TO DAZE THE SEA

TO DAZE THE SEA, by Daniel P. Kelly, pending artwork by Karolína Wellartová, pending audio by The Bard

The Mountain

 

I could barely hear the Elder

Over the spittle gale flying

From the hag’s mouth of the wind.

And yet that day I received

A Divine Command.

There, on that slurry mountain,

That place of holy connunction, the Elder

Said,” Daze the Sea.”

 

At last, I exulted, to be tasked with

Something worthy of a Brother.

After a lifetime of being a worm

Sliding through the mud of Apprenticeship

To have earned a glance at the sky!

 

With deathly determination, I descended

Into the valleys.  I didn’t get lost.  I have never

Been lost.  Though the night gods

Bathed my head with moonlight

And made me a wandering “fool”.

Or so said the villagers whose

Laughter was sharp as holly.

 

The Journey

Chelny erat! And so it was

In the Bliney Blue where the healing bloodwort grows

I saw that I was followed.

I laid a trap, and soon,

Leaping from the chulley brush,

I swept the skulking fellow’s feet

With my iron-shod staff.

 

There was no triumph in it.

‘Twas but the spoiled second son

of the Thousand-Teated Queen.

Radulas, a brother of my order,

Couldn’t be simply brained and left

 

For dead.  We shared dinner

Instead.  Parched red corn and pie-toad

Jerky.  And a swallow from a Glarfon vial,

For which I forgave him much.

We retired to our own

Dreamworlds shortly thereafter.

 

I awoke to the terrified yips

Of a coven of crimson howlers.

They rushed past us by the light

Of our near-dead coals,

Seering panic in the dark.

I did not need to wake Radulas

As a pair of wolves ran over him.

 

And then I spotted our doom. “Get up!”

I roared.  “Kill or die!”

A smokey orange cloud was rolling down

The path towards us.  “Naphroggi!”  I cried.

 

There was no time to run.

Inside the cloud were demoniac

Heads the size of apples gnashing at us.

With gollish hortal, I swiped at

Three of them and reduced them to

Pulp. And yet the snarling

Air fruit kept rolling down

 

By the hundreds. I called on the

Angels and fluid fury engulfed

Both Radulas and me!  I kept most of

Those I could not crush off me

And those that affixed themselves to me

I bit and spit out as trained

By my thrice-blessed Weapons Master Joro.

 

Radulas seemed not so trained, and so

His back was covered with red-cheeked

Heads that gnawed and smiled and then

Began to hum The Hymn of Ashvoti.

 

The demonic choir was putting a wasp’s nest in

My brain, but, sealing myself in prayer,

I, the larger head, began to chew

And spit the enemy whilst Radulas

 

Split the air with his short swords,

Reinspired by my aid. Within minutes

The Naphroggi had withdrawn and

Flowed farther down the hill.

 

I confess we felt no righteous

Triumph, but hid ourselves like foxes

In a small outcropping of stone

To which we added pine boughs.

 

We were away of the morning,

Our wounds plastered over with bloodwort.

Trained as we were in silence

We only spoke when we took refreshment.

 

Six days it was until we saw Rottletown,

So we did have time to speak

Of the soul-murdering squalor

Of the Queen’s court. I began to understand

 

The desolation the boy grew in, as if

He’d sprung alive in a waste of

Fleshy wyrms. And it did melt

My heart, and I saw how the waves

 

Of fortune raise us and toss us

From heights to trough with laughing

Unconcern.  I, the poor son of a blacksmith,

Had yet inherited a strong back and sound,

 

 

 

If rather dour, morals.  He, raised in a mixture

Of brothel and pig stye, had only by

the most desperate of miracles, escaped its ruin.

And so, seeing this,

 

The foul envy in my heart

Which I had concealed as a thorny

And blustering rectitude

Vanished in the sharing of a poor meal.

 

We could not avoid passing through

The dead city of Rottletown, but as advised

We held our weapons close and

Kept our heads down as we ran.

 

We knew not the particular horror of the place,

But a deep and festering miasma lingered there

So that one’s animal spirits were stirred

To bold panic. We increased our pace.

 

With but a minute’s sprint before us,

Disaster struck. “Save me!” came the

Quavering voice of a girl. I looked

And saw a maid of perhaps seventeen years

 

In the doorway of a tavern.

“Don’t go!” I shouted at my friend

But it was too late. He had

Hared off to the pretty pleader. “No!”

