By Craig Rodgers
Each day he builds a castle. So many he’s lost count. The oldest of them is sand piled and shaped, no craftsmanship, no detail. The ones he first made when he washed ashore are only the idea of castles.
As the days go on and the line of castles spread each day’s work grows more elaborate. Parapets and crenellations begin to appear. Little carved windows. A drawbridge of sticks.
He finds the bottle while digging out a moat. Fogged glass buried long years in sand. He holds it up, he shakes it, thinking. Wondering.
He writes the note on the label. Bleached skin peeled from the bottle with delicate hand. He puts coordinates such as he knows them. HELP, he writes. SEND ME A SHIP RIGHT AWAY.
The cork he palms hard into place, tight. He gives it another pat just in case. He shakes the bottle again. The note rattles inside.
His best throw is so little, and the ocean so vast. Once it’s beyond him he sits on the beach for some hours watching it bob along before it vanishes from sight. Then he returns to his work. His castles.
Each day he builds a castle. The oldest of them has begun to crumble with age. Its detail fading like the lost wonder of a once great kingdom. The newest is formed through long hours with care. Stone walls are raised to protect the soft sand within. A sigil is shaped on the door of this fortification in an impossible realm. And each day when his task is done he sits and watches the sun fall away behind the world as he waits for another day to come, a chance to do it better again.
Each day he builds a castle. The oldest of them has sunk back into the sand, lumps of some forgotten wonder. The ones he first made when he washed ashore look like nothing at all. He’s carving twigs into flagpoles topped with leaves, he’s filling the moat with borrowed sea. Long hours go by in great care, staring and imagining and willing this citadel into being.
It is a glance that shows him the glint. He turns again and it’s still there, riding the seesawing lap of ocean’s reach. The bottle stirs at sand’s edge. He sits, he stares. He can hardly believe. Then he is running, and he is stumbling, he is falling where it lay in sputtered foam. He takes the bottle up and with a hand he wipes it clear. And there inside, where before there was rolled his note, now sits anchored a ship.
Craig Rodgers is the author of ten books, a handful of lies, and all manner of foolishness.