Monthly Archives: May 2012

Grace stared furiously at the ship’s keel, jammed deeply in the wedge of rocks. It was a pity lasers hadn’t been invented yet, as they would have been the perfect metaphor for the intensity of her gaze.

Unformed images swirled around in her mind. She wanted the ship free. She wanted to go home. She wanted her father back, however frustrating he’d been while alive.

Marlowe suggested pry-bars, but whatever location for prying he named the muttering carpenter insisted “the keelson cannae take it” or “the skantlings cannae take it” or “the sternpost cannae take it”. They needed something that would push everywhere, smoothly at the same time.

She thought about the clams they’d been digging on this very beach just the day before, and their long humorous “trunks”. The Fae boy Ea had told her they had water inside, making them swell…

Her gaze became a squint as she looked through the lens of her imagination to a future that didn’t quite exist yet. “I know how to set the ship free,” she said again.

Surprisingly, her sister Felicity turned out to be actually useful in putting Grace’s plan into action. No one understood what Grace wanted or why, but Felicity, backed by Marlowe, had commandeered a group of women from the village to sew the long tube Grace demanded.

After a few hopeless minutes watching them struggle with the tough sail-cloth the first mate had taken a hand. “Sewing’s not women’s work! You’ll need a man for that! Florence! Nightengale!” Two profoundly scarred seamen stepped forward. One had an eye-patch. The other only one leg. Between them, Grace thought, they’d make a fine pirate, lacking only for a parrot.

They shouldered the women roughly out of the way, mumbling obscene apologies, and spread the bundle of cloth out on the sand, drawing long sharp needles from hidden places in their ragged clothing.

Under their expert hands the form of Grace’s imagination rapidly took shape: a long fat hollow tube of sail-cloth, closed at one end. She pretended not to hear what the sailors called it as they worked.

“Hurry or we’ll miss the tide!” Grace cried as the sailors tried to pull the sail-cloth trunk through the narrow passage under the ship’s keel.

“We cannae do it, Captain!” the carpenter complained. Not for the first time Grace wondered why the man was held in such great esteem, as his only contribution seemed to be telling people what “cannae” be “doone”.

Water was lapping at the stern-post. There was a crowd of villagers and sailors now standing on the beach watching.

Finally, by dint of Tuc volunteering to carry a rope through the narrowest place they were able to pull the trunk through. At the same time a group of village people came down the beach carrying a long log. Grace had them place it near the flaccid trunk near the ship’s bow.

As the tide came in she held the trunk open, letting it flood with water. Soon she was standing up to her knees. She gestured to Felicity, who had been organizing. “Now.”

Felicity shepherded the gathered people into a line and rolled the long log the village people had found down the beach until it entered the water where Grace was holding the sail cloth tube open. Grace pushed the heavy fabric under the surface and let the log roll over it, pulling it up the other side and wrapping it around. It quickly stopped as it squeezed the water inside the tube, bloating it up like one of the fat trunks of the clams that had inspired it.

“Now stand on it and walk backward!” Grace shouted, leading by example. People stepped up, holding on to each other, and as the log rolled under their weight they moved their feet in the opposite direction, squeezing the water harder.

The ship lurched as the tide continued to rise, adding its power to the tube’s even thrust against the keel.

Grace heard the ship’s carpenter say, “Captain! The hull CANN take it! Hoooray!” just as the log gave a sudden jump that tumbled everyone into the water. As she was falling Grace could see the ship’s prow lift and bob, finally free.

Captain Stone suppressed an uncharacteristic urge to do a jig as he helped the soaking villagers out of the water. His ship was off the rocks!

Uncrewed, and increasingly far from shore…

He took a few bold steps into the water and then stopped, frozen.

“What’s the matter, Captain?” Grace asked as she squeezed the water out of her dress. “You can swim to her!”

“I’m a sailor! I can’t swim! Just prolongs the agony if you’re lost overboard.” He seemed to remember a time when that argument made sense.

“I will assist you, my Captain!”

He turned to see the mermaid Marie floating gently on the tide, her arms reaching out to him.

Captain Stone took a hesitant step toward the mermaid then pulled back. He stood like a pillar of salt in the sea. “Either you’re a woman and it would be a sin to touch your naked form, or you’re a monster and it would be a sin to touch your vile flesh!”

Marie rolled her eyes and held her arms out. “I am your ship, my Captain. Come back to me.”

The seal king raised his crowned head above the water near by, and Grace called out to him, “Tuc, can you help the captain aboard?”

Tuc’s reply was a silent flip of his tail that pushed him back beneath the surface. “That was helpful,” Marlowe remarked as he watched the frozen tableau. The ship continued to drift further from shore.

A moment later the captain screamed as Tuc nosed him behind the knees, sending him stumbling and splashing forward into Marie’s waiting arms.

Marlowe and Grace watched as the captain was helped aboard his ship by Marie the mermaid. “I never should have left you my Captain! It is my destiny to ride your prow!”

“Err… ah… Very well, just let me get us underway and we’ll discuss your future opportunities in mermaiding and general figure-heading…”

Marlowe laughed. It was the first time he’d felt happy in… how long? Since yesterday? It seemed longer.

