Story Time | "The Sea and the Dreamer"

Romp was drowning. Romp was sinking. All at once, 2.9 octillion pounds of seawater were trespassing into his desperate, gulping maw in an attempt to stifle him. His hands stretched for something, anything, to pull him back up, but his salt-stung eyes beheld nothing but the shadows of flotsam, silhouetted against the rampant, rippling waves above by bright blazes of electricity. His stomach writhed and he wanted to scream, but couldn’t hear himself over the cold brine’s roar, and then the world went purple. Not blinding white, not smothering black, but bewildering, shifting shades of violet, like God had decided to dye the sea. Ha, ha. These were his last thoughts before everything just…stopped.

Romp didn’t feel the pressure around his ankle. He didn’t feel his frail body being dragged to the surface by an unseen hand. He didn’t feel when the waves slapped him onto a small, flat island of stone in the open sea—which was suddenly calm. He didn’t see the wave cresting towards the island, nor the shape of the woman with outstretched arms protruding from the center of it like the ghost of a sunken figurehead. The wave crashed onto the island, but the shape of the woman remained, her liquid form clothed only in the foaming cascades of her hair. Before her lay the sodden, broken heap she had rescued. With a beckoning gesture, she directed the waters to lap up onto the island and flip the boy over onto his back. Had he drowned after all…? No, there was still a spark, still the faintest wisp of Life’s breath. Leaning down, she put her lips to his, and breathed in the water filling his lungs. When she withdrew her kiss, his eyes opened, and he screamed until his lungs—now renewed—failed him.

Gasping, rolling, his eyes wheeling madly, Romp finally noticed the woman and fell still. She was like a goddess, like something carved from marble, except she was made of water— beautiful, tropical, coastal water—and while she was clearly looking at him, she was…dancing. Swaying gently, untethered by gravity, to a song that only she could hear.

“Who… Who are you…?”

“THAT IS A QUESTION NOT EASILY ANSWERED,” said the woman, “THOUGH I HAVE NOT ALWAYS HAD THE MIND TO KNOW IT, I HAVE BEEN GIVEN MANY HUNDREDS OF NAMES OVER MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS—BUT FOR YOU? FOR YOU, MY NAME IS MARÉ.”

Maré. That sounded like marine, a word he had once heard a rich man use to refer to the ocean. It fit her well enough, Romp decided.

“YOU ARE SAFE, NOW. WHEN YOUR VESSEL SANK, I FELT YOU ENTER MY EMBRACE, BUT I SPARED YOU—A MERCY THAT NO HUMAN BEFORE YOU HAS EVER BEEN AFFORDED. YOU ARE A VERY FORTUNATE BOY, ROMP.”

“You know my name,” Romp said. It wasn’t a question; Romp never questioned the obvious. People who stood around blinking stupidly at things right in front of them got themselves killed, sooner or later.

“YES, THOUGH I HEARD IT SPOKEN ONLY ONCE. AT FIRST I WAS CONVINCED YOUR NAME WAS ‘BOY’ OR ‘DOCK RAT.’ THAT WAS ALL THEY WOULD CALL YOU, NO?”

His expression soured when Maré reminded him of months at sea, being humiliated with those awful epithets. Being called “boy” wasn’t objectively terrible, but the way they would say it to him…like they were talking to an ant they’d indulge momentarily before they crushed it. To be called a dock rat, however, made Romp think of all the other vagrant boys and girls back home being treated like, well, rats. The sailors, the merchants, the townspeople, and even the beggars saw them as vermin—and no one ever would ever tell him how anyone could be hated just for existing.

Romp was not exactly his real name, either. He had never known what his mother had intended for him to be called, but had earned his moniker from the other urchins before he’d been snatched and put to sea like the dockside drunks.

“Where is everyone else? Did you save anyone besides me?”

Maré gave him a kindly smile. “NO, THEY ARE ALL DEAD! I SWALLOWED THEM!” The unsettling childlike joy suddenly melted from her face, and for a moment her whole body undulated like a stormy sea. Romp shivered.

“THEY WERE HORRIBLE MEN,” Maré continued, “THEY STOLE YOU. THEY BEAT YOU. THEY ENSLAVED YOU.”

“But why—”

She silenced him with a gesture. “NO, ENOUGH TALK. YOU HAVE SUFFERED LONG ENOUGH, ROMP, AND I DID NOT SAVE YOU SO WE COULD SPEAK OF THE CRUELTY OF YOUR CREW.”

“Why did you only save—?”

“I SAID ENOUGH TALK!” Maré’s shout was punctuated by a thunderclap and a wave that rose from the sea behind her and struck Romp flat. The impact on the smooth stone winded him. Maré glided across the tiny island and knelt beside him, making soothing noises like waves crashing on a beach. The sound made his head feel light.

