The Want and the Whisper
[Rediscovered a bedtime story I'd begun writing from a couple years ago. Thought I'd give it some love here.]
Prologue - Want
Sometimes, when the stars are right, and the light of the moon that hides their true pattern is extinguished out over the black soundless waves, between the shudder of sailcloth and the creaking of an old timber masthead, there the Island makes known its need. For it is said that men will oft hear its voice then, as like a long, low earth-groan: terrible they say, as a mountain turning over in its forever sleep; ill-favored as the cry of a hundred broken ships lost or forgotten. Those that claim to have known it say it is an awesome and unwholesome sound, a thing felt deep in the bowels of consciousness. What is the Island, and where does it take refuge? Surely it is out there—yea, a hundred leagues and five points west!—or some say, south, beyond fields of basalt and steam, or some north, out past the Devyfolk and the Final Marches. Swear they on their own hands, tatooed and many-calloused, swear by their father's birth they know the way. Still others insist that it hardly matters to what course one lay out, as at last it is never the seeker, but the seeking, that truly serves.
Nevertheless, the fact that this place eluded seers and sextants alike had given it such renown amongst those who took to the bosom of the seas that it had gained for itself over the long centuries a kind of dreadful prestige. How such a place remained so veiled begged many a question, as it was surely immense, having many inlets and vales and dells and hidden places the like of which we have no good name for, and it held secrets. For this reason still it was sought, as men are hunters before all things, craving for wealth, power, and the dark heart of pleasures unknown. But the sweet Mystery a man so desires—she, that perfect and coy mistress of his own imagining—is seldom often spied, though he quest for her a lifetime. And how then, having at last finally found her, are slaked his own secret wants, that of glinting metal and cut crystalline stones, and wild and supple women, and power over other men? A foolish and foolsome errand then, the search for this place. But the Island remained, and men had heard rumor of it and some themselves had known its call, and so they spoke of it in dim cabin spaces that ranckled with sweatstale malaise and soured beer; and in the houses of decent men, bright and well-swept, they murmured; and in the palaces of white marble and noble appointment they whispered...always low, ever secret, in awed tones rife with greed, disguised thinly or not at all.
Time spun on, and men did not cease their wild hunt on the sloping waves. Assured in their own hearts of their place as captains and kings, masters of all, so too was all the waking world theirs to shape and to wield. And so bravely they sailed forth, and mightily they raged and slew one another, and as their lives drew on their want became like a poison, and their hearts knew not save fury and heated avarice. Though some rare few, wiser perhaps than the rest, make admonition of their own folly, of their need for the warmness and newness of secret things, so too knew they that this need would never be far from their hearts. For men are made hunters, and while they live desire much. Yet in passing through this world's realm they leave their mark but twice, once by love and again by the lusts of their hearts. And so it is that of the two, some would see their lust score the deeper groove.
All this was known, in its way, to the Island. And so it remained where it was, and contented itself to wait. It waited as only the living rock waits, having long ago gained the patience of the eons and the solemnity of distant stars. It stretched and flexed its great stone foundation with the passing of long years, and drew close its secret places. And when the moon hid itself behind the horizon, too tired or spiteful on those ghost-cold nights to rise, there sometimes came that accursed song: slow, low, and terrible. It was the sound of the rain against ancient gravestone, the sound of a mighty river changing its course without knowing or caring why. And some heard its call and responded in kind with the awful hush of a heart full of sorrow and want.
I.
There were two hearths inside the Twisted Vyne, and they were heavy, black as iron, and cold. One made up the wall at the far side from the hewn-oak slab that served for a bar, while the other stood halfway between these. The hearths were old, far older than the wooden frame of the building they now supported, and they stood quiet as stone twins, patiently knowing they would long outlast both the tavern and its ragged patrons. To one side of the room, firewood was stacked, most of it scraps the shipwrights had cast aside. Boots of hide and leather scuffed against the worn wooden floor as men filed in or out to take their meals, hot stews and barley bread, hard yellowed cheese and meats made tough with rock salt. There was the sound of tin forks on tin plates, of wooden mugs filled with dark beer or, rarely, wine. Outside a dog barked harshly, and was still.
