White Pearl, Black Oceans

Short story inspired by/based on the Song "White Pearl, Black Oceans" by Sonata Arctica.

           I crouched on the ledge, staring somberly at the dark waves beneath me. The night was cloudless, but the moon was nowhere to be seen.

               All the better, I supposed as I looked down at the black oceans beneath me. It seemed ironic though, that I would be doing this. I was born and raised by the sea. It was my home.

                Or at least the lighthouse was.

            I was orphaned at an early age. Both of my parents had died in a seafaring accident somewhere miles across the ocean. I had no family besides them, but an elderly couple who had always wanted a child took me in and cared for me. The couple died shortly after adopting me, however, and their family didn’t want me underfoot; they sent me to the town orphanage instead.

                I didn’t get along with the rest of the kids though. I never was a people person, as I found out in later years, so interacting with the other orphans was really difficult for me. After a few years of struggling to accustom to life there and failing miserably, a sad looking man showed up at the orphanage for a child. I didn’t recognize him as someone I’d seen around the town, but I learned from one of the other orphans that he was the man who maintained the old lighthouse. As fate had it, he decided to take me under his wing.

Like me, he was a loner. He had never married, and wasn’t one who liked going out in public if he could help it. I figured he probably saw himself as a young boy in me: introverted, quiet, not terribly courageous.

                I must have been no more than six years old when he took me in. Even then I could tell that he had more than one reason that having me, and it wasn’t just because he was lonely or that he saw himself in me. I could tell that simply by the way he carried himself, the way he behaved, and his day to day appearance.

                He was a sick and dying man and he needed someone to take his place, and we both knew it.

                We both knew his time was short, so he made no hesitation to teach me how to do everything and anything I needed to know to guide the ships around the treacherous coastal rocks on moonless nights. I learned a lot in the few years there, and even grew to like the poor soul. When I was about sixteen, however, he passed away. The doctors never knew what it was that killed him; just that he has always been sickly, even as a young boy. They were surprised that he had lasted this long.

                In one simple day, I went from lighthouse boy to lighthouse operator.

                I never really minded where fate placed me. Working the lighthouse alone required a lot of attention and skill – something I was pretty decent at.

                In fact, I paid so much attention to my duties, I came to know every little nook and cranny of my lighthouse. One hundred and one spiraled steps up to the top – stair seventy-three had a big chunk taken out, a product of dropping a box of tools on it when I was ten, and the stone slab that was stair thirty-four liked to shift under foot if you weren’t careful. I knew where the spiders liked to build their webs, the favorite hiding spots of the mice that frequented the tower during the winter, the stones that you didn’t want to step on because they were worn so smooth with age and use you would slip and fall, and all the rest of the quirks and intricacies of the old lighthouse.

When I wasn’t guiding ships or discovering more of the lighthouse, I spent my time making crafts. I got pretty good with my hands since I spent more time up in the tower than anywhere else. I made a few shelves, and used them to display my work as well as store the few books I acquired while I was still learning the ropes in the tower. The shelves and crafts gave my little tower some character, and bonded me to it even more.

I spent most of my time to myself and my craft so I didn’t spend much time around the town. I learned to stay away from the crowds, the noise, and the bustle of the town’s day life, and even more so the night life, which was all for the better. The less distractions from my duties, the better. Whenever I did get the chance to go out to the town – usually to buy food or water – I often received looks of pity. I didn’t really want those looks. Sure, I was pale and thin from spending much of my time indoors, but I wasn’t some poor soul confined to the tower by a curse. I liked it there. I didn’t mind the loneliness, the quiet, or the solitude others might despise, yet for some reason people felt sorry for me. I simply wanted them to treat me like another human, who had a job just like any craftsman or tailor. Sometimes I thought they might fear me or my craft; I was so young after all. Their crafts were of wood, cloth, or steel. Mine was a dance on the open seas, a dance of death with lives on the line.

