Kraken in a Coffee Cup: 15
Chapter 15
Before we begin: I’m writing a series on literary style at Literary Salon, and today I realized there’s only a 20% crossover between newsletters. If you’re a writer, check it out.
Table of Contents
If you’re new to the story, I suggest beginning with the table of contents so you’ll understand the origins of the text and why I say it was co-authored by Herman Melville.
And now,
Kraken in a Coffee Cup.
Chapter Fifteen
We breach the surface and are swept by dismasting blasts as direful as any that ever lashed salted wave. These waters know what shipwrecks are and have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Ligeia asks, but I tell her there’s nothing yet to see. Mr. Graveling assures us there are hours left to sail; one cannot approach Paradise from below.
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a vessel looms ahead, its craft bleached like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, the spectral hull is traced with long channels of reddened rust, like the bleeding of a whale. All her spars and her rigging are like the thick branches of trees furred over with frost; all her sails torn and flailing. No man stands at look-out.
The captain made no announcement of drowned souls, but I feel the truth lodged in my throat, as sure as if I died mid swallow. She’s a ghost ship.
I hurry to the cabin and throw the door open without knocking; the captain stands at his table, expecting me.
“You’ve seen the Starling,” he says. “You’ll see her again before this is over.”
“They’re dead, and we weren’t there.”
“We weren’t,” he says, “but we will be.”
Under orders, I return to the deck and command the men to make all sail, and the Starling trails off behind us. As we leave the blistering winds to the south and the time between us and our destination dwindles, I know I can no longer put off the fulfillment of my oath.
Ligeia takes me into her embrace and pulls me into her so that my flesh passes through hers, an anchor plunging into the sea. Her form fits over mine like a transparent jacket, and the sensation of our minds joining is the flash of a thousand insights, all at once: the white beast I witnessed is not god but a physical manifestation of fate, a shadow of the divine for certain, closer to the godhead than the angels, and how often has man mistakenly fallen to worship plaintively at their feet?
I know these things without being told: Mr. Graveling is not as accepting of my arrival as I’m wont to assume; I am not in love, only enamored with the mysteries Ligeia represents; and she is here aboard the Shade because her people suspect the captain’s plan. If he cannot be dissuaded, she must protect the integrity of time and fate, whatever the means and whatever the cost.
I would wrestle with these new understandings but the world beyond the Shade presents itself as new in form and concept. We remain one, bodily, Ligia and me, as the ship passes archipelagos of romantic isles which for leagues and leagues sporadically flank the seas with ancient and unentered forests, where gaunt pines stand like serried lines of Gothic kings.
Ligeia in her infancy was laid down on the sandy bottom to nurse at her maternal sea; but without her lover–or now, without me–never has she witnessed any such as this except as through the ocean’s thick blue veil. As the Shade’s prow points to the island haven, her mind shudders through mine; she wonders what humanity went out death-harvesting with all those weapons that drifted down to Sirene to hang collected from a tavern ceiling.
Far down the afternoon; floating in the lovely sunset sea, sweet and plaintive prayers curl up in a rosy air, as if the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles wantonly turned sailor and went to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns. The prayers are neither whale-song nor human, and I alone among the human crew can hear them; and I alone perceive their meaning; for this is not a voice upon the air but Ligeia’s within my soul, welling up in a tongue I’ve never heard but know as well as my own. She is singing to sleep the sun with the rapture of first sighting.
The sun draws in its cloak and calls up the moon upon the eastern horizon, and that silver light sets upon a low white atoll, like a diamond collar clasped upon that bold green sea.
John sings out from the main-mast: paradise! Paradise ho!
We retrieve the soul from where the captain stashed it in his locker in the transom among his maps, a foolish, ghastly notion; and it could not house more than five, even with the maps removed; I’ve yet to be told where we house large collections. Apparently, Ligeia doesn’t know, either. Her regular ship has brilliant cisterns along the hull and from them souls tumble out into their dark, dense home.
I hold the soul to my bosom as I held him at his capture—as Ligeia held him—and flesh-to-soul I assure him that all is well. I feel his peace; not a logical peace but beyond understanding. It’s instinctual, founded on his trust in me like a newborn’s trust in his mother. His trust in Ligeia, that is, his soul to her flesh. Without her this communication would be broken, and I’ve never heard that the Shade speaks to the souls she takes. They are left unaware until voyage’s end: blind; deaf; unknowing.
Over and over, I am called to question the purpose for which I came; and in this anguish, Ligeia offers no comfort. She has no answers beyond the suspicion that our ways have always been barbaric. Any hope will not be found here but outside, in whatever secrets lie within the atoll.
Still cradling the soul like an abused and rescued child, I turn to face Captain Charon, and my face conceals nothing. The Sireners have their way of linking soul to soul; humanity has its eyes.
“Within the white sands’ rim, you’ll find his resting place,” the captain says. “I apologize for his keeping thus far, but I’ve collected necessities below that cannot yet be disturbed. He knows no different, but even if he did, in a moment’s time it would be all forgotten. The glory of his arrival is at hand. Now beware your face before the crew and assuage your doubts, for to them you wear the heavy Iron Crown of Lombardy, forged from the nail that crucified their Savior. As He delivered them, so you deliver this one into Paradise. He is your thief upon the tree, and to him you can now proclaim, ‘Behold, today!’ Salvation, ho.”
His lip twitches a moment’s grin, and he herds me to the door and to the deck where the crew, true to his word, stand gathered, waiting. He is behind me (the two of me) as I step out into the moonlit night, the golden booty in my arms. The crew roars with victory and delight.
This is their purpose and the reason for their being.
“A speech is in order,” says Mr. Graveling, and the others lift their voices in accord.
This moment offers us no escape, and so together Ligeia and I address the crew. “Our duty here is in service of fate, and so it is true for me, that my one cogged circle fits into various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, the arms of fate are like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before us; and we are their match. In the lighting of fate, the match is used up, and we have been so heavily used. The days of our burning cannot continue forever.”
The men stir uneasily, and I feel Charon’s heavy presence looming behind me.
“We stand at fate’s altar,” I continue, “and now prophesy that I will remember my rememberer. I say to you all, be the prophet and your own word’s fulfillment. Speak and see it done. Let paradise open and take him in.”
They cheer while yet perplexed, and I do not blame them. What madness has our combined minds produced? I will remember my rememberer? They seem words without meaning, and yet they have the taste of prophecy on them; Ligeia would know.
—Thaddeus Thomas
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The captain seems to have foreknowledge of their fate? I'm wondering if he's accurate?