The murmur of men's voices, never too loud. Now the sound of painted paper cards shuffling. The carved clock on the mantle of the far hearth made a gentle timekeeper's heartbeat, its crystal face long ago smashed and fractured, so that now it alone knew the hour. It seemed perhaps to smirk a little as it rested there, holding its secret in solitude. Indeed, there were some there who said it too had forgotten the time, or had never been given hands in the first—a grim and costly joke at the proprietor's expense. It was wound everyday with the same hollow precision that lay in its hidden hands, in the slap of the cards on the table, and in the thick-soled boots of the men as they came and ate and left, never tarrying for too long.
The ceiling of the common room—or greatroom, as it was called—was made from the stout remains of some once-proud ocean vessel, great reddish timbers stretching out to cross and meet in the peak of the upside-down keel. A grey light, soaked in late autumn mist, filtered in through the small shuttered windows portside, and so the air in the room felt dark, and saturated. There were several lamps hung down over the length of the room, though none were now lit—so too was oil becoming more and more a luxury, these days. There was no fire, and no mirth in the place. Here the patrons were dressed plainly, in wide hats and long coats, heavy woolen vests and heavy-spun canvas pants. They were dressed against the winds that blew off the great ocean to the east, dressed to do honest men's work.
They were, by and large, honest men. They wore somber looks, and none smiled, and their hands showed the long hours of work and worry they knew. These were the men of Bermún, and Bermúnmen never have been known for their jollity.
One man sat alone at the far end of the oaken bar, close by the door to the kitchens. Nursing a cup of pale cider, his bread crumbling and forgotten on the board next to him, he wore a look of expectation. He was thin, some would say too thin, and if he stood, you might think him tall. His hair was somewhat wild, a season past the need for trimming, and on his face a patchy beard had taken hold. His eyes had a habit of staying too long on whatever he viewed, and they were fixed now at the wall ahead of him, studying the cracks and chinks in the mortar without really seeing them at all. His long coat had been let loose at the neck to reveal a milk-white scar peeking from one side of the linen scarf round his neck. This was peculiar, but the men of Bermún would not ask about it. They left him be, this strange man, this stranger, for strange he was to them. He was unquestionably foreign, with smooth hands unused to decent work and an odd tilt to the way he spoke their heavy, square words, dwelling on them as if holding each one up to the light for a better view. Abruptly he pulled a sheaf of yellowed pages from somewhere within his coat and, leafing through until he found a spot not covered in his own roaming, pendulous script, he produced a fine charcoal crayon and began a hasty sketch. There was abruptly a slight tremor in his hand as he drew, and a keen observer might have noticed him wince for a moment. No one at the bar paid him heed, however, keenness or no, and neither would they have been surprised by his actions, unusual as they were. His business was his own, and this arrangement suited just fine.
What he drew would have been identified by the shipwrights as a crude and overambitious design for a seabound vessel, followed by an odd cipher and a series of wheeled characters unknown and unknowable to anyone present. The man stopped, took a long pull on an even longer clay pipe, got up, looked at the man dealing cards down the bar until he garnered a gruff scowl in return, stretched, stuffed the papers back into his pockets, and finally finished his cider. He laid a piece of stamped silver on the board, a short, oblong bar marked with the seal of some foreign land, powerful and distant. It was heavy, and as it hit the wood it sounded a small, dull ring.
“For the room.” was what he said.
The man tending the tap glanced up at him, at the silver bar, frowned and nodded to himself. He never met the man's eye as he took the silver and went to wind the timepiece at the far end of the room. There was a creaking as the man moved to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the misted salt air.
