Caged

7 November 1854

I grow increasingly weary of our arduous passage aboard the Penelope. Despite having resupplied two fortnights previous at the Cape of Good Hope, we have all but exhausted our food stores, save the salted meat, which, being as yielding as a hunk of shoe leather, is unsatisfying to say the least. On a more favorable note, it has not rained for quite some days. On this night, like most others, I prefer my solitary place on the rear of the weather deck, pondering the vastness of life in the dark waters of the slow moving sea.

Elijah's hand hovered momentarily over the bound parchment as he contemplated other possible missives to include in his sea-journal. With a reluctant sigh, he replaced his dip pen in its silver case and scowled at his spidery script. What he previously surmised to be an opportunity for adventure after his grueling years at Oxford turned out to be a tedious and miserable affair.

He realized now, four months into his journey to Penang, that he did not have the slightest idea of what to expect when Mr. Gregory Sexton petitioned him to accompany one of his spice trade vessels to India. He certainty had not been foolish enough to envision himself in courageous battles with pirates like Olaudah Equiano, but his humble imaginings of exploring abroad with all the trappings of the English gentleman he so unquestionable was vanished from his mind after the first month sipping brackish water and sleeping in the pig's trough also known as the crew's quarters.

Moreover, what little of the world he'd seen from his prison of driftwood was immensely disappointing. It seemed the only sight left to him was the endless blue world folding around him, smothering as chimney ash on a rainy London day. Despite the lack of tea, decent food, or any form of general cleanliness, his life would be greatly improved if he managed to survive the journey and married Miss Victoria Sexton. He attempted to focus on these more cheerful thoughts as he rose from his cramped position on the floor of the deck, pausing to glare at the dark ocean over the railing. The moment he turned away, dejectedly resigning himself to yet another sleepless night in a swaying hammock, a soft splash sounded from the water.

Elijah quickly turned back toward the shadowy sea, gripping the splintered rail and squinting into the Stygian darkness.

The face of a woman shone up at him from the black waters, skin silvery as the moon. Her visage was the only modicum of light in the abyss, a lone firefly glowing in a haunted fairy-tale forest. Elijah leaped backward, the backs of his ankles colliding with a coil of rope lying in wait behind him, like a snake about to strike. He tumbled to the deck floor, the smooth palms of his gentleman's hands alighting with the sting of newly procured splinters. 

Unable to contain a sharp cry of surprise, two sailors rushed forward to ascertain the source of the commotion. Discovering Elijah lying supine in an entanglement of ropes, they pursed their lips together in a failed attempt to keep their laughter at bay. 

"There's a woman in the water!" Elijah cried out, detaching himself from his twine prison and leaping to his feet. The sailors exchanged silent expressions, which loudly proclaimed their lack of faith in his current mental faculties. Snatching up the frayed heap of rope, Elijah rushed to the rail and cast it over the side. 

"What a'ya doin' with that?" One of them bellowed, seizing the rope from Elijah's limp grasp and hauling it ship-side.

"Are you a'right, Mr. Erickson?" The second sailor inquired, peering anxiously at him.

Elijah ignored him, staring steadily into the obsidian waters. Light from the ship's windows played off its glossy surface, smooth as cut glass, without hint of a splash or struggle. 

8 November 1854

Tales of my midnight soiree with "Mr. Erickson's Sea Phantom" circulated the Penelope twice over by the time I arose to take my breakfast -- further evidence that sailors gossip more ardently than London ladies at afternoon tea. Despite their verbal castigation against my rationality, I refuse to relinquish my account of things. 

Though unable to provide sound proof of my testament, my memories of the event are indisputable, if only to myself. As I decline to entertain the possibility that this lengthy and vexatious journey has driven me to madness, I must accept the potentiality that supernatural forces may be at work in this desolate and savage corner of the world. 

Elijah hurriedly slammed shut his sea-journal without a second thought for the still wet ink now smearing its way across the rippled, water-logged pages. Had he honestly been contemplating belief in spirits and sirens? And if not, was he mad? He did see the woman, he was absolutely certain. 

