Tenzons has returned, with a new layout and new flair. The updated design is still somewhat beta, so don’t hesitate to let me know if you notice any problems. Expect more updates (with actual content) very soon.

-Tenzon

• Rejected:
  • UMass Amherst
  • Indiana
  • Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Wisconsin, Madison
  • Iowa Writer’s Workshop
  • Michener Center (Texas, Austin)
  • Cornell
  • Brown
• Never heard back from:
  • Virginia
  • Boston University
• Admitted:
  • UMass Boston
  • UNH

So what happened this application season?

Well, I spent a lot of money, I applied to a lot of schools, of which I only got in to the lower ranked ones.  But I did end up getting offered a funded assistantship by UMB, which was mostly a matter of luck.

So it seems like my strategy (to apply primarily to top ranked schools nationwide, but only use nearby, regional schools as “safeties”) was a success, as far as that goes.

With all that in mind, here is my advice to future applicants.

1. Use the resources that are out there.
   Familiarity with the MFA Blog and Seth’s lists for funding and selectivity is worth a lot to your applications. (Just remember that Seth is awesome and does amazing work for the MFA community, but is still a little crazy.)
2. Your admissions will be more correlated than you think.
   One of the big refrains among MFA applicants is how “random” the whole process is. I really hate this idea, since it implies that MFA professors use the time-honored “throwing applications down the stairs” method. While it is true that there can be differences of opinions between application readers at different schools, they agree significantly more often than not. Just based on looking at everyone’s final lists, I’d say there’s something like a 60-70% correlation between admissions. That means that if you got into one school, with a given ranking and selectivity, you’d have about a 60-70% chance of getting into another school with identical ranking and selectivity. You’ll see from my list that my admissions are entirely rankings-contiguous, since there’s a relatively wide spread in terms of selectivity between the top-ranked schools I applied to and the lower ranked ones. This fact is also important because it reveals a central flaw in my strategy. Going into the process, I had this idea in the back of my mind that, just because I was applying to so many of the top schools, I would have to get in to at least one of them. Clearly this didn’t happen, and I might have been better served by only applying to a couple of the top schools and saving a few hundred dollars.
3. If you want to go to an MFA program, you can, as long as you are capable of writing an English sentence.
   I feel like this point doesn’t get emphasized enough. Basically, if you do some research, think for even an iota about your writing, and are willing to apply to a fair number of schools, you can get accepted to an MFA program. There is no challenge to it. The only questions are how good of a cohort you want to study with, how much funding you’d like to get, and where you’d like to study.This fact, of course, only contributes to the whole problem about the essential worthlessness of the MFA. But it should also be heartening for people who want to have the MFA experience, doing a lot of writing and hence improving their writing, and who also have at least $50,000 stashed in their back pockets.

So that’s it for my analysis. Starting this fall I’ll be posting updates, stories, and chatter from the insular world of MFAitude.

1. It was written within a very strict time window, under which circumstances I think I performed admirably.
2. The purpose of this site, for me, is full disclosure of all my writing efforts, travails, and struggles.  That means that I will share every blemish, bruise, edema, etc., all in the internet-y spirit of over-sharing.

So, anyhow, hope you enjoy the piece!  And while you’re there, I encourage you to take a moment and vote for Jaime Lannister in the finals.  I mean, honestly, do you want Wheel of Time to win?

-Tenzon

March 11, 2010

Ms. Katherine Smith
1850 Soldiers Field Road
Brighton MA‎ 02135

Dear Katherine:

Let me begin by saying that with all my heart, I long for the best for you, the very best in all things. In the next three years of your life, I know that you will discard the final trappings of your girlhood: the last vestiges of acne, the hint of the stutter you’ve carried since grade school, the way you slouch alongside the hors d’oeuvre table at parties hoping that no one will notice you, yet at the same time you are desperately crying out to be noticed. These deficits will, without a doubt, be replaced by the fruits of mature womanhood: an erect carriage, tighter blouses, a smile that is shy yet inviting. And though you will not be spending these next three years in our MFA program in Writing, here at Central Wisconsin State University, studying the art, or the craft, of writing fiction, that should not in any way diminish the seriousness and sincerity you must attribute to my remarks.

I know you may be surprised by the tone of this communique. If that is the case, then I hope you will forgive me for taking such liberties. Please feel free to read only as much of this letter as you feel is necessary for your own elucidation. For instance, you could stop reading now, at this very moment. But what then, of the life unlived, of the possibilities untrammeled? However, on the chance that you are so inclined, I here present you with what might be, in those circumstances, the most salient piece of information: You have not been admitted to the MFA fiction writing program at CWSU. (I considered highlighting this sentence, so that you could, if necessary, extract this information near-instantaneously, but have since discarded the idea as gauche.) You have not been placed on our waiting list, or into any type of holding file, or negative zone, or stasis of any sort. You have, in no uncertain terms, been rejected. I will not apologize or offer you my condolences for this fact because, as I will continue to explain at some length, I believe this arrangement to be, if not actively leading us onwards into the best of all possible worlds, at the very least an unavoidable circumstance.

You see, Katherine, at the time when your application packet arrived on my desk (a battered, oak monstrosity that fills most of my half of room 213 in Altamont Hall) I was, quite literally, deep in contemplation of what was to me the rather novel idea of setting fire to the entire building. In my mind, I was estimating the fatalities that would result from various sizes and speeds of conflagration; what proportion of the casualties would be faculty, students, and support staff depending on the date and time I chose; what kind of explosion might be necessary to quickly turn the building into something like the Towering Inferno. That exact moment was when your application arrived, not physically arrived but rather arrived in my consciousness, emerging from its spot where it had been wedged about two thirds of the way down my stack of seventy five odd applications.

We are a small school, Katherine. The three faculty members of the admissions committee have, during the past two years, the entirety of my tenure at CWSU, managed to handle the admissions stack with aplomb. This year, however, we were blanketed by applications, really snowed under, and I was dreading the slow, agonizing process of the reading. Unless you have tried it yourself, tried to crawl through the bleak and remorseless tunnel built of hundreds upon hundreds of application packets, creeping out of every square inch of the desk like the endless splinters of a deadly, unfinished jungle gym. Unless you have sampled this despair that tastes of 20 lb. copy stock and toner, well. My colleague Michael called it once the “Bataan Death March of American Literature,” but he is a Poet of Very Little Brain, so we will forgive him solecisms.

