The following is an excerpted chapter from my upcoming novella Sinbad and the Lost Continent, a lost world adventure inspired by the 1001 Arabian Nights. Enjoy, and be sure to check out the full novella once it comes out!
It was before daybreak when I awoke. I climbed up from the hatch onto the Black Tiger’s upper deck. Not that I had been sleeping well the past several nights. It had nothing to do with the fact that there never was much else to do aboard our small and humble vessel. I had merged so deeply into the water’s simple and monotonous rhythm that I lost track of the many days that had flown past since we set sail from Baghdad. After we had entered the Persian Gulf from the mouth of the Tigris and then advanced eastward into the Indian Ocean, nothing but the sea’s blue vastness had surrounded us. A landsman like me could lose his sanity when faced with such endless horizons, unable to cope with its full enormity, but the sailors told me they relished it, seeing it as the ultimate freedom.
Omar had deduced on our compass two to three days before that we were nearing the world’s equator. I inferred that the geographic word “equator” meant the world’s waistline, assuming he and the scholars at the Madrasa in Baghdad were right in claiming it was round instead of flat. Beyond that, we did not know our precise location.
I started to wonder whether Kishore was right to doubt our destination’s existence. He had never bought the other Sinbad’s accounts of his seven voyages to exotic faraway lands and the riches he had earned from them, even if that other Sinbad’s small yet ample investment of those riches had allowed me to purchase that old Greek map as well as the provisions for our voyage. As Kishore himself had claimed, neither he nor his father had ever witnessed sights as fantastical as the other Sinbad, and so many of his fellow sailors, had boasted of. No rocs, no giants, nothing like those at all.
Still, I was happy that Kishore had not only let me use his father’s old dhow, but also came aboard with me himself. If we were to perish out here in the heart of the ocean, at least my dearest friend would be beside me.
I was still groggy when I traipsed to the gunwale on the dhow’s port side, expecting another day of nothing but the unending blue ocean in front of us. I rubbed my half-shut eyes, gazed at the sunlit horizon, and blinked in disbelief.
It was land! Or was it my blurry vision playing tricks on me again? I closed and reopened my eyes, rubbing them again on my tunic’s sleeve. Still the green sliver of a hilltop rose before the rising sun.
As the Black Tiger drifted eastward, the sliver expanded into a thicker, dark green band. An unmistakably solid band, implanted as it rose from the water. The faint cawing of gulls rose over the splash of the boat’s wake.
My whole body trembled with excitement. “Land! Allah is merciful, for we have found land!” I yelled.
I rushed back to the hatch and opened it. Kishore was already scampering up to the deck, with the rest of the crew climbing the ladder behind him. “What is it, Sinbad?” he asked.
“Land!” I repeated as I thrust my finger through the air beyond the port side. “See for yourself, my friend!”
He adjusted his turban and rubbed his eyelids before squinting in the distance. His eyes widened and brightened in the middle, reflecting the glow of the rising sunlight behind the approaching island. “Holy Krishna, I don’t believe it!”
“It has to be it!” I spoke.
“What? Land? Of course it’s land!” Kishore said. “Must be an island.”
I shook my head like a swabbing mop. “No, no, my friend, it could only be Lemuria, the lost continent of legend, like on our map!”
Kishore’s smile vanished, with a dubious look at me replacing it. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Sinbad. You know we’ve never been to this part of the ocean before, so it could be any number of islands out here. It might even be one of those islands that other Sinbad spoke about in those stories he told everyone.”
“Well, then, let’s look at the map and then decide. Omar?”
Omar emerged on the deck upon calling, plucked out the old map from his sash, and unfolded it in his hands. I bent over next to him and followed his finger as it traced our course to date until it slowed to a point.
“The latitude given here matches what I noted from the stars last night,” Omar said, his nasal voice brimming with confidence.” Right down on the equator. The longitude should be close as well.”
Earlier in our voyage, Omar told me that he could determine how far north or south our dhow stood relative to the globe’s equator, by calculating the angle between the horizon and one of the stars. He could also tell how far west or east we were from our destination, and even from Baghdad, by measuring the distance between the moon and a given star. Once he did that, he would pull out a book of tables, which he claimed was a copy by the mathematicians that studied what they called al-Jabr, and then compare its figures with his measurements. It left me feeling foolish to know that a man could find out where he stood in the vastness of the world the way Omar did.
Captain Rabih looked over our shoulders and stroked a long, matted beard as fierce as his eyes. “Even if it isn’t your fabled Lemuria, it’s as good a place to rest as any,” he said. “Not to mention restocking our provisions. There might even be fresh water there.”
The corners of Kishore’s lip turned downward in a concerned frown. “Those gulls… those gulls…”
“What about the gulls?” I asked.
“They sound strange. Not like gulls at all. Or like any kind of bird I’ve ever heard. Can’t you hear them?”
