Part 1

Above

ON A VIOLENT, THRASHING SEA that should have been empty, there was something. A small something, but something non the less. 

A ship 

No, smaller. A boat, made for a single man. Its short mast dwarfed by titanic waves that pull up and around as if to swallow the small snack of timber and canvas. Each wave threatens to send the vessel flying. Or sinking. Whichever comes first, as if the sea has some residing vendetta bubbling deep within its subterranean volcanoes against anything that dare touch its gorgeous rippling flesh. 

And yet, even compared to the unthinkable vastness of the open ocean, the sheer size of each wave, this tiny timber boat continues to float in defiance of the sea. One would think that nothing smaller could exist when looking upon that fate bound vessel, and yet it could not survive this long on its own. Surely it must have some god of the ocean guiding it, or perhaps a god of boats, or maybe…

A man

Yes, there is a man on that boat! He can’t be seen on the horizon but he’s certainly there, one weak hand clamped around the tiller, the other blistered and bloodied and clenching the mainsheet. His hands are not those of a sailor, uncalloused, unscarred, and unprepared for the powerful winds that seek to steal the line from beneath his twigish fingers. He fights with all his fleeting strength to keep hold. Perhaps the Sea’s vendetta is with him. 

Just a little longer he assures himself, though unconvincingly as he knows the storm is unlikely to pass for hours. He stares up at walls of salty steel rising around him, seeking an indicator of hope; a patch of blue sky, a white dove, the hand of a God reaching down to pluck him from his certain doom. But this story is much more entertaining without my interference, so I continue only to watch.     

When hopes of the future are squandered, the only remaining refuge is memory. So the solitary sailor escapes to the past, the violent sounds of whipping sails disappear momentarily, giving way to the bug-filled silence of a warm morning. 

He was 20 years younger and half asleep when he heard the faint creaking of rusty wheels just beyond his window. The momentary semi-consciousness of recent waking delayed his understanding of this familiar sound; Father was sneaking off to work without him.

Sliding into his wet weather gear, he opened the door in time to see the trolley bound boat being pulled down the lane with a weary figure at its head.

“Father, Father!”

The man turned and sighed. He had failed. An already difficult day on the sea it would be, even without having to care for his adolescent son. But he forgot to grease the wheels, and this was his punishment.

“Why, Samuel, I thought a bright young man like yourself would have school today?” he replied with a smile.

“It’s Saturday!” Samuel replied with a smile twice as bright, “Besides I told you to wake me, I want to learn to read the wind.”

The man was well aware it was Saturday, but feigning ignorance is often better, or perhaps only easier, than speaking the truth; he wanted to be alone. No-one but the waves, the wind and he. Still, it was a nice thought that his son admired the sea like he did, though he didn’t wish this amount of work on anyone, especially his own son. Everyday from sun up to down on the waves was no life at all, most days he wished for a terrible storm or some mythical sea monster to swallow him up. But then what of his son? So on he goes. 

On the hour or so long walk from their home to the shore, Samuel would ask innumerable questions, to which his father would have many of the answers but little of the energy required to respond, often replying in agreement with the boy’s speculations regardless of their validity. After a while he would ask his son to carry the trailer to give him a rest, to which of course the boy would enthusiastically comply, then continue his barrage of inquiries. 

“Do sea monsters really exist?”

“Yes”

“Have you seen one?”

“No”

“How do you know they exist then?”

“I just do”

“How?”

“It makes sense”

“How does it make sense?”

“Well, we’re pretty small right?”

“Not as small as a Moth”

“Okay, not as small as a Moth, but compared to, say, an Elephant we’re pretty small right?”

“Right”

“Well we live in a pretty small house, so think of the ocean as a big house, it makes sense that there are some big things living there, especially down deep where there’s no light.”

The boy looked puzzled, but after a few seconds of clearly intense thinking, judging by the heavily creased brow and squinted eyes, he looked to his father and smiled.

“Makes sense to me” the boy said

“Good, now let me take the trolley, you’ll wear yourself out before we even get on the water.”

…

The wheels of the trolley struggled through the sandy dunes as the duo approached the coast line. The man and the boy each took a handle and heaved in unison until they reached the waterfront, small waves lapping over their boots. They pushed the wooden boat from its carriage, and quickly grabbed hold as it gently collided with the shallow water. The man lifted his son into it before removing his shoes and walking the boat out to deeper water. Once it was difficult to stand, he pulled himself in and pushed down the centerboard.