But returning to my consideration of your packet. That morning, you see, my wife had made me breakfast. This is not, let me inform you, a normal occurrence. My wife, Adelaide, is a busy woman. She works part time, for two different firms, as a technical translator from Chinese to English, and vice versa. She is extremely busy with this workload, beginning at five thirty in the morning and not letting up till seven or eight at night. She could telecommute, I imagine, but instead she doggedly sticks out her plain old physico-commute, driving two hours one way and three hours back. Needless to say, she does not often make me breakfast! So this was a curious event, at the very least from that perspective. What made it yet more curious, I would have to say, was the fact that she had managed to badly burn the eggs. Not out of neglect, or drowsiness; I watched her cook them, and she was fully attentive for the entire cooking process. I suppose she doesn’t cook eggs often. Since my wife wakes up so early, I do not actually know what she typically eats for breakfast. The kitchen is spotless when I wake at nine and make my coffee. The burning of eggs, that bare possibility, was not something I had ever considered. I have never burned eggs, not once in my adult life.

I ask you, Katherine, have you ever burnt your eggs? I know many people have trouble starting their combustion in the mornings, but I have never had that kind of trouble. And neither has Adelaide. In her case, burning the eggs was not malicious, as far as I can say. I remind you, the eggs on her own plate were burnt as well. They were scrambled eggs, and when burnt they took on a severely rubbery quality. They were chewy as a steak that you must cut with a sharp knife and really sink your teeth into, tear at, chewing for a good long while. My wife and I sat cross from one another at the breakfast table, each cutting our own personal burnt eggs with our own personal knife, saying nothing to each other. Adelaide cleaned her plate completely, which perhaps meant that she enjoyed her eggs fully. I think she did, as she ran her finger along its surface to pick up the brownish excess crumbs.

I assumed then that this was bad omen for the day.

So this was my state of mind at the time when I first set eyes upon your application packet, Katherine. Burnt eggs, jungles of death. So you should forgive what I then did, naturally, which was to put your application aside, in a drawer from which it would not emerge until several days later.

On the day I actually first read your application, things were quite different. My socks were still wet from walking through a deceptive puddle in the parking lot, and the water had soaked into the fabric starting my toes at a dreadful itching. I couldn’t take my shoes off, though, because Michael, with whom I share my office, cannot stand the smell of exposed socks, which smell is only magnified by wetness. So I tried my damnedest to scratch my toes without taking off my shoes first, but that was a pretty hopeless affair. My toes remained itchy. After a while I gave up trying to scratch, but the itch was still there, a feeling like tiny spiders walking over my toes, maddening. It was at just that moment that I picked up your application packet, and began to read.

Katherine, I’m sorry, I must now interrupt my narrative for a moment. I feel that some of what I am saying may seem to be expressing an excuse for my poor response to your paper, a mea culpa for why I did not recommend you for admission. Let me assure you, this is not the case. I would have had the same response as I did to your stories entirely regardless of the setting. Were I on the beach in Málaga, sunning my pasty shins, or in Yosemite watching the moose go about their joyful mating, I would have had almost precisely the same response to your creative work. I could not, would never, under any circumstance, endorse your submission as qualifying you for matriculation. But that is not really the point of this letter.

It might help if, at this point, you were to envision a jellyfish, floating dozens of feet below the surface of the Pacific. It is moved by the current, with almost no will of its own. At best it can pulse its mesoglea, quiver a little, to get some forward momentum, but that’s almost nothing compared to the muscular currents that shove at its gelatinous body. Primarily it drifts, hoping that, as it does so, enough plankton and nutritive detritus will drift into its tentacles.

But perhaps a jellyfish isn’t the appropriate metaphor. Perhaps an octopus? Or one of the many aquatic iguanas native to the the Galapagos? No, I think a jellyfish was correct after all.

Now imagine that I am the jellyfish, and you are some a sea bass, or bluefin tuna. Or a halibut. Yes, lets pretend you are a halibut. A huge, powerful fish, prowling the ocean’s reach, feeding on whatever you desire. You have a respectable place in the food chain. Your scales coruscate with the transient rays of light that filter down from the distant surface. You are swimming valiantly one day, quickly, chasing some wimpy anchovy, looking straight forward, keeping your eyes on the prize, when BAM, right into your eyeball, this jellyfish, stinging tentacles hitting your most sensitive spot. Because, that’s the thing about the jellyfish, it’s completely translucent, it’s barely even present. You can’t see it, not until you’re swimming right into the thing. So inert you almost pass through it, almost dissolve it into scattered proteins and water, but suddenly it’s all around you, grasping and sucking with tendrils and all its fragile power, but what it has to give you is pain, like a bee-sting, the departing echo of its own demise.

Maybe now you’re finally starting to understand me.

And so we come naturally to the discussion of your sample. I have developed a very specific method, when I am reading applications. Some might call it peculiar, but to me it feels completely natural. I will explain this to you, my method. (You will notice I will attempt, at this point, to completely abandon metaphors involving fish. Or marine life of any kind. I feel that these have grown increasingly strained.)

I begin by reading the applicant’s first story. I let that story fill me, I absorb it through my gills. (See that? That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.) I must, in that moment, be nowhere but the place in which that story fully exists. Then, as I finish the story, I take out the applicant’s Statement of Purpose and place it on the desk in front of me. I do not read it, not yet, but the sight of it allows the feeling of the story to start to relax, and begin to depart from my body. I then sit very still, and try to take note of the feeling that first enters into me, to replace the departing story. What is that feeling? If my first feeling is one of hunger, that is very important. A really great application, a really good story, will give me a hunger for red meat, heavy dense meat, delicate and rare. Once, and only once, I read a story so brilliant, so profound, that I ran out of my office at that moment to try to find a steakhouse. And I swear to you, there was drool coursing down my chin.

But your first story, it left me feeling nothing. Not a single bit peckish. I waited long, keeping still: not anything. It was like swimming through a pool of distilled water, my eyes wide open, expecting the pain of chlorine, the burning, but instead there’s nothing. No pain, no loss, no agony, no discomfort. Just: nothing. It was as if I had passed through you entirely, like a fog-bank that looks like a solid wall from far away, but once you approach it: nothing.

