Reaching The Shores [Naiser Vail Ferry Dock]

The summer months had come and gone, and the autumn gloom with all its dreary beauty was overtaking Ireland. The Emerald Isle’s seas of sage grass and viridian forests with their carpets of velvety moss had faded to amber and bronze, and while they were no less beautiful for the loss of the life that gave them their vibrant shades of green as it sunk into the soil once more to slumber during the colder months, they were pall shadows of their former selves. Even the waves of the mighty river that cleaved Naiser Vail in twain seemed subdued, its mood turned as somber as that of the man that beheld them from his place upon the bridge that spanned the watery divide. He rest his elbows on the rail, his back curving forward in a lazy arch, with his joined hands stretched out over the water. The top hat atop his head canted forward like a child anxious for a closer look and creeping towards the edge until he slipped, but the hat maintained its perch. Brown eyes, barely alight with the luster of life, shrouded in the shadows cast by the hat’s brim like a thin mask across the man’s features, slid back and forth with the slow pace of a caged predator as he scanned the river for the ferry.

For weeks he had come to the same spot, returning each evening after he closed shop to wait and watch. It seemed that many people, too many in his opinion, left Caislin Hallows and even Naiser Vail for summer holiday for trips abroad on the continent and beyond. He envied them as much as he had despised their leaving. Since the departure of the students and staff of Caislin Hallows and many of the less interesting inhabitants of Naiser Vail for their vacations, the Puppeteer had been bored, left with little entertaining to occupy him during those long months.

Soon, he knew that they would begin returning from their trips and journeys. Moths drawn to the flame, he thought as he shut his eyes and exhaled a sigh. The breath left his lips in a small puff of steam. Already, winter seemed to be closing its chill fingers around the world in the evenings. While summoning heavier attire was well within his ability, the Puppeteer simply endured the cold seeping into his clothing and soaking into the flesh it contained. It reminded him that while Ireland seemed to have died all around him, he was still alive.

The Puppeteer lifted his head, his back and shoulders straightening. In the distance, he spied the distant glimmer of the ferry’s light as chugged down the river towards Naiser Vail’s tiny pier, though the evening fog was settling across the river, draping the waves with clouds as soft and thin as the finest lace. Would tonight be the night that someone of interest finally returned to Naiser Vail or would he leave disappointed again?

The voice resonating from the speakers on the ferry was drowned out by the time they reached the man on the bridge, its words lost in the slosh of sea against shore, not that the Puppeteer would have paid them any mind. From his perch, he watched the ferry’s progress as it approached the pier and finally docked. Mooring lines, so like his own threads, were cast out and tied to posts, securing the vessel to its berth. Mortals said that no one knew knots better than a sailor, but the Puppeteer, even from his distant vantage, saw enough to condemn their work as sloppy. They were practical but nothing else. Was that sufficient for the best among mortals? he wondered, to simply fulfill the need and nothing more. Where was the artistry? The pride in one’s craft? With a soft scoff, he averted his gaze from the anchorage to the gangplank as the mariners lowered it.

It wasn’t long before the ferry’s riders began to disembark, clanking down the gangplank at their own private paces. Some were slow, eyes wide with wonder as they gawked at the splendor they had never beheld before, while others hurried passed, heads lowered as they ignored the formerly familiar sights for which they had traveled to forget. He wondered how many returning from their sojourn might look up and discover that the Naiser Vail to which they returned was not the one they had left behind. In such a short time it seemed that the tiny village had undergone a most drastic transformation. Half the village was still locked in time, held captive by the obsessions of a vampiress set on reliving the past forever lost. And the other half had become cogs in the machinations of a mysterious businessman whose influence seemingly spread over night, buildings crumbling as soon as they fell into his clutches, only to have new, modern architecture rise in their place like flowers rising with the dawn from the rot of a felled oak. There was a secret war going on without any soldiers, side pitting nothing against nothing. So far, he’d not heard of any word between the two generals as they arrayed their assets against one another, testing influence in what he heard was called a “cold war”.

The Puppeteer shook his head, pushing the pointless thoughts from his mind as he resumed his watch over the water below. The squabbles of other immortals were as unimportant to him as those of their lessers, they simply lasted longer. Years became decades, even centuries, and oh so boring. Just thinking about it brought a yawn to the Puppeteer’s lips and he lifted a hand to hide it. He stifled it when he heard the sharp rap of tall, thin heels on the stone of the bridge. It was hard to not recognize the clicks for what they were—after all, cobbling was just another skill of his. He heard her hum, filling the silence between the tap of her heels like water sifting through the holes in a sieve. There certainly was no silent approach for this woman, he assessed, given the added ruckus of your luggage, and then as if on cue, she spoke up to without a doubt announce her presence and in an effort to draw his attention from the river.

With a half-hearted shrug, the Puppeteer acknowledged her statement. “It is no more beautiful than it was yesterday or the day before or a week ago for that matter, and no more than it will be tomorrow, so it is hardly beautiful at all.” Usually only mortals found beauty in change, in the fleeting aspects of life as they counted seconds with bated breath, but the Puppeteer found consistency and permanence dull. Why live forever if forever meant every moment would be like the last and next? It cheapened the experience. At least many immortals agreed, even if only to themselves or in hushed voices behind closed doors, that humans lived fuller lives in less than a century than most immortals did in whatever eternity they lived.