“Hey Dad, are you going to pray to the wind today or can I?”

“You can do it if you like, just remember to ask for safe passage and steady speeds.” 

“And secure cargo right?”

“Well that’s more up to us than it is the wind, maybe ask for no storms, that would slow us down alot.”

“Yeah okay I’ll ask.”

That day, the boy-now-a-man remembered, the wind must have listened, as they made all of their deliveries without so much as a cloud. 

Unlike today.

Samuel emerges from his peaceful memory to a faceful of freezing salt water, quickly remembering how eminently doomed he was before escaping to memories of better times.

Of course! He forgot to pray.

Superstitions like this had been a large part of his fathers routine, as they were for any sailor. There was even a store in town that sold lucky items; hats, boots, bracelets, and even lucky boats themselves, which were shoddily made and twice the price they ought to be. Realisations like this are why our sailor had fallen out of love with the sea. Mysticism gave way to cynicism as he came to realise the sea was nothing but a bunch of water, no Gods, no monsters. Just water.

His father never came to this realisation however. He remained the town nutter until the day he went missing.

Ah! So at last we come to the motive for this whole predicament. Our sailor is searching for his senile yet beloved father. Why else would someone so unqualified, so unprepared and so utterly oblivious to the dangers of the sea, do something so stupid as setting sail into the storm of the century. If only he’d continued learning to sail from his father he might have been even a little capable of completing such a daunting odyssey. But here he is, and it's far too late to turn back now, so on he goes.  

As he fights back against the elements, he recalls the weeks leading up to his fathers not entirely unexpected disappearance. 

The boy had become a man, and as such had decided to move out of his fathers house. He found himself living in a plank-timber house on the edge of the fishing district. Upon waking he’s greeted with the pleasant salty scent of freshly caught fish. In the mornings he would walk through the market until he found himself a small bream to enjoy later that night. Afterwards he would walk almost an hour through town to get to the brewery. Grabbing his apron he got right to work, rolling barrels, cleaning kegs and delivering trolley loads of starchy beer to the local tavern. The beer he made was generally referred to by patrons as “The cheapest, nastiest shit you got,” and as such the brewery didn’t pay much.

Which of course explains the house by the docks.

‘But why was his house so cheap?’ I hear you asking. Well as pleasant as the smell is in the morning, the walk home in the evening is not quite as enjoyable for our dear friend. He passed through the market once more as the sun was setting and the fish were rotting. The saltiness remains, though accompanying it now is the putrid, festering stench of rotted guts and decaying flesh. Walking by the endless stands of corpses, he startles as he hears his name called out somewhere behind him.

“Samuel!”

He turns to see a rather scaly old man (even compared to the surrounding fish) approaching him.

How does he know my name? He thinks to himself, unaware that anyone besides his boss at the brewery actually knew who he was in this town.

“Do I know you?” he said, turning to face the strange individual. 

“Nay sir, but I know your father. In fact, he’s the reason I came. You see, we pulled him out of the water just earlier today. His guts were half filled with water and he was barely breathing.”

“Is he alright?”

“Alive, aye, but not in a great state. When he finally came to, he was babelling some nonsense we couldn’t quite understand. Crazed and manic he was, like nothing I’d ever seen! Yelling that he’d found something and that he had to get back on the sea.” the man paused, clearing his throat nervously as if frightened by the memory. “The only sense he was making was when he started calling for you.” 

       …

He arrived at his fathers house later that night. His home town was some hours away from where he lived now and it was too late in the afternoon to find a carriage heading in that direction. He was exhausted from both the day's work and the commute, and stressing about his father's condition certainly wasn't helping. 

We all have an image of our loved ones branded into our brains; we can recognise them with a passing glance or tell their mood by a single word. This image acts as a base line, a sort of litmus test for what we expect when we see them in the flesh.

The man's image of his father was shattered forever the second he walked through the door. 

The first change he noticed was the state of his room; the central lantern and wall sconces were extinguished, the only light a weak wax candle beside his bed. Even in the warm yellow hue, the old man's face looked cold and pale. The room looked tossed. Clothes piled on the floor smelling of sweat, loose papers scattered across a small writing desk in the corner. The son walked closer to the bed where his father lay. At first he thought he was awake, but quickly realised he was merely shivering violently in his sleep. He was cocooned within several layers of clothing and blankets, his skin clammy and dripping with sweat. The son pressed the back of his hand against his father's forehead to confirm his suspicions of a fever, feeling a deep subdermal heat. 

