Читать книгу Wind - Daniel Mello - Страница 6

The Forgotten Sea was calm that day, gently lapping at the sides of Lythina’s dinghy as she rowed out toward the open ocean. The sun was glowing high in the western sky, allowing her to soak up its warmth before she would eventually descend into the impenetrable fog that gave the sea its name. Every now and then she would turn to glance at the fog, adjusting her course as necessary until she was heading perpendicular to the coast, straight on toward the misty wall.

The fog was far enough from land that Lythina had time to reflect upon the past two days before she would have to concentrate solely upon her direction. A sudden rush of warmth coursed through her body as she remembered what it felt like to wake up the next morning after learning about her parents and meeting a relative she never knew she had. That whole day was spent helping her grandmother tend her garden behind the Inn until the right amount of herbs and vegetables were sourced for her voyage. They had laughed and played in the dirt together, and Hildabrand had showed Lythina a few tricks about turning the earth

“Planting a garden is far more than just plopping a few seeds into the ground,” her grandmother had said. “There are little spirits in the earth that help the veggies grow. They nourish and care for them when we are away, and help push them out of the soil towards the sunlight.”

Lythina remembered how she questioned her grandmother’s wisdom, “but God says he is the only deity, and that there is no one else. Only he can make the vegetables grow.”

“Oh, you’re very right, love,” Hildabrand had responded. “He is the Light, but he also created other beings to help him around the earth.” She had watched as her granddaughter concentrated on this.

“Like angels,” Lythina had concluded.

“Yes, like angels; though angels help humans, while fairies help plants and animals. If you’re still and quiet enough, you might be able to see them flittering about throughout the trees and bushes, like sparkles in the brush. They only let you see them if they feel it’s safe, like angles do.”

Remembering that conversation brought a smile to Lythina’s face. Her grandmother was so wise that it had a way of humbling her instantly.

She adjusted her course again and continued to row toward the fog. The young lady felt the sea breeze brush against her cheeks, glistening them with salt, before it heaved against the stern of her craft; it was as if the wind itself was urging her onward. A glimmer of intuition sparkled a confirmation inside her heart. She reflected a moment about how it must’ve been her imagination because she was heading west; due to the constant direction of airflow over Hyrendell, she should be encountering a headwind, not a tailwind. Curious…

But the thought of her grandmother crept into her mind once more. Again, she recalled her visit.

The day after learning about fairies, Lythina had helped Hildabrand tidy up the Inn. That night, she noticed her grandmother pulling an old book from one of the dusty shelves that lined the living room. They sat down in their two favorite over-stuffed rocking chairs near the fireplace and sipped some tea as Hildabrand explained further about the sealight, as she now called it, and how she had documented its appearances. The book contained several drawings that Hildabrand had made, marking the light’s location relative to the sunset, the moon’s position, and the stars. There were inscriptions and diagrams plotting the moon’s path, and sky charts so in-depth that it almost looked like the night sky itself. Lythina remembered being extremely impressed at the detail that her grandmother had put into the pictures.

“Here we are,” her grandmother began. “I’ve been tracking the sealight for so long that I’ve noticed a pattern in its appearance. See here,” and she moved closer so Lythina could better view her charts. “This was the very first year that the light arrived.”

Hildabrand pointed to a long chronological chart that was broken into months. Each month looked like the night sky, with the stars slowly rotating their position throughout the year. The full moons each had a different location in the sky, and in the center of each month, balanced on a thin, straight line, was a small pictogram of fire, some larger than others.

Hildabrand continued, “as you can see, the light never moves relative to the horizon, but it does vary in intensity. Although it follows the full moon exactly, approximately every eleven years it repeats the same cycle.” She flipped to a page near the end of the book. It showed a graphic timeline of all the maps that she had made. Each year was placed in ascending order, with an obvious trend in the sealight’s luminescence; together, all of the years tracked the light’s intensity in the shape of a large W. “The brightness of the sealight peaked when it first appeared, then again about eleven years ago, and it will again sometime during this year.”

Following the curve with her finger, Lythina began when the light first appeared, gliding to its trough, then back up again to where it peaked. She followed the trend back down again, and up to the end of the map, to the current year they were in.

“This peaks later this year, sometime in autumn,” she noted. “If your observations are accurate, and I’m sure they are, then it would crest in October, near my birthday!” She studied the curve again, just in case she had made a mistake.

