There’s a man who lives in the north sea. He’s twenty feet tall and his skin is tinged green. He has seaweed for hair and teeth that would make even a great white shark envious. He doesn’t speak and he barely moves. Once a day he emerges from the deep murky depths.
He pokes his head above the water and takes a long ponderous drink of air. He basks in the moonlight and stares at the stars as if he knows them by name. Then he leaves. With a yawn and a sigh he retreats back down into the cold murky depths he calls home. Like he never existed at all.
The night I first saw him I had run away from home after an argument with my parents. I sought refuge in the cold empty shoreline of the North Sea that fenced in my little lonely village from the world. I sat down on the sandy dunes, lit a little fire with driftwood and grass, and watched the waves pull in and out. There was terror in the silence of those shores. The emptiness makes you think of bad things, dead things.
There’s a rythmn to the ocean. The ebb and flow. The coming and going of dark cerulean water. In out. In out. The sea breathes just the same as you or I.
He took my breath away when I saw him first, this huge towering mass that split the water in two. Paralyzed, I could only watch. I don’t think he saw me. I was too little. I felt every hair on my arm stand alert, like little soldiers lining up for battle. He drank in the air, looked at the sky, took a huge yawn and dipped his head right back under. Relief swarmed me.
I was speechless. My slow breathing philosophised his existence. Had he been there long? Since the formation of the planet from space rocks and debris? Or had it been when those sorry little fish grew legs. Had the path of evolution split twice, one road for us and one for him? Did he have a wife, or did he go to bed at night with the whales and the sharks? He was big enough.
I told everyone I could when my legs started to work again. My mum called me crazy, my dad called me a prankster. I had nightmares and sleep did not come at all.
I went back to the shoreline every night after, for I was no longer tired. I saw him again and again. I told my friend Andrew and he came with me to watch. He saw him too.
He brought others, his elder brother and his girlfriend Sue. They saw him too. Every night we’d watch him. The crowds swelled and we built a dais to hide from the rain under. We were his watchers. There were so many of us by the end, it must have been half the village. We didn’t speak of him, we didn’t say much at all, we just… watched. Scared, terrified but fascinated.
My parents came one night, just to see where I went each night. When the man poked his head above the water, he did not look at the stars like usual, he looked right at us. My dad started to cry and he never spoke a word after. The sea had stolen his tongue, filled his head with saltwater and roe.
My beard had grown long, the first gifts of puberty. I filled a sink with water and readied my razor. I looked into the water. Underneath all the spiked stubble, were two slits on my neck.
I went back to the shoreline with my parents. We walked without words. We sat under the dais, the sand at our feet, and waited.
He popped his head up and looked at us again. The stars had lost their interest, for he had noticed the dutiful ants lining up for a peek at his majesty. He looked right at me and lifted his large arm out, seaweed draped over it.
I saw things. He put things in my head. Sad things. Angry apes threw spears on two legs to a chorus of loud wails. Bloated corpses exploded into clouds of fragrant rot. Large wooden ships were swallowed by arms big and wide, pulled under to the dark depths of the ocean floor where little bones were picked clean. When he was done, he put a song in my head for good measure. A sad song, like the cry of a whale in a copper tub, the beat of which my heartbeat still mimics.
The first swimmers took their dives that night. They walked naked to shore and swam deep until they could not be seen anymore. Little bubbles floated to the surface. Perhaps they lived, breathed the saltwater and lived in his seaweed kingdom. More likely they died, just little bones picked clean.
My father went the night after, then Andrew, then his girlfriend Sue. I did not think to stop them. They were meant to go I think. Their fate was already written in callous starlight. I thought about joining them, but my heartbeat said no.
The crowds thinned and the dais grew empty. The air burned as I breathed it in, but still I would not go gently into the water. Not yet, but soon.
Soon.
Before I do, I wanted to tell you that the man who lives in the North Sea is older than the mountains and the rivers. He terrifies me. I cower at his majesty as an ant might under the shadow of a thick boot. I wonder how many little bones he has to pick his teeth with. Perhaps we deserve it, we who have sat perched atop all for so very long.
There is beauty in terror. There is splendour to be found gazing upon his incomprehensibility. I think you should go have a look at him if you have the time. I won’t be there by then, but that’s alright. Our fates are already transcribed for us, the spotlight moves, but the end is already written. Perhaps he will sing you a song too.