by Paula Guran
He can’t scamper the way he did years ago, but follows the same route up the bookshelves now as then. There’s no ladder, though the cases are more than twenty feet high. No matter. Aitch is small, a flimsy wool boy, shrunken and felted from too much time in the water. The mahogany boards are sturdy enough.
At this height, dust blankets every surface. He could feel, but hadn’t quite realized, how long he’d been bottled. Chalk and pastel powder shows through the thick layer of grey. Sticks of color await Aitch’s touch. Around his secret drawing-place, beneath the moonlit porthole, favorite volumes are splayed, spines cracked, pages well-thumbed. On hands and knees, he shuffles from the top of one case to the next, careful not to knock any books to the floor. He tries not to, can’t help but, look down. From here, his glass prison looks so tiny.
Halfway around the room, he stops below the round window. Steels his nerve and peers out.
Chimneys dominate the landscape, near and far. Cold scratches point skywards from village rooftops, leading his eye to the refinery’s smokestacks, a dozen or more thick pillars spewing clouds of ink between the stars. Closer, to the right, a breakwater describes the harbor. Aitch drops his gaze quickly, avoids taking in the reef, the ever-churning sea.
Don’t be frightened, the Aunts told him, long ago, when they used to promenade through the fish markets on the wharves, Aitch by their side, harnessed and leashed.
Born liquid-breathing, as you were, one began.
Encauled, interrupted her sister.
Shrouded in brine, the first went on, inhaling the most profound essence of life—
A natural water-baby—
You should feel, said the Aunt – and Aitch remembers the moment stretching then, as he’d stopped on the rough jetty, the splinters in his bare soles forgotten, chest swelling with pride and hope and the memory of love, of Mother calling him special, believing, suddenly, that the Aunts thought so, too, that they wanted him, that he was special – but they weren’t looking at him at all. As she’d continued, the Aunt’s gaze was unfixed, irises full of the deeps. You should feel—
An affinity, supplied the double.
Gratitude, said the other Aunt firmly. To be forever submerged, to be reunited . . . A shimmer in her eyes then, a ripple of emotion as she’d turned, Aitch finally in her sights. Was it reverence in the quivering cast of her features? Jealousy? Disappointment?
Not admiration, Aitch had known, certain as the stone in his guts.
Not love.
Be thankful, she’d said, breaking the spell. Soon you’ll always be in your element.
That’s where Nick Pierce’s family moors their dory, the Aunts had said that day, playing tour guide on the wharves. Perched on his bookshelf inside the lighthouse, Aitch now draws absent-mindedly: the vista before him, the ghostly one superimposed in his memory, the landscape risen in dreams. That’s Luelly’s tackle and bait stall, the Aunts had said, pointing to an open-sided booth, boards reeking of worms and fresh paint. That’s the last of Marsh’s fleet. Over there is Southwick’s berth. The old seafarer himself had sat on a low stool, shucking shells into a pail. The sails on his brigantine had been tightly furled, flags limp on its masts. The haul more than half unloaded.
The scritch-scritching of pastels on paper intensifies; thoughts are channeled into images and signs, filling sheet after sheet.
Southwick had given him an oyster. The sailor had smiled at the face Aitch pulled when the slimy glob slid down his throat. Great black beard like a puff of steam, heaving as he laughed. Aitch renders it in charcoal smears and swirls.
He tries to write the captain’s name, but the letters come out all wrong, curves and crosses misaligning. After countless hours sneak-reading the Aunts’ books, Aitch has developed a strong sense for words . . . but, lately, they won’t stick in his head. On paper they’re moth-eaten, bad as initials.
Pictures arrive clear and fast.
Some he replicates, based on those tucked away in the Aunts’ library: pen-and-ink sketches of submarines, volcanoes, whales; etchings of distant islands, stone-carved idols, long-lost tribes; full-color anatomies, endless species of fish, barbed lures. Others he cannot explain. Images and lyrics appear full-formed in the darkness, as though projected into his mind. Urgently, he records strange hieroglyphs. Maps to as-yet-uncharted provinces. Constellations and moons never seen.
Tonight, he can hardly keep up with the onslaught. It’s been too long since he’s climbed, since he’s played; the pages practically fill themselves. Tidal waves and ships. Tunnels and caverns. Darkness scribbled in, claustrophobic, with bright sinuous streaks slithering towards the margins . . . Aitch draws and draws, arm aching and smudged to the elbow. Before one picture drifts off the ledge, floating to the floor, he has already begun the next.