Hildabrand, however, was wide eyed and quiet. She glanced at the map, up at Lythina, then back at the map. Suddenly, she yanked the book from Lythina’s lap.

“Hey, but —,” Lythina began, but she stopped when she saw Hildabrand’s expression.

Flipping to the first map in the book, Hildabrand brushed her hand over her notes, mumbling something inaudible.

“What’s your birth date, dear,” she asked, still huddled over the book.

“October 10^th.”

Hildabrand gasped.

“Oh, come on, it’s not that bad of a day to be born on,” Lythina defended. “Sure, it’s no New Years, but…,”

“Quiet, please,” Hildabrand whispered. Her hands stopped moving over the map, and she gradually lifted her gaze to meet Lythina’s curious eyes.

“You’re in your twenties, right, love?,” Hildabrand asked carefully.

“Right, I’ll be twenty two this year,” Lythina answered. Just then, she gasped as her intuition spiked. “No way, that can’t be —.”

But Hildabrand jumped on it. “The light appeared roughly twenty one years ago, I’ve got it all here. According to the stars, the moon, and the sun, this year, the light will have come every full moon for exactly twenty two years. I thought it had something to do with the old calendar, the one that people of the ancient religion use, which ends on the last day of October, but that’s not it at all. Lythina, dear, it began when you were born.”

“Impossible,” Lythina huffed. It was impossible, right? “Why would it just… show up when… when I was born.” This wasn’t happening, there was no way! First a prophecy, now this?! She was starting to hyperventilate. “It’s… probably just… a… coincidence.”

“Possibly, but the stars never lie,” Hildabrand countered.

“Sure they do,” Lythina panicked, “what day did it appear?”

Hildabrand pointed a long, thin finger at the start of the map. “October 10^th.”

Lythina squeaked, and dropped her tea cup, shattering the mug and sending tea flying into the mantle to hiss inside the fire.

Continuing to row her little boat, Lythina’s face flushed with embarrassment. How could she lose her composure like that? She recalled how she apologized to her grandmother and quickly cleaned up the mess. Hildabrand, however, had only giggled. Afterward, they had sat for a while going over Hildabrand’s notes, scrutinizing her drawings for any indication of an alternate cause, yet the only conclusion they felt was true was that the appearance of the sealight had something to do with Lythina’s birth. They didn’t know what that was, but it was written in the stars, as her grandmother had put it. Undoubtedly, Lythina’s anxiety had doubled since she had first learned of the sealight.

Glancing once again to ensure her heading, Lythina noticed that she was almost to the wall of fog. She could see the sun shining dimly through the mist as she gazed up at the towering grey mass of moisture. It was intimidating, no doubt, rowing willingly into this abyss, but she forced herself to keep her thoughts steady, concentrating on her objective.

She remembered her last moments at Flowerpatch Inn, earlier that morning. Her grandmother had helped her solidify her voyage by reviewing the path that she would keep, taking care to show her where the sun and the moon would be so she could follow them. Afterward, she helped Lythina pack all of her supplies into a cold knapsack. And once they reaffirmed all the details, they had carried the provisions, though Lythina carried most of them, down to a small boat docked at a jetty on the coastline.

She recalled turning to see tears in Hildabrand’s eyes, and how she rushed to hug her small body. Lythina and her grandmother had embraced for a long moment, reveling in the comfort that they knew was short lived.

“I’ll be alright,” Lythina had said, attempting to reassure them both.

“I know you will, love,” her grandmother had sniffled. “It just that… I can’t help but feel like I won’t see you again.” Her tears fell to the dock.

“Oh, Hildabrand,” Lythina had started to say, but the words caught in her throat. She gulped, and they’d stared at each other, just smiling.

After a moment, Hildabrand had beckoned her into the dinghy, and she waved as Lythina pulled out of the jetty. The two women continued to gaze at each other, Lythina mechanically moving her arms to keep momentum, until all they both could see was the ocean.

And, as if to punctuate her sorrow, the fingers of the Forgotten Sea fog curled over Lythina’s shoulders, sending a chill down her spine, as she rowed into the misty void. The fog muffled the distant chirping of the gulls, and the water splashed reluctantly against the boat. In the misty gloom, even the sea seemed afraid to move.