                Or maybe it was because they believed my youth was being squandered. Even so, there was no one else who knew how to keep the ships safe at night. I could, and I was good at it, whether they liked it or not. Most of them seemed to not like it, and the countless stares and mutterings led me to dislike the streets of the city more and more every time I ventured down. Regardless of what the public thought, the town leadership never saw fit to find a replacement or even an assistant. I think they may have realized I was capable. That or maybe they just didn’t want to deal with finding someone else who could run a lighthouse alone.

                Not everyone seemed to share that sentiment though. When I was about eleven, a young girl about my age would always come by the lighthouse every day. At first I had thought that she passed by for some chore or errand that her family tasked her with, but after a while, as I looked down from the window whenever she passed, she would always be looking back up at me with a smile on her face.

                Then she would hurry off in some other direction after a few seconds. I was young at the time, and I didn’t really understand it. Even a few years later, she continued her daily passes by the lighthouse. She was always smiling, always hurrying off on her own agenda; I realized perhaps she was coming simply to see me.

                I had asked the old lighthouse man about this one day, and he smiled and shook his head. He said it was something called love. Something he never had been able to experience because of his condition. I didn’t press the matter further, but he did tell me all about love and what it was – how it drew people together. Soon I found myself waiting each day for the girl to pass, so I could see her smile. She had an enchanting smile.

                Whenever I scurried to the windowsill leaning out over the city, the lighthouse man always shook his head and smiled the same way he did whenever I asked him about it.

                No matter how much I thought it over in my mind, or how many times my mentor tried to explain it to me, I never quite understood why it was that she always did what she did. Why did everyone else pity or fear me, while this solitary girl seemed to seek me out specifically? She didn’t even know who I was, my name, or seem to have any reason to do it. The answer never came, despite how much sleep I lost over it.

                Life went on that way until I was sixteen and the old lighthouse operator died. I still went to the window every day to watch for the girl whose name I didn’t know, but desperately longed to know. I wondered what she sounded like. I thought that with a smile that beautiful she must have a heavenly voice too.

                I often dreamed of meeting her. In all the dreams it was a glorious summer day, and we would accidentally bump into each other on my way to restock my food. We would talk and laugh and learn about each other as the sun set blood red over the sea. As darkness would settle around us and we sat gazing at the tapestry of evening laid out for all to see, I would softly ask her what her name was. And every time, as her lips would move to respond, a crash of sound would tear everything apart, and I would find myself lying wide awake, looking up at my familiar crumbling stone ceiling. Sometimes I would roll over in my old rickety cot and squeeze my eyes shut in hope that I would fall asleep and the dream might pick up where it left off. It never worked.

                Soon enough, the thought of her churned inside me almost constantly. How desperately I wanted to know her name. To hear her voice. I knew I had to meet her, or the feelings inside me would tear me apart. I sat down one sleepless foggy evening as I watched over my lighthouse, guiding the ships over the black oceans beneath, and mulled things over to try and meet her. I scanned across my old battered shelves, their dusty surfaces populated by my carvings and crafts.

                As I looked at them, I realized there was a lot of free time I spent just whittling. I supposed I probably could spend those hours down below instead. I might chance across her smiling face. I despised being down there, but I had to see her.

                It must have been a week later when I had finally mustered the courage to set foot in the streets I had grown to hate. Those people, who looked at me like I was some sort of outcast, like some sort of untouchable heathen sentenced to a lifetime of solitude in the confines of a tower. Even though I was older now, and more skilled, they still treated me this way.

                The sun was bright and high in the sky that morning as I hopped down from stair number five, skipping the rest, and landed with a puff of dust on the well worn street. I blinked a few times in the bright midmorning sunlight, and strode leisurely across the road. I paced aimlessly around for a while, as I was a bit early for her usual arrival time.

                After a little while, I started to worry. It was way past the time the girl usually strolled by my lighthouse. Where was she? I sighed, frustrated, and I remembered sitting down on a bench and leaning back. I had been up late with anticipation and I was exhausted to say the least.

                Then I remembered snapping awake, startled at a horse whinnying loudly nearby. I bolted upright onto my feet and tripped over myself, stumbling headfirst into someone standing on the sidewalk in front of me.

