SciFi and Fantasy Stories: The Twilight's Warden

            It was the ponderous pearl-crested waves that so rhythmically carried my thoughts that evening, as they reflected the glittering lamps of eventide.  I leaned wearily against the post of a weathered pier, my walking stick resting in the palm of my hand, and listened to the dark waters lapping at the rocks below.  The swirling little wavelets made a peculiar music, composed as much of silence as the swishes and blips of the sliding water.  It was wild and gentle at the same time, cool and beautiful like glass.  A familiar piece of home happily tinged with the promise of mystery and adventure just beneath the gilded surface or over the star-streaked horizon.  Oh, how I loved the sea!  I smiled wistfully, glancing down the length of the docks at the slumbering vessels that creaked and bumped against the piers.  If only I could actually be on one of those ships when they were awake, if I could have the chance just once to scurry up weather-beaten rigging with a nimble-footed crew and feel the canvas sails beating and pounding in a wind that would speed us far and away with its exhilarating, banner-snapping gusts to the mermaid lagoons of the East and the kelpie coves of the Northern fjords…

            So nice it is, to dream.

            As I stood there, I breathed deeply and took a salty waft as it sailed in, so full it was of ageless life and peace.  For the briefest, most sublime of moments, all my troubles crumbled into chaff and sailed away on the sea breeze.  And then the breeze died, and my troubles returned, and all was despairingly real once more.  A bell rang further down the docks, its shimmering tone calling the fishermen home from the sea.  The day was done, and I too could go.

            “Gratterson!”  The dock master was coming to meet me as I walked down the pier towards the wharf and its warehouses.  “Stop here fer a moment, an’ I’ll ‘ave a word wit’ you.”

            “Sir,” I acknowledged him as we met at the pier’s head.  My former employer was a large broad-shouldered man with hands that enforced a semblance of order amongst the lusty longshoremen with heavy liberality.  Most men were within their right senses to be somewhat afraid of him, me not excepting, though he was not cruel.

            “How’s the leg, man?” he asked, not seeming to care.  He rubbed his swarthy hands together and scrunched his nose, signs that he had misgivings about something.

            “Tolerable a’ best, sir.  I’m livin’.”  My tone, though respectful, was casually flat as I tried to hide my confusion.  His business with me had ended this afternoon, and I could not think of why he would seek me out again.  He was not a man drawn to sociable company or unnecessary conversation.

            “Curse tha’ boy fer droppin’ his load!  Never shoulda ‘appened,” he muttered absentmindedly, glancing briefly at the leg that was twisted awkwardly beneath me.

            “He’s learning,” I said quietly as way of a space-filler.  The boy was an idiot, and if he did not learn how to handle his loads soon, he would kill someone, as he nearly did me.

            “An’ costin’ me men.”  The dock master rubbed his nose irritably before leaning in a bit closer.  “Look ‘ere, Gratterson,” he said awkwardly.  “I can’t keep you on as a gimp, you know that an’ we’ve settled it, but I’d give me left eye to find ‘nother longshoreman as depend’ble as you ‘ave been.  Now I know your injury ain’t too bad to heal full, so you’s best be getting’ yerself to a ‘firmary quick.”  He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eyes.  “If you heals ‘nuff to ‘andle crates again, I’ll take you back.  See me when you’re fit, an’ you’ll ‘ave your ol’ job back.”

            I was stunned at this uncharacteristic generosity and nearly laughed at the cruelty of fate.  “Many kind thanks, sir, but I’ve simply not the money to pay a physician.  My last coins bought this apple for my wife.  Today is her birthday.  She loves apples.  With all luck she’ll be asleep when I get home, so I shan’t have to upset her with the news of my unemployment until tomorrow.”

            An unusual thing happened then; the dock master smiled.  Not the wide dangerous smile that precedes a beating or the brazen greed of anticipating a grand profit, but a quieter, gentler one of the kind that friends share.  “I’d give you somethin’ to help but I’ve not a coin to meself either at th’moment.  But don’t give up hope, man.  Th’world’s a cruel place, to be sure, but Heaven knows Its own an’ finds ‘em where’er they be.  There’s a calm after th’storm as well as before, you know.”  With a final pat on the shoulder, he walked on down the wharf towards the waterfront tavern, which hummed with the boisterous laughter of sailors and a jig played on a penny flute.

            I limped slowly through the city streets with my walking stick, holding my bad leg just so it would not drag, and pulled my tattered brown cloak around me tighter to ward off the cold.  A sharp gust blew in, whistling past the storied, thatched houses and down through the streets, cutting right through all petty clothing to the bone; no, to the heart.  I cursed my family’s luck, our lives of perpetual labor and squalor.  Hope, he had said?  Already I could not pay rent for my wife and myself, and now the job I had held for twenty years at the docks was gone.  What hope had we to last the winter in the streets?  My leg injury would only grow worse in the cold.  No one would help us; that I knew.  There was no justice anymore, not anyone who upheld a righteous cause.  The law was dead except for those with the strength to make their own, as desperate and conniving men enforced their various wills upon the people with throngs of armed cronies.  City guards were employed by the very men they should be jailing.  Nobles garbed themselves in hypocrisy as well as velvet and the king signed laws “for the benefit of the people” with the same hand that accepted bribes from the city’s true rulers, those underworld lords whose reigns began and ended with each well-placed assassin’s knife.

