Another Land Made of Water

We'd worked double tides before the storm, I remember, getting the gear away and securing the boats. There wasn't much more I could do then but wait for the storm so I went back out to the island. I passed extra lashings on the roof of the house on the rocks and went around to build up the seawall a little higher. The tide was coming on the darkness and the slow swell leaned on the sea ledge and boomed before me. I saw the clouds thicken against the Moon and then the wind began to run across the swell, fitfully. Smearing the dim moonpath with strangely shaped waves, like sails standing off and on following moonshadows. I watched for a long time, standing there on the rocks, listening to the sea ledge talking. I found it didn't do to wonder too much about the island. Nothing I ever learned about it seemed to do much to ease my sense of its strangeness. But then there are things you know and things that are given you, and there are also things you don't ask. When I first came there, it was still moving a little bit and changing
shape, but by the time the house came it had settled down pretty well and started itself into quite a private and self-sufficient enterprise, although a little lower in the water than before. When the tide was away it was island, long and wandering. At half-tide, a crescent of shelter in the circling seas. A pool of quiet with the sun in its lee. And at the high, it was a two-part ridge of rock, a ledge, a small, cold eryies in the black and hungry waters sweeping by. It wasn't a part of anything else. Except for the sea ledges it was all red rock, unlike any of the other islands nearby. It maintained a silence and indefference, indifferent to the things around it. Things came to it and went away, it neither seemed to need them nor to notice them. Because of this I wondered how the house would fare when it came there. But then, the house was no more permanently settled than the island. And when the island changed in the winter, the house was gone, so each of them had the privacy to be changing when they needed to, and I think that was good.

I had stood there 'till I was cold, in the hollow of wind above the half-tide ledges. The Moon had found a good hiding place, and I was waiting for it to crawl all the way into it. But the caring of the day, it wearied me, so I went back up around the end of the high ledge, and crawled into the house in the rocks without hanging up the light. I knew the boat was safe and the house was tied down well, and the storm would not come until the tide was well away. And I fell asleep in my clothes, hearing the first waves begin to creep through the seawall. I dreamed I heard a singing then, a gray and silver sound along the wind. And I dreamed about the Sea Elves. Once I woke, hearing the singing louder, and the sounds of the working of a ship. But as I woke it sounded like the wind going east, because of the low and lilting pitch of it. The tide had come
and was lifting the corner of the house a little as the waves came through the seawall. It was only the floor creaking, and the ropes of the house I thought, that sounded like the ship. And the sound the wind makes, going east.

The wind is with you there, waking, or sleeping. You always know what it's doing, and always wonder what it's going to do. Each day shape is given by the wind. The little boxing winds of morning, when the day is making up its mind, and then the long, strong, prevailing winds of summer. Warm and friendly at low tide, smokey and gray and insistent on your doorstep on the high. Easing a way to a lumpy stillness in the late afternoon. You walk your days in the presence of the wind. If you're easy and mind you serve it, do what it bids you, 'this day good for working,' 'this one for reading,' the next 'a good run for town for the things you want.' One for fishing, some for dreaming, and always a few for just hanging on. You sleep with the wind at your ear, you wake, and watch it to tell you about your day.

I pulled the door aside but the moon was gone, it was only the faint light of the wave-tops above the ledges now, to dark to really see. My blankets were a little damp from the tide that lifted the sleeping part of the house so I moved them to the main room by the big rock and layed down again there, feeling safe and warm with the house rocking gently. It was a relief to have a storm come on the going tide, so many seemed to come when the tide was making, where you work all the high tides and have to wait 'till the tide turns its back to sleep. This way you could sleep when you wanted. And so, sleeping, I heard the singing clearer. And the working of more than one ship. And I heard voices on the wind, not loud, but at the right pitch for the wind to carry them. I felt the tide going, but very slowly now against the rising storm. The sleeping place had settled down again among the rocks. And though I could hear it growling around the ledges and tugging at the shrouds of the mast of the house, I knew it wasn't only the wind talking. But I was weary, and preferred my dreaming to listening to the moving dark, and so I slept. I was alone, and not even the little waves that shouldered through the seawall knew I was there. No one would be coming out to the island anway, or need me. And I was safe, and warm, and content to dream.