Outside the day had already begun to wear softly away to evening, and the streets were cobbled poorly. The man stepped somewhat gingerly over the rough-cut stones, and moved with a seeming slowness that implied a much greater age than one would probably wager on. He seemed to struggle as he went, bending slowly at the knees and making his slow way past the long lines of buildings, the echo of his boots on the stones joining a steady chorus of wooden mallets and men's voices raised to their work—hoi, careful with that barrel, Jakob!—some, hawking wares from street corners, and others laughing somberly in small groups—I'll not pay you twelve and two for a tenhide, what do you take me for?—and from above came the cries of speckled rook-hens nesting under rooftop eaves, some flying low over the shallow waters down the shore. He passed an awning marked CAELMAN LEATHERGOODS in bright painter's rouge and there arose the rich smell of oiled tack and tallow soaps, mingling now with the well-browned succor of a vendor's meat pies, and these whirled up together into the coarse air already heavy with the sea. He refused a pie proffered by the eager merchant, awkwardly leaning on his cart for support, and presently kept on. As he walked the road sloped downhill, came around past tight corners and stocky houses washed white and then stained grey-blue by sun and sea, until at last the half-timber shops and public houses roofed in slate gave way to open drydock and the sparse skeletons of vessels of every size possible: the storied shipyards of Bermún.
As the thin light from the West seemed already to beckon for night's falling, the men worked with an extra measure of stoicism, hammering and chiseling now in silence, fitting notched frames together with stout well-muscled raps of their tools, carving away slivers of wood in the damp gloaming with a rhythmic whaar-aar sound, and the whole of the place had the bite and sting of tar, and smoke, and sap-resin. No one again paid the man heed as he wandered about the lots, looking at the ships, looking at everything, and moving slowly about his way. He stopped on the strand, tapping thoughtfully on a rough-cut ship's-knee. He hummed something, spritely and low in his throat: a tune from his youth, perhaps. Then his gaze was held firm by the sea's vastness and he stood and stared and the wind caught at the hem of his long coat and lifted it, but he did not notice, or seemed not to. He stood this way for some time, keeping time to the old song.
There beyond the hills
Beyond the seas' broad reach
A greening, cantled mantle of Earth
The home we forgot, the love by whose promise we were undone...
The sun was all but lost to distant water-deeps when the man's intent was questioned by the master shipbuilder, a man called Moran Bel. Coming up sharply at heavy walk, he was a big man, barrel-shaped, possessed of the same fiber as the wood he worked and in his hand he carried a massive gavel as another might a dove, delicately and protectively.
“Ho there!” he stopped up short. “Moran Bel be my name, and I would ask your business here at this hour. T's nearing full dark and it be an odd time for taking the sights of Bermún, aye?” His voice made the casual question something of a casual warning.
Closer, Moran Bel held his shoulders like an ox, and his great burl made the other man seem so much thinner, so much taller by comparison. The reply came hesitantly:
“I need...a ship.”
Moran Bel snorted. “Aye ye do, and cue up in line, will ye. You see these—” he gestured about them at the great oaken ribs of the resting ships, “they be the king's vessels, and the same number again besides. So, unless you be wanting to take the matter up for jot wi' him, or you be possessing a great deal more by way of payment than I think ye may have, then if ye might kindly—”
“I'll pay whatever you ask. Triple? I want you to use these,”—he dug for his earlier sketch from that day, along with others, and thrust the lot at the large man before him—“that is, if you think you can manage this. And I'll need it...well, how soon can you make a start?”
Moran Bel stared at the papers, bristling as might some great, slighted hedgehog. He looked at the other man standing in front of him, gave a blink, and looked down at the pages again. Finally:
“First, if what me ears take be true, and ye can pay clean—and double even be beyond the scope of any here, mind—we have the matter of this,” he gestured to the drawing, “and I'll tell ye but true, man, ye're a few blows short of an unbent blade if ye think this will stay above saltwater. I know my craft, and I can tell you what I do know. My father's father learned his shipcraft from the Devymen themselves, h'and any a ship I've seen docked dry will take a man past the Final Marches, though why he'd be wanting to go there is any fool's expectation..." He glanced up. The man had tilted his head and now watched him like a kestrel. "But this...a double keel? Will and wit, but where's the sense? And how do you expect to handle a right and proper storm come the maiden?"