As he pulled away, a cold hand gripped his own. He looked down to find his father staring back at him with the paranoid gaze of a chronic alcoholic, though the scent of liquor was absent from his breath. It was at this moment the son noticed the greatest deviation from the image of his father; his eyes were full of fear, a wild, reckless fear. It was as if his humanity had retreated inward, and in its place stood animal instinct.

In a quick, conspiratorial tone he spoke; “Another guardian of the sunken city, come to turn me away? And whose minion might you be? Clearly a shape shifter of some kind, though there's as many of those in the sea as there are fish!”

  With the surprising strength of a sailor the old man pulled his son closer and placed his other hand on his face.

“Using the face of my son is a nice touch, I bet you’ve come to talk me back to sanity right?” In a mocking voice he continued: “oh father, you look ill! It must be that rotten sea, you must never go back. Never think of that blasted city beneath the waves again. It’s not real and you are very ill.”

Samuel was too shocked to speak. He wanted to implore his father that it was really him, that there was no shapeshifter and he was not aware of any city under the sea, but clearly he would not believe him. Could he maybe prove his innocence with a memory only they would know, that no shapeshifter could possibly know. In that instant he realised how foolish he sounded. Shapeshifters? Sunken Cities? It’s futile to attempt to make sense to a man who has lost his senses. So he decided to speak plainly.

“Father, this is all quite ridiculous isn’t it? I am no shapeshifter, I am of your loins! My blood is yours. When I speak, they are the words you taught me, when I work it is with hands you gave me. The only city I know is the one I live in, Southport, and it is well above water I promise you. Come to your senses fathe…

The old man suddenly pushed away and his son fell to the hard wooden floor with a thud. The old man stood over his son with the clenched jaw of a man deep in the throes of fury. He grabbed the brass candlestick holder from beside his bed and held it over his head. 

“You shifters are so predictable aren't you? You can take any form you like, but you always act the same.”

“Father, don’t be stupid, think about what you’re saying for even a moment and you’ll realise its nonsense”

The son rolled to the side as the candlestick collided with the floor just beside his head. He crawled backwards from his father until he reached the back wall of the room.

“I know it’s your job to prevent land walkers from reaching the city beneath the waves, and I respect a man who does his job.” the old man shuffled forward, and the son saw at once that he was approaching with intent to kill. “But surely you must understand the dangers of such a line of work. And surely the oath you’ve taken to protect the city states that you must be willing to die to conceal it.”

The old man lifted the candlestick holder above his head once more. 

“Let's test your loyalty to the Sunken city shall we? 

Panicked, the son looked around for something to shield himself with, though all he found was loose pieces of parchment on the floor beside him. On them he saw drawings made in charcoal of strange figures; some with fins and gills, others who looked humanoid or even bird-like. Many of them were labelled at the bottom of the page in ink with strange words that clearly were not of his language, though written in the same characters. He recognised his father’s handwriting. He figured these must be names, and these pictures are of the guardians of the sunken city. Finally, the son had found his shield.

As his father was about to swing his weapon, the son threw up his hands.

“Okay, okay fine. I’m from the city. I came to ensure you wouldn’t alert the people of the mainland of our existence.”

The old man hesitated and on his face was a look of confusion. He lowered the candlestick holder, though still held it defensively at his waist.

“Who sent you? To whose order do you belong?”

The son made a sly glance at a picture that depicted a man-like creature whose face flowed like water, then to the label below it. 

“I belong to Waravaughn, the shifter,” Samuel lied. “He told me he met you and that you knew of the city.” He looked at the weapon his father held. “He told me you were a good man, that you wouldn’t hurt anyone.” His father seemed to relax at hearing the familiar name. He paused in thought.

“Waravaughn was one of the nicer creatures I met on my journey,” the old man smiled. “Most tried to kill me, he only sought to throw me off course. He would appear repeatedly as different people, each trying to convince me they were there to help, helpfully giving directions to the City. though each time I took the course they suggested, it would lead me in the opposite direction.” 

The son stood up now, noticing the old man's eyes were unfocused as he escaped to memory. 

