Sea Spell

Chapter Ten

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Carrying through the streets in hushed little whispers, were the legends told through generations in the ghettos. Life on the island was unique from the rest of the world in a sense, simmering with folktales and lessons that had been swept in by traders from the sea. They were passed gently from generation to generation, a treasure meant to safeguard children and teach them valued morals about life. Wrinkled elders took a certain pride as they bestowed these tales on the young, wide-eyed kids that scrambled down the alleyways with their dirt-caked soccer balls rolling ahead of them.
While it was supposed to scare them, to keep them at bay from adventuring the island, all it did was send them racing away from their homes.
Lana couldn't remember a time when she hadn't knelt down by her grandmothers rocking chair before bedtime, absorbing every word that escaped Mimi's lips. The stories fascinated her, with their unlikely characters and morals at the end of each section. Many of the stories the natives knew were of sirens and sailors, sea serpents or underwater empires. Others were harder to swallow, and yet at the same time, were so convincing that it felt like you had witnessed the event yourself. The ghoulish ones, wickedly written to prick at ones mind until it was a cold stone of fear. One such story was that of The Widower.
According to the legend, no one truly knew what The Widower looked like. In every illustration, the face was whited-out, faded artistically with rubber mead so that it would always be a question, always unknown.
Humans hate the unknown, for their minds are secret masters in the art of expecting the worst. One of their many tragically complicated hamartias, never changing. People like to cling to old habits, like shards of glass, and they don't care how badly it slices at their soul, they hold on anyway.
Since her family had shattered, (and yet, she didn't know a time when they'd been in one piece) she had been taking observing the dreary actions of her fellow race, watched them screech and clutch over something shiny that caught their eyes. They'd try to shield it from the rest of the world, to cover it from light so that only they could marvel in its fading glory. They hissed at newcomers with slits for eyes, pecking with their beaks at anything that dared to change the system. People were like ravens, the ever-sly birds she had yet to see but had heard plenty of.
All of her theories were stowed on a mental list at the back of her mind, forgotten until a new idea was added to it. She reasoned that, a lot of life's trials could be prevented if she recalled her thoughts when she grew up.
It was ironic, how here she was, a mere girl of fourteen, one of billions of humans on this Earth, thinking of deeper things, of life and love, to find herself supposedly higher than the rest. Although she wasn't superior because she thought she knew these things, that she was aware of. Her opinions were worthless in the vastness of time and space, in the bigger picture. But then again, wasn't everything nowadays?
These notions had consumed her free time lately, as they had dutifully since her mother's disappearance. Lanakila still couldn't shrug off the satisfaction her ongoing amateur wisdom provided her. If she could make a centimeter of progress through her
list, why should she be the one to pinpoint it's flaws, killing her reassurance?
It was a complicated situation.
Stories told that, in the seventh century BC, Alcyone and Ceyx, rulers of the Western Seas, were transformed into kingfishers by Poseidon. The mighty sea god said to them,
"Go survey the seas, so that you shall be my eyes and see the unseen."
They obeyed, flying just above the surface to skim the ocean and it's never ending occurrences. The other underwater gods and goddesses now felt shadowed, for they could not make a single decision unwatched. For Alcyone and Ceyx would be eavesdropping, eager to latch onto the coveted information, so that they could deliver it to Poseidon's palace. The legend told of how oceans of Earth are connected, every tsunami and seahorse, all things whether still or in motion part of network more complex than anyone understands. A blade of grass whispers to the wind, which whistles to the rain, which patters to the water. This was the mail route that sent stories of the gods and goddesses plots to Poseidon, some traveling such distances that they stretched from the Caribbean to the Far East.
Meanwhile, Echidna, the she-dragon, was fuming in her lair of boulders located in the Southwestern Seas. Plots of unleashing her children, her sirens and monsters into the open, had been thwarted by the ever present kingfisher spies. Summoning her peasant moray eels, lampreys and creatures of the murk, she sent them to capture Alcyone and Ceyx. She would imprison them in her caves for eternity, never drowning, only consistently on the verge of death.
The kingfishers were returning from a journey to Cabeiro when they were taken hostage by the monsters, dragged to the depths of the ocean. They were cursed so that their hearts could not function perfectly underwater, but there was no way for them to suffocate. They would live in pained suffering.
Though Poseidon sent his finest scouts and troops to search for his beloved wingmen, they were never heard from again. Echidna created The Widower, to keep a watchful eye on her prisoners and anyone else that the cave called to.
The question about it was, the dominions of the serpent nymph presented themselves only to those who needed them, to those whose so-called fate depended on it.
She unfurled her fingers, trying to memorize the labyrinth on them, every twist and turn.
Of course, the alienation of life underwater was proving itself to be overwhelmingly draining. As in the rest of her life, she was forced to rely on her common sense, her practical half of the brick wall.
Why am I here?
Time will tell.
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This chapter doesn't have a lot of action, but it is vital to the storyline, that I can assure you.
Also, my fable of The Widower is entirely made up by me, with some characters stolen from Greek Mythology. I know it may not be historically correct, but if it was it wouldn't fit the story, now would it? Thanks for reading, voting or commenting!
xoxo
payton.