AN OCEAN AND A TIDE, INTERTWINED

AN OCEAN AND A TIDE, INTERTWINED, by Joel Glover

 

The Fifth Realm is a beach which stretches

From a horizon which cannot be touched to one which cannot be seen

There is an ocean somewhere,

An ocean and a tide.

There is an ocean somewhere,

An ocean and a tide.

Grains slip between Ásgeirr’s toes, making them itch.

He has a blanket, ribbed and thick, made of cast off clothes.

He spreads it

On the ground, so he can sit.

There is no breeze in the Fifth Realm

So no sand impairs his enjoyment of the cheese and onion

Stuffed into a light but crusty bread.

In the Fifth Realm sands and dreams entwine

Winding around each other

Dancing a gavotte, braiding

Into threads which can encircle the unwary throat

Tugging.

Ásgeirr slips out of the noose of tragic reverie and into a place of reminiscence instead

He is, if not the Master of this Realm, at least

Adept

In its ways.

The killing thoughts are of his mother;

The song she sang whilst kneading the dough,

The sound of it stretching from his childhood to now;

The slap of the ball on the slate of the table;

The smell of the oven;

The warmth of the love in every mouthful he took.

The Fifth Realm is not malign

Nor is it kind

You cannot anger time, cannot charm it, cannot make it fear

Time is, time was, time will be.

A wanderer who sets feet unwary on this space

Between shore and the sweep of the real

Could walk until their tongue dried in their mouth

Fall

Unseen

Unheard

Forgotten.

Ásgeirr takes a small sip of water from his flask

A gift from the starkin

It tastes of glass and moonlight

Enchanted to stay cool.

He scoops up a handful of the surface of the beach

And lets it flow through the spaces between his fingers

Each grain a moment, as unique as can be

Tumbling back to join its fellows in an indistinguishable mass.

He pinches one, snatching it from the stream and holds it up to the sky.

There is no sun, of course

Because suns are stars and thus trapped eternally in the Third Realm

(But for the Evening Star, the Gardener’s first Creation, which lights the way),

But there is light above

If only to distinguish up from down.

The light splinters on the prism of sand, under Ásgeirr’s scrutiny, reds and blues

Diverging.

He has a tiny red bottle

Into which the blue light flows

And a much larger blue one to hold the red.

His coat makes the sound

Of hail falling on slate

As he slips his new finds inside.

Nothing lives in the Fifth Realm

But some things exist there

Pressed into being by needs urgent or accretive, the calcification of requirement

Around crystalised moments.

One such thing claws its way from beneath a shingled patch

In which Ásgeirr had noted a sprinkling of small shells

Scattered loosely.

The shells scatter like scree

Sliding from the surface

In swirling slicks.

A claw bursts from below, long as a naust

Red as raw steak

Curved and hungry.

It drags the defender forth in a cascade

Another claw, and six spined limbs, steeple tall and barbed like war arrows

Follow, its eyes, eight like its limbs, whirl their sockets

Diamond bright.

It is beyond tall, beyond large

If a crab is a pebble, it is a furious mountain.

In the Third Realm Ásgeirr would use his sorcerous skills

To make time flow back and forth

Dance

Tumbling grains through an hourglass shaken

Splitting sundials and rebuilding them

So shadows make pained marks

In the souls of his foes

But in the Fifth Realm, just as there is no breeze,

There is no time.

There is an ocean somewhere, an ocean and a tide.

But no time.

The Realm’s creation surges forward

Carcine weapons ready to impale, to trample, to sever.

It screams soundlessly, within its mouth another mouth, teeth biting teeth

Whirling like angry millstones

In a storm in spate.

Before Ásgeirr was an Adept, before he travelled above the belly of the world

Across trackless plains,

Before he was admitted to the School of Righteous Thought

And trained his mind in mystic arts,

He was a huscarl

A warrior on the waves

Spitting defiantly in the face of death

Through bared teeth,

Killing with axe and sword.

So even without magic he is far from helpless.

Swift Ásgeirr strikes strongly

With star iron and yew wood

Axe rising, axe falling

Sword stabbing, blade cutting

With thews quickly burning

He circles and dodges

The claws which are seeking

His lifeblood’s red spilling.

Crab feet churn sands beneath

From hard packed to furrowed

Tripping brave Ásgeirr, his

Sandaled soles slipping and

Turning. The grasping claw

Snatches his sword and shears

It in twain.

Ásgeirr’s axe is clever, though, flickering

Taking teeth and barbs in fast blows.

They called him Ásgeirr Smilemaker

When he was aviking, for a skull-splitting

Reaving.

The crab does not smile as it chokes on a hatchet

Its sobs are quiet, it trembles as it expires on his blade.

Death is not known here

Not on this branch of the World Tree.

But stasis, stasis the beast can find.

There is an ocean somewhere, an ocean and a tide

Which might rise up and sweep this fallen protector

Into a new place, a new form.

Ásgeirr Snakequick, Ásgeirr Blue-Eyed Nomad

Scribes a circle in blood and makes a gate

Through which to step

Back to the Third Realm

Carried by the smell of brine to

An ocean somewhere,

An ocean,

And a tide.

 

________________________________________

Joel is an English speculative fiction writer. Grimdark Magazine described his self-published debut as “tantalisingly dark and brutal“.

His short fiction publications include pieces in the Space Wizard Science Fantasy anthology “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, the Air and Nothingness collection “Our Dust Earth”, Nature:Futures, ‘Big Smoke Pulp vol 1’, Pulp Lit Mag, Wensum Lit, & Altered Reality.

His wider repertoire includes satire (PULP Lit Mag), Creative NonFiction (Epistemic Literary), poetry (Radon, Limerick in Chains), and cultural commentary (Swords and Sorcery Magazine, The Drift).

This poem occurs in the Nine Realms of Reality setting, which includes a novel, three novellas, and a short story collection. Another poem in this world was published by SpecPoVerse.