Grandfather

Eizla rowed. The horizon behind her was just a thin black line. In front of her was only the infinite stars and the inky black water. She imagined if she turned her head, she would still be able to make out the tiny fires of her family and kin along the shore.

It was a comforting thought. She knew they’d be celebrating. Dancing, singing undulations into the night sky, and casting ruda pods into the flames where they’d explode and send showers of embers up and up until they blended with the stars.

Her grandfather sat across from her, glassy-eyed and slightly hunched against the stern. Eizla tried not to look at him. She knew she’d receive the blessing and a life-guardian tonight, but at the moment it didn’t feel much like a gift. So, instead she concentrated on her rowing.

The splash, sloop, splash, sloop of the oars was relaxing. If she concentrated on it, her mind relaxed.  Every now and then an iridescent moonfish would leap cavalierly from the dark depths and hover momentarily above the surface. “It is good that there are many moonfish tonight,” thought Eizla, “it will make the transition easier.” The thought caused a wave of sadness to wash over her, so she looked back at her knees and concentrated on the sound of the oars.

The rhythmic sound of the water lapping against the oars suddenly reminded her of the first time she’d caught a Maki with Grandfather. She couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6. Her grandfather was young and vivacious then. He had been one of the village’s best fisherman. Her father has gone hunting and her mother had fallen suddenly ill and had been sequestered by the village Magie. Grandfather was vocal in his dismay of having to take little Eizla along. “She’ll scare the fish!” he moaned. “If she falls in,” he complained, “I’ll not go in after her.” But in the end, no one had yielded in their instance that little Eizla accompany grandfather, so into the boat she went.

She remembered grandfather had lectured her all the way out to the deep reefs. She was to be quiet. She had to stop moving so much. She could not touch the poles, the nets, the oars, the bait, the buckets, or anything really. Grandfather was not to be pestered with silly questions such as, “what do Silmon eat?” or “could a Halen eat their whole boat?”

Eizla remembered sitting there very bored and very still for the longest time in her whole life. She was afraid of grandfather and she wasn’t sure if he’d meant what he said about letting her drown if she fell in.

Suddenly, everything started to happen at once. Three polls started to dip deeply in the water just as grandfather started to pull up his net filled up with more fish than Eizla had ever seen in one place.   

Grandfather struggled to put the massive catch net into the boat while the polls tugged and tugged deeper into the water straining at weird angles against their circular holders. “Don’t just sit there, girl,” yelled grandfather, “grab a poll before we lose them all!”

Eizla grabbed the poll nearest to her. The poll jerked madly and the handle hit Ezra hard in the stomach. She lost her breath. She couldn’t see. She tasted the tang of blood in her mouth as she bit the side of her tongue. Through the ringing in her ears she heard Grandfather bellow, “damnation, girl, grab the poll! Grab the poll, girl! Is that so hard?”

So Eizla did. She didn’t know where the pain went, but she would not disappoint Grandfather. She grabbed the poll and she fell back into the boat. She would not lose Grandfather’s poll. She lay on the floor of the boat with her eyes closed and her little feet pressed upward against the rim of the boat. She pushed the whole weight of her little body as hard as she could against the floor wet, rough planking of the bottom of the boat.

Grandfather’s shadow appeared over her as he attempted to wrest the poll from her hands. She was focusing her entire being into not losing the poll. She didn’t immediately understand what was happening. “Let go, girl,” said grandfather roughly. Eizla opened her eyes.

Grandfather began reeling in the line. Eizla sat up. She ached all over. An awful taste filled her mouth and she spat. She was surprised to see the water in the boat turn red and then dissipate.  Grandfather was still carefully reeling in the line. Eizla watched. Grandfather would wait, tilt the poll slightly downward, and then jerk it strongly back.

Ezra started to get her wits about her as air thankfully filled her lungs. She used the boat rim to pull herself up. She was only about halfway up when she saw it. Some ways off the boat a large, wide spikey fin was being trailed along at the surface of the water. Eizla watched transfixed. Every once in a while, it would dip under or seemingly try to turn in one random direction or another. Grandfather’s movement of the reel seemed to match the movement of the fin, only delayed by a heartbeat.

“Grab the hook, Eizla! The hook!” cried grandfather. Eizla scrabbled around the boat until she saw it lodged in a pole hoop near the aft of the boat. She hurriedly pried it out of its holder and carried it, sharp hook waving unsteadily in the air, to Grandfather. He snatched from her and dug it into the side of the enormous fish splashing around the boat.

Almost effortlessly Grandfather pulled the thrusting fish inside. He took the longclub from his belt and hit the fish over and over until it stopped moving. Everything was still. The giant fish lay dead, sprawled over the two plank seats, the many netfish splashed merrily in the sea-buckets and small waves lapped relentlessly at the sides of the boat. Young Eizla leaned back against the side of the boat, exhausted.

