This poem provides important background for the story.¹

“I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you….’” ~ The Preacher

The sea rose around me in silent suspension, the roar of its stillness too vast to hear, its waves all black and dead-eye blue. My boots pressed against the water without passing through, so that I stood like a man on living glass. Above my head hung the ocean-spray, glintless in the unsourced light, neither falling nor rising nor flying, and I did not raise hand to touch it, as I, once curious, might have. I merely walked forward, turning left here and right there around the bodies of great waves, rising from the trough of a valley on the slope of a wave and descending again, my tread steady, neither slow nor quick.

I did not look about me. I saw merely the path ahead, an illusion in wyrd’s² pathlessness, for exile’s paths are many but without mark. I have no anchor in this world, I thought, and so I would not, could not care that when I passed the bulk of one wave I never found its companions unchanged, that when I looked the world was still, gray and blue and black under silver illumination, yet always altered when I saw it a second time.

At last, when forty days or else a single minute passed, I stood upon a wave’s lofted crest, as high as any tree, unafraid of falling, for my fall to this sea had been worse, old Adam’s fault reflected and worked out. I stood there, feeling cold as if in wind despite the airless world I walked, and I saw before me, in sight and at a distance a man without fatigue might walk, a fleet, ten ships, well-built, with bright sails of green and blue and gold, like flowers against the world, their hulls of good brown wood, drab and beautiful in that mundanity. I did not blink or flinch, but I turned, eyes still half-caught upon the sight, and passed down the ridge of the wave into the rising of the next.

I rose, legs untiring and without joy, to the summit of the next wave, not so tall, and again I saw the fleet, closer by a distance no man could measure, and now it was not ten but twenty ships, all greater than I had seen at first, great vessels each of which a king might envy, and I fancied I saw upon them bright shields of warriors, lords-men, upon whose arms and chests gold might rightly glitter.

I turned from that specter with a heavy heart, for already I presaged the end of my quest. The waves soon fell before me, each one vanquished ‘neath a steady pace, and I found a third time that I saw the fleet, now eighty men of war upon a nearing horizon, and each had turned towards another. They did not move, for in this place nothing save I moved under man’s gaze, and I hoped against reason to touch that which did still live, which once did live.

The waves held me long within their midst, then, and I wandered fleet-ward with a steady pace and stuttering heart, my thoughts too full for reason, as before they had been too empty. Before me at last rose a high hill of water, green with the color of mystery, black at its base and blue at its tip, all still, and I walked with sure step up its flowing, frozen swell, elfin glass unmarked behind me. I stood so high that I might have touched the sky, had this place such a pleasure, yet I could have stepped over the edge without a breath lost to fear. Not that I have taken breath in this place.

Carnage greeted me, and I did not weep when I saw it. Each ship had turned upon its fellow, not seeking to conquer but merely to kill, the one ship rising on a wave above another and lunging down, so that they hung frozen, both broken beyond salvation, the one with its deck shattered in the midst of the other’s gap-toothed hull. I walked forward, down the wave and around another into the depth of a valley; I walked forward, unswervingly forward, unstaying for the sight before me. I walked forward, and I stood before the battle-stream and the great shallow valley which had formed in its wake.

I breathed, in, out.

I walked forward, at the same pace, though a tear found its way past my guard.

I touched the carcass which remained.

All about me was the smooth, unyielding surface of this alter-ocean, a great valley between waves like mountains, like walls, walls made of blue and black and ancient green, smooth as they fell towards the sky. Within this great valley was a single ship, small, a boat almost, single-masted and broken, empty of all men. Indeed, I think not that man has ever touched it save me.

Its wood was not brown with the brown of once-had-life, as of the fleet which now had vanished. It had no bright sail of grass and sky and dragon-lust. It had no bright shields by which men staved off wyrd’s mercy. No, this husk was a thing of dead and shattered wood, smoother to the touch than wood so broken should be and colder, not slimy or wet though it looked it. Its sides were crushed and riven, so that I did not need to lift my feet to enter save to avoid debris, and its mast was bare, broken at the top. No man remained within to find, no skeleton or corpse, no cloth or stone or steel to show life’s presence.

I was alone.

I sat upon the highest part of the ship and watched the still world about me. Once, I had a hall, a place for treasure’s heap and friend’s feasting, the joys of mankind. I was happy then.

