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The Black Throne


I
She sang beyond the genius of the sea, and he heard.
Walking on that gray, warm morn through fogs which entombed his world in
near-viscous whiteness, perfect as snow, quietening as cloak or shroud, the boy
moved with a certain deliberation, wordless voice within his head, veiled forms
swaying about him, avoiding cobble and branch in passage through the wood behind
the school, oddity back of a place once known well, occurring mystery somehow
situated to hold his soul chrysalis for a vital season, somehow special,
personal, and marking a passage distinctive as scar or tattoo upon his life and
forever.
It was more than the dark voice of the sea that made the world acutest at its
vanishing. And the sea, for that matter, the sea ought not to be this close,
ought it? Nor in this direction. No.
Yet sea must there be. Somehow the song told him this, wordless though it ran.
Sea must there be, and to it hieing on this day, he, day embedded in cotton,
warm, salt tang within it, like the interior of vein or artery, song throbbing
through.
Brittle fingers brushed his shoulder, leaves kissed moistly. He drew back from a
dark treeform, stumbled against another, recovered. One grows accustomed to fog
in London. Even an American child comes quickly to understand it, to separate
caution from fear, to appreciate the distortions of distance, the slippery
footing, the dearth of echoes. He moved in half-conscious quest of the singer—a
quest which might have commenced before his awakening. Indeed, this seemed,
somehow, but a continuation of a peculiar dream.
He did remember getting up, dressing, departing. But that had almost been an
interlude. This had been going on before that. Something down on the strand. . .
. Beach? Strand. Same thing. He had to go and find it now. He knew it would be
there. The singing had been present on both sides of sleep. It had told him, it
led him. . . .
He walked on, his clothing grown clammy, beginning to cling, a feeling of
dampness coming into his shoes. The way sloped downward, and as he followed it
the trees retreated, though shadows still formed within the fog; and a
bell—somewhere a bell was ringing, just at the edge of awareness, slow, earthy,
full-throated counterpoint to the ethereal song.
The first sea salt smell reached his nostrils as he began the descent, and he
increased his pace. Soon, soon. . . .
The trail steepened abruptly. From somewhere there came the calls of gulls;
their dark shapes slid above the overhead whiteness. The faintest of breezes
drifted past him then, bearing even stronger sea smells than he had noticed
earlier.
The trail widened, losing its steepness. Suddenly, there was sand underfoot, and
smooth pebbles clicked and bounced. The sound of the sea came to him. The gulls
continued their calling. The sounds of the bells began to fade.
The singing, hardly louder than before, seemed nevertheless nearer. Turning
left, he followed it, passing about the squat form of a final tree—a palmetto,
it would seem. But it shouldn't be growing here.
The fog became more active, drifting in from the apparent direction of the