The Shattered West: The Tale of Colt Marsh - Chapter One

Chapter One: A long voyage

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, May 3, 1869

Colt Marsh. Saying it was like speaking a foreign language. It’d been nearly fifteen years since he’d spoken it. Fifteen years since uttering it meant anything to anyone, even himself. But that had been the name his father had given him. That was thirty years ago, if he remembered everything correctly and there’d been much he’d tried to forget…

Great Plains, Summer of 1853

Colt had been hunting alone as usual. The others would let him join a group party. He was the wasicu, the “white” and it didn’t matter if he was half white man, half Lakota, he was all ‘white’ to them. He would prove them wrong though, prove he could live in two worlds. He heard the brush ahead rustle and spotted the deer creeping through it. He knocked the arrow in his bow and took aim. He locked eyes with the deer. “Thank you sister, for providing…” he whispered as a thanksgiving in his head. The deer froze, snorted at something in the air, and took off. Over the ridge behind it, Colt saw why… smoke. Smoke coming from his village.

Out of the woods, across the creek, he sped, feeling like the deer he had just nearly killed had given him legs to run. The screams only fueled him to move faster. He didn’t bother checking how many there were, who was a weaker target, he just struck. The first went down easily, a brave from a different tribe about to bring down a war club on an elderly woman. Plowing into him from behind knocked him over and all the fight out of him, making it very easy for Colt to bash in his skull with the brave’s own club. Faster. Fiercer. Closer, closer to home.

Arriving at his hut, he saw her, his mother, prone and bloody. Over her stood a mammoth of a man, dressed like a shaman, utterling some guttural chant and then he drove his spear into her chest. She screamed and Colt felt like his own soul was being ripped from him. He was stunned to see a wisp of ethereal light, materialize from her scream and be absorbed by the spear.

Horrified and enraged all at once, he let out a warrior’s cry drawing the attention of the shaman who calmly looked up at him and smiled. He spun the spear one full turn and in a flash was standing right in front of Colt, the same spear already through his middle. Face to face, their eyes locked and Colt saw a darkness colder than raging blizzard. “Sol vi ruko vole cesar,” the shaman whispered to him. And at once he felt like he was falling. Falling from the top of the sky, far and fast away from everything he’d ever known and loved.

The sensation of rumbling along brought Colt to. He expected to see light or dark, something of an afterlife but instead saw bars. He was in a cage. A cage on the back of a wagon, rumbling along. Far in the distance he saw the imposing figure of the shaman, waving to him. He boiled with rage, tried to rise and found he was chained as well. He tried to shout and struggle but felt a tug at his throat. “Mauvais chien!: shouted a voice. Looking towards the sound he saw the back of a teamster, probably driving the wagon. He was alone in the wagon. Always so alone.

Back on the ship

The crash of a wave brought a spray across the ship, spritzing him with water and bringing him from his memories. He wiped his brow and rushed back below deck. “Late again,” came a gruff voice from the dim light of bowels of the ship.

“Sorry, sir. The fresh air distracted me,” Colt replied and quickly grabbed his shovel and began shoveling more coal into the boiler of the ship.

From the darkness stepped Kearney, the foreman. Clad in the sole, dirty suit he owned, swinging the tarnished pocket watch around like he always did. He caught it, checked the time, and gave a “tsk, tsk”. “You get 10 minutes a day on deck. Man who can’t mind his time must not mind not eating,” he chuckled. “Keep shoveling till the whistle blows, Cap’n says we’re behind schedule… likely from your lollygagging.”

Same story every day.

Three weeks earlier

Standing on this very dock in Shanghai brought back many memories to Colt. Had it been fifteen years? Fifteen years since he’d jumped the ship he’d been enslaved on and barely managed to swim to this dock? The sights and smells were fifteen years older but brought back the same fear and excitement. This was the place.

It was here Master Bai Hu had found him, digging through the trash for anything to eat, timid and scared. Master Bai hadn’t been alone that day. He had a boy, roughly Colt’s age with him, clad in a similar garb but of a different hue. It was the boy who’d approached him first, slowly, reassuringly. It was the boy who’d first welcomed him, an outcast like himself, knowing how tough life can be.

“I do not know the world to which you will return Hai Háizi - Ocean Child - what only Master Bai called him and only ever in private. Almost everyone else had called him Hǎishǔ - Ocean Rat - but never in front of Master Bai. He told everyone they should call him Hai Xiong, their Ocean Brother. The order never really stuck with the students, except with one boy, the boy who’d welcomed him in. His Gēgē, his brother, Hong Zi. The brother no more, the reason he was leaving. The reason the whole school had been forced to close and now even Master Bai’s future was uncertain.

“I know it’s where I was born and raised, but that was fifteen years ago, a lifetime,” Colt said.

“But like the season’s change, now you are in a new season, and must change with it. If you do not, you will be like the rabbit whose coat does not turn white in winter. You must remember who you were and adapt. You’ve tried to forget the past, the pain, with every strike of your fist. It’s what has given you power behind the punch, but also what’s made it reckless. You are the son of many nations, my Hai Háizi, and the closest to an actual son I’ve ever had,” Master Bai replied.

