This is I suppose to be historical fiction. If any one has concerns or suggestions please don't hesitate to respond. The story is based on the book of Jonah 1:5-2:9, something I been working on for a bit. The intent is not to make light or delusive, but offer a specific perception into the such proceedings that translate into a more modern dialect. Further, while I have mainly heard arguments back and forth about either a large fish or whale that swallowed Jonah, I decided for this particular story to do research into the marine creature. According to specific sources about very early Greek translations, the creature could have been something known then as a sea dragon (sea serpent or now-extinct animal). Now I may have taken certain liberties and/or inspiration from Numbers 22:28, however the goal is always about developing narration that evokes wonder, questions, and desire for the scriptures. Illustrating, hopefully correctly, the hesitation some of my more soft spoken Christian brothers and sisters have sharing the Word in a more secular world (I can relate); additionally, the storms in our life however literal reveal or forge our faith and the spectacular miracles in various forms.
From Terror to Courage
A devouring eye.
So massive, it is a living world with a black sun at its eclipse. The magnitude of such an ancient soul funnels into a gazing spear that shatters the body asunder. Revealing the heart of a man raw and vulnerable as a defendant before a court.
Jonah understood he was without breath of life in an abyss. He understood he was somewhere below the earth but floating as if lost upon the ether. He understood what encompassed his vision held great wisdom for a beast.
“I have come for you.” A voice resonating with the depth of a bygone era. “Awake.”
“WAKE UP!”
Snapping from an engulfing phantasm of impossible realism, Jonah found himself thrown into a world that had lost itself in dark chaos. Around him squealed the bleating goats who knew only of an immediate danger to their lives. Pushing against floorboards that felt alive with gritty secretion, Jonah’s eyes struggled amid a canopy of flashes tracing the grain in the proud hull, to instantaneous darkness swallowing all into an ebony nightmare.
“How are you possibly able to sleep at a time like this?!” A silhouette of the sailor, small in stature but featuring tree trunk shoulders. “All the gods of the sea and wrath have turned their gaze on my ship.” Jonah quickly recognized the maritime voice of the captain.
“Can you sail beyond this fury?” Jonah quickly wanted to stuff the words back in his mouth.
“Sail?” The captain’s eyes stoked with fire at the question. “This is a trap of a seaman’s doom! This is the tempest of all tempests no farer of the waters lives to speak about, at least not before all their marbles swept by the waves.”
“O,” was all Jonah could respond.
“We don’t need O’s. We need prayers. Why do you not pray to your god?”
The question punctured to the depths of Jonah’s soul, breaching a part of him he had been attempting to entomb beyond the reach of his conscious.
“Never mind,” the captain not sparing precious seconds for an answer, “come with me. Now!”
Jonah stumbled his way after the captain while the floor beneath his feet pitched violently and chaotically. It was impossible to avoid a near crack of the forehead against the joist of the ship. Every step shifted Jonah’s perception of the reality he had placed himself among. The toss of the body from every plank of man’s complex creation felt less of a vessel; rather, a living creature he found himself within the gurgling stomach fighting digestion.
Charging against every stumble caused by the pitch and inexplicable rise that would nearly expel his organs from a frightening weightlessness. He beheld many the oars crack, even snap, and those few remaining bent as a lethal bow with a ghostly faced crewman straining to row against primal forces older than their ancestors. While some fought to tame their corner of the sea with such an instrument others hunched over with bloody palms and blackening gashes from a snapped oar’s final act of resistance. Those that still possessed even one unswollen eye glanced long at Jonah as he was hurled past them. Jonah could see a shiver in each man he understood was not a mere reverberation from the boat. It was the mark of despair; an invisible beast Jonah had given himself over as prey. The cataclysmic reason he found himself on this cursed vessel scampering as a doe.
Breaching the latch for top-side, Jonah was nearly kicked back down by a sudden black surge. With a great heave, Jonah forced himself into a different world than the one below; for the sea is a black maw.
A thousand dark tongues of foam and froth rise higher and higher. Entire mountains of fluid teeth saw and smash with the mad frenzy of thousands upon thousands of raging oxen. The very air a musty cloth intertwines the body into an insensible cocoon. The ground groans amid terror to the whips of fire blanketing the liquefied chaos before snapping back into a woolen blanket of blackness at the booming crack muting all cries from planks, beams, and able bodies lost in this godly wrath. There is no north amid flaring nostrils pummeling the pride of this trireme.
