Wings

Illustrated by Samantha Fulton.

What the sea takes, it always returns. So it was that Matthew Rowe, clinging to the remains of the mizzen mast, was washed upon a shore of sand the colour of faded bone.

Some of his crewmates, also, were washed up on that shore. But unlike Matthew Rowe, they did not cough, splutter, and drag themselves further up the shoreline. They lay still, only moving when the hungry tide lapped at their arms or legs, or when the seabirds, hungrier even than the tide, pecked and tugged at them. 

It was a seabird that woke Matthew from his exhausted slumber. He woke from a dark and dreamless place to find a great albatross stood about ten feet from him. It spread its wings out, and they stretched out as wide as the height of two men. For the most part its feathers were white, its wings a greyish black. Two dark eyes, shadowed by heavy brows, glared like glass marbles from either side of a long hooked orange beak. It stared at Matthew for a few moments, and then gave its cry.

Matthew pushed himself from his feet and tried to stop his hands from shaking. “Get away!” he cried, his voice wobbling like the albatross’ call. The great seabird did not move in. It just stayed where it was, its dark eyes seeming to stare straight into Matthew’s. It knew everything, he realised. It knew everything. “It weren’t my fault!” he shouted. He knelt down, reached for his boot, and pulled out the knife he kept there. “Away with you!”

The albatross did not move. 

Matthew spat at it, wasting what little moisture was in his mouth. He took a few steps forward, his knife held in the air above his head. He yelled.

The albatross moved then, but not away. Forwards. Its wings beat, shockingly, and it lurched up towards Matthew. He could smell the stink of the bird, feel its size and weight. He stumbled back, whirled his arms in front of him to try and beat it off.

His knife opened up a deep red slash across the bird’s chest. A spray of blood, sticky and hot, splattered across Matthew’s face. He fell to the sand, dropped his knife. The albatross wobbled upwards, blood spraying from its breast onto the sand.

And it screamed. Its beak opened wide, and the noise of pain that came from it was like nothing Matthew had ever heard. It stabbed through him to the heart, brought his skin out in gooseflesh, and chilled his mind. It was as though every agony that had ever been felt was emitted through the bird’s scream, as though the world itself was howling at the agony and injustice of it all.

The albatross pushed itself up and away, riding the roads of the air, away from Matthew, over the black cliffs that lurched up behind him.

Soon he was left with nothing but the red spots on the sand and the bloodied knife. Matthew cleaned the blade, wiping it in the sand. It left smears of red, and he swept sand over all the bloodstains, so once again he was surrounded by the white of faded bone. He knew, though, that the blood was still underneath the sand, and so he walked along the shoreline. He walked past the bloated bodies without their eyes and ears and noses, past the gorging seabirds, to a cluster of rocks that blocked any further travel. 

The rock here was so dark it was almost black, and it seemed to shimmer a little in the weak sunlight. He climbed up the rocks, cutting his hands badly on barnacles as he did so. The waves lashed towards him. He was just out of their reach, but they sprayed him anyway. The fresh cuts on his hands stung. Moving further up the rocks, he sat out of range of the stinging spray, on an area of the rocks where they were flatter and almost smooth. He let the wind rush past him, through him. His linen shirt dried out quickly, and his leather jerkin stiffened from the salt and the wind. His breeches remained damp, but feeling as dry as he was likely to get, he clambered back down the rocks. He huddled at their base, trying to get out of the wind. A scream sounded on the air, and for a moment he shivered. Was there someone else here? The scream sounded again, and he recognised it for what it was – the mating call of an albatross. Perhaps it had survived after all.

“The albatross, young Matthew, only comes ashore to mate. When you see one you stay well away, for they be courting, and no couple likes to be observed when they be courting. You understand?” Old Nathaniel’s words sounded in Matthew’s ear.

 The words, the rough voice, still sounded fresh, not twenty years old and all faded as you would expect them to be after being stored away in his memory so long.

