Tide Child

October, 1911 

4:54 A.M. 

Faraway Island, England 

The door screeched open, shaving rust from its hinges. Hoss gripped the frame as he stumbled forward, his left leg trailing behind lamely, and his fingers clutched around the hollow head of his cane. At the three-legged dining table sat his boy, Fletcher. Moonlight peeked through the window and cast a pale beam upon the child’s shoulders; made him squint as he turned to his hobbling father. 

“On your feet, lad!” He snapped with not a second spared to look him in the eyes. He didn’t often, these days. “Light caught something on the shore.” 

Before the boy could speak, Hoss was fumbling for the lantern hanging by the entrance. He grasped at it with furled fingers, muttering unholy sentiments under his breath. Without checking behind him he threw open the front door and plunged into the blackness of the night. Small footsteps pattered behind him like raindrops, tossing up sand and refiguring it into new mounds. 

His eyes scanned down the coast, falling upon a glittering visage washed ashore. A frown split his lips. From upon his rise within the lighthouse it had appeared as some ordained grace from above, a divine shipment cast upon the sand for him to collect, yet as he neared, he saw his gift for what it was — a child. 

The old man heard his son catch up at last, gasping for air just behind him. “It’s too early,” he complained. “Far too early, and far too cold besides. What’s it? What’s washed up, Da?” 

Hoss scratched at his beard, now more white than not. “A little slip of a thing…” he whispered, “Couldn’t be more’n half of you.” Which was to say something, since already Fletcher was no giant in any respect. Twelve and could pass for seven, or so said the priest. He heard Fletcher scoff, “Leave it for the sea birds—” 

Before the boy was right and finished, Hoss battered him with the cane. “Quit that! Didn’t take no job as a lighthouse keeper to let little un’s die upon my watch, fool.” Fletcher stumbled to the sand with a split lip and bloody nose. Old man had struck him with the fat end. 

And though the boy said nothing, in his eyes rested a plain anger, one that Hoss had witnessed time and time again. Rooted behind that level gaze of his was a distaste for all things peaceful and sane. Fletcher had raged against the very idea of it since birth. He’s come into this world swinging, Sabina would say, and I’m sure he’ll leave it the same. Hoss was obliged to agree. His son was far too similar to himself to think anything but. 

However, something peculiar struck him then as those uncanny thoughts of a wife ten years dead crossed his salt-crusted mind. In particular how remarkably similar, though shimmering and sexless, the washed up child did appear to her likeness. A nose which hooked in that same avian manner; Eyes almond shaped and long-lashed; Pale locks of hair, too, drifting ever downward upon paler yet skin that did resemble what a daughter of his and Sabina’s might have been. A perfect image that never before had been reflected upon the world he walked each day. 

Hoss found himself reaching out, crouching low until his knees imprinted upon the sand with entire disregard to where his cane might fall. He pressed his hand against the child’s clammy face, lips gone purple, and with a great gash down the side of her abdomen. And stranger yet — there was a pearl. One which rested just within the torn flaps of skin, as though ripped fitfully from the unwilling mouth of a great clam. 

He dislodged it from the wound, rolled it round in his skeletal hand, and was shocked into prayer as another, larger, pearl took the other’s place. 

“She bleeds pearls…” he whispered to himself and then the sky. The moon was bright up there, darkness cascading over three quarters of the quarter moon. Stars blinked as though winking, as though promising and assuring all in one great cosmic gesture. And for this, Hoss, a man caught on the poor side of fifty, a sour old say-so Catholic who’d absconded church for seven odd years, folded his hands together and offered a prayer to the good lord above. He murmured the words lower than hell and pressed his forehead to the ground in supplication as he spoke them. 

Fletcher rose and shuffled over blearily. 

“Fetch the priest, lad!” Hoss roared to the little flea, “Tell him all as has transpired, and tell him true: that God has touched Faraway this dawn, and He’s sent a child of miracles, graceful as His own Jesus Christ!” And there were no complaints from the boy before he turned his small self away and began walking inland. Behind him, Hoss scooped the naked child into his arms and carried it off into the lighthouse. 