                I tried to regain my composure as I struggled back onto my feet and looked for the person I had knocked over. When I saw the young woman sprawled on the road in front of me, my heart about smashed its way out of my chest. It was her.

                And I had just knocked her flat on her face.

                I scrambled around, offering my hand to her, hoping to help her up. She looked a little confused, but took my hand anyways. She mumbled a hasty thanks, and brushed her dress off. She stood up fully, and fussed with her hair so she could see who it was who had helped her up. Her eyes met mine, and they went wide as dinner plates.

                She jumped a little and mumbled some nervous gibberish.

                “Are you okay?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t knocked something loose in her brain.

                “I, uh, um…I uh…” She stammered. She seemed more taken aback by this chance meeting than me.

                I put a finger up for silence. I had to know her name! “Hi, I’m Aaron.” I said, trying to sound confident. In honesty my legs felt like rubber.

                “I’m…I’m…I’d better get going!” She blurted, and turned and ran.

                “Wait!” I shouted after her, “Please, I have to know your name! Please come back!”

                But she didn’t turn around. She stopped coming after that. It was a disaster, nothing like all those dreams I had about our meeting.

                I kept going to the window every day, hoping to see her pass by and smile, but every day she didn’t and every day I would retreat, defeated. I kept hoping for almost a year she would pass by, but she never did. A few times I even braved the streets, and sat on the bench again, but she still never showed up. Had I scared her? I didn’t mean to jump up and knock her over. Maybe she was just shy. The old lighthouse keeper had told me that love was a confusing thing, so I decided she had a good reason for not coming. It still bothered me though, and I hoped that I could still meet her again.

                On my seventeenth birthday – that is, what the old couple that first adopted me said my birthday was – I finally saw her again, but she didn’t smile. In fact, she didn’t even look up. She was talking to a tall, dark-haired man I had never seen before. There was an older man there too. He looked a little like the mayor, but shorter and plumper. She and the younger man seemed very friendly. They stood and talked for a while, and after a few bows and handshakes, the older man walked off. The girl and other man continued to talk for a while. After a few minutes, the young man leaned in and gave her a kiss, before going on his way.

                I stepped away from the windowsill, suddenly aware that my eyes were very moist. I kept telling myself that he was simply a very good friend of hers, nothing more. I so desperately wished I had known her name.

                And so life went on. My eighteenth birthday passed, though I received no presents. I didn’t mind, it would have been the first time. I kept tending the lighthouse, guiding the ships, and making my crafts. The cycle went around and around until New Year’s Eve a year ago.

                I was nineteen. Earlier that day my heart had leapt to my throat when I saw the girl pass by, alone. I thought, for an instant, I saw her eyes dart up to where I stood at the window.

                My mind was made up. Tonight would be the night. I would find her and learn her name, hear her voice, maybe see her smile at me like she used to when she was a little girl.

                When the sun set, I grabbed my jacket and ran down my steps, taking two at a time. I had to find her before the New Year’s Eve festivities were in full swing. I ran pell-mell to the town square, searching frantically for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. After two hours, I had all but given up; when from behind an alleyway I heard a voice call my name.

                “Aaron!” I spun around to see her coming out of the shadows.

She was smiling that smile I had always seen. I tried to stand up straight, hoping she hadn’t seen me jump at her sudden appearance. I was suddenly aware of how cold it was, though I was sweating like it was the dead of summer. She was still walking forward, still smiling, and I felt more nervous with each step she took.

“You know remember my name?” It felt awkward having her know my name, but I didn’t know hers.

                “Don’t be silly,” she said, her breath steaming gently out to be swept away by the faint wind, “Everyone knows Aaron the lighthouse boy. I knew your name before you even told me it.” So they still called me a boy. But that didn’t matter now, I had found her, and she remembered my name.

