by J. P. Sheen
Blake gasped and looked up.
The Lady in Blue smiled down at him, her ocean-blue eyes aglow with pride. Reaching up, she cupped his face in her hands and wiped away his tears with her thumbs.
“Come home,” she whispered, and Blake awoke.
Blake sat up and hit the boardwalk with a head-splitting thwack!
Hissing, he clutched his throbbing skull, but his curse died on his lips as he glanced at Eselder. The moonlight was bright enough that he could see clearly. The boy was still out like a rock. His mouth was wide open, and his limbs were splayed out like a rag doll’s. Eselder had broken his rule and crossed the line, Blake noted with amusement. Then his smile died away.
What the hell he had been thinking, when he’d planned to leave the boy aboard the Swift? What if he’d done just that? What if Eselder was still chained up in Thornhill’s cabin right now? Blake felt sick at the thought. With a furious shudder, he pushed the image out of his brain. No matter what would have happened, Eselder would have been justified in hating him. Jaimes would never have forgiven him if he ever found out. And he shouldn’t. Over and above all those things, Blake never would have forgiven himself. He knew that now. Eselder was better off with him, on this forsaken beach under this rickety old pier than in that luxurious cabin with Captain Charles Thornhill.
What truly amazed Blake was that, despite all the people who’d turned out to be greedy, self-seeking swine, the boy still trusted him, still chose to trust him. And Blake desperately wanted to live up to that trust, more than anything. But…
He shook his head and looked sadly at Eselder. How would he react when Blake told him that he had to go back to Kingston? That he couldn’t sail off with Blake, and visit the coasts of Nordinnland, and do all the things he’d always yearned to do? Blake hadn’t told Eselder that his soul belonged to the deep just to soften him up. He’d meant what he said. But he’d mean what he had to say tomorrow too. How would Eselder take it? How would he feel?
Betrayed? Blake wouldn’t blame him.
Angry? After all the dazzling promises he’d made, Blake deserved to be despised. But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—keep his promise, for Eselder’s sake. He was a danger to his brother’s son. Maybe that was his own fault; maybe it wasn’t, but in the end, it didn’t matter. He’d protect the boy from his own twisted self, even if Eselder hated him for it.
Of course, Eselder didn’t have to return to Kingston. It wasn’t like Blake intended to drag him there kicking and screaming, as Jaimes had done to him. Eselder could strike out on his own if he so desired. Blake had done that as a boy, years ago. To his own astonishment, however, Blake found himself fervently hoping that Eselder would not decide to follow in his uncle’s footsteps. Because Blake feared what the world would do to him. Eselder didn’t know how to defend himself from those who would hurt him, or abuse his trust. Hell, the boy didn’t have a hardened bone in his body.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered to the sleeping boy beside him, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Even now though, Blake’s body suggested other things to him, reminding him like he was not like other people. Quietly, the pirate crept from under the pier and plodded barefoot across the soft white sand, down to the sea. His soul felt tired, tired and heavy, as if weighed down by an anchor that had impaled his heart. He walked along the seashore, gazing up at the sky as he did.
There were so many stars.
He could see the same constellations he used to search for on Moanamiri when the nights were warm and clear: the sparkling blue Asterias, the mighty Gigantas, the Aetos, the Polemistis, the Astrapi…
They filled up the black emptiness, a host of heavenly lanterns twinkling all the way to the distant horizon. Far below them, the tide looked like a woman’s flowing tresses, shimmering white and silver and deep blue-gray. The lonely seashore felt to Blake like another world, one of silence and solitude, a borderland between reality and mystery, charged with a beauty found only by the sea. Everywhere he looked, the world was blue as the Lady’s mantle or white as her radiant light.
Then Blake looked out to sea and beheld a full moon, white and radiant, floating over the waters. His heart skipped a beat and then burned with an impossible hope.
He looked down the seashore, and he saw her.
His mother.
She looked the same as she had that night, thirty years ago: A beautiful lady standing beside the ocean, her head bowed, her figure wrapped in a mantle of midnight blue. And just as he had back then, Blake began tiptoeing toward her, as stealthily as he could.