Fletcher kicked a stone, winced as it budged not an inch and found itself further embedded into the earth. “Shit!” he hissed. It were a word he learned from his Da. He stumbled forward and held to a tree for the sake of standing. The sun was just barely crossing over those same trees, though he saw little of it as the pines served to block it with their twiggish arms. The clock must’ve struck at six by then. 

Priest couldn’t live three hills closer, could he now? That’d be too convenient by half, he thought. And his angry mutterings, much like his fathers own, absorbed his thoughts as he traversed the inland path to that shack of Father Reeves’ own construction. 

It was the same path he’d walked each morning since he were just seven. And this trip would be easier if anything — usually there was a sack of goods hanging over his shoulder (apples, flour, salted meats, and sometimes wooden tools and spices). Goods for lessons, or so had been his father’s arrangement with the holy man. Fletcher found it a remarkably roundabout way to keep your own son from you, but then, his father was good at thinking on ways of doing that. 

After half an hour more of tumultuous walking, the boy found himself standing just before the wooden door of Father Reeves. Its hinges were rusted, though nothing so bad as what could be found clinging to the doors of the lighthouse. The priest’s own hands had carved it, and with his own, he knocked. Rapping his knuckles once than twice, as he’d been taught. 

“Who’s that now?” Called a voice from inside. 

It was high and less broguish than his own. But then, Father Reeves was an Englishman. Fletcher liked him in spite of that. 

He’d ministered at a boys school and asylum for the motherless and fatherlacking before striking out into the woods of Faraway. And in the time since, Father Reeves had told him enough things about the world to where some pale orphan child who bled pearls seemed natural as birth. Not everything unseen was a miracle, no matter how much a man might be inclined the other way. Fletcher was sure the holy man would see it just the same. 

“It’s the keeper’s boy,” he replied lazily.

“Ah! Here for lessons are you? Bit early for that, by my reckoning…” The door slid open slowly and Father Reeves stood tall in its frame. A handsome man by all imagingings. Better fit for the city streets of London or Liverpool, and in finer clothes than godly blacks besides. He had a full head of hair which was much estranged from Fletcher’s father who’d started balding somewhere within the last three or so years. He was also young, the priest. Younger than what one imagines when the word priest comes to mind. And though he was an Englishman, he was a Catholic. His best feature in Fletcher’s opinion. 

“No lessons today, Father.” 

“Is that the case? Well, my child, how about you step inside, eh? It can’t have been a pleasant walk.” Fletcher did as asked, and sat himself in the large cushioned chair just next to the furnace. “Would you like some tea? Or perhaps a scone? That Frenchman your father barters with brought fresh one’s just last week.” 

“No thank you,” Fletcher said politely. “I’ve come for a reason, see.” The priest raised a brow and motioned him to continue. “On the shore this morning father spotted a child washed upon the sand. There weren’t no wreckage we could see, and we could see far. It was a pale thing and haggard; could see its ribs wrapped under taut skin. Creepy little slipper, I think. Told him to throw it back, ‘fore he caned me.” 

There was a cut down the side of his face, sliced by some stray splinter of that old wicker stick. It didn’t hurt anything fierce but it bled like it should’ve. Come a fortnight there’d be a bruise if not a scar, not that he minded. His Da had plenty of those. 

Father Reeves bent down before him, his robes catching on his feet and near making him slip. “Damn things,” Fletcher heard him hiss. The holy man pulled his face nearer to the furnace light and winced. “That, my boy, might require stitches. I’d gladly do it myself if you’ll allow it?” Fletcher nodded. “Now what’s all this about the child? You called the poor thing an ‘it’. Why?” 

The boy shrugged, “Aye. Weren’t no thing ‘tween its legs, Father. Ain’t never seen nothing of it’s like and never aim to again if I can help it. Made me shiver.” He rolled his tongue over his teeth, swallowed. “Ever see a thing like that when you was at St. John’s?” 

The priest cracked the lid of an old army medical box. Queer that he should have it. Rusted hinges, too, like so many others one might find in Faraway. He pulled out a wad of stretchy looking paper and ripped away a square of it, dousing it with whiskey from a nearby bottle. “At St. John’s?” He asked, eyes cast far away. Fletcher expected the memories to be fond recollections, though by the priest’s expression they were anything but. “No, my boy, I can’t say that I have. Tell me more, if there is indeed anything left to tell.” Father Reeves looked at Fletcher expectantly. 

