Life, Love and Death

by Raymond Walker

  “I can see from the incline of your face that you do, that you have seen what I have, the glow of candles in the windows.

  You look at me quizzically but there is no need to my friend. I have seen all that you have and have seen it here and in many other cottage paintings since then.

  Once I was sure of what I had seen I studied many others, all of seaside cottages both in person and on the internet and I have also seen the dark faces in the windows and the screaming children.

  You are neither a fool nor being played a trick upon. Rather you are finally seeing what the painting really shows”.

  5. cont.

  “Many artists paint truth as they see it and they have seen the dark faces in the windows behind the candlelight, hiding in the shadows, hiding in the dark spaces, behind curtains, under the bed, in cupboards and wardrobes”

  “It is a strange painting”, he said, obviously disquieted but not wishing to say more “why do you think the artist painted it in such a way? He asked not really wishing to know the answer.

  “It is the custom here in the country and by the sea to set a candle in the window for those lost at sea, so they will find their way home. The light will guide them. Like a lighthouse beacon, warning sailors of rocks, this does the opposite, it temps their souls back home to their families and loved ones”.

  I sat back upon my chair knowing that was the pivotal moment, the crux. Was I, right now, things would change or all would remain the same. I decided to try. “I have often heard of this custom and know that it is often practiced”.

  “So many are lost to the sea here in a small fishing town, so many souls lost never to be recovered, bodies gone forever and no solace to be found, that all mourn for the many no matter wither they know them or not.

  I urge you now to take your spectacles and look more closely at the glowing windows, the lit candles in them.

  I watched as I knew what would happen as he wiped the coal dust and grime from his spectacles upon a handkerchief that he produced from his waistcoat pocket.

  He held the clean spectacles up to his eyes but did not place them upon his nose rather holding them farther away from his eyes so he could magnify the painting well enough to see.

  I heard his in drawn breath first as the hand holding the spectacles dropped and he turned to look at me.

  “The children found their way home”, he said quietly as though he did not wish to disturb them.

  6.

  “They did”, I said, seeing the shadowy forms around the candles in the windows, screaming to be let out, screaming to find their way into the nether world and so find heaven or hell or whatever was their due.

  Yet family held them and the candles and their longing for home and I knew that they would be held there long past their time”.

  “Perhaps it is simply the artist’s idea, perhaps this is simply an artist that loves the macabre and so made this picture so to discomfit the person that looked closely”. “that must be it” he continued, “it is simply your well known imagination and sense of wonder making it more than simply an errant artist”.

  I nodded, but said nothing as he walked back to his chair, I also sat on my computer chair and swivelled it round to look at him, I suspected what was coming and was prepared for it.

  “It is truly a surprising painting, no wonder you wished for my thoughts and opinion on it but you are right” he said with a deep and heartfelt sigh, “you are not seeing things nor are you mistaken, I have seen as you have”. “Yet it is no more than a macabre painting, your thoughts on the candles and the souls of those lost at sea being drawn home by the light is nothing more than your wondrous imagination, connecting old folk tales from your youth with the imagination of a rather disturbed artist”.

  “It is why you are a writer, old friend, you’re strange and wonderful imagination that makes connections where there are none, do not be upset that I do not agree with your proof as I have agreed with all you have noticed”

  I simply nodded. We sat quiet, for a couple of seconds, neither saying anything.

  7.

  “you remember” I began, breaking the silence, “that I said, I really did not believe my own eyes and my own thoughts and that is why I called you here”. “Initially that was true, but even as a fantasist and sensualist, I require proof, I need to know that I have not retired into my created worlds completely as may someday happen”.

  “I told you that I had looked at other seaside paintings both in person and on the internet and so I did, I knew that you would be sceptical old friend, even I, the imaginer, was unconvinced of my thoughts.

  So, I looked at many others, I looked closely, at thousands of works by many different artists that had painted cottages by the sea”.

  I turned around and hit the enter button on the computer.

  Close ups started to appear on the screen of windows, oil, acrylic, charcoal and watercolour mixed together, appearing one after the other with the feature I had noticed displayed in a dark array of depictions, all of screaming faces.

  Sitting across from me, my friend, of a sensible disposition, of stoic thought, of reliable scepticism, nodded once and then his head fell.

