This is a short story I wrote two years ago, I think. This is the first story I have written in a long time so there's definitely a good bit of problems with this. A lot of things feel unclear but I haven't a clue how to fix them. Any advice you could give me would be deeply appreciated. Sorry for the length.

The Sandman

A long time ago on a flat, stretched-out bay; isolated by towering cliffs, a young boy played with friends of his sex. His arm was stretched upwards to guard his eyes against the sun. He piered out to the ocean as they played "Pirates", their favorite game. The boys capered around the beach side pretending to joust each other with sticks when the idea came to bury one another in the sand.

"Capture the prisoner!" they shouted, raising their sticks like spears.

Their blue eyes reflected the ocean. The sun tilted. They were singing "Ten Little Indians". Each took their turn, laughing, while the other ones took brief poses over their "Sand Captive".

Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians

When one was no longer the Sand Captive he bounced up, with sand pouring off his shoulders as if out of an hourglass. He would bounce without struggle and let another take his place as the rest danced around like "savage islanders".

Seven little, six little, five little Indians

The small group had come to the last boy, the young boy who stared out at the sea. The sun tilted again. Dinner was called to the young ones and, without thinking, the Savage Islanders left the last boy in the sand thinking he could just stand up and follow them.

Four little, three little, two little Indians

As the boy tried to lift himself off the sand like the others had done he found that he couldn't. The great mound had spread over his chest and his legs were caught under the pressure. The tide grew higher, the night grew in shade and the boy drowned under the ropes of sand before his parents came out to look for him.

One little Indian left

Upon a century's passing a young girl looked out at the bay from by the rocky shore branching out into the depths of the ocean before her. As she walked closer to the end of the rocks a wave brushed up against the smooth surface of the algae and the young girl slipped into the water.

She plunged without struggle into the gorgeous blue below her. Struggling to reach the rocks again she splashed in the water calling for help. "Help, papa! Help! Help!" she cried. She tried so hard to swim but the fear of drowning consumed her thoughts as it had so many times before.

It began to get quiet. All she heard under the calm waves was a deathly silence. She kicked her feet over and over trying to find some sense of security to bring her to safety but found nothing. As her struggle began to prove futile a rough surface wrapped around her foot. She kicked harshly trying to pull herself up to the surface but the rough grasp continued to pull at her. Over and over she kicked and kicked until she realized that this surface was beneath her feet holding her up to stand.

"Sand?" she pondered.

The young girl stood up. For just a couple seconds she was free in the water. She could look around and wave her hands back and forth like arms from a seaweed plant. Her father swam up and carried her back safely to the bay as the girl looked back in bewilderment.

What was that? Was this feeling real: that something was pushing her to the surface, saving her life or was it merely a hill under the sea she could stand on. All through the rest of the evening the child focused on this unreal experience until the night when she returned to the lake of deep blue liquid to gaze, once again, at the mysterious bay.

"How is this possible?" the little girl thought. "I cannot swim but I rose to the surface."

She gazed at the place she almost drowned and contemplated strange scenarios until her heart could not take it. Taking off her coat with only her undergarments to keep her warm the girl stepped into the black water glistening under the moonlight.

She walked until she became waist deep with water rising higher every moment. She stood at the threshold between the deep ocean and the bay. For just a moment she stood there taking in this strange dream and then, with a deep breath she dove into the water with out a moments more thought and plunged into the icy depths below her.

She waited for a moment under the water to look out and watched this wondrous world, waving at her against the foaming waves above like sparkling champagne. As she found herself at the bottom she bent her knees and pushed off of the ground to swim like she'd never dreamed. Oh, the comfort of the Sea's open arms. What peace and serenity she felt swimming in the night. She twisted and twirled and leapt from rock to rock never once to be scraped by an angry cold wave. With only her swimming goggles to keep her company she twirled in the open bay and found herself all the way at the far reaches of this tiny isolated bay. She looked down below her to see almost thirty feet of dark murky water and still she felt at home.

She realized it was here that she plunged into the water just a few hours earlier. She put her goggles over her eyes and swam to the clear blue bottom to find a reality she could not have even imagined.

Deep below the oceans surface shinning under the moonlight the shape of a boy wrapped in sand stood with his hands up above him as if he were holding something to the surface. It reminded her of a sandcastle. His vividly detailed face showed gorgeous smooth hair, big round eyes and his lips open as if he was parched. She looked closer at his face. His stance was strong and confident; he blended with the ocean floor like another rock but deep beneath his eyes an expression of pain sparked as if he was once alive, like a ship that had sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor centuries ago; haunted by the ghosts which sank it.

