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thegreenleavesofspring · 1 year

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The Time Sea

@inklings-challenge I hope this fits the requirements because I have bullied this into its final form.

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Gritty sand beneath her, and she dragged herself higher up the strand, the waves lapping greedily at her sodden dress. Tiny rippling wavelets washing up to pull out again with a dizzying feeling of the ground itself rushing from beneath her. She shivered there awhile, barely conscious of the lightning limning the roaring sea behind her in silver, painting the cliff above her white. The thunder blended with the noise of the waves, none of it touching her consciousness as she drifted.

The heavy black of night slithered into the dark grey of a stormy dawn. She came back to herself, shivering violently in her wet dress. The waves that had deposited her on this shore retreated down the sand, now. Her fingers were numb, hair clinging to her face like seaweed between sand grains. She brushed ineffectively at her face with shaking hands and blanched fingers. Hypothermia, her mind supplied helpfully, and then, get up and walk, it will help warm you up and you may find shelter.

She stood and looked at the cliff rising above her. It was a very small cliff, as cliffs went; only five or six times her height. The thought of trying to scale it in yards of drenched material and with numb fingers made her quail.

The storm had not passed over, though the rain had ceased for the moment; a sudden crack and roll of thunder made her jump. She glanced out at the tide – starting to come in again, now, but not quickly; she had a few moments – and backed up to look up at the top of the cliff.

Lightning flashed very helpfully in that precise moment, drawing her eye up towards the castle crouched atop the hill above the cliff. It seemed a very vampire’s lair, all sharp spires and sheer black stone and cramped window slits with no light in them and flying buttresses spiderwebbing between the towers. She rather fancied she saw bats dancing around the top of the tallest tower as tiny black specks.

It was the least inviting building imagination could conjure, but she was of a very practical turn of mind, and even the least inviting building with all its imagined horrors would be less dreadful than waiting on this narrow strip of cliff-bottom beach to be sucked back into the hungry waves behind her, or dying slowly of cold.

The castle’s inhabitants, it seemed, enjoyed trips to the beach, at times, for a thorough exploration of the bottom of the cliff revealed a narrow twisting path up the rock-face. Perhaps, she thought to herself as she hoisted her bundle of skirts – all shape lost in the ocean to a formless mass of heavy cloth, crusted stiff with salt – they came down on finer days than this, when all was sunny and the sea was calm and glass-green. Or perhaps, she thought humorously, they were vampires indeed, and descended only on the full moons to dance gruesome dances upon the strand.

The castle was further away than it had appeared from the beach, and rain started sheeting down just as she attained the grass at the top of the cliff. She heaved a deep despondent sigh, her hair slicking down around her face and shoulders all over again, shivering uncontrollably now, and started her forward slog, clutching her stomach to try and keep warm. Thunder shook the skies and ground around her, rattling through her bones. Lightning shot white and violet and indigo from sky to ground, and she peered forward at the castle each time, orienting herself off those jagged spires. A pebbled path ran from castle to cliff, but now it ran with water, a miniature rapid rushing along and tugging at her feet.

She was too tired to fight the current, slight as it was, and stepped off into the grass beside the path. The water rose to her ankles as she splashed through puddles, washing the salt and grime of the ocean from her feet and replacing it with tiny blades of grass and fragments of leaves and one very startled frog that rode on her arch for two steps before leaping away with a disgruntled cro-oak.

Her stomach had ceased its growling complaints and her mind was nearly as numb as her extremities by the time she fetched up against the rough stone and wood of the castle. She took a stumbling step back from the unyielding wall and looked around and realized that the path had widened into a drive and swooped right up to a broad shallow front step and a niche with imposing double doors. An unlit torch was set in an iron bracket to the side of it; if it had ever blazed with fire the wind and rain had long since snuffed it.

She considered sheltering in the door nook for all of half a second before another gust of wind sent her stumbling forward a step. Her mind made up, she mounted the stairs, wadded her hand inside a length of her voluminous sleeve, and lifted the massive iron knocker.

It fell with a boom that echoed through the house and faded into the thunder a half-second behind it. But the door was not even latched; the weight and momentum of the knocker pushed it ajar a few inches. She took a hitching breath and peeked in through the crack and then pushed the door open a little farther and slipped inside, leaning back against the rough wood on her hands to close it as she took in the hall.

