Story Spotlight: “Aye, Plank” by Robert Jeschonek
In Robert Jeschonek’s “Aye, Plank,” the most feared instrument of pirate justice becomes the narrator of its own strange, mythic story—a tale of transformation, belonging, and the unexpected places where second chances take root. Set aboard a ship called the Defiler as it prowls Caribbean waters in 1750, this is nautical fantasy told from a point of view you’ve never encountered before.
Excerpt
It all still flickered and faded after a moment, though, wicking away into the rainy wind. Thackray was back to standing there unaltered, a solitary figure on my flattened plane, nothing visibly special about him.
I felt different, though…energized in some unidentifiable way. Still tingling, still warm to the core. The effects of his magic had lingered.
As he walked back over me to the deck, each footfall felt electric. As he slid me back through the gap, each fingertip seemed to crackle with static.
As a plank, a piece of wood, I rarely felt the slightest agitation…but I did then. I was practically vibrating with tension, desperate for release…desperate to know what was happening, desperate to say something.
And then, incredibly, I did.
A single word appeared on my surface as he held me, about to put me away…a single word, right in front of his face, scrawled in beads of water upon my red-tinged wood.
Why
At which point, Thackray’s eyes bulged in their sockets. He stood there, gaping, his jaw hanging open, his hands trembling around me.
It was his turn to be surprised. It was his turn to encounter a mystery.
About the Author
Robert Jeschonek is a USA Today-bestselling author whose fiction has been published around the world. His stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Escape Pod, and other publications. He has written official Star Trek and Doctor Who fiction and has scripted comics for DC and AHOY. His young adult slipstream novel, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, won the Forward National Literature Award and was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels for Youth. He also won an International Book Award, a Scribe Award for Best Original Novel, and the grand prize in Pocket Books’ Strange New Worlds contest.
Find out more about Robert at bobscribe.com
If you liked…
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke—for its mythic wonder, a narrator uncovering the truth of a world far older and stranger than it appears, and the quiet power of identity reclaimed
- The Scar by China Mieville—for its sea-drenched weirdness and the idea that ships carry their own living histories
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell—for its nested structure of identity, reincarnation, and the way a single soul can echo across vastly different lives
Read the Story
“Aye, Plank” appears in Haunted Waters, available now from Blackbird Publishing.
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