(№2.3)

The next day, the beach was a sanguinary battlefield, disaster struck and shook slendidly.

All the fish in the sea died in mysterious circumstances and penetrated the air with their stench of death, laying on the sand, blackened and singed, blood and oozing phlegm leaking out of their gills and streaming like agonising tears out of their pearly, blind eyes, quite a big number of flies invested and swarming to millions and millions, happily feasting.

The anger of the villagers was so tangible, touching, inflaming and setting ablaze the air, as they were cursed to be denounced just another moronic, foolish crowd, just like every town before them, lured in a trap by a blue magical ship, and failing after all precautions and noble intentions still to avoid and to not yield to temptation, now lusting for vengeance.

Most of all, it was catastrophic inasmuch as the fish were the main source of food for the folk faring on the bounds of the sea, yet the content and catch of years gushed out on the sand, stinking abominably, the sea void and sound, already lapping at the corpses and serenely drinking the black liquid and taking the fish back to their home, cleansing the crime scene nonchalantly, while all the people did was gawk and stare held by shock.

Her father, the same morning, declared with grave expression and sullen dejection, he wouldn't recommend consuming the flesh, as the fish probably passed due to most excruciating, painful disease, perhaps kin to jump on humans next.

While several strong men grumpily walked in the forest to collect wood for the fire to get rid of the fish on a sufficient pyre and the women distraughtly went on with the tasks of the day, some were poked by inspiration and greek muses muttering, so the girl sneaked into town, invisible and overlooked to steal a pig bone from the slaughterer with his thoughts in the stars. She washed it out with water from a small current, cleaned it completely with a pungent substance her father used to rinse wounds, and started commencing the tedious process of whittling, for a small dagger was not far to also drop in her pockets. Her plan was to create her own music, to resemble the blue ship. Some far back, travellers wishing to across the story sea came and sat around a heating pyre a bit absent from the village and one had held such a flute to his lips alike the one she wanted to create now, producing whimsical, tender sounds. 

The flute was not pretty, with only four rough and chunky holes, though efficient as she blew her first tone and ran deep in the forest to serenade the birds and squirrels and play her instrument until she eventually would tire out of it, which yet seemed a long way ahead of contemplating.

It worked more formidable than anyone would ever hope for.

But now as the terror of the constant visits of the Skeleton Crew were not anymore an exciting piece of news – came they once, came they twice, and hopefully thrice or their petty town had gone into swathing, dwindling pillars of smoke, houses equalling stakes of bursting, erupting, loud flames - things had changed. The villagers in hindsight smarter and shot from their high horses remained every time in their houses, pillows pressed on heads to extinguish the beautiful sounds of notes, the crying and beckoning of sirens – yet they never succeeded as the songs demanded to be heard, enjoyed, furtively and dolorously beguiling. Meanwhile one of their own sat at the edge of a cliff with dangling feet unnoticed, wetted with sea sprawl, still no shudder ever worked her body when concurrently immersed by the sounds of heaven, the only listener, the only one that would clap after each concert.

She felt the curiosity of the creatures on board every time she appeared unfazed, unafraid only how pure children could fathom to be, because of what happened last time as a result of their arrival.

It's not in the nature of any lass or lad, a child to shrink back in fear and wince in fright, it's the heart-wrecking duty of the respectable parents to teach a kid of the daunting scares and horrors of these world, girded and armed to persist the ordeal life was, in tried excellence. It made one strong, knowing how hard to push, informed about the limits and the dread incited, equally as it weakened them, for curiosity and inquisitiveness are mostly banned and banished out of the heart and mind, for what you cannot parse, recoiled in reservation might as well be the thing to kill you.

Sometimes she had the feeling they played some pieces only for her, as upon every visit, her favourites would be immediately played after their main song, the ballad to turn the rebelling waves into squabbling kittens, killer whales the likeness of dolphins and to veil the moonlight, hollowing for nautical miles unstoppably and relentlessly.

The adults suspected demons would live on the ship. Grown-ups fed many lies. Still some lies are closer to reality than the truths you decided for yourself to appoint as correct.

The girl refused to stubbornly believe that and stated they were rather seraphic, just angels, than creatures of borne purgatory. Avenging those who suffered and sought justice to the brutal and rough.