“I’m sorry, Nate,” Matthew said, to a round black pebble that lay at his feet. “I’m sorry. Was an accident.”

“Killing the albatross,” Nate replied, “or the other thing?”

Matthew rubbed his nose. The back of his hands were thick with salt.

 “The albatross,” he began. “No. The other thing. Both. Neither. I don’t know.”

The pebble did not reply. Matthew picked it up and put it in the leather pouch that hung at his belt. Like the knife in his boot, it had somehow survived the storm and the time spent clinging to the shattered part of the mizzen mast as the grey and green waves threw him up and down and down and up.

Matthew walked back the way he had come, back past the bodies. He was halfway down the beach when he realised how cold he was. It was as though all his senses were coming back to him slowly. He looked at the nearest bodies. One wore a thick woollen coat. Matthew recognised the man — a Swede called Jansen. Before the storm Jansen had liked to joke and laugh, often at Matthew’s expense. 

“Not laughing now, are you?” Matthew said, as he turned the body onto its front and undid the buttons of the coat with numb fingers. 

He tried not to look at Jansen’s face. He was relieved when the buttons were undone and he could turn Jansen — no, what had once been Jansen — back over, and pull off the coat. It was soaking wet, but that did not bother Matthew. He put the coat on and carried on walking. Soon the heat of his body had warmed the wet wool, and he felt better.

The remains of the mizzen mast lay where he had left it. The tide had come in and out again while he had been on the rocks, and now he knew the blood of the albatross would be gone. He sat on the remains of the mast, felt the pine beneath his fingers, and looked out at the sea. It was grey and green still, calmer now than it had been. 

But still an angry sea. 

What the sea took, it always returned. The place to which it had returned him was not a friendly place. That did not bother him. He had survived much, and he would survive this.

If only he had not killed the albatross.

*** 

Lying in the hollow he had dug for himself, beneath a pile of clothes belonging to other men — men who he knew still lay on the shoreline — he heard the albatross’ cry again. 

“The albatross, young Matthew, only comes ashore to mate,” Nathaniel said again. 

“There are two of them then?” Matthew asked.

“Of course there are, lad! You only killed the one. The other is still here, somewhere. You can hear it now.”

And he could. It sounded unearthly, ghastly, and it scared him.

“If I’ve already killed one albatross,” Matthew said, “then I may as well kill the other. Already cursed, aren’t I?”

Nate gave no reply.

***

The morning brought another fresh harvest. Many of the bodies had been taken away again in the night — to drift on somewhere else — and had been replaced by shattered wood, bits of rigging, and, to Matthew’s delight, boxes of provisions. He dragged ashore several barrels and a couple of boxes. The effort sapped his strength, and when he had brought the last box ashore he fainted and fell heavily onto the sand. 

The tide woke him a few hours later, lapping at his toes and soaking his boots. He gasped at the cold of it, and pushed himself up, scrabbling away from the waves. Trying to stand, his knees gave way and he fell beside the barrels. His head throbbed. 

“You’re hungry, lad.”

“Hello, Nate.” Matthew could hardly hear his own voice. There was a ringing sound in his ears, and it was growing louder with each passing moment.

“Need to eat. Keep your strength up.”

“I know, Nate.” Without realising he had taken it from his pouch, the black pebble was in his hands again. It looked at him, glistening, wise, all-knowing.

 “Nate …” 

The ringing grew louder, and louder still, until it was unbearable, high, shrieking, unearthly, ghastly, like the call of the albatross …

Matthew Rowe gave a scream, and the ringing stopped. There remained only the waves, the wind, the call of the gulls. He sat down, felt the back of his head. His fingers scraped over something hard and congealed. When he looked at them, they were covered with something black and sticky. Rope tar?

“That’s blood, lad,” Nate interjected.

“Yes,” was all Matthew could think to say. In a sudden burst of energy, he took out his knife and broke open one of the barrels. It was full of salted pork, and he scooped it out with his hands, gorged on it, until his belly was full and he felt sick and thirsty. So very thirsty.

