Energy seemed to thrum in the air. Many strange things had graced this stage over the years but nothing like this. A ripple of impending violence was already running through the Gypsy camp, mobilizing the many layabout brothers and cousins who would be here in short order with knives and short swords to slay the invader. Either he didn’t know that, or he was too desperate to care. Emmerelda reached for the crystal ball, her fingers extending almost of their own volition. It wasn’t a conscious decision to try to read the future, it was merely an instinctive grasp for something familiar. Electricity seemed to leap into her finger and prickle through her body. The crystal ball flared a white so blinding pure that it could be seen even through hastily closed eyes. There was a southern roar and the room was plunged into darkness that carried an icy cold that shivered the bone. Freezing drops of water fell from the ceiling and the iodine stink of the sea permeated the room. Emmarelda opened her eyes to find herself sitting at the table, hands locked on the inky black globe. The table hung in the air surrounded by blackness that was occasionally swept by stinging icy spray. Her companions were gone, though the strange man still stood, his pose seeming alien and awkward with no one to threaten. Emmarelda forced her eyes upwards but instead of the leviathan jawbone she saw that its candles had been transfigured into stars glimpsed only intermittently through roiling clouds and sheets of rain.


A sound like the booming of a great drum thundered below and Emmarelda forced her eyes downward.  Fifty feet below them was the deck of a ship, its great spanker sail flogging itself to pieces in the gale. Emmarelda was no sailor but the vessel must have been handsome before the storm tore her rigging into its current array of torn and shredded sails and snapping ropes. It seemed that sailors ought to be swarming up the surviving ropes, fighting the storm for their very lives, but no living thing moved on the deck. A great flash of light illuminated the ship, rendering it in a sepulchral array of grays and whites. In the momentary brightness Emmarelda saw a few sailors, but her initial impression was correct. Several men, corpse white with grey blue lips, were scattered around laying as they had fallen against the iron clad motor house or by the gangways. A body skipped along behind, tangled in a frayed line that skipped him across the heaving waves like a piece of bait. As if intent on completing the ghoulish analogy, a leviathan surged up and ripped the corpse away from the parted rope. Another crack of lighting breached the darkness illuminating a coast line only a few miles of the bows. A single light from a distant light house guttered feebly from some distant headland in vain defiance of the gale.
The interloper was shouting something at her, his bellicose posture forgotten. He might have saved his breath as not a word carried across the tumult. Emmarelda felt a chill run up her spine that had nothing to do with the icy barrage of rain. Her eyes tracked downwards toward the ship to find a figure emerging from what must have been the passenger cabin. He was tall and dark with narrow angular features that somehow seemed Continental and aristocratic. He was staring up at her, eyes glowing like coals from the deepest pits of hell. His face was flushed… not flushed, slicked with blood. It was black in the lightnings strobing illumination, running down over his chin to stain his old fashioned ruffled doublet. He could see her, she realized with a frisson of horror! The figure reached up for her, his eyes blazing with insane desire. He called three words to her that chilled her soul.

Something struck her just above the breasts and staggered her back. Her fingers lost their grip and light flared back into existence. The crystal ball cracked, echoing a final peal of thunder, as Emmarelda toppled over backwards onto the rugs that had been piled over the floor. The interloper’s dagger thumped to the ground. He had thrown it at her! Had he known it would hit her butt first? Everyone was screaming. Emmarelda forced herself up, the table was awash with icy water that poured off it like a circular waterfall. Emmarelda and the Interloper were both soaked to their skins and shivering with cold. The others were dry, save where they had been splashed by the gallons of water that had materialized on the table.

“SHUT UP!” Emmarelda screamed, so loud that it momentarily stunned two screaming Gypsy women and a trio of their male relatives to silence. The moment was broken by a cracking sound and all eyes went upwards to see the leviathan jaw breaking free of its bonds and plunging downwards. It rushed down in a disturbing inverse of a great beast breaching the depths to devour its prey spewing wax from guttering candles. Emmarelda and the Interloper jumped up through it onto the table colliding in the middle a moment before it smashed into the ground in a shower of shattering bones. Flames sprung up in a half dozen places, licking into roaring pyres as they touched spilled oils and fatty unguents to begin climbing the fabric partitions. Somewhere, further out into the carnival a racket was rising up as men screamed and beat on sheets of tin and old bells, signaling an attack from without.