“It must be this way.” He pointed. “Stout enough for deep water, but able, too, in shallows and the inland fens...” There came at once a heavy-weighted clink as a bulging leather purse was proffered: the sound of startling and obscene wealth. “This now, and later I show you how I want the tiller. Whatever the cost, as I say. I sail by the rigger's moon, and not a breath after.”
Moran Bel gaped openly. He lifted the purse warily. He peered inside it. Stamped silver and pale white metal met his gaze. A raven crowed, more loudly than one might expect. The other men were wiping sweat from brows and had heavy tarpaulins lashed over frames and tools. And still the tall man waited.
“...I imagine your business is your own,” spoke Moran Bel slowly, “and I'm no fool to go after a man's way once he's set down 'is course. But this...are ye sure ye want this done, m'lad? This be more upfront then me boys'll see in a solid ten seasons, the lot of 'em. An' whit could be so dire ye'll need it tha' quick?”
The tall man smiled then, a genuine, wicked smile. It was enough.
So it was that the sun cast a last look at the world, loosing golden red lances out over the waves and, for the space of a rook's lonely cry, pierced that forever-fog that wreathed the coast town of Bermún at this season. The light seeped like life's blood into the far clouds. Then with grave deference to the vast oceanic continuity below, it fled from view, and so dusk darkened unto night. Tiny lampfires lit the windows of the houses and taverns along the way back up the hill—naught but one light in each room, for the oil was scarce. The men who had labored took up their long coats and retired. In the Twisted Vyne, the hearthfires were set, lamb and boar were put to iron spits and roasted over the brilliant flames, and a piper played a rather heartening tune. Men lingered longer than before, spoke less somberly than before, and perhaps even smiled. The sound sailed out from the inn, was caught up into a ceaseless wind and swallowed by the great silence hanging from the stars. A dog whimpered and was quiet. There was no moon.
II.
The man awoke wildly, clutching at his chest, heart pounding a brazen alarm under his grasping hand, in the little room with the slanted ceiling he had taken at the Vyne. It was dark beyond normal night-dark, and outside the feral shapes of tree-arms merged with an other, ink-black thing that had crept down onto the world, crept into the room, even now into his very heart. He panted, sweating, veins on his neck tight, a dulled-razor's pain spreading from its birthing place in his chest down to his stomach, then into his legs, which shook violently. He was at once burning up—he yelped hollowly without really making any sound at all and made to kick away the heavy coverlet on the bed, feeling as though it were wove from lead bars rather than soft linen and down—and chilled to freezing, with a frost-fire that licked at his inner places, numbing him, slowing his breath and making each movement an anthem of agony.
He rolled from the bed, trying to find a way away from the hurt, but his body seized and hit the floor with a heavy jolt. He lay there. His pupils dilated against the nothing that was in the room, tearing at his face and lungs in the night air. Somewhere in the emptiness of his mind he thought, It's come again. Nothingness is upon me and mayhap this time it will not leave me. His eyes scoured the room for the black windowframe and the black sky beyond, and a single star held them there, the only light in his whole life. The burn in his legs found his feet then, spread out like spilled wellwater, pure and clear pain cramping his muscles, and he stared, mouth open, scar on his neck a vivid scarlet gash hidden by the night. Wordless, having not even the smallest sound or breath to express his torment, and having none present to hear it save his own fractured mind even now fleeing from his broken body, a great heaving and spiraling sickness descended upon him. Reaching out with a hand, he clawed at the hard floor, felt the seams between the boards, and slowly, wretchedly, pulled himself by his fingernails across the room.
It was in truth a very small accommodation he had rented there, and as he crawled, he repeated this fact to himself. Again and again he rasped out the words, but the words were barbed and they tore at his throat, until he merely held them in his mind, like a broken shield raised against a hard volley of black arrows. But inside himself he knew as the silent night knew—that it was not a shield he lifted, but a sieve, and the arrows tipped with barbs and the wicked heads of vipers.