[Elves singing]

Water time is our time. More than the days, we know. Listen to it, watch it, and it becomes a part of you forever. It's an ancient clock that is always right, no matter how fast or how slow it must go to be right. There are different times for different days. You can leave it if you want, and you'll find that most clocks are out of tune with the time they seek to serve. But it won't leave you. It's a rhythm in your blood who's patient footsteps haunt your breathing and slow your days. And you know you're out of step. You can leave it, and let the noise of the world drown out its bells, but it won't leave you.

I don't know if I woke, I dreamed I woke, hearing the storm in full voice--the two voices of the Northeast Wind. I heard the shutter of the seas breaking against the island's rim; the low tide ledges, and the dawn flowing past quickly. I pulled on my my oilskins but left my boots and lit the little fire in the rock under the fresh water, and opened the flap of the door. The big rocks looked sturdy and and black with water, the sea ledges down there all gray and roaring. Their job was a little easier for them at low tide and they were doing it well. There was flung seaweed all over the rocks and the house on the rocks, but the island seemed very big and capable with the storm around it, even with the rain. It felt well anchored to the morning, as though it would never move again. I noticed then that the mast of the house was gone, and all of its rigging too. The rain made me feel more awake and I thought I'd go down and look for the mast along the northern end of the island; the wind had been southeast when I'd heard the tugging of the shroud. So I started to pick my way along the tide mark, where the seaweed was all disarranged. And as I came around the west corner of the first sea ledge, I saw the Sea People there. It was a little hard to see them, at first. The ones on the rock were dressed in the color of the morning and the ones one the boat the color of the wind. It was only the contrast with the red rocks and their movement that made them visible in the dim light. They were taller than I remembered, the larger ones were almost as tall as I was, and I'd have thought that vessels built to live their entire lives away from land would be much deeper, but these looked very light and fragile. The larger boat had two keels forward and one aft, it reminded me of the underbody of a shark. The smaller boat's keel seemed detached from the hull, like an inverted TV, and looked very flexible. The masts were down, lying along the rails. At the time I couldn't guess at the rigging to tell how many masts they had. They had run them well in, quite close together behind the second sea ledge, the half-tide ledge. Even on the island itself there weren't many places you could see them.

They were singing when I came, working on some gear beside the boats. The song was antiphonal; the ones on the rocks would sing back and forth between them, and then the ones on the boats would join them with a faster melody, a little higher. That song had been my dreaming, and it sounded like the wind because it was in the double pitch of the Easterly Wind, and the parts were connected more like the wind than our songs are. I stood by the first low-tide ledge, waiting for the song to make sense to me, at least in its pattern. I thought they hadn't seen me, and they didn't know that either I or the house was there at all. But then I noticed what the ones on the rocks was working on. It was the mast of the house. They had removed the cross tree and and split the spar down the middle, and they had one end wedged in the rocks and with a sort of Spanish Windlass on the other, and they were bending it into a long easy curve. So they certainly knew the house was there, and I could see how the whole mast could carry away without waking me.

[Musical interlude]

As I thought about this my mind came back to my eyes and I saw that one of them, a girl I think, was watching me. She was still singing, still twisting the lines she had been seizing to the head of the mast, but she was staring directly at me. And then all of them were. They had straightened up where they stood and were watching me, while the song still flowed along the rocks under the wind, with the rain going through it like cold light. I didn't really move; I sat down where I was, feeling like an intruder, but watching them and listening to the song. After a few moments they began to turn back their work, still singing, knowing that I meant no harm I suppose--although often I could see one or the other of them looking at me.