It was long and narrow and soared to heights she could not see in the dark; the lightning coming in the windows insufficient to show the ceiling. At the far end of the hall – a mile away, it seemed – a tiny fire glowed in a massive fireplace that entirely dwarfed it. Open, doorless entryways to other rooms gaped cavernous to either side, black and opaque as pitch. The walls were bare and carved into sharp pillar motifs, climbing high out of sight. Everything was sharp and spiky and looked deeply uncomfortable and unhomelike, but there was a fire at the end of the hall and she was so cold…

Her footsteps echoed across the bare floor – marble perhaps; it was hard to tell in this dimness – rising all the way to the distant unseen ceiling and reverberating off all the walls over and over before whispering away into silence. But she did not let it stop her; she lightened her footfalls as much as she could and hurried over to the fire, whimpering in gratitude as she held her hands into the hearth itself to stick them over the anemic flames.

A bang from behind her startled her badly – she jumped and turned, scanning the hall. A staircase she had hitherto not seen, set back where the wall had fallen away – she had not seen it in her rush to get to the fire – rose to split into opposite directions. A thin wavering light hovered on the balcony of the second floor (she supposed it was the second floor) – a torch, held aloft in a hand cast deep into shadow. A tall figure held it; she caught a glimpse of a large hooked nose and robes the color of blood beneath silver-streaked auburn hair, two black eyes glittering like moonlight on a forest pool deep beneath craggy brows.

“Welcome, traveler,” the figure rumbled; a man’s deep voice. She shivered, staring up at him, caught in – not fear, precisely. He did not sound hostile or threatening. Unease, perhaps. Awe. Mind-numbing exhaustion.

When she did not respond he continued, “A room is being prepared for you. I… did not expect visitors tonight. Perhaps I should have,” he added lower, as if to himself, but the vast chamber caught his voice and carried it to her clearly. “My hospitality is not what it would usually be. Nonetheless, you will find water for washing, and food, and a change of clothes – though they may not be precisely what you are used to, they will serve for tonight.”

She found her voice at last, tongue heavy and throat sore with salt; her voice came out in an unfamiliar rasp. “Thank you, kind sir.”

His robes shifted; she caught a glimpse of a pale strong hand as he waved it dismissively. “It is my job. When you are ready, ascend these stairs and come down here where I am standing. There is a torch in the bracket beside your room.”

The promise of a wash and warm dry clothes and food was enough to send her scrambling for the stairs upon the instant. But she paused a moment at the top, looking up at the massive diamond-paned windows that rose before her. She had not seen them from the beach, nor approached from an angle that permitted view of them. But now she stood a moment, gazing out upon the storm-lashed ocean, the sun hidden behind frothing masses of grey-black cloud. Arcs of lightning speared down from the heavens to the water below, showing for just a minute waves high as buildings and hills and black as tar, shining like obsidian for fractions of a second.

She shivered, so very grateful to no longer be adrift in that furious sea, and turned to go up the staircase to her left. There was no sign of her host, now, but his torch had been left, as he promised, outside an iron-chased door.

It looked more like a dungeon door than a guest’s bedchamber, but she did not take time to worry about it, pushing the door open. A gasp of utter relief from her chapped lips – a fire, much larger than the one below, roared in the cozy little fireplace. The stone floor here was covered with a thick sheepskin, and a giant brass tub sat waiting and steaming before the hearth. Covered dishes sat on a small table in the middle of the room with a single chair drawn up; a four-poster bed stood against the far wall, buried under layers of quilts and blankets. A small heap of folded clothes lay atop it, and a single fluffy towel.

Part of her wished to take forever in the heavenly hot water, but cramping pains in her stomach alerted her that this would not be a good idea. She stepped out and wrapped herself in the towel – warming by the fire during her bath, soft as a summer cloud and almost as white – moving as close as was safe to the fireplace for a few moments. Her shivering had finally subsided in the bath, but she still basked in the heat, her skin prickling as it slowly warmed back up.

The food was simple and heavy – stew with beef and potatoes, some kind of green leafy vegetable, rolls split in the top with pats of butter pushed in to melt into the bread. A large mug of tea sat beside the plate and bowl. She scarcely paused to give thanks before falling on the food, devouring it down to crumbs and smears of gravy.

For all she knew, the master of this castle was indeed a vampire. But he had yet to offer her harm, and indeed had been very kindly and welcoming to the waif that had blown in his front door. The sheer exhaustion weighing on her now annihilated any reasonable caution. With no concern that it was, beyond the storm, still broad day, she hied herself right into that inviting bed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was broad daylight when she woke up again, too, the storm passed at last. She lay a minute, looking out at the azure-washed sky. Not a cloud to be seen anymore, but only an endless blue as deep as the ocean beneath it.