                “I came to see you every day when I was little, Aaron. I always thought you were brave to be learning how to keep the ships safe, even though you were my age. My mother always told me it was the adults that did it, but when they told me a boy my age was going to do it because the lighthouse man was sick, I thought I’d like to meet him.

                “I never had the courage to come and say hello to you, so instead I would come and see you in the window on my way to my father’s bakery. It always made me happy to see that you saw me too.” She smiled that pretty smile, which was framed by just as beautiful dark curls of hair. Her deep brown eyes told me she meant it.

                I looked at her, struggling for the words, hoping desperately that it was too dark for her to see me blushing, “I, er, well I always wanted to come and say hello to you too, and learn your name, but I never had the chance…and then you ran away when I finally came down and told you mine…why did you stop coming back after that though?”

                She looked to the side sheepishly, “I was really embarrassed and scared, and I’ve always been really shy,” she said, “I still kept coming, but I hid out of sight…I don’t really know why, I just was afraid you wouldn’t like me.

                “But I hoped you would come down tonight, Aaron, so I could tell you my name. I’m Maria,” a pretty name for a pretty smile, I thought, “I’m glad we could finally meet together,” she paused, her smile fading a little, “Before I have to leave the town…”

                My heart sank to about the level of my stomach. Leaving? It couldn’t be true. After all these years I finally found it within myself to find Maria, and now she was leaving? She must have seen the look on my face, because she seemed to grow a little more somber.

                “I’m sorry Aaron, but maybe,” her face brightened again, “Maybe we can spend tonight together? I’m sure it will be a lot of fun!”

                “I’d like that, Maria.” In truth, I really didn’t like it. I wanted her to stay forever.

                The night passed on, each of us sharing a bit about our lives. I told her of my past, how I came to be in the lighthouse, and how I spent my time making my crafts. She told me of fun times with her friends and family. When she had grown up, she went to the town school and worked at one of her father’s shops. Apparently her parents owned a fair number of shops around the town. As we talked, we wandered around the dimly lit streets. There was no moon out that night, but the lights from the festivities were enough for Maria to show me places from her memories. She showed me her house, which had their family name over the door: Lovloete. The name seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I asked her about why she was leaving the town, and what she would do. She told me that the town was getting too small for her, and she wanted to see new places around the world. I guessed when your family owns a lot of stores you must be able to do things like that. That was all she would say though, and quickly changed the topic to a story of how the mayor’s assistant dropped twenty fresh pies for a banquet of some sort all over the sidewalk outside the bakery. Conversation meandered about similarly to our aimless path around the town until midnight. We had made our way to a hill outside the town entrance to wait for the climax of the New Year’s celebrations. We were watching the fireworks when I did something I hadn’t thought I would.

                “Maria,” she took her eyes from the dazzling lights blasting in the sky, “I know you’re leaving, but I want you know,” my voice cracked a little embarrassingly, “I…I really like you. From up in my tower, I always wanted to know your name, hear your voice, and have you give me your pretty smile,” I saw her blush at that, “and, I wish you could stay here forever.

                “I want you to know this, and I want you to be mine, forever, even though you have to go away. Please, think of me while you’re away, and if you can, return one day…”

                I couldn’t read her eyes. She looked happy, but afraid and confused. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I’d done something wrong.

                “I…I will, Aaron…I will…”

                And then she smiled at me again. The old lighthouse man had always told me women would be confusing, and he was certainly right. She had gone instantly from unreadable to her old smiling self. My mind didn’t linger on her faint hesitation, however. I was the happiest I had ever felt before. As the last fireworks echoed and flashed on our chilled faces, Maria rose to her feet.

                “Thank you for coming and seeing me, Aaron,” she said. Snow was beginning to fall around us. She brush back one of her dark curls. “I’m glad I could finally meet you, but I need to get home now and get packed. The ship that takes me, the White Pearl, arrives here tomorrow night…”

                “I understand, Maria,” I said, nodding, “I hope I we meet again. I’ll be watching the White Pearl sail away until you’re just a speck on the horizon, to make sure you’re safe the whole way.”

