The Keepers were an odd group of fellows, a brotherhood of men who loved the sea, and straddling the last vestige of land ten leagues from the World’s End in a rickety old lighthouse was their calling. When he told them that he loved the sea too, he had thought that they might get along alright.
He had told himself the same many times; the thought an old one and he fancied that if perhaps he held it up to the light, the sun would shine through all the thread-bare patches onto his face. A thread-bare thought—good phrase, he should write it down.
A sand-papery tongue darted under the arch of his foot and he nearly toppled from his perch with a muted curse. The smirking, furry face that peered at him was adamantly unsympathetic to his obvious need for a good sulk—and the fact that the thing took up residence out of kicking-range at the top of the ladder a little ways off was not lost on the youth either. Oliver was the resident Cat, and as such he had few qualms with pestering his least favorite person when it was time to be fed.
“Adian,” The young man winced, immediately flattening his wild red hair with one hand and straightening his habit with the other. The man who warranted this, a dark-haired Keeper whose scraggly beard hung well beneath his belly, turned to look up into the rafters at the noise. Damaras, Adian knew through a long and painful association, was not a patient man and the youth swung down hastily.
“Sorry,” said Adian; he wasn’t yet quite sure what exactly he was sorry for but he was sure he was sorry for something. The Keeper frowned and moved through the door to the inner stair at a rapid clip somehow out of place on a man of his girth. Adian followed a step behind, well used to the silent treatment—the Keepers fancied themselves men of little words.
They reached the base of the stairs without mishap, Oliver waiting at its foot and licking his tail in a way that eloquently articulated his displeasure with these walking pink worms’ slowness. Adian never could figure out how he managed find his way down here so quickly without using the stairs, but he rather thought it’d be a useful skill to acquire some day.
Hefting the Cat up into his arms, he followed the brother through the vaulted door that led out. The barracks were up ahead, a dull, squat series of buildings built against the cliff face a dozen or so paces from the lighthouse, sitting up the beach like the skeletal forms of the giant beasts that occasionally washed ashore. It was then that he knew something was amiss.
Half turning, half stumbling, he wheeled about to face the older Keeper. “What’s goi—”
Damaras arched a brow, reaching out with a hand to roughly propel him forward, “Walk. There’s a Council to be had now, Adian. You’ll need to be in your room while it’s going on.”
Adian was tempted to turn tail and run, fling himself along the rocky path back up to the lighthouse. He’d hide, and only come back out when this odd congregation in front of the barracks had gone away. But he didn’t because Damaras had an odd glint in his eye, so he merely hunched his shoulders a little more and allowed himself to be ushered through the throng, gripping Oliver tightly and winding his fingers through the long fur.
The Council, it turned out, was brief. Through his dingy window, Adian could count each brother as he filed in and back out, until each of the twenty-nine had gone in for a space no longer than five minutes, with those who’d already exited assembled on the grass outside. Each wore an expression as he came out of shock, resentment, anger. No grief, which for the life of him, he didn’t know why he was expecting.
A knock at the door startled him and he levered himself carefully up from the bed. A second knock, “Adian?”
“Damaras,” said the boy, opening the door and letting through a single bar of light. Dusk was fast approaching and he could hear the rumble of thunder far overhead. “What is happening?”
The Keeper sighed, running his hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically telling gesture. “A Keeper fell from the cliffs; he’s very near death.”
Adian thought about it for a moment, but nothing added up. The men down there were angry. Adian looked at Damaras again— the Keeper’s eyes still wild—and merely gave a mild, “Oh? Who?”
“Brother Laka,” Damaras answered, voice tight, “The Keepers are leaving to convey him into town for his final rites. We will be back by tomorrow—“
“We? You mean all of you? But who will man the lighthouse?” Adian asked, alarmed. His hands tightened around the door, white-fingered. He had a feeling where this was going—not anywhere good.
The older man was silent for a moment, then said tersely, “You.”
