Borne Aloft

BORNE ALOFT

Inspired by a picture from Lucy Farfort.

My grandfather Eddie told a story once. Actually he told many, many stories and most of them more than once, but he knew the storyteller’s trick of only ever telling your best stories once, and so I remember this particular one with pristine clarity.

All his adult life Eddie was a lighthouse keeper. The events in the story occurred when Eddie was stationed on An Tuscar, off Wexford. It was known as one of the most punishing commissions in the service, a one-man lighthouse seven miles offshore, back then.

It was a balmy August evening when he found the first dead turtle. Turtles weren’t unknown in the area, but they were unusual, and it was the first time Eddie had found one washed ashore. He didn’t have to wait long for the second, which appeared the next day, along with a third and fourth. The day after that there were half a dozen. Unsure of what to do with them, Eddie removed the shells and burned the carcasses, using the paraffin oil that powered the lighthouse.

But the bodies continued to wash up, twenty a day by the end of the week, and the burning of them was becoming increasingly impractical. That Saturday night, as he retired to bed with the smell of seared turtle flesh smarting his eyes and nose, Eddie resolved to contact the Commissioner for guidance.

In the event that proved unnecessary. In the early hours he was woken by a sound he described as being unlike any he’d ever heard before. Like thunder, he said, but louder, and longer, and deeper – so deep he could feel the pit of his stomach vibrate and his teeth rattle. Accompanying this thunderous sound was another, one which bewildered and terrified Eddie in equal measure. It was the sound of water, to which Eddie had of course become well attuned down the years. But this was not the sound of water lapping or lashing the rock – this was the sound of water rushing around and past the rock. And that made no sense.

Running, tripping, falling down the spiral staircase Eddie raced to confirm what he didn’t want to believe: the lighthouse was moving. He burst out through the front door, and what he saw left him struggling for his breath. The lighthouse and rock were gliding serenely through the water, away from the already distant shore. Like a comedy drunk, with wind and spray whipping his face, Eddie closed his eyes and rubbed them violently. Hesitantly opening them again, he realised that the rock and lighthouse were actually borne aloft above the water. Crouching low, fingertips pressed to the rock, he crept to the nearest edge of An Tuscar and looked over. Ahead, he could see a black mass breaking the water. It wasn’t another rock. It had a form, and a shape, and a movement that he immediately recognised. It was a head. The rock, the lighthouse, and Eddie were travelling on the back of an enormous turtle.

After perhaps twenty minutes – although it may have been two and it may have been fifty, Eddie freely admitted – their pace slowed and An Tuscar descended, not without grace, to meet the rising waters below and come to a gentle halt. The turtle carved an elegant arc through the water in front of Eddie, turning to swim back past him before disappearing beneath the black waters.

Eddie never saw another turtle, never told how he explained to the Commissioner why his lighthouse had moved four miles, and never told the story again after that one time. It was one of his best, after all.

END.