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over 700 pages

He chose love, finding passion in verse...

She chose him, and bent his passion...

***

the Dark Muse will come to find

there's more to mortal love than words...

Within a quill's ink, the story of Jason will bleed muses and myths,

romance, seduction and betrayal.

*

Jason, a miller from 18th Century Carolina, seeks to escape a loveless marriage while on an Atlantic voyage to Italy, aboard a ship whose captain hides a pirate past.  As he watches his wedding ring disappear beneath the waves, he's chosen to alter his path.  Within his yearning to find true love, is a hidden passion for rhyme and verse.  Taking strength from his words, he builds relationships with others onboard who share his passionate nature, including a supernatural muse who shapes his words and ideas, and ultimately, the truths he finds within himself.

*

When his poetry becomes more than a connection between himself and his emotions, Jason finds the opportunity for love that he seeks.  But another has already claimed him.  Exotic and erotic, the Dark Muse clings to his senses, forming the kiss on his lips.

Immortal, Leanan Sidhe is a Queen of the Fae, and daughter of Sea Gods.  As Jason holds a hand out to the love he's been seeking, as lust crashes like Atlantic waves on the rock of his soul, his experiences with both will be defined

in terms of betrayal... 

Folded Night

Folded Night

Book 1 Chapter 1

The notes of a lute drowned the sound of waves while above me, sail canopied.  All the while, the music murmured with the beat of my heart.  Eyes tense, my mind heard different music.  Everything else surrounding me was allowed to slip away.  I held my ring higher, watching clouds of November stream through its contour.  Blued with night shadow, its impotence glinted beneath the moon.

Under skies that threatened a northern squall, the Koraxos Kalia slung her prow through stiffening waves.  I wrapped my leg about a hawser lying near the bowsprit I’d claimed.  I wasn’t yet comfortable with the constant sway of the ship.  I knew the bosun didn’t  care if I were here but Irish midshipman Ferrence did.  Steeped in mythical superstition from the Isle of Man, he thought it best to avoid the prow.  Even now, I can recall his figure, sitting near the poop, a small brine shadow as he coddled his ale.  I’d assured him that I sought only a place wherein I could escape the tedium of being two weeks at sea.  I’d grown tired of watching humpback breaches and dolphins playing tag with the Kalia’s hull.  Their playfulness could not suppress feelings that dying marriages bring.

Etched on the underside of the ring, ‘Forever’ echoed like a hollow trap, exciting fabled sirens to sing.  If I listened closely, I could hear Thelxiepia herself breathing through the golden circle I held.  I traced the rim of light that wrapped so elusively and sinuously around the band that formed my chain.  The sound of waves was like the shush and cresp of foam centaurs gnashing at the hull.  Gradually, these sounds permeated my senses.  All the while, shores of nameless atolls slipped quietly past.  

Notes of discord were also in the wind, filling sails as we headed east toward escape.  Escape—like something out of DeFoe’s ‘Robberies and Murders’—wrapped itself up in mystery.  It was as strange to me as the cryptic flag flying over the Kalia.  There was an aura here, and I felt it seek out a scupper’s release, watched as it wound about the rigging and masts.  I was content that the creaking was lessened at the bow.

I let Fer have his superstitions because I had my own distractions.  Somewhere below on the orlop deck, Lidia Fairchild Johnson Warrick—my wife—found shelter beneath woven flaxen shifts.  It was she who had had the ring inscribed, and as I thought back to the numerous times I’d wanted to slip fifteen years off my finger, the sham it had become forced dry tears.  Despite a bed that had never been warm, I was expected to soldier on beside her.  The fledgling words with which I tried to fill the night, fell hollow.

Such was the light of promise.  Fool that I seemed to be, this voyage was a last chance, but I deemed its time had passed.  I knew about the barrister Lidia had seen and I’d been to one myself. Too many times, my sister’s shoulder had received my tears.  I’d learned not to harbor the fears or anxieties and instead, to open up and expose my heart.  I’d also learned how deep betrayal could cut. I find myself here now, aboard a Greek merchant ship, a quicksilver gleam fomenting an inner circle of gold that once held a precious promise.