She desired to figure sense of them, be the first humans to disperse and to unknot the riddle of the Skeleton Crew, musing for hours without end in promised prospect, yes, back when she still could ponder all great day, play in the forest like the innocent, radiant, blithe little girl she used to be, cradled in the evening by the loving touch of her mother and praised by her father for her hungering to study medicinal technics surely coming to clever use in the future and the mere will to novate his footsteps imprinted.

But eventually, it all crashed down on her tiny head, ranked with the finest hair of raved gilded silk, life spitting in her face and exposing those rotten toothy-pegs touched by a breath of death, as it was supposed and doomed, ensured, her father dying the night of the new moon out of the unexpectant blue. The damned source found in a sudden and swift fever that took him quietly and quickly, neither allowing his wife nor daughter to seize opportunity to bid their final goodbyes to loving husband and adoring father.

The discussion arose almost immediately after the funeral, gossip so steaming and fuming, the sheer stench of it angering her out of bounds. For the villagers put it in their portioned minds to discuss and concomitantly settle on the glorious, electric fate of the ironically reprieved female family of two, issued by the agog men of town, delving and attacking the unprotected girl without the armour and unbudging obstacle her father had been. She should be wed almost immediately in her 14th summer on this Earth that year to let the fortune and opulence the father marooned on the world in good, deferential hands. Hands and ownership she would have no say over to determine with.

The girl weeped for many days, mourning her beloved and mighty sire being so much more than he ought to be, weeping for her pending marriage where she was forbidden and excluded to express neither will nor want, cursed and screamed and hit her mother a few times, even though her hands were just as equally tied tightly impotently and she could say nothing in this matter to protect her. A cruel, cruel unjust world it was. Where barbaric slugs and routs of mischievous slugs prospered, while honest people were felled left and right.

She was sadly only a woman.

And her daughter only a girl.

To make it even worse, the Cristian religion involved themselves in that matter and stated the family to be marked by the devil – as for once the father had probably not died because of any influences from the Skeleton Crew, yes, people were even astonished in remembrance that humans could die without the aid of the Harbingers of Death, still nature could reenact on its shards and remnants of power claimed. Still, the evil vibes and spirits had compacted and resided in the soul of the young girl without redemption and she must be cleansed ere by ritual, afterwards by marriage.

It was as it is; the village decided in order to redeem her mother and herself, to purge the family's roots, she must marry the priest of the village, a man matured to impressive half of a century, accompanied with oily hair and festered teeth, a macabre laugh resounding like the snickering of vicious crows accounting easy hive.

Was it enough mocking, taunting your price after having clearly won? Of course not. It would never be enough. Humans could never own enough prosperity and wealth and simultaneously could never relent from hitting and tormenting their fellows, for a planned exorcism was shortly in order after, a ritual to drain the evil red liquid squalling in her contaminated veins and drilling holes into her head to relieve virulent spirits, the mere indolent vice of her to possess flowing blood in her hands, just insolent.

From time to time as the feast drew closer and threateningly nearer when all she craved for was time to stay frozen, the girl would muse and stand tacitly at the dropping cliff resembling a statue, somewhat thinking about jumping – thinking about her father, contemplating the freeing free fall before collapsing on stone and rock, uniting with calcified crystals and being one with the water soon to be lured by the scent of her blood, cleanly licking up her body, unbound now and over any laws.

"How could you do this to me, Fate?", she whispered bewilderedly to the waves the question in an foreign language, your ears today cannot comprehend but in splinters. She dared the rhetorical prospect of her inquiry gone unanswered, for the content of her question alike the reciprocated response had plagued her for weeks now, and she felt lighter and exempt merely by saying it out loud, even to none, save pine, stone, water and rock.

But Gods could understand any language, as explained in the collection of Greek Mythology, any accounted sagas told of it to be honest.

Yet the Goddess did not answer, as wind whipped her hair fro and lo and only shallow darkness beckoned closer.

Would it be an act of hubris to end her life here and there, marching on dark and murky plays, stripped of suffering and pain, depleted of sensations of any kind, horrible yet wondrous alike? Would the Goddess punish her, turning an exit too early and too violent, just explode in a blow of fuming fire, rather than dimly fading and sizzling out, would her afterlife, that of her mother be endangered with said last fruitful action of hers?

