A Dream of Sanctuary

It is said that far off to the East—beyond the terrible waves of the Lurid Sea— is Sanctuary. We named this intangible place for the secret ideas of peace and freedom we so carefully constructed in our minds. We (the Fish, that is) must always keep our Sanctuary a secret, because the Queen will surely cast us into the deepest and darkest caverns under the Mount with only her malicious hounds as company if she were ever to find out about our imaginary liberation. We are her children and we must obey. How else can we survive in this eternal life (or death)?

We do not question Death aloud, for she is our mother, our creator, and our destroyer. Her temper is short for one so powerful and beautiful. Her castle looms over our dim city, aged and wizened by thousands of years (so we say, but none truly know how old Death or her palace is). Black ivy and lotus flowers are carved into the sides of her ever-graying tower, and though the castle looks weak and ready to crumble to its doom, none of us has ever seen the marbled walls shudder from its perch on the mountaintop. The waves of the sea constantly crash into our city, but it’s rippling smack serves only as a stroke of friendship to the Queen’s tower.

Oftentimes I find myself (as all Fish do at some point during their day) struck by the immensity of the gray tower, of its infinity and power, and I always imagine that it has a mind of its own. The Queen keeps dogs in the caverns, but the palace is her true bitch—loyal beyond any guard and always protecting its master. This is why we dream of Sanctuary—of a city of white and gold, alive and kissed by light where the dimness of this Western sky can never touch us. But, for now, we live in the shadow of a tower built by Death.

“I’d like to see The Bitch fall into this godforsaken sea,” my acquaintance (we have no friends in the West) Gregg says at my side as we wrestle the fish-filled net out of the sea.

A dozen of us stand on this section of beach together, tossing nets and casting rods, only to catch the finest Redfinns for our beloved queen. One hops out of the net and escapes back into the waters but it goes unnoticed by Gregg. He looks up at the tower and spits.

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Old Calliope sneers from nearby, reeling in her own net full of blood-red fish. Her hair is white, back bent, and mouth empty of all but her tongue, but she still catches more fish than half the men in our burrow.

“She’s right,” Kip, a young man with half a face, quips from my other side. “I heard The Bitch’s demon-gargoyles see and hear everything, and in the middle of the night they’ll steal you away and drop you in the sea.” He laughs, half his face a picture of cheer, the other a mangled painting of hell. Old Calliope glares at the boy and huffs away.

“Oh, dear Francis, if only you could talk, then I wouldn’t be stuck listening to old maids and green boys all day,” Gregg chuckles to me, but he is bitter when he does it. I only offer him a tightlipped smile.

I have no voice, you see. The Queen took my words away when I first arrived here, but I’ve been told I have a very expressive face. She took something from all of us Fish—that’s how we ended up down here working harder than any of the other civilians. Some have lost small things, like a tooth or a finger or even an eye. The rest of us, though, lost more than we ever wished. Calliope lost her youth, and Gregg lost his son. We don’t know why she takes what she does or what she does with what she takes, but we know she’ll never return what is rightfully ours. All we Fish know is that she took the peace of mind from each of us individually, and we have never felt anything but emptiness because of her.

Later that night, after we’ve washed the salt from our wounds and wrapped our blistered hands in dirty cloths, Gregg and I sit on the floor in front of our fire. We live in a shack together on the beach—the lowest civilian housing. Everyone calls it The Bottom of the Barrel. We just call it Home.

“I wish I could remember what my life was like before this living-death,” Gregg mutters as he smacks his leg and kills a dozen fleas in one go. “All I know is I had a son and he came here with me.” He pauses before his hazel eyes lock with mine, “You don’t remember anything do you, Francis?”

I shake my head no, a disappointed look on my face because I know that he knows none of us remembers anything about our lives, and we’re not supposed to remember. We’re supposed to worship Death now—but the Fish tend to scoff at the prospect of calling Death their Goddess. Everyone else seems to accept her, love her even. The Philosophers live closest to her tower and they practically preach on behalf of her. They come down to our shacks, lined so closely together in unorganized zigzags, and they knock on each of our doors. Some answer just to humor the good-for-nothing preachers and to make sure they don’t become suspicious of the “Faithful Fish.” They theorize with us, and mutter about our “second chance to live a life of fulfillment and peace and to truly know the purity of our Holy Queen Death’s heart.”

The Philosophers are stupid, truthfully. They venture down here with their black velvet robes reeking of incense, and they believe us when we say we love our queen above all else. But as soon as they leave us, get on their horses and ride back up the path to the Queen’s tower, we spit on the ground they walked to clean it of its lies. The others are just as bad as the Philosophers—the Soldiers and the Craftsmen. They blindly follow the Queen’s bidding, defending her honor, collecting her criminals, casting her silver, and cobbling her pointed shoes. But we just live in a sandpit by the terrible sea, and make sure the Queen has her fish.

“Do you think this will ever end, Francis?” Gregg asks me suddenly, the dim fire reflecting off his eyes. I cringe and sputter as the smoke wafts into my lungs and he pats my back and hands me a wooden goblet full of aged ale. I take a long sip. He doesn’t expect me to answer his question.

“I suppose it’s moronic to dwell on a hope to escape,” he mutters to himself. I nod in agreement. “I mean, it’s not like one day the Queen will just stop—”

Our rickety door bangs open so suddenly, I drop my ale to the floor. Gregg and I jump up together, both terrified and resolute in our stances, both prepared to cower in fear and defend ourselves in the same instance.

A tall figure (blacker than the starless night outside) stands on the threshold. He enters our shack, carrying a gruesome wind with him that extinguishes the fire until we are entirely immersed in darkness. We do not ask what the figure wants with us because we already know.

Gregg cries out at my side, a startled scream (and I know he has just been grasped by the cold digits of Death’s servant). “Francis!” Gregg yells, and I grasp his elbow with both my hands and heave with all my strength, but the Queen’s servant is too strong. He drags Gregg out of my hands, out of our shack. I run to the door and watch as Gregg’s thrashing body is pulled into the darkness, and he cries out in anguish as the Queen’s servant easily lugs him up the rocky stairs and away from The Bottom of the Barrel forever.

As Gregg’s desperate yet unintelligible screeches for help echo all across our pathetic patch of beach, not one other person flings open his door to watch or help. We all know he can’t be saved—most of us have witnessed this Life Thievery before. He is truly the Queen’s property now in body and soul. I collapse on the threshold, holding my shaking arms against my chest and I try not to cry, but Gregg was my friend (more than an acquaintance, more like my brother, but we Fish try not to have these type of sentiments in our heart of hearts).

When night lifts, and I have still not dragged myself back into my lonely shack, the rest of the Barrel begins to wake from its nightmare slumber. Old Calliope drifts by my doorway slowly and she gazes at me with the frightened look of a child (“I’m sorry, Francis. They must’ve gotten wind of him bad-mouthing the Queen,” she tells me).

All we have now is a dream of Sanctuary—a dream of life beyond this gray hell, where Calliope is young, and I can sing to my heart’s content, and Gregg sits by my side with his son in his lap. And we do not bow to Queen Death because we are all kings of our own lives in the East.