Swords and Ink
Our swords clashed, debris flying past our faces as we fought. Strike and blow was matched perfectly with block and deflection, our skill equal to our cunning strategy and wits. After some time however, my swings began to slow, and he noticed my hesitation. With a smile and certainty that he would win, Adam struck my arm past my defences.
“Ow!” I hollered, the stick in my hand falling to the ground. With a laugh, Adam tossed his stick next to mine.
“Swords usually do hurt when you get hit by them, sorry to break it to you Sam.” He patted my shoulder as he said this, a sly grin creeping up his lips. I couldn’t help but laugh and shoved him playfully away. A building across the street had its door swing open, and an elderly man emerged from the darkness. We knew how adults felt about kids playing with dangerous swords meant for adults, so we did what we always did. Adam began walking in the direction of the docks, then broke out into a run. “Come on!” I shook my head and the legs below me began to run as well, catching up with my brother as best as I could.
He was seven now, I was five, and we felt like the world was ours to explore. We would run around town, finding new plants and befriending stray animals. We always bumped into Scotch, an old wolfhound we named when we caught him in our garden. He had difficulty walking, but his spirit was as strong as the blazing sun high in the sky. Scotch would bark as we ran past, limping for a moment to keep up, but soon lost interest and went back to shuffling through town. We would reach the docks at full speed, ducking and weaving through the bustling crowd of merchants trading their goods and storing them in crates to be placed on trading ships that would sail across the sea. That was another thing we couldn’t keep away from; the water.
We were obsessed with sailor’s stories of the ocean, talk of sea spirits stealing men's souls, or heavy storms bashing against the hull with the captain bellowing orders over the deafening winds. Adam and I would sit on the crates wide-eyed while the sailors sang sea shanties, passing goods up a line in time with the music. Our foots would tap and heads bounce with the words, their meaning lost to us but the song piercing our hearts with an even stronger urge to sail the seas. We’d be there for hours at a time, asking questions about knots and sails and even swabbing the deck. Each sailor would either chuckle, pat our heads, or tell us to scram. Once every sailor gave a response, we would run to the next ship that was docked and ask all the questions over again. Our rush to the docks was always quick because we were anxious to get there, but after sunset we would have to walk back. That was when we took it slow, because we didn’t enjoy what was always waiting for us once we arrived home.
The house had become even more decrepit, rain and wind taking its toll on the exterior of the building. The door would always creak when opened, it was something we couldn’t hide. The one noise that signalled our arrival into hell on earth. The insides were even worse, bottles both empty and broken littering the floor. A stack of misshapen logs sat by the fireplace, dark red embers still pulsing with heat from the dying fire. In the middle of it all, snoring in his frail wooden chair, was our father. A half full bottle of whiskey hung from his fingertips, the glass grazing the ground with soft scratches. A wave of shame washed over us as we stared at him, our hope of the ocean darkened by the kind of father we had. Instead of a man that pushed his sons to be great, we had a father that merely pushed his sons away. We walked to Adam’s room and closed the door quietly behind us.
“I wonder if we’ll ever meet a sea spirit,” I muttered, looking out the window towards the last rays of light dipping below the horizon. “Maybe they aren’t all bad.”
Adam looked at me for a second and then laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll serve you up a nice cup of tea and chat about their day.” His remarks were always done in a way that made many of the adults laugh, as well as most of the children. He knew how to make people chuckle and take a look at the positive instead of how dreary everything in the world was. He began to remove his boots, the dirt on them falling through cracks in the boarded floor.
“Can you teach me to read and write?” Adam paused and looked at me when I made the request. “Eric left while he was teaching me, so I don’t really know much.”
Adam’s face went from puzzled to his usually sly smile. “And why do you want to learn reading and writing? Planning on writing love letters?” He laughed before turning dead serious and staring into my eyes. “Are you going to read poetry to poor old Scotch?” His laughter came back in ten folds, the sound bouncing off the walls in his room. My mind had travelled back to the letter under my bedroom floor, its mysteries still locked away in writing that I could not decypher. However, I didn’t want Adam to know the letter was the purpose for me wanting to learn to read and write. Instead, I felt he might have forgotten about the parchment entirely, and wanted it to stay that way.
“Of course not! I just thought your First Mate should be able to read a map or write down directions if I need to,” Adam’s laughter slowed as I continued with my excuses. “Maybe make a list of any goods that we take on our ship. You never know how important that might be.” My mind was racing with more possible reasons why I might need to read and write, but it always came back to understanding the letter tucked away within my room.
My brother began to nod slowly, then a little faster as the idea sunk in. “Okay,” he said as he stood up and walked to the door. “I’ll teach you reading and writing, but I get to tell the girl you marry that I taught you all my good lines.” He opened the door and walked out to the fireplace, leaned down to grab some charcoal that was dense enough to write with, then returned to me in his room. “For now, we start with charcoal. I don’t trust you with ink yet.”
From then on we spent every night in his room, learning new letters and words each time. When we ran low on candlelight, we used the moon’s light to see the parchment. If there were clouds covering the moon we’d just talk through the night, quizzing each other on spelling. If any words came up that we didn’t know how to spell, we would ask a sailor the next day at the docks. Adam and I became even closer through our world of words, while our father continued to drift further away from us, sleeping drunk on whiskey and rum in the adjacent room.