Great twang of rigging sounds in the strum of the mighty drums assaulting the ears and courage after blazon whips in the mysterious coal firmament. Every man a rightful master, even veteran, over the rippling path they have trusted for the exchange of fish from the aquas kingdom and strider ferrying precious wealth. All of corded muscles, some of trunk necks, others of golden eyes from so many a captured horizon sinking into gilded scarlet sea. Now all eyes are a beacon of dread with mouths in mutterings of final prayers for seashore wives, or head tossed back crying into expanse unleashing a second great flood for mercy from any god of chiseled stature who has authority over even a single droplet or a tendril of marine foam.
“Poseidon! O Poseidon! Mercy! Please, of lord of the waters, grant mercy to your servant.”
“Hail, Pontus! I beseech you! Ease your mighty temper so I may sacrifice unto you!”
“Isis hear us! I swear by the blood my children bestow your protection, and I shall restore all reverence due you!”
Yet, he knew there was one listening. He knew fully well the true master creator to every rain droplet that formed the very first ocean of the firmament and poured into the earth filling the sea they tossed upon at that moment was listening. And he, Jonah, new The Maker of heaven and earth was listening for him to obey in response to this holy tempest.
“All yea of this voyage come now! Marin bring forth the lottery!”
If it was possible for faces in the stark of desolation to keel even further, these waylaid souls were the first. Jonah along with all eyes that could be spared from flailing rigging and impossible rowing gathered around the main mast. Creeping with slick speed, a sailor of sunbaked skin and near hollow eyes hauled over a cauldron no larger than a kettle. His movement across the deck betrayed any mark of the living. Suddenly, arriving before the mast, with a single umph hoisted the iron cauldron and let it sway from the beckoning hook of the mast. The lottery was a power to match the surroundings for even the storm seemed to twirl the boat less and the mountain cascades reseeded into mere violent undulating hills.
“We may claim the helm of our own destiny, but no matter our creed each of us cannot deny thread of our fate woven by our father’s god.” The captain raised his right hand high in air, clean, and placed it inside the cauldron. “And when we skewer that thread in disobedience the consequences of the divine powers is all encompassing and unrelenting.” Instantly, his right hand flashed with the lightning high in the metallic air. In his grasp a smooth onyx. “He who retrieves the gold is the blight upon my ship!”
Jonah could only hold his breath. Every pale face dipped their hand within the iron abyss.
An onyx stone. An onyx stone. An onyx stone.
Jonah faltered as he moved leg after leg, foot after foot toward the lottery pot. His body felt like a dream without conscious thought, and the eyes of those clutched to their cast stone burrowed their gaze with mixture of emotion. Jonah took a final step, reached into that abyss, and fumbled with smooth fates left inside. A deep gulp, he tightened his numb fingers around a particular rock and retrieved his hand back into the light. It was no use to wonder, for he already knew beyond doubt or hope. Every fiber of strength he loosened his knot of fingers to reveal the pale golden flecks.
Eyes burned deeper into the man’s soul.
“You are the curse?” The question flung at Jonah from the Captain.
Instantly, the others besieged him their inquisitions, “Why have you done this to us? From where do you hail? What people are you descended? What is cause of this evil?”
“My name is Jonah. I am Hebrew.” At that many a gasp and loud murmuring overtook the deck. “I have fled from the Almighty, the Lord of the heaven, true creator of the sea and dry land. He commissioned me to go to Nineveh, but knowing their wicked deeds I feared for my life. I only desired to find sanctuary in Tarshish.”
Jonah, knowing the customs of many their rituals to their father’s gods felt a spinal chill at the resolve swelling in their expressions. He knew many of the pagan sacraments inclined blood sacrifice of foreigners, civilians, even infants. Jonah waited for the certain doctrine of Belial’s servants to overtake their heart and limbs.
“To the oars. Immediately!” The captain’s voice rang out.
