The Mother of the Lost

Once, in the days before your father, and his mother, and many layers through your ancestral tree, the sea was a place to be feared. Mountainous waves rabid with frothing foam slammed into each other in a frenzy, grinding cliffs to dust and pulling creaking ships to the darkest trenches. Lightning scurried across the sky to dip into the salty spray, and fling itself back towards the heavy quilt of ominous cloud. The sea was feared by all mankind and overcome by none.

Except me.

I danced in the frantic crashing of waves, and I lay, gazing at constellations, surrounded be the vast dark expanse. The sunbeams pierce the endless water, and would I dive and float and twist the jellyfish's lacy arms into ornate braids, and I was free. Humanity, with their muddied souls and cries for forgiveness, knew nothing of my freedom, of the power and bliss of a nymph. They build ports that jutted tenaciously into my shallowest waters, and I granted this territory to them.

But in the dim moonlight, a skinny, shaking girl in tattered clothes, shushing and swaying her silent bundle of rags would occasionally intrude into my smooth cliffs, and leave her package nestled into a ledge, to be swallowed by the creeping tide. In exchange for the shallowest shelves of my infinite home, I take the unwanted to me, and hold them close to my bosom. And as the ocean laps at the babe, cast off from her mother, I gather the small one in my arms, and rock her to sleep, and wrap her in the softest green silks of the sea. My children. Adira, with her strong brown arms and sparkling eyes; Daryah, who dances in the cold rain of swirling ocean storms; Thalassa, the one who weaves and combs out the waving sea grass.

But my son, my only son, was delivered to my arms with much less grace.

“Almost there, girl. Now push with all your being!” The wrinkled old midwife leaned over a clammy, exhausted young woman and bared her yellow molars in a grin. Deirdre arched her back and gave a deep groan as her firstborn child slid into the midwife's gentle, gnarled hands. She slumped back and took a deep, full breath of the sweet midnight air. A thin wail cut the silence. “Is it a son? A son?” She panted. Deirdre opened her heavy eyelids to see the old woman's solemn face. “Indeed, an heir. But he bears a misfortune.” She held up the newborn, still red and warbling and gasping in the cool air, to reveal his right arm, twisted and small, held in tight close to his chest. “It will never grow strong, you understand? Cannot work in the field or cast a line, or ever use his arm.” The woman reached for a small knife, shaking her head slowly, and severed the cord. She handed the boy to his mother, pink and naked and writhing. Deirdre held her son to her breast, rocking on her heels, and wept for him.

All was still, all was stone, through the village, the forest, the cliffs. Only the stream, silver in the cold moonlight, could be heard gurgling and giggling and tinkling over the smooth stones, and even this was muted by a veil of ocean mist. A shrouded figure stepped from the trees and began a barefoot descent to the shoreline. The echoes mimicked each muted footstep and hushed whisper to each other in their hollows, hollows in the crags of slick black stones, behind dripping water and velvet green moss.

At the base of the cliff, where the water lapped the stones, and pushed ribbons of kelp and shells of creatures long forgotten, Deirdre tugged her cloak from her plaited hair and examined her bundle. A tightly-woven basket, her warm, sleeping infant son tucked away inside. She sets the basket down in the soft dry sand and wades out into the waves, still lapping, lapping, lapping at the cliff side. “Nymph! I know not your name, nor of your earthly title. I cannot protect my son; I cannot provide him a life; lo if love were enough to sustain, he should live in wealth. Sweep him away, for I trust in your mercy, and see you as more fit than I!” While I heard her words and felt them near, I hid away in the cliff side as she wept and cradled her babe, and tucked him back and kissed him sweetly.

As I crawled from the dew and moss of my shelter, the orange sun kissed the horizon and sent it blushing warmth up to the fading stars, and set a pink glow about the wisps of cloud retreating towards the west. I pluck him from the basket and hold him close, swaddling him in the cold ocean waves and whispering in his little golden ear each secret that the moon holds dear. His name is Llyr. He is mine. He is perfect. All of the lost ones, my babes swept from the shore, rejoice. We dance and leap and sing, the fish flash their colored scales as they swarm and twirl through the water. A great whale breaches the surface and sprays a cool misty spout, and it whistles and warbles and serenades us with a golden aria. The night is long. It is full. It is beautiful. We all settle in a grotto, crabs and scallops welcome us in and we all lay on the soft bed of sand and sleep, and I kiss each of them on the nose as they dream.

I awake and something is terribly wrong. My son. Llyr. Where? Where has he gone? I swish about the children; he is nowhere. I burst through the surface of the water, my heart fluttering and twisting, grey clouds brewing behind me. Where is he? Then I catch it. The smell. The stink of rot. Slime. Death. A bright bolt of lightning leaps down, fractures, splinters and crashes into the swelling waves. The kelpies have him, stole him, the water murmurers. Go save him, get him. Kelpies are a monstrous breed. They moan their lullabies, their hymns to an unknown god, as they lay draped over stones and clinging to spires like eels, deep under the waves, deep in the dark, where no light will shine. They feast on flesh, rotting flesh, pulsing flesh, the souls of mankind. Their songs attract men from fathoms away, drive their sanity out and their boats into perilous, tremulous seas. I see them now, in the murk. Their serpentine bodies coil and uncoil, whip about and tangle in their frenzy around an unseen morsel. I cry out, I imagine their teeth ripping, shredding, and they halt, frozen and suspended in the gloomy water.

From their midst, their queen Sidero slithers out to meet me. Almost like an octopus, her tentacles graze and tickle every stone or weed she passes. Her eyes hold mine and they are intelligent, and blazing, and sorrowful. She holds my child, motionless, pale, and nods her condolences. She places him in my arms and now I weep for the loss of this child, and she banishes the hoard into the trenches and moats in the haze.

Sidero is the keeper of the drowned.

I clutch him and sob, salty tears drifting away in the salty sea, and it is as if I have made the entire ocean of my grief. I drift like this for hours, days, years, yet no time at all. When I return to my grotto, the dancing turns to grieving, our songs to wailing. Suddenly, a brilliant flash illuminates the depths. Neptune, the master of all the ocean, the lord of all its creatures, sweeps into our funeral procession on a glacial current and stares at us. He is terrifying and fills me with awe. I bow. My children bow. “An imbalance has taken place here.” His stormy eyes with slits for pupils meet mine, and his face is kind. “A soul was taken. I am here to return it. It is my ward, over this vast place, in all its danger, in all its beauty. You are my pride.” Neptune gestures to my babes, rescued from the tide, raised underneath it. “You have made me proud.” He swam off, enveloped by a shimmering school of fish, and was gone. We all wait, and a small spout of water eventually finds its path out of the little one's body. He gasps and I hug him fiercely, tightly, and never let go.

Once, in the days before your father, and his mother, and many layers through your ancestral tree, the sea was a place to be feared. It ground cliffs to dust and pulled creaking ships to the darkest trenches. It is still a place to be feared, but it is not only fear that dwells in it. The majesty we feel is shared as we leap from the peaks of waves, and dip our hands into bright algal blooms and explore the wending labyrinths of coral together. We are bound by love, and it makes us free.