The poet and the sea

"I'm so sorry... I can't let you in." The captain said firmly.

He was getting too old for his trade. He’d been on this ship for a month— and he was already far too tired of eating salted pork, tired of the landlubbers he’d been forced to ferry, and tired of this insufferable youngster, who’d spent the past week insisting to speak with the captain’s most important guest—who’d expressly demanded never to be disturbed.

"I apologize, sir," said the young, well-dressed courtier timidly. "but I have urgent business to discuss with the poet... and that before we reach the next port."

He removed a ring from his gem-laden right hand and showed it to the captain. The captain had wondered about the rather nondescript wooden band; now that he saw the seal on top of it, he understood.

He had no choice.

"So that's who she is." He muttered, furious.

The gray-haired, sickly-looking woman had showed up minutes before he was set to sail. Before he could give her a harried refusal and demanded she wait for the next ship, she’d produced an outrageous sum of money— more than a month’s salary for the captain— and a piece of paper.

You'll take me to the new continent— I'll take your best cabin. I will not tolerate interruptions during the voyage. You'll receive twice this sum when we reach the continent.

The captain was not one to ask questions; he accepted the strange, silent woman's proposal, put in a good mood by the tinkling, shiny cash now in his possession. He became nervous when the anonymous young man who boarded the ship three ports later—though he traveled alone, he was obviously a courtier—asked to speak to her. When the man uttered the word poet, the captain started to sweat.

That red seal was the last straw.

The captain would have to do without the strange woman's tip— his life was dearer to him.

He opened the cabin with the spare key, praying that Neptune would spare him further trouble on this voyage. The woman had not minded servants coming in with food, or reporting on the voyage. The captain could only hope she would be similarly nonplussed by the courtier's visit.

True to form, the woman—the poet— did not turn around when the door opened.

She was sitting on a desk, which she'd pushed up by the open window. She was writing.

"It's very strange." The captain said. "Since the voyage started— about a month ago— she hasn't moved from this spot. She does nothing more than practice calligraphy."

The king's emissary, whose name was Reuben, stepped slowly towards the poet, as if she were a wild animal he would rather not startle.

"Is she who I think she is?" The captain asked.

"Shiva." Reuben said. The poet failed to turn around at the mention of her name. "The king gave her permission to go on a short voyage— two weeks at most. He thought the sea would help her."

The captain laughed loudly; the poet did not react.

"Help her? The sea just sinks her."

"Sinks her?"

"Yes." The captain nodded sagely. "It happens to all poets; I've seen it before."

The king's emissary sighed. "They're so fragile... it's a pity the king took a fancy to this one."

The poet in question—Shiva—smiled vaguely and continued in her practice with the letter L.

"How does the king fare?" She asked.

The two men started at the sound of her voice, amused and hoarse from disuse.

"The king is well, Poet." Answered the messenger, solicitous. "Though he misses your presence at court."

The poet kept her eyes on the sea outside, chuckling at the thought of the old king's chagrin.

"I regret that I must say it... I trusted that, in a place like this, there'd be no need. But you committed the imprudence of climbing onto this ship, young man, and chasing me  to the high seas. So you'll have to take my message to the king."

Reuben shivered. "What message?"

"The king will have to find his own words." The poet sentenced. "I won't sell him mine any longer."

The captain unholstered his pistol and shot through the poet's head, towards the sea. The king’s messenger jumped backwards, slamming against the wall with fright. The poet fell heavily, with the tide, sideways off the chair. Her left hand still clutched the pen, and she never lost her mocking smile.

“Quickly!” The captain said. “Help me get rid of the corpse.”

Reuben nodded wordlessly. The two men hoisted the poet’s body through the ship’s door and out to the sea, where it sank like a lump of lead under the weight of the words that still remained inside her.

“I knew it.” The king’s messenger whispered. “I knew it… she betrayed the king, like all the rest of her kind.”

“And you’ll tell him that?” The captain asked. “After arriving on my ship?”

The captain remembered well what had happened a couple years prior, when the last poet had fled the king’s service. The poet— a young man of seventeen with big, weepy dark eyes and a pianist’s hands— was guillotined. The smuggler who’d aided him, in contrast, was crucified. He’d hung on the main square, crying out for water, for almost a week.

The previous poet, as the captain remembered, was killed before he could be brought to justice. The poet’s killer, and the messenger who reported to the king, were mercifully shot.

The king’s emissary seemed to remember it, too— he paled.

The captain left the poet’s cabin and changed course immediately. The ship landed on a remote island that appeared on no map, where a strange people spoke a strange language. The captain knew of the existence of this island because a poet had told him of it.

The captain let his crew go, sold his ship and never returned home. Reuben, the king’s messenger, stayed on the island for a few years. Against his better judgement— against his will, in a way— he became a poet.