                She smiled again, something she seemed to do a lot. I didn’t mind it at all though. “Thank you Aaron, I’ll feel safe with you watching from the lighthouse,”

                We stood there a moment, looking into each others eyes as the snow fell around us. I lost myself in those eyes, her smile, that voice that soothed me like no other. I couldn’t keep her there forever, but I would have if it had been possible. She finally looked away, and turned back down the hill to the town.

                “Goodbye, Aaron,” she whispered.

                I stood there in the snow, wishing that I could follow her home, but my home was in the lighthouse, guiding the ships in the night. I let the night wash over me as I sat back down and watched Maria slowly walk back to the town. Would I ever see her again? In my heart I hoped as hard as I could that she would come back one day. As the snow fell around me, suddenly realized I was quite tired. I lay back, looking up into the starless sky.

                My eyes snapped open to the faint light of dawn creeping over the seaward horizon. I discovered I was immensely cold, but it didn’t matter. The fireworks from last night were still bursting in my heart. I was a whole new person. I stood up, brushing the snow off my damp jacket. I ran across the wintry fields toward the town. Even though Maria was leaving, she promised to me she’d come back one day, now all I had to do was wait. I didn’t care if it took weeks, months or years; I could wait any amount of time. All the memories of the night flooded through my mind as I ran happily across the snowy hills.

                I didn’t even have a chance to stop what hit me.

                A wagon came tearing down the hill at full speed as I came across the road. Before I knew what was happening, the back wheel cut me down. I felt the bone in my left leg snap with a sickening crunch. My head spun with pain as I struggled to move. The only thing I knew was searing white-hot pain, as if a thousand molten hot knives we pinning my leg to the ground. I tried to take a deep breath, but as I did so I was met with more suffering. Gingerly, I touched my chest; three ribs were broken. As I lay in the freezing snow, panting heavily, my mind struggled to think of a solution. I couldn’t walk, and town was over a mile away. There was no way I could drag myself that far before I blacked out from the pain or the cold. I had to find a shelter, or at least get out of the road.

                I struggled helplessly up the slowly rising slope, looking for some sort of barrier from the elements. After what seemed like hours of dragging my broken body painfully through the snow, I saw a dilapidated shack sitting awkwardly near a small copse. Bit by agonizing bit, I inched my way to it, hot tears welling up in my eyes. My clothes were now soaked with snow, and probably blood. I hoped desperately that someone would come for me. I would freeze to death if no one did.

                For hours I lay sprawled in that shack, sobbing as I tried to fall asleep, to end the pain, if only for a short while. When I finally felt myself drifting to sleep, I could see the sun drifting low through a shattered window pain. For a few moments of bliss, my physical torture ended, only to be replaced my nightmares.

                When I awoke again, the first thing I felt was pain.

                The second thing I felt was panic.

                My lighthouse. It was still dark out. There was no light. The ships would be blind in the night without me. The White Pearl would be blind without me. Tears sprang to my eyes again, but not because of my throbbing leg, I sobbed harder than I ever had, which added to my anguish because of my broken ribs. It was all over. Maria would be in danger.

                There was no way I could possibly get back to the town in time, and I had no idea what time of the night it was. As I cried helplessly to myself in that shack, I prayed that everything was all right. The night dragged onwards silently, broken only occasionally by the hoot of and owl or the scuttling of a mouse or my broken sobbing as I drifted in and out of agonizing sleep. I only hoped that the ship had arrived before sunset, and the captain would delay the launch with the lack of a light.

                The sun was already in the sky when the door to the decrepit hovel slammed open. I raised my aching head to see a few of the townspeople standing in the doorway. The one in front, a burly mustached man in an overlarge fur parka shouted something over his shoulder to the other men behind him. None of them looked happy.

                The next few minutes were a blur. Men moving around me, examining my leg and checking to make sure I was okay, though none wore worried faces. In fact, they all seemed to not want to be near me at all. They lifted me onto an old stretcher and then into a small cart which trundled me back to the town. I hadn’t realized how far we had walked in the night, but it must have been a while, because the rickety cart bounced and jumped down the road for quite a while before we finally came to a halt. I can’t say that it was a comfortable ride.

