Fleet ‘The Blinking of Shadows’

The mizzen, main and foremasts pointed like crooked fingers to a moon that had risen in bouts of blindness, high ahead, in the rush of clouds, ragged and broken, tearing in blinks of shadow, darkness, and fleeting moments of broken light.

The roar of sea and sky flung the silence that they shared into the beaten grass beneath their feet. They were standing now. Supporting each other, leaning almost horizontally into the blast.

It was happening again. He couldn’t hold her. She slipped out of his grasp as her corporeal form seemed to dissipate into the heavy suddenness of rain that thundered into the lagoon, with a thousand heartbeats of silence upon the marram topped dunes.

She ran. He could see her still. Kicking off her coat, shawl, and shoes, she plunged into the fleet and started to swim, struggling against the pull of the wind and the hidden grasp of the waters.

She was strong. Again he saw her. And again he questioned himself. It always ended here. The explosive breach of the bar, the immense crash and collapse of the schooner as it lurched high on a monstrous wave, then hit, scraped and shattered against the screaming pebbles and the seething backwash of the flood.

He could see the men jump from horizontal masts, broken like matchsticks, jump from the vertical gunwales. See them all slip, fall and struggle, as the ship lurched against the breach, trapped.

She reached the berm, the crescent of shingle, and crawled heavily up the incline, drenched and exhausted. She stopped. Turned. Waved at him. Beckoned for him to follow. He saw beyond the bar, further out to sea, a second crescendo of waves coming in. 

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