He was right. They did not sound like the typical persistent, annoying caws of seagulls I had heard when our dhow sailed along the Persian Gulf, but rather a more prolonged screeching. I would have dismissed it as simply a different species of gull had I not recalled what Theognostos had claimed as he sold me the map.
If you think the giant birds of prey, great serpents, and oversized fish of that other Sinbad’s tales are terrible, or hard to believe without first seeing them, you’ve not yet heard a word yet about the creatures of Lemuria.
I looked down at the map again, taking in the assortment of hideous dragons, crocodiles, serpents, and other reptiles that populated it the way sea monsters would populate the seas in other charts. Those were parts of the legend I had never taken so seriously, or even paid much attention to. Why would I, when my thoughts and eyes were focused on the treasure supposed to be hidden throughout the continent? Treasure was real. Jewels, coins, bracelets, and amulets I could touch with my own fingers and carry in my own hands, but not dragons or other monsters.
The green slopes continued to reach up from the horizon toward the rising sun as we watched from behind the gunwale. I made out a peak higher than the others with gray smoke billowing from its summit, much like the range of mountains on the map. My hope soared that we had sighted Lemuria itself, my confidence swelling with it. Somewhere deep in the legendary island’s tropical forests before us awaited treasure more ancient and more valuable than the other Sinbad and his fantastical stories could imagine, at least if the Greek merchant’s story was true.
I imagined us loading the Black Tiger to her very limits with heaps of treasure and returning to Baghdad rich as the Caliph himself. Or at least rich enough that when they praised Sinbad the sailor’s wealth, they would not know which Sinbad they were talking about. No longer would I have to steal, or to make the barest living carrying loads on my head as a porter. Furthermore, I could also come back with stories as fantastic as the other Sinbad’s, though I did not know what those stories would be yet.
Bestial cries of immense volume interrupted my thoughts, screeches and yells that were drawing closer. The tar-black likenesses of birds flapped their wings toward us from the shore, their caws louder and clearer than earlier. Their bodies expanded before us while they advanced, their wingspans appearing to stretch longer than a riverman’s raft. I realized to my amazement that they were bigger than any birds I had ever seen—if they even were birds. Their ebony wings, which sprouted triplets of glinting claws from their bends, shone like thick leather rather than feathers beneath the morning sunlight.
What could such creatures be? Not even the other Sinbad had described anything like them in his stories. At least the giant rocs were just an oversized kind of eagle according to him, but these bizarre leather-winged creatures on the other hand could not even be called birds!
“The map has a picture of one of those labeled in Greek,” Omar said. “It’s called a pterodactyl.”
“A what?” I asked.
“Pterodactyl. A ‘winged-finger’.”
“You mean like a bat? And do you know what they eat?”
Omar frowned, his olive complexion turning pale. “I am afraid not.”
Nonetheless, the creatures’ beaks, long and piercing like spear points, suggested an answer to my question that chilled my blood.
If Kishore’s face were not as dark as it was, it would have blanched like a washed-out sky the way he looked at the approaching pterodactyls. “Why are they coming toward us? Like they’re attacking us?”
The captain grabbed the hilt of his saber. “Because they’re hungry. We ‘re food to them. Draw your weapons and prepare to defend ourselves!”
They didn’t waste any time. As soon as we grabbed our weapons, the foremost of the flying creatures reared for a moment, spreading out its wings before folding them inward and diving toward me. I sidestepped out of the way, but its beak slashed across my flank like a sword’s stroke, cutting through the fabric of my tunic and skin to draw hot blood. I flinched and began to hunch over, sharp pain slicing through me as I gripped the hilt of the scimitar I had acquired aboard the dhow and slid it out of my belted sash. Before I could fully draw my weapon, another pterodactyl grabbed my right forearm with its beak and tugged at it. I punched one of its beady, violent yellow eyes with my free fist to break its hold. I then freed the scimitar from my sash and slashed off the leather-winged devil’s head.
That only seemed to infuriate the flock even more. They swarmed around us like wasps over the deck. We brandished swords and knives while the airborne reptiles bombarded us with their stabbing beaks and razor-sharp finger-claws. Over the increasing din of cursing men and shrieking creatures, a sailor screamed when one of the beasts impaled him through chest like a stake through the heart, then lifted his body vertically above the boat and flew off.
Another pterodactyl swooped toward Captain Rabih from behind. The captain would have met the same fate as the first sailor had another sailor not stopped his attacker by puncturing and then slicing its wing with his sword. A third creature ambushed this sailor from behind, pinching his tunic’s collar with its beak until it tore off. Just when the pterodactyl jabbed again at him, I threw myself at it and sent my sword through its neck exactly like the last one I had killed.