Tears came now as menial as sweat occurs during a sunny day, now darkness and nocturness reigned all around her in a lulling, calming manner, a draped sheet over the landscape, with only the hint of dawn as a curious idea, dipping the edge of the horizon in lighter hues, when straining your eyes and looking on the horizon engulfed and swallowed by the ocean, where a glinting line of morning creeped on, light yellow and humble still, dubious and indecisive.

She acted like the child she was in every right supposed to be in fraying tethers and shatters from mourning and bewailing her father gone, forsaken, drawing a pouting fit where opposed obstacles rose and pondering eccentrically only about her benefit, and not that of her mother, her parent actually still breathing and deeply plunged in maternal worry for what her future would bear. To be alive, even if bonded to an insufferable ancient specimen, she'd still see her mother everyday and it should prove to be enough, in time.

She blinked and harshly wiped the dampness from her cheeks, despising herself for lying so gravely and considered feeling fortunate. She never would, but her happiness was not important to anyone else except her and she could bite her tongue on said if it resulted in safety.

Perhaps the Goddess felt sorry at the sight of such an unlucky, unhappy child, for the marbled woollen future of the girl, one that undoubtedly would happen as it was foretold, with nothing left to do or to say, won't it now?

The night before the marriage, when her mother asked her to share a bed as they did when she was but a quickening infant, spending the night one last time together, in a mother-daughter embrace offering contrived safety and hope when there was not, the girl refused and told her she wanted to think a little about her situation, to be free one last time before being owned by the most delirious man in town as his most loyal peon.

It was indeed a very good rule on the grounds they lived that a man might not communicate with or however touch his future wife before the wedded ceremony was completed and absolved, so the priest had crucially avoided their home like the source of the most maniacally pestilence striking by mere a fleeting glance, instead smiling her a toothy grin and motioning of kissing her hand when they crossed rare paths in public. She visualised always to chop off whatever of her body caught in his slimy grabs, in response.

She only ever wanted to desert this small town, see what the world really could offer her beyond the perennial bounds of water and the raking conservativeness planted in the figures to the cabins next door, what she could study even when being female, more books she could read and music she could listen to even though clearly never attaining the exact quality of a certain Crew, though that wasn't the general notion, why. Song and carols had but all faded and dissipated in the kingdom she lived in, silently tabooed with the prospect of being thrown on a stake in the ocean to drown, prior being baked, if still neglectfully ignoring the law, issued by their leader, a pet to the king of Transylvania, mere a figure over the looming distance of the squeezed hostile empire of the byzantines, threatening to usurp the southern coastline, a character of flaccidity and sloth, with inhibited posture and worser skills to introduce control or even anything else beyond the false assumption of immunity, feign they couldn't be overrun and killed any second by the enmity and hatred of the byzantines armies, as if his meagre presence could defend even their shadows. This pathetic portion of a man could hardly do anything against the Skeleton Crew, but yet again, who could really?

The only effective commands he'd state and mutter, efficaciously concrete only to keep the pleasure and joy of the people in check and prohibited, him content in ostensibly having done something notable. Fine, let their ears die out of boredom and reliance on what slowly still killed them.

She sat as she always did on her favourite cliff, seeking the horizon with her eyes, unsure what she expected, yet the hope blooming in her heart was unmistakable quickening. Her decision made, sort of, but far from being executed, ample to have her weakening and wobbly legs, to march right back with her nose high and emotions discarded and dusted off, no one who'd guess the raging and ravenous war tumulting behind eyes shining with seeming equanimity.

She missed her father, wanted to vomit by the mere thinking about her husband-to-be and life proposed in general and with what possible action she merited any of this. The girl was only sure, placing her puffy cheek on her left knee, shuddering only faintly from the rising, damp cold radiating from the cool rooks beneath, moisture scrambling up her back, that irrelevant if she truly discovered the truth to the threading of her universe, it could not overturn the bargain struck. It was hardly out of her notice, neither this rotten hope nor the drowning of her despair.

