But back to her story: “These Horse-Vultures were commanded to fly about the land and, if they should find any stranger, to bring him to the king. And indeed, taking us captive, they led us to him. When he looked upon us, he guessed who we were from our appearance and raiment, and said, ‘Are you Greeks, O strangers?’ We assented, and he asked, ‘How did you arrive here, coming so far through the air?’ And we told him the whole story. And he in turn told us of himself, that he too was a man, by name of Endymion. He had fallen asleep in our land and was snatched away, and arriving at this country, he ruled it as king.”
“The moon sleeps with Endymion,” Thea said, and it was such a strange thing for her to say that they all looked at her. She blushed at their regard and sat up quickly, becoming straight again. “It was in a book at school—it is—oh, Byron, or some such.”
“Shakespeare, I fear,” Mr. Brimner gently put in, to spare her. “Merchant of Venice, and entirely fitting: Portia, discoursing on a calm and lovely night.” He knew all the things, every book and work of art, and all the languages, and Kay wished the Voyage to the Moon of Ha‘apai would take forever.
* * *
—
Mr. Brimner had been told the story of how they acquired Aren, but he asked Aren about it himself, one hot morning while they sat in the shade under the lifeboat. Seaton’s long mahogany leg, vined with black images, dangled above them in the afternoon sun, twitching from time to time as he dreamed his strange visions.
Mr. Brimner had a notebook and pencil on his lap. He did not make notes, but simply sat still, his eyes on the dimpled surface of the waves, talking as if it was of no importance, even though he was so interested.
“What did you do before you came onto this ship?”
Aren looked up from the brass oarlock he was polishing for Cocker. His eyes roamed the rigging, as if he could scarce remember another life. “I did fish,” he said at last.
His voice was thrummy and soft, but at her table Kay heard him clearly. She always could hear him, from wherever he spoke.
“What fish did you fish for?”
“Not should—” Aren faltered for the word. “Not allow-ed to fish with hook only yet.”
Kay hoped he would find the proper words, she hated him to be frustrated.
“Fish, fishing, round hook in—soon,” he said, making a hook shape with his finger. His English had made such leaps that it was odd to hear him fumbling for grammar again. “Teach to fish?” he said, testing it.
“Learn?” asked Mr. Brimner. “You learned to fish?”
“Yes,” Aren said with relief. “I learn-d to fish.”
“What kind of fish did you catch?”
In answer, Aren leapt to the table and his own pencil, and drew a very detailed picture of a fish with a bumped-up head and a frilly top fin, which Mr. Brimner did not know. Mr. Wright, drowsing at the rail because there was no wind at all to deal with, perked up at the mention of fish and came to inspect it.
“That’s a blue-lined sea bream, that is,” he said.
Aren pushed the paper to Mr. Brimner. “This, I am let to fish!”
“Or perhaps it is a dogfish,” Kay said.
“And who did teach you to fish? Was it your father?”
Aren looked at him without understanding. Thea had not taught him that word.
Kay wondered if she had taught him mother.
* * *
—
Because Thea asked him to, and of course in accordance with his own understanding, Mr. Brimner agreed to baptize Aren. He did this on deck, at noon on the third day of their sailing, reading the form of service from the prayer book he had always with him. Mr. Wright and Mr. Best, both churchmen, stood godparents, and spoke their responses loud and clear, promising to keep Aren from the World and the Devil.
Afterwards they had cake, and all the crew toasted Aren’s health with a rum tot. Then, while Mr. Brimner changed out of his surplice and stole and Aren ran about the deck training Pilot to retrieve a piece of salt beef without instantly eating it, Kay sat with Thea in the hammock, cool and soft in the slight shade its awning made.
Thea said, “There—I am thankful to have that done.”
Because Aren’s soul would be safe now, she meant. Kay did not like that. His soul was safe because God loved him, because there was nothing but goodness in him. Not because of the words being said over him, or the holy water. It was hard to see why everyone must be baptized, when we already believe that God will take care of the lilies and the mice in the fields. But Thea had told Kay before that she was not the arbiter of doctrine, and should simply accept the teachings of the Church.
“Do you remember me being baptized?”
Thea smiled, enjoying this kind of nostalgia. “No, for I had gone back to finish school in Yarmouth before you were born. But I remember your mother being baptized.”
Kay was surprised. “When she was a baby?”
Thea laughed. “No, no, she was a little older than I! But she had lived in the country, you know, and there had never been a chance for her to be baptized, so in our first years at Fort à la Corne, Father baptized her.”
“And then he married her.”
“Yes.” Thea was silent a moment. “She was lovely, your mama. Easy to be with. She had a peaceable nature.”
“Not like me.”
“No, you take after Father, I think. But she was strong-minded, too. I left for Yarmouth confident that they would deal very well together, although she was so much younger than he. It was the happiest I had ever seen him, on their wedding day, and I was happy too.”
“But then she died, and you had to come back to care for me.”
“No, I had already come back—after normal school I came out to teach at Blade Lake for a year. I was there when she died.”
“Oh yes, tell me again.”
