Chapter 1
At the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice,
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
(Mark 15:34)
. . .
"When I was fourteen, my father called me to his room and cut my hair short. I stood watching it fall on the floor in great chunks, my dark hair that looked like a crow's nest. I asked him why. He ran his tired palm over the soft spikes my scalp bristled with and said: "It will do you good." Now that I know what he meant, I also know that he was wrong."
. . .
They set off hours before dawn. He wakes her up, squeezing her shoulder. Whisper comes out a wheeze, as he tells her to be quiet, crossing the line of her mouth with a shaking finger. She lies on her back, staring with owlish eyes, dumbstruck and struggling to see him. In the darkness he's been reduced to a pair of glistening eyeballs and shuffling feet.
But mother, what about mother, she wants to ask, hopping groggily on her bare feet and curling her toes to save them from the cold, but won't break the seal of silence he'd put on her lips.
"We're saving you."
His hand is so insistent to pull her along it does feel like being saved, drawn out of water for a gasp of air. She takes a deep breath.
"Your mother is safe."
She's startled by him seeing right through her thoughts, and breaks the link of their hands. Her father ducks to catch hers, caging it like a baby bird, putting crooked fingers upon her palm.
"No! Listen to me, you have to listen to me! Hurry!"
And she hurries, spurred up by newfound fear dragging like a sharp thread through her blood.
"Those are boys'…"
She coyly voices her objection, but father speaks out, laying a shirt, a vest and a pair of pants beside her. The worn seams and dulled colors tell it's all stolen.
"Put it on. It's the only way."
"The only way to what?"
He turns around in silence. Off comes her nightgown, as hopelessly subjected to the night's rush will as she is herself. Dropped on the bed, it is a limp blue ghost resting in the moonlight. The easiness of pulling it over her head after her wild mane of hair, the only thing beautiful about her, is gone pierced her with bitter regret. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror – a skinny lad with a mess on his head and turmoil in his face. Not a dream of any parent, but rather a shameful fact left in the shadow. As if the world wasn't full of rattish brats already. She is grateful this much for her dignity being respected, even in haste like this.
He takes her to the shore on a horse. The clatter of hooves against the paving stone soon grows into a steady blunt tramp on the ground. Father has his old sword and a knife with him, and nothing else. No food, no water to sustain them on a long journey, so she imagines the way to be short. An idea strikes her briefly, that they can die today. Her distraught thoughts go to mother and her little brother who they've left behind. She craves to ask of their fate, if they are really safe in the house they've just escaped. Was father lying to her, having taken her with him only because she is his most beloved child? That's too arrogant a thought, and she seeks remorse in her chest, finding none.
The pallid eye of the moon gawps at them, a couple of runaways in the dead of the night. She burrows into her cloak snugly, autumn wind biting her skin.
"Father, answer me. Where are we going?"
"To the sea."
And indeed, the first wafts of salty breeze reaches her nostrils. The overbearing blackness of rolling waters reveals itself and grows larger and larger.
"But the sea is so cold."
"Yes."
She knows there is father's boat somewhere at the pier. Like hitched animals, they all are rocking docilely on the timid shoreline waves, abandoned in their slumber. In the distance loom the grim bulks of merchant ships, skeletons of masts spiking their bodies.
The boat creaks and bumps against the wooden supports as they step in, and the acute, foreboding awareness of never seeing her town again engulfs her heart. "No," she says, "no, I don't want to leave," and makes to scramble back outside, but gets stopped, caught by the ankle. Fingers clutch her like a cufflink.
"We have to."
"Then explain."
"No time."
"Explain!"
"Fine," voice strained, eyes roving over the pier and back to the water, he draws a heavy sigh. "We are meant to be at a certain place by a certain time, and if we aren't, we both will die. Me, you, your mother, and they're not above killing a child of the age of two, like your brother."
"But why have we left them behind?"
"Because it's about you. Ask no more, I cannot tell you," he was standing on bent legs, hawser in his hand half-untied. His features are those of a man in despair. "Now tell me, do you believe me?"
In a way, she does. In her whole life, she never remembered him deceive her, save for the white lies parents tell their children to protect them from harm. The bond of blood takes over the strangeness that sits uncomfortably in her bones.
"Yes."
The boat moors. Reflections of light dancing on the surface beckon her fingers to skim the water. Ice cold. Bareheaded, she feels the spots behind her ears ache. This year November brought the first snow.
"Where are we going?"she asks again, wishing it wasn't somewhere far away. If she is to die this night, she wants it to happen in her own land, her birthplace. Were she born a man, she'd never give up her life to the sea, even her father has forsaken "a sailor's only wife". The sea claims too great a toll, swallowing lives like a great whale devours small creatures that hold little importance in the face of God.
"When we pass the lighthouse, you will know. Audrey?"
"Huh?" she tears her gaze off the horizon. What's beyond it scares her to no end.
"Forgive me."
"For what?"
"For today, and for the day from fourteen years ago."
"But I…"
"You will curse me this morning, but if you'll ever be able to do it, I beg of you, please forgive me."
"Father…" her eyes darted back to the shore. "Let's go back."
"We can't. We've gone too far."
"Father. Father. Are you going to kill me?"
"No. I will do you worse."