The girl started humming a melody of hers, clumsily performed once upon many summers on her now rotten and moulded flute, her imperfect instrument she had to bury for the maritime climate foiled her uprising musical career just as viciously as what was about to unfold right in front of her eyes. Her own piece of music she composed years ago, ere the writ over the interdiction of music became from half-hearted jokes, unfortunately dreaded reality, stooping so low, humming incantations, a rather sad echo, waxed to be forbidden.

It was a light melody, actually composed for winter times with high pitched notes in the middle, almost remembering her of icicles, hanging down and glinting knowingly in the sun, pearls of melted ice like tears streaming from the abyssal, razor-sharp tip, vicious for being competent to fall down any second, led by gravity's iron rule and burying deep into the skull of whatever unlucky soul was so peasant to walk under carelessly. Light fanning in angles around the well-shaped corned horn, glittering majestically with a cascade of snowflakes drowning the scene in avalanche, waist-deep and flaked ever ground, in the hues of hardy clouds.

How round the drops yet really were before falling down, transparent pearls so wonderful, when made out of something such banal as water.

As a title, she thought about "In Midwinter" or something, uncertain, perplexed little, for real, hard, biting winter she could hardly recall ever having to experience this misfortune, still living only at the Black Sea and not the crucial, horrid arctic Sea with mild, tender cold seeking them, when the sun stood low at midday.

That was when she heard another ghostly tune mingling with hers and brutally ridding the air of the silent competition, a lesser song beating pointedly against the span of a sonata, tones revoking memory and emotions, before she could see it, small and slight tunes gliding over the waves to her, impatiently, straight ahead, undeterred and piercing right her heart so stone cold for too long, at last thawing.

The water circulating under her feet became calm, turning into a smoothed mirror, with white creases and folds barely trapped under the surface, beating sluggishly for leisure than moreover for reign, resembling rather a polished pathway you could walk until the other end of the world. She sat up, excitement hurdled in her stomach with a tinge of blessed thrill, her heart beating and padding anew with evolved exhilaration and fun, as she was revived and brought back from her sorrowing, mirthless grave, wreaking of her pitying depravity and captured sobs for inequity, angled and pushed abyss, entranced.

She knew who had come for her.

The sleek ship appeared out of nowhere, as mist would have dangled and lingered bedazzling over the surface there, where it had not, glowing bluer than ever, mysteriously azure, it pressed on her drained lacrimal glands, consulted this night on too many times, turning elegantly ten yards away from the shore, afterwards halting until complete gridlock.

The girl leaned forward, risking the fall now in her giddiness, with prying, glowing eyes.

The ship usually never ceased to true stoppage, at no time not dwindling and rippling away with the rhythm of the docile water, anchors never put to strain to be lifted overboard, the least of all spotting a grim form doing so, yet now it did and seemingly only for her.

The music carried firmly on, playing the Ballad of the Skeleton Crew.

But today, it sounded different.

It was still an invitation, but not for the dance of Death, losing yourself into an adventure mortal flesh and warm blood were not apt to endure, dancing and moving until you'd finally dropped dead and plunge into a last, challenging bliss in terror. In fact, that befall the poor commoners of a city in Portugal once, dancing until their souls would rub and integrate with the soil, they'd respired their containing water into sweat, complied by stronger spirits to lust and hunger for that thrill, that explosive burn-out dying of exertion, before they all did, weeping blood and snickering at the irony. That's yet a different story to narrate. Upon its ending you ought to know, they died ailed by agony and the incapability to cease laughing and exulting while doing so.

They weren't purposefully attempting to poison and strangle her with songs and chants, indeed conceding, provoking choices to be made here, the choice of all, the honour, to be made by her.

There was no grandeur though, after the abrupt puncture of the magnificent facade, rather it was something shy and intimate, a smaller question pointed to her.

The girl blinked several times, unbelieving and turned around, assuming that sudden parade of bend festivities was held for someone running around behind, predestined save her.

No one lingered behind impishly; she was completely alone.

They only could intend for her.

Carefully, not slipping and falling onto sharp rocks and ruining her story's end whilst ironically dying the death of being impaled, she stood up, and crossed the forest first cautiously impatient, stirring blood flow back to her vast asleep shins and limbs, ere bearing able to tolerate it any longer and commencing a full dashing sprint through the emerald thicket and tearing over gnarled roots her steadfast feet would not topple over, not today, not ever anymore, hurrying as fast as she could, desperate to reach the beach, fearing she might forfeit her only shot of salvation.

