Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi

by John Grant

  Eric falls silent for a moment. There's a crackle from the fire and everyone jumps.

  "But that wasn't the last they saw of Black Bill Bartlemaine," continues old Eric after a pause that's perfectly timed. "Not by a long chalk it wasn't. And when he came back to Tadscombe it was to tell a story of where he'd been that would strain the mind of any Christian gentleman. Where he'd been, you see, was ..."

  Eric puts down his mug, which is, miraculously, empty once more, even though he'd surely never interrupted the flow of his story long enough to take more than a sip from it, and pushes back his chair. As he staggers off toward the gents at the back of the pub, another of the grockles obediently picks up the glass and makes for the bar with it. A young woman among the party giggles nervously. Her boyfriend or husband lights cigarettes for them both – who's going to report them when there's a copper smoking his pipe as he plays the fruit machine? But none of the grockles says anything much, unwilling to risk breaking the spell Eric has cast before he returns from taking his pee.

  Soon enough he's here again. As he settles himself into his seat he glances at his refilled tankard and nods a sort of impersonal gratitude to the company at large. He's fleecing them for beer, but he's being courteous about it.

  Once he's ready, he looks around their expectant faces glowing in the firelight, waits for an especially strong gust of wind in off the sea to rattle the window panes, and eases back into his story.

  "Black Bill came limping out of the setting sun on a winter's eve near ten years later, he did, with his eyes downcast, his beard a tangle of barnacles and seaweed, and one arm missing at the shoulder as if it had been pulled right off of him while he was still trying to use it."

  The old woman among the grockles – the grandma of the pack, brought along by the others because they couldn't find anyone who'd take her and they could hardly just leave her at home on her own, now could they? – sucks in her breath at this. Maybe she had a husband lost his arm in the War, or something. Whatever, old Eric's description has clearly touched a nerve in her.

  "Nobody recognized him at first, just thought he was a mad wastrel man of the type as sometimes comes by even the best reg'lated of communities. Some was for driving him off, but a nice young widder with a soft heart and a bed as had been cold for far too long, she took him in and pampered him and fed him hot broth and the like until he could recover his wits. And when that day came, he told her the most marvelous story – the story of the beach where the drowned men go."

  I tune out the old man's words as my mind fills with images of a bright summer's day, of the sunlight sparkling on choppy waves, and of Naomi Fredriksen's deliciously too-short white shorts ...

  2

  It was the brightest of summer days, and the sunlight sparkling on the water made the sea seem full of floating diamonds. I was out on my yacht – only a thirty-footer, but well fitted out belowdecks – with Naomi Fredriksen. Naomi was about the same age as I was, in her early thirties, but she seemed a good few years younger than that, young enough that she could afford to behave and dress coltishly without striking any false notes. Her face was elfin, her eyes (perhaps her best feature) a curious bluish-green, her chin pointy but with just the suspicion of a dimple in it. She wore her long black hair girlishly too: tied in a ponytail, of all things. Today she was dressed in a thin white teeshirt that showed off the smooth white skin of her arms and, whenever she stretched, that her small breasts were naked beneath it. On her neat little rump she wore a pair of white shorts so short it soon became apparent to me that, should a man feel so inclined and Ms Fredriksen herself prove willing, there would be no especial reason to remove them before undertaking a carnal engagement.

  There was no question of my not feeling so inclined, and I had no reason to believe Ms Fredriksen would prove unwilling.

  We had no particular place to go. It was still early in the morning; if we hadn't been the first to sail out of Bjorkland's dilapidated little marina this Saturday, whoever had preceded us must have set forth while the sun was still only half-risen. The general plan was to sail as far out from shore as we reasonably could, moor, drink some of the blanc de blancs I had waiting in the cooler in the galley, boff each other senseless, drink some more of the blanc de blancs, and so on. If need be, we'd eat something. We'd rest at anchor overnight, then spend tomorrow doing much the same before, in the evening, coming back to shore and driving up to our separate homes in Pingard, ready to be efficient executives on Monday morning.

