The Tempest’s Orphan

The sea, a beast with froth-flecked jaws agape,
Roared hymns of doom beneath the iron sky,
Its tides the pulse of some eternal ache
That drew his gaze where horizon and grief lie.
“O Father,” cried he to the squall’s dark choir,
“You vowed to return ere winter’s first white breath!
Why pledge the dawn if drowned in murk and mire?
Why swear the stars, then bind your vow to death?”

No answer came but thunder’s hollow groan,
Yet in his breast, a relic’s feeble glow—
A tarnished locket, clasped by hands of bone,
Its chain a noose of memory’s ceaseless woe—
Hummed secrets old as tides that gnaw the stone.
“Beyond the storm,” it murmured, “past the veil
Where tempests birth their ilk and die alone,
There waits the truth, though shadows rend your sail.”

With raft of driftwood lashed by desperate hope,
He breached the brine, a mote in wrath’s domain.
The waves, like hounds, assailed his fragile scope,
Their fangs of foam to shred his purpose vain.
Yet on he pressed, through night’s unending shriek,
Where lightning scored the sky with jagged runes,
And sea-serpents of mist, with jaws antique,
Unfurled their coils beneath the weeping moons.

Three days he rode the lunging steed of hell,
Three nights he clung to splinters slick with brine,
Till lo! Through fog that rang like funeral knell,
A spectral prow emerged—a shape divine
And damned. Its sails, though tattered, held the hue
Of blood dried brown on time-forgotten decks,
Its mast a spire where once a pennant flew,
Now bare as bones on war’s abandoned wrecks.

“Ahoy!” he croaked, salt-scarred and parched as dust,
His voice a ghost amid the waters’ howl.
From shadows thick as guilt, a figure thrust
Its visage—pale as moon-chilled cerements’ cowl.
A captain? Yes, though flesh had long since fled
The hollow where his face once kissed the light;
In sockets deep, twin flames of crimson bled,
His voice the creak of rigging strained by night.

“Come, child of shore,” the specter rasped, “aboard,
And learn what tides have scribed in kelp and foam.
Your sire’s last breath still lingers in my hoard,
A debt unpaid that lures you from your home.”
The deck, a chessboard of decay and dread,
Bore marks of claws no earthly beast could wield.
“Here knelt he,” hissed the shade, “with brow blood-red,
And pledged his soul to stay the ocean’s greed.”

“Lies!” cried the boy, though terror clenched his throat,
“My father’s heart was loyal as the dawn!”
The wraith but laughed—a sound like sails remote
That snap their chains when hope’s last breeze is gone.
“All men are merchants in despair’s bazaar;
For ten more years of life, he sold his oath.
See here, the contract signed in brine and tar—”
He thrust a scroll that reeked of leviathan’s froth.

There, stark as scars on flesh the lash has known,
A name in ichor curdled youth’s belief:
His father’s hand, which once had clasped his own,
Now damned to storms beyond the shores of grief.
“The terms?” the orphan whispered, ice in veins.
“His life prolonged,” the phantom grinned, “in trade
For kin unborn to feed the deep’s dark veins.
You, boy, were priced ere breath your first cry made.”

The locket burned against his heaving chest,
Its cracked glass veiling faces loved in vain—
A mother’s smile, by time’s hunger dispossessed,
A father’s vow that anchored all his pain.
“Why spare me then, if bound to Neptune’s fee?”
“The sea,” it sneered, “delights in slow pursuit.
Why gorge when fasting whets cruelty’s decree?
Your grief’s first draught but flavored sorrow’s fruit.”

A wave, colossal as betrayal’s weight,
Then crashed upon the ship of shattered vows.
The boy, flung backward through fate’s splintered gate,
Grasped but the locket—chain snapped at his brows.
Down, down he spiraled, through the kelp-strewn night,
Where pressure’s fist compressed his final scream,
And there, embraced by anglerfish’s light,
He saw the truth that haunts the mortal dream:

A cavern vast, where skeletons in ranks
Clutched lockets, dolls, and tokens of the shore,
Each skull a testament to empty thanks
From kin who’d sworn to love, then bargained more.
His father’s bones, mid-corpse cathedral’s sprawl,
Still gripped the quill that signed his son’s demise.
The ink? Not blood, but tears that never fall
Save in the heart where love’s last ember dies.

As darkness pressed its kiss to his dimmed eyes,
The locket sprang afloat on bubbles’ wings,
Its rusted hinge gasping a faint surmise
Of truths too cruel for daylight’s tenderings.
It breached the waves at dawn’s first blushing hour,
Where gulls mocked sunrise with their scavenger’s cries,
And lodged between two rocks—a fragile flower
Of metal, proof that even love can lie.

Now tides still gnaw that cliff with timeless spite,
And fishermen, when tempests choke the air,
Hear orphaned sobs entwined with the night,
A father’s ghostly plea: “I did not dare—”
But none retrieve the locket from its tomb,
Where barnacles obscure the names within.
The sea, content, lets silence be the womb
That births all vows drowned deep ere they begin.