 

I cried, but she already had him.

Pillow soft and oozing, she

Engulfed Radulas and then retracting

Like the white arm of a squid,

 

Disappeared. I admit in my horror

I vomited my breakfast, but

I had to flee, as several thick

White arms emerged and sought me.

 

I ran, full sick of grief and

Horror. A mile past the town

I stopped. I vomited again,

Then wandered into the brush to sleep.

 

 

The Sea

 

I arrived of an afternoon

And rested in the dunes above the shore.

A type of large, waddling rat

Made friends with me, or rather

Made friends with the corn I had.

 

I named him Radulas, sentimental act

I know, but good it was to speak to him

As the fire burned down and the last

Of the corn was eaten.  I knew

On the morrow I would be tested

Unto death.  In time I slept

And in the morning

 

I stomped through tidal pools,

Aghasting the crabs.

I scooped up handfuls of sea-spittle,

And made a splattering clap.

I kicked the rolling tide square

In its humectant ribs.

I strode into the waters and beat

The quiescent blue with ferocity.

 

All to no avail.

Eerie child-crone, she remained

Sinister, playful, implacable.

 

Alone on the beach, hearing

The monitory growls of the waves,

Aware of the stars whirling

Above in fiery certitude, (close enough

To be seen, too far to illume.)

I wondered if poison was what

The Elder meant.

 

There was enough poison in me, perhaps,

To bring a slow concussion to

The ocean’s thoughts, enough to

Stun a tempest and bring it

Low and sweet.

 

Hates and resentments, a host

Of biting flies, bred on carcasses of

Rotting desires, could be

Compounded in a tincture

To envenomate the sea.

 

This, I thought I could do.

I composed myself for tomorrow’s task,

Drifted into darkness,

And awoke in a dream.

 

And screamed, caught in the sea’s green lips,

Spit like a bullet of flesh to the sky

To plunge back into the maelstrom’s throat –

I screamed again, coughed out in a lashing squall

As a tongue made of wave

Wrapped around me until

I couldn’t move at all.

 

Utterly overpowered,

I hung there, like a peasant’s charm

Placed above a door that would never open.

I hung there, in my watery oubliette,

Facing the futility of my fate

 

When, in a rictus of expectant despair,

I felt the sea grow warm

And saw the sea’s mouth smile.

Bright fish like liquid gems moved above and below me

And dolphins laughed at me

And I, lifting my head, laughed, too.

 

And the sea, with impossible mercy

Whispered to my skin

The secret meaning of the words

The Elder taught me.

How good to be a fool, if in the end

One slim inlet of the ocean

Contests one’s shore!

 

An eternity later I woke down into the world

And resolved to tell the Elder

What I had learned, but

I would do so only

After taking a roundabout way home.

 

For only a wandering path

Taken with all the heart

(The sea told me)

Can lead us to the truth,

Or, if truth be told,

Lead us anywhere at all.

 

________________________________________

If my life were not so prosaic, my bio might be relating my struggles with the tumpinny skreechids, the evil Ents of the grasses. Instead of shepherding their charges, they lead them in violent rebellion against the rightful lord of the land. Were it not for the Whirling Blade of Righteous Order, with its capacity to turn skreechid armies into heaps of green-bleeding hay, the land would be lost.

Alas, my life is indeed prosaic, and few want to hear about mowing the grass.

However, I do have some hobbies that I find interesting, including martial arts, mead-making, gardening and walking an aged border collie.

 

Karolína Wellartová is a Czech artist, painter creating images predominantly with the wildlife themes, nature studies and the literary characters. She’s mostly inspired by the curious shapes and a materials from the nature, but the main source still comes from literature.

From a young age she tried to express herself and her observations on paper.  Painting and drawing were always the most important thing for her and visiting the local art school helped her understand the new techniques and the science of the colour mediums. She’s the award winning artist for “Best Book Cover in 2015” in Czechia. 

Her work has been published in American magazines such as Spirituality Health Magazine, International Wolf, Metaphorosis, Orion, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

 

What can be said of The Bard?  This:  Long ago, the mists of time parted. An unheard-of figure emerged: a wildman; untamed and howling. His brute savagery was a marvel to all. He fled into the wilderness and passed beyond memory. During the commotion, the Bard also emerged. He also fled into the wilderness but he came back when he got hungry.