  I'd met her a month ago in the elevator at work. I was in real estate on the fourth floor; she was in computer software on the third. What we had in common was that we didn't either of us ever want to get married again after the miseries of the first time – didn't even want what you could properly describe as a serious relationship. But we weren't cut out for lives in cloisters either. We had pretty good sex – certainly plenty of it – and a pretty good friendship, which was really as much as we wanted from each other just at the moment.

  Simple, uncluttered, essentially empty.

  I'm sorry to seem unromantic about this. Dramatic structure would call for us to be two passionately devoted lovers who died proclaiming we would be together for all eternity. But the truth of the matter is that we were just two not-quite-so-young people out for a good time.

  I was right about not needing to remove the shorts.

  Afterwards we lay together on the narrow bunk, drinking the cold, tart white wine straight from the bottle and sharing a large joint Naomi had rolled: it looked like Heath Robinson's design for a phallus.

  We weren't talking about very much – just waiting for me to recuperate, I guess – when the yacht lurched.

  "What the hell was—?"

  Again the craft rolled.

  My jeans were around my ankles and did their best to trip me as I struggled toward the companionway. I think Naomi was more collected than I was.

  I kicked myself clear of my jeans and clambered up on deck.

  The sun was still shining down on us through a sort of tunnel in the clouds, which was why, below, we'd not noticed any change in the weather. All around, though, the world had become lost in cliffs of a threatening grey. The water had turned that same grey. Big, angry-seeming waves had sprung up. It was as if we'd been becalmed in the exact centre of where a hurricane had formed, impossible though that was.

  I yelled down to Naomi that I needed some help, and set about securing the sails and the rigging.

  The wind hit just then, and almost threw me overboard. Luckily I was able to hook my arm into the wheel, but I felt something crack and a spear of pain shot through me, rattling my teeth.

  I let out a howl to the mocking sun above me, and as I lowered my gaze I saw Naomi's head appear at the top of the companionway. She saw me hanging by my skewed arm from the wheel, and her pretty little face began to twist in fear.

  I could do nothing to warn her as the boat heaved in a new surge and, from behind her, the heavy hatch, left unsecured in our earlier haste to fuck, slid shut ...

  I lost my wits.

  3

  There was a long time during which I knew nothing except that I knew nothing: I was conscious, it seemed, but had nothing to be conscious of. It was the strangest of sensations – or nonsensations – and yet it didn't bother me at all. I accepted that I must be either dying or dead, but I was perfectly calm about this. There had been nothing in particular to live for except living itself ever since my marriage to Marion had turned so spectacularly sour on me. I was just sorry that I had, as it were, taken Naomi Fredriksen with me.

  I waited patiently for the long corridor with the lighted door at the end to appear, but they never did.

  Instead what happened was that I became aware of a terrible coldness spreading through me. I barely noticed it at first; it began not as a physical chill but as a freezing of my feelings, of my emotions. I regarded Naomi Fredriksen's death, and its horrible manner, with complete dispassion. I didn't find it appalling, or sicken
ing, or depressing. I didn't even find it interesting. The same was true of my own existence.

  But soon enough the cold took on a physical aspect, and began creeping through me, starting at my core and working slowly outward until finally it reached my extremities. It was like being flayed alive from the inside out. I can't describe the pain – can't even properly recollect it. It was an agony that would have killed a living human being ten times over. Me, of course, I was already dead. There wasn't the escape route of oblivion.

  The torment lasted for eternity, and then abruptly it was gone. With its disappearance there came a return to my body of the sort of vibrancy it had possessed when alive. There was the illusion of warm blood running through my veins. I flexed my muscles appreciatively, feeling small cramps slowly ease. I was still very cold, but it was the cold of a brisk winter's day, not the searing chill I'd known just moments before.

  For a while I thought I was breathing. Then I realized that I wasn't, that I didn't have to.