He does not notice the quiet, until it is broken.
Key against iron, the bolt shunts. Hinges squeal as the door opens. Two sets of heels click-clack into the room. The Aunts skirt around the lidless jar, stepping over small puddles, mouths thin lines of disapproval. How can it have gotten so late, Aitch wonders, resisting an urge to look outside, to search for sunrise. Dropping pencil and paper, he freezes, vainly hoping to blend into the shadows. Below, the Aunts sigh, nostrils flared. They bend and retrieve the discarded drawings, each gathering a sizable stack. At first they afford the things little attention – but as the moonlight strikes the topmost illustrations, their glances linger. Studying the hurried doodles, they communicate with nods and clicks of the tongue. They flick through the papers. Quick, quicker.
Just when Aitch begins to feel the tension in his belly ease – they’ve overlooked him, surely – the Aunts cock their heads and squint at his roost. Brows furrowed in concentration, not anger.
“Aitch,” the one on the left begins. “You are—”
A gift, Father had said.
So special, said Mother.
“—not designed for heights. You are not a bird. Come now, child. Continue your work down here.”
Stomach churning, the boy lowers his supplies, reacquaints his feet with the ground. Booty in hand, the Aunts turn their backs.
“Goodnight,” he whispers as they retreat, bolting the door behind them.
The sun winks through the ocean-side porthole long before the boy stretches out on the cot, finally sure they’ve forgotten to bottle him.
Freedom survives line by line, page by page.
A week’s worth of sketches keeps Aitch occupied, earning him seaweed soups and a flat bed. First thing in the morning, his palms are mottled: brown and purple and navy. While he slept, the Aunts had visited his room – he’s sure, he remembers – and observed his slumber. They put sticks of chalk in his grasp, then watched figures and symbols appear, channeled directly from dream to paper. Clucks, glottal approval, whenever he gave his drowsy hands free rein. On his breakfast trays, new reams arrive.
He wants to make the Aunts happy.
He wants to be dry.
So he draws, even after the nightmares have stopped.
From the shelf-top vantage, looking out over the village, Aitch lets loose his imagination. A raging ocean – yes, the Aunts appreciated those pastel-flecked swells. Bizarre golden treasure, twinkling on the reef; they’d almost smiled at that one. Misshapen creatures emerging from the deeps, gills fluttering in dank air, webbed fingers flapping. Hordes of spine-crested mermaids crossing the pebbled shore. Tentacled men bent on ascending the lighthouse. Oh, how the chanting had soared, the evening he’d produced that lurid vision!
Next day, the seas are calm as the Aunts have always pretended. The waters are clear and barren. Activity on the wharves is sedate. Finding little inspiration outside, Aitch scours the library’s collection of artwork. Displacing the cylinders he lately hasn’t needed to count, he copies imprints of fire-fueled airships soaring past the sun. Pyramids inscribed with illegible messages. Vines strangling strongholds. Crumbling ruins.
There’s no release in making these copies. No b
utterflies in his belly. No urgency. For a while, he abandons the crayons and simply reads.
Around dusk, the Aunts deliver a jug of metal-tinged water, a bowl of spirulina flakes, and a shrimp cake. One changes the chamber pot, the other the sheets. Toying with his pendant, Aitch stands with his back pressed to the farthest bookcase, as the latest batch of drawings is swept up and inspected.
A frown on the left. Expression neutral on the right.
“Have you napped this afternoon?”
Aitch shakes his head.
The Aunts exchange glances.
“So you’ve been sleeping well these past nights?”
“Yes, Aunt. Extremely well, thank you.”
Another unreadable interchange.
“Indeed.”
Unsure how to respond, Aitch shrinks under the tight-lipped scrutiny. Instinctively he inches away, stopping short as he collides with the largest empty jar. Glass resonates as it strikes the neighboring bottle; a solemn church bell summoning dawdlers inside. Aitch swallows hard, willing the sound to ebb.
Shhhhh, he silently pleads. Don’t remind them. His back is only now beginning to truly unkink, his ankles and hips barely straightening . . .
“I have been very good,” he says aloud, voice breaking.
“Indeed,” says the left, unconvinced.