She freezes like a frog in winter, then moves again, dashes forward to force the oars from his hands. Her weak hands, her claw-like hands cling to his wrists and are of no use. She cries out for help, for anyone. But then, even her own voice can't believe what she's just heard, and comes out a stifled sob.
"No, please…"
He shakes his head, and she sees the anguished angle of his brows, and the weeping eyes, and the pillar of light from the lighthouse dissipating, lost in the darkness, and with that, they lose the last witness to whatever crime her father is to commit against her. Perhaps what she feels in that moment is not only the overwhelming terror, but the simmering rage that betrayal pours into her breastbone. She sat at his feet when he told her stories. She listened to his songs. Her first step fell in his presence. He couldn't have meant what he'd said. And the dawn, it was already bleeding the pinks in the retreating night, and nothing bad can happen at dawn.
A splash of another pair of oars rings out like a distant reply to her cries, and she keeps screaming to whoever is to come, to save her, to take her back home where her mother sleeps unknowing of her husband's crime. And every instance that passes as she cries, she doubts herself and his intentions. Please let it be temporary madness. Please let everything revert to the way it was just several hours ago.
Her father stands up, facing the side where the sound has come from. A boat is approaching them, and against the conceiving light she cannot make out the shapes of people sailing it. There are two. Their talk reaches her ear, quiet yet, coarse and inarticulate. There is laughter, and one of them waves, urging to move closer. Father stuns her by obliging.
Silenced, she watches the forms grow bigger and more defined, becoming overgrown with irregular outline that somehow seem barely human. Like they've been affected with a disease that had disfigured them. She doesn't want to think of her future saviors as ugly mutants, freaks of nature stricken by leper or something even worse. They could be her only way to escape death, she has to accept whatever they are.
As their boat turns sideways and the first rays of sunshine fall on their faces, she wishes she never called them. She wishes father had chosen the place to kill her elsewhere. Those aren't, couldn't have been born of a woman. Everything about them, every little feature distorted in a fit of vile laughter and mouths split in two, is like a mockery of God's creation. Her mind gets pierced by a white hot rod of a memory – sea devils. Twice as vicious as those roaming earth, they navigate the ocean to spread despair and perdition, spawn of Satan himself. As she lay in the safety of her bed left alone with her childish fears, they were one half of the creatures the domains of sea horrified her with – them and the great Leviathan.
Another scream bubbled up in her chest, but is never reborn into sound – her ribs had been crushed by terror. She is a half-dead fish gaping at the death getting closer. By force of habit, her hands come to grab her father, asking him for shelter, as absurdly hopeful as only a helpless child can be.
"No, don't!" she yelps so pathetically it would have put her to shame were it something else than whatever awaited them. The uncertainty is more terrifying than the beasts themselves.
"A loud pup ye got there, Moore. Squeals like a bitch."
Father's name coming off their lips astonishes her more than their ability to speak. Their voices could only be a product of rotten lungs and wounded throats, as hellish as their disfigurement on the outside. They are a collection of sea creatures that had stuck together and risen to life by the force of some dark magic.
"Father…"
"Shut 'im up, will ye? We don't need a screamer aboard. Got too many of 'em already."
Father stood up in the boat and stilled, as petrified as she is. The only thing different was the way he looked at them, no signs of shock on his face, though his eyes never dared blink.
"So," said one of the monsters, "this be yer firstborn?"
"Yes."
"Doesn't look like ye one bit. Sure he's yers?" Their throats erupt laughter as ugly as they are. Something was gurgling in their chests. She shudders at the thought of filthy mush of flesh they contained.
"His name is Jonah," her father says, resting his palm on top of her head. Her stomach wrings, and she coughs above the water, her white-knuckled fingers bracing the side of the boat and blood leaving her face. His hand slides off, and nothing is protecting her again. It seems to amuse them, but no laughter comes forth anymore.
"We don't need Christian names down there, Moore. He and ye both better forget that name for good."
"Please, spare him there on the ship."
"That's not for ye to decide. Ye made yer choice already, let the pup go with the last dignity he's got left. Not much of it, I see. C'mon. Hand 'im over."
"Have you…have you sold me, father?"
"Ye bet he has."
Her struggle is like that of a baby deer against wolves, as pointless as it is exhausting. She is ceased by her forearms and forced to watch her father helping tie her ankles together. Under her nose she smells dead mussels as a rough hand pressed over her mouth, muffling a howl that was ripping from her throat. Her hope grows as dim as the sky suddenly obscured by clouds, and her eyes sink shut and won't open until she feels the steady rocking of the boat and heard the rowlocks creaking. She risks a glance and sees nothing but grey. Seagulls wheeling idly above her and calling out woefully. There is no small talk from her captors, no sound, nothing, and she has no strength in her soul to look at them again. She is stiff like a cadaver. Her tied hands recline linked on her belly as if she is asking God for salvation, but she is silent. Not even a prayer can make its way into her memory. Only her father's voice is keeping her company on the unfortunate trip. "Forgive me…forgive me…"
. . .
"That day I died. It wasn't a stab in the gut or a string around my throat, I wasn't hanged or beheaded. My body kept breathing, my blood kept running in my vessels, but the world lived on without me. That day I was forever banished from Heaven."