Regardless of potential jests from the crew, Elijah squandered the remainder of his evening roaming the rear of the weather deck, his eyes locked on the smooth waters, anticipating the reappearance of the lady and with her, the affirmation of his sanity. 

10 November 1854

Before Elijah had the opportunity to press his pen to his worn journal, a soft splash resounded from the quiescent waters below. He froze, abruptly cognizant of how alone he was on the deck. Setting his journal carefully on one of the weather-beaten barrels lining the interior of the deck, he rose and with a tentative amble, walked to the rear rail. 

Timorously peering over the edge and into the gloom, he spied the woman's face once again, gleaming up at him from the dark waters. Robbed of all breath, he simply stared at her. Her delicate, pale hands clung to the stern of the ship, allowing it to tow her gently along. Her face was an angelic vision, and if he dared to imagine her in Victorian dress she would be one of London's finest ladies. Hair hanging in tangled, interlocking ropes trailing behind her like seaweed in the ship's current.

Though most of her body was concealed by the inky cloak of the sea, her bare, dewy shoulders reflected back the moonlight like a thousand infinitesimal diamonds. The woman of the water stared up at him unblinkingly with her alien eyes, so much like a fortune-teller's crystal ball in the way they seemed to absorb and comprehend every bit of his soul while giving nothing in return. They were as black as the night, as the abyssal water, as a shark's eyes peering carnivorously at marine life a thousand leagues beneath the sea's shimmering surface. 

"I...am called Elijah Erickson," he stammered, at a complete loss for what to say now that he regained the ability to articulate. The woman's mouth was framed with lush pink lips, but could she speak? 

"Elijah Erickson," he repeated, gesturing toward himself. 

The sea sprite opened her mouth to reveal dual rows of needle-like teeth, expelling a breathy hiss in his direction. Elijah stumbled backward in shock, unable to discern whether his sanity was reaffirmed or completely obliterated by the woman's reappearance. 

By the time he regained enough composure to return to the ship's rail and glance over the edge, she had vanished once more into the primordial depths.

15 November 1854

Every evening that I've spent alone on the weather deck has been associated with the sea-woman's reappearance, save the 12th and 13th, which, due to inclement weather, I remained below. Through my observations, I have gleaned that the sea-woman is incapable of speech, her mouth ostensibly a tool used solely for mastication and consumption. Two evenings past, I was able to glimpse her bare breasts and the edge of what looked to be a tail as she retreated into her native waters. 

Due to the sea-woman's nonexistent conceptions of language, clothing or any discernible cultural customs, as well as her amphibious body parts, such as her eyes and apparent tail, I am forced to assume she is a being of inhuman origin, supernatural or otherwise. 

I have also noted her unwillingness to appear above the surface when others are about, or during the daylight hours. On account of this obstinate disposition, I am her sole observer, and I have resolved to record every detail I am able regarding her being before docking at Penang. 

Elijah deposited his treasured sea-journal into his shabby rucksack before taking a long stretch, wandering over to the starboard rail and scrutinizing the turquoise ocean as it swept quietly by. It was not quite sunset and the crew was still dashing about, adjusting ropes and pulleys and shouting incomprehensible orders to one another. 

Within the fortnight prior, Elijah realized that he hadn't the slightest clue what he was doing on the Penelope. Did Mr. Sexton truly intend to marry Elijah to his daughter, or was this ludicrous voyage some sort of extravagant ploy to remove him from English society and deposit him on a God-forsaken shore where no one would recall his existence?

He could not help but observe the blue-green of the Indian Ocean was to same color as Miss Sexton's dress on the eve of his fated departure. They glided across the ballroom floor to Louis Spohr, her gloved hands gripping his own, following his lead with a proper mix of grace and proprietary reserve. When they retired to an elegant stone balcony, one of Mr. Sexton's men acted as an unwilling chaperon, glowering beside the opulent French doors. 

