random etchings

Ice

Beyond the seven seas, past where the old maps warned of dragons and in between the sterile lines our modern wizards use to explain everything, lies the edge of the world. I found it on a summer afternoon, with the sun bright overhead and the boat solid and real beneath my feet. I was a passenger that voyage, sailing down the South American coast with a group of rough sailors.

The crew murmured in their bunks of sea serpents and sirens and eerie currents where ghost ships sailed, ever seeking the able bodied to add to their phantom crews. But the captain had no patience with their superstitions. "Lot of blooming nonsense. I take reasonable precautions. Follow orders and you'll be fine."

I listened, soaking in their tales and wanting to believe, but knowing in my soul that the wonders of the past had died.

We were close to Antarctica, where ice cliffs glow blue making it impossible to tell the sea from the sky from the ice. I was on deck, watching the crew swarm over the lines, when the captain swore and folded up the charts. “We lost the compass.” She sent someone aloft and took the helm, steering a straight course that paralleled the cliff, as far as I could tell.

The crew were muttering, so low that I couldn’t hear them, and making superstitious signs with their hands when they weren’t tying off the lines. I realized that the noise of the ship felt muffled, as though there were cotton balls stuffed in my ears.

Suddenly, sound come over the water, a haunting melody that I wish that I could remember, but it faded almost as soon as I heard it. At the sound, the crew groaned and worked faster, striving to sail away. It might have been a trick of my eyes, but I could have sworn the ship and all on board were glowing the same blue as the ice.

There was a splash, and a cry went up: “Man overboard!” I rushed over, but the ship was moving too fast, and the figure in the water was swimming with all his might toward the cliffs. The captain swore again, and made as if she were going to turn the ship around, but suddenly, the music stopped, the blue faded, and the noises of the ship returned.

The captain took out her charts and laid them out with a stream of curses that ended “bloody sirens.” She saw me standing there, and rolled her eyes. “He must have forgotten his ear plugs. Makes me glad to be a woman.”