Here in the middle of the ocean
everything becomes a shadow. The waves that dance on the surface of the water
are nothing but shadows. The sails of our ship and the rope and the wood are
all shadows. The members of the crew, with their deep set eyes ringed in gray
and their thin lips pushed out of skeleton faces are all shadows.
Even I am merely a shadow on these
waters. I stand at the edge of my ship, watch the water move below me, watch
the reflection of the stars as they shimmer into the blackness below. They are
their own unique breed of fish and they swim at the same speed as the ship.
I wish I could bend further over the
edge, let the tree-bark skin of my hands soak into the waves. I want to be
covered in the blackness, the inkiness of all the shadows. I feel too solid for
this midnight dream world. I turn back to my ship and consider the men who
drift back and forth across the deck as if deciding whether or not there is
anything to do besides stare at the stars above that have taken over the sky. I
know I can never leave them, any more than I would leave the smooth edges of my
ship, the creaking wood which has been my home for more time than I can count.
That’s when I hear them. The voices. The
singing. They sound like crying at first, they rise with the wind and I think
that it is only a strong breeze playing with the masts. But then it is louder,
childlike. The men stop moving, and I follow them back to the edges of the
boat. We stare out over the waves and at first see nothing but the same shadowy
water stretched far across the horizon. There is a child crying, I am sure of
it, and I almost leave the wall to search for stowaways below deck.
A flash stops me, a single shooting star
across the water, but it doesn’t fade. Instead it grows, stretches out from
underneath the ship until it is a perfectly round orb and suddenly I cannot
hear the child. The cries are replaced with a deep singing, the sound the sun
itself would make if it learned how to sing. The music sounds…
It sounds like every shade of blue
bleeding together on an otherwise empty canvas.
It sounds like every dream I cradled as
a child, the untainted perfection of the open ocean which I once imagined
without the negative additions I later discovered.
It sounds like the ocean without the ability
to drown, the night without fear of darkness, the wind without a single storm.
I stand there, unable to move as the orb
grows into the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I cannot tell if she made
of water or of glass, but her eyes are a solid blue and they find mine and I
see the map of the universe inked into her blue eyes. Her hair is the color of
the night and I cannot see where it leaves her head and joins the water, it
sways in the waves and gives me glimpses of shoulders the color of coral, of
the tightly formed muscles of her neck, her collarbone.
“Captain!” one of the men stands
somewhere behind me. I know, though I cannot see him, that he is holding his
ears and closing his eyes, probably wrapping his shirt around his face to use
as a blindfold. “Captain these are sirens! Don’t let her touch you. Step away
from the edge.”
To me the man sounds like a madman, and
I try to tell myself to remember to talk to him later. I am always careful of
who I let onto my ship, I am always cautious.
The woman in the water reaches her hand
up to me and I forget everything. Her skin is as smooth as the sky and I want
to touch her, but suddenly there is darkness in the crevices of my heart and
her face is the face of another woman. This one is much darker, as dark as
earth with eyes indistinguishable from ink. This woman is thin, strong bones
etched against the fabric of her skin, wild curls always fighting for space
beside the indents of her cheeks.
The woman in the water reaches for me
again; her song becomes louder and fills my head so that I can hardly think,
but when I look again at her fingers remind me of those other fingers, of the
way that they brushed against my own skin. Her fingers were so soft against the
weather torn roughness of my skin, and her touch was so careful as she traced
my silhouette with her body and whispered, her lips brushing against my ears
like the tide.
“Promise me you will always come back
for me.” She sat in a dark room with ink on her fingers and stories stretched
onto page after page. She lined the edges of the room with bookshelves and
filled every row, and as we lay together in a locked embrace she sang poetry
into the night sky.
“Captain!”
There is splash near me; I turn in time
to catch a glimpse of a vanishing boot, the ripples in the water dancing out
where one man once stood. Behind me the wiser men are tying themselves down,
attaching their bodies to the ship and sobbing violently against the desperate
urge to jump.
I can still hear the singing, but I hold
her image in my mind and stare again into her dark, dark eyes. I capture her
voice and let it fill my mind so I cannot hear the singing. I leave my men to
defend themselves, leave them to their battle as I enter my cabin and unfold
the map. I begin to trace the route back to land. Back to her. Instead of the
sirens I can only hear myself.
“I promise.”
I have lived too long among the shadows.
It is time to return to the light.
Points: 337
Reviews: 35
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