This is not to say this is the same way I feel after reading a bad story. On the contrary, after reading a poor story, I will suddenly have an incredible urge to urinate. As I rush to the restroom, my mind will be consumed with the badness of that story, its hackneyed turns of phrase, its transparent characters, its grammar errors and its purple-prosed conclusion. Standing in front of the urinal, unzipping my slacks, I am so filled with rage at the story’s existence that I will sometimes scream. The secretary in the Religious Studies Department has complained about it, several times. As I finish screaming, and complete my elimination, all these turgid thoughts of the offending story will have vanished. I flush them away, and can return to read the next story in my pile.

So your story provoked neither of these common responses. That is a strange thing, and it is followed by things even stranger. For instance: I know I have read both the stories you included in your sample, as well as your Statement of Purpose, but I could not for the life of me tell you what any of them were about. When I try to recollect, my mind drifts away, to stock car racing, or helium balloons. So this unaccountable vacancy was my central problem. I tried to think: who could have written such a story? Could it, in fact, have been written by a real person? You could have been some sort of phantasm, a supra-dimensional being whom I am aware of only as dimly as the jellyfish knows the halibut. You could be the product of some host of networked computers, a spontaneous singularity. All that I could say for certain was that there was a slight burning feeling left on half of my skin, specifically the left side of my body. I thought about an astronaut without his spacesuit: I always imagined that he would be divided down the middle, the one side of him facing the sun being burned and the side facing away being frozen. That would be the price of touching the vacuum. But what I felt instead was the gentlest pressure of a breeze on my right side, and the absence of such a breeze on my left, the slightest touch of anisotropy possible on this Earth. What with all my confusion, all this feeling and not-feeling, I pushed your stories aside, somewhere on my very disorganized desk.

Still I could not stop thinking about your work, or at least about the unfillable void left in my mind by your work. The more I thought about your work, the more I tried to think about you. I wanted desperately to attach something to the story, to you, because as days passed I was beginning to ache with the un-knowing, the lack of presence. Anything. A house, a time of day, a collection of collectible bubble gum wrappers.

So finally I went back and searched for your packet, but could not find it. I looked up and down through the pile, across the desk, in the wastepaper basket, several times, but I could not find it. It was as though your stories had dissolved back into the æther.

All I could recover and hold on to was a name: Katherine Smith. That might get you somewhere, I suppose, with the internet nowadays. But therein was the problem: I did not have your Statement, or an address, phone number, or email. Just “Katherine Smith.” The internet (always helpful!) did inform me that there are 2,515,000 Smiths in the United States. Half of those, 1,257,500, are women, of whom about 3.1% are named Katherine, which means you could reasonably expect to find 3,898.25 Katherine Smiths in the country! Where to start? Clearly I could not start paging through some collection of phone books, looking for the right one out of those 3,898.25, especially because I imagined you would be an elusive, if not invisible quarry.

I imagined you as I went into the rest of my day. I thought of you as I left my office at 5 PM sharp, saying my goodbye to Greg the departmental secretary, who ignored me as he usually does. I thought about the possible colors of your hair, finding reasons to doubt each one, as I sorted the mail and read an article in a popular magazine (sent to us in a fit of pique by Adelaide’s mother as a gift subscription) about the health benefits of kangaroo meat. I thought about you, the smell of your skin, the way if I were around you I might start to feel aroused without the slightest bit of prompting. I thought of what brands of shoes you might wear, while cutting the onions for a risotto and feeling the burn of the onion in my eyes that, again, reminded me of you, and also of your absence.

You may here be wondering why, if your story, or the void left by your story’s departure, provoked such a reaction in me, why I can say that I can in no way recommend you for admission? In all honesty, I can no more reject you than I can reject the wind, or the space between two automatic sliding doors at a convenience store. You are the unknowable given the form of a girl, a girl whose teeth, bra size, acne, and posture I can only speculate on.

It might interest you to know that in the last two weeks I have taken up the practice of Transcendental Mediation. I have just begun, and can tell you little about the Vedic methods or the proper breathing of the mantras, but it has already brought me this one, tangible benefit: I have remembered the first sentence of your story. At least, that is what I hope, and fervently believe, the sentence to be. Clearly I cannot place what I cannot remember, but it has a rightness of feeling to it. It seems like a first sentence and, since I cannot locate it in any other works I have read, it seems precisely like your first sentence. It came to me as I practiced on the kitchen floor, my legs spread as best I can with my old hip injury, my fingers assuming whatever mudrā I could approximate. The sentence that appeared in my mind was “She reached for the book on the shelf while outside a sparrow was sharply singing.”

I have meditated on this sentence a number of times since. It moves, uninterrupted by punctuation, with all the energy of stagnant air. What can one say about such a sentence? Perhaps I could write a thesis on that word, “sharply,” that rises at the end, adding a hint of poetry with its consonance and possibly adianoeta. But the whole reminds me of nothing more than the exercises one performs in elementary school when diagramming sentences. “Which book did she reach for? The book on the shelf!” “How did the sparrow sing? It sang sharply!” And yet its simplicity also carries so much weight, Perhaps, with further effort on my part, the rest of your stories will reveal themselves to me, sentence by sentence, or word by word, in the form of new mantras rising in the hum of my mind’s activity.

Please do not think that I did not consider admitting you, despite everything. I thought of so many things: of protecting you, pinning you between polystyrene and cling wrap like a pound of hamburger. Of keeping you in a jar, pickled and airtight. Anything to keep you from contamination by anything less pure and perfect than you. But I think, at this point in my stages of discovery, that your perfection lies in your complete absence. That’s the best that I have been able to determine, at any rate.

I do know that the observer inevitably influences the observed. In even writing you this letter, I am doing that! I hope you will understand this sin, if it is a sin, and accept me for my own state of tangled confusion. Perhaps you will not read this. That, upon consideration, is actually my most fervent hope: that you will choose not to read this letter at all, keeping yourself fully unspoiled. That is what I want, and yet I also feel that I owe you this explanation, and, selfishly perhaps, want to explain myself to you. Do you understand now the problem I am facing? Unless of course you are not reading any longer, in which case these explanations are rhetorical.

Let me conclude by telling you a story. It is a short one, I promise.

