Watch
Again, the lull, the eddies of turbulence and peace as the horizon bobbed and righted itself again. A boot stepped up onto the deck, worn but clean, no traces of earth in the creased leather, only sawdust and silt. The waves still rocked them with the old veneer of calm, grey-blue with unremembered cold. Lilac shadows jumped from one wave to the next like ghost's footsteps, fleeing the eye. The captain looked out to sea.
The ship creaked on the water, jostled and pushed, before resolving to melodic rocking once more. Here and there, a stony glint of light dropped from the clouds and glanced on the waves. She shifted to steady herself. It was strange to be alone up there, with the remaining crew huddled below deck, distrustful of the dormant waters. There would be no stars tonight but perhaps it would be warmer for their absence. That was, at least, some small consolation. She could tell them that when she went below.
She remembered the Watch from the night before, how she was carelessly shaken awake and stumbled on deck, huddled in blankets. The night had been bathed in glittering frost, it was a wondrous cold. Those old nights when they used to take the watch in pairs were long past.
Alone, still half-asleep, traces of the dream had warmed her, and she thought she could see leaves growing from the water, burning with all their autumn splendour. Burning with their orange-brown effulgences and yellow hearts. Not like the leaves below deck, trekked in from the sailors' boots, their thread-spines slithering across the floor in a death rattle. These had been full and warm, glowing with life-force. It must have been those dream-traces, the vision seemed laughable when recollected in the afternoon. The captain shook herself; now was no time for these thoughts. Not here, with the colder nights and the clouds that hung low, threatening snow and all the rest.
The quiet cold, creeping through her fingers like doubt, made her look down at the brass box she held there. Strange, she did not recall reaching for it. Safe and so often neglected in her pocket, it was the one keepsake from home, a snare in those grand plans made aeons ago. She held it gently, the way someone would touch something real, something sleeping, so as not to alarm it. On holding it, she tried to recall the scent of oranges and cloves, the warm amber-darkness of evening fires. Its essence held itself momentarily, then melted on the wind.
She thought of the stories she had learned at her father's knee, of Noah and the olive branch. He'd liked that one. Waiting for the sight of land under the abominable sky. There were no doves for the captain; only storm petrel and arctic tern perching on the rigging, skating the water in hypnotic arcs. To these birds, their ship must seem like a tassled monster, but their glacial eyes betrayed no fear. A disdainful toss of the head, a cursory tilt of the wings and they took to the skies again, leaving nothing but omens.
In the open air, the box grew painful to touch, it misted over in the wind. Her hands had smoothed the inscription into nothing. Her thoughts strayed to it so often, she could unwrap it with her eyes and remember every detail. She could dream and feel its indents, indelible from where she once held it in the dark to fall asleep, gentle, as though soothing it from something. Calming it, perhaps, from the feverish warmth of when it was first pressed to her hands all those years ago, as they stumbled on the shore.
I'll come back to you, she had promised, she remembered saying that a long time ago. A bird struggled above and dropped its quarry on the deck. She stooped to collect it; another tiny twig of yellowing needles, larch wood, perhaps, from the Taiga; it must be close. She resolved to take the first Watch that night in case any of the others saw it.
"What is it?" The voice behind her was nervous; other sailors had been found staring out to sea like this. Not with the fervour of the early days, when the seas were crystalline, their passage clear, but with the hypnotic intensity of sleepwalkers, cabin fever kindling their eyes. Those were the first to break; it had taken all the crew's strength to subdue them.
The captain wasn't like the mad ones. She looked over the deck and saw home in all its burning warmth and amber light. The kitchen table was there, set with two yellow plates and heavy cutlery reflecting the roof-beams. And there was that tree outside, whose leaves always fell through the kitchen window and crept along the floorboards. Not sharp and brittle like these winter branches, but soft, malleable. And she'd always cursed those leaves when they landed in the sink and the dastardly wind that had put them there. It was easier to think of home in this way- of objects and colours. And not of those hands touching the shy flowers- the flowers that curled up at human contact, masterfully preserved in glycerine, in brass boxes- not the singing from another room, or those hills far away.
"Nothing," she told him, pocketing the branch.
"Nothing?" Still, after everything, his disbelieving eyes glittered with hope.
She shook her head; disheartened, the sailor turned away. And she remembered, distantly, the dream from the night before, the cold stars and the leaves growing from the water. She had seen land. That sparkling end of the horizon, glittering in the winter spindrift. The larch bit her fingers, already chapped with cold- she had splintered the wheel turning them away from it. And the waves lapped against her ship, burning with a world so vivid it hardly seemed real anymore. The empty sky called out, perhaps to her, speaking languages she did not understand yet, whispering, muttering. She turned to its ice-hearted calling and listened.