She could not bare it. She anchored herself as best she could with the neighboring seaweed beside her and swam closer to the boy as if to look him face to face. Feeling a want to comfort him from his lonely expression she gently placed her hand upon his cheek; grazing over his eye like a tear drop. Upon this single act he began to crumble like a pile of dust to the ocean floor. Swinging in waves like a feather.

Feeling a great surge of bewilderment she swam up with all the speed she could muster like chills going up the back to the ocean surface approaching a large floating buoy with a triangular metal construction. She pushed herself up to sit on it while hugging the pyramid-like framing in the middle as if to harbor her confusion instead of her freezing body.

"How could he hold me up if he crumbled when I barely touched him?" she asked herself.

Upon arrival of her deep confusion the young girl stood up on the buoy to find this boy of sand standing on the very rocks she fell from looking directly at her. A wave of nausea rushed as fast as her blood and her body began to lose balance. The little girl gasped in fright and slipped into the water, once again, hitting her head on the hard metal she stood on moments ago. The champagne-like waves soon became red wine. Her skull cracked open and blood poured out into the water as if into a wine glass.

The ghost of sand leaped into the water with incredible speed and glided down to the unconscious girl below him. In one strong swoop from the same powerful dive he picked her up and flew into the air as the sand exploded off his skin.

The night slowly carried on. Time had passed. The young girl woke up to a coat of night stars above her and the sound of the waves’ calm breathing. The waves washed up against her cold body.

"You fell asleep!" a warm voice said.

She sat up in shock. "Who are you?"

He jumped up energetically. "I am the Sand Castle!" he replied. "The fortress for human kind." He flexed his boyish muscles and beat his chest parading around the sand like a happy soldier.

"Sand Castle, where do you come from?" she sprang up in a frenzy of youthful excitement following his manly parade.

"From here, silly girl!" he laughed.

"How long ago?" she asked to the Sand Castle.

"A hundred years since I was left." he answered without a tone of sadness as he looked up to the stars.

"Left?" she questioned him.

"Indeed, left. I was killed by the tide very long ago."

"Oh my!" the young girl gasped.

"Fear not, my lady!" he replied leaping up onto a rock on the shore flaunting his chest. "I am here, as before. Watching over the little children of the bay. I am the Sand Castle." he assured her.

"Why, Sand Castle! Weren't you buried?"

"Of course, Little Girl." said he. "Me mother put me burial right here. Argh!" he groaned like a pirate. "Where I love it. Me grave lay way under the sand where I cannot be bothered. I go there to rest during the nights."

"Don't you get lonely down there, Sand Castle?" she questioned.

"The sea creatures speak to me." he imagined.

"Why are you not there always? Like grown ups?"

"Why, the waves woke me up. I could not sleep with them crashing about everywhere." he laughed. "All little children wake after life. They are not done yet. Mothers and fathers have no more to do." He smiled gallantly and jumped into the air spinning in a graceful twirl into the water.

"Sand Castle? Where did you go?" The Little Girl ran into the water ankle deep but saw no sign of her Sand Castle. "Sand Castle! Sand Castle!" she called.

A few moments after she heard a large splash. "Little Girl!" he cried. "Come! I want to show you."

"Show me what?" She ran into the water joining him in this wild splendor and glided with him into the sprinkles of the moonlight over the blanket of midnight blue water.

For hours they laughed and jumped and swam enjoying the freedom of the water and the vast lengths of their sprouting imaginations.

For an eternity they were rabid pirates, pillaging a lost island of gold doubloons and unclaimed treasure. For a lifetime they were the King and Queen of their Motherland England guiding their adoring citizens to wealth and security in the middle centuries. They flew together, robbed together, fought together, sailed together through the depths of their wildest dreams like kindred hearts beating together.

The final clearing of a wave soon marked the young girls time to go. "I must leave, Sand Castle. My parents would have a fright if I was not in my bed when they wake up."

"I shall await your next arrival Duchess of Bostonia!" he proclaimed bowing gentlemanly.

She ran up to him and kissed his cheek to say good bye.

"Duchess!" he called.

"Yes, Good Duke." she answered.