The clouds scudded thicker, strafing the moon and sympathetic stars.  I held near the prow, salt-driven rope at my back, contemplating the ocean’s depths.  What promise did it possess?  Somewhere under the same moon, with passion and wild abandon, the Sirens were calling.  With the echo of a hundred consequences too often considered, I opened my fingers and let the mirrored gleam of fifteen years slip past.  Beneath me, the sea opened hungry jaws and swallowed it whole.  

I wrapped my cloak more surely about my neck, ignoring the silence of the approaching storm.

The night coalesced.  The strange air gave stars more breadth, the taste of brine stirred on the wind.  My heart leaped with each snap of filled sail.  As I’d done with a miller’s  chisel and hammer to wood, I found similar release whenever I let the verse flow from my quill. I made a mental note to ask the Captain for more copperas to mix with the tannic acid and Arabian gum; I was running low on ink.  I’d brought only a small supply from Jamestown.

I missed Edenton and Carolina.  The windows of my cottage had just been re-leaded and the stone tuck-pointed.  A mantle of black cherry wood was even now being flushed and dried, ready for spring milling. Every day at sea seemed much like the last; clouds and waves of gray monotony.  It was as if time couldn’t decide if I were suspended within or on the outside looking in.  Only the nights offered a sense of hope.  It never rained then.  Rather than remain below where my company was less appreciated, I sought the salt-stained world of seamen.  I hardly saw the Captain during the day but at night, he liked to roam his decks, trying as I did, to capture time.  Perhaps he too thought it lay in the verse I softly crooned to the night.  

Ferrence also haunted the night.  Whereas the Captain had kept his distance, the Irish boy stepped recklessly past traditional boundaries.

“What’s that yer writin’?”  

The query surprised me and I didn’t have time to come up with a deflection.

“Just the odd rhyme”.

“Rhyme?  Like ol’ Cutlass Jack used to spout?  More bilge than brine when it comes to proper rhymin’, methinks.  Nothing like the stories back home, though...”

“Home? And where would that be?” 

I couldn’t tell from Ferrence’s Irish brogue, which leprechaun story he sprang from. 

“The Isle spit from the Irish Sea, nigh on forty leagues from Lancashire.  Though, I ken the hills near Carlow and Wexford for many years.”

He lowered his voice.

“Tis not right to approach night’s mistress with so much fey in yer voice, Warrick.”

I started and shot him an inquisitive look.

“And your meaning would be?”

He paused before answering.

“I’ve heard you soft-speak the wind, I know that kind of break.  I’ve heard it before. There are tales sung that are witness to the creases of night.  Would be best you kept that inside, but tis your destiny, not mine, so, maybe I should hold my tongue.”

Ferrence Clayrnyach, a dark-haired Black Irish boy no more than seventeen, was all piercing brown eyes and knots of wiry muscle. The Captain had been vague about the lad who seemed preoccupied with my presence.

“Just rhymes, something I’ve pattered about with since I was your age.  How is it you know of destinies—you’re hardly old enough to plot your own.”

He stood and measured my image in his eyes.  I was a man who kept solitary watch at the prow, someone he had now known only a fortnight.  I wasn’t one to expose myself and so I found his penetrating gaze uncomfortable.  Had I left myself open, again?  Though a veritable storm of emotions roiled inside, I thought I’d left much of my misgivings back in Edenton. I thought my fears were held safely in pieces of verse that only my heart had any right to know.

He stood a long time not answering, finally staring past me toward the sea.  Rhythms pulled at both of us in swells of lingering suspense.

“They say she takes the likes of you, Bard, they say there’s no going back once she does.”

He paused, struggling with the words.

 “Already I can feel you’ve stirred the winds too much…I’d not expect any pity, were I you.”

His voice trailed off and I was forced to grapple with confusion.  I asked him to explain but he remained silent.  Then, so low I barely heard him, I realized Fer was voicing his own ‘wind speak’.

Lone raven marks the tempest sea;

the caw of one forlorn.

The waves are gray as marker’s hue -

coal eyes have ripped and torn.

The raven’s cark first came to me

the year my autumn passed.

The waves were dark, even then -

salt chained me to the mast.

Of days and nights, the sailors tell;

cold silence winter brought.

The seas that rolled beneath the ship

became the bed I’d wrought.

I still recall when sails went slack -

and calm splashed on the prow.

I still remember wondering;

where were the ravens now?

Why did I glance to aft’s dark way

(had moons imprisoned me?)

to see her form all clothed in black;

as safety left the lee.

