#i knew we'd have to not dawdle but this was... rough

[ryanthedemiboy]

It's not here, but Frankfurt. (See tags for explanation)

Airports are a man made hell designed to cause pain and fuck up your sleep schedule? Which of these infernal nightmares is the worst though

[bookshelf-in-progress]

The Sylph in the Storm

This story was what I originally planned to submit for this year's @inklings-challenge--a scene from my fantasy universe that's like a fairy tale version of Anne of Green Gables. I haven't finished it yet, and what I have is very rough, but I'd like to give you a taste of what I have so far.

#

I've lived on the Island all my life--my father was keeper of the Mary's Vale lighthouse, and I kept house for my brother when he assumed the role--and I've seen many strange things. Some of them the ordinary adventures of lighthouse life--storms and shipwrecks and sharks. Some of them are more magical--not many humans can say they've raised a mermaid from infancy.

I loved Amy from the moment I found her, but raising a mermaid had its difficulties. When Amy turned twelve, she became as truculent as any human child of that age, with the added difficulty of an increased fascination with the sea. I tried to give her as much freedom as was good for her, but Amy always tried to take more than her due.

It was an unusually warm day in late October, 1892, when the crisis came. I was irritable because I'd spent the morning chasing the pixies out of the pantry--they'd gotten into the sugar again--when Amy came traipsing up out of the ocean, rainbows glimmering on her pearlescent skin. I'd let her go for a swim before breakfast--mermaids do need to keep moist--and it was now well after noon.

"Where have you been?" I asked in a low tone.

Amy stopped in surprise. "You said I could swim!"

"For an hour. It's after noon. I don't have time to care for this house, and the lighthouse, and the meals, and chase you all over the face of the earth."

"I came back!"

"You knew you were dawdling. I give you clothing and meals and a roof over your head. It's not too much to demand a little help in return."

"If I'm so much trouble, you should have left me on that beach."

That got my blood up, and to my shame, I shouted, "Perhaps I should have!"

Amy stood as if I'd struck her.

I regretted the words immediately. I tried to apologize. "Amy, I--"

But Amy was already running down the path to the shore. I tried to chase after her, calling her name, but in moments, she was on the shore and she dove beneath the waves, swimming to the east just as fast as she could.

I called after her, to no avail, and at last, I trudged up the winding stairs back to the lighthouse. We'd both spoken in anger, and our tempers would cool with time.

I went to the gardens and pulled out dead vines with vigor, pouring out my fury through my work. My emotions ran high--fury one moment, remorse the next. I swung from planning the lectures I would give upon her return to crafting apologies.

But the garden cleared, the sun sank lower, and still there was no sign of Amy.

At the sight of storm clouds gathering on the horizon, I grew frantic. I called on my aunt down the shore, but she hadn't seen Amy. When I came back to the house, I found Captain Avery had come by to help Edmund with the light, and I raced toward him, frantic as I babbled out the story of Amy's flight.

"Can we take out the boat?" I asked.

"All we'd do is wreck ourselves, and for no good purpose," the captain said. "There's no telling if she is still at sea, or where she went if she did."

"She could dive below the waters where we couldn't see her," Aunt pointed out.

The truth stretched out before me--vast and hopeless. Amy could be anywhere--curled up somewhere in the Island, lost in the Atlantic--and I could do nothing to help.

"Is there nothing we can do?" I cried.

Rain burst from the clouds above--a cold drizzle, blown about by the gusting wind.

Aunt led me toward the house. "We can wait," she said. "And pray."

#

A cup of tea steamed before me as I sat at the kitchen table. Aunt urged me to change my wet clothes, to sit in front of the fire, to warm myself with the tea, but I couldn't move. All I could hear was the howling storm--driving rain, angry winds, the blaring horn at the lighthouse, thunder that sounded like the end of the world. All I could see was my mermaid girl, washed up and broken on a lonely shore somewhere.

It was after just such a storm that I'd found Amy, nearly twelve years before--a tiny wet bundle wrapped in seaweed. Her mother had been several paces down the shore, singing out her daughter's name with the last of her strength, and begging my help with her dying breaths. Was this how I'd repaid her hope in me? Driven her daughter out to sea to be destroyed in a storm as she'd been? 

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up to see the bearded face of the captain looking down upon me, much as my father had once upon a time. "You're singing," he said.

With astonishment, I found that I was--a flowing tune so familiar that it sprang to my lips without thought. "Amy's name," I explained.

