The sailor dreamt: ‘Beware, mon. The devil’s shark knows no climate.’
TUNK.
The noise on The Brittany’s hull woke the sailor because it was much louder than the rhythmic wob-wob-wob, clink-clink-clink of the empty Red Stripe bottles rolling across the deck. Hearing it too, the sailor’s German shepherd, Santiago, pointed his ears and cocked his head at the cabin door. Animated, the sailor pulled a cream knit sweater over his torso before twisting the cabin doorknob and stumbling into the Alaskan morning.
The air was oppressively cold in his lungs as he moved across the deck toward the port side railing from near which the sound had come. Quickly, so as not to necessitate turning the boat around, the sailor cast a worn white net out to sea. He knew his venture had been successful when the net’s edges collapsed like jellyfish appendages around an invisible center mass. After collecting a fist full of the net’s corners, he heaved its contents onto the deck.
The star wasn’t glowing like they usually did. This was due, in part, to the interference of the sun’s rays—stars didn’t glow nearly as bright in the daytime and were almost impossible to find. But the fact that the stellar object had been close enough to the surface to collide with his boat informed the sailor that this was but a fragment of a larger whole. The fuller stars generally hung suspended below the surface at a kilometer count representative of their size.
The sailor untangled the fragment from the rope and, with hands numbing from the northern seawater, stashed it in the crate that he had designated specifically for shattered stars. He returned the worn white rope to its storage and hurried back into his cabin.
Over a plate of cold salmon, the sailor began to force his assortment of government pay stubs into some sort of decent order. Due to a positive-feedback-loop-meteorologist-load-of-jargon he didn’t understand, the past decade had seen many stars begin to fall from their galactic real estate into the Earth’s oceans. An arm of the now crippled United States Navy paid the sailor to fish the stars from the sea and return them to the heavens. The Brittany sailed for the Gulf of Alaska because a fellow fisherman in Jamaica had told him that its waters were rich in star.
When the digital clock on the sailor’s desk had surpassed five or six fifty-nines, its alarm began to sound. He struck the clock and reached for the doorknob with a down jacket in tow.
During his time in Jamaica, the same fisherman had told him of a breathtaking natural phenomenon and the sailor had taken special care to calculate the date and time at which he may witness this sight.
Bolstered by the albedo of the surrounding ice, the sunlight was just as oppressive as the subzero temperatures. The sailor needed a gloved hand in addition to his sunglasses to allow his eyes adjustment. After, he moved to the starboard balcony to watch the color of the ocean below The Brittany change.
‘The Split Sea’ was an informal name with which some described the point in the Alaskan Gulf at which the darker, slate blue waters of the larger ocean met but did not mix with the crystalline glacial runoff. As The Brittany crossed the oceanic boundary from slate to turquoise, the sailor marveled while Santiago, who had expected something more exciting, lifted his paws from the balcony, huffed, and returned to the cabin. Some part of the sailor was relieved that the waters were clearer here.
Before long, the sailor realized that he’d need to sleep soon if he wanted to fish that night. Checking his watch, he followed the dog inside.
The afternoon became evening and the sailor was in too deep a sleep to feel the walls of his cabin rumble as the water below his boat swelled to allow the unseen mass’ passage. He woke to Santiago, paws on the balcony, barking at the water. It was dark.
The sailor shivered as he pulled on his jacket, the dog had obviously nuzzled the cabin door open some time ago.
“What is it, boy?” he kneeled beside his companion and peered over the railing.
As he panted anxiously, Santiago’s tongue hung from his mouth like a cartoon character. His eyes were pleading with his master; he whined.
“There’s nothing out there, Santiago,” the sailor’s assurance was as much for the dog as it was for himself. His gestures out to an inky sea weren’t enough to satisfy the worried animal or the insidious fear that had accompanied the sailor since the Caribbean. His eyes narrowed to scan the surroundings once more before paranoia gave way to a rational mind and he began to fix dinner for the two of them.
Santiago’s raucous chewing could be heard from inside the cabin as the sailor retrieved the star shard from its crate. He gave the line of his fishing pole enough slack to wrap and tie around the star. Carefully, he carried the entire operation to the railing and lowered the star into the sea. When he had firmed his grip on the fishing pole, he began to swing it up and down, with increasing intensity, to warm up his arms. As he swung, the sailor gazed up at the sky; he had known where this star was going when he had found it earlier, it was now just a matter of aiming. Finally, with one great heave, the sailor swung the star upward. The fishing line’s slack snapped when it ran out, and the star was allowed to continue its journey home. Nothing made the sailor happier than a bull’s eye: Orion had his belt buckle back.
By now the sea had begun to narrow off into a channel as ranges of powdered mountains choked it from each side. The sailor knew it would soon be time to weigh anchor when a faint yellow glow could be seen emanating from below the water. He propped the fishing rod up against the starboard railing and headed into the cabin to change into his thermal suit and flippers. Santiago brushed past the sailor and resumed his post, near the fishing pole, on the railing.
When he returned to the deck to let down the anchor and gather his net, the sailor noticed that all was no longer silent. Somewhere far in the distance, a humpback whale was singing. The sailor enjoyed the song’s reverberation across the channel and the glass sky as he descended the ladder at the rear of the boat. Once he had submerged, he was unable to hear when Santiago again began barking at the water.
The sailor’s eyes travelled deeper below him and he was glad he made the trip to Alaska. Alone, a star from this angle looked like a small lantern, floating lonely in the darkness. As he gazed down to where the terrestrial shelf became steep under the water, however, the sailor could suddenly imagine what Los Angeles must have looked like from the window of a plane.
Many stars fell off the coast of California. The North Equatorial Current picked them up and swept them westward where the Kuroshio and North Pacific then adjoined them with the Alaskan current and their final resting place. Suddenly walled off by land in the northern regions of the Alaskan Gulf, the celestial bodies often collected in clusters known as star beds. The sailor could often recreate entire constellations after harvesting a single star bed. He clutched the white net in his hand and swam deeper, toward his night’s work.
Some time later, the sailor’s net resembled more of a sack as it bulged to accommodate over three star beds. As another colony of bubbles streamed from his mouthpiece, the sailor began picking up the remaining loose stars and packing them into any space he could find within the net. It was as he bent down to obtain the final star that he felt the water shift behind him. The sailor turned slowly.
When he willed his eyes to the shark he remembered the color of gunmetal. The hue saturated a body that could easily rival those of the singing whales. The two pairs of eyes met and the whales were not singing anymore. The shark hung perfectly still in the water. Its mouth was open slightly and the sailor could see rows of ragged teeth in its vicious serenity.
Without breaking the silence, it asked, “Are you afraid?”
With his eyes, the sailor responded, “I am afraid.”
The Brittany’s white hull loomed some meters above, and when the sailor tore his eyes from the shark’s, he knew that they would never return.
His entire being was shaking as he tightened his grip around the net but he tightened his grip nonetheless. With a kick, his flippers relinquished the rock shelf below and he began his ascent. Steadily he alternated his legs; he was very aware of his legs. He was sure that the gunmetal would encompass his vision if he looked down but he didn’t look down. When he reached the ladder, he didn’t look back at the water. When he hauled the luminescent net to the deck, he collapsed. Santiago licked his face. The sailor wept.
After a time, the sailor rose, opened the net, and began arranging stars on the deck. He leaned to retrieve the fishing pole from the railing.
That night, any being in the Northern Hemisphere with skyward eyes would have seen a fin begin to take shape in the heavens.
Aaron Marten
November 13 2013