Leanan I later learned was Sidhe;

I know I’m not the first.

I also knew I could not die;

my fears would prove the worst.

Her eyes of night hid veils of dawn;

her lashes inks of light.

She peered past me to hidden shores,

while folding in the night.

Her hair the darkest velvet seen;

sets ivory skin apart.

I never heard the rhythmic beat,

as wings tore mortal heart.

Did shadowed lines web-mark her face?

My eyes only for hers.

Did ruby lips part breath as blood?

Her hand on mine assures.

By lantern light I held the deck -

she clung to hand and quill.

Despite the storms which raged the sail,

my verse flowed freely still.

She arched her back and set her nails;

ink bleeds to stain the sheets.

She wound my fingers in her hair -

and no one heard the bleats.

Around me weathered faces scowl;

they only know my smiles.

I hear her voice between the waves -

they hear the gulls mark miles.

Tuatha’s children birthed her love;

the ravens find the fey.

I came to find the dark of hills,

of night in tresses” way.

My captains changed as season’s leaves-

my verse of teeth grew bold.

I saw the clippers turn to steam,

my voice grew much too cold.

At night the whispers pressed at me;

I felt her hand at first

but numbness slowly spread in me.

I felt her hand had cursed.

The roil of clouds in purple spoke -

I saw the lightning break.

When storms at last let loose I fled;

I sought my soul to wake.

One day the mirror shows my face -

and all the cuts of youth;

the next day lines that speak my life -

and all the cuts of truth.

Too many moons have seen the scene;

the poet leans too near.

An endless nightmare shows his fall;

beneath the waves is fear.

The ships still pass above my head;

my ink relents and flows.

I grasp at hulls with fevered hands -

I write the words below.

I touch the pane of sky and sea;

below, I see her still.

I mouth the words as ravens stare -

and guess I always will.

Lone raven marks the tempest sea;

the caw of one forlorn.

The waves are gray as marker’s hue -

coal eyes have ripped and torn.

Finishing like the sound of low tide, he looked straight at me again before turning away into the night, leaving with words that still dangle.

“Beware the folds of night; Sidhe know their roots.  What you seek to untwist will surely bind you within your own song, methinks.”  

His voice dropped to a whisper and I nursed shadows in the prow. 

“That’s what was said to Dagda and later to Griffiths.  Beware the winds you talk to, Poet.”

Uneasy, I spent the rest of the night imagining shapes struggled within the clouds lining the horizon, while Fer’s ballad resonated within me.

*

Book 1 Chapter 2

The Captain let himself down the stairs and into the galley where I was helping Donner.  Whereas he was large and leather-tough, standing over six feet high with a powerful girth, Donner the cook was overweight, balding and almost lumpish.  Bill’s  pointed blue eyes peeked from between a red tangled mane of hair and beard.  When he talked, the glint of gold in his teeth gave rumors credence.  He had a few names...Wil the Butcher and Sly Bill were only a couple.  Most just called him Captain.  

Wrinkling my face, I gave Donner my opinion of his potatoes.

“Would you rather be having salted pork and briny bread once again, Mr. Warrick?  Seems to me you should be looking at them taters with a bit more tenderness, aye?”

The Captain forestalled any further opinions I might have shared.

“What’s he doing here?”

Donner hovered over a large black iron pot, shaving grease from its bottom.  He turned his attention to the Captain.

“Mr. Warrick here is thinking he’ll pay a portion of his passage with a bit of galley time and I think that’s a mighty fine idea, Captain.”

The Captain cast appraising eyes.

“Do you, Donner?  Interesting idea.”

I’d met the cook in a Jamestown tavern called ‘Mermaid’s Locke’.  It was a place where I’d been told I would need to go if I wished to book passage across the Atlantic.  While bartering over cups of ale, I’d let slip that I understood poetry, that I even wrote it.  It was this fact that won passage aboard an  already-filled merchant ship.  As we came to know one another, I would speak of poetry and Donner of Bill’s shrouded history.  Donner—I never knew if he had a surname—had been with the captain for a long time.  It was he that had put the pirate ideas in my head, obscurely referring to locked holds and battened-down kegs below.

The Captain turned his attention to me, radiating intimidation  with his three hundred pound frame.  I tried not to flinch but failed.  He sampled from Donner’s cutting board, causing me to grimace.  Donner routinely packed his potatoes inside seal fat.