“Indeed,” repeats the right, taking the latest sketches and her sister by the arm. “We expect no less, Aitch.
As if to reassure, this Aunt leaves a lantern – and the door unlocked behind her.
The Aunts aren’t impressed with the juvenile horrors Aitch has created. The haunted house with its gambrel roof, widow’s walk, broken panes of stained glass. Their hands twitch, ready to scrunch the bone-filled pits seething with rats. They sneer at the Arctic tundra made by crushing white chalk over a dark ground. If they were prone to laughter, they would have guffawed at the giant penguin.
The Aunts do not laugh.
“You were right,” says one.
With the slightest nod, the other acknowledges her sister’s deferral. “Like attracts like, blood calls to blood, element to element. The message is meaningless if not spoken fluently, fluidly.”
“Agreed,” comes the reply. “His strength is undeniably liquid.”
Immediately, she reaches into the front pouch of an apron cinched around her gaunt waist. She pulls out a rag and a sloshing cylinder.
Against his will, Aitch feels the count starting anew.
One: the vial in their hands. Two: the Aunt dousing the cloth. Three: the Aunt pinning him with eyes, with hands, with nails. Two: the Aunt grabbing . . . Three: the Aunt holding . . .
“No,” he cries, attempting to wriggle free, thrashing. Arms throbbing in their brutal grip. Legs quivering. Piss dribbling. Backed against the seventh jar, he whips his head from side to side until it is trapped. Fingers gouge his cheeks, piercing flesh, turning his face. “No,” Aitch moans, pulse hot and throbbing. Tears stinging.
Cold wetness smothers him silent, fabric pinched around his nose, palmed against his mouth. Aitch tries to hold his breath, tastes bile. Scentless fumes seep between his lips, infiltrate his nostrils. His body sags against the gaping bottle.
“Mother,” he sobs, falling into the black nothingness of defeat.
He rouses in near-darkness. Chin on knees, feet twisted numb, joints screaming. Breath hollow in his ears, waves splashing. The slow rhythm of strange verses intoned. Inside the jar, the air is close, humid, and reeks of glue. Overhead, all the tiny stars in Aitch’s sky have been plugged, the metal lid sealed to its tracks. Through the glass, he sees the room blearily. Moonlight streaming. Bookshelves. No cot now, no table, no chamber pot. No tools. The door thrown wide, taunting.
No escape but into sleep.
“I’m a good boy,” he mumbles, the Aunts pulling him on his harness and leash, yanking him off the wharf, plunging into the water. Their spindle-fins clawing, clamping, dragging him down, down, further down. Diving, songs bubbling from their gills. Descending at a strangling pace. Flippers kicking, kicking for the ocean floor.
Release me, Aitch thinks, the silent cry echoed from the abyss stretching for miles below. Release me—
Busy singing, the Aunts don’t hear him. They don’t listen – he knows, he’s sure – they never have. They don’t believe he will stay if not forced.
The time has come, they seem to chant, alighting on the chasm’s precipice. Clouds of silt stir as they land, lifeless grit caught by the current, tossed out over the void. The time has come, they demand, but the words are crooned with a lullaby cadence, mesmerizing and slow. Wake, they say, leading Aitch to the precipice, slicing at his neck until it bleeds. Holding fast, binding him in long ropes of dead-man’s bootlaces. Wake, they repeat, floating the boy-bundle over the edge, pushing down as serpentine shadows writhe up.
Release me—
Aitch flails, spasms shaking his body so ferociously the bottle quakes. He throws his head violently back, forward, back, smashing it again and again to rid it of the voice – that soul-rending voice! – still slicing through his sleep-fevered mind, still pulsating through his heart.
Release me—
The jar pitches as he pounds his spine against its walls, as he huffs and grunts, using shoulders and arms and ribs and skull, his only weapons, his only tools. Thrashing and rocking, building momentum, leaning into it, tipping. An audible crack as glass meets floorboards, but it’s merely a weakening, not a break, not a shatter. Brine sloshes and for a moment he’s submerged, he’s back in the nightmare, he’s drowning. As Aitch gasps, sputters, sucks in salty gutfuls, instinct takes over. He contorts his torso, flexes, and flips. Mother’s talisman finds its way into his mouth; teeth clenched, he concentrates, holds his breath. Focuses on rotating, revolving, building up speed. Rolling, the bottle radiates great corkscrews of sound, faster and faster, like a fisherman’s copper coin spinning on the docks. Faster and faster across the planks, light refracting, a dizzying kaleidoscope of water. Faster and faster, until it smashes to a stop.