On his belly he slid forward, through that cruel haze of fear, and pain beyond fear, towards the squarish object hidden from sight, toward his only chance at life, toward anything save the bellows-fire in his lungs. It was a long time before he reached it. To the man working his way from bed to desk in the room that evil night, it was endless, as the sea is endless, a frozen moment of forever—as the tales that are told of the icemen to the far south, whose days last whole summers and whose nights can swallow villages for many moons at a stretch. The man again lifted a hand, again clawed at the boards, splintered them with his broken nails. The star watched him reverently with its quiet light. Again, he stretched out his hand.
...and again.
And sometime there in the dark of the room, as the star followed his weak movements with an impassive interest, as he reached his goal at long last and raised the ironweight leather flap to find the crystal bottles within, the sadness came. He swallowed the tincture, too-sweet and life-giving and vile, and the pain which was no longer just pain but all of creation slowly began to subside from him. And he could not weep for the effort of it, so he but lay and looked up at the sky, at the one light that whispered in through the tiny window, and as the pain went a part of him, too—grown now so accustomed to it—was saddened by its loss, and realizing this, he lay there with eyes open or shut on the rigid floor, and emptiness overtook him wholly.
Outside a tree tapped and scrapped hungrily against the casement pane, and a cloud moved to cover the only light in the whole world.
III.
The next day was spent for the man in a knotted bundle of stiffness and glassy-eyed resolve. He drank little, ate less, and when the chore of waiting and resting became too much, he sang to himself, scratchy at first, then finding his voice, raising up the song with tight hope and with fear, and perhaps, at times, with joy.
Remember the wide ways and the forest's embrace
Remember the silvered halls, resting now as ruin
The sound, like the splitting of the spheres
A peal struck once for red rivers and again for redder blood!
So a fortnite passed slowly, and another. The men of Bermún who frequented the taverns and shops and docks saw the man go on his way but did not see him, went minding no business but their own, noting only that he was strange, and certainly not from around those parts, and surely too thin, and tall.
IV.
She was christened the Elliye Rei, which by other tongues meant Hope Telling, and truly she was a fine ship. Spurred by the weight of the purse and by the challenge of such outlandish plans, Moran Bel had quickly drafted into his use several of the other craft-to-be and shaped and cut and bound them all together with such skill and sleekness of design as to be called wonderful and odd by those who walked the causeways above or plied the shallow waters there for halfshell and mullosk.
True to form she was, an elongated, twin-keeled vessel that rose fluidly from the water, having bright sail and graceful bow, stalwart and sound as a palace wall, swift as a wren on the leeward breeze. At fore and aft were hung great bronze lanterns, wrought like the hives of giant bees; wide and ample were her decks, and her anchor iron and new-poured copper. Well-appointed and well-provisioned, and lacking for nothing that seacraft might want in shallows or deep water, she carried pitch and tar, canvas cloth and linen, great coils of braided rope, stich and needle and oil and tallow bars, saltmeats, cheese, and jars of all things brined, pickled, or soused...all these and more filled up her ample belly. Her cabin was unusually spacious as it was grand, rich embossing of pearl and turquoise and rare woods polished to a quiet, wizened glow, with cut-crystal portholes framed in eight-sided brass, a desk of dark ironwood set into her hull and full compliment of charts, tomes of sea-lore, scrolls and paper with ink and good pens—even a modest library acquisitioned from the town's scribesman. Standing on topdeck, one could feel her radiate a kind of impish ease, a playfulness that welcomed new beginnings, though she had never yet raised sail and surely could not know the dangers that awaited her. She was unlike the heavy warships of the king's naval fleet, those square and lugubrious and many-masted leviathans, and unlike the light yawls and cutters that bobbed and weaved in the harbours, which never dared venture too far into the dangerous waters and unknown currents of the Great Western Reaches.
In summation she was well-wrought to her purpose, exactly as hoped for, and the man who had called for her was happy and Moran Bel himself was happy, and his great chest heaved with pride at his handiwork, and the people of Bermún, intrigued as they were by this wispy dark stranger in their midst, were only too happy themselves to see him off. And so they did.