“Donner tells me you’re a poet and a bard.”

I blinked at Donner.

The balding cook cut in expertly.

“I’m not so sure he can sing, Bill, but poetry?  Aye—the tavern-keep at the Locke was adamant about that.”

I realized this was supposed to be my introduction and gave Donner a withering stare.

“Ah, well, not really sure that’s what I do, Captain.  I’ve been known to give a reading or two while someone at the Locke would accompany on the mouth harp, but I don’t sing.”

The Captain stopped picking at Donner’s fixings and I saw the glitter in his eyes.

“Is that so, Mr. Warrick?  And here I thought you were just a cuckold  whose master currently quarters in the fore orlop.  

He paused again, waiting for a response but I was half in fear of the man, half in denial of his words.

“If you were asked to entertain the crew, Captain’s whim as it were, what would your answer be?”

I couldn’t help noticing that when he leaned forward to lay out his words, that his heavy duffel fell away from his neck, exposing a line of coarse skin.  His small grin of amusement encouraged the chittering voices that were loose inside my  head.

“Of course, Captain, as you wish.  It would be an honor.”

The man took in my words and grunting his approval, left us alone.  I waited until I heard the creaking above fade toward the prow before I gave Donner a glare.

“And now what am I supposed to do?”  

I hoped I didn’t sound whiny—I didn’t want to lose Donner’s friendship because I wasn’t man enough to say no to the Captain.  

I put down the short stabbing knife he’d given me and looked morosely out the only port hole.  The gently frosted sea crested and pulled the Kalia along as if the ship had wings. 

“Like you didn’t want the opportunity, Jason; really, you should be thanking me.” 

He went about flensing the remainder of the seal, his portly belly catching the bits and pieces that missed the pot like a carpenter’s apron near a lathe.  

“And what if he doesn’t like what I write?  Have you thought of that?  You know I’m more a dabbler, you know it’s the heart of wood I know best!”  

Donner put down the knife and taking off his wire-frame spectacles, pointed westward.

“I can remember words spoken once, ale-cheapened maybe, in a Virginian tavern on the Chesapeake Bay—and I had no doubt then as I don’t now—that something inside of you needs getting out.  And it goes far beyond a marriage.  The very same bits of verse you managed to spit out from between pints of ale that night, are exactly what ol’ William needs.  Don’t worry about the crew, they’ll follow the Captain’s lead.  Just speak as you did that night and you’ll be fine.”

I was given reason to pause again as the tenor of Donner’s words bore resemblance to those Fer had said less than two nights earlier.  Like the chatter of a loose mill blade, I felt the shift toward danger and yet, perhaps Donner was right—something inside did need to escape.

As stew bubbles clung to the sides of the pot, he and I shared a bottle of sherry and I asked him about the Captain’s neck.

Donner stopped mid-gulp and slowly put the flagon down. 

“Best forget you saw anything, lad;  there’s some things best not talked about.”  

But he was in a good mood and if there is one thing I’ve learned about those that drink, it’s that they always reveal what shouldn’t be revealed.  I presumed to have the old cook’s trust.

“Why does he want more than sea shanties from the crew, Donner?  I can see he knows something about poetry or I’d probably not be here.  Most sailors don’t even know who Shakespeare is; why would he care to listen to me?”

Donner idly stirred the broth with one hand, while extending his empty cup toward me, eyeing the half full bottle.  As we finished it, Bill’s story slipped out.

It was Bill’s first mate, Mr. G, who’d gone diving after his body when they’d cut him down from the gallows to fall into the bay.  The tribunal chiefs hadn’t reckoned on the man’s neck being so strong.  But for all intents and purposes, Captain William Fly was dead and his pirate ways finished.  Only a few knew Sly Bill still roamed the seas.

Perhaps this explained his strange penchant for poetry; maybe he found there was more to life than a seaman’s ways.  Maybe Bill saw the world differently, now.  I suddenly felt more vulnerable than before Donner had begun.

As schooners go, the Koraxos Kalia of Greek origin, was truly a wonder.  Though it rained daily, the decks dried quickly and purposefully. The sails unfurled like a flock of white swans heading for the stars, and I knew the ship’s deftness was due to the tightly woven skills of Sly Bill’s crew.  