                I had thought they were taking me to the hospital, but the building in front of me was the courthouse. For the second time in the recent hours my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach. I had a bad feeling about what was to come.

                The men thrust a set of crutches into my hands and led me through the tall ornate double doors. I hobbled through the front atrium, not bothering to look either way, and entered through the smaller door ahead of me.

                What looked like the entire town was assembled in the room. People were practically sitting in each others’ laps to fit in, and many were packed like sardines against the walls. Not a single person in the room was wearing a happy face, and all eyes were focused on me. Each and every person’s gaze killed me a thousand times from the inside out as I worked my way awkwardly up the main aisle, wondering what was going to happen. I already assumed the worst as I reached the front of the room. I expected to see a judge sitting at the front of the room, but instead the mayor looked down on me with steely, emotionless eyes. I guessed at that moment that I wasn’t going to be part of the audience. A court assistant opened a small gate for me; I limped to what I assumed was my seat, but I never got a chance to sit. It was impossible to keep my tears inside as the mayor spoke.

                “All on board the White Pearl have died. The coastal reef has tolled their lives, and you, Aaron, were supposed to be the light of the night.”

                His words echoed around the packed room as I sank painfully to my knees. I wished the black oceans had swallowed me up right then and there. As I fell forward I could see a list on a desk near me. It was a list of those lost on the ship. One name jumped out on the list. Lovloete. My heart felt as if it were torn in two. She was gone. Maria, and all those on board the White Pearl had died. It was my fault. I didn’t even feel the rough arms dragging me out of the room as I cried with all my soul. I had betrayed everyone because I sought to fulfill my own selfish desires. I should have known to never try to associate with the world below the lighthouse. It didn’t bring me happiness, only ruin.

                All dead.

                All my fault.

                The world swam around me in slow motion. I heard jeering insults thrown at me, but I couldn’t comprehend the words. I had truly become an outcast now. The people now had a real reason to despise me.

                I woke up in a bed. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. There was a splint around my leg and my wounds were bandaged. I guess they had the courtesy to let me recover physically, at least. Most of the pain had diminished, but my heart still felt as if someone had beaten it repeatedly with a heavy stick. The emotional scars would never go away. My Maria was gone forever.

The next few days passed in and out of fitful sleep ended by nightmares and moments of pain. No one came to visit me while I recovered. I didn’t care. If anyone had showed up, it wouldn’t have been because they cared, but probably so they could see the face of the boy who killed one of their loved ones.

                I had a lot of time to think while I laid there. I wasn’t sure who to blame. Was it my fault, for choosing to venture out, and get lost in the moment? Was it my fault because I dozed off, or becoming absorbed in my feelings and not paying attention to my surroundings? Was it Maria’s fault, by luring me out with her beauty? No. I couldn’t blame her. She was the victim. I caused this tragedy. I had harmed so many. If only I had stayed in the lighthouse, satisfied with fantasizing about meeting her, this would have never happened. She could have kept on living, and I wouldn’t have the blood of so many staining my hands. I just wished I could disappear. There was no purpose for me anymore. I had neglected my duties. I was no longer fit to guide the ships.

                I had just about given up on the world when Maria came to see me.

                I couldn’t believe it when she came to my bedside and sat down. She was still alive! I had seen her last name on the list of the people lost on the White Pearl. How could she be alive? Was I dreaming, or was she a ghost? She was carrying a wrapped box. Before I could say anything, she put a finger on her lips. I decided it was best to let her talk, as it probably would have still hurt to talk.

                “Aaron,” she said, her eyes welling with tears, “I need to tell you some things…things I should have told you on that night…” I didn’t say anything, so she kept going, “I’ll start at the beginning.”

                She wiped her eyes. I could tell she didn’t want to do this. “You see, Aaron, I’m…already...” she hiccupped a few times before continuing, “I’m already engaged.” If the pieces of my shattered heart could have been broken any more, they would have. She looked away from me as she continued.