The Lady in Blue looked just as pure, just as lovely as ever. The only difference was that she was much shorter now. Or perhaps, Blake thought sheepishly, it was that he had grown taller.
He had grown up.
Blake felt a sharp pang of realization. He was a man now, not a little boy. What would the Lady do when she saw him? Would she run away…from him? The thought was an awful one. Blake didn’t want to believe it.
Then the Lady in Blue turned. She lifted her veiled head, and Blake froze.
For a long time, they stood there, silently facing the other, the tall pirate in rags and the woman clad in ocean-blue. It was unnerving to Blake to tower over the woman who’d once held him in her arms. Especially when he still felt like that unhappy boy in so many ways. It was like going back in time to the night when his voyage had begun. Back to the beginning.
For years and years, Blake had obsessed over what he would say to the Lady in Blue if he met her again. How he would call her out for her treachery, and reject her as she had once rejected him. His eyes hardened, and he opened his mouth.
“I love you, Lady,” he said.
The Lady said nothing, but a tear slid down her cheek. She knew. She knew everything he had done, what her child had become.
Blake went beet-red. He wanted to flee, run away, hide somewhere he couldn’t see her tears! He turned, kicking up sand. Then he stopped. Gritting his teeth, he turned around. And started shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Why didn’t you come for me?!”
The dam burst.
“I believed you! I waited for you!” he roared, “But you never came back! You left me on Moanamiri and because of you—”
Blake pointed a finger at the Lady in Blue like it was a sword he could drive through her heart.
“Because of you…”
He couldn’t say it, even now. Shame and disgust surged up within him.
“I know, Blake,” the Lady said quietly, “My heart bled for you that night.”
A thunderstorm brewed in Blake’s black eyes.
“Do you have any idea what happened to me that night?” he growled. The look in his eyes would have made most people back off with fear, but the Lady merely looked at him, ready to listen to whatever he had to say. That made Blake even more furious. He didn’t want her to listen; he wanted her to do something, anything that would make the pain go away! He accused her, “If you’d kept your promise, everything would have been different! This is all your fault!”
“I did keep my promise, Blake,” the Lady sadly replied, “I came back for you, but by then, you could no longer see me. How I longed to hold you in my arms and comfort you! Yet all I could do was remain at your side through it all and hope that someday you would see me.”
Blake laughed bitterly. “Well, that’s shithouse lovely! I’m sure that would’ve been a great comfort to me then!”
Spreading her arms in a pleading gesture, the Lady went on, “So long as you stayed close to the sea, I stayed close to you, and I tried my best to comfort you in a language you could still understand. When you were grieving, I bid the ocean sing for you. At night, when you were loneliest, I spoke to you through the whale’s cry.”
“Then why can I see you now, all of the sudden?” Blake demanded challengingly. He thought he would have the Lady stumped. But she just looked at him and softly replied, “Because you have opened your heart again to love and be loved. Blake.
You do not even know what you have done.”
A pair of tortured eyes looked at the sand, the waves…anywhere but at the beautiful Lady.
“I know damn well what I’ve done!” hissed Blake.
“No, Blake!” countered the Lady. There was a steely edge to her gentle voice. “No more of Cutlass’s lies! I endured them for twenty years, but no more. Listen to me, your mother, not to him. Your wounds run deep, Blake, deep as the ocean. But they are not the summation of who you are, and they cannot stop you from embracing your destiny. It is time to listen again, Blake, to the call within you. It is time for you to answer the call of the deep.”
“I’ve been to the deep,” Blake growled, his hands balling into fists, “I am never going back there!”
“You have been to Keel Cutlass’s domain,” the Lady corrected him, “That is not the Deep, the true Deep, though Cutlass wants you to believe it. In your heart, you have always known that. The Deep calls to you, Blake. In the crashing of the tide, in the roaring of the waves, it cries out with impossible tenderness. Do not be afraid to answer that call! It will not betray you. It will lead you to your heart’s desire.”
“How do I know that?” Blake retorted in a hiss, “I thought…there was one person…who would never betray me…and then he did.”