Thea’s head tilted to check Kay’s face, but she was patient enough to retell it. “She was tired, after church, and she went up to lie down. She asked me to bring her a cup of tea in an hour—”
“And when you took it up, there she was, dead.”
“Yes.”
A flood of tears pricked at Kay’s eyes, wanting to flow forth, but Aren had come back and was looking at her. Thinking of his mother never seeing him again, she was distracted from self-pity. She got up to run along the deck, her bare feet almost as fast as his.
* * *
—
In the ideal hour, near the end of the watch on a slow afternoon when the work was done and the men slept or sat carving in the shrouds, low sun brought a lessening of the heat. Everyone she loved was here, Kay thought.
Silence spread like oil over the unmoving sea. Then up from underneath came a blue-black swell rising in a long arc, longer than thought, unthinking, unknowing, unknown. Kay waited, immensity pressing on her, hovering in the difference between herself and the whale.
* * *
—
While Thea and Francis took a turn about the deck in the early morning heat, Mr. Brimner asked Aren, “Shall I tell you of Arion of Methymna, a name close to your own, who was carried ashore at Tainaron upon a dolphin’s back?”
Aren nodded, and Kay said, “Yes, oh yes, that would be perfect.” Which sounded as if she knew the story, which she did not—but Father had read him, therefore Herodotus was manly reading, and a historical account rather than mere fiction.
Mr. Brimner adjusted his dark spectacles (Kay was happy to see his portable darkness unbroken) and began: “This Arion, they say, was a great harpist, the first, so far as we know, who composed a dithyramb!” He gave a courteous nod, as if Kay at least would certainly know what a dithyramb was. She smiled at him, knowing he knew by then exactly what she knew and did not know.
“He had sailed to Italy and Sicily and made a great deal of money—he was the Caruso of his time. Wishing to r
eturn home to Corinth, he hired a ship with a crew of Corinthians, whom he trusted. But out in the open sea, those rascals announced their intention to cast Arion overboard and take the gold for themselves. He offered them all his wealth if they would spare his life, but the sailors insisted he either slay himself on deck or leap straightway into the sea. Being driven to it, he promised to put himself to death if they would let him sing one last song.”
Aren looked to Kay; she mimed the playing of a lyre-harp to show what was meant.
“Thinking it good to hear the best harpist alive, for the few moments he remained alive, the men settled themselves on deck to listen. He dressed in his full singer’s robes, took his harp and sang the Orthian measure. At its end, as he had promised, he threw himself into the sea, and they went on sailing away to Corinth.”
Mr. Brimner sat back in his deck chair and took his spectacles off to polish them.
“That cannot be the end,” Kay protested.
Aren said, urging him, “Then? And then?”
Mr. Brimner sighed. “You are too wise for my narrative ploy. Yes, and then—and then, as Arion struggled in the waves, a dolphin came and swam beside him, and then beneath him, and supported him on its back across the water and brought him to shore at Tainaron, which is very near to Corinth.”
Kay could have said, I once swam where dolphins were. She remembered that grey smoothness, the clear eye watching her. And how she would not have touched him without his permission. It did not seem impossible to her, this tale.
“And when Arion came to land, he went to Corinth and told the king what had happened. The king set watch for the rascally sailors, and when they came, he inquired of them if they had any report to make of Arion, his famous harpist. Oh yes, said they, he is safe in Italy, they left him at Taras faring well…At that, Arion appeared before them, in the same singer’s robes as when he made his leap from the ship, and they were struck with amazement and no longer able to deny their crime.”
Aren laughed and laughed. Kay was not sure if he understood it perfectly, or if he merely laughed to please Mr. Brimner.
Who laughed as well, and added, “Herodotus says this tale is still told by Corinthians, and there is at Tainaron a bronze figure of a man upon a dolphin’s back.”
* * *
—
The voyage was too quickly over.
They stood again on the little stone jetty under the rise of Mr. Brimner’s house, Francis having good-naturedly said they would pull for Ha‘ano, no need for cadging a second lift at Pangai. Thea sent a basket of supplies and two chickens over in the boat; Kay went along to hold the chickens, and to say farewell.
Mr. Brimner pulled on his thin nose. “Well, my dear Kay, goodbye again, for a short while at least.”
“Yes,” she said.
The pier faced a flat, beige-blue stretch of sea with nothing much to interest the eye.
“Your brother tells me another voyage is planned, not next year but in 1914.”
Kay nodded. Her braid had come loose; she pushed her hair out of her eyes again and rubbed them.
“When people are fast friends, it is immaterial whether they visit in the flesh or in the spirit. I have been following your work and travels with great interest through your letters— Wait, let me think…Have I yet received a single epistle from you? No?”
She blushed.
“Ha, I do not mean to shame you! The price of a seafaring life is that one is always busy, and correspondence suffers.”
“I will write to you faithfully now,” she promised.
“And I to you,” he said. He shook her hand on it.