                “I’m also the mayor’s daughter.” That’s why I recognized the name. “My father owns a lot of the shops around the town, and he made a pretty good name for himself. When I was old enough, suitors began visiting, and eventually my father arranged a marriage…”

                “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you…I hoped we could have just been friends without you having to know. You see, the White Pearl was coming to port with my fiancé, Richard, as well as my father’s brother, who was the one who introduced me to him.” So that was why I saw her surname on the list of dead. I had killed her uncle too. “Richard and my uncle run a trade company back across the sea. I was going to get on the ship and join them on their return back home.” Tears were now streaming down her perfect cheeks. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. There was nothing left of my heart to die. Darkness covered my lonely soul and hate seeped into my being. Hate at myself. Hate at the world. Why was I cursed, Cursed to a life of loneliness, and now had the blood of so many innocent people on my hands? I didn’t know what to say to Maria. At first I thought she had died. I had found her now alive, only to find that her uncle and fiancé died because I was an ignorant fool. Her fiancé. I punched at the air angrily. I could never have her for my own. Why had she not told me of this then? Why had she promised to be mine forever and to return? Did she take me for some fool? Did she think I just sat and stared at walls during the days I spent in the lighthouse? The thoughts boiled in my troubled mind, as anger and hate burned at my soul.

I don’t know how long Maria sat and sobbed in the chair by my bed, but when she finally left wordlessly she set the box and a note next to the bed. I stared it for a while, debating if I wanted to even bother to touch them. Finally I took the box and opened it.

                Inside was a masterfully carved wooden lighthouse, modeled exactly after the one in the town. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to set it on the bedside table or hurl it across the room. Before I did either I opened the note and read it. If I had more tears to shed I would have done so, though from the looks of the splotchy ink some had already been shed on it.

 

                Aaron,

                I am sorry that I lied to you that night, promising to return and be yours that night. I was happy to have met you properly that I did not think clearly. I guess I felt sorry for you having to live alone all your life, and I wanted to give you something happy to remember.  I don’t blame you for the deaths on the White Pearl, and I want you to not dwell on it. It is more my fault than yours, because I made a promise I couldn’t keep, and overwhelmed you with feelings you’ve never experienced. If you blame anyone for all this, please blame me. I don’t ever expect your forgiveness for lying, but please do not feel the guilt because of this. The truth is I never wanted to be in this marriage. I hated the thought of being married to someone I hardly know. I really did want to return here, to get to know you, and bring happiness to you. I wanted to be with you, even though I knew I couldn’t. The little girl who always came to look up at the lighthouse got in the way and controlled my feelings that night, and I didn’t think clearly. Maybe someday we can be together. I will wait and pray for that day forever.

~Maria

 

                I laughed. It hurt, but I laughed. I wasn’t sure what it was that made me do it but I did. “I guess I felt sorry for you…” She was just like all the others, pitying me for enjoying a life of solitude. Everything had been a lie, and now because of all that he was responsible for over ninety peoples’ lives. She wanted to give me happiness? I was happy. The lighthouse was a part of me, and it never harmed me. It was the people down below who harmed me. I should have never gone to see Maria. She was just as bad as all those other fools who thought I was a miserable wretch.

My eyes drifted to the wooden lighthouse. Had she carved it herself? I picked it up and rolled it between my thumb and forefingers. It was small and light, but very detailed. She clearly rivaled my skills at carving. But why the lighthouse? Was it her idea of some sick joke? Reminding me of the very building I should have been attending to keep the ships safe at night? There was another not stuck to it as well: “I made this a long time ago, before the suitors. I was going to give it to you that one day when we bumped into each other to show you how much I admired you and your lighthouse, but I was too flustered and embarrassed to. I want you to have it now, to remember me by.”

My face burned as I read the note. I wrapped the wooden lighthouse in the note and hurled it with all the strength I could muster at the opposite wall. It shattered in half, a few splinters of wood flying at odd directions. I didn’t care that she had tried to cheer me up or make me feel that it wasn’t my fault. I was tired of people feeling pity, and now I would have to deal with their hate. I sat back again and drifted off into patchy sleep.