  And finally I opened my eyes.

  Instantly I panicked.

  I was lying twisted, mainly on my back, half sunk into ooze at the bottom of the ocean. In the very far distance above me I could see a flicker of light – either the storm had passed or the intensity of its lightning strikes was now so great that they formed a seemingly continuous discharge. Around me, unconcerned, strange marine plants waved slowly in currents I could not feel, and a couple of poisonous-looking muddy grey-brown fish darted between vague hunched masses that I knew to be overgrown rocks. I could smell – or thought I could smell – the bittersweet shit-scent of eons-old corruption and decay.

  But none of these things especially registered alongside the overpowering terror that the pressure of the water should be squashing me flat!

  I began choking, as if fighting for the breath I didn't need.

  It took a long time for me to realize that I felt no great burden from the water at all. Despite the contortion of my position on the sea floor, I was as comfortable as if I'd been lying at home in my own bed.

  Although this may seem hard to believe, it was only now that the wonder of my situation began to hit me. I'd never since childhood – when I'd cast aside childish things, as enjoined by no less an authority than Christ himself – believed in any afterlife, or the soul, or any of the guff earnestly propounded to the ignorant masses by people whose education and intelligence really should have told them better. So far as I was concerned, once you were dead that was it. You re-entered the carbon cycle, and future generations unwittingly feasted on your remains. But now I was, as we said in the real-estate business, having to swiftly re-evaluate my prior estimate.

  I tried to sit up, but was powerless to shift. I could turn my head, but that was about it. It wasn't that the muscles of my limbs and torso weren't working – I tested them again and they were – but as if some immense weight that I couldn't directly feel were pinning me to the spot. Had I been right about the water pressure after all?

  Hours passed. The distant glimmer of light above me darkened. Night must have fallen. I could see little but shadows and darker shadows; only later did it strike me as strange that I could see anything at all.

  And then there was that ripping, wrenching, tearing sensation of ultimate cold once again. I cried out in silent agony. There was, of course, not even a spiral of air bubbles to mark my scream.

  Mercifully, this time the pain didn't last long.

  With a sense of release not unlike orgasm I felt my heavy physical body pull free of the other body I was now inhabiting. Taken by a wayward current, my corpse flopped over to one side. Already its silhouette was looking a little puffy from the gases of decay. It seemed to retain a precarious grip on the sea bottom for a few minutes, bobbing gently, and then it floated completely clear of me.

  I sat up and watched its almost invisible mass slowly begin to rise in the dark water.

  The departure of my body seemed to make my senses keener. I could see better – not very well, but well enough to be able to check my arms and hands to see that I still had arms and hands. I was naked, my clothes having departed with my other body, and the flesh of my stomach and thighs felt firm and oddly youthful where I squeezed it. I seemed to be in the best of possible health, as if I'd somehow shed ten years of smoking, drinking and general physical neglect. My broken arm was healed.

  I grinned. If these were the consequences you could expect, I'd recommend drowning to anyone.

  Well, okay: if you didn't mind going through that frigid hell to get here ...

  My new body wanted me to leap to my feet, but I held back nervously, wary of losing my footing in the liquid ooze. I stood up very gingerly, moving not as if I were underwater at all but as if I were out in the open air. Holding my arms out to either side, I waited until I was satisfied I could keep my balance. It was only then that I noticed my feet weren't sinking at all into the mud. I started walking across its surface, cautiously at first but then with increasing confidence as I discovered it was as easy as ambling across a well kempt lawn. When obstructions loomed in my path – rocks, waterlogged beams, patches of prickly sea plants – they seemed to level out as I approached them and then restore themselves to their former state after I'd passed over them.

  The only real difference between this existence and everything I'd experienced in my previous life above the water was the lack of sound – except, as I began to realize, that wasn't really true, not quite. The submarine world had its own particular repertoire of sounds. They were very quiet, which was why I hadn't registered them before, but they were definitely present. Most of them were very low in pitch – the snap of a fish's tail as it abruptly changed course might have sounded like a slap or a crack in the air but down here in the water it was a low, sluggish murmur. Some of the noises, though, like a few of the sounds the fishes and other creatures made among each other, were like little clicks and whistles.

