The Deep Sea never deemed to tell new tales. It is not one to be a storyteller, or one who speaks of stories (or one who speaks at all), but it often appears in the stories of others.
It often appears at their stories’ ends.
The Clavori send their dead to embark on a journey beyond the Deep Sea, for it is the water way to the afterlife. It is one of only two ways, and the other, not a breath anyone speaks of.
So the dead sail, uncaptained but not directionless, towards the horizon that has never been mapped nor reached, tamed nor charted—nor did anyone want to.
There are beasts beneath the Deep Sea, monsters which once ruled over solid land, caused to retreat by great powers no longer walking the earth. The green folk, those who live inside their big walled cities, those who cower within their stone houses and follow the laws of market and man and rely upon these laws to save them, believe that the dead are humanity’s offering to the beasts. That the corpses are their items of feast. A meager showing, and an incorrect presumption.
The hardened folk know the truth of the truth. Those who live by the shore, who challenge the course of the waves, those who endure the harshest brunt of the ravages of the storms, we believe differently. We’ve known the Deep Sea. We know it speaks, it conspires, it consumes. It was once a beast too. It does not accept offerings. It demands.
The dead are not gifts; they never were. They are a plea.
***
Hosea Orsa pushed his brother’s burial boat from the shore and out into the cold embrace of the sea. He would see his brother again, he knew, or he hoped, more like, if he was being honest with himself. He could feel no tears fall; he’d spent them all. The others offered him their sympathies and told him things he already knew. Nothing that wrought much or meant much in truth. All of them were familiar faces saying familiar words he himself had already said to some of them some time before.
Words and words caught in the wind, none of which were strong enough to anchor. None of which had power sufficient to challenge the beasts of the sea. Words from faces, familiar ones at that, carried away as they were said.
All of them were familiar faces who knew him as he knew them, all of them except for one.
Hosea found a boy, maybe in his middle teens, although he could not be so sure, sitting alone above a small grassy overlook that saw the beach stretch. He looked ragged and dirty and salty. Saltier than even he, who was a fisherman by profession, and a salt trader by craft.
The boy kept his eyes on the sea as Hosea walked up to him. He sat beside him, and it was clear the boy had not bathed in days, for he smelled of horse shit and rotten breath. “Th’ view is er’ pretty nice here eh,” Hosea said. “Ye seem to be enjoyin’ it.”
“I guess you can say that.” The noon time sun barreled on the crown of their heads like weighty beams of light. “I could go for a swim.”
“Eh, ye could.” That would answer for th’ smell, Hosea thought. “But ye wouldn’t want to.”
“The Deep Sea, it’s called.”
“Best tuh’ stay outavit.” Hosea cracked his right thumb knuckle. “Ye new here. I can tell.”
“How?” The boy looked at him.
Hosea sniffed. “Ye smell o’ horse. Eh there ain’t not much horse in these shores, no. Th’ horsies be scared o’ th’ water, as they should.”
“And why is that? Why are they scared.”
“Because they know, eh boy. They know. Them horsies have never forgotten.” He stood, and the boy looked at him as if he wanted him to explain, but he had not more time to spare talking about beasts while they so intently listen. “Ye best be goin’. I must tend to me dead.”
So he did.
The next day, before the first wisps of daylight came to signal the coming of the morning, Hosea made his way to the grotto. The others just called it that, the grotto. But he and his brother had a different name for it—The Altar of the Crag. It was the name they were told it had by an old man who walked with a crooked staff and a frayed robe. An old man who knew the sea, they saw.
It was there, on the face of the cliff that met the waves, through narrow ledges not even a foot’s length protruding from the rock, that Hosea found the boy again sleeping wistfully beside the altar. For the boy to have found the altar in the first place, he figured that passing strange.
The altar was small, and dingy, and humid, as it was in its nature to be. To a green folk’s eyes, it was nothing more than an insignificant cavity on the face of the cliff. Within, a drooping rock hung from above, and from it trickled indigo water that fell onto a small and shallow pool. The pool, more like a large bowl, was made of stone, crafted by nature itself. Surrounding it were three candles, and Hosea lit all of them as he prayed.
Hosea thought of his brother, and nearly saw his brother’s face in the indigo pool, only to recognize that it was just his own. He wished him back. The old man had said that the pool can grant miracles. That one must only believe and do well and mean good and it will grant miracles.
There have been no miracles made on the Eldewin Shores.
The boy awoke nearly an hour into Hosea’s prayers. The boy brushed his hair, cleared his face free of drool and spoke, “You again.”
“Ye swam, I told ye to not be swimmin’ within these waves, eh.” The boy had bathed, clearly. “And now ye be sleepin’ on sacred ground.”
