Betokened

*Pasture of Light

It was the start of a perfect day when the Fisher scanned the western horizon of the island. He sat beneath a tree’s branch, looking up under the vacant stars, and counted constellations while he awaited the slow-to-rise sun. In the early mornings, he recalled the age-old stories of their creation which had been passed down to him by his ancestors. This was his time and place to inherit the sand, so the fantastical details of astrology and meteorology were his alone to safeguard. Suddenly he watched as a fiery blue star fell, streaking silvery across the upper limits of the sky past the dark heap of land behind him. 

“A good sign.” He thought.

Looking dead ahead once more, a spark emerged slowly from the far edge of darkness. The closest star, the sun, was beginning its own life, casting gem-like apparitions from the edge of sky into the lapping waves. Within a moment, the small cap transformed into a fiery molten white semicircle, which saturated the folds of distant clouds in a blood-red dye. A confirmation of the betokened clear day.

“Dash of blue and a red sky in morning, makes for Boaters rewarding…” Whispered the Fisher to himself, as he sat up with a firm smile and brushed sand from his trousers.

Teetering forward onto his half-buried walking stick, he grabbed a lunch pale and trailed down to the shoreline. 

Walking along it, he came to a cove of rock and damp mounded sand, where a bobbing boat slept, lashed onto a wooden jetty.

The Boater was leaning against a moss-eaten post by his dormant ship when he heard the Fisher’s creaky boot step and tapping stick approach. He tugged a wide brim rubber hat downwards like a knight's visor and squinted below it, wobbling out forward to take up a blocking stance on the dock.

“No sneaking up on me! Who goes there?” 

“It’s me Boater, I thought you’d forgotten the Porter’s tales of Robbers by now?” Said the Fisher in his usual calm response, as he delivered a hearty pat to the shoulder of the old sentry and stepped aboard the vessel. 

The Boater remained in his steadfast pose for a moment, but ultimately let down his guard and hobbled onboard, skillfully lighting a pipe. He struck a match with a one-handed flick as he climbed masterfully over the ropes. 

“Can’t never forget a dangerous tale. Might be wrong, but better to be wrong with breath than right with Death! You're lucky t'wasn't armed this morning Fisher.” He tapped his pipe against his hip then pointed it westwards. “Say, d’ya see the sky by chance this morn’? Little blue streak, and that red luster, a good day’s haul no?”

Though the Boater regarded stars as truths, he wasn’t as sure of his decryptions as the Fisher seemed to be.

“A real beauty, silver gilded sea’s and cloudless skies today!” Is all the Fisher needed to utter for the day to begin. The Boater always took comfort in the Fisher’s poetic diagnosis of the heavens. 

Not another word was spoken between the two men for the remainder of the day’s work, as even sneezes or loss of footing from one was always followed promptly with a well meaning grunt from the other. Non-verbal language was their preferred mode of communication.

The Boater steered along the foaming currents expertly and grumbled obscenities at deck birds between his pipe and teeth, occasionally throwing a stone from his pocket at those that dared to near his helm. All the while, the quick Fisher methodically maintained baited hooks, mechanically returning lines and nets from the sea onto the deck below. Lines went out, nets were dragged in, and within half the day, half the vessel’s fuel was exchanged for a barrel full of silvery fish and blue crabs. The pair worked in perfect unison, as a hammer and nail would, both reliant on the other in mutual livelihood. There were many different trades and professions on the island, but none worked as intimately on their craft’s together, save maybe the Smith his Apprentice.

A prompt lunch was taken when the sun was highest in the sky, and both men found themselves retired separately to eat, occupied by their own respective meals and pastimes. The aged Boater sat in his cabin and played some lude sea shanties on a wooden stringed instrument, stopping only to nibble at a wrapped cheese between sips from a jar of potent alcohol. The seaman cursed the women passed in his life, and reserved a special teary eyed ballad last for his most recently escaped sweetheart, who he couldn’t quite remember past a vague few syllables- “Ma, Me, Mar- Mavis perhaps?”

The young Fisher below made his lunch from a tacklebox, while seated quietly under the shaded awning of the stern, dangling his legs above the water. He ate a chicken sandwich with a wide palm of lettuce spilling out from its seams, and sipped from a sloshing metal canteen of milk. He finished quickly, and retrieved a warped paperback book from his long coat pocket, to begin where he had left off. 

He kept his prized stories stocked among a humble bookshelf of his cottage, and put one in his coat before setting out for the beach every morning. Other than some of the adventure nonfiction and fish research books, which were written just off shore, most literature found on island and in his collection were written and printed locally. His favorite genre to turn over in his few unoccupied hours was that of romantic fiction, which was fortunate, seeing that it was one of the few genres to be found in abundance in the town’s dusty shops.