The explanation was unnecessary. It was the captain who'd explained it to me, in those early days when he helped me to care for the baby merrow. Every mer's full name was a song--names upon names detailing family histories, connections to other clans, great deeds of long ago ancestors. The captain knew a fair amount of the merrow tongue, and we'd puzzled together over the meaning of the tune that had stuck in my memory after just one hearing. Amy had a family, a lineage, that we knew nothing about. Now, all she had was us.

The lines on Captain Avery's weathered face were deeper than ever. If Amy had a grandfather, the Captain filled the role. He had helped me keep her alive in those early days, and, I realized, he loved her as deeply as I did, worried as deeply as ever I could, even if his face didn't show it.

"She'll be well," the captain said. "Amy's got a good weather eye. She'll have come ashore before the storm hit, or gone below where the sea is calmer."

I shook my head, trying to banish the image of Amy's broken body. "But what if she didn't?" I asked.

"There are always miracles. I've seen them before."

I stared into my tea, trying not to snap. This was no time for the captain's stories of sylphs and sea kings.

"We can't count on that."

"No, but we can pray."

I tried to. Truly, I did. But I could find no words, no hope, to penetrate the gray despair of my mind, the roiling power of the raging storm. For what felt like a week, I sat there, misery seeping between the seconds and stretching out time to unbearable lengths.

I was dimly aware of Aunt tending to the fire in the parlor, and Captain Avery going to the tower to offer assistance to Edmund, and coming back soaking wet, but nothing truly roused me from my misery until I heard a strange voice from outside.

"Ahoy!"

Aunt and I both jumped.

"Edmund?" I asked.

"Couldn't be," Aunt said.

Captain Avery shook his head. "He'd never leave the light in a storm like this."

"Ahoy!" cried the voice that was most definitely not Edmund's. "Anybody home?"

I rushed to the kitchen door and flung it open. A strange young man stood on the threshold. I could barely see him in the darkness of the storm, but there in his arms was my mermaid girl--safe and whole and sound asleep.

"I believe," the man said, "that she belongs to you."

"Amy!" I breathed.

"I found her on the shores of Selkie Island," the man said.

At least, I thought he did, but I assumed I'd misheard. In the time since she'd left, Amy could barely have swum to Selkie Island. It was impossible that this man could already have brought her back--especially in such a storm.

I welcomed him into the house and rushed him into the parlor, glad that Aunt already had a fire blazing in the little hearth. I made a nest of blankets on the floor and urged the man to lay her down. He moved through the room with such speed and grace, as if she--or he--weighed nothing at all.

I stepped back to give him space, and he moved between me and the fire. Then the firelight revealed what the night had hidden. Though the man stood as tall and real and human as any of us, the light shone through him.

Amy had been rescued by a sylph.

I fell back against the wall, dizzy with shock. I felt as if I'd fallen into one of the captain's fireside tales. A sylph, a spirit of the air--one of the most powerful creatures in the universe, so rare that even on the Island, some people doubted their existence--stood within my little lighthouse parlor.

No one breathed, no one moved.    We all just stared, struck motionless by awe and fear, because this solution, miraculous as it was, meant that Amy had been in far more danger than even I had feared.   

Sylphs are like the wind, the legends say, unheard and unseen, rushing about the world to do as much good as they can in the three hundred years allotted them.  Direct intervention is rare.    It takes too much time, too much energy, when a simple, passing bit of magic will help humans solve the problem on their own.    The sylph could have hurried the storm along, or moved a few trees to shelter Amy until she could swim home, or let us know where we could find her when the storm ended.    But he had come to her direct aid.    He had taken form to bring her home.  How badly had Amy been hurt, that she couldn't wait an hour or two for aid?

Aunt was the first to speak. "Was she hurt very badly, sir?"

The sylph ran his fingers gently through Amy's red hair.  His hand seemed as solid as a flesh one.  “Broken in a few places,” he said.  “It seems as though she'd misjudged some currents and been dashed upon the bathing rocks.    She wasn't in pain long—I reached her after a few moments."

My throat tightened. "Is she...?" I knelt at her side and examined her in a panic.

The sylph stilled me with a hand on my shoulder. "I healed her injuries. She needs only rest now."

Amy was whole--pure and perfect. Even the scar on her leg--from when she'd fallen from that tree last summer--had faded to perfect skin.

I looked into the sylph's face. I'd never seen such kind eyes. "I don't know how to thank--"

From the lighthouse, the foghorn sounded, drowning out the last of my words.

The sylph jumped, looked toward the lighthouse, and suddenly the sound faded away, as if it were coming from far out at sea.

The sylph answered my look of astonishment by saying, "She needs rest."

I stroked Amy's hair and nodded. What had she suffered, while she'd been away? What had driven her the miles and miles to Selkie Island's shore?