The small gathering had dispersed as people headed back to the village to prepare for the coming voyage, led by Felicity. The Captain managed to fend off the attentions of his salacious figurehead for long enough to raise a single sail and turn the ship’s head toward the entrance of the bay.

Marlowe waded into the water and inspected the remains of the rocks that had trapped the hull. The little outcropping was split and shattered. He looked at Grace, who was lost in thought. “Come on, Stonebreaker. It’s time to honour your father.” Grace nodded. It was time indeed.

The villagers and sailors were running to and fro when Marlowe and Grace returned. The ship was rounding the point under Captain Stone’s gentle touch and Marie’s enthusiastic and expert assistance.

No one was paying attention to Sir Hyphen-Dash as he lay on his pyre on the beach, quiet as he had never been in life. Gulls stood all around, waiting patiently for him to become edible. They found that things generally did, if they waited long enough.

The sight burst Grace from the numb calm that had possessed her since that moment when she had realized that Rothgar was right, whatever she meant.

She raced forward, hands waving, sending the gulls into raucous flight. They circled, but landed nearby, still waiting. She collapsed to the sand, suddenly exhausted.

“It’s going to be all right,” said a voice beside her, and she looked up to see her sister Felicity, with their cousin Hope beside her. “It’s how he would have wanted things,” Felicity said, helping her up. “Come help us pack things, please. Then we can go home.”

They came. From down the village paths and through the forest ways. From past Argumdur and out of the hills. They came through the black water and past the bright stars beneath an ancient Moon. They came.

As evening gathered the Fae arrived in ones and fives, helping quietly, silently, unasked and unorganized, to move the whole of the village’s worldly possessions into the ship which Captain Stone had grounded on the sand as the tide went out of the bay.

The carpenter was busy caulking and patching while the Fae moved up and down the gangplank, stowing and stashing, stashing and stowing, and then doing it all over again.

The villagers rushed about, frantic and flumoxed, while the Fae calmly loaded their lives away in the ship’s hold. When the work was done there wasn’t a stick standing where the village had been. Only Sir Hyphen-Dash’s funeral pyre remained as evidence that the English had ever settled here.

“MOOOO!” came the sound from somewhere in the forest nearby. Athis rolled his eyes.

“I think the silly cow will have to stay,” Felicity remarked as the Fae fumbled about helplessly trying to track down the errant animal. “The ship is packed so tightly we’ll be sleeping on the deck for half the voyage.”

“We’ll all be doom…” Hope began, then caught herself. “Well, it won’t be very pleasant, but I suppose most of us will survive.”

The mooing from the forest stopped, and a few moments later Don Deigo appeared, leading the cow by a vine he’d thrown around her neck.

“I think this belongs to you,” he said, leading it over to where Lady Belinda stood. He handed her the end of the vine and stepped back. The cow stretched out its neck and licked his ear. He tried not to flinch.

“No one has ever given me a cow before!” Lady Belinda twittered.

“I deeply regret the death of your father, my lady,” Don Diego said with a bow. He was still unsteady on his feet but looked less green than usual. “He was an honourable enemy. Not like these elves, who understand nothing of the glory that is war.”

“Do you think perhaps there might be glory without war?” she asked him. He looked perplexed, then shrugged. “They say with love anything is possible.”

“You mean..?”

“I mean I love you, my lady. You have been the one good thing I have met on this journey.”

“Then you must return to England with us and make peace between our peoples! After all, it isn’t as if you could us any harm. What would you do, send an armada of a thousand ships against our island? What a disaster that would be!”

“As you say, m’lady.”

The tide slowly inched its way up the beach, lifting the ship off the smooth sand. Most of the sailors were already aboard, preparing for departure under Captain Stone’s watchful eye. Marie the Mermaid graced the bowsprit, fending off unwanted attention with swift slaps of her tail.

On shore the villagers gathered around the funeral pyre, looking expectantly at Marlowe. He glanced around the crowd. Drunais was in the back with her father, avoiding his gaze. Grace and Ea were standing side-by-side, not speaking. Daphne, Cat and the raccoon Skeezicks were nose-to-nose-to-nose. Cat looked unhappy.

He rummaged through the attics of his mind, looking for suitable words. Achilles’ lament over Patroklos’ pyre? Too bitter. Thucydides’ version of Perikles funeral oration, telling the men and women of Athens they were the best, but their dead sons were better? Too arrogant. “Friends, Britons, countrymen…”? Too derivative.

It was time to say something new.

The rising of the Moon signs the end of day;
the lowing cow wends noisy through the trees.
Upon life’s journey we all make our way
down forest paths or far across the seas.

But here upon this beach there will remain
a man untouched by the Muse of Fire
who treated Art with humor and disdain
more expert with a sword than with a lyre.

Yet who could not his simple strength respect,
his steady purpose, honest hate of all
complexity and intrigues that collect
the souls of subtle men before their Fall?

The machinations of our Queen passed by
his noble ignorance of politics,
untutored in the use of clever lies,
diplomacy or other artful tricks.

His great accomplishment was not the war
that ended with his own unplanned demise
but bringing us all safe unto this shore
and lighting love within his daughters’ eyes.

We leave his bones to rest in well-earned peace
ten leagues beyond the wide world’s further end
knowing that his soul has found release:
he’ll be remembered by both foe and friend.