Speculative Fiction

What could be worse than not wearing shoes on a beach strewn with remnants of sea urchins and broken glass? Sharp objects as shattered as the poor soul treading on them?  

The footprints were soiled by bloody rivulets oozing from the cuts and nicks under his feet. Though as bruised and bare-bodied as his feet, the approaching storm didn’t concern him. Delirious with a high fever that never broke and a hangover from weeks that refused to dull, pounding and beating him relentlessly like the incoming waves on the shore, he trudged on. 

Fatigue began seeping in like a noxious drug. This was the last day before the floating castle would disappear beneath the molten waters. That’s what the scroll proclaimed. And a scroll, the old sailor said, never lies. So, he couldn’t give up now. 

Ominously, he discovered the scroll on the same day he lost his livelihood, home, and, in a sense, his wife and children to the sea. The sailors reported his ships had sunk off the coast, mercilessly pulled under by many otherworldly creatures rising like mountains from under the sea. They had fins, neon hair, claws, and snouts longer than a crocodile’s. His wealth and the future of his burgeoning trade disappeared overnight without a trace. When his wife learned of the misfortune, she cursed him with a worse fate. 

‘Go away forever and leave us alone!’ she had cried. By that, she meant she wanted the house with everything in it, including their two little children, so that she could escape from him and his dreadful obsession with the sea. When she left him with only the clothes on his back, he stumbled onto the beach, a broken man with nothing except laments that were louder than the crashing of waves. That night, right after he tripped on a stained bottle containing a scroll, he met some reveling sailors who offered him rum in exchange for his story. 

The old sailor read the scroll. ‘Aye! You’ve a bloody good chance, son, to see what no man could: the floating castle on the sea!’  The others jeered, but the old sailor continued to read. ‘The legend says an architect could build anything he desired on the sea, for he was blessed by a mermaid who loved him. However, only those who had lost all their riches to the sea and found this scroll could see the creation for thirty days. If that person could swim to reach its gates within that time and make a wish to the sea, he could regain everything he had lost!’

The first time he saw the castle was right after that night of drinking when he woke up to a gentle breeze on his sandy face and discovered the merry men were gone. A sailor had possibly taken his shirt, and another his shoes, for his body and feet were bare; in his hand, the bottle with the scroll remained. He hauled himself up slowly, on an elbow, eyes widening at a giant wave, swelling and rising into a mighty one–as tall as a building with a hundred floors. And, as if with a snap of a finger, it transformed into a floating castle on the sea right before him! 

Terrified, he shut his eyes, but the castle was still there when he opened them. Fragments of the old sailor’s conversation surfaced in his mind. ‘Ah, yes! That’s the solution! All I have to do is swim to those gates of the floating castle, make a wish and regain everything I’ve lost! And just like that, I’ll become a rich trader again!’ 

But then, something transformed within him when a dagger of hatred pierced his kind heart. He thought of his despicable wife, whom he now hated more than anything in his life. He regretted every word of love and act of generosity that he had bestowed on her. With a vengeance searing through his salt-crusted body, he stamped the bottle with the scroll into the cool sand and dashed into the chilly waters like a king crab. He swam steadily toward the castle. It wasn’t that far. 

That is how it all began. 

Yet, when he attempted to swim to the castle every twilight, he felt he had swum further away than the previous day. It appeared to float just at arm's length in the foaming waters but was moving further away. The lifebuoys pegged at measured distances in the sea that had once been beyond his reach were far behind him when he swam toward them. And each time he reached the nebulous floating gates, the castle would vanish like it never existed!

This was the thirtieth day. For a month, he had starved, scavenging scraps and drinking what people tossed his way. His skin was singed and peeling off his body. His unruly hair had grown to an unimaginable length and transformed into matted strands caked with salt and shells. The very outline of his being had begun to smudge like an epitaph written on shifting sands. 

‘But all this could change if I reach the castle! He said.

So, with all his might, he swam in the twilight, one last time, to the castle that nobody ever saw or could see. He fought the lashing waves and ignored the eerie screams from the deep, while the sinister grasp of the sea tightened around him. He realized he was too far gone to return to the shore only when the otherworldly creatures rose again, rainbow fins shining gloriously on their backs and menacing talons gleaming like polished onyx. 

The castle didn’t vanish at once as before; it edged away from him like a ball rolling away from a child's reach. 

‘Come with us,’ one of the creatures said above the growling waves, ‘the way to the castle is from beneath.’ 

The exhausted man took a deep breath, made a wish, and promptly dived to the bottom of the sea. 

The castle vanished.

(997 words - 4 to 5 mins. reading time)