“Sure there is,” said the boy. “Father kneeled over it, next, and both us saw a deep cut down its belly. Inch or more, must’ve been. But it were a strange kind of cut, yeah?” And the priest looked at him as though to say: strange how? “Cause’ from it, came a pearl. Old bastard plucked it straight away, rolled it round in his palm, and God as my witness, another took its place.” 

Father Reeve’s lips were pursed, “You mean to say that this strange child was – excuse me – bleeding pearls? The kind from a clam?” 

“The very same.” Fletcher said. 

“By God, what you speak it true?”

Fletcher winced as the whiskey writhed within his cut, “That it is, Father. Though it mustn’t be so strange, should it? Ain’t no miracle, as my Da went and said. Can’t be. You’ll set him straight, won’t you, Father?” 

The priest stood suddenly and behind his eyes gears looked to be turning. “I’m afraid that your father is straight as an arrow, case being what it is. Praise be to Jesus, you’ll have to take me to him with expediency, my boy. With expediency! God has delivered upon this island a miracle child,” Father Reeves closed the medical box loudly and latched it shut. He carried it to the door by the wood handle. “And I must minister to it personally. Come now, my boy. To the lighthouse with us.” 

He was out the door just a second later. 

Hoss was rummaging through the pantry which was thin on food these last months. When that Frenchie came next, he’d have words for him. He had a feeling, too, that his boy had been stealing more than was required for that priest, damn them both. He grunted as he reached further than an old keeper should and settled finally on a can of beans. When the girl-child woke, he hoped that it would be enough to hold her over until he could get her into town. But she had yet to. 

The beans slipped flacidly into an old pot and he struck a fire underneath, pouring a cup of water and stirring it all around before making for his cabinet. He glanced over his shoulder at the blanket wrapped mound on Fletcher’s cot, the linens pulled all the way up to her chin. Satisfied, he drank from a quart of Vodka he’d purchased off some burly Polish boatswain. 

A jaunty hum was brought to his lips with the suddenness of a heart attack and he recognized it at once — Kalina Malina, one of Sabina’s. She’d told him once that it was a song her father had learned in the army, one that he’d brought home and taught her himself. On quiet days, when they’d lived in Cork, its fastness was slowed and each note was left to haunt their small abode. It would trickle down the stairs and fester in his ears as he chopped carrots and pulled cabbage. Those were good days. 

The child coughed fitfully and Hoss turned on his heel with the kind of speed a man in his condition shouldn’t employ. Still deep in sleep, he found her, though her forehead ran hot with fever. Even so, looking upon her familiar features did bring a smile to his hardened face. Her skin shimmered like old stars, and tracing fingers down her neck would lead you to feel each protrusion made by the pearls that lay just underneath. She was treasure in the human form, the very picture of incorruptible innocence that one might find also in a docile lamb or yet beautified caterpillar. She was perfect, and she was his. If only Sabina could have stood aside him. If only this child, birthed of the tides, could have come instead from her loins rather than the son he’d been left with. 

Fletcher kicked at the door impatiently, the shanty thing spitting dust like some old mummer. The priest stood calmly beside him, hands folded in front of him with the metal box hanging just in between. 

“Perhaps you might consider giving your father a moment?” Said Father Reeves. But it was a thing that needed not be said. Just a second later, the cranky face of Hoss appeared in the doorway, a scowl on his lips that was not unusual. For a moment he only spotted Fletcher and that scowl deepend, but then the priest crossed his eyes. 

“Ah, Father Reeves. Good of you to come,” he said as though he hadn’t asked after him. “I’m sure the boy has already informed you?” The priest nodded, “Good to hear. Come then, want you to give her an inspection. She’s taken to a fever, and my stitching ain’t never been good work; I figure you can do better, heal her in ways I can’t.” 

“Of course,” said the priest. 

Fletcher walked in after him and saw the pale child laying upon his cot. He was stewing something awful, but let it pass like the wind. Weren’t no good that came from anger. The cut on his face convinced him well enough of that. 

Father Reeves approached slowly, as though the thing that lay atop that cot were a deer he could scare away by moving with haste. He marveled at his luck. 

The priest knelt down and gently grabbed it’s arm, running callused fingers over the child’s shimmering skin. He felt the pearls pass underneath and smiled. God had delivered a miracle unto Faraway, and he was there to bear witness. 