“His aim was never to hurt you,” the Lady softly replied, “Your father left your brother to fill his place, and he did the best he could. But he was just a boy himself, with deep wounds of his own…though you couldn’t understand that then, little as you were.”
She looked at him with compassion. “He needed you, Blake, as much as you needed him.”
All the rage in Blake’s face died away, leaving it tired and haggard.
“Jaimes?” he croaked.
The Lady nodded. “You were not the only child awaiting my return to Moanamiri. As long as you watched for me, your brother kept vigil too. Ready to fight if I tried to take you away. He needed you desperately, Blake! And so, for his sake, I waited to fulfill my promise. If you had left Moanamiri then, your brother would have died there.”
“I…don’t understand.”
“You gave him a reason to live through all those dark years. If you only knew how much he needed you! And you did not let him down. You have not let any of us down. I am so proud of you, Blake. My dear son.”
Furiously, Blake swallowed the lump in his throat, but it was no use. The tears came spilling out anyway. Somehow, it wasn’t shameful for the Lady to see them. He asked, with a reticence he would never have let anyone else see, “Lady in Blue, are you really…are you really my…”
The Lady gently interrupted him.
“I am truly your mother, Blake, and you are truly my son. But I am not the one who gave birth to you.”
“You didn’t mistake me for Jaimes?”
The Lady smiled and shook her veiled head.
“Why did you choose me, Lady?” Blake asked, his voice betraying his longing.
The Lady’s gaze was unspeakably tender. She replied softly, “I didn’t choose you, Blake. You were given to me.”
Blake’s chest constricted. He stared at the Lady, not sure how he felt about that.
“You are a gift, Blake. I didn’t deserve you. But from the moment I saw you playing on the shore, I wanted no one else but you. Without even trying, you stole my heart away.”
The Lady smiled. “And you accepted me at once, with your whole heart, as your mother…”
“How could I not?” Blake croaked. The Lady’s smile grew. Her voice was triumphant as she declared, “And on that night, I was swept away, because in you I saw an ocean of light that could flood the whole world.”
Blake’s face instantly darkened. Looking away, he retorted harshly, “You’re wrong, Lady! There’s no light in me. Just darkness. I’ve felt it there since I was a boy. It’s never gone away.”
“There is darkness within you, Blake,” agreed the Lady, “But you did not put it there. An enemy has done this. Blake, look at me.”
Blake did, unwillingly. His eyes were red and blazing.
“You were a little boy, in unimaginable pain, who wanted his brother to protect him and love him,” the Lady said quietly, “There was nothing tainted or dirty in that desire. Do not compare such a pure love with the horror you suffered as a boy. They are not the same. Do not listen to Cutlass’s lies anymore.”
Two fat tears slid down Blake’s cheeks.
“Like the coward he is, the Butcher of Souls attacked yours when you were little, far too little to defend yourself. He knows that you are a threat, and he fears you. That is why he has tried so hard to drive you to despair.”
“Then I didn’t imagine all those visions in the deep?” Blake croaked, “Keel Cutlass, the shadows, the demons…they were all real?”
The Lady nodded.
“Then you can’t leave me again, Lady! Let me come with you!”
Blake moved swiftly for the Lady in Blue, but she gestured warningly.
“No, Blake!” she said, quite fiercely, “You may not touch me anymore!”
Blake stopped short. “Why? Because I’m a man?”
The Lady nodded. Blake was so hurt he was tempted to disobey her. Angrily, he demanded, “What do you think I’d do to you? You’re my mother.”
“Oh, Blake.” The Lady regarded him tenderly. “I don’t fear your touch. I do this for your sake, not mine.”
“My sake?”
“As a boy, you gave me your heart, and I accepted it. To keep it safe. Up until now, I have been the only woman in your life.”
Blake couldn’t look the Lady in Blue in the eye. He replied bitterly, “Trust me, Lady, when I say there have been plenty of women in my life.”
There was a very long, sorrowful silence. Blake sensed that his confession broke the Lady’s heart. In response, his own heart welled up with grief, fury, and deep, deep shame.