She went down the pier and hopped back into the boat. The boys pulled on the oars, and once again she left Mr. Brimner’s bundled, bird-legged body standing at the end of the pier, waving his handkerchief to them as the boat separated from the pier at Ha‘ano and made way to the Morning Light, back out into the blue.
15
An Eclipse
On April 28, they sailed through an eclipse of the sun, the first that Kay had ever witnessed. Mr. Wright, a great amateur astronomer, believed it must be the first for Aren too, since he could find no note in his almanacs of a full eclipse occurring in this hemisphere during the boy’s lifetime.
The sun was bright and ordinary when they went up on deck for breakfast, but Mr. Wright rushed round with pieces of card and instructions for creating a pinhole viewer, and dire warnings about blindness, not only for Kay and Aren but for all the crew. Aren was in the lifeboat playing knucklebones with Seaton, and leaned over when called. He watched the perforation of the card with interest, listened gravely to the cautions of Thea and Mr. Wright, and then leapt back up to finish his game, crowing whenever the bones fell in his favour.
Kay took her book up to the roof of the Aft cabin, letting her bare feet dangle down through the open skylight. Thea had quite stopped remembering to order her to wear either boots or stockings these days—everything was much freer now that Aren took up half her worrying time.
At a sudden feeling Kay looked up, scanning the yellowish sky, but could see no portent. And yet everything felt strange.
The ship was nearly at a standstill, the wind having dropped completely, and Francis directed Mr. Best to set the sea anchor so that all the crew could stop their work and watch the phenomenon.
Finishing with the bones, Aren appeared again over the lip of the lifeboat and made a game of coming to sit by Kay by the most devious route, ending with a drop onto all fours beside her. He sat close, looking at her book, which was Treasure Island, for the seventh time.
There was no point in attempting study when something enormous was about to happen, but Kay read to him, pointing at the words, and his finger raced ahead to find words he knew: ship, island, table, ocean. She stopped reading to him and made him read to her, helping him when needed.
Though I had lived by the shore all my life, I seemed never to have been near the sea till then. The smell of tar and salt was something new. I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far over the ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering, clumsy sea-walk…
They were getting on very well, Kay doing a good deal of prompting and Aren very concentrated, when that feeling of quiet alertness came over them again, as something odd happened to the page. It was muted, darker.
Aren looked up first, and then Kay. All the men had gathered on deck, even those who ought to have been sleeping. All were looking up into the sky.
Pilot came out of his shady spot by the wheelhouse and stood looking up too.
“Not direct at the sun!” Mr. Wright called in general warning. But the temptation was strong! Many of the crew put up their hands to shield their eyes, but most continued looking generally up.
The day—darkened.
Nobody spoke.
The eeriness of it, and the stillness of wind and sea, took hold of Kay in her deepest heart. Aren had moved imperceptibly so that he was very close to her. Kay whistled for Pilot, and he came, moving quietly and crouching a little as if afraid, and hopped up onto the saloon roof. Aren made room for him and put an arm round his neck.
Thea came with the pieces of card and reached them up. Kay adjusted them to show Aren how the sun was looking—a bite taken out of the top of the disc. It had turned into a horned thing. Then there was a slow progression into dusk. The men eventually went back to a desultory kind of work, until in half an hour or so the twilight was pronounced. On the card the sun showed like a crescent moon lying on its back. Then they had to look up.
The air around them had fallen into purple, eerie evening. Kay realized that half its mystery lay in the absence of a preceding exit of the sun, no redness in the west, no lingering light. The whole sky darkened equally.
When Cocker called eleven
o’clock, the sun was only a bright thumbnail left in the sky, like a bit of evening star come early. The sky had tinted from cerulean down into Delft and Prussian blue, and then lower, into a shining indigo.
In the starboard shrouds, Jacky Judge called down, “Sir!”
Francis turned, and Jacky pointed out to the sea. Kay and Aren stood to see better—to see the strangest thing imaginable.
In the weird descending twilight, the water was full of shapes. Whales, many of them, had come to the surface, their heads gazing up. Then more, smaller shapes.
Aren said a word and Kay said, “Dolphins, dolphins…”
A head, and another head, another—dotted across a wide space, twenty or thirty dolphins and whales had risen from the deeps, all looking up into the heavens together to where the sky was growing murkier, yellower, more sombre and burnt umber every minute—no longer normal darkness in the least.
Again, silence fell across the ship. Thea had crouched down by the railing and Kay thought she might be praying.
Darkness fell then, as quick as a blind. They could see the shadow-edge of it skimming toward them across the sea, and in two minutes it was night.
Kay let out a little shriek and clamped on to Aren, as he did to her with both his thin, strong arms. The darkness came with a wave of vertigo—everything was wrong! This was not how the world was to work!
The darkness, which was not night but a tarnished-silver sadness cast over the world, lasted four minutes. Kay breathed, of course she did, but she could not make her chest open as usual. She and Aren both kept tight hold on Pilot, who shivered uncontrollably all through it, and on each other. When the light came back, as if it had never gone away, they saw the other observers diving down, dispersing like darkness, going on about their usual lives. And so did the Morning Light sail on.
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