“Sarah,” the Captain said suddenly, “could you pour some tea for our guest?"

Tea? For a sylph?  I didn't understand how he could consume anything, but the Captain knew about these sorts of things.  And when faced with the question of what one did with a sylph in the parlor, tea seemed as sensible an answer as anything else.

The sylph stood and tried to decline. "That's very kind, but you needn't..."

The Captain's face was as firm as it ever could have been when he'd commanded a ship.    “You've form enough to take food, and you're tired enough to need it.”

“I can't take repayment...”

“Good,” the Captain replied, “because none of us have any hope of repaying you.  But you need to allow us our gratitude, and you'll need nourishment before you can do much else.”

The sylph humbly nodded his head. "Very well."

"Sarah," the Captain said, looking at me. "Tea. And whatever food you can find."

I brough the sylph a fresh cup of tea from the kitchen, then offered him a seat in the softest chair in the lighthouse. He accepted the seat--not sinking into the cushions at all--and sipped the tea, then asked the captain, "Met sylphs before, have you?"

“I'm a sailor,” Captain Avery replied.    

The sylph nodded as if that explained all, and I suppose it did.    A ship's home was among the winds on the open sea, and so was a sylph's.    And if the stories are trues--I was beginning to suspect they were--sylphs were more likely to intervene for those who are far from any human help.

We hadn't much food in the lighthouse, but between the two of us, Mrs. Avery and I managed a to put a respectable spread--thick slices of bread, boiled eggs, the remains of two kinds of cake, my prize-winning pickles--on the small parlor table. The sylph watched with eager astonishment, like a child at a circus, unwilling to miss a single delight.

When I set out three jars of jam, his face lit up with delight. He seized a teaspoon, placed it in the nearest jar, and had a spoonful of blackberry preserves in his mouth before he caught himself.

He set down the spoon and gave me a questioning gaze. "May I?"

I smiled. "Take as much as you like."

The sylph spooned three dollops of jam into his tea and one into his mouth.    

When the food was spread, I settled on the floor next to Amy, who still slept peacefully.

"She will be well," the sylph assured me, and it sounded like the voice of pure truth. "Will you join me?" he asked. "I prefer not to eat alone."

How could I resist such an invitation? I tucked some blankets around Amy, pulled in some kitchen chairs, and invited Aunt and the captain to sit. Then, unbelievable as it sounds, we all dined with a sylph. It felt like a dream; if the captain and Aunt didn't remember it, I may have been able to convince myself it was.

Despite his light, transparent form, the sylph was able to eat and drink like any creature.    When the food entered his mouth, it disappeared from sight, just as it did for us opaque creatures.    He didn't chew much, but he imitated the motion, as he seemed to understand it was the proper thing to do.    And he could certainly taste—he savored each bite, and delighted in flavors.    He combined flavors with extreme creativity—butter in his tea, ham atop slices of cake, salt and pepper on buttered bread, jam on anything he could spread it on—and found satisfaction with everything.    

As we ate, the sylph spoke of his travels--marvels in the Orient, the Pacific, great cities, vast deserts, both poles. Yet he never chattered, never boasted. He seemed happier to hear someone else speak, delighting in hearing about the ordinary details of our lives. He listened more fully than any creature I've ever known, giving his full attention to each word, even if he was also spreading jam on a boiled egg at the time.     

That was the paradox of the sylph.   When he listened, he seemed so calm and wise that I was certain he must be one of the oldest sylphs in the world.    Yet, as he ate jam by the spoonful or marveled at the light of the fire, he seemed to be the youngest person in the room.    Such a combination of wisdom and innocence is impossible to describe, but a joy to experience.    Neither wisdom nor innocence allows for pettiness, cruelty or anything small-minded, only for joy and wonder, respect and understanding.    

The spread, though small, filled all four of us nearly to bursting, and I filled a plate for Amy, in case she woke hungry. Even in such happy circumstances, I wouldn't be completely easy until Amy woke.

The sylph was speaking to the captain about the progress of the storm, when suddenly his eyes flickered, and he turned his gaze toward Amy. He burst into a smile. "You're awake!"

Slowly, Amy rose from her nest of blankets on the floor, her red hair tangled in a cloud around her head. She blinked sleepily and looked around the room.

"Amy!" I cried in joy. I rushed to her side. "How are you feeling?"

She didn't even look at me. Her eyes went straight to the sylph. "How did I get here?" she asked.

“I brought you,” said the sylph.

Quick as lightning, Amy rose from the floor. Faster than any of us could comprehend, she stood, approached the sylph, and then slapped him across the face.