"IronHull" by C. L. Corbin

“Grandfather, will you tell me a story?” a small elf boy ran over to his grandfather, who was looking out the window at the ocean that lay far below. Slowly, his joints creaking, the old man turned to his grandson.

“Well,” he said, his voice no more than a crackly whisper, “I’ve told you all of the stories I know except for one, and it’s the only story that is true. It is the story of a ship called the IronHull, a vessel very advanced for its time. I rode on that ship.”

The boy’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Tell me, grandfather!” The old man leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and sat still for a second. Then, he began his story.

“When I was a boy of no more than fifteen years old, my family lived next to a ship builder’s shop. Every day I would look out my window and watch him and his workers build huge ships, strong vessels that could withstand the toughest of storms. The ships were expertly built, with beautiful carvings that made them stand out from any other ship. Day after day, I would watch the ships be built, and the more I watched them the more I felt connected to them. They were a part of me- I had watched them be created from the time they where first waterproofed to the time they were given their names. When one of them was finished and finally sailed away, I felt like a part of me was gone. And I vowed that, when I was old enough, I would sail on one of those ships. A part of me just knew that I would.”

“And did you, Grandfather?” The boy asked, sitting down on a cushion next to the rocking chair.

“Of course I did! Didn’t I say earlier I was on a ship?

“The ship was called the IronHull. When I was seventeen years old, a full-grown man, I decided that the IronHull was the right ship for me to work on. It was a beautiful boat, a trade ship used to transport exotic herbs between the islands. I was the first mate and I made sure that the rest of the crew took good care of the stock aboard the ship. The captain trusted me with everything. In fact, I might as well have been the captain. I loved that ship, and I never wanted to leave it.

But one day, as the IronHull was about to dock on the shore of one of the islands to unload our cargo, a leak sprung in one of the cabins on the lowest level of the ship. No one knew how this could happen- the IronHull was one of the sturdiest ships ever built. We all had to abandon the ship, and all we could do was watch as it sunk beneath the ocean.”

“So, that was the end? Did you work on another ship?”

The Grandfather chuckled. “Oh, no. The captain of the IronHull loved that ship so much that he had it hauled out of the water and repaired. Once it was as good as new, we found something strange in the cabin that had gotten a leak. A sack of strange gold coins was lying on the floor. They were covered with foreign markings and where like nothing any of us had ever seen before. We decided to ignore them, and sold them to a curio merchant for an ample amount of money.”

“And what happened next?”

“Well, over the next several years, the boat sunk several more times- five, to be precise. The captain didn’t want to keep spending gall of his money on repairs, but he and I both loved that boat and I promised to help him pay for everything.

“Each time we pulled the boat back out of the water, we found strange artifacts in it- once we found a trident made out of platinum, another time a stone tablet with beautiful carvings covering it. I kept them all and treasured them, because they were beautiful. But I also kept them because no one knew what they were. Until one day.

“I was at home, having just gotten back from a long trip on the IronHull. When I heard a knock on my door, I thought it might be one of my cousins coming to visit me. But it wasn’t.”

“Who was it, Grandpa?” the elf boy asked, staring tentatively at his grandfather.

“I’m getting there! Anyway, the person visiting me was a girl named Kirakesh. She immediately struck me as odd- I mean, she was beautiful, but she didn’t look like a normal person. Her eyes where curiously slanted and her hair was almost blue, it was so white. She wore a long skirt and was very careful to cover her legs and feet. She walked in an odd way, almost like she was sliding over the floor. She walked in the house, looked over my collection of strange artifacts, and told me that they where mad by mermaids.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Mermaids, Grandpa? Really?”

“Well, at first I didn’t believe her, but she seemed so serious that after a while she had me convinced. After that, she left just as mysteriously as she had come, and I never saw her again.

“When I told the captain about Kirakesh’s visit, he laughed at me. He thought I was making everything up to impress him. Finally, when he refused to believe me, I got angry. He fired me right on the spot and I never worked on another boat again.”

“Why not?”

“Because no ship could compare to the IronHull, child. If I couldn’t work on that ship, I didn’t want to work on a ship at all.”

“Oh.” The Elf boy said, looking out the window over the vast sea. “Is that the end of the story?”

“Well, yes.” The Grandfather said sadly. He, too, turned and gazed out at the sea, his cloudy blue eyes scanning the glassy surface of the water. As he looked, a small sleek shape surfaced. It was a girl, an exotic-looking girl with blue-white hair. She stared up at him, her face asking, where do I know you from? Her delicate lips mouthed the word “Kirakesh”, and the Grandfather knew. She then surface-dived as gracefully back under the water as quickly as she had come, and in a flash of fins and foam, she was gone and the sea looked just the same as it had before. The Grandfather knew he had not been dreaming, but he decided to say nothing to his grandson, to simply savor the moment before his eyelids slid down and he drifted to sleep.