“Me? But I can’t—I mean, I’m not even a Keeper and—“
Damaras cut him off angrily with a sharp jerk of his hand, “You think I don’t know this? Believe me, if there was another way, any other way! we'd take it in a second. You aren’t yet a Keeper, however, and so not subject to the laws that bind us.” The man sighed. “You will stay.”
There eyes met for a moment, both daring the other to make the first move. Still glaring, Adian hit his fist against the wood of the doorframe.
The other man jumped, flinching away from the boy almost imperceptibly. Clenching his hands, Damaras turned away, paused for a moment longer outside Adian’s door as if about to speak, and then padded away.
Through the window, Adian could see the brothers, bearing a stretcher swathed in white between four, begin picking their way up the beach. He watched until they disappeared into the twilight, little more than cutouts of night making their way along the sand. Then they were gone.
Adian watched until he could no longer see even the shadow of their cloaks through the light mist, then raised himself up from his crouch in bed. Oliver waited for him in the shadows outside his door, tail flicking impatiently. When the Cat saw that he was indeed standing, he began to make his way to the kitchens.
With a choking laugh, Adian followed.
*
The lenses needed to be cleaned, he found as he ascended into the lighthouse lantern proper, the wick raised, the oil checked, the smoke jack unclogged, and both the ring and pinion gears oiled. None were usually his chores, but he’d heard about each of them often enough that he felt confident that somewhere in his vague gleanings, he’d know how. There was no time for sulking, Adian knew, but he couldn’t help but take a moment to gaze forlornly at the mess in front of him.
Oliver wound his way about the youth’s legs, licking his chops with contented smugness. Scales still clung to his fur, but he ignored these, twining his way to the single bench at the far corner of the room and curling up for a nap.
Adian settled quickly into the way of things, and his mind soon drifted. These Keepers were such a strange sort, so very superstitious! The oldest of them, the white-haired ones who had taken up permanent residence in front of the kitchen hearth, they whispered to one another about the serpents.
The lighthouse, Adian knew, was on the World Sea, and the last one and the very far-most tip of the Lyonesse Penninsula. The World Sea was the spark and tinder of legends, stretching out until it fell into the stars, with the serpents and stranger beasts gliding through the waters, waiting for a ship to be brave—brave or stupid enough—to venture forth. The serpents were common enough sights as it was, Adian had seen them himself from high in the lighthouse, their great, gleaming backs sliding under the water and seeming the span the whole length of the ocean.
His hands moved of their own accord as he worked, brushing first with ammonia, then water, then dumping the sooty water and filling the bucket again. Yet as he began work on the second lens, something caught his eye.
Nestled at the base of one of the rotating gears, was a latch. Frowning, Adian flicked it with a finger, watching in dull amazement as a small compartment flipped open. Without pausing to consider further, he fished out the contents—neat parchment with dark lines etched across the pages—and dumped the lot onto his lap.
Have you ever seen a ship at sea? Adian squinted as he tried to decipher the arching, slanted hand. He’d honestly never thought about exactly why there was a lighthouse at the edge of a sea where no ships sailed, but now the question seemed an obvious one. We keep watch for God-
Here the writing turned crazy, squiggles jumping on and off the page, the margins crowded with rough, child-like serpents sporting rows upon rows of teeth and above them a great eye, lines and more squiggles pointing off of it. At the bottom of the page there were the final words, because if you stare into the abyss long enough, it begins to stare back.
Aiden never considered himself religious, but this seemed rather heretical in any case. He flipped over the page but there was nothing on the back side, the bright blankness of the parchment seeming to stare at him accusingly.
He replaced the notes carefully into the niche but the thoughts stayed with him. A Lighthouse at the Edge of the World, keeping watch for a ship that never came. There was a sort of poetic irony here, he knew, but he couldn’t bear to see it. Suddenly the Keepers—did he see them now for what they really were?—were but a group of sad old men who loved the old ways too much, deciding to die for an ideal rather than the world inland…where their lives might actually mean something.
