Cheol
Lady of the Sea
1911, Northwest Passage, the Arctic
Bitter wind.
It was a bitter wind which signaled me of her nearness, for her heart was the coldest and bitterest of us all. A love scorned woman. The most vile, temptuous, hatred-filled woman.
How had she found again the only sort of person who could know who she was?
On deck I was, on the look out for icebergs. I was the only one who could withstand the cold. They knew me as a man who had been on these passages before, one who could withstand the cold better than they. However, I was only using them to get to Europe.
It was while I was on this deck, many weeks into the voyage when the men were perishing, that she showed up. Mysteriously, blindly, perhaps. But the earth told me of her before she showed herself to me. Maybe she miscalculated, desiring to show herself to another man. However it was unfortunate circumstance.
The doors on the ship rattled with the freezing arctic wind, and I did not move. The black water of the night was still despite the wind. For this I knew it was no ordinary wind.
"Ysobel, you devil woman," I whispered through my teeth to myself, for these words needed to be said. Any time to curse her very name aloud.
Where was she? By sky or by sea? I could only wait.
The only sounds were the gentle rockings of the ship and my calm, deep breathing. All was still, as if waiting, expecting, to be punctuated by her presence.
Just as I thought I had miscalculated myself, about to look forward again, I saw it.
Tiny, small lights in the water far forward. I could only compare them to perhaps in the modern era when there were fairy lights in the trees at Christmas time. These tiny lights, glowing themselves in the black water, piercing the black water as if they were not even there, as if they were independent beings on the world. They appeared to mix in with this earth from another universe, removed from reality but still real.
My eyes squinted at them. They rose and fell, as if on waves but there were no waves this night. Not at all. Gently and fluctuating on light, they seemed to come towards us but yet stayed in the same place. The eyes do weird things when you are on the edge of the world, and many a sailor could vouch for this. Yet my eyes were not normal eyes. She could trick my demon eyes in this way mysteriously, and this showed her power over me, using her allure on me as one who likes such creatures as her as any other man.
I did not blink, not once. I could not let her suddenly change if my gaze were to go away from her even for a moment.
Unbreakingly, the lights floated on the water. Then suddenly, they began to move with frightening movements. This way, that way. Erratic, as if possessed and crazy, just as her soul is. It was here I knew she could sense me and had realized me quickly and by surprise. She had indeed not expected me to be here.
In the blink of an eye, her lights floated downwards into the black and were seen no more. But I knew, by this bitter wind, she was not finished. And I knew by her patterns of feast, why she was here.
She could smell the death odor of the young men below me in the small sleeping quarters. She wanted to take them away, have them for herself. She desired their love, for any man would love such a woman as beautiful and tempting as her. But I would not allow it. Though dying, I knew they had enough life yet in order to make it to the nearest land. They would not die, and it was not their time to die.
As I was thinking this, to my right I felt a presence, and I looked over to starboard. Feeling yet more of a presence, I walked slowly and cautiously to the side of the small ship, and put my hands on the railing, looking over the side.
My breathing took a small change when I noticed the transluscent hand in the water. A beautiful, water made hand which was touching the ship as if a caress. I recognized the hand of course, and inside me I sighed in the beauty and the memory.
Slowly, the hand began to form to a solidly moon pale hand with nails still transparent as the water. The hand extended out, as if into a backstroke, and disappeared under the water. It became apparent to me at this moment how she was trying to lure me instead, and I strengthened my core.
As my resolve thickened, the water below me thickened, and suddenly the lights were back, moving along with us. The lights had no reflection, no anything. They were ethereal, white gold colored and I began to see they were moving as if in backstroke. As I stared further, I could see how they were outlining her as if a five pointed constellation in the water. One for her face, one for her chest, one for her navel, and two for her hands. I remembered how the tracking of Venus in the sky has five points also, how she is a Venus, and my heart shuddered for just a moment in the thought, and a moment was all she needed.
Beautifully, as my heart was shaken, she manifested in the water.
She was naked from the waist up, her golden tan skin of Spanish ancestory gleaming half submerged and her two breasts bobbing gently above the water in her small movements. Beyond her waist was a dark blue tail of a fish, descended into the water and disappearing into the black for it was an illusion. Suddenly, I began to wonder if what I was seeing was an illusion. My poor black heart wanting in this lonely sea, the only company the stars and thus this constellation reflecting into the sea, my demon heart too lonely to see anything truly real.
Her defined pale blue eyes were staring at me in a loving manner. I could not control my eyes, but only to join her's. Her impossibly long, pale white blonde hair was floating in the water like spun gold, floating as if liquid itself and framing her face as if an angel.
As my breathing quickened for her, she smiled at me lovingly and my smile went down to join her. My breath caught as her slender hands slowly extended upwards out of the water, beckoning to me, wanting to feel me once again. I could feel myself climbing up onto the railing and not being able to fight it. Not wanting to fight it. I needed her, and she needed me. She needed me as if life itself, and this was in her sweet, loving eyes.
My heart jolted as I heard the crack of a door slam to the left of me. My eyes whipped to the left in a frightening moment, and there stood my fellow looking tired and cold.
With a gasp I looked back down into the water for my love, but there was nothing. Nothing there, not even waves.
My heart pounded and strangely I felt as if a veil were lifted from my body up into the sky.
Strangely I felt nothing but a lingering anger, and that anger became more pronounced.
For she had cast her spell on me, and she could cast her spell on me at any time.
As I stood on that deck looking for icebergs waiting for sunrise, I thought hard about her. Wanting to know how I could no longer fall for her, to be free of her finally.
But as the small ship sailed on in those icy waters where the world ends, I realized that no matter what happens, she could lure me with her love until the world ends if she still loved me, if she needed me. And my quick beating heart hoped how in her dead heart somewhere, she lured me with that purpose.
For perhaps this devil woman was as lonely as I, and I, so deeply heartbroken and aching for the touch of one who understood the crushing black of the demon death, hoped she alone could soothe that ache. And maybe that I could soothe that ache in her dead heart as well.
But I knew in the depths of my soul surely how it could not happen again. How a foolish love between these two dead hearts could not rise again. And as the sun did not rise, neither did my hope for her anymore.