Smoke and Mirrors

and left the inkpots and the nibs for ever.

There were good months and bad.

Cold, cold, the sea was bitter and brine, the nets cut my hands,

the lines were tricksy, dangerous things; still,

I’d not have given it up for the world. Not then.

The salt scent of my world made me sure I’d live forever.

Scudding over the waves in a fine breeze,

the sun behind me, faster than a dozen horses across the white wave tops,

that was living indeed.

The sea had moods. You learned that fast.

The day I write of now, she was shifty, evil-humored,

the wind coming now and now from all four corners of the compass,

the waves all choppy. I could not get the measure of her.

We were all out of sight of land when I saw a hand,

saw something, reaching from the gray sea.

Remembering my father, I ran to the prow and called aloud.

No answer but the lonely wail of gulls.

And the air was filled with a whirr of white wings, and then

the swing of the wooden boom, which struck me at the base of the skull:

I remember the slow way the cold sea came toward me,

enveloped me, swallowed me, took me for its own.

I tasted salt. We are made of seawater and bone:

That’s what the stationer told me when I was a boy.

It had occurred to me since that waters break to herald every birth,

and I am certain that those waters must taste salt—

remembering, perhaps, my own birth.

The world beneath the sea was blur. Cold, cold, cold . . .

I do not believe I truly saw her. I can not believe.

A dream, or madness, the lack of air,

the blow upon the head: That’s all she was.

But when in dreams I see her, as I do, I never doubt her.

Old as the sea she was, and young as a new-formed breaker or a swell.

Her goblin eyes had spied me. And I knew she wanted me.

They say the sea folk have no souls: Perhaps

the sea is one huge soul they breathe and drink and live.

She wanted me. And she would have had me; there could be no doubt.

And yet . . .

They pulled me from the sea and pumped my chest

until I vomited rich seawater onto the wave-wet shingle.

Cold, cold, cold I was, trembling and shivering and sick.

My hands were broken and my legs were twisted,

as if I had just come up from deep water,

scrimshaw and driftwood are my bones,

carved messages hidden beneath my flesh.

The boat never came back. The crew was never more seen.

I live on the charity of the village:

There, but for the mercy of the sea, they say, go we.

Some years have passed: almost a score.

And whole women view me with pity, or with scorn.

Outside my cottage the wind’s howl has become a screaming,

rattling the rain against the tin walls,

crunching the flinty shingle, stone against stone.

“Now hear us as we cry to Thee

For those in peril on the sea.”

Believe me, I could go down to the sea tonight,

drag myself down there on my hands and knees.

Give myself to the water and the dark.

And to the girl.

Let her suck the meat from off these tangled bones,

transmute me to something incorruptible and ivory:

to something rich and strange. But that would be foolish.

The voice of the storm is whispering to me.

The voice of the beach is whispering to me.

The voice of the waves is whispering to me.

WHEN WE WENT TO SEE THE END OF THE WORLD

by Dawnie Morningside, age 11 ¼

What I did on the founders day holiday was, my dad said we were going to have a picnic, and, my mum said where and I said I wanted to go to Ponydale and ride the ponies, but my dad said we were going to the end of the world and my mum said oh god and my dad said now, Tanya, its time the child got to see what was what and my mum said no, no, she just meant that shed thought that Johnsons Peculiar Garden of Lights was nice this time of year.

My mum loves Johnsons Peculiar Garden of Lights, which is in Lux, between 12th street and the river, and I like it too, especially when they give you potato sticks and you feed them to the little white chipmunks who come all the way up to the picnic table.

This is the word for the white chipmunks. Albino.

Dolorita Hunsickle says that the chipmunks tell your fortune if you catch them but I never did. She says a chipmunk told her she would grow up to be a famous ballerina and that she would die of consumption unloved in a boardinghouse in Prague.

So my dad made potato salad.

Here is the recipe.

My dads potato salad is made with tiny new potatoes, which he boils, then while their warm he pours his secret mix over them which is mayonnaise and sour cream and little onion things called chives which he sotays in bacon fat, and crunchy bacon bits. When it gets cool its the best potato salad in the world, and better than the potato salad we get at school which tastes like white sick.

We stopped at the shop and got fruit and Coca-cola and potato sticks, and they went into the box and it went into the back of the car and we went into the car and mum and dad and my baby sister, We Are On Our Way!

Where our house is, it is morning, when we leave, and we got onto the motorway and we went over the bridge over twilight, and soon it got dark. I love driving through the dark.

I sit in the back of the car and I got all scrunched singing songs that go lah lah lah in the back of my head so my dad has to go, Dawnie darling stop making that noise, but still I go lah lah lah.

Lah lah lah.

The motorway was closed for repairs so we followed signs and this is what they said: DIVERSION.

Mummy made dad lock his door, while we were driving, and she made me to lock my door too.

It got more darker as we went.

This is what I saw while we drived through the center of the city, out of the window. I saw a beardy man who ran out when we stopped at the lights and ran a smeary cloth all over our windows.

He winked at me through the window, in the back of the car, with his old eyes.

Then he wasnt there any more, and mummy and daddy had an arguement about who he was, and whether he was good luck or bad luck. But not a bad arguement.

Their were more signs that said DIVERSION, and they were yellow.

I saw a street where the prettiest men Id ever seen blew us kisses and sung songs, and a street where I saw a woman holding the side of her face under a blue light but her face was bleeding and wet, and a street where there were only cats who stared at us.

My sister went loo loo, which means look and she said kitty.

The baby is called Melicent, but I call her Daisydaisy. Its my secret name for her. Its from a song called Daisydaisy, which goes, Daisydaisy give me your answer do Im half crazy over the love of you it wont be a stylish marriage I cant afford a carriage but youll look sweet upon the seat of a bicicle made for two.