Slowly, he unclasped the medical box and stuck his hand inside. The old keeper watched carefully from the wooden beam behind him and Fletcher might very well have rolled his eyes. But he paid them no mind. The war had taught the holy man many useful things to implement within his practice, and afterwards had spat him out into the priesthood. His knowledge was rusty twelve years gone of Africa, though he got a grasp on things quick enough. 

He pressed the barrel of his Webley .455 standard against the soft flesh of the child’s scalp, flicked down the hammer, and blew half its pale head off in one single shocking second. 

Fletcher was motionless as the child’s head exploded into a gory mass and pearls scattered about the room. His hands were clammy, palms sweat slicked, and mouth hanging half agape. Out the corner of his eye he saw a flickering of movement. 

Hoss roared and came barreling forward, fumbling with his cane, more a warble than any kind of run. Father Reeves spun round and clicked down the hammer once again, lowering it to be level with Hoss’ bad knee. “Not another step, keeper,” He said without menace; as one might greet their neighbor or the clerk of a frequented cafe. 

“She was a miracle!” The old man hissed, and Fletcher could see pitiful tears beading in the corners of his father’s eyes. 

Father Reeves motioned to the corpse, frowned. “It is also entirely deceased.” “You’ve slaughtered my child. You’ve slaughtered a gift from God. You’re no better than the Romans who hammered Jesus to the bloody cross!” Hoss heaved in tearful breath, “Murderer!” He condemned. “Murderer!” 

“A gift from God, is it? How are you so sure it wasn’t the devils; you asked him?” The priest’s gaze flickered from Fletcher to his Da. “Satan hides within the flesh of the innocent, don’t you know? He is the vile debaucher that all are rightful to fear; a master of deception and mistruth. A strange child washes upon your beach and immediately you have become misguided.” 

Hoss collapsed to the floor, his blubbering held back no longer. There wasn’t an ounce of fight in him as there had been. He wailed upon the floor, inconsolably, eternally. They were deep cries that bounded through the souls of all who heard them and haunted like old ghosts. “Why?” Was the only thing spoken, and by Fletcher. 

“A priest cannot know his faith is true until he has himself seen hell. I have seen worse. I have seen Africa.” His eyes were hollow as he gathered up the pearls and gutted the little body which held them. “The Second Boer War was brutal, though you’ll not hear it from any veterans. There aren’t many. Fifteen mile marches upon grounds muddied by the last regiment who you’re replacing; walking paths that they had carved days before with boots of the same standard as your own. Imagine a rifle clutched within your sweating palms, and the knowledge resting in the back of your mind that it’s a certainty you’ll use it, and for what?” The child’s cadaver looked more lively than Father Reeves. “There is no discharge. There is no command. Just desert, and mud, and boots… Even if this child were God’s own creation, and I should go to hell for its slaughter, I know that Satan can provide me no sight that is worse than Africa.” 

“Father Reeves…” 

“After four years it was over and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I set sight on Britain. I could believe them less when I found myself in St. John’s just a year later.” He cut into the child’s belly with a blade and gathered all of the glittering pearls in great handfuls, stuffing his pockets and his metal box. 

Fletcher helped him. Hoss wept upon the floor, yet the son felt little duty to his father. “With these pearls we can leave Faraway, my boy. We can go to the mainland, or to Cork, or to Poland where your mother’s family might still reside. The world is open to us and will not soon close.” But the question of murder still niggled at the back of Fletcher’s mind. Father Reeves put a hand on his shoulder, “Regret not what I have done, for I would do it again without second nor third thoughts. In fact, It is my hope that God provides us better fortune with another child of the tides, and another after that.” 

Within the hour there were no pearls within the lighthouse of Faraway and the light had gone out. The child’s skin had turned ashy gray and deflated without its horde. The priest had discarded his Webley. And at 8:47 A.M. that same morning, a second gunshot was heard on the coast of Faraway.

About the Author

Dylan Manson is a freshman English major with a passion for storytelling. While currently exploring the world of short stories, Dylan's true aspiration is to become a novelist. With a keen interest in exploring complex characters and multi-faceted narratives, he is excited to develop his voice and craft throughout his academic journey and beyond.