“And like him I mean you no harm.” the son calmly replied. “So let me go now and I will leave you be.” He held his hands over his head in surrender, the last thing he wanted to do was appear threatening in this moment.

The old man shook himself out of his trance and looked again at his son, though now without the frantic fear of an injured animal. He seemed calm, or calm enough for a victim of insanity. 

“Go,” the old man said. “Tell Waravaughn that I will see him soon, and that I will not be fooled again."

The son kept his eyes glued to the ragged remnants of his father as he backed out of the room. He wished that it was all a cruel joke, that his father would suddenly throw up his arms and say “It’s been so long since I last saw you, let us catch up over drinks and talk about life in the city,” or something along those lines. At least one thing was true in this sentiment: the son certainly needed a drink. 

He closed the door to his fathers shack and immediately saw a group of men running down the hill toward him. One carried a lantern. The others carried weapons.

“Sorry we didn’t stay at the door while you were in there,” the man with the lantern exhaled, “But we were certain he was asleep, has been all day!”

The man let out a deep sigh, realising he had been holding his breath the whole way out the door. He took several deep breaths to clear his mind of the flurry of questions that spiked his mind: How had he gone so mad? Where did these insane ideas come from? Had his fancies of sea monsters finally gone to his head? What did he see out there on the waves? He could deal with these later, what mattered immediately was keeping his father away from the ocean tonight, in his feverish state he would certainly die. 

“I believe we should keep watch of my father tonight, tie him to his bed and post a man inside, we will take turns through the night.”

   The men went inside and tied his father up with scrapes of sailing line while he remained outside. He had made a promise to leave and he intended to keep it, even if the true reason was that he couldn’t handle watching his father in distress any longer. 

…

Through the night the man thought of his father and of the sea. Laying out on the hill beside the shack, he looked up at the night sky. The stars, like pinpricks in a pitch black blanket, he found were much brighter away from town. He saw stars he had only seen when he was young and living with his father, in this very shack in fact. He remembered returning from a day out on the waves, his father pulling the boat, himself sound asleep inside. Sometimes when the boat would be jolted by a run-over rock, he would awake and be instantly greeted by the night sky, with its thousands of pale eyes staring back at his only two.

The boy always suspected his father of hitting those rocks on purpose, as each time he did he would launch into conversation; “Sorry bud, plenty of rocks out here tonight. Have any nice dreams?” or some other trivial nonsense like this. Though even as a boy he understood loneliness. He did not have many friends even in school, which he was absent from most of the time anyway, and when he was there he only wished he was with his father. His father felt the same of course, the sea being the loneliest place of all. 

Though sitting on the hill, he was physically close to his father yet as distant as he had ever been. His father had changed, that is for certain, but surely he had changed too. Maybe this would not have happened if he hadn’t left. But the time for ‘what if’s and ‘if only’s always comes too late, so the man worked himself into a guilty mental loop, then passed into sleep.

He woke to the near silence of wind in the trees. The dark blanket of night replaced by the blinding blue of day, the man realised it was morning, the sun barely climbing over the hills far away. Then he realised he had slept on a strange knot of grass and his neck ached. Then he realised the door to the shack was open. 

He stood and carefully stepped down the steep hill, not seeing any of the other men. As he came to the door frame he knew at once what had happened. The lock busted through. The binding ropes torn. A body on the floor, not breathing.

His father was gone. And he had killed an innocent man. 

…

And that about brings us back to the present. The other men had returned and called for the fathers head. Well deserved of course, he is a murderer after all. They noticed the old man had taken his boat and sailing gear and presumed he had returned to the sea as he swore he would. The weather was wicked and none of the men felt the urge to chase the mad man on a suicide mission into his own territory, the place he had spent most of his life. 

They had agreed that the storm would take him and that was punishment enough, though they posted men all along the coast to make sure he wouldn’t return. 

The son was not satisfied. So he went to town and bought a boat with what little money he had. Noone would let him borrow one as the chances of returning in this storm were slim. The boat was of course second rate, not nearly as well kept as his fathers though just as sturdy. It was made of dark timber and the man who sold it seemed honest enough to have told him if there were any leaks. Putting on his brewers overalls and boots, which would be waterproof enough, and a wet weather jacket he launched the small skiff straight into the harbour. He felt but did not see the many eyes that looked out at him with pity from the town. They stood only for a moment, shook their heads, called him crazy under their breath, then went about their days as if he had never existed. And maybe he is crazy. It’s like they say; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. 