"What is your name?" he questioned.

A silence came. "I am the Little Princess of the Sand Castle fortress." she replied. "And I shan't be back until the eve."

The next eve the Little Princess met her knightly Sand Castle and dove once again into the sea of dreams. Each night after they met over and over frolicking in their dreams for as long as they pleased. The Little Princess skipped in the mornings eagerly awaiting her Fair Prince. "Mama," she would call. "Let me tell you about my Prince." All through each gorgeous summer night she swam along side her Sand Castle and each passing day her parents grew sicker and sicker.

"Charles, she must grow up. She’s almost eight years old! It is not healthy for her to still be playing with figments of her imagination. There is no boy in the water. She needs to grow up!"

Colder and harsher the waves became as the summer ended and the tides were moved more rapidly as the Little Princess argued with the Wicked King and Queen about the Sand Castle Prince.

Finally one night the Little Princess came to the shore with a devastating reality. At the end of their ride through their secret world when the last wave retreated marking her time to leave she came to tell the Little Prince about the ghost she had been haunted by.

"Sand Castle," she addressed him. "I shan't be back next eve nor the eve after."

"Why for?" the Young Prince replied.

"The Wicked King and Queen of the cliffs above demand I be sent away. I am to attend a private school at my aunts estate."

And for the first time since their discovery of one another he stood up seriously with a look of irreparable sadness on his face.

"Will you be back, Little Princess?" he asked desperately.

"For the summers, I hope. Oh, do not fret, Sand Castle Prince. I will be a queen soon and I will come back to you. I promise."

Each summer passed away for seven years to come and the Sand Castle waited on the shore for the Little Princess; each night she never came. With each word the Sand Castle Prince spoke in waiting, came another summer kept apart and each day she grew to be a proper Duchess, each day he grew to a young man.

From then his hair darkened from the golden blond and the color became but a ghost as his spirit grew longing for her. His ocean blue eyes glistened against the oceans current each night as the soft moonlight glowed on his growing form of a ghost who still remained alive for the purpose of a fading away. His ghostly form slowly began to age as he commanded and he became a young man.

"Come, Little Princess!" Flashed back into his mind. "I have to show you one last thing." Bit by bit sweet fragments of their last Good-bye came into his mind when the Little Prince guided his Fair Princess beneath the waves to his grave below, and down beneath the yards of water lay his resting place 30 feet below the ocean tide, never found for a hundred years. Shuffling through his small chest of treasures he pulled out a beautiful necklace made of gold with a golden locket as the center piece and took her to the top. "Here, Little Princess. This is my gift to you. Keep it with you always and we shall never part. I am your Sand Castle."

He closed his eyes from the brutal memory burning into his mind and dove into the sand as if it were water.

One summer night in the long torturing hours of the Sand Castle Prince, a young lady walked slowly down to the ocean shore from the below the abandoned castle of the Wicked King and Queen.

Rising from the sand and pushing himself up, he watched the young girl stare at the pale moon, in a form of sand he showed the Little Princess so many times before. Her body was grown and shapely. Her hair was a dark brown but her eyes shined against the moonlight like pearls and a necklace rested on her bosom that she held tightly with her hand.

The young man continued to look.

Slowly a song came from her lips of a sad and melancholy tone. It reminded him of a tune sailors would sing when faced against the apparition that is the sea.

“Her eyes were burned from crying

and her face was pale and worn

but her beauty shined behind it

much greater than the morn’.

And when her ship has sailed too far,

She floats on back to home.”

Her face tilted downwards and a smile crossed her velvet lips. "Who are you?" she asked in a calm steady voice.

"I am the Sandman." he replied.

The young lady smiled. "Sandman, I am the Maiden of a Place Far-Far Away."

"What land are you from dear maiden?" he asked in a tone just higher than a whisper.

"Why, I'm from here! Silly boy."

"How long were you in the other place?"

"Seven years till I left."

"Left?" the Sandman wondered.

"Indeed, I was killed by the tide not too long ago.”

“Why did you leave?” the young man asked her.

“There was an evil prince, who purchased with his gold my hand in marriage from my wicked aunt. So I ran into the waves never ever to come back” She paused. “And..” she started “ to come home to a prince who I never thought I’d see. If you are the Sand Castle then the princess you seek is me.”

She pulled out a golden locket from around her neck. "All little children wake after life." she smiled. "They're not finished yet."

The End