It seemed that for every one of the flying monsters we slew, at least two more darted in to take its place. My muscles burned with strain and sweat, with sprayed blood slickening my skin, as the creatures’ wings flapped furiously, whipping up an evil zephyr over me. If they did not massacre us with their relentless diving attacks, I realized, the pterodactyls would fight us to exhaustion. Then they would swoop down and feast on our flesh. All we could do was endure them the best we could.
Just behind me, I heard a desperate holler. It was Kishore! A pterodactyl had snatched him by the arm and picked him up from the deck like an eagle might hoist a snake with its beak. He thrashed his limbs and kept screaming for a help we could not provide as we watched the infernal demon haul him back toward the continent’s shore.
I closed my eyes for a brief second, trying to erase the picture of his upcoming death from my mind.
I could not let him go like that. I quickly hacked my way through more of the pterodactyls to the port side, leaped over the gunwale and plunged into the tropical water below, my scimitar’s blade in my teeth. The times Kishore and I swam across the Tigris jogged my memory as I threw out my arms in breast strokes in the direction the pterodactyl had flown with him. My arms burned as I swam, my mind filling like an endless foundation with our days as boys in the slums racing down the streets, chasing dogs, and pilfering only what we needed, but never more, from merchants’ stalls or patrons’ purses in the bazaar. I swam and swam, recalling the stories we told while feasting on whatever we could obtain either through purchase or plunder.
Even our secrets we shared, not least of which was Kishore coming to feel for men the way I felt for women. It was an admission that shocked me at first, as I had been raised to consider such feelings as sinful, but in the end, it had no bearing on our friendship. Besides, for all I knew, Kishore’s faith minded it less than mine did.
Those memories, and secrets, kept feeding me like nectar, giving me the strength I needed to propel myself all the way to the beach. When my fingers first dug into the damp sand beneath the surf, I could hear my old friend’s screams persist overhead, even though his voice was hoarse. While catching my breath, I exhaled a quick sigh of relief that Kishore still lived. The pterodactyl was taking him to a tongue of headland atop some slate-gray cliffs to my right, with several more of its kind bedded down on top of it. That had to be the creatures’ nesting site.
I scurried to the shade of coconut palm trees that bordered the opposite side of the white sandy beach and wove my way around them toward the headland’s cliffs. Vines thick as rope festooned the cliff that touched the jungle further inland, allowing me to scramble up the jagged face using the same holds and moves that enabled Kishore and I to climb Baghdad’s buildings, where we would gaze at stars as big as dates from the rooftops while he taught me his native Tamil. Still, the cliff must have reared at least twenty feet from foot to lip, so it was with stretched and aching forelimbs, left even more painful by the long swim, that I reached the headland’s top.
I peeked carefully across the stony surface. Pterodactyls watched over nests of branches, leaves, and seaweed, with numerous bones and chalk-white droppings strewn between them. The creatures did not nestle on the ground with wings folded along their sides like birds, but instead stood on all fours like bats, the claws on their wings’ bends acting as front feet. One of the nests had a lively brood of tinier pterodactyls hopping around on it, chirping with gleeful hunger as their mother began lowering her catch to them.
That catch was Kishore, his movements now slow, fighting with every ounce of energy to stay alive.
I clutched my scimitar and raced toward the nest, maneuvering around the younger creatures while dodging their winged architects’ piercing beaks. The mother pterodactyl dumped Kishore into her nest, and her famished brood pounced on him. I didn’t know if I could get to my old friend before the little devils pecked out his eyes, or his life. They were hungry and wasted no time swarming over him.
By the time I scampered to his side, they had already pocked his skin with cuts and deep wounds that bled while he shielded his face with his arms.
I swung my weapon over Kishore, slicing one of the hatchlings in half. Its mother screeched the loudest I’d heard yet, her fury absolute over her baby’s death. She launched herself at me. I ducked underneath her, grabbed Kishore by his shoulders, and propped him up while he shook off the other hatchlings. The puny creatures continued to peck at and harangue him, while their mother and her companions did the same to me, despite my best efforts to keep them at bay with my sword. I sliced it through the air, over and over.
A pterodactyl snapped onto my sword-arm and pulled me off the headland, my arm still wrapped around Kishore. It began carrying both of us, the flapping of its wings unsteady as we weighed it down, two men apparently too much for her to carry. Yet, to our utter amazement, the creature lifted us higher into the sky. The world began to shrink beneath our dangling legs.
“What’s it planning to do, Sinbad?” Kishore cried over the beating of the reptile’s wings.
The pterodactyl shook its head furiously, reminding me again of the fury of eagles holding snakes in their beaks.
“Whatever it is, don’t look down!” I yelled.
A thin dark shaft whizzed up from the jungle’s edge to puncture the pterodactyl’s breast. After emitting a pain-filled screech that diminished into a staccato croak, the aerial beast released its grip on me, and we plummeted alongside its limp body into the ocean.