He was suddenly, violently sick. Half-digested salt pork splattered onto the sand. He heaved and retched until there was nothing to bring back up. On all fours, he stayed there for a little while, grateful that the sickness was gone. Then he realised that he was thirsty, horribly thirsty, and the world steadily grew darker until he realised he could not see, and then he could not think either, and all was quiet and black.

***

As always, the sea woke him again. The salt water lapped at his hair and filled his mouth. He sat up, coughing and spluttering. The first thing he was aware of was that he was cold again. The second was that he was still thirsty. When he swallowed, it was as though a hoop of iron burned red-hot inside his throat.

 It was time to go inland, he realised. He needed to find water, and he needed to find out where he was. This beach was an inhospitable place, but there might be somewhere inland where he could recover, look for help. 

Doing his best to ignore the thirst, although such a thing was hard to do, he dragged the barrels and crates up to the base of the cliffs. They were safe from the tides here, and perhaps from the wind and the spray too. He put some salted pork into his pouch, and some biscuit from the crates too. Some small pebbles lay in the sand. He picked one up and put it in his mouth, sucking on it to relieve the worst of some of the thirst. As best prepared as he could be, he walked further along the beach, searching for a way up the cliffs.

His search was not met with reward. All the ways seemed steep and impassable, until he came once more to the pile of rocks. He spat out the pebble in his mouth and clambered up the rocks. The cuts on his hands which had just begun to scab over opened up again. He grimaced and ignored them. He tore his shirt, but that did not matter. He had three other shirts tied around his waist. It was not as though the men — or what was left of them — were going to need them anymore.

The top of the rocks brought him to the flatter area where he had sat the day before. He walked across the space, past little rockpools. He glanced into several and was pleased to see they were full of mussels; he would not go hungry once the salted pork and ship’s biscuit ran out. Looking to his left, he noticed what he had been too exhausted to notice yesterday: beyond this cluster of rocks there was no beach or hospitable shoreline, merely a series of jagged, dagger-like reefs. Sharp rocks projected out of the waves like the teeth of wolves. 

“That reef must extend for a while out. Probably the reef that the ship was blown onto in the storm.”

“I ‘spect you’re right, Nate.”

He put the little black pebble back in his leather pouch. The rocks he stood on sloped upwards to a cliff that was steep, but which did not look unsurpassable. “Might as well try,” Matthew said aloud. Some gulls screeched in reply. Matthew swore at them, although it did not seem to have any effect. 

He scrambled up the remaining boulders to the base of the cliff. Mercifully, these were free of barnacles, and the cold, smooth stone seemed to soothe his tender hands. Matthew had heard tales of men tied to ropes and dragged underwater against the barnacle-ridden hulls of ships to emerge mutilated on the other side, although he had never seen it himself. He shivered then, but told himself it was just the cold.

Looking up at the cliff above him, he realised that it was steeper than it first looked. It also seemed to lack any sign of hand or footholds. 

“Courage, Matthew lad,” Old Nate said from the pouch. “It’s no worse than climbing the cliffs down by the bay in the village.”

“Yes it is,” Matthew replied. “This is three times higher.” It was true that he had climbed the cliffs that overlooked the bay, but they were gentle slopes compared to these. Besides, a boy had once fallen from the cliffs of Matthew’s childhood, and cracked his skull open. For three weeks and a day he had lain in bed, never waking, surviving only from water poured down his throat and bread mixed with more water, until at last he had died. More than a few in the village had said the boy’s mother had placed a pillow over his head and held it there, and all said that if that was true then it was kindness. What had the boy’s name been?

“Jacob. Jacob Richards.”

“So it was,” Matthew replied, still looking up at the cliffs. “You have a good memory, Nate.”

“And a long one. You won’t fall, Matthew. I’ll guide you up.”

“If you say so, Nate.”

“I do, Matthew lad. Now start climbing.”

Tentatively, Matthew put his right arm up and felt for a handhold. To his relief, he found one. He swallowed, and was reminded of his thirst. Gripping tight, he brought his legs up, so that he now hung firm from the cliff. He reached his left hand up, scrabbling for another handhold.

