The Gloomcatcher

10: Pirates From the South

N E R I A T H

    The long night had not ended when Neriath stood alone at the forecastle deck. She closed her eyes and silently summoned for a wraith nearby, concentrating. It would be difficult to catch a wraith in the middle of an ocean but if her luck was any good, she would be able to find one at least. Anyone. Anyone.

    Breathe.

    Then she felt the gloom, cold shivering sadness ran down her spine and clenched her heart into an imperceptible knot. She opened her eyes.

    Before her, floating in the mournful air was the ghostly grey, translucent wisp of shadow that formed a wraith of a woman, pale and disembodiment of soul. She was young but older than Neriath. She wore a colourless gown and her dark, wind-swept hair was open and wild but her sullen face held the sadness that she felt earlier.

    "A Gloomcatcher, I thought I would never get to meet one," said the elusive, intangible woman, her voice sounding as a distant echo.

    Neriath eyed the wraith, her own voice soft but filled with a calculated charm. "I've heard much about your kind," she replied, a hint of intrigue in her tone. "And I must admit, you're not at all what I expected. So full of...sorrow."

    "I see, it's your first time." It wasn't but Neriath wanted her to believe otherwise. The wraith hovered in its insignificant, misty grey form, rippling in response. "Sorrow is our existence, you know," it whispered.

    Wraiths were tricky to catch, or more accurately, tricky to convince. It was more challenging to capture an older one since they would have become accustomed to the years of gloom and wouldn't want to let go of it.

    "Gloomcatchers need to be clever than the wraiths," one day her father had told her when he had came back home from a hunt. "If you won't act clever then they'd inflict gloom upon you and trust me, my dear, no cut would be as painful as a wraith's gloom."

    She had now caught uncountable wraiths since then, all collected in stones and kept in her drawstring bag. This wouldn't be any difficult for her.

    She began, choosing her words carefully. "You see, we, Gloomcatchers understand the intricacies of gloom, and we have a unique ability to offer something in return for a wraith's release."

    The wraith's sullen face showed a flicker of curiosity, a subtle shift in its ghostly countenance. "What could you possibly offer that would be of interest to me?"

    Neriath smiled, a calculated glimmer in her eyes. "Relief from your eternal sorrow? A fleeting glimpse of light in the endless darkness? Isn't that something worth considering?"

    Silence rented the air as the wraith thought for a while so she decided to proceed with a different approach.

    "How did you die?" she questioned, mindlessly and cautiously taking out a free stone that she had tucked in her belt without the creature noticing her.

    "Jumped from a ship."

    "Why?"

    Her face morphed into a pained expression as if she was reminiscing the moment of her death. This is it. She could feel the radiating gloom, it just had to be more, enough that it could touch the stone and she'll seal her essence in.

    "My lover," her pallid lips quivered, "he deserted his drowning ship, leaving me alone to die."

    "It was cruel of him."

    "Oh, yes, it was but when he jumped into the water, I saw him, I saw those sea monsters ripping his head and limbs apart, leaving nothing left of him." She cried, tears rolled down her cheeks and disappeared into the air as grey smokes. "My love for him was greater than his betrayal and like a foolish woman I was, I realised I couldn't live without him and jumped right in. My death was just the same as his."