“SLEEP,” she whispered, “IT HAS ALL JUST BEEN A BAD DREAM. EVERYTHING. THERE IS ONLY YOU. THERE IS ONLY ME. THERE IS ONLY US. FOREVER.”

No…

…She…

…Was…

…Wrong…

            …Romp was in a wooded glade. An oversized moon hung in the center of the cloudless blue sky, illuminating everything with an otherworldly pale blue light. The ground was like a fine silvery sand, and the trees…flowed. Every branch transitioned perfectly into the next, curling, cresting, and dropping perfectly. Romp approached one of them. Wild trees had never been common at the docks. The tree felt like…driftwood. It was bleached and smooth and scentless. He rapped on the tree’s bark—if that it could be called—and it produced an almost musical knock, like a drum.

            Someone behind him giggled. “Don’t you know what a tree is?”

            Romp spun around, dukes raised, but froze when he saw what appeared to be nothing more than a girl scarcely younger than himself.

            “Don’t do that!” Romp chided her.

            She cocked her head like a puzzled dog. “Why not?” She grinned at him, displaying rows of white, pointed teeth. “It’s funny!”

            The sight of her bestial teeth made Romp realize he hadn’t had a chance to take her in, so he carefully examined the rest of the girl. She was barefoot, and wearing a silky white negligée that seemed to gleam like a pearl. Her close-set eyes were a pale golden color with slit pupils, her pale ears tapered and gossamer, and her nose upturned and thin. Her ragged, close-cropped hair lent her a sort of free and feral charm that reminded him of home, but it was a shade of red that did not look like a natural human hue. Her skin, too, had a sort of red-brown tint, and…why, it wasn’t skin at all. It was fuzz. She was covered in fuzz!

            He let his fists fall to his sides. “I…didn’t catch your name,” Romp hazarded.

The girl gave him another Cheshire smile. “Foxfish,” she said, then grabbed his hand and started shaking it. “Don’t you know any manners at all?”

“What?”

Foxfish giggled again. “You don’t know anything do you? Not trees, not manners, not me—do you at least know your own name? Do you have the manners to tell me? Huh? Do you? I bet you don’t.”

“Romp! My name is Romp!”

“Oh? Well, it’s not nice to yell at new friends, Romp.”

“’Friends’? Who said we were friends? We just met!”

“I did! Or did you not know that, either?”

“I did know it!”

“You know, you don’t say a lot. Nothing long, anyway.”

“Will you give me my hand back?” Foxfish was still shaking it, and her grip was surprisingly strong for her size.

“But you haven’t asked me ‘How do you do?’ yet.”

“Fine! How do you do?”

She released her grip and started toying with a stray wisp of her hair. “Oh, can’t complain. And you?”

“I think I have plenty to complain about, thank you very much.”

“Oooo, who about?”

“I think you know,” said Romp, then grinned, “Or do you not know anything at all?”

Foxfish blinked, and then she started laughing.

“Oh, you do know something! You know how to be like me!” She doubled over, and then fell on her back, rolling around in the silvery dust, kicking her legs with mirth. As she did so, Romp noticed a long, furry tail ending in a white, membranous fan flopping about beneath them. If nothing else did, this proved she definitely wasn’t human.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“Because…! Because…!” Foxfish took in a deep breath and blurted out, “Because that’s all that’s worth knowing!”

Romp watched her a moment more. “I don’t get it.”

She suddenly stopped and sat bolt upright, looking disappointed. “You don’t? Well, that puts us back to square one. You know, you’re really going to need a teacher to help you know more than just your name and how to accidentally be like me.”

“I wonder who that could be,” Romp muttered.

“Why me, of course! It’s so obvious! Don’t you know when something is obvious?”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh, I knew that, I just didn’t know if you did.”

* * *

To say that Romp and Foxfish became fast friends would be a bold-faced lie. Indeed, it took weeks for Foxfish to stop calling Romp an idiot every few seconds, and weeks longer for Romp to understand why seeing things Foxfish’s way was important. To Foxfish, everything and everyone was a joke if you looked at it the right way—and if the world was the joke, then she was the punchline. How could you ever be miserable if everything made you smile?

But something was wrong. Very, very wrong. What, though? Romp always felt like something was screaming desperately at him in the back of his skull, but he couldn’t hear it. He saw flashes of familiar faces when he looked at Foxfish sometimes, but the features would always resolve back into her own distinct, pointed face. Water made him uncomfortable—even drinking it—and whenever he was around it the screaming in his skull seemed to get louder. Foxfish laughed at his foolishness. The water was his friend, she would say. The water was comfort. The water was life.

Liar, he would say in his head. But why?

It isn’t real.

What?

It isn’t real.

That’s impossible, he’d always been here with Foxfish.

It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.

