Gone The Tides Of Earth: A Novel

Tide washed in past the shoreline as the red disc of a blood sun retreated into a beam of ichor upon the horizon.

Borne with current, fish carcasses and seaweed began to flush in and straddle dry sand. There were bits of driftwood and litter caught in perpetual ebb, bobbing at the brink of the water. Seafoam already fizzled along the eclipse of golden beach.

Soon it would be hightide; I collected the two tin buckets used to gather the crustaceans and waded out of the frothy water.

Overhead, summer’s molten fire beat furious and relentless; seasonally it had reached the point when the heat were a dead heat, because of this face, hands and body turned leather-hard. Inadvertently pain was constant, especially under the scorch of the sun, yet being in the water dulled it, provided soothing remedy; until as now, whence out from the sea started feeling again raw, sultry, dried-out like a fillet that cured in the sunlight. Heading out, cleared the water and instantly felt the hot sands toasting soles of feet. They were burnt, callused, so the warmth felt nice. The buckets weighed heavy, frayed wire-ropes jangling to-fro, biting deeper into callused skin, half-healed cuts.

I’d gone a little away from the shore when placed the buckets down to ease the strain, rest a moment. From where stood there was not only visibly sea though woods, mountains, the old village, with still daylight aplenty all these things could be made out quite clearly. Directly ahead were the expansive ruins of an ancient cliffside settlement; its structures, terraces, stone-walled boundary stretched along the beach west behind, then east far as the eyes could tell.

Seeing it no longer worked the same magic it once did, those great feelings invoked become seldom; all things objected by man’s eyes also subject to subjective tarnishing, metaphysical deterioration manifested through eye of beholder. From there watched the sun fall away behind the city glinted gold, a slanted bar of light tinging the horizon, compressed into a flat disc like a flying saucer. I saw the light dim before it went, illumining goldenly the whitewashed cubiform houses of red, blue, beige domed-rooves, between the alleys of forsaken marketplace shops in the lower regions. Saw as it crept, faded away up interwoven flights of broad stone steps - connecting every structure like an elaborate maze - as if with the flitted steps of a slow climber. And then it was gone and the village grey in shadow.

For most part summer had been dry, although very wet, inclement in short turns with the climate gone volatile. Storms which wracked the sea below scythes of lightning flashing across the sky, with bouts of thunder shaking scapes of the land - racketed from stormclouds as if orchestras of brass instruments arranged for a heavens-felling composition. Before, the spring went in a dissimilar fashion, fair, cool, of an intimate, swaddling pleasance, perforating pours, percolating the mind. At slow rebirth of nature transfusing an awakening of many things, beneath the tenderly swathed paints of a renewed ether. Yet now, it were midsummer and that the sun had reigned long, an oppressive heat, many a day blazed infernally; a fiery carbon as if atomically broiled in the steam erupted of Hades’ chthonic geysers, such with the malice and fury as if Cronus father of gods at long last cracked through the cavern Nyx in the bowels of Hellmount to spew streams of molten jet setting aflame very particles of the air itself.

After scooping up the buckets I walked ahead the sands, to where the beach ended. High on up above the silhouetted village loomed, a twilit bastion no less mystifying than a monumental obelisk or pyramid. A glimmer of refracted light kissed the apex of rocky cliff were it composed: its cluster of structures like an intricately detailed carving set in the edifice of an ivory mount. A supposed ancient place of worship for Hellenes, brethren to the mountainous cuneiform Behistun Inscription worshipped by Zoroastrians of old. A site to witness the beginnings of a typified art, culture and civilization, such as with the cave sketches and rock formations of early men.

Upon a highest ridge stood out the cross-topped steeple, idol spires of an old Orthodox chapel which were beige, brown, limestone-based, eroded smooth. The church nestled lowly in the basal of a green plateau leading to a range of mountains, forests farther beyond. Fair distance below its threshold was a set of ten steep, broad steps, fifty feet wide and trailing off a cobblestone goat-pass woven from beach unto eastern shoulder of the village; of old it walls stood higher than castle gates, crowned with a granite arch cut with windows and sconces. Now it was but few feet off the ground, meagre and littered with crumbled debris. A short, contiguous wall of iron-embossed granite spanned its fringe at the beach below. Gave way to a modest opening where the goat-pass started, looking up to the plateau and great Greek oaks, cypresses, beeches and chestnuts dreamily swaying, troughing and re-erecting in the gentle breeze like seesaws. Far in distance glowed the discolored peaks, bright and ghostish with off-ethereal colourized shades.

Severely, I walked way along the beach until arrived at the partition in seawall, buckets weighing leaden in my hands. Its entire fringe was mottled with withered fauna, scraggly stalks of grass. On there went through the opening into a vestibular courtyard of ruinous mortar, cracked stone, over a threadbare choral carpet and dusty mound of wreckage to the foot of goat-pass. Trace by trace, as though the trail of steps was the cranium to tail of an earthworm boring the ground, its lowest tiers were barely visible until a certain elevation lifted enough from beach and erosion to ascend uniformly; it was an old, time-beaten path possessing a nomadic modesty melded with charm of the village.