Elijah sensed Miss Sexton's desire to be alone in his presence, as if she had something she yearned to communicate to him. He also sensed her disappointment at her father's intransigent insistence that they were not to be left alone together. Miss Sexton was a handsome enough young lady, and utterly precise in every courtesy, yet Elijah did not know her at all. 

Ladies, however, were not meant to be learned or unraveled, their inconsequential secrets trifling to the refined gentleman's eye. Miss Sexton was merely the first step on the stairway to consequence, the means to a substantial title. All Elijah ever desired was to be an accepted member of the gentry, to have his ideas entertained by significant ears. 

Since his dream's inception, he examined and refined it, turning it over and over in his mind as frequently as a treasured keepsake, until it had been worn to perfection. It was now so infallibly pure that as the first rays of its golden light began to reflect on his solid reality, it surreptitiously transformed into something of a gilded cage. 

The dream slipped cruelly between the cracks of his mind in the nascent of its realization, leaving him as empty as the relentless blue world closing in all around him. The ceaseless indigo sky morphed from violet to ebony, the stars crystallizing above him like rock candy blossoming on foreign twigs. His thoughts brushed again over the image of the sea-woman, delicately, as if examining her form too closely would shatter her actuality, confining her once more to the land of myth. 

Her beauty was baffling and her mystery magnetizing. More than once, he envisioned pursuing her into the fathomless, incalculable depths, allowing the cocoon of dark water to envelop him like a child seeking reassurance in his mother's bosom, erasing everything that had been and would be. 

As the remainder of the crew departed boisterously into the mess, Elijah leaned hopefully over the rear rail, his every muscle taut with anticipation, like one more glimpse of her was enough to send him vaulting into the deep. The moon danced imperceptibly across the diamond-studded sky, and still she did not come. 

Elijah did not retire until the first flaming fingers of dawn reached across the heavens. 

17 November 1854

Five tireless days have passed since I last saw the sea-woman. I have painstakingly recorded every perceivable detail of her countenance into this journal, and I believe there is no more to be said without a more comprehensible investigation. However, it is a possibility she has abandoned her interest in my person just as I have reached the zenith of my preoccupation with her. 

Her phantasm recurs ceaselessly in my waking dreams, permitting me little sleep. Every day that passes aches tenfold with the void of her absence. I cannot say why this vexes me so, but I am a man tortured. I feel as if I wandered afresh from Plato's cave and received the gift of the sun, only to have it ripped away from me just when its warmth penetrated my bones. 

With a flick of sand to dry the ink, Elijah closed his journal and tucked it away. His gaze lingered on the setting sun as he prepared himself for another disappointing night, wandering the weather deck alone like a forlorn ghost. He realized in the last few lingering, lonely nights that the death of his dream came with the birth of another. 

He was deceiving himself all along with false notions of greatness, of gold and titles and acknowledgment. When all those superficial ideas were sloughed off like his own sunburned skin, he was left as nothing more than a hollow vessel, ferrying emptiness to nothingness. But she changed everything, the majestic maid of the sea. That a creature like her should exist exposed the lie his reality so clearly was. 

For the first time in his life, he felt something. An emotion so pure and so real that the infallibility of his dreams could not even begin to tarnish it. If there could be nothing else but this feeling, this awakening of his senses, of his self, then it would be enough. 

The moon rose with seeming reluctance against the backdrop of velvet sky. An hour lapsed by before Elijah was bold enough to look over the railing. His breath caught in his throat as her moonlit face gazed up at him with those fathomless black eyes.

A rapid breath, then another. His heart thundering like the ocean in a tempest. Fists clenched at his side. The sea-woman relinquishes her hold on the ship and begins to float away from him, farther and farther out to sea. A minute, then two, but Elijah will not allow time to take this chance from him.

Clambering over the splintered rail, he leaps into the sea. The water is warmer than he expected. The ship's lights vanish into the nebulous horizon. He does not call out and no one notices his departure. He treads water in the crisp, clear cut dark until the ship's lanterns are nothing more than an abstract reminiscence. 

He is alone now in the abyss, save the stars casting their undying light over the inky water, and a pale, sodden hand fiercely gripping his own.