“It isn’t real!”

“What isn’t real?”  said Foxfish.

“You! The moon! The water! The trees! None of it! I finally hear the screaming in my head!”  He looked straight at the moon. The craters…the face they made…he knew that face. “This isn’t real, Maré!”

Foxfish laughed triumphantly. “I knew you’d figure it out! I knew you knew!”

And then the world went purple.

* * *

            Romp awoke on the tiny stone island and looked about him. There stood Maré. Romp stood and approached her, but she backed away from him.

            “NO! YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO WAKE UP! THIS IS ALL WRONG!”

            “Maré, why did you trap me in there? What was that supposed to accomplish?”

            “THAT IS NOT FOR YOU TO KNOW!”

            She raised a hand. A wave formed behind the approaching Romp. She beckoned the wave. It knocked Romp over, winding him as he hit the stone hard.

            “I NEED YOU TO SLEEP, ROMP.” Maré whispered, her voice like the coast again. “SLEEP. THERE IS NO STONE ISLAND IN THE OPEN SEA. THERE ARE NO DOCKS, NO FRIENDS EXCEPT FOXFISH. THERE IS ONLY YOU. THERE IS ONLY ME. THERE IS ONLY US. FOREVER.”

            “No…”

            “YES, ROMP. SLEEP. SLEEP…”

* * *

…Romp was in a wooded glade. An oversized moon hung in the center of the cloudless blue sky, illuminating everything with an otherworldly pale blue light. The ground was like a fine silvery sand, and the trees…flowed. Every branch transitioned perfectly into the next, curling, cresting, and dropping perfectly. Romp approached one of them. Wild trees had never been common at…

Where was he from, again?

Why here, of course.

He loved the trees that felt like driftwood. They produced the most musical knocks, rather like drums.

            Someone behind him giggled. “Have you forgotten how to stay awake?”

            Romp started and turned around, beholding… “Foxfish? Wait, how do I know you?”

            “Because we’re friends. Don’t you know that? I said so myself, just now.”

            “Yes…we’re friends…and…none of this is real!”

            “That’s right. You’re dreaming.”

            “Okay, uh… How do I stop?”

            “Did you already forget? It hasn’t even been five minutes! You have to tell Maré!” Foxfish pointed at the moon. “Tell it to her face!”

* * *

            SLEEP.

            It isn’t real.

            SLEEP.

            It isn’t real.

SLEEP.

            It isn’t real.

            SLEEP.

            “No.” Romp stood up.

            “YOU WILL SLEEP, AND YOU WILL DREAM. YOU WILL STAY MINE.”

            “I was never yours, Maré,” Romp started walking towards her.

“I SAVED YOU.”

“No, you didn’t. You stole me, just like those horrible men, and then you enslaved me. And you know what?” Romp was right in front of her. “All I ever wanted to know was why.”

Maré stood silent, swaying, and then she sighed, lowering her head. “BECAUSE I HAVE DANCED WITH THE MOON FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, BUT HAVE NEVER KNOWN A LOVED ONE’S EMBRACE. BECAUSE I TREAD UPON THE COASTS THAT LEAD TO THE BOUNDLESS LANDS OF MUSIC AND EARTH AND CHEER AND PASSION—BUT ONLY THE COAST, AND NO FURTHER. BECAUSE I AM EVERYWHERE, YET NOWHERE. BECAUSE MEN TRUST ME TO CARRY THEM TO WHEREVER THEY MUST GO, YET THEY FEAR AND DESPISE MY DEPTHS AND MY POWER. WHAT WAS I SEEKING, YOU ASK? I ONLY SOUGHT…TO KNOW YOU. TO KNOW ANYONE—ANYONE BUT THE MOON AND THE COAST AND THE HATEFUL MEN THAT CAN NEVER LOVE ALL OF ME.”

Maré turned away from Romp.

“BUT…I SEE NOW THAT I CANNOT KEEP YOU. NOT LIKE THIS. IF I AM TO BE LOVED, THEN IT MUST BE FREELY RECEIVED AND FREELY GIVEN, NOT DEMANDED AND UNREQUITED. FOR WHAT IS LOVE IF NOT THIS?” She faced Romp again. “I AM SORRY, ROMP. I HAVE TAKEN YOU, AND NOW I MUST NOW GIVE YOU BACK. WHERE DO YOU WISH TO GO? I WILL DIRECT THE WAVES TO DELIVER YOU THERE SAFER THAN ANY SHIP COULD DARE CLAIM.”

Romp remembered the docks. He remembered the urchins. But then…he remembered Foxfish. He remembered the driftwood trees, and the moon that lit the world, and the silver sand. He put his hand on the sea-woman’s shoulder. It was remarkably warm and solid.

“You don’t have to take me anywhere, Maré,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “I’m already home with you.”