Out from beneath the heavy blankets – a drab dark green, but warm and cozy and slightly scratchy – and over to the window. The surf still ran high, the waves topped with foam as though the clouds had fallen from the sky to the sea. She stared, oddly mesmerized, for far too long, until hunger pangs reminded her that it would perhaps be prudent to seek breakfast.

She turned. The table had been cleared of its dishes, a single folded piece of strange parchment left in its place. She opened it and stared blankly at the script within; nothing she recognized.

She shook her head and set it aside, lifting the dress hung carefully over the back of the chair. It was nearly as strange as the writing on the odd parchment, with thin sleeves that clung to the arms and a bodice that laced almost up to the neck and a severe lack of ornamentation. But it was a delicate rose-pink that pleased her much more than the deep purple of her own dress, and it swept modestly all the way to the floor. Perhaps even more importantly, it was easy enough to get into without assistance.

The castle was nearly as intimidating by daylight as by thundering dim, severely plain without any relieving decorations. Dark blue-grey walls and black marble floors swallowed light, returning only a reluctant polished shine. But the vast windows at the stairs had an even better view of sea and sky and horizon than her own window had had, and she found herself arrested once more by the eternally shifting palette of blues and greens and greys.

She stood, lost a moment in time, as she watched the ocean, before turning and descending the stairs. A table had been set up before the massive fireplace with its comically small fire, and a hearty if simple breakfast laid out across it. Two chairs were pulled up before the table, and she assumed her mysterious host would be joining her.

She sat down, resolutely ignoring the tempting smells wafting up from the food spread across the table. Her stomach growled and she dug her fists into her gut to silence it, looking around at the stark hall and the sunlight sliding across the floor rather than the meal spread out.

The silence was oppressive. There was not even a clock to show the time passing, only the black stone walls and black marble floors and the bright yellow sunlight creeping back towards the near wall and the slowly cooling food.

The bang of a door upstairs startled her badly and she jumped before twisting in her chair to look over at the staircase. Her mysterious host was joining her at last, it seemed, his footfalls heavy and brisk as he descended the stairs towards her. “Good morning, lady.”

She rose at his approach. “Good morning, my lord.”

She studied him now, in the bright morning light. Grey-streaked auburn hair and a great curved nose, deep lines chiseled in his face around a heavy brow and kind dark eyes. He was truly absurdly tall, towering over her head and shoulders, a shapeless mass of deep wine-red cloak. It was quite impossible to judge his age; he looked perhaps middle-aged, save that there was some indefinable ancient air that hung over his shoulders like his garments.

He stood examining the table with a faint frown that looked rather forbidding on his heavy-featured face. “Did you not receive my note, lady?”

“I… could not read it,” she admitted, brushing nervous fingers down the thick material of her borrowed dress.

He turned that intense frowning regard on her person and she stilled. “Untaught,” he asked slowly, “or the script was unfamiliar to you?”

“It was… unfamiliar to me.”

He studied her a moment longer before sweeping a long hand, bones and sinews standing out beneath the skin, towards the table. “Please, sit and eat.”

He sat opposed to her and for awhile they both broke their fasts in silence. Only as their concentration lapsed into dallying did he brush his lips with an old ivory napkin and query, “And the dress. Was it also unfamiliar to you?”

She looked down at herself. In the bright morning light, it was truly lovely. But… “Yes, my lord, it also is unfamiliar.”

“My goodness,” the man murmured to himself. “I must be slipping. I have not misjudged an origin in… quite some time.” For some reason this last comment made him smile grimly.

She plucked up her courage. “My lord, I beg you to forgive my impertinence,” she began.

He gestured again, the craggy face settling into kindly lines. “I am no lord,” he interrupted. “You may call me… the Keeper, if you wish. Ask whatever you will, child.”

She squared her shoulders. “Where is this place, pray, sir? And do you live here all alone?”

“I do.” He reached languidly for his tea cup. “I am the Keeper of this castle, and of the shore below. The ocean below us is the Time Sea – people who are lost to the ocean are brought to my shores. It is my job to assess their original location and time, and send them home.”

This seemed entirely reasonable, but she had a concern. “And how do you do that?”

He smiled slightly. “Well, I am afraid you will have to cross the Time Sea again.”