Later that evening, I held the prow, huddled near the huge mainmast with a cup of potato stew. The moon traversed rifts in clouds.  To the west, Carolina and home lay swathed in moderate temperatures. Though November, the colonial coast forestalled winter’s cooling touch, but here, it gripped at a man, working its way under duffels and oilskins.  

Tonight was the first time I’d really considered Mr. G;  a tall man, not quite as burly as the Captain, clean shaven, hair cut short and sporting a black and white kerchief in pirate fashion.  I think it was the eyes though, which gave away his feral nature.  I avoided direct eye contact whenever possible.  He was usually quiet but when he did speak, the rancor and absoluteness of his words were sharp.  That he had the Captain’s authority was unquestionable.  

I watched as he dipped a wicked looking knife into his bowl, fishing out the larger chunks.  He kept to himself but would interject as the sailors swapped  stories, as though he had to right the tale when it got exaggerated. I learned a lot listening to them recreate escapes from the Spanish fleet.  While few of the crew hailed from Caribbean lines, Fer I knew was Gaelic and Donner properly English, as was the Captain. Mr. G was confirmed French Canadian by Donner, while a few others talked like they were Scots.  

My eyes followed the lines of rigging where a few seamen kept watch.  I knew they’d be down at twelve bells for replacement.  Half interested, I listened to a story about a raid that had happened south in the Antilles, a port off Bahama where the renegade supposedly made off with a trader’s slaves and all the town’s virgins. 

Unconsciously, I reached toward my neck, feeling for my silver cross.  My Christian roots were strong but I did not advertise this fact.  The mix of men did have me wondering about religious convictions.  But I knew that the only true religion a pirate knows is the one that binds you when wind and blood spills.  It really wasn’t that long ago that taking such a voyage as this one, was tantamount to suicide unless you had a large, fast ship.  When England outlawed piracy and privateering, a lot of seamen suddenly found themselves out of a job.  I’d hired more than one such man to work at the mill, so I was familiar with this breed.

 My wife’s family was old country but mine was two generations removed, first living in the cold north near Syracuse then later, settling in at Edenton, Carolina.  God, I missed my cottage.  When a master works at his craft and puts in more than just toil, he finds the creation takes on more of the master.  Thus it was with me;  a lot had been left behind at Edenton.

My attention fixed on a couple of seamen who were doing their best to sever each other’s toes.  Mumblety-peg, Donner called it. Something about proving the courage of a man, something about not flinching first.  Men and their knives, I thought...

“That’s a mistake.”  

Donner slumped next to the main mast with me, stew gone and working on what looked to be a cup of the Captain’s better ale;  I knew this because the liquid looked less dark and the smell more honeyed.  Perks of nobility, I suppose.  I suddenly wondered where the Captain was and looking around, noticed he had taken a high place on the poop, his eye to a hand-glass and scanning the northern horizon.

“What’s a mistake?”  

I swallowed the last few bites of crusty stew and picked up my flask.  The day’s earlier conversation had suggested inebriation might be wise.  

“Fer’s too good at this.  Watch, Darrien will soon find this out, I’m thinking.”

I saw the knife’s edge penetrate the deck with a smoothness that should have warned the other mate, Darrien, who was another from the Emerald Isle.  Donner spilled running commentary even as the two combatants took turns swigging from flasks and furthering their next throw.  

“I’m a bit surprised.  Darrien should know better but I think you’re seeing a bit of North versus South, here.  Darrien once crewed a barque that plied the northern seas near Donegal but Fer is recent from Wexford and southern waters.  Maybe this is just how they get acquainted!”  

He chuckled, tipping my cup and attracting Darrien’s gaze.  Fer’s howl of glee told me that Darrien had flinched first.  The older Irishman cried foul even as the figure of Mr. G materialized from deck shadows.  I saw Darrien slump to the deck beneath G’s heavy hand.  

“Darrien says congratulations, Fer.  Help yourself to his ration of water for the next two days.”  

Mr. G turned his attention from Fer to Darrien. 

“He cheats better than you, aye?”

Fer smirked and went about retrieving his knives.  Mr. G left the glow of the brazier and found the ale keg.  I noticed the Captain looked on in silence.

“That Darrien’s a sharp one, sure enough, then again, the boy wasn’t brought aboard for no reason—Captain always knows.”