                Within a few weeks I was up and walking again. I finally took my leave of the hospital. The streets of the town weren’t much better. Everywhere I walked I was met with words of animosity, and angry looks. I was a hated man. I was welcome nowhere, run out of stores and shops; banished from every day life. No one could love a man who failed to guard the light that night…that fateful night.

But could someone? Was Maria’s note heartfelt? Did she really love me, despite being engaged to another man? Maybe she was just trying to protect me. Could I love her back? It was her fault I never made it back to the lighthouse. She admitted it herself. But it was my fault too. I shouldn’t have become absorbed in my feelings.

                I didn’t know which way to turn. I couldn’t go on living like this. I couldn’t even take haven in my lighthouse now that there was a new man in the lighthouse guiding the ships. I had heard that Maria had left the town sometime while I was in the hospital. Perhaps she had still told the truth about wanting to see the world outside of the town after all. As the weeks went on, growing into a year of torture, my decimated heart couldn’t take it anymore.

                If they town couldn’t love me, and I couldn’t love the town, there was only one way to go. Maria was gone, and I was locked out of my tower.

                I ran up to the coastline, gazing up at my old lighthouse. There was nothing left in me, an empty shell of a man, no use left for a poor fool who only knew the comfort of a lighthouse. I ran up my One hundred and one steps, my cracked step seventy-three; my cobwebs and my mouse holes. I came to the top and saw the man. I grabbed him from behind and threw him against the hard stone wall. I don’t know if I killed him or if I only knocked him unconscious, but what was one more death on my list? I was a hollow shell anyways. No one could love me. As long as he couldn’t stop me from my completing my task, it didn’t matter.

I pulled a misshapen wooden lighthouse and a note out of my pocket and set them on the shelves next to my old crafts from my early childhood and climbed onto the windowsill that overlooked the ocean.

                So I crouched on that ledge, staring somberly at the dark waves beneath me. The night was cloudless, but the moon was nowhere to be seen.

                The irony hit me as I sat there, recalling all the past, that my little tower, my lighthouse, my life and soul, would be the death of me.

                My mind set, I stood, my arms extended out, and I jumped. Maria could never love a killer like me. That’s why she left.

                As I fell, my troubled mind felt clear for the first time in months. My little tower will seal my fate. All on the White Pearl had died, and now the coastal reef will claim my life too. I was falling, down, down, down, in a pitch black night for my old town.

                The black oceans shall now swallow me.

•••

                The aging woman climbed the rough steps of the old lighthouse. Her dark curls were now streaked with bits of gray, and no longer were they full of the life they once had. She took in the old structure, trying to think about what it would have looked like when the young man she once knew was the keeper. She hoped against hope that he would still be there, waiting, but he was nowhere to be found.

The setting sun glared in through the window as she looked around the now decrepit and dusty room. Her eye caught a jumbled mess in off to the side of the circular room. She picked through the old wooden trinkets, smiling sadly as she ran her fingers over the damaged objects. Her heart stopped as her eye caught an old and battered wooden carving of a lighthouse. The lighthouse she was in. A note was attached to the carving, which appeared to have been split in half and hastily reassembled. With shaking fingers, the woman opened the paper and read the words which appeared to be written by a trembling hand.

 

I hereby commit my body to the deep, to be turned into corruption looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Sea shall give up her dead and the life of the world to come,

~Through our Lord, Amen.

 

Maria, I love you, and I am sorry. You are faultless. Please forgive me.

 

                The woman in the room cried until long after the sun had set over the horizon.

Author's Note

This is only a second draft of this short story, the first of which was written a while back in a marathon session. Bear that in mind. If you find something that makes absolutely no sense, that's probably because I jumped around when I was finally editing this the other day, and possibly forgot to finish another edit. Also, not sure what's up with the indenting, I couldn't get it to format right after I copied this in from Word.