Aiden snorted, one soapy hand raised above the dark water. He shook his head, teetering between simply throwing the bucket over the lantern edge, watch it spiral down, splinter! Except he wouldn’t be able to see it so very far down. Regretfully, he simply upturned the contents over the gallery’s lip and let the bucket sit in the corner of the room. Everything had changed.
Oliver, one rear leg raised over his head, mewed a question and silently Adian walked over. For the first time in his life, the Cat didn’t mind being manhandled into someone’s lap and even suffered through Adian’s ministrations with a good-natured rumble working its way through his body. Adian’s mind was leagues away, plunging over the edge of the World and into the roiling froth below. What waited there then?
God only knew.
Night fell. Silence gripped the lighthouse and hours were ticked off in heartbeats. The youth’s movements lapsed into mechanical jerks, the Cat’s pur faded to d-d-d-dsighdd-dd-ddsigh. Oliver yawned over Aiden’s knee, tongue lolling.
Then he heard it. Scrape of rock on rock. Adian jerked into motion, Oliver tumbling to his feet and hissing his outrage. He sprang out, through the door, and onto the gallery bridging the lighthouse exterior, bile rising in his throat. Mindless fear gripped him, tightening his stomach, his chest, as if every particle in his thrummed and stopped, thrummed and stopped.
Serpents were coiled at the base of the lighthouse, a very short forty feet below the deck, twining and twisting, their stone-hard scales screaming as they grated against one another. And they were climbing up; Adian stumbled back inside and flung the door shut, pushing the bench to block it.
Turning, his fingers scrabbling over the frames, he began rapidly assembling the lenses—not fast enough! The horrible screeches were closer yet, lighthouse timbers groaning with the weight. He could see it in his mind’s eye, with the outer walls writhing with the hideous beasts—
His hands were clumsy as he worked, pulling the lens roughly into position, gears stiff. It was a small eternity before he could light the lamp.
The first match, for the life of him, would not catch. It fell to the floor but Adian ignored it, fiddling with the second. His fingers were trembling too bad and the second slipped on the second strike. The third blew out as he half moaned, half sobbed in frustration, sinking to the floor. Fourth died and Adian fell apart.
On the floor, he brought his knees to his chest and tucked them under his chin, tears wetting the sawdust beneath his cheek. Through the floorboards he could still hear them, right below! Hissing and snarling among themselves, the click of teeth as they snapped and missed.
Pum-pumpum-pum-pumpum…Heartbeats. Count the heartbeats, he told himself brokenly. Count them? One. Two. Three. Pum-pum. Four.
I can’t do it.
A furry form curled against his stomach, but even in the night, he could see that Oliver had his ears flicking about nervously. Adian scooped him up, trembling as he straightened and moved to the door. He ignored the p***k of claws through the sleeves of his habit, Cat trembling as much as he.
Black forms moved just under the windows, the sickle moon glinting wanly off their spines. Adian gasped, stumbling, gaze refusing to rest on them or all was lost.
Out to sea, there was a light.
For a moment, it refused to compute. Light. At. Sea. But there was nothing there! No ships! Only the World’s End, Adian thought, mind spinning madly, only…What do we wait for? He latched onto the distant glimmer, stretching out a hand to caress the glass. What do we wait for?
*
The light disappeared several hours before dawn, but by then the serpents had fallen away as well. The sea stretched before him as he tentatively cleared the way to the gallery, glittering like the scales of the great beasts—but not so very sickly-like. He walked out gingerly, Oliver having long since made his way into Adian’s habit to curl about his stomach above the cord.
If you look into the abyss long enough indeed, the boy thought, one hand winding into his hair and a low, hysterical laugh bubbling up between his lips. Perhaps, only perhaps, it is better to live by an ideal than by practicalities. This way, at least, when the abyss stares up, I can learn to stare back.
Fin