  And there was another spectrum of sounds, sounds that served as a backdrop to the rest. These were much more steadily sustained, so that for a long while my brain blotted them out, the way the brain soon learns to disregard a persistent background hum. Once I began to pick these up, though, they became impossible to ignore. I was soon able to identify them: they were the noises the currents made as the waters of the sea floor settled and resettled themselves in response to changes far above me.

  They weren't just random noises. As I listened to them more carefully I found they wove themselves together with a definite structure and rhythm.

  They were music.

  It wasn't a music like any I'd heard back in the human world – indeed, it was so very different that any attempt at analogy is going to be misleading. However:

  Imagine the audience has finally hushed and the orchestra has stilled. The first sounds the conductor draws forth are very low, almost imperceptibly quiet tones from the tubas and bassoons, the note barely changing for long moments and yet the sound certainly bearing some tantalizingly elusive melody. This low chorus will make itself felt continually throughout the orchestral piece that follows, even though it can only sometimes be distinguished. Consider it to be the more major currents of the sea floor, the constantly streaming offshoots of the far mightier but far distant currents of the open ocean.

  Now, just when the audience is aching for some change to the tapestry being woven by the low wind instruments, there comes a sudden capricious flurry of notes from the first violins, almost immediately countered by the violas and – startlingly in its unexpectedness but nonetheless fitting perfectly into the composition – a tumbling melody played in duet between the xylophone and the harp. These are the eddies as the waters spin around the projecting spar of some long-wrecked wooden ship. As subsidiary eddies playfully develop, piccolos join in. A slump of the ooze brings a muted barrage of thunder from the timpani, and then ...

  But really it sounded nothing like that at all. The instruments making up this invisible, phantom orchestra weren't any I'd ever heard,
and they brought out harmonies no mortal composer could ever have conjectured. All the music we're accustomed to, even if it's produced electronically, scored by computer software, is ultimately the product of the human mind. This strange subterranean music wasn't. And yet it was, at least to my ears, of quite enchanting beauty.

  Furthermore, it wasn't just idle sound.

  It was speaking to me, as clearly as if it were pronouncing words.

  The music of the underwater currents was telling me to follow quite a specific path, a route along which it would guide me until I reached the destination it desired me to reach – the destination I had to reach.

  I didn't know what that destination was. In my previous existence I'd have struck up, I'm sure, a clamour of questions, demanding to know where I was being taken before I so much as stirred a single step.

  Here, I didn't do any of that.

  I followed where the music of the waters led me.

  4

  I've no idea how long it was that I spent following the currents. At some stage I gave up walking on the sea bottom and began floating easily through the water, not so much swimming as sliding my way like a lazy fish from one place to the next. I lost count of the cycle of light and dark above me; it belonged to that other world, the world in which I was no longer interested. This place of gloomy shadows and graceful movements was my world now. The speed of the surface transitions from brightness to darkness and back again seemed to become swifter and swifter, so I guess my journey beneath the sea must have lasted for many months, even years. Perhaps even longer.

  Sometimes I was joined for a while by the creatures of the deep – rays, squid, schools of little silvery fishes. These fellow travellers of mine seemed to accept my presence without any special attention, yet there was something companionable about their being there. At other times, and often, I was accompanied by beings whom I can only describe as wraiths. They certainly weren't like anything I've ever seen pictured or described in books or on the screen. They were filamentary creatures, seemingly only part substantial, as if most of their existence was located somewhere else, just around a corner and out of sight. All the colours of the rainbow flitted through their translucent bodies as they undulated alongside me among the currents. I believed, and still do, that they were intelligent and were trying to communicate with me in some way. Perhaps it was really the wraiths rather than the music that acted as my guides on my long journey.