The paperback he was flipping through now was about a mermaid, who’d fallen from the stars, and found herself washed away, far down an inland stream after becoming disoriented during a storm. She happens upon a veteran ferry boat captain who, in exchange for her ancestral gem necklace, promises to guide her back through the channels, and eventually to the shores of the heavens she aired from. He’d probably fall in love with her or something, that always happens in these books.

The moon winked at him from the corner of the horizon, time to get on. He earmarked it and folded up his meal’s contents into the tin box. The slightly boozed pilot of the vessel hobbled back to his helm swiftly. Upon a slight nod of affirmation between the two, the ship engine groaned and sputtered forward once more, taking up its former domain. She was the uncontested sea-monster of these waters.

With the cyclic laboring finished and the whale's appetite satisfied, the lines were reeled in and packed up, as the ship’s point was turned towards shore.

The sun had almost reached the black peaks of the island’s crags, while at its base, the ocean’s tides swelled the pale beachline. A radiant hue of rose and orange tinted itself against the cloud peppered sky, bathing the water and vessel below it in a sherbet dimness. From behind this lightshow, crept the approaching night, which was bespeckled with dim stars, beginning to stretch their lashes. Though darkness grew, the Boater steered expertly between sharp jutting masts of rock, shooting glances above to dead-reckon his course with the tip of the Eastern Scythe, a well known constellation trusted to bring northbound Boaters home east from storms.

 A pair of pale sea bird’s flocked to the top railing, anticipating the free ride home. The Boater benevolently permitted the winged stowaways. He was out of stones.

**The Fallen Mermaid

The Fisher hung over the railing, dipping his stick in the front wake listlessly while he scanned a large rock they neared. He couldn't remember a time where he was unable to recall the minutest detail about the island’s features. He saw how spring was just starting to show its pale yellow signs among the mossy sides and grass which draped lazily over the edges of the cliff.

Just as he was looking out, a green glimmer caught his eye. Following the flicker to its source, he made out a jittering shape, cast from just below the dark marble surface of the water at the foot of a remote sea stack off their port. Through the white frothy tide that beat against the rock, it was impossible to make it out, at least for most men’s eyes. 

“Boater-” 

The captain of the helm was pulled from the daze of his tranquil humming, and looked down at the Fisher below with narrowed eyes, unsure if he had really heard him.

The engine was lowered a click.

“Ya say something son? Speak up!”

The Fisher took some hurried steps to the center of the deck and pointed over at the lonely rock’s direction.

He repeated solidly, “There, something with a shine to it. Just off the portside”

The Boater scanned the far rock with strained eyes and scratched at his stubbled chin before returning with a nod to the young lad. 

“Aye. Seen it too. I’ll pull her around, ready the gaff.”

The nearly blind helmsman who almost certainly hadn’t seen a thing, was too proud to admit otherwise. 

Nonetheless, the ship edged its course towards the stack, as the engine tugged away gently. It wasn’t uncommon for a smaller ship or a dinghy delivering Vacationers to be carried out past too far by the temperamental tide, so the two veteran seamen weren’t too weary of bringing the ship around to get a closer look. Coming to its right flank, the idle was set low, as the boat drifted gracefully into position just out of reach from the rock. 

The Fisher speared the gaff in and began raking, slowly working the water by the boat’s side, as the Boater hung cautiously over the top cabin, leaning with a grip on the railing. He tugged at his pipe impatiently while he tried to get a good look at what it was they were searching for. 

 Before calling it quits, the Fisher set the gaff down, removed his coat, folding it atop his boots, and amid a volley of curses from the disapproving Boater above, he dove in. The pair of birds on the railing took advantage of the stillness to head to shore on their own wings, and departed with a few squelches, an outburst that startled the pacing captain.

The Fisher sprang out of the water coughing and was quickly helped back on board by the Boater, all the while being lectured about the dangers of imprudent Fishers and the likelihood of treacherous sirens to pray upon such careless men. When he had recovered, he dropped a dark and round object that was in his hands onto the deck with a thud, and took some steps back, now standing dripping wet near the Boater looking down at it. The two men looked on in silence at the anomaly laid before them. 

It was unlike anything they had seen, and was very clearly not naturally originated. It was about two fists in width and perfectly round as an orb. Its surface was sleek, smooth and wet, and rendered not a seam or scratch in to be found. It was clear it hadn’t been assembled from different pieces, and was homogeneous; being of the same dense glass-like element through and through, like a meticulously cut gem. 

“What the devil is that?” The Boater finally spoke up, in a half choked whisper from behind.

Before an answer could be supplied, the object began to illuminate from within, streaking lines of emerald light through the cracks in the deck as a musical ominous chiming rang out. They backed away a step further and exchanged a pair of wild glances. 

