The Call

The first time my fledgling lungs fill with air, its humid warmth almost makes me choke. It’s thick, somehow, so unlike the frigid waters of our gorge. As I rise from the sea, I can feel my salt-crusted shoulders already beginning to sting in the bite of the wind. So, I think, this is what it is like to live above. 

The sea mud seems to hold tighter to my feet with each step that I take towards shore. Footstep by footstep, I pull further from home. 

The lights of land are bright and diffuse in the heavy air; as I grow closer the spots of brightness solidify into lanterns, windows, dangling bulbs. Dark patches reveal themselves to be shacks and lean-tos, shambling storefronts, homes. Somewhere in this patchwork, someone is waiting for me. Even if they don’t know it yet. 

“We’re like whispers,” my father had explained. I was still a child then, scarcely bigger than the sharks who drifted lazily up from the trench. “We’re just out of human reach. They know they need something to make them complete, but when they try to grasp at it, it disappears.”

To demonstrate, he had blown a thin stream of bubbles out of his nose, and the two of us had watched them dissipate as they swirled up towards the water’s surface. They fizzled out one by one.

“When man requires conquest, Sadari meets them,” he had continued, gesturing to my brother’s chamber. “Innovation or inspiration, your sister Reya wades ashore. When it’s your time, you will feel the call and provide your missing piece, whatever it may be.”

He had looked down upon me with a distant pride. 

“Yarah, remember always that we are what holds their fractured world together. Because all life…”

A pause, a prompt to complete the phrase.

“...comes from the sea,” I had answered, dutifully, in my high voice. 

As I now make my way towards land, I feel the pull of human need churning deep within me. I have no way of knowing what I am destined to provide, now until the end of time. I am almost to the beach now; the water laps at my sand-scraped calves. The lights of town grow ever brighter as I enter the world of man. 

Though it must have been many years ago, the memory of Reya’s call still sits fresh in my mind. I had not been there to witness Sadari’s; he had first gone ashore long before I was born from the sand. 

I was braiding seaweed into her hair when she stiffened, slightly, under my hands. I thought I had harmed her somehow, and drew back. But she turned to me with a far-away look in her eyes.

“I feel it,” she whispered. “I feel a pull.”

After a word with our father, she began the trek to shore as he, Sadari, and I watched silently. Neither Reya nor the rest of us knew on which coast she would emergeーthe warmth of the tropics, the chill of a Nordic bay. That was a decision made by the sea.

She returned the next morning, her face flushed with excitement. The three of us gathered round herーthree, for Uros had not yet been bornーto listen to her tales. Words tumbling out of her mouth like pebbles, she spoke of the hours she spent in the seaside workshop of an aging inventor. 

“Inspiration,” she said, smiling. “I brought him inspiration.”

The two of them had let the night hours grow long by the light of the man’s candle; Reya had whispered an idea here, nudged his charcoal pencil there, gently bending his ideas. By morning light, he had the first plan of the steam engine etched into his paper. He would remember nothing of his time with Reya except fleeting moments: a soft hand guiding his, a flash of dark hair, the faint smell of salt. But the idea would remain.

To my young ears, Reya’s words glowed with importance, just as Sadari’s did when he would spin his own tales of sailing with the Greeks as they faced the Trojans or devising strategy in the tent of an American general. There was such honor to it all, and I felt the yearning for my own call stir within me hot and deep. How I would reappear at the mouth of the gorge, bursting with stories! How I would change the course of man’s history! I could scarcely force myself to bide my time.

I can feel the same excitement bubbling up within me now as the pull grows stronger. I weave through the streets of this coastal town, the dirt cool and rough on the soles of my bare feet. Though perhaps town is too strong of a word to describe the collection of dilapidated shacks and storefronts that has now enveloped me. 

The streets are nearly deserted save for a few stragglers yet to turn in for the night. To my left, a vendor is packing his unsold wares (beads, cloth) into a set of worn trunks. He does not look up as I pass. It would not matter if he did: his eyes would stare right through me, for my call does not lead to him. 

It’s a strange feeling, this pull, almost like having a cord slowly reel me towards some unknown destination. I have no choice but to let it move me. 

My feet finally stop in front of a hut so small it practically disappears into the brush behind it. And this building is truly meant to host some great changemaker? 

I pause for a moment before gently pressing the wooden door. It swings open freely on ancient hinges. The hut’s interior is barren, filthy, lit only by the faint glow of the moon through a paneless window. 

I can make out two figures in the corner. A shape lying down appears to be a small girl, and as my eyes adjust I can see her sleeping face is slick with feverish sweat. A woman is kneeling beside her with one hand on the child’s forehead. I can tell, certain as the tides, that many nights have passed in this fashion, a mother’s back arched over a child slipping away. 

Has my call somehow led me astray? There is no greatness in this shambling hutーno kings, no generals, no one of any import whatsoever. All the moon looks upon here is a kind of imminent grief. Has the pull towards land ever been wrong before?

But then the woman looks up and sees me, she sees me, and I know that there has been no mistake. Her eyes are filled with tears and a kind of faint recognition. I remember my father’s words: like whispers, just out of their reach. Somewhere, subconsciously, she has been expecting me.

“Are you here to take her away?” she whispers, her voice trembling. She lays her hands on the girl’s shoulders and hunches over as if to shield the child from me.

I am taken aback, unsure of what to say.

“No, Iー”

She me looks up and down, taking in my bare feet, my white tunic, the seawater dripping from my long hair.

“You are a spirit, aren’t you? One of the dead?”

Had Reya and Sadari felt this same loss for words? How do I possibly explain the nature of who I am? How do I articulate what I am meant to do when I myself do not know? 

“I’m not a spirit. I’m… something else. I’m here to provide help.”

She straightens up.

“Can you heal her, then?” 

In that moment I feel smaller than I ever have, smaller even than when I was a child, for I know that I cannot. My powerーand Sadari’s, and Reya’s, and Uros’s when his time comesーis that of suggestion only. I am a guide, not a manipulator of bodies or circumstances.

I answer truthfully.

“No,” I say.

But what, then, can I do? 

The answer comes to me slowly, timid at first but then more certain until it sits, solid, at my core. Silently, I kneel next to the woman and place my hand on her shoulder. She stiffens and turns to me, her eyes tired and wary. 

I reach deep and conjure every image of comfort I can remember: Sadari’s laugh as he chases me, darting through the gorge. The feeling of the sun in shallow water. Uros’s eyes beaming up at me with admiration as I teach him to braid seagrass.

My palm pressing gently into the mother’s shoulder, I let every shred of warmth and light I know or have ever known flow through my body and enter hers. Finally, her tense muscles loosen under my fingers and she leans into my touch. I hear her let out a shaky sigh of relief. 

Tonight, I will not reshape mankind; I will not help an empire rise or fall. But there are different, quieter, types of change. I will sit with this woman through the cool length of the night. I will bring her comfort under the silent watch of the moon. And in the morning, the sun will rise and bathe us with light.