Once, in a simpler time, the world consisted only of a tiger, an eggplant, and a glass vase half filled with water. This didn’t last for long. Things quickly got more complicated, in ways too complicated to explain. At some point the tiger became hungry, so he ate the eggplant. Later, the tiger became thirsty, so he drank from the vase of water. In doing so, he spilled some of the water on the ground, since tigers do not have opposable thumbs. As the tiger lapped up the last of the water from the vase, a shape appeared before him. It was the ghost of the eggplant he had eaten. The tiger asked it, “Are you angry at me for eating you?”, to which the eggplant replied, “No, to take what you can is in the nature of the tiger. I am only angry at you for spilling so much of the water on the ground.” The tiger was about to reply that this was completely unfair, and rather arbitrary, since spilling water was also certainly in the nature of the tiger, and no matter what his own aspirations were he certainly couldn’t help that. Before he could speak, however, the vision of the eggplant disappeared in a puff of purple smoke, and the tiger began to feel the rumblings of indigestion in his belly.

Does that mean anything to you? Does the jellyfish feel the halibut, like a German zeppelin feels the strafing fire of a Vickers’ machine gun piercing its belly, like the Earth feels as the arrows of the sun strike her? And do those arrows feel, as they plunge blindly through her heart?

Sincerely,
Samuel P. Langston
Assistant Professor
Central Wisconsin State University

Ed: All apologies, where appropriate, to Haruki Murakami and William Styron.

-Tenzon

Eleyna held her body entirely still, not drawing a breath, feeling the three cold pricks of Rot’s steel fingers on her throat. She was the Captain now. That meant that this was her ship, and she’d be damned if any half-wit First Mate could wrest it from her.

“Mate Rot. We are at an impasse.” She spoke with barely a whisper of air, so that her throat would not move. And yet her firm voice could be heard from the hold to the yardarms. The ship hung on the crest of a wave, waiting like Eleyna with bated breath. “The Captain has designated me his successor. But I also acknowledge that you have precedence, having served as Ancilla‘s First Mate with distinction for many years.” Though this was not precisely true, as everyone knew. Rot had always served with drunkenness, insubordination, and fits of erratic violent madness, but never with distinction. For the moment, though, with the aura of the Captain’s death still hanging in the air, it felt true enough that Rot seemed to believe it, and the steel hooks against her throat softened slightly in their grip.

“As well,” Eleyna continued, “We find ourselves in difficult straits. After the punishment of the battle, both the Eyetooth and the Ancilla will be a fair challenge to crew. So I propose this: We allow the Ancilla‘s crew the opportunity to decide on a Captain, and we abide by their decision. Either they pick one of us with a full and hearty voice, or, if enough dissent to form a crew, we will divide the men and each Captain a ship, setting sail our separate ways. And as a courtesy to your seniority, I would let you select the ship of your preference. Does that sound fair to you, Rot?”

Eleyna felt Rot hesitate, felt a tremor of doubt run through his hook fingers. She could imagine the calculations slowly working their way through the slow-turning cogs of his mind: surely at least some, if not all, of the crew would prefer him as Captain. In the worst case, he would have command of one ship, whichever of the two he desired. How could he fail? Eleyna could tell he was considering the alternatives, thinking of his most loyal allies in the crew, numbering how many others he would need to kill in order to assume full power.

“If this offer is not to your liking,” Eleyna said, assuming a sterner tone, “then you can pierce my neck, and Yelol will distance your head from your shoulders. And then neither of us will have a ship.”

That settled it. Eleyna could imagine Rot thinking, assuring himself. “Clearly the crew will see how I am the more fit Captain. They could never take some wet-furred kit of a girl as their Captain.” He slowly lifted his hand away from her neck, and Eleyna let out a tiny, inaudible gasp of relief. She had found the correct combination of threats and coaxing, appealed to Rot’s healthy appreciation of himself. Yelol relaxed his stance as Eleyna stood. She looked down at the lifeless body of the Captain, his chest awash in red. A wave of doubt washed over her. Perhaps her gambit had been unwise, but had she really any other choice? And what of the crew, who whom did their sympathies truly lie?

The Captain was dead. Now she only had to consider what came next.

There were so many of the dead. Most were thrown overboard, without no ceremony at all. There was little room for religion among the Ancilla‘s crew, only the ritual frisking of the body for any valuables, then the heave and shove over the railing. But with the Captain, that was different.

For twenty years the Captain had been terror on the western seas. Sailors whispered of him to one another in the dead of night, that in his ship’s wake the ocean boiled, that whales and kraken swam to his will, that he could call a typhoon with the gale of his haggard breath. He had been the Ancilla‘s avatar, striking blubbering fear into the hearts of even the most hardened of crews. And his men had feared him, respected him, and in their own way had come to love him. The Ancilla‘s crew, sailors of a dozen races and creeds, gathered on the quarterdeck for a quiet, respectful service, where each spoke words privately to his own gods, and each in turn felt replied to.

So every man looked up when Eleyna stood, startled by her brash assumption of the center of attention at a time like this. She began by silently pouring an entire flask of rum to the deck. As she poured, Eleyna saw a few men wince at the waste of good drink, but all remained silent.

“Men, at this time we mourn, and with good reason. The Captain was a model to us all, a pirate’s pirate, a man who truly lived the wind every day of his life. In his end the sea will take him and possess him, but during his life, he possessed the seas.

“The Captain would have wanted us to continue, and continue we shall. The sea will swallow our dead and bury them, and Ancilla will sail again. We face five hundred leagues across unfriendly seas, with the storm season upon us, and little time to spare. The Ancilla is sore wounded; the pounding of the last battle she won’t soon forget.

“Men, we face a choice. We have two ships, but not enough men to fully crew one. The Ancilla will sail again, but her hull needs patching and her masts must be reset. That process would speed up a fair slight if we were to cannibalize the Eyetooth, and scuttle her when we finish.

“This decision is not a light one, and we will need a bold new Captain with will to carry it out. The honorable First Mate Rot is such a man, and has offered himself up for this a service. But the Captain, with his dying breath, requested of me that I take on this burden. Still, he was perhaps not in his truest mind at that moment, his vision and thought obscured by death’s cloud. So I leave the decision to you, the crew of the Ancilla: who will you have as your Captain? The choice is yours alone.”

With that, Eleyna stepped down, and First Mate Rot took her place. “’Tis all like the lady says, ye scurvy dogs. Ye all know me, ye know I’m not such a one fer pretty words. But mark this: I’ve nigh run this ship on a dozen years, an’ I’ll not steer ye wrong now. Think on it, mateys.”

