the ocean and the bell
today, i was one deep breath away from drowning.
before that: warm air rushing against my face. falling. then the impact, the cold, my arms moving in the void. i had arrived somewhere, i understood this much before i understood that i was drowning.
a bell rang below me. sunday morning tolling. no. a leviathan cry.
through the salt water i thought i saw a small figure. i couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to know. afterward, i would return to that moment and try to see more than i had seen.
a rope brushed my hand. i caught it.
someone pulled me toward a ladder. rope cut into my palms, rust scraped against my knee. above me, a voice kept saying something i could not understand. i climbed toward it.
on deck, i coughed until my ribs hurt. the woman who had ordered my rescue stood nearby. her name was serrat. the vessel was the ondine.
i thanked her when i could speak.
the ondine belonged to a trading community that moved between mountain islands. water lay in every direction. the currents had names and destinations. there were no roads anymore.
they asked which vessel i belonged to.
i had no answer they could use.
i watched their faces change. a moment earlier i had been someone to pull from the water, i was one of them. now i was something else, unwelcome as a ghost. i sat with my hands between my knees and tried to make myself small and easy to leave alone.
maren brought a blanket.
she put it around my shoulders and offered me her ration of freshwater. i remember the care with which she gave me the cup.
she asked whether i had seen anyone below.
i told her i saw something in the darkness. something small. but i said i wasn’t sure.
i struggled to find the words. she listened without helping me finish.
through the hours before dawn, i heard pieces of what the bell meant. a name spoken quietly. someone who had failed to appear. someone seen once and never again. i didn’t yet understand that these were ordinary conversations here, that people could speak this way and then go on with the work of keeping a vessel afloat.
i stayed awake.
i wanted to go home. i didn’t yet know what would happen when i would fall asleep.
later, i found maren at the railing, facing the bell reef. crimson coral stretched toward the horizon. i stood beside her wrapped in the blanket she had given me.
the water was still. glass. a mirror reflecting the sky. and then it wasn’t.
a ripple moved across the surface. maren leaned forward. i looked from her to the water, trying to find what she had noticed.
“you really are a stranger here,” she said.
i nodded.
she told me in a whisper that when the bell rang, the drowned could rise. someone had to be waiting for them. even then, the dead did not always come. but when they appeared they stayed only as long as the note held.
the way a held breath has to end.
her son’s name was cael. he had drowned seven seasons earlier. he was four.
every time the bell rang, she came to the railing. hoping.
she had never seen him. but she waited hollowed by grief with each note. with each tolling.
we watched the water together. i was rehearsing words i would not have wanted anyone to say to me.
then the storm came.
the bell started tolling when we went over the side.
i lost track of my hands. i couldn't tell where by body ended and the dark eternity of the ocean began.
i was tired enough to feel relief, and too tired to be frightened by it.
a searchlight pierced through the darkness. and i saw them for a moment.
maren was holding a child. the two of them in a tender embrace. they needed only each other and nothing more.
she spoke to him as they drifted farther down.
the light moved away.
hands brought me back onto the ondine. serrat was shouting orders. someone called for maren. then someone else called, louder. the ocean did not reply. only the wind howled.
i lay on the deck as i did before. i could not lift my head.
i had seen her. that much i told them.
exhaustion set in and hardened against me. i did not yet know what sleep would do.
two people disappeared from the ondine that night.
if this reaches anyone: there is a world covered in water, a world where there is a bell that summons the dead, but also calls out to the living, a world where a mother found her son in the darkness.
