By Moonlight

The moonlight leaks through the planks of this ruined house. When the wind blows terribly and the shutters rattle their discontent I watch silver droplets dance across the floor. I have been still too long already, but I cannot bring myself to depart.

I have almost been there; I have dreamt that long, cool grove where my brothers stand, proud and tall.

The men circle me, here in this desolate place, as I seek my echoes. They walk dangerous roads to avoid my little house. The stillest among them watch me—always from a distance—and speak in their strange tongue. Some have jolted near, angular limbs so like this frame I wear. They leave things. They circle about me, and I glimpse a forgotten suppleness. Perhaps they recognize this knowing. In their undulating shapes I remember the smooth risings, silvery bodies in dappled sea-light. 

I have built a world from the wreckage of my memories. It is how I know I live still: I let the past gnaw at me, boring holes, and when it tires something in me moves still, something it has yet to kill.

I am afraid. I am afraid that if I go to the sea I will not find my brothers, that I will know beyond doubt I am mad. Or worse: I will find them and they will not know me. It is better to linger, uncertain, playing house with my shadows and the clean moonlight.

Imagine: I drag my slippery body up from the sea onto the shore and shed my skin, peeling my flesh off and rebirthing myself to the hard earth. It is a hard, slow thing, this birth. I am uncertain without the warm embrace of water, but I wait. Stronger now, my bones move me further inland. I am shocked by the newness of it all: the trees, the jaggedness, the rocks, digging into me, the sounds, sudden and so very present. It is too much, and I crumble.

Among the stunted shrubs I lay. The night wanes, and soon I am burned by the harshness of the sun. Homesickness chokes me. Everything is so much, so here. I long for the soft, diaphanous sea, the cradle, the beginning. Even so, my flesh betrays me, seeks the shadow, and forces itself inland. Night after night I move this way, breaking against the ground. Loneliness engulfs me, but they are waiting.

I find them, in the grove. My skin is itching; I have worn this form too long. I see the echoes of my brothers in these strange wooden bodies. They move like the seawater that flows inside them. An open space, and I curl up in it. This birth is harder than the earlier one. Earth-skin does not flow; it must be torn. I tremble as I claw myself open, as the seawater pours out and lends its life to my brothers. In great chunks my flesh abandons me, and over my watery veins a thin wood grows. I am tired, and I slip into a dream of peace.

Seasons pass. Spring creeps along my boughs, autumn slips in through my roots. Then—winter, a long, slow spiral of cold. Others come, peel their Earth-flesh away, slow, harden. The years drift over me, and I watch my brothers change their faces. The old ones become older, the young ones older too. Life flits among my leaves, bird-song, worms in the deep earth. I grow restless again, my skin clinging to me.

Water spreads from my insides, pushing away the wood-skin. It rots off, sloughing to the ground. Again I am bare, again I become new. Smaller, tighter, I condense. Into the still, hard heart of it. The furthest from what I was, what I’ve been. Things move around me, under me, but do not touch me. Years pass, life-times. Bits of me flake off, by wind and water am I altered. The sea moves, out there. Change, fluidity, ebb and flow. Coming and going. My stillness begins to break itself. It is the end, the beginning; I return to the cradle. To the sea, and all the water in me sings out: the sea, the sea, the shining sea—

This is what should have been. It torments me in this vacant place. I crawled from the sea with my brothers, and fear found me. Who was I? Who am I? Can a man shed his skin? I hear the water, all my blood and bone crying, but I cannot leave. They might not know me, they might know me exactly, see my exhausted cowardice. The wind howls and the moonlight plays tricks on me. As the men dance through the shadows I see my brothers, I watch them leave me, turn to tree, to stone, to sea, while I linger. Sometimes I am sure I dreamt them all. 

The hour is late already. My skin is wrinkled. Age sits heavy on these shoulders, on a spine intended only to be a passing thing.

I remember. My first night on land. How crisp and sharp the air, how sudden the gravity. Strange limbs below me ached, a bewildering body. The worst moment, then. I turned, to enter the sea, to warmth and safety and home, and I could not. The waves pummeled me, this damning meat all bloodied and raw. I could not move properly, could not get past the breaking, the white-caps arching huge and black above me. My flesh stinging from the salt, the water, blessed water, filling my lungs, my eyes, my mouth, and I could not breathe it. Refusing me, the water spat me out, a broken little play-thing.

Brothers. Some moved forward, the bravest of us. A few, like me, tried to turn, but the sea scorned us all. Fewer, like me, sobbed in our silent way after this refusal, then dragged themselves inland. It is not our nature to keep still for long. I watched them move away from me. Soon, only I remained, with the moon and the wind and the water. 

I saw the moonlight catch the corner of this little house. A shelter. Wind was a strange thing to me, all unpredictable currents and sudden gusts. My new skin felt dry and foreign. I wept. Water leaked from my eyes. Terror, then. To lose a single, precious drop of the water—I clutched at it, rubbing it back into my flesh.

I watched my brothers move forward, inland to the grove. I felt the longing too, but I could not follow. Below burning stars they left me. I remained crumpled beside this little house until the sun crept over the world’s gray edge. In the garish light I saw men for the first time, moving along the beach. One of them saw me—cried out to others. They circled ever closer. One reached out to touch me and I opened my mouth to the sky, waiting to be devoured. But the figure withdrew, joined the others. For a time they lingered, gesturing. They left a pile beside me, small carven things.

I entered this little house, and I have not left. I watch the men call and circle from the doorway. They leave me offerings that I do not touch. I hear the water talking to itself through all the twisting hours. And I dream always of the sea.