, was resupplying at a smuggler’s cove carved into a cave somewhere in the Caribbean. His presence drew little attention but he was a known and respected figure among the sea’s more lawless trades. Some still remembered his days of piracy, long before he took to the deep. They called him a captain’s captain.

The kind that men followed without hesitation.

As supply crates were lowered and fuel lines connected, Perera caught up with “One-Eyed” Garcia, captain of La Bruja, a raider out of Cartagena.

Garcia motioned to a nearby crewman.

“Got something you’ll want to see. Came from a Dutch smuggler. Passed through Mozambique, rounded the Cape, and ended up here. Said he found it aboard Pursuer, which was adrift just off the coast of Mauritius. No crew, no logbook. Just this.”

He presented a leather-bound book, worn and weathered.

The Secrets of Erigam Island.

Hawthorne had left margin notes throughout it, from the first page to the last.

“Belonged to Hawthorne.”

“Strange it survived,” Perera murmured.

“Aye,” said Garcia. “Almost as if it wanted to be found. I should warn you: his notes read like a slow unraveling. He gets more unhinged as you keep reading.”

Garcia flipped to a dog-eared page at the beginning and read aloud.

“They say this undertaking is folly. What do they know? Nothing! Singh wrote from memory, not imagination. I will find Erigam Island. Pursuer will take us to it. I shall prove them wrong, God-willing.”

He turned to another page at the end.

“I HAVE COME TOO FAR

I CANNOT

I WILL NOT RETURN EMPTY-HANDED

DEATH BEFORE FAILURE

SO HELP ME GOD”

Garcia shook his head.

“If that’s not a descent into madness, I don’t know what is.”

Perera took the book, examining the brittle spine.

“Could happen to any of us.”

Garcia lowered his voice and leaned in.

“Not even with my good eye would I try to find it. I’d sooner sail directly into a squall than steer by that map! No one knows what became of Hawthorne and his crew. They remain a secret of the sea. Do you want her to claim you, too?”

Perera glanced toward the cave’s mouth and the ocean beyond it.

“I do not wish to upset Mother Ocean any further. My crew and I have already sacrificed enough to remain in her good graces. I do not wish to tempt fate any more than I already have.”

Garcia nodded, but not without worry.

“Be careful,” he said, and left him there with the book.

Perera returned to Retaliation, the book still in his hands.

He had hand-picked every man aboard. Not one for rank alone, but for instinct. For qualities and skills that couldn’t be taught. They’d outlasted many a storm and skirmish, all under his command. When he spoke, they didn’t just hear him. They listened.

Even if unease stirred beneath their silence.

That first night back at sea, Perera read the book from cover to cover. When he closed it, his hands were shaking.

“I’m nothing like Hawthorne,” he muttered, though he gripped the book like it would escape from him.

On the second night, he didn’t touch it at all.

On the third, he reopened it and studied the map again, only to satisfy his curiosity.

Or so he claimed.

On the fourth, he dreamt of Erigam Island.

In the dream, Retaliation glided slowly into a hidden harbor. Golden lanterns lined the docks. Figures in long robes stood waiting, calm and welcoming. A strange light shimmered behind them.

On the fifth night, he stared at the map again.

“Hawthorne only sought glory and fortune,” he said aloud. “I’m not like him.”

But he hadn’t eaten. He barely slept. And the book never left his side.

Then, near midnight, he stormed the bridge. He’d torn the map from the book. Now it was clenched in his fist. His officers turned as he unrolled and unfurled the ocean charts.

“We’re changing course,” he said.

The navigator watched as Perera circled a point deep in the Indian Ocean.

His eyes widened.

“Sir,” he said carefully, “there’s nothing there… no land. Only… open water.”

Perera didn’t look up.

“That’s what they’ve all said about Erigam. That’s what they’d like us to believe. But our charts have been wrong this entire time.”

He thought of Hawthorne’s final words:

DEATH BEFORE FAILURE

SO HELP ME GOD

The navigator hesitated. Perhaps there was a part of him that wanted Erigam to be real, too.

Retaliation turned south.

And none of her crew objected.

Whatever awaited them in the deep, they would follow Captain Perera into it.