This cursed night my lord had sat at the head of the giant-wrought table, and alongside it sat all his warriors, my friends. We were triumphant, then, slayers of monsters, and we bore home upon our backs three great trophies of our deeds, a scale, a tongue, and torch unending. I had struck no final blow, but I had held shield over him that did, and I rejoiced with him most gladly.

My lord had proclaimed a feast, of boars and cows, of deer by hunters slain and bread to overmatch the heap. He had torn from his arm a bracelet, cast it upon the victor, opened the gates of his treasure hoard. He declared that he would speak blessings and seal them with gift, for the slaying of the serpent, whose scales had rubbed against our walls till they cracked, whose hide had parted for our steel’s brave bite. An oath I gave, all bubbling with gladness, and I raised my mead high as I spoke, so that all might hear my boast, that I would see this hall stand against all her foes, that I should be ever foremost in war while my lord still gave my head rest. It was a mighty oath, and they laughed with it, bringing it to me in turn from their own lips.

I laughed with and for them; I drank deeply at the feast; I sang songs of victory and lord-love. I held in my heart a well of joy and thought of the one whom I might someday husband. The fire grew high, and my stomach filled, and the songs had turned to legends. Now the bard spoke, ancient tales in sequence, valor beyond valor, and the night grew ever longer, the feast never diminishing, the cup raising high in unending concatenation of acclamation and rejoicing. Above it all my lord of men reigned, his voice the foremost, his words the wisest, his oath kept in full generosity, so that I and all about me had of his hoard a surfeit, in gold and in counsel, and in all this he was naught poorer, for by these great gifts, to him a pittance, he made all which was ours to be his.

The bard proclaimed the deeds of warfare and of the man of war, a lord giving home to his people, and the door opened. Frost entered in. The wind turned the latch, and from the emptiness beyond, the great and twisted wilderness, the world entered. Hoarfrost crept like lightning up the floor, crawling onto men’s legs and over their chests, like shackles upon the raging sea. Yet like the sea they admitted no shackles, and they brought hand to axe and to spear, even as I did, drawing into ranks for war, though no man or beast had yet entered the gate.

Behind the wind and the frost came a great howl, the wrath of a mountain and the rending of its cloak. Those great thegns stood tall, and I with them, though my hand shook. The walls shivered about us, and we heard past winter’s howl the caws of crows, the racket of ravens, all flesh-feasters, all which laud the dead man’s eyes, his tongue. There rose too amidst it wolves, creatures eager for the kill, creatures without compassion, hunger on their breath and madness, the madness of man reflected.

The door was open, now, and the blackness without absolute, and for a moment it seemed to press in upon us, the looming of moon-less shadow. Too soon, the newcomers’ shape became clear, their black-forged spears, their armor of veils, their deep, reverberant hum. All of a piece they seemed to a glance, but they were ten men at first, then twenty, then forty, and still we stood unmoving, our feet dug into the wood below to keep from flight. All the hall was filled with the same constant, chest-burning note, swelling till we felt as if we should burst, and at last courage found us, for my lord, my dearest friend, he who counselled and gifted me a hundred times in that night, stepped forward. We followed.

The strangers leapt upon us, and we met in the hall. We struck, and yet their spears struck too, so that blood was spilled below our feet, staining the boards. The world’s howling grew, and my hand hurt with the effort of retaining my spear against the singular sound which filled the world, which pressed against the walls and pressed those walls against me. I saw then that the blood was not theirs. Ours it was, and where it touched their spears, it dissolved to curling mist.

My own spear fell from my hand, and I stumbled back, beyond my companions; my world blurred, as if the sound had finally wrenched it free of the earth, and I saw no more than a great black mass overwhelming my kinsmen. Above us I heard the crows in merriment, and a roar deeper than any wolf’s cut through the silent din, near a relief. As my eyes shut, I found I could not breath.

My eyes opened to twilight, to a world empty of joys. Among all I saw, but one could move, my friend whose spear had slain that dragon, and above him stood a wolf whose paws were rimmed with gold as if a lord’s hands. As I watched, that wolf clasped the dragon-slayers throat with his teeth, bone grinding on bone, and blood flowed forth like wine from a flagon. While it sated itself, it laughed with the hacking merriment of a body never made for the task, and I was still till it left.