There was none. His right arm, burning from the strain, spasmed. He fell, and his back slammed against the rocks. He screamed, rolled around trying to clutch his back, and tumbled down the rocks, back onto the plateau.

“Up now, Matthew lad.”

“No. I can’t. My back…”

“Is bruised, but nothing worse.”

“Alright… Alright.”

Jacob Richards had always wanted to go to sea, Matthew recalled. As had most of the boys in the village. But not Matthew. He had been content to stay where he was, keep his feet on the lush green ground of the fields. He thought of the fields of his childhood now, as he lay on the rocks. Perhaps there would be fields like that at the top of the cliff.

“Up you get then.”

“I might fall again, Nate.”

“Nonsense lad. You’ve fallen once, and you know not to do it again. Now climb.”

Matthew pushed himself up into a sitting position, and then slowly stood. “Alright, Nate. Alright. As long as I can rest at the top.”

“We’ll see,” Nate replied softly.

Matthew found the handhold again, braced his legs. 

“Make sure to take your time now, Matthew lad. Look for place to put your hand ‘afore you go scrabbling around.”

Matthew ignored the old man. Nate was really starting to vex him, particularly with all the visits to the cottage. It seemed as though he was after something. Matthew would have to keep an eye on him.

“No,” Matthew said aloud. “That was then. It isn’t now.”

“Focus, Matthew lad.”

“Shut your mouth, Nate.”

Matthew focused on the expanse of sheer cliff ahead of him. When he looked more closely, he saw it was not as smooth as he had imagined. There were hand and footholds aplenty, if only he concentrated. He reached his left hand up. Found a lip around which he could curl his fingers. He raised his right leg up and out, feeling with his boot-clad foot for somewhere to rest it. He found it. Left leg up now. But there was nowhere to place it! 

“Focus.”

Matthew took a breath. Sure enough, there was a place to put his foot. Now it was it time to raise his right hand, and the whole process could start again anew. If he did it ten times, he reckoned, then he would reach the top. Nine to go. Perhaps it was his raging thirst, or his exhaustion, or his fear — he could not himself tell — but whatever the cause, for the rest of the time he could recall nothing but darkness, as though cast into a deep and dreamless sleep.

He came to the top of the cliff. His feet hung over the ledge, and he hastily drew them up to his chest. Placing his hands around his knees, he curled up like a baby, and slept. He could not feel his thirst anymore, only a dull and steady pounding at the base of his skull. Throbbing regularly, like the beat of a drum. He had heard a drum once, when the brightly clad soldiers had passed though the village, resplendent in their red coats. They had offered a shilling to any man who joined there and then — the King’s shilling it was. A few of the village lads had joined on the spot, and Matthew himself — noting the way that some of the girls of the village looked at the soldiers in their fine red coats — had been tempted. Old Nathaniel, however, had pulled him aside. 

“They march through all fine and grand, Matthew lad, and that’s how they get you. Chances are you’ll give your shilling straight back, and have some sergeant yelling at you for the rest of your days. Stay away from them, that’s my advice.” 

Of the lads who had gone with the soldiers, Matthew had heard neither sight nor sound ever again. Sometimes — when the ship was drifting on a windless day, or when they were ashore in some stinking fleshpot — Matthew wondered how different things might have been if Nate had not been there at his shoulder to pull him back. Where would I be now, he sometimes thought. Who would I be? 

He curled his hands into fists as he slept, felt them close around grass. His fists tightened and pulled clumps of the grass out of the ground, grasped them firmly. Was he back? Could it all have been just a passing nightmare? When I wake, he decided, I will be lying in the meadow just beyond the cliffs. The sun will be bright, the sky blue. I will walk out of the meadow, through the flowers. Perhaps I shall pick some for Rosie Cartwright. But first I shall pick some for my mother. I will walk down through the village to the second-to-last house on the left, and my mother will be there, baking bread perhaps, or just sitting outside the house in the sun. I will walk down and give my mother flowers to show that I love her, and it will all be alright and none of this will ever have happened and I —

He opened his eyes. 