Then the Lady asked him, very quietly, “Do you remember when I told you that your sea longing would lead you to the ocean’s greatest secret?”
Blake nodded, still red in the face.
“You wanted to discover it right away,” the Lady continued, “But I told you that you would need to help of another for that.”
She smiled.
“She will help you do that, Blake.”
“She?”
With his big eyes, slack jaw, and flabbergasted expression, Blake looked just like the little boy from Moanamiri again. The Lady did not elaborate further but merely smiled her motherly smile and turned toward the sea. It was still very dark, but a pale ribbon rimmed the horizon.
“Though I grieve for your lost childhood, Blake, I see such great hope for your future. Know that I would give anything to take your pain away.”
Blake saw Thornhill’s smirking face in his mind’s eye. With red, streaming eyes, he hissed, “They were supposed to be the heroes!”
He collapsed on the sand, his shoulder blades shaking violently. In an instant, all the Lady’s restraint was thrown to the wind. Running to him, she stooped down and wrapped her mantle around him, her soft cheek pressed against his brow. Blake sank back onto her breast, sobbing, while she ran her fingers through his damp, tangled hair. Lost in the Lady’s embrace, he could have remained there forever.
Then he sensed a familiar presence nearby and shuddered, though not with fear. Looking up, he saw the Sea Captain’s shimmering, translucent form. The ghost’s ghastly appearance still sent a shiver down his spine, but to his surprise, Blake discovered that was no longer afraid of him, nor did he experience the hate-filled rage that had consumed him on the seafloor. He’d done what the Sea Captain had asked. He’d warned Charles Thornhill that he was on his way to the Sunken Slaughterhouse…and, for his father’s sake, he had spared Thornhill’s life when he’d had the chance to send him there himself.
The Sea Captain no longer frightened Blake. But his face did.
It was utterly devoid of light or life. A terrible darkness had eclipsed the light tha
t had saved Blake’s life in the Sunken Slaughterhouse. His eyes, where the morning star had once shone, were now twin black pits. They stared at Blake, not blinking, but Blake refused to look into them. He hid his face in the Lady’s robes, because he was afraid that if he looked into them he would fall into that darkness and never come out again. He wanted to beg the Sea Captain to go away, leave him be! He’d done what he’d been asked!
He knew that the Sea Captain wanted him to match his gaze, but he couldn’t do it, for fear of where it would take him.
The Lady brushed back his hair and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be afraid, Blake. Now that I have you again, I promise, I won’t ever let you go.”
Only those words could have given Blake the courage to look up and into the Sea Captain’s eyes.
Just as he had feared, the seashore, the Sea Captain, and the Lady in Blue all vanished. He no longer saw moonlit waves or felt the Lady’s gentle touch. Instead, he saw bulwarks of dark paneled wood; a black-and-white tiled floor; an ornate silver mirror; and a lavish mahogany table and matching cellaret, both varnished to perfection. All this was lit by a single ship’s lantern, so that a sickly orange gloom shrouded the cabin. He knew this place; he’d just come from here; it was Thornhill’s cabin.
Blake’s stomach twisted up at the sight of a tall, heavyset man in a blue uniform stalking around the cabin. It was Charles Thornhill. What was he doing up at this late hour? Shouldn’t he be peacefully asleep, laboring under the delusion that he had successfully rid Elioth of yet another piece of vermin?
But Charles Thornhill, Jr. looked neither restful nor peaceful. He prowled around the spacious cabin, agitated and bleary-eyed, like a man who didn’t know what to do with himself. He passed by the table, and Blake recognized the paper lying on top of it. It was Eselder’s suicide note. Surprised, Blake looked at Thornhill and, for the first time, noticed the pistol in his hand.
Then Thornhill wheeled around and looked right at him.
All the terror of a helpless ten-year-old came flooding back. Crying out, Blake raised his arms to shield himself from that blue-eyed stare. All the blood drained from Thornhill’s face, except for his lips, until he looked like a sick corpse. In the man’s bloodshot eyes, Blake saw his terror reflected back at him.