I stood, and I looked, and the world continued, silent not by its own nature but by my deafness, for I could not have heard an angel had he spoken to me. I stumbled forward, feet clumsy and cold, still boot-clad, my armor upon me, no weapon to hand, the thoughts of my heart half to flee, half to die. My lord lay upon the floor before me, eyes skyward, teeth bared and red, all armed, with his chest riven open as by a giant’s axe. As I stood, caught as in amber by the world’s terror, a bird, a raven or a crow or something worse, winged from the rafters above, suddenly huge in my eyes, weightier than the earth, so that I braced myself against its vertiginous pull. It alighted upon my lord’s corpse, claws against breastbone, and it leaned down to see his face. Its beak opened and shut and opened and shut, and no more my lord had eyes to see with, though no more harm was done, yet no more harm could have been done, for I wot it so drew forth his soul by those windows, drew his spirit down to its gullet. When it winged away to the west I should have pursued it, but I did not.

The world’s howl grew again, and I once more could hear. I turned instead to my brother, my mother’s son. I dared not step beyond those walls, so I turned downward, splitting open the floor with a blood-slick axe, hacking open the earth. Though I labored, I felt no tiredness. Then the world shivered again, and the ceiling above me groaned, and it broke, and the world was white.

From the sky came hail, the size of a rat’s head, a dog’s head, a man’ s head, and where it touched me it burst to clinging snow, but where it met wood or corpse or world it rived them apart, its ash-white fury tearing away the walls which enclosed the charnel pit, turning corpses to pulp, churning them into the splinters and mud below. In all this I worked still, covering with ruddy earth the remains of my brother over whom I stood, my realness his bulwark, and at last he was interred, the only one in this hall to rest in a grave of his own, neither taken over the sea as my lord nor defiled in his death as my friend nor expelled from all home as myself. He had borders, of body and soul and residence, and I envied him.

I looked out across the sea, sitting there upon the height of a wrecked ship which would not, while I saw it, sink, and I wept, though I did not close my eyes. Such, I saw, was wyrd, that man should not long have happiness. All is vanity, for all passes, and neither wealth nor friend nor man nor woman may stand against the world’s working. I stood, and I laid hand upon the mast to steady me. Do I call myself wise? I walk the paths of exile, no wealth to support me, no lord to counsel or gift me, no friend to stand beside me. I have weathered winter in this world, and I know the measure of man’s way.

A new longing seized me, clambered through my veins, sprouted through my thoughts. I desired to find where an anchor lay, where man might find a center and a place of rest. I wished to find that which would break through the inviolate stillness of these waves, which would hold me in place and grant me counsel, which would be to me what lord and friend and wealth can no longer ever be. So minded, I departed that wreck, turning up the gut of the valley. Behind me, had I looked, I wot I would not have seen any vessel, but I did not look. My path led up the valley, and I emerged upon the crest of another wave. Where shall I seek? No map had I, nor would a map comprehend this ever-shifting wasteland.

I walked forward, hands clenched tight, and I turned when I wished, and I ran when I wished, but I never stopped. I marked no course and sought no path, though I saw many. An exile’s paths are many, but none of them are true, all anchorless, so that their past and future changes with the ocean’s whim. I ascended, after some time without measurement, upon the back of a swell, a great mass of water reached out of the sea like a giant’s knuckle, and I saw a great sight.

I saw before me solid land. This, though, was no hall or home. Before me, amidst the frozen waves, a long, straight line of dark stone rived the world apart, a path as wide as a man’s shoulder and reaching past sight, gray as thunderclouds on a moonless summer night. No water encroached upon its surface; no waves sought to cross it. I knew in an instant that I could never call it unnatural, as I might call the rest of this world unnatural; I knew that when I touched it, I might break upon it as the hail had broken upon me.

I stepped forward nonetheless, terror in my gut, hands clenched, with a thirst I had no water to quench. My pace quickened, for I saw hope, and I knew that if an anchor was to be found in all this weary world, I must find it at this singular reality. I trod closer and closer to it, and the waves began to weigh upon me, and the spray above me shimmered, and I choked in trying to breath once more. I stumbled, and I ran, and I could see it always before me, as if the waves dared not entirely obscure it, though they tried, though they leaned up against my sight and nigh encompassed it, and still the peculiar depth of its existence would not be subsumed to the world around it.

I stopped, one step from it, unable to move, unwilling.

It will rend me apart.

I would touch it, and I would no longer be.

What is to man as snow is to hail? Would I be made blood or earth or a mud of both? I did not know, and my chest was crawling up through my parched throat. I raised my hand to it, slowly, and I held it hovering there, nigh touching, terrified.

I shuddered, and my teeth bent against each other with all their might, and I was touching, and I lived. I know what I must do.