  I could hear him sobbing as I turned to switch the display off.

  “They are still there now; I think”. I said.

  He did not lift his head but he answered, quietly, “it is time to blow out the candles”

  I am perfectly aware that the tale you have just read is perhaps not the brightest nor the sunniest tale that you have ever read and so I decided to add another making this short volume a trilogy. The last Is sometimes called the River Sprite, and seems a light romantic tale except that buried in the vaults of this tale is an ecological message. It is none the less a lovely short romantic tale. I hope that you like it.

  The River Sprite

  The River Sprite

  Part one.

  When our heroine

  Appears.

  She Shook the water from her long dark hair, and stood, shaking her head from side to side.

  The droplets almost sang with feeling as they sprayed out over the river. Before they finally collapsed back into its owner, their trail marked a huge crescent like a hail of rain on the water.

  She was unobserved as she always was.

  Once only, sometime ago when she was still young had mortal man ever seen her, for mortals cannot see immortals, unless they are blessed but then that man had vanished in the haze of autumn as mortals do.

  That was many an age ago and even then she had been thought a waking dream for who would not believe her so.

  Ever she would watch the mortals come and go, bathe in her waters or collect a little of her for their food pots and cups. But that was many years ago now perhaps even an age ago and everything had changed but her.

  Instead of collecting water in buckets and bowls they used nasty pipes now that smelled wrong in her river.

  Instead of the mortals wading in her to spear her fish or placing nets in her to gather the flatfish that lay at her confluence they ripped her surface asunder.

  These days they whipped the water into a frenzy with their fishing rods and spread nets across her estuary where it met her lord’s domain.

  She had once had company when she wished it though it had been rare that she had wished for such. She preferred her shady beds and sandy banks, her dark depths, and her lonely nights, she enjoyed a solitary way.

  She (a long time ago) once talked with the spirit of the loch at her head, the dryads of the great woods that surrounded her for though a creature of a different type they were akin to her in a way she did not understand.

  She talked with the pixies that came occasionally to her edge and with the fairies that once flitted over her fair bosom.

  She had talked at one time with the water creatures of the near sea at her feet. Mermaids and serpents and things stranger still but they had gone many a long age ago.

  She was always replenished by storm and fallin
g rain and rising tide, never would she empty, never would she run dry but never would she be as happy as she once had been for the loneliness hurt her more than she could say.

  No matter the storms that lashed the land, the rain that fell or the floods that occurred always would she be unfulfilled and unhappy. She longed for someone to talk to, someone to sing to and for someone to sing to her.

  So she watched from the water, from her sandy bed and billowing reed banks, from the fast flow of the shallows to the cold darkness of her depths.

  She would lift her voice in the night and sing calling out for her emptiness to be filled, for her loneliness to end, for it is ever lonely being the river.

  With this in mind she endeavoured to do that which she had not done in a long age. And so she rose and rising sang out over the loch at her head for the spirit of that place once had talked with her.

  Though she did not much like its company she longed for anyone to converse with, to commune with and share her fears and happiness for all she talked of was the beauty of her river. But the spirit never answered her song though she sang long and strong.

  Nor could she sense its presence in the depths of his lake or her river, as she had once been able to.

  She sang for the pixies, dryads and fairies of the old forest but the old forest was long gone and they with it for no answer did she receive, though she sang loud and long.

  She did not know where the trees had gone and those merry souls that had once inhabited them.

  She swam south and sang her song at the ocean and the domain of her lord but she knew that he would not come.

  For never had she seen him, he preferring to hold court in the darkest depths of his ocean lit only by fish that glow in the stygian depths of only the deepest of seas.

  She had, of course, not seen this but only heard tell of it by passing mermen and maidens for she had never left her river.

  She hoped instead that some of the creatures of old would answer her song and keep her company for at least a while but though she sang and she sang; no answer did she hear.

  This did not bother her unduly as she had often called to the creatures of the sea in the past for them not to answer. She; replying only when they wished to and she not wishing to talk to them anymore would, in turn not answer for she was yet a sprite and her nature fickle.

  But the sea smelled odd, she could not put a name to it nor was it exactly a smell but it did not seem right to her.

  But then she was the river and there was little she could do and so after a while she did not sing to them anymore and a time passed or perhaps it was an age she did not know nor care until someone called to her.

