The Call of Distant Shores

by David Niall Wilson

  "Ten years to the day after he brought her home, Angus bought a boat. He told her it would be for short trips - jaunts up the coast and back, but she knew. In his eyes, the waves danced, and the sun set over shores with unknown lines.

  "He sailed within the year."

  "Sailors have always sailed away," Jeremy said, lifting his eyes to meet the barber's. "They come home."

  "Not Angus," Terry shook his head and sipped his beer. "Not that time.

  "He was gone a year before she began to really worry, sending letters home to her father, who was less than sympathetic. He'd received her dowry, and she was aging – still beautiful, but not of marrying age, and still married, in any case, to Angus. The year stretched into another, and another – ten years, Jeremy. She lived alone in that keep for ten years, spending the money Angus had amassed in a life of sailing and trade, and pining for the one thing that had drawn her to the ocean's side. The one thing she couldn't have.

  "Every night she watched at the balcony outside her room until the sun set and the moon rose high above the waves. Every night she prayed. Some say, near the end, when the loneliness had started to make her crazy, that she prayed to others than the God we know. There were books found in her towers, books none could place, or translate – some written by hand, others printed in far-away lands. Angus must have brought them home, but it was obvious that his lover was the one to find their use.

  "Then one day, the ship returned."

  "You said he never came back."

  "And he did not. The ship came back. Most of his men came back. Angus died of a fever, wasted him away to nothing in the cabin of that ship. They buried him at sea, but before he died, he set them to bring his boat home. To bring her the treasures and secrets of the world he'd found. To tell her he loved her.

  "None of it mattered. They pulled in and she flew to that shore a woman possessed, to find no man, but only wealth. Only salt-soaked board and men too-long away from home. Only more loneliness washed ashore.

  "They brought it all to her, and she held a feast such as had not been seen in those parts since Angus himself was alive. They drowned themselves in the food they'd missed and the local girls, washed it all down with barrels of wine. She watched, smiling all the while as if she was sharing their good humor.

  "When they woke, every man-jack was locked in that ballroom. She'd had men come in during the night and bar the doors with stout planks. They were left to rot with what remained of the food, and the wine, even the women who'd joined them. They carried on and wailed at her, even tried to set the place on fire. None of it worked. They were trapped, and she was going to go and let them stay, leave and never come back."

  Jeremy shuddered, casting a glance at the door – toward what lay beyond. "What happened?" he asked softly.

  "That night, she stood on her balcony as always," Terry replied. "As she stood, staring into the waves, he came to her. Moss was matted and woven into the long hairs of his beard, and his eyes were half-eaten by fish, but he came, staggering from the waves. She just watched him come, no effort to help him, or to hinder. She watched as he staggered to the walls of the keep and beat his rotting hands against the stone walls.

  "Let them go," he cried. "Let them go, my love. I've come back."

  "No one knows for certain if she listened," Terry said at last. "She released the men the next day, giving them back enough of what they'd brought her to build a new ship. She made certain that everything was perfect – every board, every sail – hand-picked. And she sent for an artist. A young man, some say a Eunuch. He brought the wood with him from Egypt, a solid block of it, taking up half his cart. As the ship was built, the man worked."

  "She sailed with that ship?" Jeremy asked, breaking the silence.

  "No. She died. She died, alone in her tower, leaning on the wall that overlooked the waves below, but the work was finished, and when they saw what she'd commissioned, the work the eunuch had left, the men would not leave her behind."

  Both men stared at the doorway now. Beyond it, they could feel the draw of the wood, dark and curving tightly to the wall behind, eyes sockets of something darker than shadow. In their heads, a voice, calling out softly.

  "Your great grandfather found that ship," Jeremy breathed. "He brought her here."

  Terry rose, turning toward the refrigerator again without a word, and the lights flickered, suddenly, threatened to die, then steadied. They were dimmer, their radiance more yellow, and Jeremy staggered half to his feet, bracing himself on the arms of the chair as the floor lurched sickeningly.

  "Damn," Terry cursed. He turned back, a brown-necked bottle in his hand. Tipping it up, he took a long swig and strode across the deck to where Jeremy now stood, wild-eyed and staring at the doorway, now a stairway once more. Beyond the walls, the waves crashed, and Terry – not Terry – handed over the bottle with a wild-eyed stare.

  "We can't let her go down," the man whispered softly, almost plaintively. "We must keep her afloat. She ... she loves me."

  Jeremy took the bottle, turned to the stairs, and staggered through – into the clear night air beneath the stars. The moon was bright and full. He downed the beer in a single gulp and fell heavily over the hood of his car. In the shadows behind him, he felt the weight of eyes, and the call of farther shores.

  It was good to be home.