I laid my hand upon it more firmly, hauling myself up onto it and standing, leather boots on gray stone, and I stood there for a moment. I was fragile, I knew, liable to shatter upon the reality of what I stood upon, and yet this too was far from full reality. This stone too was of the ocean’s world, if heavier than the rest; this too would wyrd twist with time. I had not found an anchor, and so I must not stand still.

I began to walk.

The ground was uneven, but not by much, enough to steady my step, and I walked quickly. As I walked, I saw the world clearly, saw the bareness of my fingers, saw the stone beneath my feet. I looked up, and behold, before me the stone turned suddenly to gold, brilliant and real, strewn with rings shrewdly smithed. The path grew wider, smoother, lost all imperfections, and upon the edge I paused, looked down upon the ground. I leaned down, my finger a hint away from one of the rings, saw it glint.

I looked up, and I smiled, a little hilarity under the bitterness, a little incredulity and euphoria. This is a lie, I thought, and it was, a lie all the worse for its reality. Yet I had renounced gold. I stood now on the exile’s only true path, and my spirit was bound upon it, not dwarrow-like to make wealth its anchor. I stood straight, and I closed my eyes, and I stepped forward again, onto a path which was, when I looked, once more a narrow and imperfect line of stone amidst the waves.

The wind roared about me, suddenly real, cold and hateful, howling and shrieking, cutting against my skin and tearing away my garb. My chest burned. My throat ached. My mouth froze under the world’s touch. I choked, and I breathed once, and I choked again till the world started to dim before my eyes, overtaken by effervescent spots like pressure against light, but I walked forward. Slowly, my struggles died, and I realized suddenly that I walked alongside a companion.

I looked to his face, and he was not my brother, dead and buried, nor was he the dragonslayer, whom the wolf shared with death, for I would not have believed those. He was no man I could name, but I knew him, and I reached towards him with joy, greeting him with body as my words failed me. My hall-companion, warm, touched me in turn, and he held me as we walked. We walked long and we spoke long, and I knew joy once more, a place to stand.

At last, when I had walked near twice the distance before I met him, my companion paused and I with him. We stood there upon the rock, each with a hand upon the other’s shoulder, and we smiled at the other for joy of a memory returned. Then, with sudden solemnity, he turned towards our path, not moving, merely peering down it. The north wind blew around us with all the hatred of the storm, promising terrors beyond endurance, but we seemed, when we spoke, as if alone in a hall still fire-lit from the feast.

He sighed, and I feared, suddenly, that I would lose him. Again. Would it be again?

I had seen their bodies churned into the mud and splinters, seen the hail pound it apart and make the whole world of men a red-brown muck.

He held out a hand to me, and he pointed forward, showed how the long lance of stone, which had seemed so straight from afar, bent so subtly, how we must needs follow it. He showed, and I listened, and I realized that I had not shut my eyes once since the wind resumed its weight. He took a step forward along this bent path, and I felt the breath in my chest rebel, for I shut my eyes.

I opened my eyes to a straight and empty path, a way without companion, and I knew that I had feared rightly, that the floating spirits brought voices only and not men, not men who had fallen within their walls already. I felt the spray of the waves on my face, and I flinched.

To my left and my right, waves rose higher and higher, suddenly liquid, and the sea, once death-still, had come to life, writhing and roaring and crashing in a Sisyphean chaos, a battle of ten-thousand armies. The two waves which bracketed my once-inviolable perch descended upon me, crushing me between them, and I could not breathe, could not see, felt the blood freeze in my veins. I rose a little into the air with the waves; I dropped. My feet found earth, but the water kept pulling, tore at me with savage hands, ripped downward. I crumbled forward, to my hands and knees. Still it wrestled with me, till I lay spreadeagled upon the stone, fingers gripping with assured futility at what scant grips they could get. I knew, with a surety I could not doubt, that had the waves been less perfectly matched I would have been swept away to the right or left, lost beneath the grindstone of the sea.

A hand clasped about mine, lifted me to my feet, and before me stood my lord, he upon whose knees I had laid my head for succor and for counsel, my gift-giver, my loved one, he whose eyes and soul had been carried out to sea by the carrion-bird. His form was tall as in life, his teeth unbloodied, and his eyes bright. Whether he lived, I would not venture to say, for he seemed not less real but merely different. I could not bear to question farther.