The service concluded, and the Captain’s sailcloth wrapped body was pushed off the plank to a twenty gun salute. The crew deliberated, chattering and sipping grog. Eleyna waited quietly, Yelol at her side, while across the deck Rot polished his hooks nervously on his shirt.

After a solemn, secret balloting, Maurice, the helmsman, delivered the verdict to the assembled crowd. “Arr, ’tis unanimous. Every hand an’ hook ‘as been counted. Fer the next Captain o’ the Ancilla, we be selectin’, most ‘umbly, the Lady Eleyna.” Maurice offered her a small tip of his cap, and some sort of awkward bow at the knees. Behind him the crew cheered, lifting grog bottles high and shooting pistols into the air. The First Mate was aghast, his hands and hooks hanging slack.

Yelol turned to Eleyna with a generous bow and a flourish. “Milady, the ship is yours.”

e had helped her find a new berth for her hammock, when the pitch stores had burst open and swamped the whole larboard side of the hold with oozing black tar. He had given her a stopper of rum to tide her over when the grog supplies had run low and crew was near mutiny. The ferocious Captain of the

He had given her command of the boarding party. He had trusted her. He had treated her like a daughter, and more.

Eleyna was surprised to find herself screaming, her blade whipping at speeds she never before imagined believed she could move. She thought she had known rage before, but it had been only a pale shadow of this fury. She felt elemental, a conduit for a primal force that had always existed in the world, but had never been manifest until now. Like she had been trapped for a thousand years and all of that frustration built up during an eternity of captivity was exploding from the surface at once.

He was dying, this man who had cared for her, and standing before her was the one who had killed him. The bastard who had unloaded his pistols into the Captain’s heavy chest was standing right in front of her, and her sword knew what to do. Her sword knew how to make him bleed.

She thought she saw Yelol, fighting alongside her, keeping a clutch of corsairs off her flank. For a moment she caught a glimpse of Second Mate Pellagra, on his way to her aid, being cut down in a hail of bullets. But mostly she saw only blood, the spray of blood all around her, coating her face. Some of it was her own blood: she had wounds up and down both arms from not-quite-evaded blows. Much of it was the blood of others, spilled by the edge of her cutlass, then running down the metal the way gentle waves run off the sand of an island beach.

And then, almost before she knew what was happening, the entire moment came into clear focus. All the crazed movement, all the screaming and smoke and confusion of the battle cleared away, leaving only Eleyna and Gauliga the Merciless. Gauliga had his back to the deck, his arms at his sides, trembling in his boots. Eleyna had her cutlass blade pressed against the Merciless’ neck, just close enough for a good shave. Eleyna prepared to deliver or deny mercy, poised for vengeance or absolution. Destruction or annihilation. Ready to end it all.

“Please,” said Gauliga, showing her the palms of his hands. “Please, I surrender.”

It fell to Yelol and First Mate Rot to accept the surrender and deliver the news to the disparate parts of the ship, where intermittent fighting persisted long after the formal acknowledgement. The battle was over, and now their new task was to keep as many sailors from dying as was possible. After all the casualties incurred, able bodied men were sure to be few and far between.

Eleyna was oblivious to it all as she knelt by the Captain’s side, watching his face tremble in his final minutes. He was still breathing, but barely. Some part of her knew that she should put him out of his misery, allow him peace at least. Peace from all this, this reality of dying slowly on a blood and fire-stained deck.

But she could she let him die? After he had shown her kindness, it didn’t seem possible. Or would her kindness to him now be in helping to him die? Her heart raced. With two bullets deep in his chest, and with the rag she was holding to his wound barely staunching the flow of blood, the Captain had no hope of survival. But how could she be the one to end him, or even allow him to come to an end?

She was not certain how much time passed as she watched the Captain’s labored breathing and saw the light in his eyes slowly dim. At some point the noise of the battle ceased entirely, replaced by the screams of the wounded as the surgeon made his fitful rounds. But no one dared approach Eleyna and the Captain. All were too fearful of that steely glint in her eye, the way her left hand still held on to her cutlass like it was the last solid thing in the world.

It was Yelol who came to her side at last and put his hand on her shoulder. At the touch Eleyna’s body snapped like an eel, turning, then twisting and jabbing with the point of her cutlass. Only Yelol’s quick reflexes saved him from being poked through. For Eleyna, exerting that last spasm of energy was like applying a pin-prick to a bubble, and she fell to all fours in total weariness of the mind and body. Yelol could not tell if she was sobbing, laughing, or experiencing some other, fully alien feeling that he could not even begin to describe or understand.

First Mate Rot approached, tossing a razor thin knife between his hands, sporting a brand new gash along the left side of his jaw. “Gauliga’s in the brig, all neat an’ tidy. Been thinkin’ on how we should quarter him, then hang the left-over bit from the yardarms until the birds do away with him. Unless’n you have some better ideas.”

“We can’t kill the prisoners, we need every able bodied men to crew us back to port. Now we’ve two ships, and we’re shorthanded even before our losses.”

Rot watched Yelol, twirling his knife between his hook-fingers in a complicated pattern. “An’ who’re you to tell me such? Tellin’ me I can’t execute prisoners on me own ship? Wanna go up against Captain Rot, see how yeh fare?”

Eleyna looked up at Rot, glaring with a fierce intensity. “You are not the Captain. Our Captain is still alive.” She was holding the Captain’s hand, feeling every twitch of his muscles as he teetered on the brink of death.

“The Captain’s near on dead. ‘Asides, he can’t hear a word we’re sayin’. Look innis eyes. We’re drawin’ it out, but the man’s been gone fer hours. Don’t say as you can’t see it.” Rot smiled, and his smile was a dark, hollowed out thing that sickened Eleyna. She wanted to reply, to say something biting and vicious to this horrible man, this man who would gloat over the deathbed of the one person who had cared, truly cared, for her or for anyone else aboard the Ancilla.

She was halted by a gasping sound, the squelch of air being drawn into lungs in an agonizing, final breath. She, Yelol, and Rot all huddled close to the Captain, as he made use of the final air he had gathered.

