Siren Song | Winston Yu (10)

Ironically, the pier’s Fisherman had never liked fish. He just didn’t. In fact, while most were indifferent to their routines around the harbor, he’d initially hated fish. Their slime, imperfect and unpleasant to touch, a shield of ugliness to an otherwise beautiful mosaic of scales. His fingers always itched to peel and rip it off.

Actually, he felt the slime in a lot of other places too. 

He felt that slick discomfort in the grins of the Church people, when they waited expectantly for a cut of his money at his stall, and when they silently shunned him in the large wooden halls, cloaked by deep ringing bells and sonorous organs. 

He felt it in the way some of the other market sellers whispered about his strange silence and stiff posture. 

He felt it in the dissatisfaction one would have after another meaningless day. 

Suffice to say, he felt it in every waking moment.

—------------------

He liked the Sea.

The only reason he still fished, aside from making his living, was to feel the Sea.

In fact, he’d been born in the Sea.

Only the priest knew this, and that meant only everybody knew this. His mother was found drowned on the sand that day, beside him, a strangely silent child. Gulls and the like circled them, the Sky watching the Ground’s little stage play.

It was that day, with seagrasses stuck, clinging in his hair, when he had first felt that horrible slime. He would feel that impurity on himself for the rest of his life.

Until one day.

He cast his net in the same fashion he always had, the Sea’s swaying more familiar to him as the sickening steadiness of stone and wood harbor floor. He stood up, to feel the mist of her waters tease his face and neck, when he first heard it.

A clarion call, high and beautiful.

A soliloquy sung across the stage of white misty waves reached its audience of one. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard anything like it. Wasn’t sure whether to freeze, to cry, to stand and applaud–to clap madly until his hands burned red with heart.

The moment this cool fire, filled with passion and meaning, pierced through the grey-blue fog, into his ears;

This true “Sun” risen high, high up,

Before the false one could pollute the peaceful sky with its heat and lead its parade of endlessly meaningless days,

He felt clean.

The muck washed clearly off, out of his now salt-tangled-hair. The crashing flow of seawater eroded away at the buildup.

He looked up upon the beautiful sea, the obscured siren. The Song which felt realer to him than any pinch or misguided cut ever could. The most whole, loving, perfect illusion. He could not describe the emotions he had with words. Not even the most skilled poet could, for this was the feeling they all sought to capture into ink and speech. 

He caught glimpses of himself, of his real self, hidden by the endless folds of crashing water.

He saw a world underwater, a world of dreams, of impossibly possible being; it was a fantasy, yet not the childish kind filled with toys and sweets. He could feel this ambrosia, golden and sweeter-than-honey, hovering just above his greedy, beggar’s tongue.

Before, he had thought his life would have ended in a dull, routine manner. He’d lay on his sickbed, one of the fish on the chopping slab. Only when the slow but skillful knife of Time had worked off all of his scales would the filth begone. Then, he would be grilled to taste over the crematorium’s fire to be scattered onto the plate of Death. The Church said otherwise, but he’d butchered enough fish to see. The only thing that mattered to the Sky, the Ground–whoever, whatever–was how you’d taste.

He had learned better that day. The Sea would bring him into its calm, rocking cradle.

—---------------------------------------

The pier’s Fisherman was going crazy. Mollier could tell at a glance.

In all his years working as a priest, and his short term try at being a baptist (He’d held their faces to the Sky for too long, and the Sun disliked rude admirers) he’d never seen such a strange case.

The Church had worked hard to ensure that any strange others, like the Ground’s obsessors, had been ushered out beforehand. But Mollier could see something in the Fisherman. Past the unassuming, quiet shell. Father had always said he was good with people–yet what ticked something in his mind, far, far back–was that the Fisherman did not feel like any other person he’d met.

He was clearly not one to find gratitude in the everlasting and evergrowing sky. In its comforting yet generously free routine, guided by the warm sun.

He saw some sort of sinful existence within the Fisherman.

Something that had been cast off from the Earth and the Heavens long ago.

—------------------

After that fateful day, he would sail out every Sunday. Far, far out, where the Siren’s Song gently washed away the metallic clang of Church bells.

It was strange. The comfort had opened his mind, the creak of an empty closet door.

He saw things now, bizarre things. He would look within the mirror, and his eyes would whisper to him of the gills that had opened upon his neck. When his eyelids wiped them down, they were gone. 

The knowledge of his soul, somewhere buried within, seemed to poke and prod at its long dormant cocoon.

The Priest took notice. Of course he did. Whilst selling his slimy, suffocated fish, the Priest stood by. He did not know the Priest as well as the Priest seemed to know him, but he knew the Priest did not like to eat mackerel. So he knew that the eyes he felt on himself were not those of an innocently interested buyer.

“Aye, sir. I’ve noticed you ‘aven't been t’ church in a while.”

The Fisherman stood in silence, feet together, back hunched.

The Priest paused. “You should come back sometime, eh?”

No response.

“Well, bless the Sky.”

—------------------

When even his goodbye was met with a sort of nervous quiet, Mollier knew his suspicions had been confirmed. Despite the muteness, the Fisherman had always at least muttered some sort of greeting or farewell. He knew he had to inform the Church quickly.

—------------------

The Fisherman knew the Priest saw what had changed. He had always felt that the clever man’s eyes knew where to pierce through.

He had been careful all his life to avoid the Church’s ire, and yet there had always been a part of him, ever since that day he was found, that knew he would never fully see their way. Worse yet, he was starving. Not in body, but in soul. He hungered to hear that voice again, that song. Whether it be from the illusory mist’s throat or his.

And so, that very next day of worship, he sailed to the altar he had been reborn from.

Surrounded by the familiar sway of the Sea comforted him once more. He took one last glance at the coast of the land he had despised living on for his entire life.

—---------------------------------------

Icarus felt the wind blow across his entire body, wings afloat, basking in his freedom.

Do not fly too high, or else the Sun will melt your wings, his father had said.

But father, what else should wings be used for?

—---------------------------------------

The Seawater seemed to torrent him relentlessly, as he dived into its embrace.

Blasted with cooling ocean waves, he came apart completely.

The further he drifted along the currents, the more the water washed away his skin, a reflective mosaic shining through.

The truest form of the slime was gone. The Fisherman was no longer.

The Siren, born of a saline baptism, sat atop a small outcrop of wave-kissed rocks, and she sang.

She sang choruses and melodies drawn from within the depths of the heart, and although there were no sailors to hear, the crash of the Sea’s foaming applause brought the most simple satisfaction to her soul.