Arms stretched a thousand miles wide, Greybeard rolled forward.
Ocean waves are born in storm, destined to die on distant rocky shores, but not Greybeard. He was one of the Immortals. Born 30 million years ago, he surged eastward without relent. He had lost count of the number of times he had passed The Narrowing. He knew no rocky shore.
With this latest storm he had grown taller and mightier. The wind had wrought in him an anger as frightening as it was uncontrollable and unstoppable. He had become a vast brine leviathan, a living being of foam and crushing water, thundering onwards and downwards, crushing and swallowing anything lying before him. Monarch of the ocean, all bowed before Greybeard and the cohort of Immortals.
A great white animal thundered over Greybeard. An expert mass of twisting sinews and drumming feathers the bird skimmed the sea, paralleling Greybeard’s long white ridge of cresting froth. A furious wavelet leapt skywards; the Roaring Forties instantly turned the water to shrapnel, pelting the bird with icy shards of vapour. But the aviatrix was unflinching. An eternal wanderer, it swung stiffly down Greybeard’s foaming shirtfront and turned its head; for a second they looked into each other. Pelagic exiles both, they saw in each others’ souls a part of themselves and then suddenly the bird was gone, soaring high into the sky and vanishing into the spindrift that covered the sea like a mist.
Implacable, Greybeard obeyed nothing but his urge to go east, surging and tumbling onwards in the Sisyphean search for the fabled rocky shore all Immortals waited for with a patience as infinite as their quest.
For 30 million years now he had waited. He had seen many changes, but recently he had seen something unexpected. Men were here. They did not live here. They were not like the birds. They were not like Greybeard.
Greybeard remembered some of these men; a dirty group huddled beneath one of their wooden craft on a narrow beach, while a hundred miles away six desperate compatriots clung stubbornly to their tiny boat as they had ridden up Greybeard’s face. Their stress-lined visages were locked in rictuses of terror as they clung to the gunnels, staring up at Greybeard’s toppling crown of foam. The boat full of water, they had somehow survived and had slipped down his back, vanishing into the dark night. Greybeard had always wondered what had happened to them. A year later, in a wind-whipped fury, his fingers had trailed along that narrow beach, destroying the upturned boat. But the stranded men lay there no more.
Today men came in mightier vessels. Built of cold, hard steel, they thundered through his body, leaving great foaming scars across his back.
As the storm faded and the winds dropped to an exhausted breath, Greybeard relaxed. He sank downwards and spread his body out wide. Still soaring forward without pause, his anger was gone for the moment.
Ahead a bright red ship steamed across his path. Greybeard watched as he closed in. He recognized this ship; their paths had crossed before, usually in The Narrowing. Whenever he saw these ships he thought of those six terrified men in their dinghy and he looked up. As he met the ship it rose gently on his back, sliding off unsteadily as he passed beneath. Through the windows he saw people inside. Some looked back at him. In them he saw nothing. But he thought of those six men. In them he had seen himself.
Forgotten already, Greybeard left the ship behind. Rested now, the wind began to grow again, full of a new vitality. An electric hum filled the sky. Scudding clouds heralded the coming storm.
Growing tall he felt his anger rising. He rose up, proud and mighty, his crown of foam spilling down his face in the fading light. Night fell and Greybeard rose.
A howling filled the air. Some call it the sound of the wind. Others know it is the sound of something else. Something implacable. Something searching. Something infinite.
Arms stretched a thousand miles wide, Greybeard rolled forward. He waited for his rocky shore.