Donner spoke while I watched Fer collect wagers from the crew.  I wondered what drove the boy.  A lot of seamen were cut from the same cloth but this one was too young and yet, too experienced.  

“You say he’s from Wexford?  Where’s that exactly and how is it he was brought aboard?”

Donner shuffled the coals.  The rest of the crew were busy bragging about other duels involving knives, keeping their comments about G to a whisper.

“Ferrence is a strange one.  Not even sure his last name is Clayrnyach, though the Irish are cock sure with clan pride.  The Captain had put in for supplies before the voyage to the colonies.  He doesn’t usually put up anywhere near the Homeland, and on that particular stop, we had occasion to lose our oldest deckhand, Grimnir Bal Hagen of Norvik.  I put in ten years with the old bandit.  Buried him at sea, we did, out near the headlands of Dublin and Wicklow.  Scurvy is what the cutter said, though there is some doubt he knows his plagues as well as his surgeries.  Good man though, and Captain has more than once praised his hands and eyes.  Probably saved more than a few seaman limbs, too.  

Anyway, ol’ Gregor pronounces Grimnir dead and we lay up at Wexford, the Captain giving us only one night to go ashore.  Some of the crew complained at first but the next day all was forgotten when we had to leave suddenly.  Seems  we were under way before I noticed the boy.  Fer was high up on the poop, looking back at the harbor like all the clans of his race were chasing him.  Mr. G was quick in wanting to throw the lad off but as luck would have it, Captain was on deck too and he held the First Mate back.  Went to the boy himself and without breaking tack, the Kalia had herself a new sailor.  

I asked Bill but all he’d say is that Ferrence came from Carlow and some gibberish about Templar nights.  Not really sure, but he says there’s a castle and a journey through Kilkenny with fairies on his trail.  Bill has a soft spot for such stories, methinks, and that is partially why you’re here.  Maybe this means you’re like Fer, that you must be more than you seem...hmmm, hadn’t thought of that, before...”

Donner trailed off as if he’d suddenly turned over a card and found it wasn’t the deuce he was expecting but rather a wildcard.  

“Seems like flimsy reasons, Jason, but Captain has his own ken.”

I let him fold into a silence that didn’t dispel any of my reservations.  I decided more ale might help and headed toward the keg.  Behind me, I heard a new storyteller’s voice—it was Fer!  His story was tinged with everything the Old World could offer.  His voice was ominously quiet and everyone listening felt the wind pulling at the sail.  As he finished, Darrien scoffed from the edge of the circle.

“You don’t know that, boy.  There’s the Christ now and he’s stuffing all that gaffer nonsense.  Tis only the old dads as is still spouting with mist and foam...” 

Darrien had recovered some of the pride Mr. G had taken away, and was furtively plying at the holes in the lad’s responses.

Fer fixed him with a steely glare that spoke louder than seventeen years.  The coal of the brazier guttered.

“There are many who’ve lost the Way, Darrien, and the wounds Tuatha inflicts, endure beyond any Christian heaven.  Don’t doubt the old ways.  She is here, and you better know it.  In this, I am sure; last to see Turlogh, his words speak loudly.  He may be blind but his harp sees plain.”

I glanced over at Darrien, saw the doubt and an obvious struggle to regain status.  Reaching out, he took another crewman’s cup and daring the owner to object, drained it before hooking Fer with equally dark, Irish eyes.

“There’s plain and then there’s plain truth, boy.  I doubt you’re old enough to know the difference.  Sharpen your knives if you feel such an ill wind but there’s been no sign of her yet.” 

He paused and looked first skyward, then seaward, opening his arms as he did.

“I’ll embrace red sky at night and the freshened wind that fills our sails.  This is what speeds us from our enemies and that’s truth enough for me!  You think I’ll worry about luck with women below?  We’re already cursed, what’s another ‘istoiche  dainsear’ to keep our watch?”

Sails boomed with his last words, as if in emphasis.  A few of the crew got up and drifted off.  Morning watch would work themselves into about eighteen inches of space below deck soon enough, rocked to sleep with the rhythm of waves.  I saw more than a few separate themselves from Fer though, perhaps feeling he was suddenly tainted and not wishing his ‘feas’ to find them as well.  Sailors are very superstitious.  

Still, there were some few that lowered their voice and questioned the boy further, simply because they had their own mysteries.  There was a need to know if they should fear one more from the north.  