“What is this?” He looked around as the water dripped to the pool.
“An altar, see.”
“You pray?” the boy asked.
“Aye, I do. Do ye?”
“Partially,” said the boy. “Not as others do, would be more apt to say.”
“To whom do ye speak to?”
The boy hesitated, as if the question was foreign to him. “The one god.”
“Ahh, th’ green god,” Hosea said. Perhaps he can make miracles happen, he thought, and he remembered the old man with his staff and robe and eyes that peered into his soul like spears. No. Hosea knew the truth of truths, and it was not with the green god.
“Green god?” The boy spoke with a tone that hinted at both offense and curiosity. “What do you mean by that?”
Hosea smirked and wondered if it would be wise to speak such matters in the Crag, and concluded it was not for the best, but did so anyway. “Aye, th’ one god, as he likes to be called, is a vain god. Not truly a god, but a descendant of one. Lusting for power, th’ bells tolling his name. If ye are almighty and know it, then why require worship?”
A strong gust of wind blew into the Crag, extinguishing the candle fires. The boy did not flinch in the face of darkness. Daylight has still not come, though it should have already. Hosea found that passing strange. There must be a storm on its way.
The water continued to drip from above, and the pool, stagnant lest for the ripples from the falling water, glowed faintly indigo.
“Indigtum.” The boy had his eyes on the pool. “But liquidized, for some reason. Changed. Or maybe, this is its form in the purest?”
“It is water.”
“Indigtum, I said. Nothing glows like it. I can never forget. You can sell this and make a fortune!”
“Eh?” Hosea grunted. “Why would I want to make a fortune? Gold gives no miracles.”
The boy looked at him then, and Hosea was unsure whether he was curious or offended. “So that’s why you pray? For miracles?”
“Eh, what else in this world can bring me brother back?”
Rain began to fall outside. “What kind of gods do you pray to, exactly?”
“Th’ real ones.”
The boy nodded, slowly, opting not to contest. Hosea found that passing strange. Usually, when he challenged the legitimacy of gods, people grow offended, yet the boy seemed not so much offended, more so curious. But for all that, he didn’t ask a question as curious boys tend to. “When people find this reserve, they will take this water away from you. King’s men, if they see it, or traders from all parts. Pure indigtum… I’ve never seen such a thing.”
The green folk who know nothing of hardship, and know less of the world, Hosea thought, continuing his prayers. The boy left soon after, out of the grotto and into the rain. The boy was green too, though not as green as the others. There may be hope for him yet.
The following morning, the boy was gone. Hosea was alone in the Crag; he was alone there for the first time, he realized. Whenever he went before, it was with his brother, and yesterday, he had the boy’s company.
He prayed, letting the dripping water aid his pleas. The grief did not pass easily, regardless of tears and prayer. Even if he lacked the former, he would have much of the latter.
He sat there, alone, until noon came, until night. Hosea had spent all his tears. His eyes must have been bloodshot red. He remembered the old man with his staff and his robe and his eyes that peered to his soul. His eyes that were not black or brown or red, but indigo. And he found that passing strange.
Hosea walked to the pool and gazed at his reflection on the water. From here, his eyes looked indigo too.
He woke the following morning at the foot of the pool inside the grotto. Not having eaten or drank anything for the past day, his stomach grumbled. His throat was barren and dry. He salivated without spit as he heard the water drop from the drooping rock.
He wondered if it would be wise to drink the water from the pool, which truly looked more like a bowl, and considered against it but decided otherwise. He plunged his hands into the bowl, cupped the indigo water, and drank. Perhaps this water will make my eyes indigo too.
A strong wind swept through the grotto, and when he blinked, he found himself on the shore. But there was no water, there was only sand. The sand stretched for leagues beyond and away, and the Deep Sea was no longer deep. No longer a sea, even. It was a broad and flat desert.
He walked the sand where others would swim, quietly sure of himself, and he found none of this passing strange. The air was hazy and cloudy, and the world felt like a dream. A dream where the sun and moon shared the sky beside each other. The indigo water has poisoned me, he thought. But deep within, he knew, that this was the truth of truths, and he continued onward.
Onward, where he knew, he hoped more like, he would see his brother again. And onward and onward and onward he went, until he passed an empty boat. He considered its use, and realized it had none on a sea that was not a sea. So he went beyond and walked onwards, journeying the expanse.
Yet beyond, on the onward he journeyed towards, the horizon trembled. It moved and… and rose. And it grew, turning the horizon no longer into a line, now a ridge, a dune, a hill, a wall. It covered and blocked both the moon and the sun, and eventually the sky. It was a curtain that covered the world.
And the horizon ate Hosea, as he drowned in its drapes. But within it… deep within, the indigo remained.
Comentarios