STORIES FOR THE PEOPLE

I leave a white and turbid wake, pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. Yonder, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun – slow dived from noon – goes down; my soul mounts up! Is then, the crown too heavy that I wear? – Herman Melville (Moby Dick).

It has been a long and turbulent voyage since the Great Storm. We did not flee, but turned and sailed into its rabid maw.  We battled the mighty waves through the terrible night and on until dawn, and as the sun rose, there was nought but ocean to every side.  Since then, the flat line of the horizon has remained ever distant. We are lost on the deep blue plain.

At the stern I gaze across the waves, tumbling into one another like dancing spirits. The prow points bravely toward the setting sun, fresh salt wind fills the billowing sails, and the crew busy themselves on deck. As the sunlight fades the waves become shadows, whispering their stories to the stars. The crew sit with rum, swapping seafaring stories before sloping off to their hammocks below.

I do not follow. For me the night is peace. I light lamps and take my place at the wheel, steering our course through the oceanic darkness. The rise and fall of the ship, the gentle pat of the waves against the hull, the stars that wheel overhead, play together to soothe me. It is as if I am a part of the ship, myself bathed in the cold water, borne onward into the night.  

But what’s this? A clatter, and, from the edge of my vision, a shade slipping between the shadows.  “Ho there!” I call, “who walks?” Nothing; the wind knocking some unsteady object. I survey the deck with intent to spot what has fallen, but all is strapped down and in its right place. So, I return to my meditation and gaze to the middle distance beyond the prow. When the moon surmounts the mast top, I make the wheel safe and descend to the deck. I walk toward the bow and watch the moon’s pale reflection rippling in the water below.

At the foremast I pause. Something has caught my eye. My breath stops in my chest. The smooth line of the bowsprit is interrupted by a shadow, unmistakably human in form but far too small to be one of my sailors. I am no coward, but my belly has leapt and I am frozen to the spot, squinting to get a good look. I clutch one of the lamps in a shaking fist and raise it before me. I see a child-like figure. It has long, messy hair and is sat with its legs dangling, gazing away over the ocean. Unsticking my feet from the deck I force myself forward, croaking a “Hello?” 

The child’s face turns to watch me intently, curious yet fearful. I judge she is a girl by her features, though a ghostly one.  Sea water drips from her tangled hair, which is decorated with barnacles and clams. Seaweed and kelp cover much of her thin body, yet the skin that does show glows with a pale light. And her eyes, oh, they shine like venus and mars in the night sky. “So the sailors were not telling tall tales”, I whisper, “a moonchild”.

Instinctively, I reach into my pocket to find a piece of biscuit and hold it out. The child sniffs, swings her legs up onto the bowsprit and cautiously crawls toward me, with the balance of a wild creature. I move back slowly, coaxing her down the bowsprit. At the end, she looks down as if pondering for a moment, before dropping onto the deck with a soft thud. I drop the biscuit before her and she settles cross-legged, happily munching on it. 

The moonchildren are a legend told amongst sailors. When the moon is bright, they say, the children swim up from the depths, enchanted by its beauty, and are lost. Sometimes, they find their way to ships and clamber aboard, hiding in the shadows by day and coming out at night to wait, melancholic, for their people to find them. I look down at the poor creature, eating with such hunger, and feel pity.

Dropping more biscuit to occupy her, I move swiftly to my cabin and make a rough sketch. Returning in haste, and lifting the lamp, I show it to her: a ship on the sea, and below the surface two sea people, mother and father, with their daughter. She looks quizzical for a moment, then a shade of realisation passes over her face. She stops eating and drops her gaze, a tear rolling down her cheek. She looks out forlornly at the sea, raises one arm and off to starboard, toward the moon. To confirm, I point to port, a different direction, and make a questioning sound. Shaking her head vigorously she jabs her finger again, exactly toward the moon.

The wind is in our favour so no need to wake the crew. With an energy rising in my belly, I hasten to the wheel and guide the nose of the ship so that it splits that pale circle of light hanging in the sky. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and the cold wind whips up in gusts, and though the waves are driving toward us, the ship skims the ocean’s surface like a pebble on ice. I feel a tug on my trouser leg. Her face is beaming up at me with a wide, glimmering smile and she is glowing with an incandescence that drowns the light of the lamps. This way we stand, man and moonchild, the sketch still clutched tightly in her hand, as the stars wheel overhead and we speed across the sea. The blackness of the night fades to a deep blue and the first tinges of red-lit sunrise dapple the horizon. She hugs closer into me and I feel her tremble; but fear not little one, the moon still shines bright and brave.

Since the days of Homer’s Odysseus, sailors have feared the songs of the peoples of the sea. Sirens, he called them, whose song would entice any sailor into their arms, to a fate worse than death. But until the little moonchild suddenly sprints to the side of the boat, I had not noticed. Then I heard it; the sound of water and wind, of the tides and the stars, a sound indescribable but so natural that it rather brings the disparate noise of the ocean into a harmonic symphony. Looking over, I see shadowy forms keeping pace with the ship and leaping like dolphins through the waves. Her shouts and laughter are like raindrops and she bounces with sheer exhilaration. 

I watch, as she begins to clamber over the side of ship toward her people. But she pauses, and looks to me for a moment. She runs back and holds my drawing toward me and points at the family below the waves, then points to me, with a questioning look on her face. The old pain that I keep buried surfaces with a stab and I shake my head sadly, “I lost them when the storm came” I mutter. She looks sad and hugs my leg tight.

She climbs onto the side of the ship, once again ready to dive in. The red sun rises, fiery with its dawn light, casting her as a sharp silhouette against it. She looks back at me with a long gaze, lifts her arm and with a flourish touches the horizon, then leaps and plummets into the ocean below. A great splash, then immediate silence. I am left in a daze, overcome.

Finally, I turn back to piloting the ship and settle my gaze to the horizon and the rising sun.  And for the second time my breath is stopped.  I reach for the bell and pull with all my might, ringing it loud so the clang resounds all through the ship. My bleary-eyed sailors tumble onto deck looking up at me, confusedly. “You there!” I shout, “Jimmy, climb the mast lad and tell me what you see”. My orders are followed and a muttering arises amongst the sailors as they eagerly await the watchman’s call. Jimmy clambers neatly up the rigging the crow’s nest and we see him standing, surveying the ocean. Then a shout, as if from the very bottom of his lungs “Land Ho!” he cries “Land Ho!”

Whether my little moonchild gave us direction, or with the touch of her finger brought the land to us, I shall never know. But the coastline we bear down upon, with all sails stretched to their full, is green and welcoming. The boats are dropped and the sailors haul the oars with all their might, so long have we been lost at sea. And beyond the beach head, green shores, fresh leaves, a bustling town, and home.