In that moment, Grandfather gathered her up and tossed her little body in the air. He whooped. Eizla lost her breath again. “Eizla, girl, this is the biggest Maki, I’ve ever seen!” he said laughing, “You must be blessed by the Plesods!’

After that day everything changed between Eizla and Grandfather. Since that day, Grandfather had taught her he knew everything about boating and fishing. Eizla grew on the ways of the ocean, they way that most girls grew in the ways of preparing nein or knowing the ripe-seasons of parcelfruit. In time, it was said, she was a better fisherman than many of the men who were much older than she.

Still it was a surprise when Grandfather’s lodenstone had appeared at the end of her sleeping mat ten tides ago. Such an honor was not given to women.

 Eizla shook the bad thoughts from her head like passionflies during the rain season. She didn’t like to think about that small gray stone. As was her duty, since that day, she had carried the stone in her safepouch. Oddly, if she thought about the stone too much, she could swear it left an unnatural warmth amongst her body that differentiated it from her other treasures. It felt different.

Eizla banished these superstitions by rationalizing her situation. It was just the weight of her duty that made her seem to feel the lodenstone in its cloth pouch, nothing more.

Her thoughts about the lodenstone were ripped from her as a moonfish leapt into the boat and began flopping uselessly against the boat floor. Eizla quickly stopped rowing to help the little fish. On nights like this moonfish were said to guide souls to Plesod Halls, their little bioluminescent bodies acting as torches on this special moonsless night. Eizla felt it would be the worst kind of luck to let a fish such as this die on a night such as this.
 

 It flopped chaotically against the floor. Eizla darted this way and that trying to wrangle the shiny little fish. Eizla was nimble and used to the arrhythmic movement of a boat, but Grandfather’s bulk weight made the boat lurch in way she hadn’t predicated. In slow motion she saw the vast, moonsless sky above and felt her foot slide uncontrollably on the wet board, before her back ever touched the warm, salty waters of the vast, unending ocean.

Eizla tried to control her panic. Unless you were crossing-over, it was forbidden to enter the water on a moonsless night. She felt herself being pulled deeper and deeper into Plesod’s depths. She began to struggle and sink. She could not tell which way was up. She felt herself running out of air.

Yet, as she kicked and struggled, she felt something warm against her torso. Even in her panic, she heard her Grandfather’s voice saying, “kick, how hard is that, girl?” And she did. She kicked past her endurance. Even carrying all the weight of full interment garb, she kicked. She was 6 years old again and her Grandfather’s opinion was all that mattered.

Her head broke the surface. She gasped for air and it filled her lungs like fish in a seanet on plentiful day. The outline of the small boat stood ominously dark against the ceaseless stars.  She swam toward it.

Eizla reached the shell of the boat. She tried to pull herself into the boat using the rim to hoist herself up. The boat lurched downwards. Water begun to flood the boat. Eizla scrabbled. She swung a leg over on top of the rim, but the boat flooded more deeply.  “Faster,” Eizla said to herself. But it was no use. She let go.

If the boat sank, she would indeed enter Plesod’s Halls with Grandfather tonight.  

With hands on the lip, she began feeling her way around the boat, hoping that an anchoring line or something would be available to help disperse her weight. She had gone ¾ quarters around the boat rim when she felt it. She immediately let go in shock.

In the turbulent activity of falling overboard, Grandfather’s arm had fallen over the side of the boat. Eizla paddled in place considering her options. The moonsless sky twinkled overhead and moonfish jumped carelessly hither and thither in the distance.

Eizla swam back to the rim of the boat. She intertwined her fingers with Grandfather’s. While she kicked rhythmically and held her other hand over his lodenstone in the pouch next to her heart. Outloud, to all the seas, she proclaimed, “Swim free, Grandfather. Until I may join you, feast victoriously in Plesod’s Halls. I beg you to watch over me all my days and help me be the fishman that you were,” Eilza felt her tears mix with the ocean waters. “Goodbye, Grandfather.”

She held his hand gently a moment longer before switching her grip with that hand and gasping his forearm with her other. As she pulled herself up and swung her weight into the boat, Grandfather’s lifeless form was displaced over the side.

As relieved as she was to be back in the safety of the boat, she scrambled up quickly. Grandfather’s outline was sinking slowly through the clear, dark depths.

She somehow managed to find a seat on the plank bench in order to watch his decent. A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was the moonfish she’d been trying to save a lifetime ago. It lay still in a puddle of water that had formed at the bottom of the boat, but it’s gills were still flapping slowly, trying to lap in the little water available over its gills.

Carefully, Eizla lifted the little fish and put in gently over the side of the boat. It lingered a moment at the surface as if recovering it were recovering its wits. The last thing Eizla saw was the little glowing fishing swimming hell-bent toward the increasingly vague outline of Grandfather. She thought she saw, as if it were waving goodbye at her, Grandfather’s hand, disappearing into the unfathomable depths, illuminated by a tiny, glowing oblong orb.

Eizla put her hand over the still slightly warm lodenstone and picked up the oars.