“Eleyna,” his voice came out rattling and coarse. It was like he was speaking through a pile of salt grains, and also breathing them in and out with battered lungs. “Eleyna, yeh’ll take care o’… o’ Iwaki fer me.” Rot bent in closer, hovering over the Captain’s thick beard, but the dying man’s eyes stayed fixed on Eleyna. Again he spoke, even soft, just a half-breath of air left to spend. “Yeh be th’ Captain, now. Take care, o’ Iwaki, the Ancilla, me girls…” A shudder passed through the Captain’s hand, and by some trick of the wind seemed identically to pass through the entire ship, from the hold to the foremast, rattling loose timbers and knocking over kegs of loose shot and power. With the last of his wind gone, the Captain died.

Eleyna was blinded by tears. She squeezed the Captain’s wrist, felt desperately for his pulse. Normally it felt like a pounding surf, so strong you could sense it from the far side of a room. But now there was nothing. She felt something sharp tickling her throat, and blinked the tears away so that she could see what it way.

“So,” said First Mate Rot, pressing his sharpened metal fingers against the tender, velvety underside Eleyna’s throat, “ol’ man thought he’d set ye up as th’ next Captain of the Ancilla, did ‘ee now, dearie? That’s a right larf, ‘swhat I say. ‘Coz the ol’ man’s dead now, cold an’ still, an’ ye’ll not be much a Captain either when yeh join him in the Locker.”

The battle so far had consisted of long, interminable bouts of waiting, punctuated by intermittent explosions. The Ancilla was a fast ship, but the Eyetooth was a touch faster. That meant that they would be caught, eventually, and boarded, but not until they had thoroughly maneuvered, tacked, cut across the wind enough times to turn even a hardened seadog’s stomach. The Captain swore at his men until his voice and vocabulary were exhausted, and then he got out the whip and started right back at the beginning again. The sails would shudder, the helm would twist and turn, and when they caught the wind again the Eyetooth would still be there, directly behind them, five yards closer and gaining.

And so it was almost a relief to Eleyna when the Eyetooth drew yet closer, to within fifty yards, and muskets began to fire from both sides. The smoke from the powder joined that from the Black Eyetooth‘s thudding bowchasers. The hull of the Eyetooth rose and fell, smacking the water like the angry fist of a seaman demanding his grog ration. It drew closer still, to thirty yards, and now musketballs began to find their marks, attested to by the screams of wounded men falling from the rigging.

Then only twenty yards or open water separated them, and Eleyna could have tossed one of the chickens, which were still milling about her ankles, at the Eyetooth and expect it to glide and flap its ungainly way cross to the far ship’s deck.

Finally, she heard the satisfying chopping sound made by a grappling hook finding purchase in the Ancilla’s timbers. Dashing to the railing, ducking and weaving to avoid incoming fire, Eleyna quickly found the hook and severed its rope. She watched as a buccaneer, working his way hand over hand across the space separating the two ships, found himself suddenly without tension in his wire. He let out a howl as he was sent unceremoniously down to the water’s churning surface.

Now this, she thought, was more like it.

Caught amidships, Eleyna and Yelol fought back to back, relieving swarms of pirates of their unneeded limbs and extremities. The two fought like blind furies, together forming a dervish of terrifying cuts and pistol shot that none of the Eyetooth‘s seamen could approach. Meanwhile in the sterncastle, the Captain, along with First Mate Rot and Second Mate Pellagra, made a last stand with his braces of pistols and rapier singing.

And more singing, besides. The Captain belted out a rousing chant as he unleashed searing death on any who dared come near. “Sing ho!” / Kaboom! / “Sing hi!” / A scream! / “Sing yo ho ho!” (The Captain held the low note as long as possible). / “Sing for yer lives, me hearties, and I’ll send ye the sea below!” He finished off his ditty by laughing wildly as he thrust about with his rapier.

Eleyna was occupied by two cutlass bearing ruffians, whose skin was so tattooed you could barely tell where their trousers began, or if they were even wearing them at all. The two men struck at her like demons, but Eleyna fought like the devil himself, and bested both their blades with her smooth ripostes and lightning footwork. With a sudden twist to the left, she tripped one of the men while still parrying the other’s blow. Then, with a rapid downward thrust, she punctured the fallen man’s hand and pinned it to the deck, then tumbled forward, dodging a whistling cross-blow and availing herself of the prone pirate’s cutlass all in one graceful motion.

As Eleyna rose to her feet, she heard a a horn sound somewhere, then something like the blasts of heavy cannons. She ducked instinctively to avoid the shots. But the thuds continued, and she realized it was not cannon-blasts she was hearing but instead the sound of impossibly heavy boots walking the planks of the Ancilla. After checking that Yelol was successfully dealing with the other tattooed corsair, she turned to find the sound’s source.

It was not difficult. For there, clambering onto the quarterdeck, was a man who could be none other than the dread pirate Gauliga the Merciless. His body was built like a barrel: thick, stout, and heavy, and four feet tall at best. He kept a beard that stretched halfway down his body, and carried a curved sword that was long as Gauliga was tall. On his head was a pitch colored hat with a lush black feather lofting out from its edge. It was as if all hells had bundled themselves into one tight little package, forming something denser with evil than any the foulest souls of mankind. His gaze was a force in itself, pushing Eleyna aside, through the clashing multitudes, seeking out its true prey.

But before Gauliga’s gaze could pin him, the Captain was aloft: he had clambered up the mizzenmast, caught hold of a loose bowline, and swung himself across the ship, grinning and howling like a monkey as he flew. “Gauliga, yer days be numbered, fer nothing ye’ve seen on th’ se’en seas can compare ta the likes’a.”

The Captain was never able to finish his challenge. Just as he made the quarterdeck, landing full on his feet, rapier swinging, Gauliga drew two pistol and unloaded them into the Captain’s chest.

Eleyna wanted to scream out as she saw the Captain fall to his knees, his violently cheerful expression replaced by shock. Blood was spilling out his pea coat, staining his breeches. Instead of shouting, Eleyna forced her own way to the quarterdeck, not caring what pirates she cut through, which side they fought for. Yelol tried to keep pace with her, but she was a storm unto herself, coming at Gauliga like a typhoon’s wind.

As for Eleyna, she saw nothing, heard nothing. All she knew was that a red cloud was covering her eyes, and a feeling of boiling blood filled her ears. That roar and wash drowned out everything else, leaving only herself, Gauliga, and the space needed to get her blade out from her hand and into his heaving chest.

But didn’t have me-self a ship, back then. Just fresh out the Academy O’ Piracy, sailin’ on the Black Eyetooth with Seymour Skulfidy, Cap’n Seymour to his crew, the fearsome Black Skull to his enemies. An’ oh ho, me hearty, Cap’n Seymour could stab fear in the heart o’ any man crossed his blade.