Turning, I happened to catch the look Mr. G gave to the Captain.  I didn’t wish to know, and put a silence between Donner and myself.  Ferrence Clayrnyach would require watching, of this I was sure.

I felt eyes on me and dreaded that it might be the Captain but found instead, it was the boy, his dark features made more devilish in the brazier’s glow. There was a brief flutter and his eyes widened.  Inside, I was looking for a hiding place but outside, the shadows thickened with support.

“You’re making a mistake, Bard.  Great though you think you’ll be, in the end, your folly will be made known.  I see it now…it will not be me; for that, I’m grateful.  But I pity you.  Did I not say stay away from the prow?  Even blind Carolan grasped this truth eventually.”

I felt an unreasoning fear creep from his words. He had his strong, sinewy hand on my shoulder and I could feel his earnestness through my heavy wool cloak.  The night pressed in like an echo of his words.  I kept fighting the urge to reach out and choke him—he’d done me no harm, yet I felt this horrible compunction.  He must have realized that his passion was mirrored in his finger’s grip because he suddenly loosened his hold. 

“I think it’s probably best you get some rest, Bard—too soon this calm will end and bring the storm.”

And when I turned to look at the night sky for evidence of such, all I saw was a huge hole of blackness where the moon had been.  Donner would say it was only clouds, but I was leery to believe him.  The winds had shaped as vespers  in my head, forms my mind had difficulty believing.  But, my caged fears accepted such thoughts as possible.  The deck was empty save for the Captain still on the poop.  He continued to stare at me.  I dreaded another conversation with him because now, I knew his real identity.  I had to depend on this ex-pirate for my immediate safety.  I didn’t think my whirling mind could comprehend another cryptic conversation so I gave a feeble wave and closed the hatch to the orlop.  I found my berth and noticed the cold wasn’t as deep.  

Dim light shone in through the lone porthole of the cabin my wife and I shared.  It was a nest of shadows I had to further navigate.  Locating another woolen blanket from the chest under the cot, I pulled it over me and found the bed’s farthest edge, as I’d done for so many years.  When sleep came, it was long before the lightning struck.

***

I tumbled to the deck with the creaking grown louder.  Lidia clung desperately to the cot and I urged her to hold tighter still.  The ship was rolling sharply and though we both had been warned of winter Atlantic storms, the severity was surprising.  Even in crisis, our words to each other were minimal and terse.  There was a distance so deeply rooted that it shaped the present.  Its origin was almost forgotten now. I’d tried many times to break through her veneer of silence,  wrought from an over-enabling father.  I’d been left bludgeoned from it’s overuse and now, it was a formality.  It took a lot for either to acknowledge that the other more than just existed anymore.  Only the  children had kept our union together.  At Marseilles, Lidia had family but until we reached there, she chose to wait out the  voyage and weather below deck.  For me, the shadow of fear at my back had only grown larger,  a pit in which the blackness smothered in its depths.  There weren’t any feelings to trample anymore and I found myself sliding back toward the slippery edge of that hole...

This trip had been as much tapestry’s ending as starting point.  Neither knew how it would all unravel or come together.  The more we hurt, the more the chasm grew.  The more it grew, the more I feared my own personal demons would overcome me.  I often wondered what she thought about, why this had come to be.  But there were no answers.  I wished I’d had a father who’d taught me better.  I wished he had taken more from his mason ways to help me understand the foundation of life.  But that too was never to be;  eight years had passed since his passing and even then, I doubt he’d been capable of giving me the answers I needed.  My younger sister now kept my mother whole and I tried to visit as I could, but the mill had its needs and my sister lived more than a few days away.  

All this seemed to weave itself insidiously in my mind as the storm sought to crush the Kalia and an unreasoning need to go topside and face the storm came over me.  Working into a seal-skin overcoat, I climbed the ladder and squirmed out the hatch. 

Cursing, I could just make out the crests of sea that poured in over the lee side.  A Norther: something Donner had warned me about.  Dim shapes crawled in the rigging as the ship’s crew tried to batten down, furling sail before it was impossible to do so.  I was amazed they hadn’t already been blown off the heights and out to sea.  Crawling and looking for the aft deck, I sought the poop where I knew the Captain would be. 