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The boat was small and unprepossessing and she regarded with with deep wariness and distrust. Her dress was remarkably clean – the Keeper had put it in something he called a Washing Machine, deep in the depths of the castle – and returned to its old familiar shape. She lifted the bundle of her skirts, took a deep breath, and stepped into the rocking little shell of wood.

“And this will bear me home?” she asked nervously.

The Keeper brushed long slender fingers over the gold-embossed runes carved into the rim of the boat, the wood around them stained the same black that was between the stars at night. “It will bear you where I have told it to bear you, and I have told it to bear you home.”

Hours spent in a library taller than the hall downstairs, the maze between the shelves miles long, the domed arch of the ceiling made almost entirely of glass so that sunlight would pour in no matter the time of day. Maps and books spread out across the heavy oaken tables, dusty tomes that weighed as much as she did and were nearly as tall. Gadgets and gewgaws in crystal cases and on shelves and sitting upright on the thick forest-floor green carpet, gold and brass and silver and many other metals she did not recognize, amazing and incomprehensible. A map of the heavens all along wall that one could study for ten years and not examine all of it.

She wandered in awe-struck exploration while the Keeper consulted his books and his maps and his gizmos. It was, perhaps, hours that they were in that wondrous library, or maybe days; time seemed to pass differently here.

She could have spent ten years there without losing interest.

But amber light was stretching towards the far wall, the sun plunging towards its own brilliantly multi-hued setting, when at last the Keeper stood upright. “I believe I have found your time and place,” he announced. “It may be less fearsome for you to cross the Time Sea by daylight, so you will depart tomorrow – such as it is.”

The food that night was the food of her home – the sleep-clothes laid out for her were the old familiar type she wore every night. Her own dress awaited her the next morning, laid out carefully across the chair. The same breakfast on the table in the hall that she ate every morning.

It felt like having a piece of home with her here in this strange place.

It was jarring.

She sat very carefully. The rocking of the tiny boat made her uneasy, an instinct hissing that it would tip and dump her out again, that those waves were dreadfully large and rough.

“Are you ready?” the Keeper asked where he crouched on the slick wet boulder, holding her boat securely.

Her heart quailed, anxiety seeping up her throat like bile. “Yes.”

“Then may the Lord of All Creation return you safe home.” He shoved her tiny vessel out into the ocean and she suppressed the urge to clutch the sides by clutching her skirts instead, swallowing a nervous shriek.

“Farewell!” he called behind her, and she dared to carefully twist and look back. He stood still on his pile of rock some yards into the ocean. His shapeless robe wet to the thighs and clinging, even as spray and sea-wind alike whipped his hair. The spires of his dark castle behind him stabbing the sky, their secrets well-hidden behind the thick stone.

She rode the waves, the swells cradling her fragile boat like a mother cradling the soft head of her newborn, watching until the very tallest tower-peak sank out of sight. She sighed softly and settled into facing front again. For a long second, she was surrounded entirely by ever-shifting blue-green water, before another wave caught and lifted her high towards the cloud-daubed heavens above.

A strip of pricklingly familiar coastline ahead of her – docks and quays and shops and houses and ships and sailors and darting urchins and dogs. She gazed at it a moment in wonder and awe but no surprise at all.

The wave dropped her into a trough that propelled her forward quickly enough that she swayed back with a startled squeak. Another wave rose beneath her and crested and slung her forward like a stone from a boy’s sling, her boat overturning and vanishing under the waves behind her.

She thrashed amid bubbles rushing through the emerald water. Garbled shouts came to her submerged ears as she struggled to reach the surface. A hand seized the back of her dress and she was yanked up into open air, and then over the rough side of a crude wooden boat to land in a slippery pile of fish. Two bearded grizzled men stared down at her in considerable astonishment. “Where’d ye come from, missy?” the older one demanded. “An’ how’d ye get way out here?”

She blinked up at them. She had not realized how much she had missed the familiar accents of her people over the last two days. “My ship was wrecked in a storm.”

“The storm last night?” the younger, taller man asked, nodding. “The flotsam has been coming in today. But where have you been all this time?”

“All this time,” she murmured to herself. A dark pointy castle rose in her mind’s eye. “I was lost in the Sea of Time. But I am home now.”

#inklingschallenge #team Tolkien #genre: time travel #genre: secondary world #theme: food #theme: drink #theme: clothing #theme: shelter #finished #further tags:#fantasy #castle #ocean

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