They called me the Lieutenant back then, tho’ we had no proper ranks on board ship, yeh see. Cap’n Seymour was enamored o’ the parr-limentary form ‘a government, thought of ‘imself as first among equals. ‘Twas a right old mess on the Black Eyetooth, always with yammerin’, debatin’, holdin’ cloture votes. Ye couldn’t propose a measure ta set in a course fer mayhem an’ plunder without some snaggletoothed son o’ the yardarm attachin’ a rider to increase grog rations tenfold. Madness, I tell ye.

Gauliga ‘n I were bunkmateys, down in the rat hole of a berth, hammocks filled with droppings, filthy I tell ye. How he snored, like a whale breachin’, like broadsides goin’ off all night long. So I poked some fun at Gauliga, or poked him with me cutlass. Whenever I’d be needin’ a laugh. Friendly rivalry, ye might call it.

In the mess hall, I be feedin’ Iwaki her splinters ‘n kindlin’, dipped in molasses ‘n sprinkled with salt, just how a Koypu likes it. But Gauliga’d load the salt shaker with blasting powder, have it explode ‘n set fire to me ‘n Iwaki’s whiskers. So I’d stab ‘is hand with ‘is own fork, stick it to the table just as the Cap’n called us out fer roll call votes. All in great fun. Hillarious stuff, crew all loved it.

Then the next day, after Gauliga’d put Olivier’s eyeball in me blood puddin’, I said, “Oh, Gauliga, eyeballs is poppin’ out left ‘n right. Must be yer mum’s in ‘er nightie again!” All in jest, mind ye, in good fun. Aye, and I was stabbin’ him in ‘is side with a rapier too as I said it too, still in good fun.

Well, ’twas the last straw. Gauliga couldn’t suffer no insult to his mum, dear creature she was ta him. Tho’ in me own defense, Gauliga’s mother was indeed an ugly hag, she was. But twasn’t her fault, the sweet ol’ hag, a normal sea hag she was. Swimmin’ about in her rags ‘n such, catchin’ tuna with ‘er claws. Times were she’d swim up the Eyetooth‘s wake, climb ‘er way up the anchor line. Check up on Gauliga to see he’s bein’ a good boy. Sweet lady, and quite a vision, ‘side from her vicious, foot long incisors, crooked nose, an’ skin wrinkled by sea water. But a lovely hag she was.

So Gauliga, he’s touchy ’bout his half hag heritage, he starts up a bluster. Then I pin his hand to the table with a fork again, an’ all the crew laugh. I think all’s done. But Gauliga, he never forgets. Plots revenge, the boy does.

Next genr’l caucus, Cap’n Seymour calls roll. But me, I barely hear the bailiff call ta order, or the secretary’s setting agenda fer the meetin’. ‘Cause next ta the Cap’n is the most bonnie lass yet ta put me eyes astern, bountiful as sail catchin’ the wind, buxom as a barrel o’ grog, fair as a trade current. The Cap’ns niece Maria, bein’ transported to Crawston Port fer her health, the poor thing. Watchin’ our parliament o’ fools, havin’ ‘erself a right laugh at our madness. But nothin’ could dissuade me from seekin’ her, nothin’ could tear me eyes away. Thought of nothing but her through th’ nights, th’ days. I needed some way as to prove to the lass that ’twas I to be her man.

So, a’ the shipwide meetin’ next day, I took meself the floor, an’ I began to speak. I spoke so eloquent, so passionately. Of the mast repair project ‘ad been delayed many a month, of the hold reorganization allowin’ hammock space fer the less fortunate sailors, of fundin’ fer the rodent extermination teams. Spoke straight from me heart, words truer an’ more beautiful than any sailor ‘ad yet spoken on the decks o’ the Black Eyetooth, or on any pirate ship fer the matter. An’ I brought down the young lass’ attention, saw ‘er watchin’ I, likin’ what she’d seein’. Woulda had her eatin’ out of me glove by the end of me speech. Me oratory brought a tear to many a jaded glass eye, pirates as never cried when they watched their own mothers skinned alive, those men cried at me grand elocution.

As I finished speakin’ a quiet came over the ship. A hush no man would break: tender ‘n perfect. At that moment, all th’ stars aligned, I prepared to declare me love fer Maria, make ‘er mine ferever. Bent me knee, removed me hat, all set. An’ then. An then…

“And then what?” asked Eleyna. “Finish the damn story.”

The Captain was distracted by the screeching of the mizzenmast, creaking and straining after a well placed shot from the Hannibal‘s guns set it loose. All about them pirates were preparing to repel boarders, gripping cutlass and musket tight.

“Then, Gauliga steps forward, nasty grin on ‘is face. An’ he says to the assembled, ‘Men, the Lieutenant here is, he’s fillibusterin’ the grog ration!”

“Oh my,” said Eleyna. “How devious.”

“Aye. ‘Twas political death. Would have me stripped me o’ me committee posts. A masterstroke. Would’ve admired Gauliga’s verve, were things but different. Had Maria been there to see me fall from grace, had not she been laughing.” The Captain let out a long, aching sigh. “Grog’s a very sensitive issue, amongst any crew. The Grog Coalition ‘eld a large plurality o’ seats. So th’ crew mutinied on th’ spot, Gauliga himself had Cap’n Seymour an’ his sweet young niece walk the plank, just fer to spite me. Things just ain’t been the same twixt us since.”

As if to punctuate the point, another cannonball lodged itself in the deck not a yard to Eleyna’s left.

“Well,” said Eleyna, “old wounds can still be healed. It sounds like you and Gauliga have had a standing grudge for some time. But you can end it. Be the bigger man. Bury the hatchet.”

“Aye,” said the Captain, with a wicked grin. “I’ll be buryin’ me hatchet. Buryin’ it in Gauliga’s fat skull, that hag’s-son. No one crosses the Captain of the Ancilla an’ breathes ta tell tales.” And with that, the Captain was off, urging his men on and ordering the sails to be let out. The Ancilla slowed, pulling back, while the Hannibal sped ever closer, brimming with a hundred bloodthirsty pirates hooting like monkeys and priming their pistols. Emergency grog rations were issued on both ships, and final prayers made to the gods of sea and storm.