[Elves singing]

It wasn't my business after all. I didn't own the island any more than anyone could. I just used it when I was there and it was there. I began to feel very good that someone else used it to stop out of the storm and work on their gear. I couldn't say I owned the house either, at least not the individual parts. Many of those parts had been with me for quite a few years, but they usually changed places every time the house came back to the island. If they didn't have fixed places they didn't need a fixed owner. And it was true that many of those parts I just borrowed from the water not so long ago--like that spar. I didn't know where it had come from originally, the house didn't really need it. I just liked to look at it and remember when the house did need it, before the house came to the island. If these people had a need for it now they should have it.

[Musical interlude]

I listened for a long time to this song and many times I felt that they were directing it at me, that they wanted me to hear it. That what they were telling me was important, but a story too old and too long to be given in the framing of verses or the squared off corners of rhyme. And that while I had no tongue for it, nor ever would have, they wanted me to know it. So then while the day blew on from gray to gray I curled up under the tide ledge and listened, and watched, and tried to understand. I know I slept again, because I dreamed of the winter of the sea, I remember that. I dreamed that the song changed its flow and direction many times. And I dreamed that some of them came to where I was sleeping and spoke to me long and carefully, in a language that is not yellow and red and brown like ours but cold and silver.

[Musical interlude]

The cold woke me. The song was gone then, or was resting so quietly on the wind I could no longer hear it. There were only a few of the people left working there among the ledges and the tide coming, the water was up around the keels of the boats. My feet were cold on the rocks and I was shivering a little inside my oilskins. I thought about a cup of tea and the quiet sounds of the house on the rocks. I got up slowly, so not to disturb the ones working there, and went back along the half-tide ledge towards the house. I stood looking at it for a moment, thinking that it still didn't look bad without the mast. I climbed in, took off my oilskins and made my tea, and sat there for a long time drinking it.

If someone needs something I have I don't care that they ask me for it, although it's nice to know where it went. I usually ask others though because I'm never sure they'll understand that. That's the good thing about doing business with the water, you don't have to worry about those things. I'm a trader at heart, I suppose. Except that I don't like trades that come out equally though; that's too much like borrowing. I'd rather trade a strong hand for a patient ear, or a story for a meal. Anything that keeps things turning over. That's another nice thing about doing business with the water: while for everything that's gone there's something given, what you give and what you get are something different. And that's good. And you never have to bargain with the tide. If what it offers isn't worth hauling home, there's always other customers.

[Musical interlude]

You set your clock by the tide. You asked it when the wind would change, you woke or slept by its coming and going. You gave it your days when the boats were moved, and your nights when the fish came down the bay. You'd awake on a day who's name you forgot, but you always knew the state of the tide, and how far it would come or go. You measured your sleep, and your work, and your ways by the ways of the tide. It dogged your watches, and kept you content. And there is no adding the hours and days, the years spent waiting for the tide to serve.

[Musical interlude]

Now as the tide came, clawing up the bay against the wind. I could hear that the seawall was taking a pounding. I went out to look at it and was pleased to see that it had fared the night pretty well on the rising wind. It seemed that the wind was lightening too, so the wall might not be too badly hurt on this coming tide. Standing there on the cup of the high ledge, I wondered what the Sea People would be doing about the tide. They wouldn't stay where they were. I stepped around the big angular rock that was the west wall of the house I saw the two boats practically in by dooryard. Each had two lines ashore and probably two anchors off, and they were lying just inside my boat very close under the lee of the island which was getting quite small now. Their mast was still down, and with the yards and quarters lashed to their sweeping decks they looked like half-tide ledges themselves, only rolling a bit in the surge coming around the end of the island. There was no one visible on their decks, but the feeling of having company so close was very pleasant for me. It was raining heavily by then, so I went back inside the house and added more oil to the fire in the rocks. I cooked a little meal with the rain whipping the canvas above me. There was nothing to do until the tide went away again, late that afternoon. And I still had sleep to make from the tides before the storm, so when I finished eating I lay down again just as the house began to lift again in waves.