On cue the whitecaps flared as living mountains and the sky churned the ingredients of rain and hail into a solid chute pulverizing the ship into the black surface. Jonah witnessed all around him turn a pale gravy in their face, yet none made a survival intent of doing him harm. Nevertheless, the eyes whose message flashed in the thunderous light were beacons of despair and melancholy. Jonah could feel a burning within him. He had perceived these individuals no different than the devious wolves inhabiting Nineveh should their heart turn against his. Now, in storm of doom, they retained more honor toward a fellow man of laying down their own life rather than condemn a single soul. The fire within seared his muscles and singed the underside of his skin with the shame he had chosen all those days ago. He clenched the golden nugget until his knuckles became bloodless, the definitive revelation of his disobedience and judgment over all people.
“Throw me over.” Jonah answered the storm encompassing and within. “THROW ME OVER!” His words carried by a silver bolt that could not be taken back.
All eyes locked on this lunatic; their focus ripped away from the splintering of the hull or whining stretch of rigging ready to snap. Above the dire prelude to destruction, it is the captain who steps forward his composure unfaltering.
“No. Do not ask this of us. We know too well of the God of Abraham. The one who broke the Philistine’s army. The one who reduced the Egyption empire to ruin. The one who blanked the world in destruction.”
“By cowardice I have defied the Lord, and cowardice once again I cannot of my own strength give myself over to His hand which stirs this sea. You would not be murdering a Hebrew, you would only be helping a poor wretch finally return to the Holy Creator.”
The revelation burned the captain with a swell of emotions. Yet, he could see in the eyes of his men a void. Whereas in the face of Jonah, an astonishing light he recognized only as the rarest gems of humanity, conviction. A seeking feeling within, the captain could only give a sorrowful nod.
“Grab his limbs and host him over.”
Even now amid the sea’s grinding instruments the blank eyes didn’t completely indulge such notions as execution.
“HOST HIM OVER!” The captain’s voice boomed, “Or we are all dead.”
Jonah wished his final moments were those of sound nerves and dignity. Unfortunately, the curdling basis of survival that promotes many evils swept over Jonah’s mind and body like a flash frost. His howls for mercies and rebuttals only answered by the drums of thunderstrikes blanketing out his voice. The swelling teeth of froth welcoming its long-awaited catch. In his frenzy Jonah could vaguely comprehend his flailing limbs that surely bruised and drew blood.
Jonah, struggling to grasp for breath, a vain attempt as final tide like a massive finger pinned him beneath the darkness.
Down, down, down, down he plugged into a nothingness with only an increasing fire within his chest for warmth. Betrayed by the fleeting wisp of the awesome bolts, light barely could penetrate the thickness of the void. Or perhaps the torch of the sunlight was too frightened of this realm beyond the land of man. Here phantoms of the monsters and ghouls from ageless folktales manifested in the deadening pressure rupturing the life from his body.
In response, a funneling torrent brushed against his presence, his sanctity. Turning his head was painful struggle at this point. The darkness nearly complete, he knew he was not alone. Perhaps the myths of the heathen deity were true in this realm, and her presence all-encompassing while being a universal bridge to sheol.
Jonah simply closed his eyes, happy to substitute his own nightfall over the watery grave.
“I have come for you.”
Jonah eyes opened wide to a great eye. Acting as doorway, a massive halo encompassing ridges and streams to the deepest darkest sapphire while strata upon strata of muscles formed the eyelid to this fearsome wonder. Impossible speed the whole of the creature twisted in a full circle coming into the fading eyes of Jonah. As if blowing a kiss, a massive orb extended and encompassed Jonah’s body in a sensation of pure warmth. Immediately, painfully, the water expelled vaporously from his mouth quickly followed by a deep breath. His vision clearing Jonah gapped at the creature that extended his life beneath the water. It’s head far greater than any ship, maybe fleet, in the shape of a muzzle with teardrop nostrils extending as a valley to the forehead. Like a lion’s mane hundreds of tendril ribbons flowed from the base of the head while the lips hid what he was certain a cavern of pearl razors. Beyond the intelligent cranium coiled its body not dissimilar to a serpent or eel; however, unlike such insidious cousins this beast featured whale fins made it appear elegant, almost spiraling. Each individual scale were a beauty beyond the world, for only the best he could ever depict such radiance was as if looking at a shimmering, living meadow in a morning frost or a beholding a cluster of twinkling stars seen during solace. Perhaps this was a living constellation come to greet him at death’s threshold.
