A Fisherman's Tale

Of Kyhl’Shalaak, Child of Shadow

My grandfather would uncover his head whenever the sea grew dark beneath a cloudless sky. He had done so since boyhood, and though he was seldom a churchgoing man, there was a prayer he kept for such occasions.

I heard it first aboard his boat, when we lay beyond the last sound of the harbour bells. Our lines had gone slack, yet the corks stood upright upon the water, and beneath them something black moved slowly against the tide.

“Draw nothing aboard,” he told me. “What rises now is under Her keeping.”

I thought he meant a storm. He took off his hat.

The darkness passed beneath us in long folds, gathering and loosening as though the sea had been given another tide below its own. Where it touched the hull, it climbed a little way above the waterline. I could hear it moving against the timber, although the boat lay perfectly still.

Then our lantern cast a shadow towards the flame.

My grandfather bowed his head, and I followed him.

He said afterwards that his father had seen an eye open beneath a fishing ground where no bottom had ever been found. The eye was hollow, and within it the lantern light diminished until the old man could scarcely see his own hands. He cut his nets loose and came home with every hair upon his head turned white. For the remainder of his life, he kept an empty place beside the hearth whenever the tide was high.

It was from him that my grandfather learned the name.

Kyhl’Shalaak. Child of Shadow.

There are men along this coast who will tell you that name belongs to a beast, and there are learned gentlemen who will assure you it belongs to nothing at all. Neither sort has heard the water speak it through the seams of a boat.

We had.

Before dawn, the blackness withdrew. Our corks fell flat, the wind returned, and my grandfather put on his hat with hands that would scarcely obey him. We left our lines where they lay.

He never took me to that ground again.

In his last winter, when his sight was failing, he made me repeat the prayer until he was satisfied I should remember it. Then he held my wrist and told me what his father had been told before him.

“There will come a morning when the sun is covered, though no cloud has crossed it. The sea will draw close about Her Child, and every wave will bear the shadow of its passing. You will see its eyes above the water then. Keep yours lowered, and speak Her name with gratitude.”

I asked him what we were to be grateful for.

He listened for some time to the tide beneath the quay.

“That She has taught it to pass us by.”

I have kept his prayer. My sons know it also.

This morning, before the sun had cleared the harbour wall, we found our nets laid upon the shingle. They had been cut away in deep water three nights before. Every knot was sound, and the fish within them were still alive.

There was a shadow upon them which did not move when we lifted the nets.

We have uncovered our heads.