THE TIDE BENEATH LANGUAGE

More about THE TIDE BENEATH LANGUAGE

In the year when the moon forgot its own reflection, the fishermen of the black coast began hearing syllables rising from the sea. Not words exactly, but damp sounds swollen with salt and sleep:

phra-phra-phra
lui-lui-lui
gla-gla-gla

The old women said it was only water speaking in its sleep, but the children stopped learning ordinary language and answered questions by drawing spirals in the sand.

At first the tide behaved normally. It arrived with the moon and departed with the moon. Then one August evening it refused to leave. The sea stood upright like a dark wall breathing in the distance, and from its surface emerged bubbles large as lanterns, pink and luminous, floating inland over the sleeping houses.

Inside each bubble was an eye.

Not human eyes. Ancient eyes with the patience of drowned stone.

People began dreaming the same dream. They saw a mouth larger than the horizon opening beneath the ocean, and inside the mouth was another sea turning endlessly in darkness. The priests called it temptation. The drunks called it memory. The children simply walked toward the shore at night without explanation.

One fisherman followed them.

He entered the water beneath a crescent moon that looked hooked upon the sky by invisible thread. As he descended, the ocean became warmer instead of colder. Schools of pale fish drifted past him like pages torn from forgotten books. Then he saw towers beneath the waves.

A city.

Its domes and black spires leaned at impossible angles as though geometry itself had become feverish. Seaweed climbed marble staircases. Bubbles moved through broken windows like wandering souls. Somewhere deep below, bells were ringing underwater without sound.

The fisherman understood then that language was changing.

Words were no longer attached to mouths.

Language had become tide.
The tide had become a mouth.
The mouth had become night.

In the center of the drowned city sat a figure with the face of an exhausted god and the beard of an octopus. Its yellow eyes opened slowly, as though centuries were merely moments passing through sleep.

When the fisherman returned to shore three days later, his hair had turned white and he spoke only one word.

Not loudly. Not fearfully.

Tenderly, as if naming a lost homeland.

“R’lyeh.”

And after that, all the rivers began flowing backward toward the sea.