It was a morning like every other morning in Bermún-town, cold and heartless and soggy damp, and though the sun did its best to harrow that thick interminable fog that clung as wet wool might roundabout the docks, it was, ultimately, something of a doomed errand. The man who had commissioned her climbed aboard the Elliye Rei, and gripping the heavy clapper of the brass bell that hung from the mainmast, sent out a peal of singing sweetness, a contralto call to action that sounded and reverberated out into the mist, struck against the grey cliffs and into the grey town, and presently into the hearts of the men who sat at early table in the Twisted Vyne. They shuddered then, for the sound was beautiful, and it seemed to call to a part of them long since abandoned in the grim face of their lives' small lot. For the briefest of moments, they were as children again. So too the children stopped their playing at hoops or jakes in the broken streets, and there was heard then the roar of cannon-fire in cracking salute: one final arrangement made by the thin dark man who now turned and laughed in the morning air. Together these sounds were heady as winter wine, and slowly the heavy lines were drawn in, and the wild vessel cast off. And then, coiling the wet ropes alone there in the fog, the man began to sing, and the people stood and watched as he coiled and sung and smiled his wicked smile.
Again shall I go before thee
Out upon those wreaking waters
As a mote on the breeze without hope of return
You know where I go, love, and why...always the answers have been yours!
V.
A man who has not sailed into deep and open ocean can not for a moment know what it is like to do so. This is but simple observation. To be sure, he may hear tales from other men; he may read fiersome accounts of brilliant detail; he may spend his days exploring all the spurious nautical avenues his waking mind can lay out before him. But he does not know, cannot know, the pitch and yaw of the cradle of the waves, the freshness of the open sea's breath and the kiss of its salt-spray on his face, and though he spend a lifetime in eager contemplation of the subject, of the fathomless spheres of star and sky that move so in wild, wheeling arcs, he can never yet know that turning and turning through nights filled with sanctity and solitude, gazing up at the heavens.
So sailed the man across the sea, steering his little craft as a leaf out on that selfsame glittering water, listening to the silent laughter of stars, orienting and guiding, keeping pace with the rhythm of the prow as it sliced like a prayer through the waves.
VI.
Against the shore the waves crashed, but they made no sound. Odd, for the green-frothed foam to surge and stretch and reach out inland, to grasp madly at the stubborn land and fall back again—reach and break—clawing with such fervor and yet, doing so in a hush—nay, in true silence—afraid, perhaps, for all its bluster, to disturb the solitude of that place. A large bird of some kind sounded what should have been a teetering caw, many-colored and hungry. It touched off its perch, a great warped branch the width of a man's chest, but its wings beat the dense air with nary a whoosh or flap of feathers...nothing.
A breeze or something like it made to stir the great green fronds of trees. Towers of brown trunk and thick-limbed they were, set back from the crescent beach and silent sea a span or two, as one might expect them to be, though they were much larger and much heavier than a person thinking tree might imagine them to be. The great tree-beasts fluttered a little, resisting the temptation of the wind. Thick, curling-bark sentinels standing guard, they lined the long strand with its white and grey and blue-pebbled bosom pressed snugly against the salacious advances of the sea. Perhaps it was that the trees were guardians of the island's deeper places, lofting up their branches to the sky, and perhaps for no other reason did they so stand. Here, in that cove made from the islet's lusty curves, the waves lapped the shore, the treeline stood mighty and silent, and far and away, seemingly many miles beyond guessing, nearly beyond sight, the mountain lay.
This place was not the Island, though one would understand if were thought to be so. Rather the more true to say it was a stepping stone, a gateway to the threshold that may have led to the true Island's realm: a place of mystery, immortalized in whisper, and so profound was its hold on the hearts and bones of men that none dared even to sing of it.
The man at the helm of the Elliye Rei came gliding now, over the clear shallow waters of this place, over the azure-green hues of blue and lapis and cerulean that marked this new paradise, and the sun shone bright the way forward and so he steered a straight course into the bay, delighting in the nimbleness of his fine ship, weighing her anchor, yea, and singing, though his voice made not a sound.