There was grass. That much was true. But it was of a coarse, scratchy type, and it tormented his poor tender hands. The wind buffeted him, and below he could hear the crashing of the waves on the rocks. Every part of his body ached, and he was thirsty.

He screamed then. Screamed with frustration, with anger, with sadness for his lost dream. Screamed like the albatross had done when he sliced open its breast with his knife. His scream carried across the cliffs, over the rocks and over the sea until it was lost upon the desolate air.

Matthew let go of the grass in his fists. He sat up. 

He sat upon the top of a sheer cliff — looking down, he was amazed that he had climbed it. He was on a little ledge. It was perhaps eight feet long and four feet wide. And all around was rock — sharp glistening rock. If there was a way up to whatever lay beyond, he had not the strength nor the will to try and find it.

Matthew sat for a few moments. Now that he had screamed he felt numb. Empty. He had pinned his hope upon this climb, and his hopes had been dashed.

“You hear that, Matthew lad?” the pebble said, from where it lay cupped in his bloodied hands.

“I hear nothing, Nate.”

“Well you’re not listening hard enough. Try again.” 

Matthew sat very still. At first, all he could hear was the wind and the waves, but as he sat there, he heard something else, a trickling noise. Gentle, scarcely hearable, but there all the same. “Water!”

“Exactly right. Close, too.”

Matthew stood, and walked the few steps to where the rock rose up above him. He looked more closely at it. It glistened, even in the weak sunlight. Suddenly he realised the reason for its glistening. Cupping his hands eagerly, he let the trickle of freshwater gather in his palms. It was agonisingly cold, and when he brought it to his mouth colder still. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. He did not know how long he knelt there, drinking his fill, but by the time his thirst was quenched the sun was dipping down below the horizon, and all was growing dark. Matthew ate a little salt pork and nibbled on a ship’s biscuit.

“Thank you, Nate.”

“That’s alright, Matthew lad.”

Quiet.

“Nate?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

***

A storm came that night, nearly as fearsome as the one that had wrecked the ship. Matthew huddled up under his stolen coat and shirts, and he shook as the water leached through to his bare skin. The wind howled, louder than he had ever heard it howl, yet beneath it all he could still hear a plaintive call. He knew exactly what the cry belonged to, and he shivered, and not just because he was cold.

The morning brought bright skies and calm. For the first time since he had arrived on this shore, the sky was blue, and that cheered him a little. He looked out to sea. It was the calmest he had seen it for quite some time. Something caught his eye. He squinted. 

Bobbing away from him, locked into some invisible current, were several barrels of salt pork and a couple of boxes of ship’s biscuit.

This time, he did not even have the energy to scream.

***

“I didn’t like it, Nate. You coming round like that all the time.”

“I know you didn’t. I could see that.”

“Then why did you keep coming?”

“Because I loved your mother. I always had; but when she married your father I thought I had lost her. But after the accident …”

They both fell silent then, lost in their memories.

“I never really understood,” Matthew said after a while.

“Understood what?”

“All of it.”

Nate laughed. “That’s life, isn’t it, Matthew lad? A lot of not understanding. Only at the end do you really see it.”

Matthew frowned. His head was throbbing. “See what?” His head pulsed, and now it not only throbbed, but hurt too. “See what, Nate?”

But Nate was gone. The only thing to suggest that he had ever been there was a small, black pebble.

***

The day passed fitfully. Matthew ate a little more of the food in his pouch and drank plenty of the water flowing down the cliffs. After the storm the flow had increased, and his little grassy ledge was starting to become bog-like. He was permanently damp, and now his shiver became a constant. His head pulsed all the time, and flared into a reddish agony whenever he moved. His hands stung when he flexed them. For most of the day he kept very still, and watched the tide come in and out and in and out and in out.

There was no sign of the barrels and boxes.