Never, in all his years, had he ever spoken to him with such affection. It was uncharacteristic of a Shaolin leader and even more rare for Master Bai. Colt turned, tears in his eyes, and embraced the man he knew and looked up to as a father for the last fifteen years. The first and last hug he’d likely ever give him.

Master Bai had given him a set of clothes to wear, bought off an American man, so he’d have something other than his karategi. Bai took the sack from his shoulder, forced it onto Colt, and left. All Bai owned was in that sack and he’d given it to Colt. He watched his master leave, off into the world without even a bowl for his rice.

He took a job on a ship for America, not knowing he’d be expected to put in 18 hour days by the boiler, stuck in the bowels of the ship and doing the work of three men. The water he was given was stale. The bread, moldy. A board for his bed. He savored his daily break, ten minutes on deck, and it was the only thing which sustained him day to day. And today like almost every day he was late, whether it was true or not, was Kearney’s justification for no pay, only bread and water, or both.

After hours of hard labor, back to his slab he went, asleep in seconds from exhaustion.

It was not the usual curse or kick from Kearney that woke him from his slumber but the immense jarring of the ship. Over the week’s at sea he’d become accustomed to the buoy of the ship and found it comforting. This was not a gentle rocking or even the swell of a storm surge, both of which he could sleep through. This was different.

Moments after his eyes opened he could hear the shouts, “We’ve struck something!” And it was all hands on deck to react to such an encounter. The air below the deck was normally a stark contrast from up top. But taking in his first breath, he found it more fetid than the air below. How could that be possible?

Before he had time to wonder much more, a terrified scream grabbed his attention. Reaching the deck, he spied the source… Kearney. He had something like a tentacle wrapped around him. He’d seen octopus in China, but this tentacle was as big around as a tree trunk, and coming from the sea. It had hold of Kearney and was waving him about, then it dragged him below in the depths.

Silence.

Everyone on deck stood frozen, collectively wondering if they were all suffering from some sort of mass hysteria. Colt recognized the captain curled up in a little ball on deck sobbing like an infant. Within moments, the ship was racked again and Colt rushed to the port side. There were at least five tentacles he could see on this side alone and they seemed to be taking hold of the ship. With the way they were being rocked about he assumed the same was happening on the starboard side.

Then with a great groan the ship itself seemed to scream. It was as if every board and bolt was begging for mercy. Colt turned to the stern, where the lifeboats were kept, but soon found himself slipping toward the stern anyways, along with everything and everyone else, as the ship tipped upward. They were being dragged under, stern first, like the ocean itself was swallowing them whole.

People and pieces tumbled down as the ship went nearly vertical. Then from the sea they saw a horrifying sight - a giant maw, beginning to gnaw into the ship with razor sharp teeth. Colt grabbed hold of a railing and dangled, struggling to hold fast. He could hear screams around him as people fell. He could hear the teeth ripping through the ship and everything that came with it.

Time stopped. Everything got quiet. He was aware of the carnage around him but his mind was in a different place.

Ten years ago

Colt and Hong were accompanying Master Bai on a trip to a monastery deep in the jungle. Along the way, Colt was chased by a tiger up a tree. Unable to climb it, he could only dangle from a low branch. Colt’s grip was loosening, death imminent. Then he heard Master Bai. “Let go, Hai Háizi! He cannot swallow you whole!” He’d looked down, focused in on the tiger’s mouth, and let go. He fell, but directed his foot right into the tiger’s mouth. While the tiger’s teeth cut his foot, he broke several and dislocated the tiger’s jaw. It yeowled and ran away.

Back on the ship

Screams. Cracking. Breaking. He looked around. His eyes landed on the rear mast. The ship was a steamship, but also equipped with fore and aft sails just in case they ran out of fuel or wanted to use wind to save on fuel. He swung and let go of the railing, landing on the stern mast. Lashed around the mast were tools, stored there just in case, and one was an ax. Colt grabbed it and hacked at the mast with all his might with one hand, using the rope down to the deck for support. Seeing it begin to splinter, he began running down the mast, toward the maw, his weight directing the tip of the mast down into the beast’s mouth. Seeing it ram into it, Colt leapt from the mast and into the sea.

Cold. Darkness. He’d never been a great swimmer and all the debris in the water made it even more difficult. He bumped into something large, but it was floating, so he used it for support and grabbed hold. It was a crate of something and it was his lifesaver. He looked up to see the beast releasing the ship, roaring in agony, pierced by the mast. Thrashing around it disappeared beneath the waves.

The ship wouldn’t last long, it’s stern a splintered mess causing water to rush in and dragging it under as well. He saw a few people on deck, loose the remaining lifeboats and jettison them to the sea. He counted three boats with maybe a dozen survivors among them. He knew that meant maybe a hundred had perished already or would, trapped below deck somehow, but it was twelve or so who might live another day.

He called to them and thankfully one saw him. They pulled him in and sat in silence watching the ship go down. No one spoke even after it disappeared into the sea. He was one of four in their boat. There was a large, Scandanavian man he’d heard named Klaus. There was a nun, her habit disheveled and dripping wet. The last member of the boat was a dandy of a man, dressed in a nice suit and bowler hat. How he’d managed to look still so put together and still wearing that hat puzzled Colt, but he opted to not say anything. No one in any boat spoke and darkness came as day turned to night.