As I turned a corner, I noticed a man lying against the wall of an inn.  I had seen him often there in the morning when I went to the docks and every evening when I returned, begging for scraps of food, money, or anything anyone would give him.  His hair was long and stringy, his body thin, and his trousers and tunic were patched like a country quilt.  He shivered as he slept.  All at once I felt ashamed.  Here was I, with a warm cloak about me and a loving wife waiting at home, while this man froze in the streets, bereft of everything but his own gentle soul!  With a silent word of self-admonishment, I gently laid my own brown cloak over the sleeping figure.  An incoherent mumbling escaped from his thin lips and he turned in his slumber, unconsciously pulling my cloak tight about him.  Then, vigorously rubbing my chest, and supremely calmed, I continued through the darkening streets as above me the ocean of stars quenched the crimson flames of sunset.

I turned onto the street that led to the room my wife and I called home, on the upper floor of a dirty housing establishment.  Ah, my sweet wife; what news to bring her on her birthday!  With no money to pay the rent, our landlord would evict us; and no one wants to hire a homeless man.  Ours was a sad story so oft repeated in such a city as this.  Of course, there were tales that told of fortunes being turned for the better, of shadowed figures slipping gold coins into the pockets of paupers, of figures in black appearing to save poor girls assaulted by brutes, that sort of thing.  Over time, urban tradition had attributed these occurrences to a character known only as the Twilight’s Warden.  Legend developed that he was an orphan who was raised to be the best assassin in the city by the top crime lord of the day.  But he rebelled, they said, and forswore his life of murder for one of justice, and now every lucky happenstance was credited to him.  With every good deed, it was said, he left a slender ribbon of sapphire bearing the mark of a white dove.  Such a ribbon was said to bring extraordinary luck and protection to the bearer, but a terrible curse if it was lost.  Every so often an especially inebriated man would claim that he had actually seen the black-caped fellow himself, dashing hat and all.  I chuckled a little to myself.  Not that I, or anyone with half a wit, believed any of those romantic tales to be true.  For one thing, there was too much money in murder!  And no one ever left the underworld, once in.  To do so was death.

            No, I thought to myself, neither is there any use in hoping for a rescue that won’t come.  If you can’t fly with the rest of the birds, learn to walk with the legs you have.

            Our window was dark from the street, and I deemed my wife had gone to sleep early.  My walking stick clunked irregularly on the wood stairs as I ascended as quietly as I could without waking our neighbors.  The door to our apartment creaked ever so slightly as I gingerly pushed it open, not wanting to steal the rest my love so richly deserved.  Then, on a whim, I stopped.  Something seemed not quite right.  As I opened the door further and began to step inside, something darted by swiftly in the shadows.  My hand went instantly for the knife at my belt and with my walking stick I threw the door wide open.  One step I took, then froze.  There was a large window at the back of our room, and from it streamed a shaft of pure milky moonlight that wrapped itself around a dark figure framed by the sill.

            From the intruder’s shoulders hung a cape of rich sable that lapped at the tops of his boots, and on his shadowed head sat a wide-brimmed hat.  A slender sword hung at his side, its pommel winking at me in the moonlight.  As he turned his head almost imperceptibly, I caught a similar wink from his eye.  There was a sly, almost laughing smile on his lips that challenged the very presence of fear.  The shaft from the window caused a pearly film to finely outline the silhouette of this figure as he paused there, watching me with one boot already on the windowsill and a gloved hand on the frame.  Time stopped as he paused, and I dared not move a muscle for fear of that which I knew not.  But I remember as a dream the nod, as he tipped his hat to me, and the billow of his cape, and he was gone.  The moonlight now shone unbroken where he had stood.

            I broke out of my stupor and limped to the window as fast as I could, breathlessly peering into the streets and alleys below, but all was quiet and still.  Hovels and taverns alike were dark and shut up.  At the end of one street I saw the bouncing light of the watchman’s lantern as he made the rounds, and I began to wonder if it had all been my imagination.

            “Charles, is that you?”

            I started at my wife’s voice, and I heard her moving about by our bed.

            “Yes, my love, it is I,” I replied gently.  I moved to where our lamp was, and with a strike of the flint a honey golden light sprang forth to illuminate her, propped up by an elbow on the pillow.  “Happy Birthday, darling.  You can sleep now.”

            “I thought I heard a noise,” she said, blinking in the lamplight.

            “Just me entering,” I replied, not wanting to alarm her with the news of an armed intruder.  “You know how clumsy I can be.”  I smiled and held out the apple.  “Again, Happy Birthday, my darling love.”

            “Oh Charlie, what shall I do with you?” she said, grabbing my extended arm and pulling me down for a quick kiss.  Then she pulled back suddenly, her eyes moving to the one table in the room.  “Whatever is that?”

            Unsure, I turned to look.  On the table behind me was a small brown sack, tied with a deep blue ribbon.  Hands trembling and brow sweating, I approached it cautiously and set the lamp down.  With wide eyes, my wife watched as I untied the ribbon and shook the bag upside down until every last gold coin clinked onto the wood tabletop.  I noticed a small slip of parchment folded inside and pulled it out.  A physician’s wages, it read.  Silently, I picked up the shimmering blue ribbon, the sapphire ribbon, and turned it over, though I knew what I would see.  Indeed, the silhouette of a white dove was etched neatly into one end.

            My wife’s smooth chin settled on my shoulder as she read the note, her cheek touching mine.  She was silent for a moment with shock, I think, and then suddenly enfolded me in a tight hug as she cried aloud for happiness.  I kissed her again and looked up from the table and out the window, where I could see the stars and the full moon shining above.  Though I knew not why, my heart was filled with hope.