I embraced him, and he me, and a wave broke over us without notice as we so stood. Then I knelt, and he blessed me, so that I knew peace once more. I implored him to lead me on my journey forward, to the end of this stone path, pled for mercy despite that I, craven, had not guarded his soul from the sea. He lifted me to my feet and forgave me, blessed lord of men, named me redeemed by my sorrow. I wept, then, and he with me. Thus joyful, we walked together down the path. Waves broke over us, but his steps were sure and his grip on me tight. Though the stone grew slick, he did not let me stumble. Behind us fell a great distance, as much as I had walked with my false companion, and at this thought terror overwhelmed me, for I doubted, of a sudden, that I stood beside the true man.

He had been born away across the sea by that bird; this I did not doubt. Yet how had he returned? Dead men do not come quickly to the living’s aid. I remembered too the double temptation, first of phantom gold and next of a companion whose name I could not remember, of whom I had been sure, whose speech I had heard and rejoiced in though now, as I pondered it, not a single word had stuck in my memory. Was this, my lord, a temptation like those? I knew my duty. My eyes, open as they ever were in this place, open even through the greatest wave, ought to shut for a single moment, rid me of this doubt, confirm or deny it. Yet I did not. I cannot walk this path without him.

We continued, and I saw my lord so clearly. His counsel rang true, his words both grave and gay in turn. He had no gold, but the bellies of birds have little room for treasure. He led me always, and he gave me strength. We walked ever forward, ever onward, till at last we stopped, for the path had come to an end. The stone ceased, a sudden cut which coincided with the horizon; I could not see beyond it however close I came. Upon the left-hand side it had an outcropping, as wide as the path again, with a set of stairs which likewise disappeared through the horizon, three visible, the rest beyond sight.

My lord stood still for a moment. As he stood there, a great wave gathered behind us, taller than before, taller than any I had climbed while they lay still, reaching past the sky towards the starless heaven, and it rose so fast that its rise concealed its rush, till in the instant before it struck, before my arm was caught by my lord, I saw that it came for me. It fell, and its fall was as of the world falling, a tumult unfathomable lunging from the abyss above towards the abyss below, through me, the hammer of the ocean.

When it passed, I stood strong still, but my lord had fallen to his knees, his breathing labored, his form wan, even wasted. I knelt beside him, and I felt his hand upon my shoulder, holding him from falling, its grip convulsive and yet without strength. I lifted him in my arms, finding him lighter than he looked, and made to step forward, beyond the horizon, over the edge of existence, but he stopped me with a single gesture.

He was, I saw, too weak for words, and so I watched him instead, looked where he showed me, the outcropping and its stairs. I saw too that it was made for man’s passage. I stepped toward it, hesitated. In my arms, my lord was still, his face slack and gray with all he had done to aid me, and we would not, I saw, survive this last wave without his aid. I must take a path.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, the second wave, as great as the first, had gathered, and I knew from its brother its speed, yet I hardly moved. How could I? Had not my lord faded even from my arms, my last anchor to this earth? I had the wisdom to discount gold, companion, and lord alike as anchors before, when I saw them not.

It was no consolation.

I looked towards the edge, and the wave approached from behind me, and I did not think I would have the strength to step forward or even the desire. The wave struck, rising through me, and it flung me up and forward, bereft of all anchor, and I saw a moment before it happened where I was going, so that I clawed at the water and fought desperately to escape, to turn away from the horizon.

I stood, in dry clothes and dry boots, in utter darkness. I was calm, now, beyond that horizon, amidst silence of ear and eye and heart and soul. I have changed. My flesh was not the same, nor my bones, but these were only fruit, for my soul was changed, and I could have sung for the joy of it. Yet the silence there was holy. I began to step forward, out of that darkness, but I paused. I knelt, unlaced my boots, and held them in my hand. My feet were bare. So changed, I walked forward. The sight I there beheld many men have seen with eyes less clear and heart more pure, and I will ever laud while I live that final and incipient reality.

I stood then in a strange building, a house, I think, with its stable set within it. There amidst the animals I found myself, with three strangers, men now my brothers, and I thought by the warmth of our dress that it was winter. Before me I saw a man and his wife. The man was tired, yet he watched us well. The wife had thought only for her child- newly born, by her paleness-, and she trembled as she knelt, peering down into the manger. I stepped forward, my three companions with me, and the vision was complete, for I saw there wrapped in swaddling cloths a babe.

And behold, I awoke.

(Finished 12/17/23)

Footnotes

1 – Find alternate versions here and here.

2 – ‘Wyrd’ is an old word meaning ‘fate’ or more distantly, ‘the way the world works’.