The Sea Mother

The Sea Mother

by J. Macreus

“Give me your hand, boy!” the witch demanded, grabbing my wrist and twisting.

I had been in a dozen barroom and back-alley fights. I had been beaten and burned. I had even been strung up and left to die. But I had never known the panic that I felt when the sea hag snatched me in her bony hand, her fingernails black and crimson. A freezing shudder coursed up my arm, spread across my shoulder, my chest, and down to my knees. I buckled and fell. Whatever curse or dark magic her touch imparted struck me like a cannonball. I could not move. I was helpless.

Her eyes traced over my skin, and I felt as if her fingers crawled up inside my arm.

The first mate and the bosun stumbled and fell backwards covering their faces and crying out. Both dropped their swords, and scurried toward the tangle of the crew. The chief still hung with rigging around his neck, loudly suffocating and clawing at the ropes. The rest of the crew held tight to each other. Some sobbed. Some prayed to a God in which they didn’t believe. All were as frozen as I until the captain appeared.

He was red-eyed and furious, holding a scimitar above his head and swinging it wildly. The witch turned as he cleaved it into her shoulder, bringing the blade as far down into the hag as her breast. You could hear her bones snap. Her seaweed green blood burst out from the wound. Yet, she did not let go of my arm. In fact, her grip tightened, threatening to crush my wrist.
She smiled, unfazed. The captain yanked at the scimitar but it held fast in the witch’s body. He screamed out a curse, but it was cut short as she struck him with her hand and sent him against the railing in a heap.

Again, she regarded me, her eyes locking on mine. It was then that I saw her face.
In the melee, her hood had fallen from her head, and the black raven hair it had covered now flew free in the ocean’s wind. It was warm and dark like velvet. Her eyes were pools of starless space that stretched deep inside of her. And her lips were as pale as sea foam.

Slowly she turned my hand so that it pointed palm up. I grimaced as her grip tightened even more. Then she took the scimitar and drew it from her breast. An odor issued from the wound, like that of a rotting corpse.

She flashed her yellow broken teeth at me and dug the point of the scimitar into my palm. Somewhere an albatross wailed as the clouds exploded above with rain and a thunderous wind blew up and stretched the sails almost to their limits.

As she began to carve into my palm, the ship broke fast and hurtled across the sea. Two of the crew flew backward off the quarter deck and were left screaming in the wake of the ship. The start was so violent the chief’s neck broke in the rigging and both the fore and main masts groaned and splintered.

“You have hidden here upon the water too long, boy,” the witch cackled. “Your father thought he could outrun his doom. But here we are at last.”

The captain’s scimitar now glowed with a burning blue light. Not only did it cut into my flesh, but it seemed to light my entire hand on fire. Then as the sea-witch laughed, the flames danced their way up my arm and to my face.
She yanked my hand toward my eyes, and I saw the mark she had cut into me. It was the same as the one my father had branded into his neck. The same that had been stretched years ago by the hangman’s noose for piracy. The same that now appeared burning in the crone’s eyes.

The flames from my arms continued to dance over my face and then, like a serpent, coiled themselves before me and shot into my eyes, burning out what color I had until they were as ebony as the witch’s own.

The ship turned grey, the sky, a deep purple. The crew screamed in horror as I saw the flesh drop off each one I turned my gaze upon.
The sea-witch no longer held me. She no longer cackled. In truth, she hung her head and looked even more frightening for it. The ship began to slow.

To her wounded breast, I crawled and took suck. She held my head like a newborn and I drank of her blood and her cold salty tears. A memory invaded my mind. It was one from half a lifetime ago. It was of a mother and a child and seafaring man who left one day. It was of a fire and a curse and of drowning wife. It was of a serpent and bargain, a resurrection of sorts, and a race across the wild open sea.

The witch looked down upon me, and met my astonished gaze. Then she pushed me hard to the deck, stepped to the railing and leapt from the ship.

I jumped to the edge and looked over into the water below but saw nothing except the cold sea and a dark shape sinking fast below the surface. I tried to dive in, but was grabbed and held tight by a skeleton’s hand. When I turned I saw the fleshless body of the bosun standing before me.

The other members of the crew, each missing their skin, hoisted the captain’s limp body over the deck and into the water. A shanty erupted from the chief’s throat, though he still hung from the rigging, and I was handed the scimitar.

Later that night, a new pennant was raised above the main top. It was a flag of black like colorless eyes and white like skinless bones.

And so, my story began.