Rapidly and harshly breathing, the girl skidded to a halt at the beach, face red from the race, heart energetically pumping against her rips, untouched by usual spasm and cramps of her torso, tiring ever so slightly from endeavour, despite her electric eyes shining with admiration and dreamful longing, watching how the ship slightly neared itself to her, when it stopped and couldn't approach her more because of the lacking depth of sullen waters.

The last passage, if she chose to crest it to the end, could only be made by her alone.

The moon arose from a dark cloud, its light shining warmer than ever, illuminating the perfect way from beach to boat, the lighting truthful under encouraging spotlight.

The music continued playing and the girl thought on what to do next.

The music tethered and frayed her ears well, this time around refrained to cloud her mind and let motions fall languid, but sharpening her wits, the opposite of what it normally did in a pleasurable way.

She took one step into the Sea, the water playfully nibbling at her ankles, ushering her to move, to continue, foam spilling with air bubbles the size of thumbnails and lightly nicking around her shins, the hem of her gown dewed already.

The music went on, but differently; Something was missing, someone on board stopped playing. It was yet another mystery readied to be dispelled and shook with verity, her in front attentive to not miss a second. It was impossible to tell how many there were members, but she would atone for several at least, more than a pair.

She took another step, water now reaching her knees, wetting her pale nightgown fully.

She watched the ship and believed to hear for a partial second a loud screech, like a door being opened.

Then in the matter of a heartbeat, a ladder was thrown off deck, perfectly for someone to climb on deck, someone who couldn't supernaturally lift themselves into the air and repel forward aptly with strong stamina. Now let's stop better with these generalisations. Of course it was designated for her personal use, the spacings ideal and measured to fit her arms and legs, so that staggering out of the claiming waves, decked in droplets of ice cold sea water could be as easy as breathing to her.

That was everything the girl needed, every accelerator, before immersing herself all at once completely into the water and diving under, the temperature barely bearable, luke-warm from the zealous shine of the sun on the previous day.

She wasn't priced for her swimming skills at all, but the sea was calm tonight and almost carried her to the ship, the expectant blue glowing, pulsing along the rhythm of her agitated heartbeat, approaching closer and closer, until her skin would take on that ghostly illuminating radiance, spanning the still bereaving distance into mere seconds, beckoned like a fish on the hook to another side, another world beyond the wall of the surface, which she knew not a glimpse of, but longed to ascertain, to figure out what men had not for centuries and probably never would after her.

Her fingers brushed the rough wood, shocked how below the panoply of various shimmering blue light, breathtaking and simply incandescent, the blackest, deadest, rotten planks of wood lay installed, cracked worn beneath her soft finger tips, conjuring anew shivers with fresh goose flesh, daggers of newly risen doubt creeping in so close before the very end and perforating her heart, spoiling her fidgety wind of careless youth. Reminding the girl to levy her jubilant joy, although it was long too late to have her retune her decision, bought in by the mystery of all enigmas and allured by the tunes no human apt enough to resist once caught in its net. The trembling girl at last grabbed the very first string with dampened, numb fingers firmly, already struggling to stay floating on the surface, with only the gaping dark gorge of the unknown paddling around her feet and zealously waiting for her to slip and drown like many victims have and will for as long as its existence impends and demands, as if the claws of bodies rose to the surface attracted by the scent of her warm blood, anticipating her hesitation prior to seize.

These currents the fisher damned only too eagerly all day long and all day out were not much of a help either, presently reckoning that even if she wanted to retreat right at the finish line, she probably wouldn't be able to swim the way back to the beach.

Meaning there was only the path contingent to go up.

Thus she grabbed the next, pleading with the squeaking thread not to curse her in laughter and make her tumble down to her death below, a weak distraction really, to atone for the magic impulse she knew not anymore to suppress. Sighing, for the last time in her short life, she turned to the town of her upbringing, that in the end betrayed her bitterly, decisions all but locked, prying a good last gloating glance at all these people ought to rot while she sailed the world. Or something along these lines.