But there was no immortal closer to human than the bodysnatcher that stood on the bridge with a passerby, an unfamiliar mortal, as his only companion. He turned from the splashing waves, their crests dancing in the mist of the fog, and set his eyes on her. While the woman was appealing enough, her attire was more alluring with its rather unusual flair. It wasn’t often that the townsfolk dressed in such outlandish outfits and her wardrobe marked her as either a flamboyant tourist or one of the unusual denizens of Caislin Hallows. His own outfit was similarly out of place, given the blackness of the cloth that no smote of dust dared to fleck, and the modern cut of his suit that still hinted at a regalness of a bygone era.

“Is this your first time to Naiser Vail?” he asked, diverting the conversation with a question to satisfy his own curiosity before she could continue in a less than desired direction. His voice was neither deep nor high in pitch but settled somewhere in between and he spoke with a plain cadence, lacking any music to it. His face, while bordering handsome, was not the definition of masculine beauty: his cheeks and flesh were pale, despite the recent passing of the summer, and his eyes, with their jaded gaze, were the brown of earthworks. The top hat atop his head cast light shadows upon his face, though as the dipped lower along the horizon, the shadows grew in length and deepness of shade until the soft glow of the street lamps set along the edge of the bridge brightened and reformed the shadows on his features. All things considered though, there was nothing particular special about the man on the bridge. He appeared, after all, as nothing more than the flesh he wore: a simple human.

“You hardly look an old woman,” he commented as he sized her up with a casual glance. He gave a subdued shrug of his shoulders, the dark cloth of his suit barely shifting across his frame, before adding, “But then again, looks can be deceiving, and I should know better than anyone.” Here he was, a man millennia old conversing with a woman who probably hadn’t seen the passing of a century’s worth of years but still called herself old. He wondered if eons ago, when he’d still been human and constrained to the mortal coil, if a similar thought had ever crossed his mind, but it was too long ago to remember and he dismissed the matter. She was human and they had such an unusual way of looking at things. Their lives were fleeting whereas his was eternal. Her manner of speaking was even stranger though, but then again, it could have just been an artifact of the age, though he had thought himself already well adjusted to the era after a year’s passing since his resurrection.

Her next sentence, which formed itself into a question, was far clearer and less queer. With a bow at the waist, an arm tucking beneath the bend of his body, the man lowered his head though the top hat never shifted from its tilted perch atop the nest of his hair, as if it defiantly denied gravity’s grasp. “Why, I am none other than the Puppeteer, proprietor of the Nimble Needle of this fair town of Naiser Vail, nestled upon the river banks so near to the Hallows with all its otherworldly haunts.” Even the speaker had to admit it was a bit overly dramatic, but when in a dour mood, he always favored the theatrical. How better to improve one’s mood than to embellish oneself and the world around him? And who better to embellish than a man who thrived on creating, decorating bodies and anything else he desired with his peculiar talents and magics.

The Puppeteer lifted from his bow with a light flourish of his hand, his top hat remaining positioned on his head. He was far less curious about the woman than she about him, it seemed. But better to have her as a minor distraction and possible entertainment than to continue brooding over the spell of quiet that had overtaken Naiser Vail and the neighboring citadel Caislin Hallows over the summer months. It was already fall, the life fading from the leaves, and yet, the place seemed as deserted as ever. As dead as the area had become, he wondered if the trees would rouse in the spring or if they would slumber eternally.

“Cold?” he asked, noticing the chill in the evening autumn air. His eyes alit upon her, gaze drifting across her flesh in search of goose bumps like a survey scouting for mountain ranges. Even he was not immune to the brisk temperature and he felt a tingle through his body as his body strove to keep itself warm. It was a weakness of his less than immortal vessel. Of course, in an instant, he could summon a garment from the endless wardrobe, which spanned centuries and cultures , in his mind to ward off the breath of winter trying to sneak into the air. For the moment, he decided against it, against allowing her the knowledge of his abilities.

The Puppeteer was in agreement with her first statement and he demonstrated his assent with a brief nod of his head, the posh chapeau sitting as steady as could be. Like a stolid acrobat, the stove pipe hat never stumbled and dared the viewer to wonder if even a world turned topsy-turvy would be enough to topple it. Her laughter received a far less favorable reaction and the Puppeteer rose from his bow with an irritated frown weighing down the corners of his lips like the trailing lengths of ribbon done-up in a bow. Just as quickly as his agitation had appeared though, it vanished when she twitched in response to his question.

Generous was a term few in his life would ever apply to him, and while he decided upon an act that might portray him as such, he was already planning fees to charge for his benevolence. With the slightest display of power, the Puppeteer waggled his fingers in the air and a soft silk shawl settled across his shoulders with the gentleness of a leaf gliding to the forest floor. Despite the thinness of the fabric, it shielded her from the chill of the autumn air. Of course, it would be so easy for her to cast off the garment if its touch spooked her. For the time being, he would satisfy himself with knowing that the kindness would surely buy a more favorable opinion of the dark-clad man that presented it. Let her know his secret, just this one, for he knew that if she was a resident of Caislin Hallows, she would learn it one day anyway.

“Life would be awful boring without a little queerness,” he murmured before turning on his heel and giving a wave over his shoulder to bid her good bye. “Keep warm, they say tonight might be the first frost,” he said as he walked down the length of the bridge, the lamp posts arrayed along its rail casting a multitude of shadows. Before and behind him, shadows lay before him like dark, lush carpet.

(Exit)