The sun became an orange glow that illuminated the mist as Lythina paddled further into the abyss. She remembered what her grandmother had said about following the sun, and she kept it just above her right shoulder the entire time. The ghostly atmosphere that surrounded her boat seemed to diminish the further in she rowed, and she soon realized that the sun was beginning to set along the western horizon. Before long, twilight fell upon the sea, casting Lythina into a diffused luminescent purgatory as she rowed toward the last noted position of the sun, waiting for the mysterious light to appear.

Quietly, slipping the paddles into the sea she slid her dinghy along the ocean. Just as the last remnants of twilight were fading from the mist, she stopped rowing to pull out an oil lamp that her grandmother had provided for her. She lit it at once, and a soft fiery glow pressed against the curtain of fog that surrounded the boat. She couldn’t go any further out to sea without some sort of guide. The ocean would carry her where it willed, and if the sealight never appeared for her to follow, she would have to wait for the sun to rise as a beacon toward land. Any further paddling on her part would just send her deeper into the Forgotten Sea.

Lythina shivered, more out of response to the lonely abyss than the actual temperature of the chilly fog. As if the water itself was an illusion, an overwhelming uncertainty began to bubble inside her spirit. Quite suddenly, her mind conjured up the image of herself, sitting utterly alone inside a tiny boat, floating completely lost to the world upon a forsaken ocean, like a speck of insignificant dust against a starry sky.

And just then, a notion occurred to her, one so obvious that she didn’t know why she hadn’t realized it before. Since she’d heard about the sealight, all she could imagine was that the people from Flowerpatch who went in search of it had all found it. Never did she assume that her grandmother was right about them; maybe none found the light; maybe they all got lost out at sea. And she would be next…

“Ridiculous,” she said, shaking the thought from her mind. “I just have to wait for the light, and then I’ll row towards it until I find out what it is.”

This comforted her slightly, but the silence that pressed against her ears began to infest her mind. Her arms and her back were screaming from the duty of rowing, so she tried to relax herself as she pulled a small jug of fresh water from her knapsack and sipped it. The wetness washed some of the salt from her lips, and she pulled out a piece of sweetbread to chew.

But her hunger was short lived. The immense claustrophobia of the void was numbing, and the still water gently rocking the dinghy seemed to enhance the loneliness. She had no idea how much time had passed because time itself seemed suddenly nonexistent all together, and she glanced around a few times looking for the sealight, but to no avail. She had been suppressing the notion that rowing to find the light was a bad idea, but as she sat alone inside the impossibly dense fog, that realization began to creep forward into her mind. If she had only waited until later, when the sealight was actually lit, then she could’ve used it as a beacon. But against her grandmother’s wishes, she had insisted on getting a head start while it was still light outside. Perhaps she should’ve heeded the wisdom of her elder with a little more tolerance.

She wearily glanced around once more at her misty abyss. The light started to make different shapes dance in the fog: images of fairies and spirits, of hideous creatures with crooked fingers reaching out to snatch her into the void, all twisting and curling in the depths of her vision. She felt like the loneliness itself began to lap at the sides of her boat, waiting to splash its freezing hands upon her. Suddenly, she remembered the ethereal hands that were groping for her right before she entered the Inn.

“It wasn’t the light at all,” she whispered, because the demons of death could’ve been waiting just behind the glowing curtain of fog and she didn’t want them to hear. “It was the sea pulling me in.”

The lonely silence, the cold orange infinity beyond, the soaking crypt of her nightmares, they were all formed before her inside the fog of the Forgotten Sea. Her mind began to collapse, and the fog began to close in around her, swirling with a surreal pleasure as if to delay her watery death as long as possible. Her breathing accelerated out of her control, but she willed it quiet so the demons wouldn’t find her. Crouching into a ball, she fought unsuccessfully against the horrific panic, frantically searching her mind for some form of relief.

But none came.

“Stop it, STOP IT,” she hissed to herself, “They’re not real! They’re not… real…”

A frigid emptiness beckoned Lythina from the fog. Unknown for how long, lost inside her own tomb, she sat curled into herself, rocking back and forth against the motion of the sea, trembling from the freezing mist.

Suddenly, a thought about her mission to find the sealight flashed through her gloomy visions. She glanced up and around, quickly so the demons wouldn’t see, and searched for the light. But it was nowhere to be found. There was no other light to accompany the small flickering reaper perched inside the boat.

“Where is it,” she whispered hysterically. “It’s supposed to be here tonight! WHERE IS IT?!”

Her breathing climaxed, her heartbeat sprinted away from her, and the fog demons swirled in around her as she fell into the icy ocean unconscious.