The Hannibal came alongside the Ancilla, rigging meeting rigging with a series of sharp crunches and screams from the men who hung to it, now knocked to decks swarming with brutally armed crews.

“Good lord,” said Eleyna, securing her brace of pistols. “This will not end well.”

As was typical when the Captain issued commands, there was a general bustle of activity all about the Ancilla, though it was far beyond Eleyna’s grasp of seamanship to guess this was in accord with the orders or not. In fact, she couldn’t even tell whether the Captain’s orders made any sense at all, or if he was just making it up as he went along. She imagined she would have the same amount of success if she stood on the forecastle and shouted whatever popped into her head. “Haul the wind! Hard a-lee! Open hawse and pawl the capstain! Quicker, yeh yellow loggerheads!” and so on and so forth. Either the crew knew what they were doing or they didn’t. And while she could see that it was important to have a Captain who shouted odd things, for morale purposes, the practical value seemed small.

“Ah!” cried the Captain, peering once again through his oddly tuned spyglass, pointing it out to the open sea. “The serpents arr readyin’ a broadside, let’s not us sail into it. Hard a-larboard! Hard a-larboard!”

The Ancilla lurched and heaved as the rudder was thrown to the far side, and the mizzen sails grew slack and empty.

“Captain,” asked Eleyna, “what of the prize crew on the Ledgerwood? Arden and Maurizio and the sailors, how shall we recover them?”

“Blistering blue barnacles, they’re lost, all lost, lass. Captain Gauliga has us outstripped by rights, cutting twixt us ‘an poor Piss-Bucket. Gauliga’s ship the Hannibal outguns Ancilla by thirty long-nines. Outrunning him ’tis the best we can do. We’d never stand hull to hull, his broadsides’d rip us to splinters.” The Captain turned and began yelling at the men hauling the lines. “More sheets! Men want yer tongues torn out and stewed with mutton? That’s what’s coming, that’s what’s on the wind! Gauliga the Merciless! Move, yeh buncha lubbers! If Gauliga don’t eatcher kidneys for supper I’ll have ‘em myself!”

Arden, lost to the brutal seas and the uncaring waves. Perhaps enslaved by a vicious pirate, if Gauliga had paused in his chase to launch a boarding party and take the Ledgerwood. Eleyna took a moment to mourn this fact, but couldn’t honestly bring herself to feel bad about Arden. So instead she thought of Maurizio, which gave her an appropriate twinge of sadness. He had been a good companion, entertaining and personable. She hoped he would survive; Maurizio did seem to have a knack at it. But Arden, well, now she was rid of him again, and that was that.

Her thoughts were cut short as the Hannibal‘s bowchasers discovered the Ancilla to be in range and scored their first hit. Eleyna heard the screams of wounded pirates and watched smoke rising from the deck. Now was no time to be lost in thought.

“Well sir,” Maurizio said to Arden, stumbling about what had been the captain’s cabin of the Ledgerwood. Maurizio was still shaking off the effects of an earlier wine-induced stupor. “Well this is a right mess you’ve gotten us into now.”

“For certain, Maurizio. These spiny Gurnards are nearly inedible, no matter how long you sauté them. I don’t know if there’s anything to be done.”

“Actually, begging your lordship’s pardon, I was referring to the pirate ship that seems to have sailed between us and the Ancilla. The one with the big, black sails, and the blood-red flags and all of that.”

Arden sighed and prodded at the surly lump of fish on his platter. “Maurizio, we were slaves on the Ancilla. If these new pirates commandeer our vessel, we shall be nothing more than rude servants again. So nothing seems likely to change in our situation, and the net impact on my quality of life is nil. Now, if this fish had been rendered delectable and crispy by frying, and if there had perhaps been a slice of lemon lying about the cabin, that would have improved my quality of life considerably. So this is by far the more pressing concern. Understood?”

“Not that I’ve no concern over your lordship’s breakfast, far from it.” Maurizio again checked the wine bottle he was clutching, to see if even a drop was left. Just as when he had checked two minutes before, there was nothing. “But those pirates there might want to do more than enslave us. They might want our blood to paint their pretty little flags, if you catch my drift.”

“Torture and death would at least bring me a reprieve from the last few months’ incredible boredom. Going to sea is one part pain and nine parts tedium. One is never warned about that aspect of the experience.”

Maurizio was beginning to feel the effects of yesterday’s wine, and not in a pleasant way. His stomach made its displeasure known all across the cabin’s rug.

“Honestly, Maurizio, can you do nothing but make my sorry life yet more unpleasant?” Arden aimed and let fly his plate, topped by inedible fish, at Maurizio’s head. The blow hit Maurizio strong enough to knock him to his knees, upon which his stomach let loose another volley of its own. “See if you can find any more foodstuffs about. I’d like to have one last decent meal if I am shortly to walk the plank,” commanded Arden. Through the aft windows, Arden watched the Hannibal, red flags waving their crossbones brightly, inexorably chasing down the fleeing Ancilla.

“It’s no good, Captain. They’re closing too fast.”

“Brine and sea bass, blasted buccaneers.” When situations were tense, or when he was drunk, the Captain adopted a sing-song voice and spouted nonsense more impenetrable than ever.

The Hannibal had kept up the chase, pulling to within three lengths of the Ancilla. Their stern had been peppered with shot. The deck smoldered with fire, as did a few members of the crew. Soaked in grog, they caught the flame fairly easily. Eleyna went from one wounded crewman to another, helping move the injured to a makeshift infirmary in the orlop. The Captain seemed to be everywhere, yelling encouragement to the fire crews and helping trim the sails.

Catching her breath, Eleyna found herself resting by bowsprit, where the Captain had retaken his post, spyglass in hand. “Gauliga’ll never back down, not while I yet draw breath,” the Captain whispered to Eleyna. His eyes blazed redder than the fires spotting the deck, his teeth grayer than powder smoke. “Gauliga the Merciless. Arr, ’tis a long year since we last crossed paths. Didn’t think he’d find me again. But he’s indomitable as he is merciless, I can tell ye.”

“What did you do to him, Captain?” Eleyna asked. Despite the screams and flames, something in the Captain’s gaze captivated her, pulled her out of the moment, so that the whole scene felt unreal.

“’Twas many a-year ago, before I was e’er Captain of me own ship. Yarr, but even then, knew in me bones I’d know no lady in my life like the sea. Except one woman…”