The sea is not concerned with the strange antics of man, nor are the fish within it. They care not for birthdays or funerals or weddings. For animals, the meaning of life is simple; survive. They have no aspirations, no dreams, no ideas. Life is simple for a fish. If a fish's father were to kill another fish then swim away without saying goodbye, it is likely the son wouldn’t bat an eye, then proceed to forget about him. Some fish are more connected than others however, like whales who have some basic understanding of what it means to be a family. You are birthed by your mother who protects you and teaches you to eat krill, then eventually she either dies or leaves and life goes on. They may not even remember their mothers. But even then a whale doesn’t really understand these things like you or I would. All they know is that to survive, they have to stay with this other fish who looks alot like them but a lot larger and older. Life is simple for a fish. 

So when a small wooden boat passes above with one inexperienced sailor struggling to control both the tiller and the mainsheet in fifty plus knots of wind, rain bombarding his only slightly waterproof clothes, the fish take no notice. They do not see a man who is far too in over his head, desperately searching the sea for his deranged, murderous father over waves the size of buildings. They keep swimming, and life goes on. Life is simple for a fish.  

Life, however, is not so simple for the man in the boat. The small dingy clearly was not made for these conditions and the man regrets that he didn’t get a higher paying job in town so he could have afforded a better boat. Though few boats truly are made for the storm of the century, so the man silences his internal complaints and swears that if he makes it back home he will work at the nicer brewery up town, the kind that makes good tasting beer. 

The pain of occupational inadequacy is replaced by a physical burning sensation as the wind finally rips the line from his hand. He sees the red mark left on his palm, though he didn’t have to look to know it was there. The sail went rogue as the line lost tension, whipping wildly in the wind, the boom swinging from port to starboard and back again like a drunkard defending himself with a two by four. The man ducks down to avoid getting clobbered. 

He feels defeated as he realises he has lost total control of the boat, though of course in wind like this he never had control in the first place. In a situation like this most experienced sailors would probably recommend capsising the boat and hanging onto the centerboard for dear life. Our sailor here has either forgotten this lesson from long ago or is too stubborn to admit defeat to the sea. This is the mistake of many an amateur sailor; seeing the sea as an enemy that must be defeated, as opposed to an ally that it is best to submit to. It's a matter of perception I suppose. Some chose to believe the sea is out to sink the vessels on its surface, it gives crews a common enemy to unite against, so they don’t turn on each other. But in truth the ocean, like the rest of the universe, is indifferent. Cruel and punishing, sure, but not conscious. 

If the man had submitted earlier, he would have been in the same position he is now: curled up in the boat, waiting for it to capsize. 

The stupidity and rashness of his decision to be here finally strikes him as he lies like a coward in his cheap little boat. He feels stupid for worrying about leaks in the hull; what would that matter in conditions like this, the waves just bring water over the sides. He feels stupid for not watching his father himself that night in the shack, surely then that man wouldn’t have died, and he wouldn’t have escaped. He feels stupid for not remembering everything his father taught him about the sea, as if one of his many superstitions would bail him out now. And now he feels stupid for feeling stupid, as if regret and self-judgement will somehow help him survive the storm. 

He looks up from his low vantage point, each wave larger than any building he has seen, each gust of wind brings with it a torrent of sharp rain. In this moment of panic, the man finally sees the sea like his father does: not violent but beautifully chaotic, like a painting by an artist who disregards the standards of the critic. Each wave pulls and pushes like a deep breath. The crashes of the waves have rhythm, but they are syncopated and unique. In what feels like constant noise there are crescendos and decrescendos, climaxes of colliding whitecaps followed by calming codas.

And among this endless noise, the man hears his name called out for the second time this week. 

He pulls himself out of his epiphanic trance and stumbles to his knees, looking around the waves for the source of the voice. He shelters his eyes from the rain and looks up to see a figure standing above a towering wave. No, not above but on, its feet firmly planted on the water as if standing on solid ground. With his eyes glued to the figure he notices it is feminine, her body silhouetted against the grey clouds behind. He stands to get a closer look as the woman begins walking down the face of the wave toward him. She reaches out her hand, and he cannot resist the compulsion to reach out in return.

He does not get to feel stupid for a final time, as he is unconscious before he realises he forgot about the swinging boom, which collides with the back of his skull and sends him falling over the side into the waves. 

End of Part 1