This piece is beyond bizarre, but it popped into my brain and just wouldn't let go. It's sort of a crossover, which I don't normally believe in, but… oh well.
"Cap'n?"
Davy awoke with a start. For a crewman to be here, in the organ room, disturbing him while he dozed...
There must be something very unusual afoot. "What?" he snapped.
"I, erm, ehr... this, Captain." He held out a letter.
Davy took it carefully, knowing that paper had a tendency to fall apart in his wet clutches, but he soon realized that this was parchment, not paper, and furthermore that the ink could not be smeared by any means at all. His first glance was at the signature line. Albus Dumbledore , Headmaster.
Davy was mystified - he knew nobody by that name, if a name it was at all. "Poor fool, what a mouthful," he muttered. He frowned at his bo'sun. "Where did this come from?"
"An... an owl dropped it off, Cap'n. Yes, an owl, a bird, I know tis impossible out here, but we all swear twas an owl."
One look at his face was enough to know that he wasn't playing tricks. He really was mystified, it really was an owl, someone named Albus Dumbledore had actually posted a letter to
Captain David R. Jones
Flying Dutchman
Somewhere in the Sea, 1782
Someone knew his middle initial! Amazing - Davy himself didn't remember it most days. He scratched his head and smoothed the letter out and began to read.
Dear Captain Jones, the letter said. I write to you from a place whose location I regret I must keep a secret. It is a school for wizard children, a center for research into the magical arts and most importantly, a fortress which protects the helpless from the arcane forces of Dark Magic.
Davy blinked and shook his head hard, wondering if he was hallucinating. He looked again, and yes, the paragraph did talk about wizards, and magic, and Dark.
He moved on to the next paragraph: Our aims here are pure, I assure you. We fear we may soon be attacked by innumerable inhuman enemies. Though we have placed what magical protections we can around the grounds of our castle (Yes, Davy admitted upon reading the sentence over again, it did say "castle) one area remains woefully unprotected: our vast lake.
Lake. Water. At least the letter was no longer completely senseless. You're trying to defend a large body of water, you seek out Davy Jones. Clever. But if this person "Albus Dumbledore" knew enough to find Davy's middle initial he had to know that Davy couldn't travel inland to a lake, didn't he?
His meaning soon became clear: I realize, Captain, that you are confined to the blue bits of the globe and our problems are on the green, but there is one favor I would beg of you and I promise will not go unrewarded.
Reward. Davy liked that.
I met you yesterday, in the year 1994. This letter, in other words, has been sent from the future.
Davy had to laugh.
As proof I am to remind you that it tasted awful - not like fish at all.
Davy stopped laughing. He had to re-read that line at least six or seven times before he believed that the words were actually on the page. It was true, then. The letter was authentic, the writer had actually spoken to him or at least read his mind. Who else but himself would know that during his transformation, when octopus tentacles first began emerging from what used to be his chin, he had been startled momentarily out of his grief and had laughed like a madman, thinking, oh, now what a convenient change be this! Now I'll never starve - I'll be carrying fish with me wherever I go! I can just hack off a piece and grill it right up… And then a squirmy bit had ventured too close to his mouth and, still laughing in an unbalanced sort of way, he'd taken a big bite out of it. It smelled like fish but instead of tasting like seafood it tasted like himself, almost like blood although less metallic, and it was only then that he'd realized how completely the magic had changed him. Not simply welded his body to the bodies of a couple marine animals, but actually changed him. The discovery had made him sick.
After some moments of thought he looked back at the letter in his hand.
I apologize for alluding to such unpleasant memories, but I have not done so without reason. It is my understanding that you have done violence to yourself after an unfortunate romance. Now, in 1994, you have come to me to ask a wizard's assistance in alleviating your condition. I have pledged to help, and in return you granted me this favor:
This letter reaches you at a time when you have a very powerful pet Kraken. Later on battle and age will weaken the creature, but at this moment she is in her prime. We, too, have a sea-beast at our disposal. Ours is a giant squid, a male, and we desire to borrow your Kraken for a few months so that they may lay a clutch of eggs together.
The Kraken really was female, then? Davy had always believed it but never known for sure. And Krakens laid eggs? He had always assumed that they spontaneously generated themselves from the depths of the sea, but in retrospect he supposed that made no sense.
I know you will agree to this because in 1994 you tell me that you did. Nevertheless, I phrase this as a humble request: please allow my expert beast-handlers to remove the Kraken from your possession peacefully. She will be returned to you in four months.
Respectfully yours,
Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Davy put the letter down very carefully on a dry patch of table. He leaned as close as he could without getting slime on it, and read the critical part over again. It might well be the most important message he had ever gotten:
1994. An end to everything. He crunched the numbers to see how long he had to go: just over two hundred years. In that time people would grow up and live their whole lives and die and their children's names would be forgotten by their children's children, and he would still be waiting.
Davy took a breath and squared his shoulders. It was a stiff sentence, aye, but a finite one and Davy knew he could endure it. 1994. It would come eventually.
That belief sustained him for eight years. Then one sunny morning it occurred to him that in 1994 he would ask some fool wizard for help and the fool wizard would promise to try. He had never heard from "Albus Dumbledore" again after that one strange letter, and so for all he knew, 1994 would be one big spectacular failure. He might be dragging himself along for two hundred years, suffocating with anticipation, just to arrive at the most soulkilling disappointment of his (eternal) life.
He began to wish that he'd never heard of 1994.
He forbid himself to hope, but his mouth still ran dry every time he thought of the number. He took a flame to the cursed parchment but it wouldn't burn. He threw it overboard, then clumped back to his cabin, and there it was sitting on his bed again - "1994" staring up at him, not smudged or even wet. Miserable and frustrated, Davy wept for the first time in near a century. (But what was a century, after all - he probably had forever left to go, didn't he. Although he wouldn't know for sure until he'd marked off, flipped through, and thrown away another two hundred calendars.)
The End.
Bizarre, yes. Sorry about that, folks.