***

When he awoke the next morning, he found that he had just a mouthful of salt pork and one ship’s biscuit left. He ate half the biscuit. The sky was grey, and he was tired, and so he slept.

Matthew woke in the middle of the night to the call of the albatross. It was out there somewhere, searching for its mate — the one he had killed. He reached into his boot and took out the knife. Holding it in his hands for a moment, he felt the well-worn wooden handle, every scratch and scar a reminder of how long he had carried this with him. He threw it over the cliff’s edge, out into the blackness. He did not hear it land.

That morning, he ate the mouthful of salt pork. In the evening, he ate the last of the ship’s biscuit. Then he curled up and slept.

“Matthew lad.”

“Wha—?”

“It’s me. Nate.”

“I know. Glad you’re here.” Although was Nate here? Matthew wondered. It was certainly Nate’s voice, but there was no sign of the man himself. Only a small black pebble. It looked out of place here on the rough sodden grass. He picked it up and threw it off the ledge, and then slipped into a feverish shuddering sleep.

***

“Matthew.”

He sat upright. It was the ends of the day, the gloaming time. He had slept all through the night and most of the day too. All he seemed to do these days was sleep. Had he become like Jacob Richards, and slipped into a sleep from which he could not be woken? No, that couldn’t be so, Matthew realised. Because his mother was looking after him. He heard her singing to him, as she had always done whenever he had fallen sick. A soft, plaintive song; a call, a cry, sounding out over the waves, looking for a mate …

“Nate.” Matthew stumbled upright, lurched away from the ledge. “I’m sorry, Nate. I’m so sorry. It was an accident. Just an accident.” 

It had been an accident too. He had never meant it, that day he walked back down from the meadow with flowers in his hands, had walked into the cottage to find that Old Nathaniel had proposed to his mother, and that she had said yes. He had thrown the flowers into the fire, run from the house, up onto the cliffs. Nate had followed, more slowly of course, but he had found Matthew at the top, staring out into the sea. 

“It was just an accident,” Matthew cried. The ringing sound he had heard several days before was in his ears again. “Just an accident.”

Nate had moved towards him, arms outstretched, saying that he knew it was a shock, but that he loved Matthew and his mother, that he wanted to protect them, and that they would all grow used to it in time.

His arms outstretched. Not because he wanted to hurt Matthew, but because he had wanted to embrace him. Before he could think to act otherwise, Matthew had reached for the knife he kept in his boot, found it, had swept round in a vicious arc. A great slash had opened up across Nate’s chest. He had stumbled, too close to the cliff. For a moment he had seemed to hang in the air.

“I’m sorry, Nate, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Matthew said, over and over. As well as the ringing, he could hear a keening sound, and he realised that it was him.

Nate had scrabbled at the cliff’s edge for a moment, and then he was gone. He had made no sound.

***

Matthew knelt on the ledge, facing out to sea. Tears rolled down his face, tracing a line through the salt and the dirt and the sand that was stuck there. “I never meant it, Nate. I never did.” The ringing grew louder in his ears, louder still, and he covered his ears to try and block it out, but he realised that the noise was in his head and he could not be quietened, it could not be stopped, and he turned so his back was to the sea and clapped his hands to his head but that only made it worse and he looked up and …

Nate stood there. 

He had been with Matthew these past few days, in a way, but now he was really here. Nate looked at Matthew, and there was sadness in the old man’s eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came forth was a high, seeking cry that seemed to go on and on and mixed with the ringing in Matthew’s head so that he went tumbling back, tumbling too far, out over the ledge and down to the wave-lashed rocks below. 

The albatross remained upon the ledge. The slash across its chest was still vivid, but it had scabbed over and was starting to heal. It gave another cry, and its mate came soaring over the rocks to perch beside it. They looked out at the rocks, and the crumpled unmoving figure. Then the pair pushed themselves off the ledge, into space, into the hanging air, and winged themselves away. 

The island was soon a smear on the sea, then a speck, and then it was no more.