Candles topple from the bookshelf; wax cylinders crash onto glass, encouraging the jar’s new split to widen. Bracing with his forearms, the boy heaves. A high-pitched whine as the structure around him weakens, pinging as it cracks. With a sharp squeal, the container shatters. The water level and jagged shards fall, slicing and stinging. Aitch weeps as blood courses into his limbs – and out of them.
Lurching onto all fours, he grinds the pads of his fingers into the bottle’s wreckage until the red trickle becomes a steady flow. Without pencil or paper, he has no other means by which to record the vibrant images flooding his vision, the instructions, the dark mariner’s pleas. The Aunts will want to know every foreign word, every primeval beat. He smears every note, every glyph, every incoherent medley, until his head is light, his hands raw.
Taking a step back, Aitch considers what he’s made.
This work.
This message.
The Aunts are going to love it, he thinks. Hope and pride turn him toward the door, take him by the hand. Whispering the Aunts are going to love you, they lead him into the corridor, push him at the spiral stairs. Convince him to go and get them.
Alone outside the lighthouse’s lantern room, Aitch’s hands throb while his nerve shudders and dies.
Gas flames burn low within caged sconces, barely illuminating the narrow hallway. The ceiling is shadow-cloaked, held aloft by cobwebs and century-old beams. Darkness runs its fingers along Aitch’s bare back, tickling the nape of his neck. It ushers him across the short landing at the top of the stairs. He’d been so brave below, an artist drunk on revelation. Now he hesitates, facing a set of double doors that rattle as though desperate to break away from the jambs. Light pulsates out of two small circular windows centered at head-height, harsh yellow-white beams piercing the corridor, then fading. In the strange between-glow, Aitch feels exposed. He’s not brave at all. Not special. Just a barefoot boy in his smallclothes, dripping blood and fea
r.
Up here the chant is chilling, louder than ever, underscored by a wild howl.
On tiptoe, Aitch approaches. He peers through the left-hand opening, flinching each time the lantern turns its glaring irises his way. Inside the round chamber is strobed, observed in snatches. Polished timber counters ringing the central lamp, strewn with parchments, maps, rulers and compasses. Leather volumes stacked on a trestle table, on ledges, on the floor. Dozens of specimen jars, labeled and lidded. A hard bench on the right, a pillow and grey wool blanket folded at one end. Too many cylinders for Aitch to count: telescopes on tripods; brass spyglasses; plinths topped with crude wooden idols; fat pillar candles, flames full and guttering. All around, from floor to vaulted ceiling, Aitch’s drawings are pasted in indecipherable patterns on the grand windows. The pages whip and curl in the gale; now black holes in the night, now constellations.
To the left, the room’s easternmost glass is missing; its salt-rimed casement admits a fierce wailing. Framed in the gap, the Aunts sway. Starkly illuminated for a few blinding seconds, then silhouetted against the waning moon. Hair unbound, long tendrils undulating, storm-tossed. Aitch gasps, glimpsing the robes fluttering from their shoulders like wings. He’s sure, he remembers, the silken sheen of that fabric, the way it shimmers on a starlit May-Eve . . .
“Mother?” he whispers, though he knows she’s not there. Not now, not ever. The lamp spins and Aitch blinks a second too late. When sight returns, the Aunts have shifted position; they’re performing an irregular dance, their song changed to suit, lyrics guttural as a seal’s bark. As they step back, the bottom ledge of the window is revealed: a plank juts like a parched tongue from the lighthouse’s side. A hemp rope is firmly fastened around the board’s outermost end. Spilling into the chamber, it forms an immense snake-nest on the floor, spooling and coiling, eventually attached to the vessel lying at the Aunts’ feet.
Unlike its precursors, the eighth jar is not cylindrical, nor is it pure glass.
Six-sided, it is not flat-bottomed but pointed and arrow-tipped. Its facets are smooth and oblong, smoked mirrors chased with lead; each pane absorbs more light than it reflects. Aitch whimpers. He has seen its like before in the Aunts’ books – but not on this scale, not for this purpose.