― and he is thinking
of music, of the leap of his violin and the deck shaking under dance. a round, friendly face in the water like a bud poking out from beneath spring frost. the moon had been a silver coin in the sky and the men had been merry, and he had been hovering, blissfully invisible on the edge of their small adventure
― and he is thinking
of fever sweat, of shadows moonlight dancing. of paper dolls, and how they fell so easily to the ground, their corpses piled on top of each other. he welcomed it, the tide of death, but she had not been kind enough to take him with her, leaving nothing but bones in her wake
― and he is thinking
of how the rain washed right off of him, how time ran liquid there, each day peeling back to reveal a hundred other days just like it. each day, a scraping note echoing once, twice, in the hollow bones of their ship, and though he knew no poetry, he spoke to the skulls around his feet like he did. instead of a friendly face in the water, there was just his; he broke all the mirrors ― enough bad luck to last a hundred years, but he'd squandered it all already, on his crew and his life
― and he is thinking
of Now. Of the sturdy deck beneath his feet, the salt on his calcified ghost. His bow hovering, not playing. Waiting.
He'd lost something there in the vast obscurity of the triangle, replaced it by learning to know loneliness more intimately than his shadow. He had made the world into his coffin, the cemetery he carried with him for half a century.
He feels it awakening now, old and familiar, like birds returning home. He memorizes the quiet, the foreign feeling of others, revels in the infinity between breaths. His bow shakes above the strings of his violin; he knows it will shatter this peace he's found for himself.
Ahead, the sea unfurls beneath the midnight sky, unladen by fog. He remembers the wide waters of the west, the way they held the future in their waves.
"You know what's out there?" Yorki had said right before they set off. "Anything. Everything," and he'd smiled that same smile when he asked him to play his favorite song one last time.
The dead are gouged into him. He thinks that far into the future, when historians uncover his bones, they will find two lifetime worth of stories written on them.
Humming an old, familiar song under his breath, he sheathes his bow, violin hanging loosely by his side. Tomorrow, he will play. He will let his song ring out to the heavens, let the world know that he has found his place beside the boy who will become king, and the winds will buffet the canvases and they will rise like the dawn of a new age, his age, beside his crew, and they will sail.
But right now, the others are sleeping.
There are others now.
For the first night in fifty years, Brook does not play.