[Elves singing]

I woke again in the late afternoon and knew by the waves that the island was bigger again. I heard the sea ledges washing their heads, and the wind was down even more--the sound of it twisting and scattering around the house. I warmed some water, made some tea and drank it. And went out to look at the seawall. Most of the top had been taken down and tossed in pretty confusion in my front dooryard, the quiet little place to the eastern of the house. The sea ledge was working to break up the swells and the spray was light and easy, so I set to work arranging the stones. A little half-hewed afternoon light from the west had sifted through the scud from the mainland, picking out the gentle reds and browns of the staggered, spray-wet ledge around me. It wasn't much of a light for strength, but enough to show that the weight of the storm was shifting, that it had walked its way here and was moving on. Its a kind of a sad and friendly thing watching a good storm go, knowing you'll never meet another one just like it. And I stood for a while in the quiet place behind the seawall under the arch of the wind, trying to fix some of it in my memory.

The sea takes trouble from you. Takes worry, and fear, and illusion, and anger and joy, and joking, and plans, and ambition, and love from you. Takes them, scatters them, gathers them, gives them back to you know so big and important as before. You're not anyone really: you never were. Who you thought you were when your head was too small for your illusions. But illusions aren't important now. You don't have to be anything, even yourself, because yourself was just something you had to make up, and then you thought you had to carry it around with you. What a relief to lay it down, and walk away, and forget. Just to be part of what's around you is enough.

After a while I went down to the north end of the island again. But this time, up along the high red ridge of the island's back. I saw them there, one boat grounded with a circling swell, washing a keel among the sea ledges. The other lying off, half a boat-length behind it. I didn't go down this time, just squatted beside a jet in the high ledge and watched them work on the boat. The wind was down a little, still leaping around me, but I listened as well as I could to hear them singing.

The song was higher now, lighter. The parts of it were running more together. There was an exuberance in it now, a lifting that was cold and warmer at the same time. And there was a theme that I could hear, and no matter where the song went I could hear the theme lifting into it again and again. And I knew I would hear the song again. And I knew the wind was going to change, and they would go. I sat there until the dark was blowing over the island, listening to the song. And then I went back along the high ledge in the slap of the wind and stood beside the house a moment. I thought that I should hang out the lamp, and then I knew I wouldn't because I knew why the island was there.

I woke at the first pounce of the Northwest Wind on the island, and lay in my blankets against the rock, knowing what it was, and thinking that the shelter where the Sea People had been was suddenly no shelter at all. And when I went out on the high-tide ledges to where they had been, they were gone.

[The Windcalling]
Fair be the Northwest Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Far in his ways thy fairing be
Though the days pass over me
Fair be the wind to thee
Call now the wind to thee
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the wind to thee

Right be the Northern Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Thou in his ways thy keeping be
Though the days pass over me
Right be the wind to thee
Call now the wind to thee
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the wind to thee

Cold be the Northeast Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Long in the valleys of the sea
Though the days pass over me
Cold be the wind to thee
Call now the wind to thee
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the wind to thee

Pray be the Eastern Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Thou in her ways thy keeping be
Though the days pass over me
Pray be the wind to thee
Call now the wind to thee
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the wind to thee

Dark be the Southeast Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Safe in her hand thy toiling be
Though the days pass over me
Dark be the wind to thee
Call now the winds to thee
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the wind to thee

Soft be the Southern Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Though in her ways I keep it be
Though the days pass over me
Soft be the wind to thee
Call now the wind to me
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the wind to me

Kind be the Southwest Wind to thee
Go as you may go
Home on his wings thy winging be
Though the days pass over me
Kind be the wind to thee
Call now the wind to thee
Go as you may go
There be the storm suddenly
Though the days pass over thee
Kind be the winds to thee