Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

For a moment, Effram was too flabbergasted to accept the invitation. She was beautiful, this clumsy, pieced together, jigsaw puzzle of a boat. Pieced together of scavenged things-mostly old wood from the wrecks of Tarsis. Long and svelte at the prow, wide and square and ugly at the stern, she was beautiful just the same. Beautiful because… she floated.

She was a boat. A real boat, not “that piece of junk in crazy Effram’s yard.” Until that moment, he had not realized how much he feared that the people who jeered at him were right-all of them, the adults who looked at him askance and the children who threw rocks and words.

He scrambled on board, slipping on the wet planks despite the work he’d done on the soles of his boots. On his knees, he walked awkwardly to the mast and clung to it. He savored the gentle rocking as he waited for his knees to stop trembling. He waited for his heart to quiet, so that he might hear the storm again.

There was a voice in that storm. A voice speaking to him.

Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, still clinging to the thick, round trunk of wood upon which he’d hung his sail. As he came upright, the first crack of thunder boomed overhead. Lightning, so blue it looked like sky, rent the clouds. For a moment, he could see nothing but jagged streaks on the backs of his eyelids. Another boom and flash followed closely, and it seemed his pounding heart had taken home in the storm, had leaped from his throat and sailed away in joy at his finally being afloat. At being only moments from actually sailing.

Effram freed the large lateen sail from the boom and clumsily ran the rigging that hauled it up the mast. He’d practiced the maneuver hundreds of times since he set the mast into the keel, but it had been much simpler in practice, with the boat land-docked instead of rolling gently under his feet, with the sail hanging loose instead of fighting with the wind.

The sail flapped in the strong, whirling winds, snatching the boom free of his grip. The boom swung wide and then reversed back toward him, smacking his fingers sharply for his lack of agility in subduing it, but there was joy even in pain.

He tied off the boom, still allowing it to swing in the wind while he cast off the lines, forward and aft, that held him captive to the land. Then he used a pole to guide the boat toward the swirling sea. The boat bumped from side to side in the narrow pit, and his heart thumped as loudly in his chest as the thunder boomed overhead, for fear that the boat would beach itself before it had ever sailed.

The churning waters caught the stern, and the boat jerked underfoot. The starboard side slammed into the rocky edge of the breakwater, crashing him to his knees, and then the boat bobbed forward and twisted in a stomach-curdling semi-circle. It scraped the break-water on the other side, wood screeching on stone. The sail snapped, fluttered, snapped, then caught the wind. The sail popped, as if every thread in it shouted as one, and then Effram and his boat were into the Sea of Tarsis, caught by the strong current, washed away from the jagged breakwater. He was sailing!

The boom jerked in his hand with such force it felt as if it would tear his arm from the socket. The steering oar yanked from the other direction, fighting the boom for possession of his body. The prow of his boat turned to the open sea as if guided by the hands of the long forgotten gods. With a tug that threatened to topple him over the rail and into the water, the wind and the water took his boat.

He fought with the oar, bringing the nose around so that he was parallel to the breakwater that, like a mother’s arm, encircled the southern side of what had once been the harbor of Tarsis.

The round-bellied, clumsy boat skimmed across the ragged white tops of the waves with as much ease as a sleek, high-masted schooner at full sail. The prow of the boat cut through the water, the sail snapped in the wind, lines moaned against the blocks, and the mast overhead creaked with the pressure. But she held together, and she floated. She swam. She flew! Effram, captain of the only sailing vessel to sail the Sea of Tarsis for centuries, stood proudly in the stern and whooped his joy into the wind.

Cries, like the screams of seagulls, called to him from the direction of the city. Effram darted a glance at Tarsis. Children, a whole swarm of them, ran along the ridge of the breakwater, waving their arms and shouting at him. Their little faces were washed clean, streaming with rain, and they looked as exultant at seeing his sail filled with wind as he was to feel it snapping and tugging. They flapped their arms, screeched like shorebirds, and leaped as if they, too, would catch the wind and fly. The cries now were, “Hey, Captain! You’re sailing! Ahoy, Captain, take me for a ride!”

He waved to them, his face stretched in a grin. He’d never thought hearing that title would sound so sweet. He wished that every child who’d so sneeringly called him “Captain” and every adult who’d smiled indulgently or snickered at his passing could see him now, like this handful of children. He wished they all could see him sailing!

Then he had no further thoughts for them, as he used the sail to turn his boat at an angle to the arm of the breakwater. The boat wallowed and groaned as it turned with all the sluggishness of a fat, sun-warmed grub, but he loved even her clumsiness. He’d expected it. With the midship and the stern built so wide, there was no way she’d be a fast vessel, but what he’d sacrificed in speed, he regained in balance. She rode low, strong, and stable, even in the churning storm.

The wind fought him as he pulled in the sail until it was close-hauled, almost parallel to the lines of the boat itself. The wind tore at the sail as if it would rip it from its fastenings, but the strong cloth held, and the boat leaped away from the wind.

All before him was darkness. Roiling clouds and sheeting water and lightning flashed like fire in the sky. The wind was solid as stone. It battered him, the wood beneath his feet, and tried to snatch the boom from his hands. It drove the salty rain into the side of his face so that it felt like stinging sand on his skin. It was madness to sail toward that black wall of storm, but that was just what he did.

Effram understood the maneuvers necessary for sailing into the wind, even though he’d never had occasion to attempt them. In order to go forward, toward that unnatural blackness, he knew he had to zigzag, back and forth so that he tricked the wind into taking him into it. It seemed only another test of his will, like all the past years had been tests, leading up to this moment.

He sailed leeward for a short while, never taking his gaze from the black horizon. As he shifted, knowing that now he must change course and sail at an opposite angle, he lost his hold on the boom. The boat careened wildly and he fell as the sail went flat. Effram flailed about and finally caught the lines that trailed from the boom. He yanked it into position, the wind grabbed the sail, and the clumsy boat turned and shot away into the storm once more.

Effram threw back his head and laughed with the joy of it all. The pure delight of accomplishment, the pleasure of the salt wind in his face, and the rushing power of the sea, singing through the planks beneath his feet.

This! This was why he’d done it all. This was why he’d spent his life building this thing that had no life except that which the sea could give it. He knew that, whatever else life brought him, he’d be a happy old man someday, to sit in the sun and remember the life of the sea beneath his feet.

As he tacked again, he noticed that the black of the storm was no longer ahead of him. It was all around him. Rain pounded steadily, unrelenting, so that he could barely see through the sheets. The rain tasted of cold blood, salty, coppery, and alive. The only light came from the harsh streaks of fire that zigzagged across the sky, guiding his course through the storm- as if the lightning reached earthward, fighting against the clouds.