A small figure far away stood motionless on the cliff she had hung around all day scowling, coolly inspecting her.

She knew extracted from a deeper sense, that it was her mother, her dark brown hair indistinguishable melting with the gloom of the black prowled crowns of trees and the night sky glinting a dome above, the form she had hugged her small arms around countless times, a withering beauty always serene, also the women who gladly had her wed away and would now watch again powerlessly idly how her daughter would be shipped away by demons. But a mother's fault can often be forgiven by her offspring, if at last she accepts their decision.

Her mother held her left hand up and waved, a small gesture she wouldn't have expected. This crone she desperately had painted as an out righteous villain, gowned with black veil and saturnine apparel happened also to be the one to cradle her on her lap while she cried waterfalls after her father's passing, padding her back and drawing streaks of wet, entangled hair behind her ears, spending no word of comfort, but her warm appearance, existence, which sometimes sufficed just enough.

The daughter waved in return, surprised a bit by this tangible scene of mother-daughter-love, still there were no tears, nor of joy nor sadness.

Her mother seemed - in reality - genuinely happy for her. The woman standing on a cliff with her billowing cape behind touched her lips with her hand and turned the hand towards her girl.

Her daughter returned the gesture, looking one last time at the woman who raised her, taught her to be who she was today and continued climbing into an unknown future full of promises and a new life, perhaps a new purpose, remote from this band of bigots, and a mother who had loved her too less in vicinity, and could only show her affection from too far. True enough, for turning around, the girl was not to see her mother burst into tears, omitting from undignified groans out of character, still pitying her daughter for avoiding one horrible outcome with a funded eternity of misery. The small adage and wisdom collected only by a loving mother, over the years, sensing the cold truth up from the first time she held her on her lap. If you love your children, you have to set them free one day, when it would hurt the most, to still remain in their good graces, an image now painted only of the good.

The girl's goal had always been to figure out the reason for the existence of the Skeleton Crew, why they punished people, what divine instrument the ghostly crew afforded to attend and most important of all; If the frequent tale of monsters and demons residing on board emphasised the truth, nonsensical chimaeras born out of those despising the unfamiliarity or if the truth begged really much to differ.

It appears as if she will find out, before all of us, holding the secret close to her heart, always and forever.

Before reaching the deck, the girl couldn't resist, couldn't have her pride and ego overrule and spare her the shame, shooting one last glance at the cliff, one good last gaze of her last standing forth-bringer living on this world.

Her mother had gone with the wind, tolerable to many things except for seeing her daughter leave her alone. So, satisfied and steeled by that last glance, the girl pushed herself on board.

The next morning, the village would not only find their worshipped priest dead – his lying, deceiving throat had been torn to shreds by his own misericorde, but also his soon-to-be-wife gone, erased like her wretched mother, the house completely cleaned of money, books and even the slightest trace the family had ever lived there, gone as never existed.

The girl was never to be seen again, like her mother.

Of course, they did have some imagination on what happened to the devil's child and her bearer, yet no one ever knew in certainty.

Even you will probably never know.

Just another mystery around the Skeleton Crew I would say.

Was the story sentimental to your taste? I do put a lot of effort in vicariously and beseechingly conjuring all these gruesome pictures of spattered gore and plain, cold misery to even chill your hardened heart.

Let me confine you in a bit of a secret, reader. Irrelevant to what degree you fancied and reveled into that little tale, fought it cute, simple, plain and dramatic, if not all too tragic, placid, void of apace heartbreaks and most horrible deaths, easy, too easy, for life is never this simple, you might attest to that.

It's really of importance, because it never has happened, all of it above. Besides the included nuggets of other horrid scenarios, those in Greece and Rome and Portugal happening close enough as depicted, but the sought girl was not.

Or was she now somehow? In some other form, incredibly hard to decipher? You'll learn figment and reality are as thick as thieves together and to not believe a word you read, especially from me.

Of course it had happened, the girl really figured out the big, unspoken mystery. Yet under much more tragic circumstances, unlike this pretty tale of self-sacrifice and warding off a hated wedding, where the prospect of hope and excitement was enough, for in the end, she wished she wouldn't have.