He rowed until the palisades wavered in the distance like the energy of heat. The sky took
on a blister-sheen. Out he rowed, further until his motives proved insoluble, until the gulls
began to mock and chide, belittling his strength. He rowed because he couldn’t sleep,
drawn towards the strands and ripples and sickly undulations of his past. The oarlocks
bemoaned his age. Minutes turned to hours and then the hours turned to vortices. He
rowed as if there were no future, no fathomless deception, with only watercress, and water
lilies, and lotus fruit to eat. He rowed, still knowing little of the secrets at the centre of the
earth, but something of pale prophesy having failed to foresee the stingray’s poisoned
dart. He rowed all through the night, all through the dead of night, and through the dead
themselves, who appeared and disappeared, mouthing words without the breath to speak,
with eyes of belladonna he recalled as nightshade. His beard soon turned to salt. His
knuckles becoming stone, then chalk, then windblown wings of dust. Clouds closed in, the
concentric teeth of Charybdis! Yet still he rowed, across the wind, against the wind, then
through the wind he rowed, casting furtive glances back at what bestrode the distance
between himself and what was once the shore — which lay in ruins now — and the citrus
beacon of the sun, which signalled neither safety nor return.