  2.

  In her excitement at hearing another voice she rose quickly soaking the sorry looking stormkarll that graced her banks calling to her.

  With a wry look, blinking the moisture from its eyes. It was spluttering and ringing its clothes over and over, staring up at her with its huge sad eyes the stromkarll said; I thought I would not be able to rouse you. I am sorry to surprise you my queen of the river.

  So many of us are so sleepy and I thought you the same.

  No I am fresh and vital as I ever was she said in reply but I have not been able to sing anyone to me in an age, it is good to make your acquaintance stormkarll.

  For she knew what the sorry looking creature was and its purpose though she had never met one before.

  She did not know, nor had she ever known, why she knew the creatures she could talk to and for that matter those that she could not.

  She had always just known what they were and what to expect of them.

  If they were good or bad or capricious like sprites are, even ones like herself.

  She was of neither nature, she could be serious and whimsical by turns, malevolent and charitable by others, she was simply what she was; A Sprite.

  The stormkarll told her a tale of woe, as it is the duty of the stromkarll to do.

  It was their duty to spread tales of woe when wandering through the land. There was an old saying, though when it was said she could not tell but said it was and that was “In June there was never a stormkarll to be found”.

  She could understand this as the fairest weather and the warmest winds were carried in June and the Stormkarll carried woes, regrets and sad songs with them for that was their reason for being.

  She looked at the white garbed thin little fellow with his lank blond hair and over large nose. The huge blue eyes looked up at her as he told his tale.

  It started a time ago, he commenced (for our kind have little notion of the passing of years in human terms) when the mortal men became more numerous.

  I found that woods in which I would sing a song or tell a story to the dryads were now gone and stone things in their place.

  I have always been a traveller you understand moving from place to place singing for my supper, spreading the news of the land, for that is my nature and purpose.

  But I realised then that some thing was amiss, I seemed to pass fewer of the folk on my way. I realised I had neither met an elf or fairy in a long time.

  On the positive side there were no trolls under bridges or talking bears anymore and I was mighty glad to see the back of them.

  So I started looking for the folk; those that were close and easy to find and when I looked and found none I expanded my search and looked again.

  I travel far and wide so I thought it would not be difficult, to find those of us here and there but I was wrong. I have seen a few along my way and talked to one or two and the story seems the same.

  We are being pushed from this land from the woods and forest, glades, streams and rivers. Many go to sleep and never wake, others have travelled and go always north where there is less smoke and noise. I have never been north to tell you if it is better there, perhaps I shall go there next for I also feel tired beyond all reason.

  I once was able to walk for an age without trying, now scarcely do I take a step without feeling weariness creep over me. There are none now that can be raised within a day’s walk of you and I myself go north, will you come with me?

  I cannot I replied for I am the river and the river is me and though I can leave it for a time I must always return to it or I too will fade.

  I am not disappearing and can awake as I wish. How do I not have the sickness you talk of?

  I cannot say the creature replied with a cough but if you will not come with me then I must take my leave. And that is just what he did heading north, but not before playing me a last sad song of the passing of the folk. We folk do not own emotions in the way that humans do, I know that now but did not then all my thoughts and feeling were linked to the river and nature but we have things in common that I had never imagined.

  Come learn of them.

  .

  Chapter Three.

  I asked a favour of the stromkarll before it left and that was for a song as I had heard little of singing but my own in a time.

  He lifted the harp from his shoulder and sang to me, of elves and sprites and towering trees and love. And that was the last anyone did for an age.

  I spent the time between in the tasks I had always done but longed to hear singing again, longed for someone to talk to and be with but there was not now anyone that could see me or talk to me in this land.

  And then as if reading my very thoughts of loneliness; the boy came to the river.

  He sat on my banks and played a tune on an instrument I did not know and after a while he began to sing as if to me though he could not have known I was there.

  My heart soared to hear his music, so sad and lilting, soft and sweet that I was drawn to it. I shaped myself in the reed beds and listened to hear him better.

  He did not see me but I saw him and realised an answer to my longing. I would take the boy and he would sing to me and with me in my depths through the passing days for the future I knew would come.

  A sprite is capricious by its very nature and it was something I wanted
and so I planned to trap him and draw him to me for he had to submit to me before I could take him.