The Choir

The ocean floor, having been the subject of a great deal of my childhood fantasies, did not at first strike me as an unusual setting in which to find myself.  I presumed I was in the middle of some pleasant dream I would soon wake from.  As time progressed, however, both the sharpness of my consciousness and solidarity of my surroundings became increasingly apparent.  I was, evidently, standing on or perhaps gently floating above the sandy ocean bottom.

I did not want for air, nor was my vision impeded very much within a certain radius.  I was being conveyed, perhaps by a current, through a forest of craggy towers of blue rock.  I craned to see the extent of their height, but they rose into the blackness out of sight.  I heard nothing save the swish of salt water in my ears as I turned my head, and noted the absence of any form of sea life.

Though I was not oppressed by the ocean’s weight as one might expect at so great a depth, the dark expanse made me feel horribly alone.  I am a potter by trade, with no apprentice or family, and I am accustomed to being at work without human contact for several days at a time.  But even I, and I would imagine many who lead far more solitary lives, take comfort in knowing that I have neighbors, however distant they may be.  Living a mile outside of a small town gives one a comfort that one lacks if he lives in the wilderness.  Here my only sense of surrounding came from the rocks, and I took as much relief from their presence as rocks are able to provide.

I floated on, never seeming to change direction, and my path never impeded by any obstacle.  I could not think how I had come to be in this situation, nor why I was not at that moment drowning.  No bubbles issued from my mouth and nose when I attempted to exhale, and I found I breathed quite normally.  I preferred to seal my lips, however, for I could taste the sea all the same.

The novelty of my predicament soon waned, and I wondered if I were being taken somewhere purposefully.  I could not imagine a force capable of conveying me in the manner I was being so, save God Himself, and I decided that if He was indeed behind it, He could certainly do whatever He pleased with me.

I now believe that it was a little less than an hour from that time that I first saw the light ahead of me.  The terrain became steeper and I more or less crawled up the incline, pushed along by the current or God or what have you, barely touching the ground with toes and fingertips.  The light began as a yellow pinprick, like the beginning of a sunrise.  It steadily increased in vibrance and intensity until I reached the lip of a cliff, at which point the force driving me forward ceased completely and I gently settled on my stomach, peering down into an enormous crater at a wondrous scene.

Where to begin!  Dug into the center of the immense crater were many hundred pits; deep, narrow holes, and from these rose, attached by long translucent tendrils, a host of creatures the like of which I had never seen, nor even heard of in stories.  Their slim, spindle-shaped bodies were long, covered in a myriad of transparent tentacles that stirred the water around them, and extended up to a round head with globular eyes and a wide, thick-lipped mouth.  These heads too were covered in a nimbus of smaller tendrils, closely resembling hair.  The entire scene was almost blindingly bright, and from what I could see, these creatures were the source.

None took notice of me, and all seemed to be looking intently skyward, or surface-ward, as it was.  It was deathly silent for some time, and it was this that allowed me to detect the instant the first of them began to sing.

It seemed that the very centermost creature closed its eyes, tilted its head back, and issued forth a soft note, so gently as though the song had already started a good deal of time ago, and she (for the voice seemed feminine to me) was simply joining in as unobtrusively as possible.  The note quickly grew in strength and volume, however, and soon her immediate neighbors started up, and then their neighbors, and the song rippled out to the edges of the crowd with great speed.  As this happened, the light, which had been difficult to look at before, became nearly intolerable, and I was obliged to shut my eyes.