Winding up the steps, they curved like a serpent into the gizzard of the village: a wide terrace with pillared, open-concept, modular leisure rooms, public baths, sitting alcoves. The walls were frescoed and had long ago begun to flake and peel off. Broad precipices offered incredible views of the horizon; a shell of purple light husked from faded hues of ichor and crimson smelt inward, unhatched where it hung slow, collapsing into blackness of a blackhole firmament. No clouds were visible in the darkness; dark bled through; pitch as nightsoil sort that consumes everything, impenetrable as death. I placed the buckets down to stand, at the edge look out a moment. Sea was interminable, sheeted glass smooth to perfection, everlasting bed of life, moisture and mineral, bereaved nothing.

Fiery light blazed from an oil-burner in the head of a bronze lamppost at the far end of terrace. Cobblestone setts shone like bone skulls etched in the shrouded descent to a chthonic catacomb. Moon was at waxing gibbous, purple and tinged with a hint of translucent red, stars aplenty, ellipsed valleys of cosmic radiance. Leaves, dust wisped in the breeze. Sifted along the floor of the terrace. Scuttled against steps of the goat-pass. The stars twinkled in a way uncanny, as if took cue or were reacting to each other. Blue. Silver. Red. Blinking like a million gazing eyes might be doing. Leaves. Dust. Stars. All seeming to portend some sort of felt, yet unperceivable entity nearby.

This sentiment I carried, striding back over to the goat-pass. When going farther up the great semi-circle stairway. As plodding up each stair. Stronger it impressed, though as then I was set and headed toward an impending fate. A destiny Kundalized; provocative sense that I, inevitably in my progression, was gone for an ineluctable neutrality that binds me, which shall in all forms inexorably come to pass.

I went on up the cobblestones with the buckets, both arms and shoulders numb from carrying. Upon a proximity of narrowed steps tread gentler than the rest. There I hunched forward so as to not trip, the navels of each bucket dragging off the setts. Foam, saline water sloughed out, splashing the cobbles, spilling darkly upon stone.

As the staircase widened, still a distance to the summit rose a diagonal, whitewashed wall separating the stair from a terraced level, and another case, blue-dyed whitewashed, farther up which could lead back down to a partitioned level. There I placed down the buckets to scale overtop the dividing part. Cautious, lowered myself and found footing on a ledge connected to that terrace, reached back over wall to gather the buckets then shimmied along the ledge until it joined the terraced floor, smooth and spread out before me in the darkness with quaint houses tucked in the background.

The feeling arose again, changed now than in its initial conception. Settled in some way. Across the terrace a brisk gale surged then died out. Something must be around any corner now. Strangest ambience enclosing, flooding outwards auric like a shimmering heatwave. Darkness seemed lifted a bit, structural contours serenely, greyly texturized. Went walking along past houses seemed to glide by like automobiles passing on a freeway. Felt feeling full and growing, evermore and stronger the farther went; first swelled in mine mind such as a nutshelled idea before blossoming inside chest, becoming all that I thought of, sensed, felt. Closing in now, could not know towards what. Continued past dozens of structures to where terrace gave way onto slanted, lower corridors between broad whitewashed walls and shrouded rows of alcoves. Breeze flush, shadowy splotches and, somewhere, at the end of long corridor a pale blue light gleaning vaguely.

A palace room with high, broad walls deep within hidden chasm. Urns, baskets and decorated pottery arrayed on small tables and antique dressers backed against walls. Men, bulls, sea monsters, centaurs, minotaur’s maze and hoplites at war, women prostrated before palatial kings and foreign rulers in strange lands were depicted in watery blue, bloodred and ichor frescoes mostly deteriorated. At the wall of a far corner shone faint, spectral light where clotted shadow grain hung blacker than the rest.

Again, the feeling burgeoned once more; a well of sensation pooling over within thine heart; something stirring intuition fluttered outward from the dark corner like the winds of a turbine, embracing me indiscriminately in the darkness and prompting me there. An intimacy. To come ahead. Go forward. For what awaited. Into the welting shadow-grain of that dark, distant corner. Stopped halfway across the room, taking pause where stood. As knew what came next, I always did.

Beforehand tended to feel like one should take a moment. For thought. To consider. Reflection. Spiritual, not egoic. Intuitively, nor thought about or predetermined. I ha never been religious, not since childhood nor superstitious for that matter. Yet what would transpire within the room beyond shadow through the majestic chamber, the feeling that could or would not conclude, were a thing which foremost inspired modesty. As if granted an audience to witness secrets of the past unfolding. Like being watched by the divine. Ceremonial. Spiritual. Ancient.

So, I waited long enough to be calm, letting humility. Then stepped forth towards the shadows.