“I have come for you, Jonah.” Its voice deep and mysterious as the very sea, yet mighty as a mountain.
“How do you know my name? How can I hear you? How am I talking with a fish?”
“Fish!” The creature’s disapproval of the comparison rumbled the inside of Jonah’s mind. “I am what the Maker has made me to be. A shepherd over the fin flocks. A hunter to the cold blood predators. Even an observer from afar to Adam’s tribe.”
“You know of Adam?”
“My kin have span of years that would be a misery to you and yours. Although, I did not come to be till after the first lord’s passing, my kin were taught the art of this communion via the image of the Maker. We have exiled ourselves from your presence in the age of chaos, the years before the Lord of Lords destroyed your surface and uprooted the realm you now reside. For your spirit is one of stewardship, that can nurture a fertile bedrock or poison the flock.”
“Are you here to kill me?” Jonah plucked the courage to ask in the glory of this creature whose size clearly equaled its wisdom.
“Ah child of Adam, how you look only at the physicality of my magnitude as the source of fear. I have dominion through the strength of my fins and wit of my mind, but I am nothing upon the sand foyer. Your dominion is over all beasts including me, yet even you, Jonah, are not the One who crafted every drip that fills the oceans or with sheer command smoothed stone after stone into this world.”
To Jonah’s surprise the majestic sea shepherd closed its eyes and gave a long bow with its head. Opening its deep eyes Jonah thought he could see a twinkle he didn’t recognize before.
“But I am going to eat you.”
“Wait what?”
Fast as lightning, its maw opened exposing a chain-link knoll of pearl teeth before a horizon leading into a black oblivion. Just as before, his reality became one of pure darkness. Pure terror. The water pressing against his body still allowed him luxury of breathing, but now an invisible phantasm sloshed him around before a slick inline which felt of twitched warts glide him to a chamber as infinite as his mind could conceive this inkiness.
“O Lord why did you offer a glimmer of hope only to steal it away?” Jonah wailed.
“Do not say such things, for the Maker is not the one who steals. Nor has your hope gone, rather only just begun.” The beast or shepherd’s voice a droning bell here in this new darkness.
“You ate me!”
“Yes, but I said nothing about digest. I told you I have come for you. Come from the wild seas whose size dwarf this puddle you sail. And now I deliver you back to the shores.”
“You ate me! Do you intend to deliver my carcass to the shores?”
“I intend, you stubborn fool, to ferry you back in the direction you were expected to travel in the first place.”
“Nineveh?”
“If that be the title of that surface patch, yes.”
For the first time, Jonah said the name without fear in the recess of his mind. Possibly because his current circumstances demanded greater concern.
“The Lord is intent on dragging me to doom,” Jonah said with soft conviction, “He is resolute in my demise at the hands of those deplorables.”
“Would you call those who you just traveled with deplorable?” The sea shepherd asked.
“Well, no… maybe.”
“Why?”
“They are from uncircumcised lands that give offerings to gods of animal bodies and deities no different than the convoluted whim of man.”
“Yet they displayed reverence to the Maker at the mere thought of casting you into my realm. Even now the storm abates, and they offer a pledging sacrifice to the Maker for fear of His awesome power and distress in their action toward one of His chosen.”
“They are?” The revelation surprised Jonah. He didn’t despise the crew, and in truth was relieved they would survive. Yet, he considered all individuals from nations beyond his home borders to be devoted to their father’s practices forever.
“Indeed. I am aware many of men who were in the inner-sanctum of the Maker turn their backs for a fleeting lure of the dark thief. Many others in trenches of their own wickedness humble themselves before the Maker’s feet and rise in His sunlit glory of salvation. Do not display such ignorance that you deem all those shattered tribes torn from the Maker’s love.”
“Then there is truly only one question: what do I do now?”
“Here you will be removed from the world. You will have neither food nor drink, only the serving of the Word. You shall spend this time embracing true humility. I will share instruction with you, how to sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving. Although I have seen many of your kin faint of soul, I still hope even one will know a strength reminiscent to days of youth.”
