Page 53 of Wicked Tides
Above me, a world of gray, blue, and black swirled in slow and eerie motions. Sound was muffled, but I could tell by the muted flashes that a storm was raging above. But the depths never felt the turmoil from the skies.
It was all so familiar.
Looking down, I was in my seal skin dress, the pieces stitched together in asymmetrical patterns like they’d always been.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
It was my dream. One I had many times. One I knew very well. Looking around again, I found myself let down by my own mind. I didn’t want to be there in that barren wasteland, alone where no light or sound could penetrate. I had gone to the deep ocean before in a feeble attempt to erase myself only to find that it was exactly what I wanted. I enjoyed the silent loneliness. I enjoyed it too much and I almost didn’t find the will to return, but now I had something to do. I had Vidar to deal with and I couldn’t let that cold, dank world summon me too soon.
I started walking, determined to find a way further from the temptation. The cold sand was gritty between my toes and smelled like salt and rot. A deep moan rippled through the space and as I panned my eyes upward. The monstrous shadow of a whale slowly moved overhead, silhouetted by the dancing light of the storm behind it.
I sighed contently at how beautiful I found it all. I used to enjoy the sun. The breeze. The sound of rain beating on the waves. But my mind changed throughout the years when I realized just how ugly the surface was.
My eyes dropped to the sand ahead of me to see a giant ship rotting in my path. The wood was misshapen and half eaten by the sea and barnacles. The sails were shredded, hanging like wet moss. The figurehead, however, was untouched by time and deterioration. A wolf carved from oak stood at an angle, a bronze bell hanging from between its teeth.
“Mother’s Fang,” I whispered, slowly making my way closer.
As I neared, I could smell him. His scent had never left me since that day and it had not changed much in the eighteen years we’d been apart. Adulthood had only added the metallic smell of metal and the sweet scent of rum.
Circling around the skeleton of the ship, I found that small, rusted cage in the hollow bowels of the lower deck. Inside it was the boy before I knew him as Vidar. I had seen his face that day, full of fear and sadness. Seeing it in that dreamscape, it was filled with revulsion and fury.
How was I so stupid to not see it then?
Vidar’s eyes flicked toward me, but his anger did not wane. He stared into me, tears of blood making lines down his face.
I stepped closer and cautiously crouched down by the too small cage in which he was stuffed, eyeing the lock on the front.
“You seem uncomfortable,” I said.
“Come to devour me?” he spoke, his voice hoarse and dry.
“What’s your name?” I said, dodging his question.
“They’re all dead, you know. Piece by piece. I saw it. Heard it all.”
“Cover your ears.”
“And my eyes?”
From his lap, he uncovered a rusted nail and quickly jammed it into his eye. I tensed at the sight of the boy gouging out his sight without a sound. He ground it around, making sure it was well and truly mutilated before moving to the other. More blood washed down his young face and down his neck.
Hand shaking, he dropped the bloody nail and gnashed his teeth.
“Doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t need eyes to see what I saw.”
I swallowed hard and looked down at the dark sand around me to find his silentium necklace at my feet. I pulled the chain from the sand and raised it up only to find that the cage was now empty, the gate open with a broken lock.
I coiled the old necklace in my hand and slowly stood, searching the strange wasteland for him. When I heard a man’s deep humming nearby, I stopped breathing.
I knew it was him. Somehow, I knew. And as I circled around the decaying ship and found the hull barely intact, there he was. Vidar, grown into adulthood and sitting with one ankle crossed over his knee in a red velvet chair that looked just as aged and rotten as the ship. He wore captain’s attire, but his leather hat sat on his knee as he hummed an eerie tune.
Dreams were strange. I wasn’t entirely sure whose dream I was wandering at that point. Mine. His. Both of ours stitched together into a venomous realm of horrors. It could have been any or all of those things. None would make more sense than the other.
“…They stripped them to the bone, the sailors come ashore. They broke their backs and ate their hearts, the crew became no more…”
Vidar hummed portions of the song and added words to others, but never finished it. Walking further into his view, I saw him staring out into the vast graveyard around us with unfeeling eyes. Empty eyes.The necklace hung in my hand, but this Vidar didn’t need it. His silentium was buried in his chest.
“The son did drive a blade into the chest of the father. And when he slew the bitch he had hate and vengeance to harbor…”