As it rolled under the shadow of the pilot’s deck, the light and sound died away to glossy darkness. The Fisher stepped around the anomaly in the manner of a hunter pacing his netted beast. He squatted and cocked his head sideways to study it while the rocking boat rolled it gently around the deck. Seeing the Fisher was now moving ever closer with his stick in hand, the Boater ejected a low and firm warning of “Careful”. The Fisher nodded, and prodded the orb until he had it pinned against a raised board in the open which still had some sunlight clinging to it. 

The deep blackness of its material was spotless, with a few drops of seawater beading off it immaculately. Just then, as the men watched, it grew to life in the sun light, giving off a bright green and blue flutter of light, which worked their way from the edges like lightning bugs, this time connecting, forming a single burning core in the center of the apparently translucent stone. It hummed a single unbroken tone, similar to the underwater resonance of whales, growing and dying in synchronization with the pulsing light from within.

“Unworldly… It’s-” The Boater took up the gestures of a frantic Preacher as he searched for the air above his hat for the words, pointing a frenzied finger down at the gem. 

“Unworldly! And dangerous is what it is, Fisher! Mark my words carefully son, the Witch's instrument such as this isn’t to be trifled with. Overboard with it.” he decided resolutely, tugging his hat down firmly and crossing his arms.

The Fisher was too mystified with the shape that danced inside the stone to heed any words. Summoning his courage, he took his coat and laid it over the stone, attentively wrapping it like a gift before lifting it slowly. As soon as it was covered, the light and sound suspended once more.

“It’s no danger to us Boater, see? You’re too superstitious for your own good. I could bring this to the village tomorrow to show the learned men. They may have answers.”

The old sailor shook his head like a pendulum and retorted, “Curses on the ‘learned men’ is the only thing you’ll be bringing home! Have you not heard what I've said? An unnatural relic such as the one you hold is best to be tossed overboard with the chum. I don’t know as much as any star-gawking Professor, I surely never will be as studious a lad as you, but-” He tilted his chin up high in superior finality, “but I DO know it’s not wise to dip a toe into bewitchment. For ‘a toe dipped in foiled waters is a toe to go’ .”

“ ‘Dipped in foul waters’ you mean.” Corrected the Fisher distractedly without taking his eyes off the bundled up orb.

The Boater's shoulders relaxed as his face darkened over sourly. He snapped his pipe back into the corner of his teeth, and stormed back up the dinky ladder to the helm. 

“Keep you’re pretty words, and your stone then. But don’t say I didn’t warn ya’ boyyo.” 

“Boater, I-”

“Pull that gaff in now, we're to be heading back. It’s getting much too dark.” He said pointedly.

The Fisher, having worked several fruitful years with the captain, felt keenly abashed to have angered the old spirit. Nonetheless, he knew an apology would never be in order, and the only proper way of remedying bad blood between the pair would be time and silence. He racked the gaff up and tucked the wrapped object underneath his lunch tin by his foot, as the boat turned slowly to aim towards the shore.

***Snuffed Lanterns

After the ship was all tied down and the haul unloaded, the Fisher turned and made his way to the jetty’s entrance.

The old Boater cleaned and adjusted the instruments of the vessel, the same one he slept in every night, stopping only briefly to call back to the Fisher.

“Make sure you get a good price for those pairs of spears we snagged! I should suspect the Cutter will pay a good price for the sword on the big one we hauled, he’s a habit to be collecting them for his shop wall.”

“Aye, I’ll get it offloaded in the market first thing in morn’. You won’t be needing me tomorrow?” 

“Nay, just a net load or two I’m planning. Besides, I don’t need any more omens being dragged aboard my vessel.” Said the Boater grimly as he turned to complete his scrubbing.

The Fisher called goodnight and went to join the Porter by his wagon. After seeing the payload and Porter off up the cobble road with a wave, he turned some 5o paces up and faced out at the dark cove below. The object underneath his arm vibrated like a rolling wave breaking below a ship’s bow. He pushed aside the coat and revealed the face of his treasure. Its muffled humming became clear with the moon’s pale reflection, which danced off it gaily. The little white crescent seemed to sink down into its hard surface and collected at the center, forming a tumultuous molten core of lime-etched red which rippled in an angry hum. Looking up, at the horizon, he took note of a peculiarly blood red lining at the edge of the blackness, with a singular, almost imperceptible, speckle of green at its center point. A warm wind scrubbed his right ear from the northern cliffs, while an icy western breeze nipped at his left. He nodded, finally comprehending the sign..

“Ay, core of green and a red line at night- Boaters take fright.”

He watched as the Boater’s wide hat ducked under the cabin door and a lantern lit from behind a port curtain snuffed out. Some lonely stringed notes and lyrics were heard echoing from within. He knew he’d probably stay up drinking all night before his work tomorrow.

The Fisher re-wrapped the gem under his arm and continued up the beach path, away from the boat. He mused, staring thankfully up at the throned night above him, “Every man must interpret his own stars.”