This compunction to understand the storm was a mystery—maybe it was a mirror of the ache I felt inside, the ache to be in control of my situation. Still, knowing was better than not knowing.  As I neared the poop, I heard Mr. G’s voice bellow above the wind.

“Get back below, Warrick!  What do you think you’re doing?”  

I could feel his anger rising even over the storm.  I’d forgotten—this was his deck, his world, and  I was the interloper, a piece of baggage.  Here, there wasn’t anything but a sailor’s point of view.  I tried to croak out any excuse I could but the wind rushed up and like a harpy, stole my words away into wicked night.

“Leave him, Mr. G;  some need to learn the hard way.”  

It was the Captain.

Dimly seen, the soaked and sodden Mr. G receded back into his shadow.  Bill was at the tiller, working the rudder as the rain channeled off his head, swept by wind and waves.  

“Not the best of nights to think about writing verse, Mr. Warrick, aye?”  

We both watched as his crew scuttled precariously, roping and securing pleats of canvas to their yardarms.  The heave and tilt of the ship didn’t seem to be bothering the Captain, though.  I found the roll of deck wasn’t that bad during the day but tonight was different.  I dared not be sick now as I’d probably slip right over the edge.  To the west, the waves were witness to streaks of lightning that struck parallel with the sea, as if cloud to cloud.  Unnerved, I asked Bill if this was usual.

He pulled the wheel over to starboard, barked an order to an invisible crewman bow-side before taking the time to really look at the sky.  He clucked his tongue and smiled mirthfully at me.

“Well, haven’t seen one this strong so early in the season, but looks typically like something Poseidon would send us just to check our boredom.  The Kalia will run before it, she always has.  It seems to be tracking to our north—and we’ll be below the thirty-fifth parallel, soon.  Octant is pretty hard to use in this kind of blow, though...” 

His words trailed away as a burst of lightning lit our stern, firing the Kalia’s wake with its madness.  I slipped and slid toward the rail, reaching out a hand to stop my momentum.  A bow wave broke violently, air-born water reaching all the way to the poop.  I heard cursing among the crew and fire in Mr. G’s voice as he waxed poetic about each crewmember’s lineage. 

“Had enough fun, Warrick?” 

I kept quiet, refusing to take the bait.

“How long’s this going to last?”  

My voice belied any courage.

The Captain didn’t take his eyes off the bowsprit, battling with the tiller.

“Shouldn’t be long—it’s coming up fast and this time of year, they hit hard but don’t last long.”

I heard the dismissal in his voice.  Drenched, I scrabbled back to the main hatch.  Just about to drop down, a particularly bright flash of lightning accompanied a deck-shuddering blast of thunder.  My feet were rocked out from beneath me. I fell on my shoulder and hit my face on the deck.  The wooden edge caught me violently, turning my head and pulling it under brackish streams, but with a direct view of the prow and its widow-maker.  The strike hit directly in front of the mast, its sound rattling timber, the ringing a dull echo.  The lightning took anchor and spread the drops of rain aside like a veil.

I shook my head in disbelief.  In the arc of blasted night, I could swear I saw a tall, cloaked form.  I didn’t think it could be the crew as their movement was all in the yardarm rigging.  It just stood there, an aura surrounding its shadow.  One moment the light silhouetted my apparition in a nimbus of light and the next, it was gone.  I blinked the water out of my eyes and forgot about my shoulder as I staggered to the foremast.  Why was I drawn?  About me, the storm was dying and the Captain proved accurate.  I held the wood of the mast, still feeling the power leeching out through the deck.  There was no mark where I was sure the lightning had struck. 

The rain was still coming down and I’d had enough, so I made my way carefully back to the hatch door, pausing a moment to replay what I’d seen.  Glancing back, I could see the Captain and Mr. G working to belay mizzen lines.  Neither looked at me nor even gave any evidence that they’d seen anything unusual.  I swung back quickly in hope of catching the moment unawares, but all there was, was more rain.  In the distance, the east flared up with crackling fire, and the rampage of waves was the only evidence the storm still raged.  I shook my head thinking now of my shoulder and how it hurt.  I’d have to get Doc to bind it but that could wait for morning.  Closing the hatch behind me, I clambered back to my berth, stripped off the wet leggings and cloak.  Snugging the coverlets over me more securely than usual, I drifted off to sleep wondering just who that woman was.